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.

Mr President: Only 100,000 People Can Start A Food Revolution!

 By Dele Sobowale

“An activist is not a man who says the river is dirty; an activist is a man who steps forward to clean the river.”  — Chief Gamaliel Onosode.

Very few people now recall that the famed Onosode ran for the Presidency in 2007. Asked why an activist and already accomplished man like him wanted to go into the dirty waters of politics, the quote above was his reply. He did not win the election but he left food for thought or thought for food in that statement which I just re-discovered in my archive, buried since 2007.

The statement gave me an idea which had been developing in my mind for ten years which I once observed working well in India in the 1980s. When the Indian Prime Minister, Nehru, prohibited food importation, he also declared that “India should starve, if India cannot feed herself.” It was a bold measure which made India the largest producer and  second largest exporter of food globally. A nation which could not feed 400 million people now takes care of the food needs of 1.4 billion and still exports to the rest of the 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. 

Coups In Africa: It’s Time Politicians Accepted Soldiers As Rival For Power

 By Olu Fasan

The recent resurgence of military coups in Africa calls for further exposition, and I would do that here through the theory of militarism. From a cause-and-effect point of view, it’s futile, even irrational, to condemn coup d’états and ignore their root causes.

Unfortunately, a lot of contrived denunciation has dogged recent coups in Africa, whereas the underlying problems are glossed over. Indeed, some would view this piece as “coup-baiting”. Yet, the real coup-baiting is the failure of politicians to recognise that soldiers are their real rival for power, and that they must do the right things, democratically and in good-governance terms, to keep the military in the barracks and out of politics. 

‘Democracy Day’: The Deception And Betrayal Of ‘June 12 Activists’

 By Olu Fasan

General Ibrahim Babangida erred tragically and did a great disservice to Nigeria by annulling the presidential election of June 12, 1993. But nothing has deepened the wounds more than the deception and betrayal of the so-called “June 12 activists”, who turned the annulment into a self-serving political lodestar and built their political careers around it, yet bastardised the spirit of the June 12 election by acquiring power through a deeply flawed presidential poll that violated universal rules of credible elections.

*MKO Abiola 

Earlier this week, General Babangida said the “gains” of the June 12, 1993 presidential election were squandered in succeeding elections. He told journalists: “It was adjudged the freest and fairest election in Nigeria, yet politicians have blatantly ignored that beauty: the beauty of credible elections.” How ironic that the man who flagrantly annulled an election now talks, 30 years later, about the “gains” and “beauty” of the same election!

Buhari, The Man Who Loathes Nigeria

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have bothered commenting on former President Muhammadu Buhari, the man who, rather than build, spent eight years in power dismantling Nigeria, brick by brick because for me, his voyage into oblivion is good riddance. After Buhari’s eight ruinous years, Nigeria really needed a breath of fresh air.

*Buhari 

Whether the new order enthroned last Monday constitutes a refreshing change which Nigerians clamoured for remains to be seen. But no one can possibly be worse than Buhari. But I am intrigued by Buhari’s adversarial disposition to the country that gave it all for him. In his last days in office, he spoke condescendingly about Nigeria, in a manner quite unbecoming of a president.

GCFR: Nigeria’s Highest National Honour Under A Threat

 By Carl Umegboro

The ‘Grand Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic’ (GCFR) is the highest national honorary grant in the country exclusively conferred on presidents and former heads of state.

The last time I checked, only the names of former heads of state, former presidents and the incumbent namely: Shehu Shagari, Abdulsalami Abubakar, Ibrahim Babangida, Olusegun Obasanjo, Goodluck Jonathan, Chief Moshood Abiola, Muhammadu Buhari, respectively are in the list of recipients of GCFR. All these figures by their positions as former heads of state or former presidents are all members of the Council of State with the incumbent president and vice president as the Council chairman and Deputy Chairman respectively.

Peter Obi’s Endorsements And The Integrity Of Nigerian Politics

 By Sola Ebiseni  

The much-awaited year 2023, so expectantly talked about by Nigerians and her well-wishers is here with a big bang, and already stirring ripples around the country. As usual, it was welcomed with prophesies and predictions on all conceivable issues, but only those touching on the elections appear to matter to Nigerians.

*Obi

The Man of Letters, former President Matthew Olusegun Aremu Okikiola Obasanjo, would not even allow the very first day pass by before he released a salvo in his quintessential letter writing fashion. Like it or not, Peter Obi’s candidacy has not only attracted quality commendation by well-meaning Nigerians, it is evident that it is the only aspiration that comparatively matters to Nigerians from the usually non-partisan quarters.

Non-partisan in this context does not mean being apolitical but those who have no constraints or burdens of political party membership. By my position as the Secretary General of the Afenifere and ipso facto member of the Southern and Middle Belt Leaders Forum, this organisation of the ethnic nationalities of the three regions of the South and of the Middle Belt which traversed all the three zones of the North is completely insulated from the pressures of political parties.

