Humphrey Nwosu: Unsung Hero Of Nigeria’s Democracy

 By Tonnie Iredia

The death a few days ago of Professor Humphrey Nwosu, the outstanding Nigerian who supervised the famous June 12 1993 presidential election no doubt reminded many Nigerians of how best to organize an election. Although the winner of that election was never formally declared, everyone knew who it was and across the globe, the contest was unanimously accepted as the best Nigerian election in history. The accolade is yet to change.

*Prof Nwosu 

Those who knew Nwosu’s strength of character especially those of us who worked with him on the elections must have been elated for the first time hearing President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in a tribute describing Humphrey Nwosu as “as a bold and courageous administrator as well as a patriot and national asset,” who played a major role in shaping Nigeria’s democratic journey. The description was simply apt.

Why Tinubu Should Listen To Our Elder Statesmen

 By Nick Dazang

Apart from an army of voluble commentators holding successive governments to account and speaking truths to them in the most parliamentary and patrician fashion, Nigeria is blessed with scores of irrepressible elder statesmen.

*Tinubu

Whenever matters come to a head and Nigeria teeters at the brink of precipice, these statesmen weigh in with their thoughts. They intervene by way of statements or well calibrated pronouncements. Sometimes they do so by authoring scathing epistles. Some of these statesmen, such as Chiefs Gani Fawehinmi and Anthony Enahoro and Dr. Tai Solarin have departed this sinful world.

Dele Giwa: 37 Years After The Gruesome Murder Of This Celebrated Journalist

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 

“Death is…the absence of presence…the endless time of never coming back…a gap you can’t see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound” – Tom Stopard    

In the morning of Monday, October 20, 1986, I was preparing to go to work when a major item on the Anambra Broadcasting Service (ABS) 6.30 news bulletin hit me like a hard object. Mr. Dele Giwa, the founding editor-in-chief of ‘Newswatch’ magazine, had the previous day been killed and shattered by a letter bomb in his Lagos home. My scream was so loud that my colleague barged into my room to inquire what it was that could have made me to let out such an ear-splitting bellow. 

*Dele Giwa 

We were three young men who had a couple of months earlier been posted from Enugu to Abakaliki to work in the old Anambra State public service, and we had hired a flat in a newly erected two-storey building at the end of Water Works Road, which we shared. My flat-mate, clearly, was not familiar with Giwa’s name and work, and so had wondered why his death could elicit such a reaction from me. 

The Bola Tinubu Papers

 By Ugo Onuoha

Alhaji Bola Ahmed [or Adekunle] Tinubu’s plot to become Nigeria’s president was not incubated only over the last 24 years as appears to be the refrain in recent years. It has been a lifelong ambition and he said so himself in the presidential villa in Abuja in January.

A man who had no sinister plot will not willfully erase and expunge and diligently hide his beginning and his early childhood as Tinubu has done successfully or so it seems, until now. Even if he was born in the Dark Age, there was no way his first twenty-something years on earth would have disappeared to the extent that they have almost become irrecoverable.

President Tinubu’s Hurdles

 By Sunny Ikhioya

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu became the governor of Lagos State in May 1999, he was boisterous and full of enthusiasm, portraying him in the image of a super man. But it was not long before he was confronted by the reality on ground. This reality encapsulated among others things happening in the streets. Lagos was growing increasingly filthy with wastes and becoming unsafe for people. That was after the exit of his predecessor, the famous Brigadier-General Buba Marwa, whom everyone deemed had performed well. 

*Tinubu 

General Marwa’s success was attributed to two clear strategies: keeping the city safe through the introduction of ‘Operation Sweep'(which later transformed to Rapid Response Squad, RRS, under Tinubu) and clearing Lagos of filth.

Concerning Buhari’s National Honours 2022

 By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

At the beginning of August 2022, President Muhammadu Buhari constituted a nine-member National Honours Nominations Committee with a four-year tenure. It is chaired by Alhaji Sidi Muhammad Bage, the senior judge who resigned from Nigeria’s Supreme Court in 2019 to become the Emir of Lafia in Nasarawa State.

