Decriminalising Nigeria’s Democratic Estate

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

A lot has been agitating my mind in recent times on the state of our union and why evil seems to continually thrive over good. Why is it that the things which disqualify people in other climes from holding public office are exactly what is needed by an average Nigerian politician to be considered astute?

In other climes, hardly will a certificate forger make a successful career in politics. In Nigeria the reverse is the case. Many of those in public office in Nigeria today forged their academic qualifications even when the bar is so ridiculously low that all you need to be president is the West African School Certification Examination, WASCE. You don’t even need to pass.

As Gov Uzodinma Runs Imo State From His Back Pocket!

 By Steve Osuji

Conquered Territory, Burial Industry: It’s all quiet over there in Imo. The quiet of a conquered people. People move about sombrely, not unlike sheep. Death stalks the land quite proactively and burial ceremony is the most thriving business. The emerging economics of burials becomes avenues for one big meal and a quaff of beer in many communities. Not much more seems to go on in Imo State these days than misery, ailments, certain demise, then burials... and more burials. 

*Ihedioha and Uzodinma 

Meanwhile, our dear governor, Hope Uzodinma, seems to abide in the clouds these days. He’s grown more chubby and rosy-cheeked; his visage looking supple and lush like the tenderloins of a nubile damsel.

He's on top of his game as governor of a vassal territory. Now and then, Abuja sends him on serf errand around the southeast – an emissary to a state burial or to the more tacky task ‘managing’ difficult election. 

Concerning Courts Of Electoral Kleptocracy

 By Chidi Odinkalu

In 1968, Stanislav Andrzejewski, the former Polish soldier and prisoner-of-war, who later founded the Sociology Department at the University of Reading in England, coined the word ‘kleptocracy”, which he defined as “a system of government [that] consists precisely of the practice of selling what the law forbids to sell.” He saw in the system of Nigeria’s First Republic, “the most perfect example of a kleptocracy” in which “power rested on the ability to bribe.” 

According to Andrzejewski, the defining characteristic of a kleptocracy “is that the functioning of the organs of authority is determined by the mechanisms of supply and demand rather than the laws and regulations.”

Towards A Democracy-Sensitive, People-Oriented Judiciary

 By Tunde Olusunle

On Thursday, March 16 and Friday, March 17, 2023, an editorial titled “The judiciary and public criticism” featured on prominent pages of a Nigerian national newspaper. The editorial alluded to public denunciation of certain judgments delivered and actions taken by the nation’s apex court and its leadership. 

Principally cited in the commentary are pronouncements gifting Ahmed Lawan, president of the Senate, and Godswill Akpabio, a former governor of Akwa Ibom State, tickets to contest the recent senatorial elections. Such appropriation was done by the Supreme Court, even when both political leaders did not participate in the primaries which would have presaged their emergence. 

2023 Elections And The Fake Registrants In Imo

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi 

Last Sunday, Professor Chidi Odinkalu, human rights activist, lawyer and guest columnist with TheNiche newspaper, raised a poser: Can Nigeria’s INEC Organise A Credible National Election?

*Uzodinma and Buhari 

Odinkalu asked the question against the backdrop of the mind-boggling revelation by the spokesman of the Coalition of United Political Parties, CUPP, Ikenga Imo Ugochinyere, that the 2023 elections may have been rigged even before the first ballot is cast.

Ugochinyere alleged on September 14, at a press conference, that voters register has been grievously compromised, having been padded with fictitious names. He further alleged that there was a plot to sack the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, in the event that he refuses to play ball; and also alerted of a secret suit at an Owerri High Court to stop the use of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BIVAS, in the 2023 elections.

Under Uzodimma, Imo State Has Gone To The Dogs

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Let me be clear from the onset. I am neither a fan of Senator Rochas Okorocha, former governor of Imo, nor his son-in-law, Uche Nwosu, who he wanted to impose on the state as his successor. Okorocha knows that for a fact because I told him to his face in Owerri that he was a big disappointment to Ndi-Imo who preferred him to his predecessor, Ikedi Ohakim, in 2011.

Uzodinma and Okorocha 

I told Okorocha that if he didn’t mend his ways and provide the people the quality governance he promised while he was out on the hustings, history will be unkind to him. Of course, he ignored my unsolicited advice and doubled down on the shenanigans that became the hallmark of his administration. He capped the political tomfoolery with the attempted imposition of Nwosu. Uche Nwosu’s political ascendancy was tied to his filial relationship with Okorocha, whose first daughter, Uloma, he wedded on January 5, 2013 while he was serving as the commissioner for lands and survey.

Supreme Court Judgments Are Clearly Reversible

By Chuks Iloegbunam

Nigerians must with one voice put this critical question to the seven-member Supreme Court panel of judges that sacked Governor Ihedioha of Imo State and planted Senator Hope Uzodinma as his replacement: Distinguished as you all are, would you have dared to pronounce this same perversity if other than the All Progressives Congress (APC) is currently in control of the Federal Government of Nigeria?

