The Oppressors Who Love The Oppressed

 By Owei Lakemfa

It is bizarre. The International Monetary Fund, IMF, calling on the government to protect the poor from the impact of the fuel price hikes it engineers! To add to its criminal thought process against the Nigerian people, the same IMF is telling the Tinubu administration that fuel prices in Nigeria are too low and need to be increased because it is allegedly selling below market price. What market?

To understand this, we need to know that the Western Europe-owned IMF and its Siamese American twin, the World Bank, have since 1981 told every successive Nigerian government that our petroleum product prices are too cheap and must be increased.

Niger Republic Of Nigeria

 By Emeka Obasi

West African leaders should wake up, the party is over. What we are witnessing is neo nationalism in form of ECOWAS Spring, get ready everyone it will go round, from Dakar to Niamey, up North in Tangier to Bissau Southwards.

I wonder why people are surprised that Gen. Abdouhramane Tchiani, Commander of Niger’s Presidential Guards sacked President Mohammed Bazoum. It happened in Nigeria when Col. Joseph Garba, Commander Brigade of Guards, announced the exit of General Yakubu Gowon.

The Coup In Niger

 By Nick Dazang

The Czar of military coup d’etats in Nigeria once offered us a useful glimpse into the prime motivation and raison d’etre for the overthrow of governments by force. Former Military President, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, a putschist par excellence, and a veteran of all successful coups, except that in which the late General Sani Abacha ousted the illicit Interim National Government, ING, of Chief Ernest Shonekan, once stated that all coups were inspired by the subsisting frustration in a given society.

In the aftermath of the 1983 coup, which ushered in the draconian administration of Major General Muhammadu Buhari, as he then was, a well respected Nigerian Editor, fed up by the chicanery and ineptitude of the President Shehu Shagari administration, proclaimed that God was a Nigerian. In retrospect, this well regarded Editor must  rue his effusive endorsement of military rule. The flip side to this unrestrained display of emotion must be the sedate but poignant observation by Mr. Peter Enahoro, one Africa’s best Journalists.

2023 Elections: Do We Still Need Political Parties?

 By Adekunle Adekoya

The online version of Encyclopaedia Brittanica describes a political party as “a group of persons organised to acquire and exercise political power”. Political parties originated in their modern form in Europe and the United States in the 19th century, along with the electoral and parliamentary systems, whose development reflects the evolution of parties. The term party has since come to be applied to all organised groups seeking political power, whether by democratic elections or by revolution. 

*Obi, Tinubu, Atiku, Kwankwaso

Another online resource portal, Wikipedia defines a political party “as an organisation that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country’s elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or policy goals. Political parties have become a major part of the politics of almost every country.”

2023 Presidential Election: Can We Get It Right?

 By Chiedu Uche Okoye

Why is Nigeria, a country endowed with humungous human and material resources, still trapped in the cocoon of   economic and technological quagmire and backwardness?  Why has she continued to bring up the rear on the global ladder of countries’ development? The answer to the above question is not far-fetched. The military incursions into our politics had dealt a severe and devastating blow to our democratic growth and national development. And we have not got it right, politically since Nigeria became a sovereign country in 1960.

 

The departing British imperialists laid the foundation for the egregious culture of imposition of national leaders on the populace in Nigeria. They surreptitiously helped Alhaji Tafawa Balewa to become our Prime Minister in 1960. Was Tafawa Balewa better than Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Rt. Hon. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, who were intellectual giants and political juggernauts? Not surprisingly, Alhaji Tafawa Balewa failed to unite the Peoples of Nigeria and set the country on the path of sustainable economic growth and irreversible technological development.

Babangida Should Just Apologise To Nigerians

 By Charles Okoh

For about two weeks, the nation has witnessed the activities around the 80th birthday of former military president, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. For some, especially those who have had direct dealings with him, it has been a flurry of praises for the man whom many have come to know as the Maradona and affectionately referred to also as IBB or the evil genius. 

Babangida has the unenviable record of aborting what everybody has come to accept as the best thing to happen to our electoral evolution as a nation. He scuttled the June 12, 1993, presidential election which he midwifed and for which he received accolades for organizing the best election ever held in the country. 

*Babangida 

First, it was Babangida in an interview with Arise TV, where he clearly spoke like the intelligent man that he is. He also showed that apart from the troublesome leg which has practically left him immobile, he did not disappoint with his intelligent responses to questions put before him. His ability to vividly recall all events around his life as a soldier and a military president even at age 80 stands him out as a brilliant officer. He clearly stands out among his peers and his understanding of issues within and outside the country you can hardly find that with many of our leaders today. 

Stop! Nigerians Lives Matters

By Ene Gift Linus

Democracy on paper is not enough. Free, fair, and violence-free elections are crucial for the protection and deepening of representative democracy in any country. It is shameful and inhuman when political candidates use their own citizens as pawn to pave the way for their political ambitions. Unfortunately, electoral violence has been a continuous problem in Nigerian politics since she became a federation in 1963. 

