Why Do Nigerian Governors Swear Allegiance To The President?

 By Olu Fasan

This is a subject I have long wanted to address. It first caught my attention when I watched the inauguration of Professor Charles Soludo as governor of Anambra State in March 2022. As he recited the oath of office, I was struck by how many times he mentioned the words “Federal Republic of Nigeria”, “President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria” and “Federal Government of Nigeria”, while he only directly mentioned “Anambra State” once; yes, once!  

*Tinubu meets governors 

The words quoted above, bar Anambra State, are in the governor’s oath set out in the Seventh Schedule of the 1999 Constitution. For instance, it says a governor must exercise the authority vested in him “so as not to impede or prejudice the authority lawfully vested in the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria”, and “so as not to endanger the continuance of the Federal Government in Nigeria”. It goes on: a governor must “devote” himself “to the service and well-being of the people of Nigeria”. Really? Why?

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.

Resolving Abuja’s Real Status Is Overdue!

 By Tonnie Iredia

Former Senate President Lawan’s senatorial nomination bid and the earlier Imo State Governorship election are two recent cases whose controversial outcomes have continued to annoy many people including retired and serving judges. A third case that may have such lasting impact is the controversy concerning what a candidate must score in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory as a condition for becoming president.  

According to Section 134 of the Nigerian Constitution 1999, a candidate can only win a presidential election in Nigeria if he scores majority of votes at the election which must in addition not be “less than one quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two-thirds of all the states of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory Abuja.”

Buhari’s Huge Parting Debt Profile

 By Eric Teniola

The outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, has made sure he is leaving a huge debt profile of N80 trillion when he leaves the villa on Monday, May 29. Well, well, well. While he will be celebrating in Daura or in Niger Republic, we shall be sorting out the mess he has created for us in last eight years. No problem. By popular demand, I want to republish an article I wrote that was published on 21 January 2021.

*Buhari 

“In June 2005, we were so ecstatic in celebrating the debt relief offered us, a relief of over $20 billion, which was beyond the total revenue of Nigeria for one year. So happy were we that President Olusegun Obasanjo, GCFR, had to make a broadcast to the nation on June 30, 2005. He followed the broadcast by appearing before the joint sitting of the National Assembly on July 26, 2005 to speak on the issue.

Cry Not For Northern Nigeria!

 By Yakubu Mohammed

Apparently, the North deserves pity. But is it worth crying for?  Whichever angle you want to look at it, and through whichever prism you want to look at the Hobbesian state of its conditions today, the inevitable conclusion is that the North has nobody to blame but itself.

In its heydays, with good leadership that was imbued with sound vision, the North was united and monolithic in more senses than one. And relatively, it was more economically viable, self-confident, arrogant even.

But today, it is at war with itself, thanks to rabid ethnicity and religious bigotry with a system that wallows more in mediocrity than merit. Home to soulless insecurity with Boko Haram and other assorted criminals, armed bandits, kidnappers, cattle rustlers and herdsmen, both local and foreign, unhinged, the once united and peaceful North has turned into a hot bed of grotesque abnormality.

Minimum Wage, Maximum Politics!

By Owei Lakemfa
The general strike on September 27 and 28 over a new National Minimum Wage will, going by antecedence, be the first of many strikes to come. This strike was not about a new wage per se or figures; not about agreement or disagreement, not to talk about implementation. It was merely to demand that the Buhari administration which has an unenviable history of cancelling promises, returns to the negotiation table.

If a general strike had to be called just to pressure government to talk with workers and employers on a New National Minimum Wage in accordance with the constitution, imagine the struggles that will need be waged to get the new wages implemented across all sectors and levels of government.

Nigeria: Kemi Adeosun’s Mendacity And Buhari’s Integrity

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

After pussyfooting for 69 days, the former Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, finally did the needful by resigning her commission on Friday, September 14. She was accused of parading fake National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) exemption certificate with which she secured employments contrary to the country’s extant laws.

