‘June 12’: Nigeria Is Not A Democracy; Stop Celebrating A Lie!

 By Olu Fasan

Last week, Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s president, tripped and fell as he climbed the steps of the parade vehicle during this year’s “Democracy Day”. Characteristically, Tinubu dismissed the incident, saying he “dobale”, that is, prostrated for democracy. In truth, Tinubu’s tumble is a perfect metaphor for democracy in Nigeria.

For, let’s face it, Nigerian democracy is so inherently wobbly that it’s prone to tripping and falling. Indeed, Nigeria is not a true democracy, and to celebrate annually a failed system, instead of admitting and tackling the failure, is to entrench and perpetuate a lie. 

Buhari’s Integrity: From Attenuation To Total Wipe-Out!

 By Adekunle Adekoya

Time flies! And very fast too. In this space on September 24, 2021, the column carried a piece with the headline: “The attenuation of integrity.” Those who read between the lines would have discerned that it was a commentary directed at the nation’s head honcho at the time, a retired general known to the rest of us as Muhammadu Buhari.

*Buhari 

Buhari was sold to us in 2014-2015 as the very personification of integrity, which meant he was a man of his words who would do exactly as he said. During the electioneering whose main objective, as we can now see, was not to make life and living better and easier for me and you but to oust Dr Goodluck Jonathan and his PDP cohorts from power, Buhari was sold to us as the next best thing to happen to humanity in Nigeria outside the scriptures.

Rotimi Amaechi’s Glib Talk And Threat To Democracy In Rivers

 By Alabi Williams

Rotimi Amaechi, former minister and governor of Rivers State, at a public lecture on Thursday, October 26, sounded rather melancholic. For a man who has been in government since 1999, first as two-term speaker of Rivers State House of Assembly and later as governor for eight years, before he served as minister of the Federal Republic for another eight years, all on a platter, the privileges he amassed do not justify the grief he attempted to offload. And he was most unfair and incorrect as he tried to blame the polity’s woes on the people.

*Rotimi Amaechi

That same week, Port Harcourt was in turmoil as former governor Nyesom Wike vainly and desperately sought to protect a so-called political structure he claimed to have built. In a democracy, do individuals own political structures to the exclusion of the political party? And whose resources did he deploy to build the structure, Rivers’ taxpayers’ monies?