Why ASUU Strike Is For Benefit Of The Poor, Needy

 By Jeff Doki

For many years, the ideological nature of political struggle in Nigeria has been systematically suppressed by the press. When Nigeria politics is written about, it is in misleadingly crude terms of power struggles between political parties—usually the All Progressives Congress, Peoples Democratic Party and (very recently) the Labour Party. Or sometimes, the reportage is about individual personalities—Bola Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi—or the economic problems (hunger, poverty, disease, joblessness, soaring energy prices and lack of access to quality education, among others) supposedly caused by poor leadership.

As a matter of fact, such strands of politics, reported by the Nigerian media, are mere subplots in the battle between a backwards-looking regime, erected on the structures of shameful revisionism,  corruption, denial of truth and unpatriotic divisiveness on the one hand, and the nationalists and intellectual workers headed by Academic Staff Union of Universities on the other. It is important to state from the outset that this latter group (led by ASUU) is acting as a check on the increasing gross inequality between the bourgeoisie and the 90% of the Nigerian population who are peasants and urban workers.

Bestriding the Ethnic Politics: A Case Of Peter Obi

 By Ndubuisi Nwafor

“This dimension of our identity politics is frightening, but it’s not an unusual experience” – Gimba Kakanda, Daily Trust, 9 August, 2022

Nigeria’s political, social, cultural, economic and religious space is currently awash and agog with political activities. Such activities include ethnic, ageist, and other toxic innuendoes with the propensity to scuttle the very existence of our dear country Nigeria.

*Peter Obi 

The history of Nigeria’s power transitions may have assumed a parabola tangent, ranging from elections, coups and even appointments as was the case with transition from IBB to Chief Ernest Shonekan, but in all, good fortune and electoral popularity played major roles.

The argument that South East has been displaced politically in the power equation of Nigeria is an honest and painful truth, however, this situation is both self-inflicted and also as a result of festering fear of Igbo domination in the contemporary Nigeria.

2023 Presidential Election: Can We Get It Right?

 By Chiedu Uche Okoye

Why is Nigeria, a country endowed with humungous human and material resources, still trapped in the cocoon of   economic and technological quagmire and backwardness?  Why has she continued to bring up the rear on the global ladder of countries’ development? The answer to the above question is not far-fetched. The military incursions into our politics had dealt a severe and devastating blow to our democratic growth and national development. And we have not got it right, politically since Nigeria became a sovereign country in 1960.

 

The departing British imperialists laid the foundation for the egregious culture of imposition of national leaders on the populace in Nigeria. They surreptitiously helped Alhaji Tafawa Balewa to become our Prime Minister in 1960. Was Tafawa Balewa better than Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Rt. Hon. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, who were intellectual giants and political juggernauts? Not surprisingly, Alhaji Tafawa Balewa failed to unite the Peoples of Nigeria and set the country on the path of sustainable economic growth and irreversible technological development.

Nigeria, Going , Going…?

 By Magnus Onyibe

Imagine a man standing at the edge of a cliff and a demon is standing behind him wielding a bazooka firearm menacingly, with the intent to blow the man off the cliff, or simply just give him a kick from behind so that he would fall to his death. That in my estimation,(and l believe in the assessment of most Nigerians)is the dire situation in which our country and indeed our compatriots are currently trapped.

No matter, how government spin doctors try, they can no longer pull-the-wool over-our-eyes with the false claim that since Boko Haram is no more holding swathes of Nigeria’s territory in the north which was the case before 2015,terrorism has not only been highly degraded, but it is in the throes of death and technically defeated.

In my view, Boko Haram and ISWAP are no longer interested in holding territories where they could be engaged in conventional warfare with Nigerian army that has superior fire power with which it could be defeated in direct confrontations or conventional war.

Nigeria: Writing Buhari’s Scorecard

 By Rotimi Fasan

The consensus among Nigerians across different parts of our country today is that President Muhammadu Buhari has failed both as a leader and a two-term president. His inability to deliver on his electoral promises to secure Nigeria, making it a safe polity for life and property aside food and job security in the wake of what Nigerians then thought was the demolition job of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP-led government of Goodluck Jonathan; fight corruption and relate with the people of Nigeria without fear or favour, in regard to religion, ethnic and gender identity- all of these have conspired to undermine his claim to a favourable place in history.

*Buhari

For a man who at a point enjoyed the unalloyed support and admiration of the vast majority of Nigerians from his part of the country, was accorded grudging respect from other parts on account of his apparent spartan lifestyle (which was seen as the appropriate antidote to the corrupt profligacy of the Jonathan years) and spent the latter part of his adult life aspiring to lead the country he once ruled as a military dictator for almost two years before he was ousted from power in a military putsch, this turn of events is without any doubt tragic. The more so it does not appear there is much the administration can achieve in the few months left before a new government comes into office.