*2022 National Honour: Buhari decorates Lawan 

The Minister for Special Duties and Inter-Governmental Affairs, George Akume, inaugurated the committee on September 16 with the mandate “to screen and select eminent Nigerians and friends of Nigeria, who have contributed to the development of the country.”

In what would have been a record of unprecedented efficiency in the annals of such committees, a list emerged a mere fortnight later of recipients of national honours. Among the recipients, it listed the Emir of Lafia, himself the newly inaugurated chair of the National Honours Committee, for one of the highest honours – Commander of the Federal Republic (CFR).

Remembering Gani Fawehinmi

 By Ayodele Ale

We were in the newsroom when respected lawyer Gani Fawehinmi’s call came in that reporters should be sent to his Oduduwa Crescent, GRA, Ikeja residence. A drama was in the offing. Gani was news, any time, any day. Within a jiffy, reporters from different media houses stormed his abode. It was a day to the Ileya festival and two rams were tied to the stakes in his compound. Gani pointed at the two animals, alleging that they were sent as Ileya presents to him by the then military administrator of Lagos.

*Fawehinmi

Fawehinmi said emphatically that the MILAD, who is a Muslim did not know the tenets of Islam as Ileya meat and gift is to be shared with the poor, not the rich like him. Cameras flashed as Gani granted an interview, turning the animals to four-legged celebrities. The enfant terrible loaded the animals into a truck and returned it to the Alausa office of the governor, with the message that Gani would never accept any such Greek gift.

Gani was war. Uncompromising. And the MILAD dared not try him. But the MILAD was also fond of him. He later approved that the road leading to Gani’s house be tarred. Gani had no objection. He told the press why. “The MILAD only used taxpayers’ money to tar the road and not his compound and he could not prevent other people living in the same street from enjoying the product of their tax. Chikena!

Everyone’s Obituary Is Inevitable

 Chuks Iloegbunam tells Sam Omatseye to cleanse his journalism 

*Peter Obi

 Some have called you foolish, dear Sam Omatseye. Others insist that you are plain stupid. There are those who hold you to be beneath contempt. Their howls of execration upon you are in reaction to your August 1, 2022 article entitled Obi-tuary. For me, however, you are a dear friend. Our friendship started in the 1980s at Newswatch magazine where both of us practiced journalism before you travelled to the United States for further studies.

 

It continued upon your return and strengthened to the point that, sometimes, you get the producers of your TV Continental programme to connect me to field questions live. Besides, living in different states, we often chat by telephone. I demonstrated our amity again last May when I was in Nigeria’s commercial capital for the Lagos International Book Fair. I phoned you and, within the hour, you were at my stand where we spent quality time reminiscing about the good old days and prognosticating on the future of our dear fatherland.

 

Armed with this handle of friendship, I have just the one advice for you: Be careful. It is in elaboration of this counsel that I write all that you read hereon. Please look back to the time of the Nigeria-Biafra war of 1967 to 1970. You will find that, military or civilian, none of the political actors of that era is still in a position to fight elections today. The final curtain long fell for most of them. Of the lot that remains, some have become vegetables, or are propped up with a suffusion of drugs or would not find their way to the loo unless hired attendants or swearing relatives point it out. Together with the handful that is still blessed with something close to robust health, they have one thing in common. They are seated, restless or restive, in various existential departure halls, clutching fitfully at their boarding passes and waiting for that inevitable voice that cannot be disobeyed, to announce their flights into past tense. 

Dele Giwa’s Assassination: 35 Years After

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye 

“Death is…the absence of presence…the endless time of never coming back…a gap you can’t see, and when the wind blows through it, it makes no sound” – Tom Stopard    

In the morning of Monday, October 20, 1986, I was preparing to go to work when a major item on the Anambra Broadcasting Service (ABS) 6.30 news bulletin hit me like a hard object. Mr. Dele Giwa, the founding editor-in-chief of ‘Newswatch’ magazine, had the previous day been killed and shattered by a letter bomb in his Lagos home. My scream was so loud that my colleague barged into my room to inquire what it was that could have made me to let out such an ear-splitting bellow. 