*Buhari and Adeosun 

NYSC which was set up by the General Yakubu Gowon administration on May 22, 1973 as a tool for re-building the nation and reconciliation after the civil war and backed up by decree No. 24 makes it an offence for any Nigerian who graduated before the age of 30 not to serve.

The North And The Buhari Myth

By Kennedy Emetulu

1.Introduction:

One of the ‘mysteries’ of today’s politics is what some Nigerians see as the continued popularity of President Muhammadu Buhari in the North, despite his evident ineptness and the many, many failures of his government. When these Nigerians see him in outings where massive crowds of young people work themselves into a frenzy as they rent the air with “Sai Baba!” chants, they wonder what diabolical concoctions he must have let loose on them to make them feel this way.

*Kennedy Emetulu

People are being buried in grinding poverty, the economy is on a stretcher, Nigeria is regressing into the Stone Age in every respect and Buhari hops into a plane to London and back or walks 800 meters and the whole place is filled with jubilation in the North, or so it seems. What information do these people have that the rest of us don’t have? What planet are they living on when the nation clearly is on a deathbed?

2. The False Successor:

In the nation’s history, only two Northern politicians have had what can be considered the type of popular support or loyalty that Buhari has today in the North. These men were Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto and Mallam Aminu Kano. But the irony is that as opposed to Buhari, these men actually had political ideas of governance and real track records that gave them credibility with the people.

Unemployment, Corruption And Nigeria’s Youth Dilemma

By Matthew Ozah

Their story is very pathetic and heart-breaking: You cannot help but feel sorry for Nigeria’s youth. At every step the Nigerian youth wonders where he or she is going and why. They worry about unemployment and cost of living as the creeping inflation following the recent economic recession which has raised prices of commodities. In the face of all these challenges, youths across the country are determined as they struggle to make themselves relevant by acquiring university education.

However, being a graduate does not save one from enlisting in the army of unemployed people. The strong expectation and desire to be gainfully employed saw the youth entangled with the All Progressives Congress (APC) change trap. The sound of ‘change’ that engulfed the entire nation then, was like the midnight drumming sound Alex Harley described in his book: Roots, which led some slaves in America during the era of slavery to escape to freedom. Indeed, Nigeria’s youths were captivated and entangled with the APC’s change bait to escape joblessness and live a good life. As we all know, the APC promised to create millions of job and pay unemployed graduates a stipend of five thousand naira monthly among other mouth watering promises which are still in wait three years on.

Will President Buhari’s 2019 Ambition Ruin His Anti-Graft Agenda?

By Martins Oloja

Verily, verily, we should say it to President Muhammadu Buhari and the men and women who are assisting in running his government that this is not the best of time to say ‘silence is golden’. Surely, silence can’t be a strategy in Nigeria at this time when there are serious concerns and questions about the future of the most populous black nation on earth.

*President Muhammadu Buhari 

Before the president’s reputation managers start screaming blue murder and resume their blame game on the previous administration, the concerns raised today are not about them. They (concerns) are about the office of the president from the office of the citizen. The president and his men should note that before they begin to raise huge funds for the 2019, there are weightier matters of governance, especially about corruption that they should settle quickly, lest they will be the last in 2019.

Indications are daily emerging that politicking around 2019 is beginning to becloud sound judgment in the presidency. As I noted here last week, there is no need reading the president’s lips anymore: I advised us to read his leaps in Kano the other day. 

Let’s Stop Talking About Corruption, Please!

By Anthony Akinwale

Let’s stop talking about corruption. Let’s do something about it, something intelligent, something within the bounds of the law and fairness, something devoid of selective sanctions, propaganda and media trial. The recurrence of corruption as a theme in coup day speeches and in maiden speeches of successive military strongmen who, by force and not by a constitutionally granted mandate, took over reins of government in Nigeria, challenge us to act and not just to talk.

