Are These Professional Soldiers?

By Sunny Awhefeada

A shocking and horrifying post appeared on facebook two days ago. The post in question is a video in which a helpless civil­ian was being pummeled by soldiers in uniform under the watchful supervision of a major-general!

The victim is neither a terrorist nor a bandit! He is just another ci­vilian accused by power drunk soldiers of denting the jeep of the major-general. As the brutes in uniform rained blows on the fellow, his traumatized wife wailed draw­ing attention to his ill-health and how his uniformed assailants were about to blind him. That heartrending cry of the wife did not deter the soldiers.

Nigeria In Disarray: Waiting For Damnation

 By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu  

This Fiction Called Nigeria: The Struggle for Democracy by Adewale Maja-Pearce; (Verso, UK, 6 Meard Street, London; Verso, US, 388 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, New York; 2024; 185pp) 

Adewale Maja-Pearce does not pull his punches in his prolific engagements in public intellectual pugilism. He packs quite a punch, and comes strongly recommended by such eminent worthies as Jeremy Harding of London Review of Books who writes thusly: “Adewale Maja-Pearce is Nigeria’s most dependable journalist.” 

There is no denying the fact that Nigeria as a country is in dire straits. It is as though Africa’s most populous nation is forever thrust in suspended animation, especially after the heavily flawed 2023 presidential elections. Incidentally, Adewale Maja-Pearce starts out with these words: “This book was written against the background of the 2023 elections.” 

Democracy Day: Electricity Bill Is Larger Than My Salary

 By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

Today has been declared a public holiday by the Nigerian Government to mark Democracy Day. May 29 used to be Democracy Day until then President Muhammadu Buhari put forward June 12 as the real McCoy.

The greatest piece of fiction written in Nigeria since the publication of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart back in 1958 was the fantastic yarn that promoted May 29 as Nigeria’s Democracy Day.

Some of us are even hard put coming to terms that there is civil rule in Nigeria let alone democracy. At the very least, to practice democracy a country has to first boast of democrats.

Blessed Are The Human Rights Defenders

 By Owei Lakemfa

My mind raced back 34 years as I stood on Saturday in the assembly of human rights defenders who had gathered in Ilorin. Back in 1989, some of us had the choice either to surrender or confront the rampaging Generals who had seized both power and the national treasury and were ruling Nigerians as they would: a conquered people. The 1775 words of Patrick Henry, an American planter, rang in our heads: “Give me liberty or give me death!” 

We were guided by the examples of our ancestors like Oba Ovonramwen Nogbaisi, Raji Abdallah, Bello Ujumu and our mothers in Eastern Nigeria in 1929 who fought what seemed to be unwinnable battles for freedom.

Nigeria: Democracy Is Dead!

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

On March 18, 2023, some Nigerians, incurable optimists I must say, still went out to cast their votes in the governorship and Houses of Assembly elections after the presidential and National Assembly elections fiasco of February 25, believing that Nigeria is still redeemable. 

Well, I am not one of them. I used to be sanguine as well before the presidential election, having been taken in by President Muhammadu Buhari’s promise of bequeathing the country a legacy of credible elections. The chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Prof Mahmoud Yakubu, was a real charmer who totally took me in in the days leading up to the elections.

Election 2023: Toward A New And Better Nigeria

 By Pieray Awele Odor

Every Nigerian who has been in Nigeria since the first democratic government, 1960 to 1966, would have quest for a better governance. Every Nigerian who has been in Nigeria since the second democratic government, 1979 to 1983, would have quest for a better governance. Every Nigerian who has been in Nigeria since the third democratic government, 1999 to this day, will have quest for a better governance. Every Nigerian who has been in Nigeria since the beginning of the second term of the present government in 2019 would have quest for a better governance.

I note some of the situations that we have borne so incredibly stoically and have been credited by foreign people for our “resilience” and given the title of “the happiest people”. Fela Anikulapo-Kuti called these “suffering and smiling”. All the situations have been progressively worse from one democratic government to another and every year of a new democratic government. As my defence of these assertions, I note the following: Poverty, suffering and agony have got worse progressively since the first democratic government.

