President Buhari, Danjuma And Looming Anarchy

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Like medieval potentates who fiddled around while their empires were in the grip of mortal perils, President Muhammadu Buhari has since lost the capacity to resolve for us the question of whether our nation is on the brink of anarchy.  

This is because Buhari and his officials are stuck in a reality that does not reflect the pains of the people.

*Buhari and Danjuma 

In other words, if the country staves off a post-Gaddafi Libya-like anarchy and it remains one after the tenure of Buhari, the credit should go to the forbearance and prescience of those who are outside his government. 

During the recession that the government claims to have overcome through its deft economic management, it amounted to blackmail of the Buhari administration to draw its attention to the reality of the suffering of the masses.

Of Hate Speeches, The Nigerian Senate And The Death Penalty Bill

By Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo

Recently, the Nigerian Senate entertained a bill on “hate speech”, the high-point of which is the recommendation of death sentence to any person found guilty of hate speech. I am utterly disappointed that the Senate could at this point in our history be considering such bill even in the face of mounting challenges confronting the country. This is a typical case of treating the symptoms of an illness rather than the root cause of the illness.

*Dr. Arthur Nwankwo 

I am disappointed that life in Nigeria today has become so cheap; that while we are daily assailed by the atrocities of Fulani herdsmen, Boko Haram and other merchants of death, that while other countries are removing capital punishments from their statute books; an institution such as the Nigerian Senate is considering a bill to constitutionalize capital punishment. This is a tragedy of gargantuan proportion and it does consolidate the impression among many that Nigeria is irredeemable. 

President Buhari, Before You Seek Reelection

By Matthew Ozah

I write not to dissuade you from running in 2019 elections just like two notable statesmen in the country and others did the other day.

Nevertheless, you have done well to ask the messengers of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ intention to give you some time to think about a second term.

*President Buhari 

As you may know, many Nigerians were charmed to ride that gravy train with you because of your pedigree, captivating campaign promise to fight corruption and other miracles that you pledged to perform during your election campaign in 2014/2015.

The recent corruption rating of the country by Transparency International (TI) triggered this letter. From the foregoing, it seems obvious that corruption has taken an armchair in your administration.

Nigeria: Vice President Osinbajo’s Bluster And Burden Of Proof

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Nations like individuals who have recorded giant strides in most spheres of life sometimes look backward. It is not to escape from the challenges of the present. Rather, they appropriate vital lessons in such moments to turn their travails into opportunities for a stellar lot in life. In that case, they appreciate the place of history in their current march to progress. But we are trapped in a tragic situation when we think that such moments only serve as opportunities to gloatingly point to others the glitch in the wheel of a people’s quest for development. Thus, we do not deny the necessity for the past to pay for its misdeeds. 

Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo

In this regard, the current government headed by President Muhammadu Buhari is free to hold its predecessor to account. But the danger the current government has not successfully negotiated is that of going to a ridiculous extent. Deluded by the notion that the past is complicit in its denial of a star rating, the Buhari government could unabashedly blame the Jonathan government for disrupting the president’s domestic felicity by inducing his wife to rail at his failings in private and public. 

President Buhari, It’s Time To Go!

By Emmanuel Ogundele

For those who have watched the direction of President Muhammadu Buhari and his administration for well over two years now, there is no doubting the fact that we have made a wrong choice. Not that there was anything to choose from between a weakling called Goodluck Jonathan who allowed free stealing to go on in his government unabated and, at that time, a serial loser at presidential elections since 1999 called Muhammadu Buhari.

*President Buhari

However, little did we know then that it was a choice between a present disaster and a would-be tragic figure. The facts don’t come out in good time and so people were quick to paint a future devil in a Saint’s colour. While the drive to choose anybody but Jonathan among the political elite which eventually percolated down to the people, was so pressing at that time, it was not a well-thought out choice. For while Nigerians act as if they operate a two-party system, we actually run a multi-party democracy. 

Buhari, Our President In The Clouds

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Bristling with rage at the unceasing carnage and fecklessness that have bogged down the nation since the emergence of Gen. Muhammadu Buhari as the president, Prof. Wole Soyinka recently warned us against the fate of a people whose affairs are presided over by a leader in a trance. But not a few of those who are befuddled by their devotion to Buhari sniggered at Soyinka’s position as another instance of the dramatist over-dramatising the perceived failings of his president. 