*Giwa

We were three young men who had a couple of months earlier been posted from Enugu to Abakaliki to work in the old Anambra State public service, and we had hired a flat in a newly erected two-storey building at the end of Water Works Road, which we shared. My flat-mate, clearly, was not familiar with Giwa’s name and work, and so had wondered why his death could elicit such a reaction from me. 

But later that day, as he interacted with people, he realised that Giwa’s death was such big news, and by the next couple of days, he had become an expert on Giwa and his truncated life and career. Across the country, Giwa’s brutal death dominated the news not just because of the pride of place he occupied in Nigerian journalism practice, but more because of the totally novel way his killers had chosen to end his life.   

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: June 12: Every Life Matters

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

After the elaborate ceremony of apology and award of honours, it is now time to come to terms with the fact that the greatest tribute has not been paid to the victims of the truncation of the nation’s democratic watershed on June 12, 1993.

*Abiola 

Clearly, there has been in the past 25 years a persistent clamour for restitution for the victims. Every June 12 has witnessed calls for the closure of the sad political trajectory in the nation’s life. President Muhammadu Buhari has apparently heeded these calls. But sadly, Buhari’s action has rather shown the poor premium we place on life in the country. 

Reuben Abati: The Threat Of A New Political Party

ESSAY

By Reuben Abati

When aggrieved politicians within the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) decided to join forces with members of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and the All Progressives Peoples Alliance (APGA) to form the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2013, they had well-defined, if not so clearly stated, even if poorly conceived objectives: to send President Jonathan out of power, displace the PDP which had clearly become a dominating hegemonic party, exert vengeance and offer the people an alternative.

*Reuben Abati 

   The triumph of the APC in the 2015 elections resulting in victory at the Presidential level, in 23 states out of 36, and also in the legislature, state and federal, was propelled on the wings of the people’s embrace of this slogan of change. Change became the aphrodisiac of Nigeria’s search for democratic progress. The new party’s promises were delivered with so much certainty and cock-suredness. Those who were promised free meals were already salivating before casting the first vote.

    The permanently opportunistic players in Nigeria’s private sector could be seen trading across the lines as they have always done. Everyone knew the PDP had too much internal baggage to deal with.  The opposition exploited this to the fullest and they were helped in no small measure, not just by the party’s implosion, but also the offensiveness of the claims by certain elements within the PDP that their party will rule Nigeria forever. This arrogance had gone down the rank and file resulting in bitter conflicts among the various big men who dominated the party. The party failed from within, and even after losing the 2015 elections, it has further failed to recover from the effects of the factionalism that demystified it and drove it out of its hegemonic comfort zone. It took the PDP 16 years to get that hubristic moment. It is taking the APC a much shorter time to get to that same moment.

      The displacement of the PDP gave the impression that Nigeria’s political space, hitherto dominated by one party, and a half, out of over 30 political parties with fears of a possible authoritarian one-party system, had become competitive.  But the victory of a new party over a dominant political party in power such as occurred in 2015, has not delivered the much-expected positives: instead, questions have been raised about the depth of democratic change and the quality of Nigeria’s political development. The disappointment on both scores has been telling.

        The ruling APC has not been able to live up to expectations. In less than two years in power, it has been behaving not like the PDP, but worse. Not a day passes without a pundit or a party member or a civil society activist suggesting that the only way forward is the formation of a new political party. There are over 30 registered political parties in Nigeria; no one is saying that these political parties should be reorganized and made more functional; the received opinion is that a new political party would have to replace the APC.

Sylvester Akhaine’s Logic Of Struggle And Humanism

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

The world is a theatre of struggle. Every stage one finds oneself at, one should know that it is a struggle; it is one of the principles of social Darwinism – Sylvester Akhaine

With Donald Trump clinching the United States’ presidency on the back of the promise to privilege the welfare of Americans and deport immigrants he considers as parasites, such foreigners have only the option of making their own countries great to cater for them and obviate the need of seeking succour overseas. To make their countries to attain a level where they do not need to be economic refugees in foreign countries like that of Trump imposes on such citizens the necessity of a struggle to remove impediments to the development of their societies.