President Buhari, indeed, has just about five active months, between August and February, left to ameliorate the harsh verdict of history. Not enough time to do much to say nothing of achieving a fundamental shift in opinion, expectations of Nigerians or his own capacity for any miraculous transformation in the state of the nation.

President Buhari Is Overdue For Impeachment!

By Yemi Adebowale

A large number of senators, across party lines, showed a bit of courage last Wednesday by pushing for President Muhammadu Buhari’s impeachment in the face of the appalling security situation of beloved Nigeria. But the coldblooded President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan tactically stalled the motion to give the inept Buhari six weeks to improve the country’s security or face impeachment.

*Buhari 

It is appalling that Lawan did not allow the senators to discuss the raging insecurity in the country as agreed during an earlier Executive Session. He knocked it off the day’s Order Paper, preemptively, making it impossible to accommodate the debate on this vital issue at plenary. I was not shocked by Lawan’s action. This man has never been on the side of traumatised Nigerians. The senators eventually walked out of the red Chamber in protest, chanting “Buhari must Go,” “Lawan Must Go”.

Cumulative Evidence Of Buhari’s Failure

 By Olayemi Olaniyi   

If you’re not in academia, there is a good chance you don’t know what the hell a Nomological Network of Cumulative Evidence means. I came across this rather prolix and strange phrase during one of the many podcast interviews granted by the Lebanese-Canadian Professor, Gad Saad, that I have been binge-watching for weeks now. Gad Saad is arguably the world’s leading expert in Evolutionary Psychology; a field that theoretically explains psychological structure through modern evolutionary context.

*Buhari 

According to Saad, to build a nomological network of cumulative evidence essentially means to provide a wide range of evidence across various disciplines to explain a theory. The results of this interdisciplinary voyage usually would lead to the same conclusion, hence, giving the researcher an airtight premise to support their case. He often cites how Charles Darwin used this framework in On the Origin of Species. Darwin presented a nomological network of evidence from geology, archaeology, biology, anthropology, and a mélange of other disciplines in support of his theory of evolution in his seminal book.

The Problem Buhari Created

 By Rotimi Fasan

One knew this was where we were headed; Nigerians too saw it coming, a situation where a group of bloodthirsty marauders could put a bounty on the head of the leader of the so-called giant of Africa, the most populous Black country on our planet, while threatening fire and brimstone.

But these are no group of braggarts. They often put their mouth where their money is and are far better at making good their threat than the Nigerian state under the present administration.

*Buhari 

Nothing could have been more brazen. That bands of undisciplined men that have chosen to make the forest and similar hideouts in the wilderness their home, could boldly advertise their plan to abduct President Muhammadu Buhari as well as Nasir el-Rufai, the governor of Kaduna State, tells us nothing if not an account of official negligence and dereliction of duty on the part of President Buhari, who continues to issue ineffectual statements of intent and orders to the military and other security agencies to destroy the outlaw elements that have grown stronger by the day.

Nigeria Cannot Defeat The Igbo And Yoruba At The Same Time!

 By Akinyemi Onigbinde 

The greatest thing Nigerians accomplished in the last thirty years was electing Muhammadu Buhari as president. If he had lived and died without being president, no one would push back when politicians fall over themselves to deliver tributes and call him the greatest president that Nigeria never had.

  *Pa Adebanjo 

After six years of Buhari’s administration and with only two more years to go, all is settled about the rhymes and stanzas of Buhari’s elegy. Some thirty years from now, people will stone anyone who attaches “greatest ” to any tribute at Buhari’s funeral.  

You may ask if anything is worth the cost of having Buhari as president?  

Before you do, there is another reason why his election was the greatest accomplishment of the Nigerian electorate in the last 30 years. If Buhari had not been president, if his incompetence had not been exposed to the uninitiated, Nigeria would have continued its zigzag path. The one-step-forward, two-steps-backwards trajectory would have continued unabated.  

Chuks Iloegbunam At 70

 By Chido Nwkanma 

18 May 2021 is an important day in the household of the Iloegbunams as the one and only Baba Ndidi, the brand and the person, clocks 70 years. Chuks Iloegbunam is a general of the writing fraternity. He has served this nation well as a journalist, book editor, publisher and technocrat in government. 

*Chuks Iloegunam 

He stands out for his craft as a writer with a fearless voice that wields a powerful pen. Chuks Iloegbunam is a writer in the best traditions of that craft. His pen roars in honesty and fluidity. 