Usually, the violence and killings occur either before the election (electoral campaign) or after the election.The First Republic (1963-1966) collapsed due to the  widespread violence unleashed by politicians in the disputed 19665 general election that led to the first military coup of January 15, 196. During the Second Republic (1979), the country returned to civil rule, but not long before some politicians again, resorted to electoral violence especially during the August 1983 general election where political observers said that, Akin Omoboriowo versus Governor Adekunle Ajasin saga in the old Ondo State allegedly involved in electoral fraud in the state led to three days of severe killings and arson, resulting in military takeover on December 31, 1983.

June 12: President Buhari’s Left Handed Charity…

By Obi Nwakanma

Mr. Muhammadu Buhari, President of Nigeria, announced on Wednesday, that June 12 will now be “Democracy Day.” He went further to award posthumous honours to the presumed winner of the June 12, 1993 elections, Moshood Kashimawo Abiola, with the GCFR, the highest political honour in the land, and his running mate, Babagana Kingibe, the second highest honours, the GCON. To top the gravy, he also honored the late Gani Fawehinmi with the GCON too.

*Buhari 

Quick as the announcement came, there were various reactions. Not unexpectedly, many from the Southwest of Nigeria, particularly the partisans of the APC, began to call Buhari the “new progressive.” Mr. Ahmed Tinubu in fact did gush so much that he came short of describing Buhari as the greatest democrat of Nigeria’s modern history. This is not unexpected, because Buhari’s gesture fits into the logical interest of the APC partisans of Southwestern Nigeria. And I shall return to this. But the president’s gesture was quickly called into question – the legality of it: first from the senate, came a flurry of tongue-in-cheek statements.

Nigeria: Apologies For Gen. Sani Abacha

By Dan Amor

​Friday this week indubitably marks the twentieth anniversary of the death of General Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s most treacherous tyrant and who ranked with Agathocles and Dionysus I of Sicily, as the most notorious dictators, not only of the age of antiquity but of all times. He died in Abuja on June 8, 1998 as a sitting military dictator. It is true that the degree of cruelty and loathsome human vulgarity that the Abacha era epitomized is already fading into the background due largely to the mundane and short character of the human memory. But his timely exit ought to have been marked by Nigerians just as the United Nations marks the end of the Second World War not only for posterity but also as a thanksgiving to God for extricating mankind from such epoch of human misery.

*Gen Abacha 

Abacha emerged as head of state from the ashes of the June 12 crisis. The General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida military administration had annulled the June 12, 1993 presidential election with a clear winner. It was the most placid election ever conducted in the annals of our country. The contest was between Alhaji Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention (NRC) and the billionaire business mogul, Chief MKO Abiola of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). Abiola was coasting to victory when the Babangida military regime halted the announcement of the election result superintended by the Professor Humfrey Nwosu-led National Electoral Commission. The Federal Government eventually announced the annulment of the result on June 23, 1993. This action triggered a violent protest especially in the South West which led to Babangida stepping aside.

June 12, Not May 29, Is Nigeria’s ‘Democracy Day’

By Mike Ozekhome

On Sunday, June 12, 2016, leading lights in the human rights and pro-democracy movement in Nigeria, gathered at the late M.K.O. Abiola’s house, to mark “June 12”, 23 years after this talismanic, watershed and cornerstone of a people’s election. I was one of them. We paid tribute and sang solidarity songs. We x-rayed the state of the nation. We laid wreath at his tomb. We did not forget his lovely wife, Kudirat, who was martyred with him. We prayed by her graveside. An amazon that carried aloft the liberation torchlight after her husband’s incarceration in military dungeon, she epitomised women’s potency, fervour  and ardour.

June 12 is very stubborn. It is simply indestructible, ineradicable, indelible, imperishable and ineffaceable. It sticks out like a badge of honour, the compass of a beleaguered nation. It cannot be wished away. Never. Aside from October 1, when Nigeria had her flag independence, June 12 remains the most important date in her annals.

Nigeria and June 12 are like Siamese twins. The snail and the shell. They are inseparable.  Like six and half a dozen. Like Hamlet and the Prince of Denmark. You cannot discuss May 29 without its forebear and progenitor, June 12. To attempt that is comical, droll chucklesome, even bizarre and freakish. June 12 is not just a Gregorian calendar date. It is Nigeria’s authentic democracy day. That was when genuine democracy berthed in Nigeria. Nigerians had trooped to the polls to vote for Abiola. On June 12, 1993, Nigeria stood still. Nigerians became oblivious to religious sensibilities and ethnic nuances. They did not care that Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola, Bashorun and Aare Onakanfo of Yoruba land, was a Moslem who was running with another Moslem, Alhaji Babagana Kingibe. The gods and goddesses of ethnicity, tribalism and religious bigotry were brutally murdered and interred.

The apparitions of gender, culture and class discrimination, were sent back to their graves. Abiola, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate, squarely won the election under Babangida’s option A4. He trounced his challenger, Alhaji Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention (NRC). He had campaigned with “Hope 1993” (a message of possibilities later adopted by Obama in 2008). His was “Farewell to Poverty” manifesto. Both resonated well with Nigerians. Abiola, who had joined politics at 19 under NCNC, in 1959, had used his stupendous wealth to water the ground and build bridges of unity, understanding and acceptability across the length and breadth of Nigeria. He had Concord newspaper and airline to help propel his ambition. He regarded money as nothing but manure with which, like plants, human beings are nurtured. Abiola had defeated Bashir Tofa, even in his Gyadi-Gyadi Ward, Kano.