On January 15, 1966, that bloody day of the first military coup in Nigeria, Major Chukwuma Nzeogwu declared in his coup day speech: “The aim of the Revolutionary Council is to establish a strong united and prosperous nation, free from corruption and internal strife….Our enemies are the political profiteers, the swindlers, the men in high and low  places that seek bribes and demand 10 per cent; those that seek to keep the  country divided permanently so that they can remain in office as ministers or  VIPs at least, the tribalists, the nepotists, those that make the country look big for nothing before international circles, those that have corrupted our society and put the Nigerian political calendar back by their words and deeds.”

The Slaves Of Nigeria

By Femi Fani-Kayode

Many years ago​,​ ​the irrepressible Hausa leader who hailed from Kano and who was the founder of the radical leftist political party called NEPU, Mallam Aminu Kano, said,​ ​“Until the Fulani Emirs are toppled northern Nigeria will not know peace”.

*Femi Fani-Kayode 

History has proved him right. The feudal structure of the north and its deeply conservative ethos has resulted in nothing but retrogression, poverty, disease, radical Islam, terror and killer herdsmen.

Yet the problem goes much further than the north: it extends to the whole of Nigeria. Worse still it has affected the psyche of the Nigerian people and left them with a very low self-esteem.

We have become victims and casualties of our modern history and little more than miserable serfs in a Fulani-controlled artificial, man-made vassal state which deems non-Fulanis as nothing more than the biblical “hewers of the wood” and “drawers of the water”.

In our very own eyes we are nothing and in our hearts we believe that the Fulani are everything. We bow and tremble before them, we jump when they sneeze or express their displeasure and we smile and commend them when they commit all manner of abominable atrocities and slaughter.

President Muhammadu Buhari And His Unfaithful Mistress

By Dare Babarinsa

Absolute power loves to come in the benign habiliment of profound understatement. When General Yakubu Gowon came to power after the coup of July 29, 1966, he was called the Supreme Commander and Head of the Federal Military Government. Yet his supremacy was heavily contested and the military government was deeply divided. Then the soldiers went to Ghana under the auspices of the new military ruler of that country and they met in Aburi. From that point on, Gowon took on the title of Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces. Yet with this new sober title, Gowon wielded more powers than hitherto.

*President Buhari 

When he came to power in succession to General J.T.U Aguiyi-Ironsi, the new Gowon was talking of handing over power to an elected regime by 1971. Then the Civil War intervened and the assignment of nation building came in earnest. After the war, Gowon wore his powers with outward lavishness. We all love his regular movement to the airport, with the white uniform outriders displaying the arts and science of acrobatic motorcycling. The pomp and pageantry of power appealed to our youthful sense. Gowon was young, breathtakingly handsome and power becomes him like a natural accouterment. He too fell in love with power, its dizzying scent, its allure and its tantalizing romance.

No Cure For Yakubu Gowon Fever

By Tony Iwuoma

Former head of state, Yakubu Gowon, was gifted with opportunity for atonement when he recently appeared on AIT’s People, Politics and Power programme. Unfortunately, the man, who wanted to ‘go on with one Nigeria’ (Gowon), flunked the grace of history.

*Gowon

Perhaps, the greatest take-away was Gowon’s inadvertent exoneration of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. He had actually set out to vilify the venerable Biafra leader by heaping inordinate falsehood on the dead, who can no longer defend himself. Gowon claimed he went to Ghana for the famed Aburi Accord unprepared. That, according to him, accounted for why highly cerebral Ojukwu bamboozled all of them and wringed the concessions he got. He added that secession was not on the card in Ghana and, of course, it couldn’t have been. It was not on Ojukwu’s agenda either. However, secession crept into the matter when the pogrom against the Igbo in the North continued unabated and Gowon, admittedly, could not halt it. According to Gowon and rightly so, the Igbo saw Biafra as the only hope for safety and freedom.

Gowon's Aimless Cut On Odumegwu-Ojukwu

By Sunny Igboanugo

Wouldn't it have been better for former head of state General Yakubu Gowon to just say that his inexperience, age and poor education were responsible for the Nigerian civil war rather than sticking to a 50-year-old propaganda, which has refused to stick.