*Justice Tanko Muhammad

The controversial Supreme Court verdict was read by Justice Kudirat Motonmori Olatokunbo Kekere-Ekun. Mrs. Kekere-Ekun was born in 1958. She earned her first Law degree from the University of Lagos, and the second from the London School of Economics and Political Science, not from backyard or quota colleges that routinely grant admissions to laggards confirmed incapable of passing basic School Certificate subjects like English and Mathematics. Called to the Bar in 1981, she was appointed to the Supreme Court 32 years later.

Notable lawyers hailed her appointment to the apex court, two of whose informed opinions are here: “I have read a few of her judgments; she is very sound in law. In other words, she suppresses technicality and allows substance to prevail. She has that equitable spirit of trying to do justice,” said Professor Itse Sagay, SAN.

Imo: Will Emeka Ihedioha Be Different?

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Since Mr. Emeka Ihedioha of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) emerged the winner of the governorship election held recently in Imo State, all sorts of people who are able to get themselves interviewed by reporters have been filling our ears with rambling tales about how a new “messiah” had emerged to liberate Imo people from the hands of their “oppressors” and “exploiters” and usher them into a glorious era of limitless happiness.

Emeka Ihedioha 

As a citizen of Imo State who has closely observed several governors enter and leave the Imo Government House, I find the whole absurd drama so revolting.

If only Mr. Ihedioha would spare some moments and reflect, he would realize that there is nothing new about the drab performance that these characters are staging today; nor is it peculiar to Imo State.

Imo State: Between The Devil And Deep Blue Sea

By Charles Onunaiju

Never  in the recent history of any  people have their prospects of been  so bleak and in dire straits as what stares the hard working people of Imo state in the face right now, starting from the debacle of Mr. Rochas Okorocha’s near eight year comic rule to the prospects of extending the governance nightmare to another four years. 

*Gov Rochas Okorocha

The recent choice of candidates for the top job in the state by the two major parties, the All Progressive Congress, APC,  and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP,  is  chillingly harrowing. The two earlier contenders in the ruling APC, Mr. Hope Uzodimma, a serving senator, who first claimed to have won the primaries has nothing in his pedigree either in business, career, profession or even politics to recommend him for the top job in the state, which for all its seeming glamour is a burden for which any worthy occupant must toil in privation and humility while radiating only uncommon ideas  with the will of steel to offend vested interest and step on big rotten  toes.

Pini Jason – A Date Still Fresh

By Kanayo Esinulo

It happened in the morning of May 4, 2013. Pini Jason was already beginning to recover from surgery which his doctor considered necessary and urgent. He had no choice but to submit himself in obedience. But days before he left Abuja for Lagos, we kept talking not just about the impending medical tour to Lagos, we also discussed the rampage of Boko Haram in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, a city he said he visited a number of times and developed so much love “for its streets lined with trees and flowers, but which these rascals are now destroying.” He told me how beautiful and peaceful Maiduguri was each time he visited the city either on official duty or on holiday. 

*Pini Jason 

We talked of other things like Jonathan’s response to the terror group, and then we would return to his health. “I am not feeling too well,” he said repeatedly, but kept assuring me that his doctor was certain that the surgery would come off pretty well. 

Nigeria: A Dishonest Political Circus

By Sufuyan Ojeifo

I have watched with amusement the hollow rituals of “comic tragedy” or tragicomedy, which the defection of politicians from one political party to another typifies. The polity has witnessed, in recent times, movements by some politicians who were, doubtless, respected leaders of their people up until their sudden volte-face and gravitation to other political parties, characteristically for obvious reasons.  Anytime I see them on television or read about them in the print media announcing, with glee, their decision to jump ship because they have suddenly realised how bad their original party has been and how disciplined and forward-looking their newfound party is, they cut a pathetic picture to the sight and create a sardonic impression in the mind.

What they, perhaps, know but which they do not give a heck about is that they do not enjoy the respect of well-meaning Nigerians, including, most of the times, their followers, especially those of them who can hold their own without the usual compromising handouts from “the lords of the manors.” This dimension reinforces the age-long subjugating notion of stomach infrastructure, which has, only recently, been so elegantly described and tagged in the aftermath of the 2014 Ekiti governorship election that swept Ayodele Fayose into power.

Nevertheless, political leaders’ movements have characteristically thrown up the loyalty question.   As supposed leaders, they have failed the critical test of loyalty by wavering in their commitment to the party on which platform they have been voted into elective offices.  Rather than consistently and persistently inspire confidence in their followers, they have disconcerted them, dealing a strong blow to their pristine sense of conservative attachment to the party.  It thus becomes crystal clear that the followership that has remained unwavering in its support is, indeed, the nucleus of the tribe of enthusiastic and enchanted party faithful, not the opportunistic political elites who, always wanting to be politically correct, lack the discipline to promote and embrace any well-defined ideological standpoint, which the followership can relate with or approximate under their tutelage.