*Sylvester Akhaine

For African states and other formerly colonised countries of the world, the need for a struggle to attain their national destinies is very familiar. It was such a struggle that paved the way for political independence in the 1950s and 1960s in African countries. Thus for these African states to overcome their new masters, whether internal or external, there is the need for them to resume the path of struggle. This validates the intervention of Sylvester Odion Akhaine, through The Case of a Nursing Father, in the contemporary discourse of resistance by the citizens of post-colonial states against their economic and political oppressors to create prosperous societies.

Beneath the veneer of a preoccupation with existential affairs such as those at the home front as signified by the title of the book are weightier issues of a people’s struggle to be free from oppression in its multi-faceted forms. But then, even at the home turf, a struggle is required for the solidification of humanism. This is demonstrated by the author’s refusal to align with the members of his elite class who objectify their fellow human beings by making children from poor homes as housemaids.

While such housemaids spend their days in drudgery in the service of oga, madam and the children, no one spares a thought for their education. The author resolves the conflict that could ensue from his resistance by becoming a nanny in order to accommodate the professional demands of his medical doctor wife. By both husband and wife accepting to take turns to care for their first child, they avert a feminist war of equality.

Thus, in the African context, there is the robust possibility of mutual help between a husband and a wife as counterpointed by a brand of Western feminism that breeds an unnecessary gender hostility.

Nigerians, Time To Hold Our Leaders Accountable

By Remi Oyeyemi

Like millions of other Nigerians, one is very concerned. One is concerned about the subsisting chaos in our social order. One is concerned about the turbulence in our economic condition. One is worried about the glorification of charlatanism in our political landscape. One is disturbed about the morass of our moral mill. The absence of integrity, the discountenance of dignity, the disrespect of reason and disregard of facts all combine to give one serious concerns about Nigeria.

*Remi Oyeyemi

When one traverses the social media, rummages through the newspapers, and listens to real life experiences of Nigerians, one could feel the concern of Nigerians. From discussions with variety of Nigerians, irrespective of the social, economic and political status, the concerns have been evident. One could fathom that Nigerians wanted solutions to the manifesting myriad of problems. One would come away with the fact that Nigerian are fed up with the situation in the country.

But what is not very clear is how ready are Nigerians of all hue and clime to get off the sidelines and be involved in changing the course of their destinies. Their attitude of believing in a messiah to come around and liberate them might not be the best one given what we have witnessed so far. It is becoming increasingly self evident that Nigerians have to stand up and take control of their destiny by getting off the sidelines.

It is one’s belief that time is now for all of us to get off our laptops, drop our pens, stop complaining and get off the sidelines. It is time for all of us to accept the fact that we are the captains of our souls. Not all of us can be president. Not all of us can be senators. Not all of us can be governors. But certainly all of us can be active participants in the political process. Through our participation we would all be able to work together to forge a new destiny for our country, forge a new country for our children and for the posterity.

“Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved”  – William Jennings Bryan  

With our active participation as individuals or as members of groups we would be able to decide on the direction of the country and the type of policies that have to be in place. We would be able to hold our leaders accountable. If someone is a local government chairman and he is not able to declare his assets, we would be able to hold him accountable or force him to leave office.  Any councilor that lives beyond his means could be held accountable. House of Assembly members would be forced to be accountable on their stewardship.

The Senators who collect constituency allowance and spend such on their girlfriends would be made to answer questions. Those who become commissioners and live beyond their incomes would have some explanations to do. The political party operatives would not be allowed to get away with deceit and deception. Party platforms and promises would be seriously adhered to. Presidents or governors would not get into the office and deny their promises made during campaigns.  All these could be possible only through mass participation in the political process.