*President Buhari 

But those who did not share Soyinka’s prescience and thus did not appreciate the horrendous developments that validated his position can no longer ignore what has happened since that grim verdict.

Indeed, we have all been confronted with subsequent stark developments that have been triggered by the administration of Buhari which show that Soyinka’s position remains unimpeachable.

Nigeria: The Return Of Decree 4

By Abraham Ogbodo

Last week, I wrote on a proposed bill, which seeks to calibrate free expression into love and hate speeches, with the latter attracting serious penalties including 10 years imprisonment and death. As I wrote from one end, a colleague, Mr. Don Okere, editor of Daily Independent Newspaper was at another end battling to call public attention to the unlawful detention of the Abuja Bureau Chief of the newspaper, Mr. Tony Ezimakor by the Department for State Security (DSS). The reporter was kept for days and incommunicado for refusal to disclose how he got information that the DSS had paid a princely $2 million to secure the release of some of the Chibok schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram terrorists in April 2014.

I do not know, who between Lawal Daura, the Director-general of DSS and President Muhammadu Buhari should take the blame for this. From the little I know of Daura, he is loaded with a lot of native enthusiasm that forbids him from pretence. Most times, and perhaps, without realising it, he presents himself more as a Fulani than he does as a Nigerian. He also does not pretend about his big stake in the Buhari presidency.

Nigeria: Time To Remove Muhammadu Buhari From Power

By Remi Oyeyemi

"There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction." – John F. Kennedy

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." – Benjamin Franklin

*Buhari 

Dateline - February 11, 2018. As I woke up this morning, I got a message from one of our revere leaders in Yorùbá Nation. The message, not something one would have expected on a Sunday morning, but nevertheless, I got this message. I was confident that this elderly person, the way I have known him, must have considered the timing and its propriety before sending the message.

He must have been very enraged. His being a father and grandfather must have been egregiously violated. The milk of human kindness flowing in his veins must have belched with a high degree of contamination. His marrows of humaneness must have erupted with disgust and unbelief. He must have been excessively repulsed to the point that he felt the message must get to me. And quickly too.

Nigeria: Restructuring And The Herdsmen Question

By Adetokunbo Pearse

Reform in the fiscal and the security sectors can aid the effort to alleviate the growing tension between nomadic herdsmen and sedentary farmers which has captured national consciousness lately. Unfortunately these clashes are fast becoming a way of life in Nigeria. 

In 2017 alone deadly confrontation between roving herdsman and local communities were reported in every geopolitical zone except the north-west. Sometimes it is the herdsmen who get the worst of it as in the celebrated case in 2000 when then General Muhammadu Buhari led a delegation to governor Lam Adesina to protest the killing of dozens of Fulani herdsmen in Oyo State. At other times it is the local communities who suffer as in the most recent incident of January 1, 2018 with the massacre of some 70 citizens of Guma and Logo local government areas of Benue State by herdsmen or their agents.

Benue Massacres: How Gov Ortom Got His Groove Back!

By Reno Omokri

I must say that I was rather disappointed in the Benue State Governor’s initial response to the killing of 73 residents of Benue State by killer Fulani herdsmen. I felt that it was wrong of him to have accepted President Buhari’s summons to go to the Aso Rock Presidential Villa with Benue elders only to be talked down at by the President who had no harsh words for his Fulani herdsmen kinsmen and who condescendingly told Gov Samuel Ortom and his elders to “accommodate your countrymen” (never mind that he, the President, once claimed that killer Fulani herdsmen are foreigners).

*Gov Wike of River State in Benue State to Commiserate with Gov Ortom on the Killings 

My disappointment with Ortom stemmed from the fact that he allowed himself be summoned by a President who did not have the common decency to first of all pay a condolence visit to the state where killers who share affinity with him had just killed his countrymen and women. 

Nigeria: Of False Narratives And Killer Herdsmen

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

It was Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century English philosopher, who in his seminal work Leviathan put a magnifying lens on “the natural condition of mankind.” All humans are by nature equal in faculties of body and mind, he argued, and therefore, “During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called warre … of every man against every man,” a natural condition he elucidated with the Latin phrase bellum omnium contra omnes (war of all against all).