Bishop Kukah’s Final Scorecard On Pres. Buhari

 By Rotimi Fasan 

As was the case this time last year, the Catholic Bishop of the Sokoto Diocese, the Rev. Matthew Hassan Kukah, has again issued a damning score card on the Muhammadu Buhari administration. Kukah has become a consistent critic of President Buhari and of the All Progressives Congress, APC, party-led government.

*Buhari and Kukah

Aside what has become an annual December ritual of assessing Buhari’s performance in office, the bishop has also taken other available, “out-of-season” opportunities to ask searching and inconvenient questions of the ruling APC government.  That he is at it again, just two months to the next presidential election and less than five months before Buhari’s second term in office expires, should be enough measure of his conviction that President Buhari has failed as a president. This on account of his inability to live up to his electoral promises in 2015 through 2019. 

Balablu-Blu Blu-Bulaba And Other Incantations

 By Tunde Olusunle

For his famous zeal, stamina, energy and verve, Nigeria’s former President, Olusegun Obasanjo had to learn when to draw the brakes. There were those times his spirit was willing, but his body weak. He had to succumb to the body clockwork to catch some rest. If he still desired to drag his body, he was tactfully restrained by his aides. I know a bit about Obasanjo. I served as his campaign media officer, a job I was enlisted into, even before his formal declaration to contest for the nation’s top job. He threw his hat in the ring at his famous Otta Farm, his primordial resort in Ogun State, November 1, 1998.

*Tinubu

I had been previously introduced to him by my respected senior professional colleague and mentor, Onyema Ugochukwu. I served under Ugochukwu, beginning from the glorious days of the Yemi Ogunbiyi restoration and revolution of the Daily Times. I’ve attempted to capture my perceptions and impressions about the works and persons of Ogunbiyi and Ugochukwu, in separate, self-authored, full length academic essays. Both have been published in reputable journals, in 2017 and 2022 respectively. I also accompanied Obasanjo to the State House, Aso Villa, Abuja and served his administration for eight years.

Buharism: As The Naira Collapses, So Does Nigeria

 By Tony Eluemunor  

I may not be an Economist but I don’t need an Economist to tell me that as the Naira tumbles in the foreign exchange (of curren­cies) market, thus Nigeria collapses. Or to put it in a proper perspective, thus the quality of the livelihood of Nigerians collapses, degrades, van­ishes, disappears, is tarnished, is destroyed. I added that really need­less second sentence because there could be some people out there that could claim that the country Nigeria is totally different from the citizens.

As strange as that may sound, some people actually think that the coun­try Nigeria is different from her cit­izens, or that the health of her econ­omy does not really impact on the lives of the citizenry. If not, the cost of necessities such as petrol, cement, electricity tariff, food, transportation, books, newsprint, even sachet water and bread, should not be rising ev­ery day and our leaders would be congratulating themselves for a job well done. Also, no government offi­cial has seen it fit to resign. Yes, they also tag themselves as “progressives”!

Buhari’s Surpassing Failure: Nigeria’s Dashed Hopes

 By Tony Eluemunor

How many citizens remembered that 29th May was supposed to be a major anniversary? It was on May 29, 2015 – seven years ago – that Gen. Muhammadu Buhari became Nigeria’s President. Also, this Fourth Republic incepted on May 29, 1999, when Nigeria’s last military rule interval which began on January 1st, 1984 came to a frantic end. Frantic? Yes, the military by then, having thoroughgoingly disgraced itself, was forced back into the barracks as Nigerians agitated against military jackboot despotism and campaigned for democracy’s return.

*Buhari 

And Nigeria had a party. Hope was renewed. Many of the state governors were young and the smiles on their faces hinted of the goodies to come.  The President in that promising era, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, was no neophyte.  He had not only been a military Head of State (1976-1979) he had been almost so superlative in office then, providing leadership to the African continent, standing up to the West in Africa’s fight against the accursed apartheid system in South Africa, that Nigerian university students tagged him “Uncle Sege”. 

Nigeria Is Not An Emirate

 By Chidi Odinkalu

November 28, 1988 was a Monday. In Abuja, Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory, FCT, a Constituent Assembly inaugurated by military ruler, Ibrahim Babangida, had been in session for just over six months since May 11, 1988. At the helm as its chair was Anthony Aniagolu, then a recently retired Justice of Nigeria’s Supreme Court. He was a Christian from Enugu State. His deputy was Muhammadu Buba Ardo, then Chief Judge of Gongola State, who died suddenly in 1991, two years after the Assembly completed its work. He was Muslim.