Mr Iloegbunam wrote memorable essays in The Guardian, where he turned to after service at The Punch. He was passionate both in his writing and in his defense of rights, the worker, and humanity.

He was at Longmans Nigeria Limited as Humanities Editor. He edited Sonala Olumhense, No Second Chance, and Femi Osofisan, Morountodun and Other Stories. 

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.

Nigeria: How Not To Mismanage the Covid-19 Pandemic

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Even though by 2015, the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) had performed below the high expectations of many Nigerians and had rightly earned their rejection, I highly dreaded the disastrous possibility of Nigerians falling for the massive, overwhelming but vacuous propaganda of the All Progressives Congress (APC), backed by a formidable coalition of tragically naïve activists, intellectuals and opinion leaders, to seriously consider that the APC could by the widest stretch of the imagination, qualify as even a manageable alternative.

There was massive corruption in the PDP, but it was just impossible for me to buy the tasteless myth that the APC which was mostly made up of the very characters that gave the PDP its unwholesome image could, no matter the relentless efforts of their tireless spin doctors, qualify to be classed as something that has the slightest resemblance with a party of saints and an assemblage change agents, and that once a person moved from the PDP to the APC, the person would receive instant beatification from a band of holy angels waiting to perform that sacred assignment. This should make no sense even to a two-year old!

Buhari And The Enduring Hate Narrative

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

In the buildup to the 2015 elections, the wild, uproarious promotion of General Muhammadu Buhari, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), as the man with the panacea for   Nigeria’s myriad of problems wasted no time in saturating the air.

*President Buhari 

This was sloppily packaged with a strange, aggressive refusal to give the slightest consideration for any voice of caution, any alternative opinion no matter how sound and redemptive. You either joined the rowdy herd or you are a “hater” of the “messiah.” 

The Offa Robberies, Political Thuggery And The Near-Death Of Nigerian Democracy

By Kennedy Emetulu

There is something rotten in the state of Denmark and it’s either we clean it up now or we all die from this stench. This is not an alarmist testament; it is real. The killings and findings following the Offa robberies have provided us an opportunity to cleanse the Aegean stables once and for all.

Thirty-three citizens woke up on Thursday, the 5th of April 2018 to go about their lawful businesses, but they were brutally murdered in cold blood by a group of young people in apparent armed robberies involving six banks in Offa, Kwara State. The banks are the First Bank, Ecobank, Guaranty Trust Bank, Zenith Bank, Union Bank and Ibolo Microfinance Bank. Amongst the dead were 9 police officers, pregnant women and other ordinary citizens. The police have arrested some of those behind the killings, including leaders of the gang and they have allegedly been making confessions. I say “allegedly” because whatever they are saying now has not been tested in a court of law.

Theresa May’s Search For Wife In Nigeria

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It is either that British Prime Minister Theresa May is on the verge of divorcing her husband or she is a lesbian even though she is married to a man, Philip.

In either case, the PM might be considering taking a wife from Nigeria or any other Commonwealth country that her ancestors presided over its expropriation and ruination.

British PM Theresa May President Buhari 

Obviously, May is ruing her mistake of ever getting married to a man. She would have preferred to be a lesbian-husband with a wife. Or why is she rhapsodising about the glories of homosexuality? 

If May does not hanker after lesbianism, then she should be charged with duplicity directed at sexually perverting millions of other people while she is enjoying being married to a man. We could see May’s duplicity in her proselytising zeal for same-sex marriage while at the same time professing how much she has enjoyed the benefits of the marriages of others.

President Buhari’s Naked Self-Interest

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It was not really unexpected that President Muhammadu Buhari would hinge his bid to return to office on patriotism. It is the way of all politicians. They are not tired of striving to mislead us into considering their personal ambitions as goals that are inextricably tied to our collective good. Thus, Buhari wants us to see him as a good patriot who is only responding to the call of his people to serve again.

*President Buhari

But it is clear to those of us who are far from the madding Buhari chorus that he is propelled by naked self-interest. Before the leaders of his political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), Buhari rhapsodised about how much the people who are appreciative of his service to them want him back. But he should have gone further to provide the specific areas in which the citizens have benefited from his government.

Hello, Buhari Is Beatable In 2019

By Sufuyan Ojeifo

In 2015, serial presidential contestant, Muhammadu Buhari, emerged victorious through the instrumentality of enclave politics to which the north adroitly resorted in the face of plans by Goodluck Jonathan to ensconce himself in power for another four years. Had Jonathan succeeded, the north, barring any unforeseen circumstances, would have been out of presidential power for ten unbroken years following the demise of President Umaru Yar’Adua.