“The life of man” in the state of nature, Hobbes famously wrote, is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

In the state of nature, security was impossible for anyone, and the fear of death dominated every aspect of life. Being rational, man sought to reverse this nihilistic status quo. Therefore, since in the state of nature “all men have a natural right to all things,” to assure peace, men must give up their right to some things, and Hobbes asserted that an individual’s transfer of some of his rights to another is offset by certain gains for himself.

Nigeria: Three Old Men In The Ring

By Dare Babarinsa

The people of Lafia trooped out last Tuesday to welcome the nation’s number one citizen to Nasarawa State. The enthusiastic welcome was an indication that Buhari still packs a lot of muscle and those who are thinking of taking him on should consider what they are up against. However, it is clear too that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is restive and rebellion is rearing its head from unexpected quarters. This is more so when its reign, despite the resounding victory Buhari recorded in 2015, now seems precarious if not endangered.

*Babangida, Obasanjo and Buhari 

 Buhari is the first politician to lead the progressive camp to victory at the Federal level. All attempts in the past, in 1959, 1964, 1979, 1983 and since the return of democratic rule in 1999 have failed before the tumultuous ride to power by Citizen Buhari. Now he is facing allegations of reckless partisanship, unblinking nepotism and of heart-breaking incompetence. It does not help matters that some terrorist elements have succeeded in hijacking the sporadic burst of violence by suspected Fulani herdsmen and have killed more Nigerians under the watch of Buhari than even the notorious Boko Haram insurgents.

Nigeria: Who And Where Are The Criminals?

By Anthony Cardinal Olubunmi Okogie

“Everyone is talking about crime. Tell me, who are the criminals?” So sang, more than forty years ago, the Jamaican artiste Peter Torsh in his album “Equal rights”. Today, that question has become extraordinarily pertinent in our beloved country Nigeria. Here in Nigeria, we talk of crimes: armed robbery, kidnapping, and now, murder by herdsmen.  But who and where are the criminals?  Are we pretending not to know them?  And are we pretending not to know where they are?  But our God of JUSTICE looks on!

*Cardinal Okogie

Nigerians are familiar with the drama of parade of suspects. On prime time television, the police treats us to it. Some men and women are apprehended by the police, made to sit by dangerous weapons, and paraded as criminals.  And the story ends there.  We hear of no prosecution, no conviction, no sentencing. 

On President Buhari, I Stand With Obasanjo

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Again, we are in the political silly season. Not that it just kicked off. No, Nigeria is a country in a permanent state of politicking. In reality, there is never time for governance. The end of one election circle jumpstarts another and the actions of incumbents are informed not by the desire to deliver on good governance but the need to win the next election.

*Obasanjo and Buhari 

So, ministers and board members of government agencies are appointed not on the basis of capacity and competence, but who has the political muscle and “structure” to deliver on the next election. Ditto for heads of security agencies who are appointed on extraneous considerations such as who helped in rigging the previous election and who can be counted upon in the next election.

Nigeria: APC And Its Rotten Eggs

By Ike Abonyi

“It is wise to direct your anger towards problems – not people, to focus your energies on answers – not excuses.”
– William Arthur Ward

The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is desperately searching for the cause of its inability to raise their governance beyond plinth level. 

There is no doubt that the party has been struggling in its administration of the country in the past 20 months. As they try to cover one hole another opens. The fight against corruption which is their biggest strength has been trapped in the intrinsic contradictions in the regime.

The government has been rolling in and out of series of embarrassing scandals even as it tries to hold on to the acclaimed status of being a cleansing government. As the party strives to find its bearings, it has been groping aimlessly trying to look for whom to blame for its failings. For two years, it can hardly cough without calling on the past government. Even when their people face personal domestic problems they try blaming the past administration.

Fulani Herdsmen: Grim Statistics Of Their Bloody Exploits

By Dan Agbese

You probably thought it could not get more unsettling. You were wrong.

Here is some evidence. Former head of state, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, addressed a one-day forum organised by a group known as the Search for Common Ground on his farm October 30. In it, he released some grim statistics about the killings and maiming in clashes between Fulani herdsmen and peasant farmers in four states – Plateau, Nasarawa, Kaduna and Benue – in just one year. These figures are certain to chill your bones and make your eyes go rheumy for the present and the future of our country.

