Nigeria: Survival Of The Fittest And Profligacy Of Government

 By Emmanuel Onwubiko

The English philosopher and psychologist, Herbert Spencer, coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” (1820-1903). He is famous for his doctrine of social Darwinism, which asserts that the principles of evolution, including natural selection, apply to human societies, social classes, and individuals as well as to biological species developing over geologic time.

*Akpabio and Tinubu

In Spencer’s days, social Darwinism was invoked to justify laissez-faire economics and the minimal state, which were thought to best promote unfettered competition between individuals and the gradual improvement of society through the “survival of the fittest.”

Akpabio: How Not To Be A Senate President

 By Emmanuel Onwubiko

In 2019, Mr Omagbitse Barrow wrote that many Nigerians have never really thought seriously about the competencies required to be an effective legislator and using these competencies as the basis for selecting legislators and evaluating their performance.

*Akpabio and Tinubu 

He then said that in case you have not reflected on this before, there are five core competencies that every effective legislator should possess that are acceptable all over the world and align with oversight and legislation.

He listed them but I will borrow three which are: character; communication and courage. On character, he argued that legislators as the promoters and defenders of the Constitution and the laws of Nigeria, must seek to be beyond reproach. They must have very high standards of personal integrity and conduct themselves in a disciplined and ethical manner at all times.

As British Tightens Immigration Law

 By Emmanuel Onwubiko

Followers of news, events, information and development from the United Kingdom would have noticed that the hottest topic on the lips of most British politicians and bureaucrats is immigration. Immigration is a big issue in Great Britain given their peculiar and unique circumstances regarding the sudden upsurge in the number of irregular migrants that pour into Great Britain through the dangerous canals connecting Britain through France. Besides, border security and affiliated issues are key to defining the sovereign authority of a nation state.

In view of the aforementioned background information, I perfectly understand and appreciate the fact that the British government has an obligation to control the levels of migration into their Country given the increasing rates of costs of living and the economic crises that were thrown up by COVID-19 pandemic that slowed down the economic fortunes of many nations. Controlling migration also addresses the critical questions associated with national security and wellbeing of a nation.

Are Corps Members Year-Long Slaves?

 By Emmanuel Onwubiko

The current administration is populated by cabinet-level ministers that are not competent but were simply appointed on partisanship basis. Then, the sharing of the ministerial slots was marred by bribery scandals. Some who are now ministers allegedly paid heavy bribes to key members of the cabal in the Presidency to win a seat to represent their states in the Federal Executive Council.

The man Chris Ngige has become very notorious as the Minister of Labour and Productivity under whose watch due to crass incompetence, thousands of university students sat at home for almost a year due to industrial dispute between government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
He also registered two other unions in the universities as a strategic approach to weakening the strength of ASUU.

Nigeria’s Election As Point And Kill!

 By Emmanuel Onwubiko

Some days before the presidential election of February 25, 2023, I was awoken by a chat informing me of the possibility that the election may not be taking place in seven Local Government areas of Imo State. The Senior Director of the headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission, who brought this sad tale, also tasked me to find out why this is so. 

The Director expressed shock, consternation and disappointment that the insecurity in the South east of Nigeria has been allowed to degenerate and is now a hydra-headed monster. The person expressing this worry is not even Igbo Speaking but he is genuinely concerned about what has gone on for two years now in the Igbo heartlands.

Nigeria In A Fix, Let’s Fix It!

 By Emmanuel Onwubiko

Things are truly not looking good all around us in Nigeria and the signals are as bright as the sun with facts showing how tragic things have degenerated to and are piercing through the conscience of Nigerians like the sword of Damocles.

Things have fallen Apart in Nigeria, as prophetically affirmed by the legendary writer, Professor Chinua Achebe, who wrote the iconic novel, Things Fall Apart.

I sat in a corner of a coffee shop somewhere in Garki II, Abuja, and spent over 30 minutes waiting for the waitress to serve my hot cup of Cappuccino coffee, in deep thinking about a lot of things.

Buhari Unwinnable Anti-Media War

 By Emmanuel Onwubiko

''Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter''   --Thomas Jefferson. 

''Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost''

 --Thomas Jefferson.

*Buhari 

The history of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration won’t certainly be complete without a detailed mention of his contrived but well sustained war against media freedoms. The cantankerous relationship between the Present federal administration in Nigeria with the media is a direct reflection of the kind of opaque government that is in place which substantially is devoid of transparency, accountability and integrity.