*Gowon and Ojukwu eating from the
same plate in Aburi 

Having gone to Aburi "unprepared" and completely overwhelmed by an Oxfords-trained graduate, wouldn't it have been better for him to just accept that he simply fell to the manipulations of the British and bureaucrats back home rather than blame the war on "Ojukwu's lies?" 

Time For Buhari To Reshuffle His Cabinet

By Oshineye Victor Oshisada

“Time changes everything,” was the title of Tummy Duncan’s song, recorded by Miki & Griff of Pye UK Recording. Truth to tell, there is time for everything and, indeed, “time changes everything.” There is the time for a motor driver to change the gear for effective acceleration; he cannot maintain the same gear for too long in the old manual gear lever. A school headmaster or principal changes his teachers for effectiveness, or even requests for his transfer to another school, if it is necessary to do so.

*President Buhari and his Cabinet 

In the same vein, I am inclined to reason that it is time for President Muhammadu Buhari to reshuffle his cabinet. But because sometimes not all the ministers are included in a cabinet, I shall generalise by the use of “ministerial reshuffle,” instead of “cabinet re-shuffle.” Be that as it may, the phrases can be used alternatively. President Muhammadu Buhari’s ministers came on board after the elections of 2015. The size of a cabinet can be large or small, depending on political and economic circumstances. Invariably, in war-time, cabinet size is small. For instance, during the Nigerian civil war of 1966 to 1970, General Yakubu Gowon, under Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s directives, himself an astute political leader with stickler for discipline, maintained modest cabinet size. Ministries were combined in one person -- Chief Anthony Enahoro, another shrewd politician, had the unique opportunity, variously holding Information, Labour, and External Affairs portfolios.

As Buhari Fights Corruption Without A Strategy

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu  

President Buhari’s much-advertised fight against corruption has degenerated into a demolition derby. As happened with many previous efforts to fight corruption in Nigeria, different outposts of power and influence in the president’s coterie appear determined to use anti-corruption as a cover to settle intra-palace scores.

*Buhari 

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), headed by an acting chairman, is pursuing the prosecution of the President of the Senate before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT). While those proceedings end, the Senate, whose President is accused of corruption by the EFCC, has declined confirmation of the acting Chairman of the EFCC, citing a report by the State Security Service (SSS), which accuses the nominee of abuse of power and of human rights. These allegations of human rights abuse against the EFCC’s acting Chairman are made without any hint of irony by an SSS that has earned a dismal reputation for respecting only court orders that it likes or in favour of only those it approves of.

Meanwhile, the judiciary, many of whose senior-most officers have become objects of ridicule at the instance of the EFCC and the SSS, must somehow bring itself to arbitrate with a straight face the winners and losers in this squalid mess.

To some, this report card is evidence that there are no sacred cows in this “fight” against corruption. It is indeed easy to mistake injury for progress when the goals are unclear and a strategy is non-existent. There surely is a fight but it is increasingly difficult to sustain the idea that it is President Buhari’s fight or indeed a fight for the interest of Nigerians.

To be sure, this is not the first time an administration will be up-ended by those supposed to implement its proclaimed commitment to fighting corruption. In 1970, General Yakubu Gowon declared that he would “eradicate corruption” from Nigeria within six years. It was an impossible mission proclaimed with the starry-eyed certitude of a 35 year-old intoxicated with power unmitigated by experience. Four years later, Godwin Daboh, instigated, it was suspected, by then Governor of Benue-Plateau State, Joseph Gomwalk, published an affidavit listing sundry allegations of corruption against Gowon’s Communications Minister, Joseph Tarka. Gowon’s indecisiveness turbo-charged the allegations. By the time Tarka was eventually forced to resign, Gowon’s commitment to fighting corruption looked terminally hypocritical. Less than one year later, Murtala Muhammed intervened to put the Gowon regime out of its misery.

