For The Sake Of Nigeria, Our Nation!

By Anthony Cardinal Olubunmi Okogie

For the sake of our nation exposed to insecurity by absence of governance, the time has come for us to differentiate between a political jobber and a statesman.  A political jobber is a merchant who buys and sells loyalty in order to be in power.  He does not care about the morality of his means.  He would, therefore, do everything to win an election or be declared the winner.  His sole and ultimate objective is access to power and to the perks of office.

Cardinal Okogie 

But the ultimate aim of a statesman is not power.  It is service of the common good.  And even if he plans to win an election, he does not transgress the boundaries of morality.  He is fair in running for office and fair in running the office.   He works for the good of the nation and for the good of its citizens.  Rather than use or threaten to use violence, he shares his vision with the citizens, respects their right to share or repudiate the vision, and their right to decide through an electoral process free of fraud or coercion.  Political jobbers manipulate the electoral process.  Statesmen respect its integrity.  The choice before Nigerians in the 2019 elections, therefore, is that of choosing between political jobbers and statesmen.  And, for the sake of our nation, we must make a right choice this time around. 

Jonathan’s Bill Of Rights Or Failures?

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It remains a puzzle of governance in Africa why those we entrust with leadership do not creditably acquit themselves like their counterparts in some nations of the world.  Before our politicians get power, we are enthralled by their resonant visions of an equitable society that would be an all-powerful response to the mockery that the black man would irremediably chafe under the affliction of  inept leadership. But once they are in office, they often fail to translate such grand dreams into reality.  After they leave office, they regain the trajectory of articulating how a great society should be run.

*Jonathan 

This is the problem of a nation whose leaders do not really prepare for leadership. They are imposed on the citizens by themselves, others or circumstances. It is only when they are thrown up by circumstances or other people or they bulldoze their way into power that they start to learn about what they should do while in office. Of course, this is in the rare case of when they learn at all. Most times, our leaders do not bother to learn about the real issues for which they are in office.

Rather, once they get to office, they become not only enamoured of it, they are pre-occupied with how to sustain themselves in their position to the detriment of good governance. This is when they think of the next election and how they would return to their offices.  It is when they would globe-trot, marry more wives and take more chieftaincy titles. It is because our leaders only remember the right things they should have done only after leaving office that the country would remain undeveloped or even retrogress.

But the real tragedy is that such leaders do not behave in a manner that shows that they regret frittering away some opportunities to do great things for their country. For instance, ever since former President Olusegun Obasanjo left office, he has been  behaving as though he were the only Nigerian alive who  could proffer solutions to the  seemingly intractable problems of the nation. It is in the same mould that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has caught the limelight by canvassing the restructuring of the country as the solution to its myriad of problems. If they had used the opportunities they had to do what they are talking about now, they would not need to push them into public consciousness now.

Ever since he left office, former President Goodluck Jonathan has been silent. Even when it seemed he would react to the persistent  insinuations of his complicity in the corruption charges hanging over many of his aides, he has avoided being embroiled in them. But he broke his silence on Monday when he spoke in London. Indeed, Jonathan’s speech brims with stellar ideas about how to run a society that is underpinned by a clearly defined bill of rights. Jonathan wants such a bill of rights to be similar to the British Magna Carta established some 800 years ago, and  the one introduced by America’s Founding Fathers.

For Effective Change To Evolve In Nigeria

By Dan Amor

There is a lamentable and disturbing magnitude of violence in Nigeria. So is crime. The country is constantly on the boil. The at­mosphere in the country has been nothing but a tawny volcano. The situation conveys at once the chief features of the Nigerian spirit: it is vertical, spontaneous, immaterial, upward. It is ardent. And even as tongues of fire do, it turns into fire everything it touches. What we are experiencing today is induced by poverty, hunger, frustration, apa­thy and desperation. There is no more thermometer to measure the degree of frustration and des­peration in the land than the spate of student unrest in our tertiary institutions. As we write, not less than five universities have been shut down by their authorities as a result of protests by students. These protests are precipitated by absence of amenities and utilities that would make life comfortable for learning on our campuses. In some of the campuses, water is now a very scarce commodity. In the midst of the misery and lack that is the lot of our youth and other Nigerians, a few Nigerians are still swimming in affluence and under the best security system and protection one can think of. It hardly seems a time for timidity and restraint.

In fact, unbridled activities of fraudsters, narcotics couriers, swindlers and the emergence of a class of billionaire idle politicians, have diminished our international stature to an embarrassing level. The net effect of this has been the sorry spectacle we have cut for Ni­geria and Nigerians in the international arena. The reality is that the corporate image of the country is almost irretrievably steeped in cri­ses. It is therefore no more news that the high rate of criminality in the country is traceable to the endemic corruption which has enveloped the land. Nigeria’s name is synonymous with corruption and crime all over the world. It is agreed that with the emergence of General Muhammadu Buhari as President since May 29, 2015, given his much vaunted integrity and principled stance against cor­ruption, the international image of the country would be redeemed. But it seems, from the reality on ground, that the change mantra of the APC-led Federal Govern­ment is fraught with contradic­tions and ironies. Ten months into the regime, Nigerians are gasping for relief. There is discontent in the country as hunger and lack rule the land. And one can sense the fear of the unknown. The signs are not difficult to see. They are the signs of internal decay; the dry rot of apathy and indifference within the ruling party. Nigerians have mistaken a baboon for a monkey.