But this situation is diametrically opposed to what should be expected from a nation that has consistently practiced constitutional democracy for well over twenty years at a stretch after about four decades of military subjugation of the democratic forces under the whims and caprices of the barrels of the guns.

Nigeria: Government As Purveyors Of Fake News Today

 By Emmanuel Onwubiko

“A few lines of reasoning’s can change the way we see the World.”— Steven E. Landsburg.

I was actually ruminating on a very important theme that traverses all of humanity and indeed already indulged in my compulsive lifestyle of deeply reflecting on my newly acquired books (75% of my annual income go into buying freshly minted, topnotch books, hard copies) and one of the most recent copies occupied my consciousness because of the opening quotation aforementioned.

*Information Minister, Lai Mohammed

Titled Basic Economics: A Common sense Guide To The Economy, this quotation rather led me to think much more about the threats to the Nigerian economy by the widespread use of fake news by all kinds of government officials with dominant reference to Federal Government officials. Lies, misinformation and outright fake news are increasingly being forced down the throats of millions of Nigerians by those who run the government and therefore have seamless access to our humongous commonwealth and patrimony which they misapply as their whims and caprices dictate to them. 

Nigeria: Presidential Assault On Human Rights

By Emmanuel Onwubiko

Did we just read that president Muhammadu Buhari told lawyers that if you put national security side by side with the rule of law, that national security comes first?

*Buhari 

This is an unmitigated assault on constitutional democracy which must not be allowed to be swept under the carpets because it is manifestly erroneous and obscenely illegal. His resort to holding on to a so called supreme court’s decision which he refused to disclose the particulars makes the entire claims puerile, spurious, unbelievably shallow and therefore a nullity to the extent of its inconsistency. Shamefully, the lawyers sat down as the head of the executive arm of government embarked on this one man show of intellectual shame. The President has wounded the truth and must be corrected with all the speed that can be mustered. We will first determine the essence of constitutionalism which is the be all and end all of the form of government in practice in Nigeria without which there would be formlessness.

Nigeria: Herdsmen’s Killings And A Forsaken Nation

By Emmanuel Onwubiko

I was very rudely awakened from a deep sleep today’s wee hours by a rash of text messages that buzzed noisily for nearly a minute.

These messages were six in number and came in torrents from family members and friends who live in Aba, Abia State; Ogoja in Cross Rivers State and Otukpo in Benue State.

*President Buhari 

These hugely unexpected messages had similar information on the rumoured invasions simultaneously of these places of their habitation by armed gangs of Fulani herdsmen who are said to be getting ready to invade some communities which are agrarian and whose land owners had protested earlier cases of invasions by cows and herdsmen resulting in the destruction of their crops that are awaiting harvest.

Nigerian Army And Human Right Obligations

By Emmanuel Onwubiko

It is no longer news that the Nigerian Army has commenced an internal military operation in the largely peaceful South Eastern states of Abia, Enugu, Anambra, and Ebonyi. They have not been withdrawn.

It is also no longer news that the key civilian population that inhabit this geopolitical entity of the South East of Nigeria stridently opposed the decision of President Muhammadu Buhari to so deploy such heavy weapons and operatives in the streets of the South East states.

This deployment has clearly constituted a cog in the wheel of economic progress of millions of people in the South East of Nigeria who due to panic and social upheavals created by the activities of the Army had to shut down their business premises to be safe. 

Nigeria: How Government Steals From The Poor

By Emmanuel Onwubiko

Thursday, May 18, 2017 started for me in a very special way. First, I got a distress call from a young single mother of three children who ekes out a living by hawking fresh fruits somewhere in Wuse Two, Abuja.

This call came at about 8 am the moment I settled into my office desk to begin the day’s work. The purpose of the call was to report that armed operatives of the Abuja Environmental Authority seized her articles of trade and arrested her late last night. She was forced to cough out five thousand naira before she could be left off the hook, but the men went away with her entire business wares.

This lady, by name Miss Evelyn, has a toddler she still breastfeeds in addition to the other two children who are in public school even as she relies on the petty trading to take care of them the best way she can. She wept uncontrollably and urged that our group should intervene so her wares could be released. But our effort was fruitless.

Fulani Killer Squads, Nigeria Police And Chocolate City

By Emmanuel Onwubiko

Nigeria has returned to a familiar turf as a society in very deep distress thereby necessitating good Christians and Muslims to embark on wide ranging prayers and atonement sessions to solicit divine intervention.