Here are the details he gave for 2016 only: 2,500 people killed; 62,000 people displaced; $13.7 billion lost to the clashes and 47 per cent of the internally-generated revenue in the affected states lost. 

The problem with statistics is that when they are about human beings, you cannot put faces to them. Human beings are thus reduced to stark, impersonal numbers. The death of 2,500 Nigerians and the displacement of 62,000 others may do no more than give you a momentary jolt only for you to shrug it off. You are not likely to think of them as struggling Nigerians in our rural areas who were doing nothing criminal but pursuing their legitimate livelihood as peasant farmers who fed the nation.

Fayose Wants Army To Shift Attention To Fulani Herdsmen Menace

The Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, has called on the military to direct its Operations Python Dance and Crocodile Smile to those areas in Nigeria, especially the North Central States of Benue, Plateau as well as North East States like Taraba and Adamawa where Fulani herdsmen are killings Nigerians and destroying farmlands worth several billions of naira.

The governor who described the reported threat by Miyeitti Allah Kautal Hore, a splinter group of Miyeitti Allah Cattle Breeders Association, over the Benue State Anti-Open Grazing Law as reckless and open threat against the sovereignty of Nigeria added that the silence of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government over the Fulani herdsmen menace was a sign of complicity on the part of the federal government.

In a statement in Ado Ekiti on Monday, by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, Governor Fayose said: “If the Federal Government does not want to be seen as protecting the Fulani herdsmen, attention of the Army’s python that is dancing in the Southeast and crocodile that is smiling in the Southwest and South South should be focused on the killer herdsmen.”

How To Kill A Country

By Dare Babarinsa

Somalia was a beautiful country. It was also supposed to be a lucky country, one of the few in Africa whose boundaries harbour predominantly one ethnic group. Only few countries are in this category in Africa; like Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland. Many African countries are endangered by ethnic differences and even the veneer of democracy has not totally erased the old ethnic differences.

In Nigeria, we have fought a bloody Civil War caused mainly by ethnic differences. In Zimbabwe, ethnic rivalries had coloured the country’s history especially between the Shonas and the Ndebele. Rwanda was once also killed because of ethnic violence. But Somali, because it is populated by mainly the Somalis, is supposed to be free from ethnic tension.

But Somalia is also the workshop for the devil. For more than 30 years now, the devil has been at work in that country populated mainly by ethnic Somalis. Almost all the citizens are Muslims of the Sunni sect. Yet there is no country in Africa that has consistently worked against its interest like Somalia has done.

Nigeria: That October 1 Hate Speech

By Steve Nwosu

If I say President Muhammadu Buhari’s October 1 speech was pre-recorded, that could amount to “hate speech’. Especially, as I have no documentary evidence. So, I’ll not say what I think.

*President Buhari

Similarly, if I say the Independence Day broadcast is the second hate speech I’ve heard from the president in a space of 40 days, I would also be incorrect. Especially as the details of what constitutes a ‘hate speech’ is increasingly looking like the proverbial Malawian constitution of Kamuzu Banda’s. It is whatever they tell us is the law that we accept as the law.

So, I’ll only recall that, after being away for 103 days, President Buhari returned to deliver one angry-speech (where he berated us for behaving badly, especially on the social media, while he was away), and that about 40 days later, he delivered yet another one (where he took Igbo leaders and elders to the cleaners, over the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB)).

President Buhari: Stop Blaming Jonathan And Learn To Accept Responsibility

By Reno Omokri 

It is rather unfortunate that instead of sticking to the facts in its tiff with Ohanaeze Ndigbo, the Federal Government decided to drag former President Jonathan into a matter he knows nothing about by stating that "We inherited a country in tatters- its economy, its security and its social relations. President Buhari deserves credit for rebuilding what has been destroyed."

*Buhari

Thankfully, no less a personality than the President's own confidante, Professor Itse Sagay, has revealed that the APC is an 'evil' party, built on propaganda. This recent statement by Garba Shehu only serves to corroborate that statement.

For one, President Muhammadu Buhari DID NOT inherit a country in tatters. Rather, on May 29th, 2015, the day he was sworn in, President Buhari inherited a nation that was the largest economy in Africa and the 24th largest economy in the world.