The whole scenario is unwhole­some: the decadent social institu­tions, the comatose and despond­ent state of the once vibrant economy, the decaying infra­structure, and the unnerving bout of fuel scarcity in the six largest producer of crude in the world. All this could not have been mere speculation by whatever standards. Indeed, it was speculated recently that more than 80 per cent of Ni­gerians are living below the pov­erty line. Economically, there can never be anything more humiliat­ing and even frustrating than the current exchange rate of the Naira. Anyone who had witnessed the strength of the Nigerian currency against the dollar in the late 1970’s would realise that the slightest tinkering with the economy spins off a frantic palpitation which may lead to a cardiac arrest. This is why wiser nations often fix their gaze on the enigmatic ups and downs in the stock market. They are wise and experienced enough to know that an ostensibly inconsequential drop in the currency rate of a na­tion may precipitate a phenomenal fall of any government. How does President Buhari feel when he sees the Naira exchanging for 350 to the US Dollar? Does he ever remem­ber his campaign promise to Nige­rians when even the Dollar was ex­changing for N165, that he would make the Naira at par with the Dollar within his first six months in office? This is not all. Hundreds of thousands of our graduates and school leavers still trudge the streets of our cities in search of jobs that are not in sight, and the com­munal bonds that once held our various nationalities together have been rendered taut by the forces of annihilating and devastating pov­erty and inter-tribal wars.

APC: Breakaway Faction Of The PDP

*Ikhide

Exactly one year ago, Mr Ikhide Ikheloa (Pa Ikhide) wrote this on his facebook page. Read again and see if it is possible to disagree with him, if you have any grain of honesty in you...

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O Beautiful People

Many people have asked me my opinion on the change of baton between the PDP and the APC, that breakaway faction of the PDP. It should be obvious that I am not crying in my beer that Mr. Goodluck Jonathan is out of Aso Rock, he was not fit to be president of Nigeria, I am contemptuous of his reign and that of the PDP. And I have a hard time being grateful to Mr. Jonathan for being gracious in defeat; it is high time we stopped thanking the servants of the people for merely doing their job sometimes.

On the other hand I am not dancing in the streets because our thieving public intellectuals, the Napoleons of Animal Farm are heralding the coming of the tired face of yesterday on the backs of criminals and thugs and liars as "change." I do not share in the euphoria; I repeat, we have merely changed the letters of the alphabet from odious PDP to odious APC, same difference.

No one fools me, I will continue to push the conversation about what is appropriate in terms of governance. Democracy without accountability is killing Nigeria and Nigerians. We have spent dozens of billions of Naira to race past broken schools, broken hospitals and broken roads to execute a shoddy election and install the illusion of change. We have just traded ravenous locusts for starving termites. We will be miserable for the next four years as we continue to endure an unsustainable democracy. This democracy is an unsustainable farce and we all know it. If we are not careful it will be the end of our nation as we know it.The PDP needs to go, the APC needs to go, they are collectively responsible for our mess and I am not excusing one bunch of thieves and incompetents from blame.

President Buhari 

My people. I would like to be wrong, I pray to be wrong for one reason. My generation and older, of leaders and intellectuals owe this generation a huge debt of relief. We owe them what we have afforded our own families and children from the safety of the West and the faux suburbs of Lekki and Abuja. They deserve good schools, homes, hospitals and robust safety and security that our children and family enjoy. We have ripped them off, looted their present and future and fed them lies from birth. We owe them relief.

My people, since independence what has happened to Nigeria and Nigerians, I call black-on-black crime. Nigeria was quite honestly better off under white rule; that is exactly what our black rulers have proven to their eternal shame.

In the name of this generation of hopeful youths, I plead with the incoming farce, this change borne on the backs of criminals and thugs and liars, to prove me wrong and show some compassion and competence. Please do something in the name of millions of young people who truly believe in you and expect structural changes in the next four years. Prove many of us wrong and do something productive for once. We have the solutions but sixteen years of corruption and buffoonery by various versions of the APC and the PDP have taunted the question: Who will bell the cat?

I salute and congratulate every young Nigerian that has begun the journey of fighting back. It is your country, they owe you, you do not owe them. They work for you; hold them accountable, make them leaders, not rulers. Make them treat you the way they treat their own children. This is a promise: In your name, I will continue to be a one-man army railing against the APC and the PDP until they morph from being enemies of the people to champions of the people. I do not need money from any of them, I just want them to do what they have promised. It may not happen in my lifetime but it won't be for lack of trying. A pox on both their houses.