Only yesterday, the Catholic Church around the country continued with the recitations of the Unique prayer for Nigeria in distress composed by the Nigerian Catholic Bishops Conference during the regime of the military dictator- Late General Sani Abacha.

In Maiduguri, Borno State, report has it that in over 90 mosques, the adherent of the Islamic religion last Friday interceded for the quick recovery and return to work of the Nigerian President who was only recently described by a foreign press as the “missing president”.

Buhari originally travelled to London for a ten days medical vacation but ten days has turned into a full blown Month with no known exact information on when he would be back to the Country.

But the defining moments that reminds us all that Nigeria is in very spectacular distress is the weekend's illegal arrest, detention and belated release of the young Nigerian entrepreneur Mr. Audu Maikori by the police for alleged incitement following a social media posting he did on the Southern Kaduna Massacres by the armed Fulani thugs.

Mr. Maikori, a lawyer by training and a leading light in the Nigerian Music scenes, was arrested in Lagos around noon Friday by a team of policemen attached to inspector-general monitoring and intelligence team and was immediately transferred to the Force Headquarters in Abuja.

Mr. Mark Jacobs, the Legal Counsel to Maikori said the arrest was in connection with a series of tweets posted by Mr. Maikori about four weeks ago in which he alleged the killing of some Southern Kaduna residents by Fulani herdsmen.

But details of the tweets, which Mr. Maikori said were obtained from his driver, turned out to be false.

Mr. Maikori later retracted and apologized for the false information. A magistrate in Kaduna issued a warrant for his arrest, his lawyer said. But it's a notorious fact that Mr. Audu Maikori was humiliated by the police on the illegal instruction of the Kaduna state governor only because he is a Christian from Southern Kaduna and because he has consistently condemned the atrocious mass murders of his people by armed Fulani terrorists.

The arrest of this young Nigerian business executive born by Southern Kaduna parents was sequel to earlier threats by the Kaduna State governor that he will order the detention of anyone spreading information about the killings in Southern Kaduna State. It is a well-known fact in a lot of circle that Nassir El Rufai is an unrepentant ethno-Islamic bigot. He was once quoted to have tweeted a hate message stating that for every Fulani man killed the Fulani will not forgive but will decimate many from the community whereby this killing takes place. El Rufai is not known to have dissociated himself from this apparent hate message on his tweeter handle. 

Infrastructure Collapse In The South-East Of Nigeria

By Emmanuel Onwubiko

During the last Yuletide, when people from diverse sectors of life trooped down to their indigenous hometowns in the South-East of Nigeria from across the globe to celebrate with their loved ones, this writer also spent quality periods in the South-East.

But, unlike several millions of our people whose major point of attraction in going home for Christmas is to be with loved ones, as a professional journalist and human rights campaigner, I also moved round the South-East states to catch impressions of the state of infrastructure in the zone, largely due to the existential fact that the South-East of Nigeria suffers severe infrastructure deficits. 

With the possible exceptions of Enugu and Anambra states, all other states in the South-East like Imo, Ebonyi and Abia states have serious infrastructure shortages. Some elected politicians in some of these states operate like merchants who are in Abuja to enrich their families. 

But, throughout the movement I had around the South- Eastern States, a common noticeable trend emerged, depicting the reality that, indeed, the South-East of Nigeria is witnessing first class infrastructural emergency.

Home truth dawned on me that steps and mechanisms must be put in place and meticulously implemented to restore the pride that the South-East of Nigeria used to enjoy in times past.

But, in all of these bad states of social amenities, the almost complete absence of effective social services and professional policing of most states of the South- East goes to show another hidden fact- that the South- East is currently witnessing human rights emergency.

Federal security agencies operating in the South-East States, most especially in the capital cities, usually operate with a hostile mindset, as if to say the South-East of Nigeria is a conquered territory. 

Military’s Resurgence In Our Democracy

By Emmanuel Onwubiko

IN what could pass as the most poetic expression of democracy, the renowned political scientist Professor John Keane made the following opening statement in his widely acclaimed book The Life and Death of Democracy, thus: “History is often said to be a catalogue of human sorrows, an unending story of bootlicking, a slaughterhouse of crimes. It is not always so.”

Dr Keane said democracy was born of resistance to tyranny, just as he reasoned that Greeks’ claimed invention at first caused no great stir but that few spotted its novelty.