The People's Choice: The Story Of Goodluck

BOOK REVIEW 

(A Tribute To Our Former President At  59)

By Dan Amor

Reflection on the existing number of books on former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan might well raise doubt about the desirability of adding to them. But since research does not stand still and its more assured results often take long to reach the handbook, there may be a place for a brief account of the man described severally by different people as a leader who is humble and simple to a fault. Yet, to read Rev. Father Charles A. Imokhai's The People's Choice, his lucid account of the life and times of the former Nigerian leader, is to embark on a delightful journey.

*Dr. Jonathan cutting his birthday cake 

Segmented into four parts, the 194 page book published by AuthorHouse, United Kingdom (February 2015), circulates how gorgeously a child from a humble state did swing across the gloomy and multitudinous chasm of the Niger Delta to become President of the world's most populous black nation by divine providence. As a priest and religious thinker, who has worked for over forty-five years in Nigeria, Liberia and the United States of America in various pastoral and administrative capacities, fortified with a doctorate degree in social anthropology from the University of Columbia, USA, Father Imokhai has produced a book which will have a remarkable vogue and influence on Nigerian youth.

Like General Yakubu Gowon, former Nigerian Head of State who wrote the foreword to the book states, the book, in an easily readable format, tells the story of an ordinary farm boy's rise from his obscure village in Otuoke, Bayelsa State to the pinnacle of leadership as Number One citizen of our dear country, Nigeria. And, like he also enthuses in his foreword, The People's Choice is work in progress "because the Presidency under Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, GCFR is still unfolding." The book which incidentally does not have on its cover the picture of its focal subject, would keep the prospective reader wondering who it's talking about.

Yet on launching into the foreword, the reader is now confronted with the reality of the subject, the figure about whom has clustered the yearnings, the ideals, and the aspirations Nigerians have for themselves and their country. That symbolic Goodluck also stands between the reader and the book. Jonathan does not pretend about his humble background. We know what happened and we cannot undo that knowledge. We read The People's Choice with a different eye. The present changes the meaning of the past. We can get the record straight, as historians like to put it, but the meaning of that straightened record is inextricably involved in the meaning we also try each day to discern in the confusion of the living present.

Remembering Ironsi, Fajuyi

By Amanze Obi

Fifty years after their assassination by north­ern military avengers, the gruesome murder of General JTU Aguiyi Ironsi and Lt. Col. Adekunle Fajuyi has received more than a pass­ing attention in the media. At the time of their death, Ironsi was the Head of State and Com­mander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria while Fajuyi was the military governor of the Western Region.

*Gen. Ironsi

Since their passage, at no time have they been so fondly remembered and elaborately celebrated more than now. Fajuyi, particularly, is being celebrated by his Yoruba kinsmen for his courage and sacrifice. Ironsi is being men­tioned in passing, probably because his Igbo kinsmen did not roll out the drums for him as the Yoruba did for Fajuyi.

Since the celebration began, many have had to wonder why the Yoruba staged such an elab­orate outing for Fajuyi. The perceived impres­sion in some quarters is that there is more to the celebration of Fajuyi than meets the eyes. I am, however, not persuaded by such suspi­cions. What makes sense to me here is that 50 years is a landmark. It is worth celebrating in the life and death of persons or institutions. Perhaps, the Yoruba may be saying through their celebration of the death of Fajuyi that 50 years of his passage is significant enough in underlining the undercurrents that brought down one of their own, who rightly deserves to be recognised as a national hero. No one should begrudge them the right to tell their own story, as it concerns one of their icons.

Perhaps, what we should question is the loud silence of the Igbo about the death of one of their own whose assassination signposts the endangered position of the Igbo in Nigeria. Why are the Igbo not talking about the murder of Ironsi on July 29, 1966, by northern military officers?

The most immediate reason for this is not far-fetched. The Igbo hardly celebrate any­body. They may recognise you for who or what you are, but they are not interested in symbol­isms. They have never celebrated any one of their greats, be it Nnamdi Azikiwe or Chinua Achebe. Whereas the Yoruba place Obafemi Awolowo on the same pedestal as a demigod, the Igbo are hardly bothered about whatever Azikiwe represents or does not represent in the pantheon of the great.