2023 Elections And Future Of Nigeria’s Democracy

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

The 2023 elections will be consequential. Though six months away and campaigns yet to be officially flagged off, politicians are already crisscrossing the length and breadth of the country, shadowboxing their way through all manner of policy disputes. They are making a show of tackling the myriad problems the post-Buhari era will present, while avoiding any direct engagement with opponents.

The elections will be consequential because Nigeria is at a crossroads, haunted by demons many thought had been long exorcised. Seven years of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency has brought out the worst in Nigerians. Ironically, while this self-inflicted leadership crisis and the uprising it has engendered is bringing out the beast in us, as the late Afrobeat legend, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, noted in his epic song, “Beast of No Nation”, it has also re-ignited the hitherto dimming Nigeria’s democracy candle light.

Obadiah Mailafia: Truth Never Dies!

 By Ayo Baje

“Please, pray for me. I have reasons to believe that my life is in danger and that some powerful political forces want to silence me forever for speaking the truth.  For speaking on behalf of the holy martyrs of thousands of innocent children, women, elderly and youths that have been killed in our beloved country. It is only in our benighted country that a man who speaks from his conscience can be hounded like a common criminal.”

–Dr. Obadiah Mailafia (now of blessed memory) on September 11, 2020

*Obadiah Mailafia 

In life he was definitely one of the few bearers of the unquenchable torch of timeless Truth. And he must have seen death coming, for having the audacity to speak that same bitter Truth to power. More so, in this long, dark tunnel of quasi-democracy garbed in the bloody garment of daring despotism. So, it was only a matter of time for the haters of Truth to undo him, characteristically in nebulous circumstances. Talk about the ominous hoot of the owl at midnight and the sudden death of the naked baby the next dawn! 

But as yours truly has insisted, “Truth is eternal while lies are short-distance runners”. Or, to put it in the warm words of the legendary King of Pop, Michael Jackson, “Lies run sprints, but the truth runs marathons ‘. 

Ending The SARS Mentality In Nigeria

By Ayo Baje

You bowing, you crying 

You, dying like that one day without knowing why 

You, struggling, you watching over another’s rest 

You, looking no longer with laughter in your eyes 

You my brother, your face full of fear and suffering 

Stand up, and shout No!”  

– David Diop  

The recent protests against gross human rights violations, through the use of brutal force and extra-judicial killings of defenceless citizens by operatives of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) across many states of the country underscores the anomaly of a political leadership that deploys force and fiat under a democratic dispensation.

13 Threats To Nigeria

By Tola Adeniyi  

With this title several readers will jump to the conclusion that the dreaded but now degraded Boko Haram terrorist group should occupy the Number one slot while the Fulani herdsmen terrorists and the new Ijaw Avengers would rank second and third respectively. They are wrong!

While the menace of the three mentioned terrorist groups constitutes grave threat and danger to Nigeria’s corporate existence and her economic resurrection, the combined menace of the three will pale into insignificance when placed side by side with the menace of the criminal silence of Nigerians in the face of the serious onslaught perennially and perpetually unleashed on the country by a handful of vultures who have bled Nigeria to near death with their insane looting of the country.

The Number 1 threat to corporate Nigeria is the unexplainable timidity of all Nigerians, the criminal silence of the masses in the face of the huge theft of their patrimony by a handful. Sometimes I wonder if Nigeria is the same country that produced legendary Aminu Kano, Madam Sawaba, Mrs. Olufunmilayo Kuti, Margaret Ekpo, Joseph Sarwan Tarka, Adaka Boro, Tai Solarin, Arthur Nwankwo, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Beko Ransome-Kuti and fiery Gani Fawehinmi among a few others.

Inability to speak out against evil, against injustice, against oppression, depression and deprivation is the beginning of calamitous tragedy. Nigerians have kept too quiet for too long that we now have a deadly monster that has almost swallowed us up as a people. Can we pretend not to know when our school drop-out neighbour who became chairman of local government suddenly started putting up a mansion and assembling porch cars in his yard? Did we not see Ghana-Must-Go bags being loaded and off loaded in the National Assembly? Did we not see our governors, presidents and other public officials suddenly becoming billionaires? We kept quiet.