Mass participation is the heart and soul of democracy. It is the life blood of freedom. It is the best check and balance for governance. Mass participation is the best form of holding elected officers accountable. If our elected officers know that we are all paying attention, they would think twice before they steal our commonwealth or engage in any other form of corruption. If our elected officers know that we are informed and very much aware of the way the process works, they would not be able to hold us to ransom or deceive us.

Multi-Partism As A Philosophic Construct

By Amor Amor

Like an inscrutable nightmare, the pon­derous mystery of the Nigerian national question, which is ultimately the nation’s enduring essence, is still at issue. Jolted by the scandalous and shocking dis­play of the obvious limitations of the human evolution, the unacceptable index of human misery in their country, and willed by the current spate of pain being inflicted on them by a stone-hearted old soldier and his quislings, Nigerians have been singing discordant tunes about the state of their forced union. This has further been exacerbated by disarm­ing pockets of inter and intra-communal clashes, ethnic cleansing by Fulani herdsmen, student unrest, rampaging madness of ethic militias and sectarian fanaticism in some parts of the country. There­fore, the matter for regret and agitation is that a supposedly giant of Africa has suddenly become the world’s most viable junkyard due to the evil mach­inations of a fraudulent ruling class and the feudal forces still bent on keeping the country in a perpetual state of medieval servitude.

(pix:123rf)

Yet, the most disturbing irony of the Nigerian con­dition is that a multi-party democratic system made up of over fifty registered politi­cal parties enthroned by the civil society and the media with the support of a few pro­gressive politicians such as the late legal luminary, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, the great Yoruba leader, Chief Abraham Ade­sanya, Chief Ndubisi Kanu, Alhaji Balarabe Musa and a host of others, is gradually be­ing turned to a one-party state by a gang of confused politi­cians and discredited soldiers who call themselves “progres­sives”. After a keenly contested presidential election in which emotions rose to fever-pitch, a lot of unprintable and dam­aging words thrown into the bargain from all sides of the divides, rather than sue for a genuine reconciliation of all the contending forces, presi­dent Muhammadu Buhari and his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) started by criminalizing the opposition led by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) which was hither­to the ruling party. Rather than show magnanimity in victory as genuine progressives would do, extend the olive branch to the defeated, resuscitate and rejig the Inter-party Advisory Office and promote peaceful co-existence amongst the vari­ous political parties, ethnic na­tionalities, religious and other interest groups, the APC-led federal government did the op­posite.

Soon after its inauguration, the APC government, like a bull in a China’s shop, started embarking on the aggressive promotion of belligerence, acrimony and rancour; crimi­nalization, demonization, de­humanization, and demolition of the major opposition party, the PDP. While decimating their prime enemy, the APC was trying to lionize and can­onize its members in messianic emblems at the detriment of other politicians. The APC, in its smugness, self assurance and we-know-it-all bravura, is bliss­fully unaware of the fact it won the election not only for them­selves but for all Nigerians. The ruling party is sadly engrossed in the envenomisation, intimi­dation and balkanisation of the PDP, organized Labour, the intelligentsia and the critical elite that it has forgotten how to govern this complex nation. By trying to rubbish the sustained achievements of the PDP which succeeded in rebuilding almost all the broken segments of the national economy for sixteen unbroken years after sixteen consecutive years (1983-1999) of military gangsterism, rapac­ity and greed, the APC has, unknown to itself, committed political harakiri before all dis­cerning Nigerians and the in­ternational community which rated the country under former president Goodluck Jonathan as easily the biggest economy in Africa and one of the fasted growing economies in the world.

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.

The Danger Of A Single Corruption Story

By Moses E. Ochonu

There is a danger in equating corruption in Nigeria with the infractions of a single corrupt individual. At different moments of our national life, we tend to narrowly and naively unload our anti-corruption angst on one individual politician. We then pummel this individual like a piñata while seemingly forgetting that Nigeria’s political corruption is a group act, an orgy of theft involving whole groups of politicians and bureaucrats.

*Buhari and Saraki

We inculpate some politicians while inadvertently exculpating others. We do so to assuage our emotional exhaustion at corruption’s stubborn persistence, and its devastating consequences.