*Buhari 

 That cold fact apparently nudged the north to throw everything into the mix of 2015 presidential power politics. Many key northern elements in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) deployed political brinkmanship, dismantled loyalty that characteristically underpins leadership-followership construction, betrayed trust and deceived Jonathan in the utilisation of campaign and election funds in order to ensure the defeat of a sitting president, for the first time, in the annals of Nigeria’s presidential election.

Willie Obiano Shines In Governorship Debate

 By Chuks Iloegbunam

 Governor Willie Obiano displayed a sense of purpose all through the debate. He was first asked the nature of the quarrel between him and ex-Governor Peter Obi. He brushed it aside, saying that Mr. Obi was not a candidate in the governorship ballot. His preference was to state his work and his plans for Ndi Anambra. In the course of the debate, the Governor was asked if he could authenticate the story that Mr. Obi had demanded a refund of the N7.5 billion he claimed to have invested in his election. Yes, indeed, the demand had been made but Obiano declined to pay any such money because Anambra was not indebted to anybody on campaign funding. These underscore his clarity of thought on the night.

*Gov Willie Obiano 

The issue of probity was raised. Mr. Oseloka Obaze accused Governor Obiano of selling off dollars “they” had saved for “future generations.” This was the Governor’s masterful response: “First, that’s Anambra’s money. In banking, we call it ‘liquidity management’. You don’t leave an idle fund when you desire to put funds into activities. This guy (Peter Obi) left a debt of N127 billion. Contractors have to be paid. While you are balancing your act, you won’t have money sitting in the bank and you are looking for money to pay contractors. That’s a legitimate transaction. It is not a personal fund. So, in liquidating only $10 million (out of over $100 million) in four years to be able to pay contractors in a recession is good. That’s money management.”

Corruption And Aisha Buhari’s Testimony

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It is increasingly becoming obvious that the President Muhammadu Buhari government is chafing under the affliction of a one-week-one-scandal syndrome. Unless they are irrevocably befuddled by their partisanship, Buhari’s loyalists who have been consumed with the notion of his unrivalled integrity would not fail to observe the dark atmosphere of corruption in which the administration is immersed. But of course, while most of these loyalists are apologising for allowing themselves to be used to pave the way for the Buhari presidency, there are some who would counter that those who accuse the government of corruption are the shellacked members of the opposition. After all, the Kachikwu-Baru affair which is the latest scandal in the Buhari government has not been declared by a competent court as an unimpeachable case of corruption.

*Aisha Buhari 

But the evidence of financial sleaze such unalloyed believers in the integrity of the Buhari government may not be able to dispute is no longer from the members of the opposition and other citizens whose moral sensibilities are daily affronted by corruption cases. Now, the evidence is from an unlikely quarter. It is from Aisha Buhari, the wife of the president. Just a week after the nation was scandalised by the $25 billion heist in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) which has no rival in the alleged financial misdeeds committed by the Goodluck Jonathan government, Mrs. Buhari alerted us to the possible mismanagement of over N4 billion at the Aso Rock Clinic in less than two years. She was shocked that despite this allocation, the clinic did not have a single syringe. Mrs. Buhari’s alarm came shortly after her daughter Zahra was outraged at the lack of syringe and common drugs like paracetamol at the clinic. 

Nigeria: Living With Two Presidents

By Ochereome Nnanna

Section 145 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, (As Amended) has this to say about the power of the Vice President in the absence of the President:

“Whenever the President transmits to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives a written declaration that he is proceeding on vacation or that he is otherwise unable to discharge the functions of his office, until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary such functions shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President”. 

*President Buhari and VP Osinbajo

Because of the cynical nature of Nigerian politics which is sadly rooted in religion, ethnicity, sectionalism and familial interests (factors that corrupt and debilitate our constitutional democracy), a constitutional enactment as precise and self-explanatory as the Section 145 is still made to seem hard to grapple with.

President Muhammadu Buhari, who has done very well in respecting the Constitution by transmitting such letters to the leaders of the National Assembly on each of the two occasions he went abroad to tend to his health problems, however, introduced confusion into the issue when he said Vice President Osinbajo would “coordinate” the activities of government in his absence. The President was heavily criticised for this strange definition of the status of the Acting President, though it hardly matters since it is the Constitution, not the President that defines roles played by everyone in our democracy.

This is the second regime in which our President had to be taken out of the country for an extended stay out of power. When the case of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua took place late in November 2009 he did not transmit any letter as Buhari does. By February 2010, murmurs over a power vacuum became cacophonous and Yar’ Adua’s handlers caused the British Broadcasting Corporation to air an “interview” he granted to show he was not incapacitated.