The above commentary from one of the global political thinkers which at first sounded like the little book of lamentations could be compared to the inglorious roles played by the Nigerian Military and policy in the just ended Rivers State rerun parliamentary polls.
The disturbing partisanship of the Nigerian armed forces is reminiscent of the 40 years that the Nigerian military took over power and ruled Nigeria in the most lawless form in such a way that the Constitution was in suspension not until overwhelming public pressures forced the military back to their barracks in 1999. The resurgence of the military in the political firmament of Nigeria is deeply troubling.  This development ugly as it is must be arrested immediately because the long term damage it would inflict in the credibility and integrity of the Nigerian military as an institution.

When President Muhammadu Buhari came on board last year, he made the Chief of Army staff Lt. Gen Tukur Buratai to constitute a board of inquiry which investigated alleged partisanship of the military in some past elections and over three dozen military officers trained with billions of public fund were prematurely retired as a result even though many of these indicted officers are in courts challenging their sack. But to now witness a worst case scenario of the same military behaving like dogs that eat their vomits with the open and brazen partisanship as seen in the Rivers State rerun election is indeed traumatising.

Rivers State also the nation’s hot bed of inter-party rivalries between the nation’s two main political parties known as the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC).

The rerun legislative re-run elections in Rivers State were occasioned by the legal cancellation of last year’s election in which the People’s Democratic Party swept virtually all of the parliamentary seats both within Rivers State House of Assembly and the Senate and House of Representatives seats to represent the State of Rivers at the National Assembly. The party at the center saw the annulment as an opportunity of a life to gain entry into Rivers State.
From evidence available on the social media and even from eye witnesses, the roles played by the military and police to sabotage, undermine and scuttle the will of the Rivers State electorate are despicable.

Should The Massacre Of Pro-Biafra Activists Be Overlooked?

By Emmanuel Onwubiko

The Nigeria Army is once more in the eye of the storm due to the indiscretions and unprofessional conducts of some of her operatives   and officers with regards to internal military operations. Under the current dispensation the Nigerian Army has had several   face offs with International humanitarian groups over alleged   widespread killings of civilians.

The latest challenge to the public and corporate image of the   Nigerian Army is the alleged mass killings of over 150 unarmed   protesters thought to be members or sympathizers of the Europe   registered group known as the INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF BIAFRA (IPOB).

IPOB has for two years now waged global wide peaceful advocacy   campaigns for self-determination of the people of South-East of   Nigeria.

The members of the Indigenous People of Biafra are absolutely   unarmed and are some of the most peaceful and peaceable advocates of   self determination Worldwide.

The British founded global human rights body known as AMNESTY   INTERNATIONAL has recently issued damaging but extensively   verifiable reports of the killing spree conducted by the Nigerian   Army in the South East of Nigeria in the last one year leading to   the slaughter through extra-legal means of unarmed civilians   belonging or exercising their sympathy for the messages of   self-determination being spread peacefully by IPOB.

This report has understandably generated considerable volumes of   reactions with the Army hurriedly denying any involvement but in   another breath said it was only defending her operatives from   violence. Which violence? One may ask.

The killings of civilians by the Army go against everything that   constitutional democracy stands for because extra-legal execution of   civilians is absolutely antithetical to civility and democracy.

For the better part of the last two decades, Nigeria embraced   civilian democracy and an essential ingredient of this system of   government is the constitutionally guaranteed right to peaceful   protests the citizens are entitled to.

Importantly, the attempt to sweep under the carpets these senseless   killings captured in audiovisuals and which are watched globally,   offends everything that make us rational and thinking beings.

The killings if tolerated would amount to overturning all the   efforts we have genuinely made to build a Nigerian nation whereby   the Rule of Law would become our national ethos.

Our Northern ‘Naughty’ Governors

By Emmanuel Onwubiko

Since independence on October 1st 1960, one question that has continued to be asked without appropriate response is: why is Nigeria so cursed with poor leadership? Another corollary to this interrogatory is: What is the leadership recruitment process in Nigeria? These key questions are germane and hold the magic wand to the bigger question of why Nigeria is in rapid decline from all indexes of human development.

(pix: thesheet)

To go straight to providing answers to the above interrogatories, the beginning point is to take a cursory look at the work of the renowned writer Professor Chinua Achebe of blessed memory which he titled- “The Trouble with Nigeria”: Professor Achebe summed up the trouble with Nigeria as that of poor leadership. Professor Achebe quickly added that poor followership is also a major issue. I agree.