Finally, I must thank those who engaged me on my wall; as much as I joked about ‪#‎BLOCKING folks, I found that I did not really need to use that powerful tool. The vast majority of folks proved that they were raised right and engaged me with passion and uncommon respect, even when I was being bad and I am not the easiest person to have as an adversary. I salute you and I look forward to more skirmishes as I join like-minded folks to continue to name and shame our ruler-criminals. Nigeria is ours, not theirs.

Good morning!

Corruption Mobilizing To Fight Back

By Femi Falana 

 Last week, some of the principal  suspects implicated in the probe of the $2.1 billion and N643 billion arms gate were nabbed by the Economic and Financial Commission.  Pursuant to the ex parte orders validly issued by the courts  the suspects have since been detained  for the purpose of investigation. But in a desperate move designed  to divert the attention of the Nigerian people and the international community from the grave allegations of reckless and criminal diversion  of the public funds  earmarked for arms procurement to prosecute the war on terror, some reactionary politicians have accused the Buhari administration of engaging in  impunity for detaining the suspects beyond 48 hours without trial. In challenging the detention of the suspects by the EFCC  a senior lawyer was alleged to have said that "a magistrate court has no power to issue a holding charge warrant".

With respect, the detention of the suspects is in strict compliance with the rule of law. The attention of the "critics" ought to be drawn  to sections 293-299 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015 (ACJA) which stipulate that a suspect arrested for an offense which a magistrate has no  jurisdiction to try, shall within a reasonable time, be brought before a magistrate court for remand. The order which shall be for a period not exceeding 14 days may be further extended provided that if the investigation is not concluded  within 28 days the court may summon the appropriate authority to show cause why the suspect should not be unconditionally released. Suspects who are remanded in custody are at liberty to ask for bail or apply to the appropriate high court to secure the enforcement of their fundamental right to personal liberty. In view of the clear and unambiguous provisions of the law it is misleading to insist that a magistrate court lacks the power to grant the application filed by the EFCC for the detention of the criminal suspects.

Buhari: The Limits Of body Language

By  Jude Opara

RECENTLY Nigerians have been groaning under the heavy burden of acute fuel scarcity which has hit the country for the third week running. Also the issue of power which many thought was beginning to improve for the better has gone bad again thereby leaving behind anguish and lamentations across the nation.

Interestingly, these vital components of a nation on the path of recovery were witnessed as soon as Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in as president last May. Then what was on the lips of many people was that the body language of the new President was beginning to work.

The moribund refineries, we were also told, started to operate to a certain level and there was a ‘promise’ that with just few months, the issue of fuel scarcity and the attendant hardship experienced by Nigerians will be things of the past.

The argument in many quarters then was that since there was a new sheriff in town, the people who hitherto used to sit on the progress of the generality of Nigerians for their selfish interest were afraid of being hounded into jail, hence the decision to allow the system work again like what is experienced in many other climes.

The masses who have always been at the receiving end of the drama and power play that usually play out between the Federal Government and the all powerful oil marketers heaved a sigh of relief that the days of hurray were here at last. They thought that the fuel importation which has made even the government to lose count of how much it spends will be a thing of the past.

But surprisingly, just six months down the line it seems that we are returning to Egypt which we thought we had left for good. The scenario has not been anything different from what it used to be in the past as the two vital indices; fuel and power have once more become the most elusive commodities one can get.

President Buhari: Enough Of Excuses, Please!

By Sunny Ikhioya

Excuses do not get things done. Those at the helm of the nation’s affair must begin to realize this by now. Six months after, there should be signs of the so much trumpeted change or a positive approach towards that direction.

People are becoming weary of promises and excuses, they want to see action. A couple of days back, I received a mail from Mr Dan Ekoko, President of the Salimo-wits foundation, an NGO that is silently impacting lives in Nigeria through; youth leadership initiatives, wealth empowerment and positive health advancement. Mr Ekoko has this to say about present situation in the country; “It’s time to call Mr President to change his negative talk about Nigeria.

Yes, we have had bad leadership at all levels of government in the past.
Yes, corruption has been around with us a while
Yes, infrastructures are in bad shape, need refurbishment renewal and additions to our road, rails ,ports, etc

What we need more than ever to stem the current situation of these problems is not talking endlessly about them but speaking out the measures that his administration wants to adopt to change how govt biz will be managed going forward.” And, I absolutely agree with him.

The crying and lamentation s of the present leadership is beginning to give everyone headache, it is as if they were unaware of the challenges facing the nation before deciding to delve in.

Almost everyone agrees that there was misrule during the sixteen years of PDP’s rule and that accounted for why they performed woefully in the last election.

The APC government therefore, is assumed to be a corrective and change one, they did leave us with the impression during campaigns that, they already have the formula to steer the nation’s sinking ship on course, so, why the whining now?

Our obsession with the performance of the immediate past government will not allow us to move forward. Whatever happened, has happened. The previous leadership did not do well, that is why they were voted out, we must forget about the past and move forward. If anyone has done anything against the law, the normal process of investigation and trial should be followed but we must move forward.

It is important for our president to know that no amount of foreign trips and lobbying will change the situation of this country, it is only the people- Nigerians- that can make it happen. He will succeed if he genuinely carry the people along and not through instruments of coercion or condemnation.