Perhaps, the only Igbo man the people lion­ise is Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the leader of the defunct Republic of Biafra. The reason for this is simple. Biafra means a lot to the Igbo. The passion flows in their blood veins. It matters to the Igbo that Ojukwu was more than committed to the Biafran cause. He never wavered in his belief in and fight for the cause until death. The Igbo revere him for this. He is their war hero for all times.

Apart from the inherent disposition of the Igbo, which does not encourage the celebra­tion of anybody, there are also remote rea­sons for the non-celebration of Ironsi by the Igbo. The Ironsi story is not an isolated one. It carries with it a myriad of sub plots which, when woven together, define the Igbo story and situation in Nigeria. There is no story of Ironsi without the story of the organised mas­sacre of hundreds of Igbo military officers by their northern counterparts. The story of the murder of Ironsi also necessarily dovetails into the story of the pogrom visited on the Igbo in northern Nigeria. One pogrom followed the other. In all of this, there was no whim­per from the federal military government led by General Yakubu Gowon. The government, which was supposed to protect the life and property of its citizens, as a primary responsi­bility, merely aided and abetted the organised massacres. All of this eventuated in the birth of Biafra. The Ironsi story is, therefore, a complex tapestry, which can hardly be unravelled and understood without making Biafra the subject matter.

July: Nigeria’s Month Of Remembrance

By Dan Amor

 For those of us who were born during or after the Nigerian Civil War, Chief Uche Ezechukwu's Monday column on the 50 years of the assassination of Nigeria's first military head of state General JTU Aguiyi Ironsi, provides an illuminating pathway to the events that led to the war. No nation among the third world countries makes a stronger claim on the interest and sympathy of Africans than Nigeria. What Nigeria has meant to the black continent and to blacks across the world, makes her future a matter of deep concern.

*Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu
taking the oath of office as the leader
of the Republic of Biafra in May 1967

Nigeria might be doddering or tottering behind less endowed African countries as a giant with feet of clay, no thanks to the tragedy of irresponsible leadership. But whatever happens to her usually serves as a huge lesson for other African countries. To view therefore with judgment and comprehension the course of present and future events in Nigerian life and politics, we must possess knowledge and understanding of her past, and to provide such understanding within concise compass, we must consult history. Yet it is an unbiased, disinterested and unprejudiced inquiry into the history of our country that will ensure that we leave a legacy of truth for generations yet unborn.

In fact, the true story of Nigeria must begin with the foundations of the nation – its geographical and economic character; its social-political and religious influences and the psychology of its peoples. Besides the existence of multi-ethnic nationalities before the fusion of the Northern and Southern Protectorates in 1914 by Lord Fredrick Lugard, a British imperialist military commander, and the almost 100 years of British colonial rule, the great period of post-independence crisis – 1960-1970 – must be vividly delineated for posterity. The death in November 2011 of Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu who has come to symbolise that great epoch of epic struggle brought to the front burner of national discourse, the issues and convergent forces at play in the Nigerian Civil War. But recent developments point to the fact that our leaders who prefer to learn their geology the day after the earthquake would want history to repeat itself.

Unfortunately, rather than telling in bold dramatic relief, the tragic and magnificent story of what brought about the war and its aftermath, some commentators have elected to mislead the reading public on who actually caused the war. Some have even pointedly accused Chief Ojukwu of having masterminded the war in order to divide Nigeria. What can be more mischievously misleading than the deliberate refusal to allow the historical sense transcend the ephemeral currents of the present and reveal the spirit of a people springing from the deepest traditions of their tragic experience? How could one begin to appreciate a legend who continued to be astonishingly misunderstood even when the realities of the factors that pushed him to rise in defense of his people are damning on the rest of us forty-nine years after his action? Why is it so difficult for us to appreciate the fact that Ojukwu has come to represent, in large and essential measure, not only a signification of heroism but also a courageous attempt to say no to an emerging oligarchy which was bent on annihilating his people from the face of the earth?