In the second republic the individual stand-in for corruption was Umaru Dikko. In the Peoples Democratic Peoples Party (PDP) era, it was James Ibori. In the unfolding All Progressives Congress (APC) period, that personification of Nigeria’s corruption is Bukola Saraki.

To hear some people talk about Bukola Saraki one would think that the Senate President is the very embodiment of Nigeria’s corruption problem and that his removal from office and/or conviction would magically banish graft and restore probity in the polity.

Reading and listening to some of these folks one would think that Nigeria’s corruption virus originated with Saraki and would end with his conviction. You’d think that Saraki’s ongoing trial was some seminal event in a revolution against corruption and that the reclamation of Nigeria hangs on its outcome alone.

Never mind that Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was charged with exactly the same offense as Saraki in a similarly politically charged atmosphere and that over 70 lawyers invaded the courtroom to defend him and eventually succeeded in intimidating the judge into acquitting him. Mr. Saraki is rightly berated for trying to wriggle out of an actual trial, for seeking to have the charges corruptly dismissed. But it’s now a distant, rarely revisited memory that Tinubu, the architect and champion of change, if you believe the hype, had used a mix of legal maneuvers, bully tactics, and other shady shenanigans to evade justice on multiple occasions when the late social crusader, Gani Fawehinmi, sought to subject him to an open court process. He, too, was afraid of a trial. Today, he issues periodic sermons about how corruption has hobbled Nigeria and needs to be defeated. Depressingly, many Nigerians cheer these sanctimonious pronouncements.

Who Is Nigeria’s Conscience?

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Nigerians are very good at crowning false heroes. Just open a Nigerian newspaper you can find near you and see how many people that are recklessly described on its pages as “credible” politicians, “honest and selfless” Nigerians, or worse, the “conscience of the nation.” You would be shocked to see the number of people that carelessly allow themselves to be associated with such superb, ennobling qualities even when they are fully aware that by their personal conducts, it might even appear as a generous compliment to dress them up in the very opposites of those terms.

*Chinua Achebe

Over the years, these words and phrases have been so callously and horribly subjected to the worst kinds of abuses in Nigeria with hardly anyone making any attempt to intervene and seek their redemption. I won’t in the least, therefore, be surprised to wake up tomorrow and hear that decent people in this country have begun to protest and resist any attempt to associate them with such grossly debased terms.

As a people sharing the same country with an ever-growing tribe of shameless, exceptional experts on the egregious art of effective and perpetual devaluation all that ought to inspire awe and noble feelings, it should not come to us as a shock any day to be assaulted by the news that some Nigerians felt grievously insulted that their dogs were, for instance, nominated for “National Honours.” Even the poor dog may bark all day to register its dismay! But do we need to wait for this to happen before we quickly rouse ourselves from our long-lasting moral slumber and hurriedly stop this overly revolting annual charade of “honouring” people whose only contribution to their fatherland may just be their ecstatic participation in the mindless looting of its resources and effective supervision of its wholesale devastation.

Nigeria: Glamourisation Of Political Prostitution

By Dan Amor

It is a sickening reality in Nigeria that defection, the act of leaving one political party for another, also called carpet-crossing, or what the eminent poet and humorist, Uzor Maxim-Uzoatu called “Jumpology” (the political act of jumping from party to party), has been elevated to the height of a national ideology.

*Nuhu Ribadu, Murtala Nyako and Atiku Abubakar 

(pix:pointblanknews)

This glamourisation of political prostitution by Nigerian politicians signals the death of commonsense. Before the December 2013 defection of 37 members of the House of Representatives elected on the platform of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) in an open show and fanfare, four PDP governors had led the way in a much more rehearsed, media pampered braggadocio in November 2013. Many Nigerians believed that despite the larger implications of the defection with regards to the 2015 political permutations, nothing had really changed. Nigerians who are no longer shocked or surprised at the sheer ingenuity of the defection gale which has seen some politicians changing parties more than they change their agbada, have unanimously called for a stop to this wayward political culture.