Nigeria indeed has a warped leadership recruitment process which emphasizes the role of political godfathers and the role of illicit money which are the combined factors that have consistently determined much of the political leadership of Nigeria since the last half a century.
The consequence of this distorted and crime infested leadership recruitment process is the near- state of collapse that Nigeria faces.

Corruption, ineptitude, indiscipline and above all impunity are some of the cocktails of this poor leadership system that Nigeria is contending with.

Because of the urgent need to salvage Nigeria from impending implosion and collapse, a number of patriotic but scholarly minds have often intervened intellectually by proffering pragmatic panaceas to this debilitating virus of poor and naughty political leadership in Nigeria.

Fulani Herdsmen: Terrorists For Or Land-Grabbers

By Emmanuel Onwubiko

The FULANI ethnic nationality is a unique brand of people in the sense that they are perpetually nomadic.

The nomadic nature of these people has made it impossible to precisely pin them down to any specific geo-political locale but for purposes of intellectual debate, the Fulani are Northerners of Northern Nigeria.

Fulani also share similarities with other nomadic populations in some neighboring sub-regional political entities in West Africa.

Lately, the Fulani have attracted a rash of commentaries around the issues of banditry, terrorism and the violence some of them have continuously unleashed on host communities whilst they are engaged in their cattle rearing activities.

There have been reported incidences of vandalism of farms and the killings of farmers caused by these Fulani herdsmen just as their dastardly criminal acts of blood cuddling attacks of farming communities have assumed frightening dimensions since one year ago when MAJOR GENERAL (RTD) MUHAMMADU BUHARI of the ALL PROGRESSIVE CONGRESS was inaugurated as the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Sadly, the current government has through its ineptitude and conspirational silence attracted suspicions from across Nigeria who have drawn a conclusion that the Muhammadu Buhari’s administration tacitly endorsed these murderous campaigns of the Fulani herdsmen who are kinsmen of Mr President.

In the last count, the Fulani herdsmen have been pointed at as those who have engaged in the high profile kidnap of notable politicians, military officers and clerics just as the two prominent incidents involved the kidnap of an Enugu State based catholic priest, REV. FR. ANIAKOCELESTINE and the erstwhile secretary to the government of the Federation, CHIEF OLU FALAE.

Between Abia/Enugu axis, Fulani herdsmen have also unleashed considerable violence and some biased military commanders recently deployed armed operatives to invade AWGU community in Enugu State whereby 76 Igbo youth were arrested arbitrarily and dumped in UMUAHIA prison only because they resisted attempt to take over their ancestral farm lands by the Fulani herdsmen. The military operatives were deployed from the Enugu based Division of the Nigerian Army.

The extensive reach of the destructions unleashed by the Fulani herdsmen is unbelievably apocalyptic spanning all the six geopolitical entity of Nigeria.
In this piece therefore, we are inspired to ask the pertinent question of what the Fulani people have become between being described as terrorists as most other Nigerians have done or land grabbers.

Persistent Rape Of Justice In Nigeria

By Emmanuel Onwubiko
The universal symbol of justice is the statue of a very beautiful but blindfolded beauty queen wielding a sharp sword with which justice is dispensed to all irrespective of class, status or race.

There is also a universal unanimity that justice must be dispensed with timeliness since justice delayed is said to be justice denied.

In Nigeria however criminal and civil justice is slower than a typical snail because of a number of reasons ranging from prosecutorial bureaucratic bottlenecks created by professional incompetence of the police which coordinates much of the prosecution of criminal cases and several other extenuating factors including but certainly unlimited to outright corruption and compromise on the part of the presiding judges.

Judicial corruption is therefore a hydra-headed monster that has unleashed unwarranted delay in the dispensation of justice especially to the poor and disadvantaged litigants.

Miss Cynthia Osokogu and the four undergraduates of University of Port Harcourt (ALUU4) murdered by the villagers in Aluu ikwerre in Rivers State on trumped up charges of theft have come to symbolize the most abominable kind of delayed justice because these two cases have lingered for almost four years without the killers being punished for these gruesome acts of criminal depravity.

Miss Cynthia’s case is pathetic because she was lured into her untimely but primitive death by her would-be business associates whom she encountered via the social media of Facebook.