*Buhari 

The Secretary to the Constituent Assembly was one Alhaji Babagana Kingibe, whom the country has since then got to know a lot more eloquently, a Muslim from Borno State. Kingibe’s assistant was Amal Inyingiala Pepple, who would rise to the height of the civil service in Nigeria, before retiring in June 2009 as the Head of Service of the Federation. She is a Christian from Rivers State.

In those days, Nigeria had 21 states: Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bauchi, Bendel, Benue, Borno, Cross River, Gongola, Imo, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kwara, Lagos, Nigeria, Ogun, Ondo, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers, and Sokoto states, plus the FCT.

The Constituent Assembly, which Justice Aniagolu chaired, comprised 567 members drawn from all these states. A total 458 were elected, while 109 were nominated by the Federal Government, including the Chairman and his Deputy (both of them male), and drawn from the ranks of judicial figures, senior lawyers, titans of industry, traditional rulers, experienced public servants and administrators, academics and other professionals.

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.   

How Nigeria Became A Failed State

 By Dan Amor

Every real nation state is an historical product. It is, in Marx’s celebrated phrase, “the official resume’ of the antagonism in civil society”, but under historically determinate circumstances. As such, it is the product of the historically specific constellation of class relations and social conflicts in which it is implicated. It may, therefore, indeed, it must, if it is not to rest on its monopoly of the means of coercion alone, incorporate within its own structure, the interests not only of the dominant but of the subordinate classes. In this quite specific sense, then, every real nation state has an inherently relative independence, including, as well, the independence to understand the dynamics of its made-made domestic crises. In consequence, therefore, the general characteristics of the Nigerian nation state today may be seen in terms of the enormity of its domestic crises and social contradictions. 

Therefore, those who murdered Nigeria, and are still killing its residues include, but not limited to: a big and comprador bourgeoisie that has abdicated its political aspirations and allied itself to semi-feudal interests; a disoriented small and medium bourgeoisie made up of a certain class of professionals and intellectuals, potentially revolutionary, but which hesitates to renew the struggle for its national liberation. There is a sleeping working class which is supposed to be the prime revolutionary force but which cannot define clearly its trade union tasks and political aims. There is a large crowd of youths, the student body that constitute about 60 percent of the national population, which has abdicated its responsibility of serving as light to the national ideal due largely to intellectual dishonesty, ignorance or docility arising from poverty of ideas. 

Nigeria: Buhari’s Legacy As A Failure Already Sealed

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi 

President Muhammadu Buhari never ceases to confound. Even his most strident supporters, who are ever willing to cut him some slack, are gradually but inexorably coming to the inevitable reality: he is a study in hypocrisy.

His claim to higher standards is a ruse. Too often, he fails to follow his own expressed moral rules and principles.

I will come back to this shortly.

*Buhari

On August 19, the National Security Adviser (NSA), Maj-Gen Babagana Monguno (rtd.), reported Buhari as telling his Service Chiefs that he was not ready to leave office a failure.

Two days earlier, the Nigerian army claimed that at least 1,000 Boko Haram/Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) members had surrendered and army spokesperson, Brig-Gen. Onyema Nwachukwu, said the terrorists would be received, processed and passed on to the relevant agencies of government for further assessment in line with extant provision.

Humphrey Nwosu And The True Story Of June 12, 1993

 By Ikechukwu Ngene

“I think I did something for the worst possible reason – just because I could. I think that’s the most, just about the most morally indefensible reason that anybody could have for doing anything.” 

— Bill Clinton to Dan Rather on 60 Minutes; June 20, 2004.

Bill Clinton had not found religion as he spoke. He had not found morality either. What happened was that he became wiser by way of being caught cheating. For that indiscretion, Monica Lewinsky hitches a ride with him into the dusk of eternity.

*Prof Nwosu 

We can never regard Prof. Humphrey Nwosu enough. To understand his moral stature and what he achieved under the dubious conditions of the transition programme to civil rule during the regime of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, let me state this with as little intent of hyperbole as possible   “If the US 2020 presidential election was conducted using Nigeria’s centralized electoral system, President Biden would never have been elected.”

Is Nigeria Still Redeemable?

By DAN AMOR

Every real nation state is an historical product. It is, in Marx's celebrated phrase, "the official resume of the antagonism in civil society", but under historically determinate circumstances. As such, it is the product of the historically specific constellation of class relations and social conflicts in which it is implicated.

*President Buhari 

It may, therefore, indeed, it must, if it is not to rest on its monopoly of the means of coercion alone, incorporate within its own structure, the interests not only of the dominant but of the subordinate classes. In this quite specific sense, then, every real nation state has an inherently relative independence, including, as well, the independence to understand the dynamics of its self-made domestic crises. In consequence, therefore, the general characteristics of the Nigerian nation state today may be seen in terms of the enormity of its domestic crises and social contradictions.

Assessment Of Nigeria’s 59th Independence Anniversary

By Guy Ike Ikokwu

The situation in Nigeria today, is egregious and monumental that it gives a great majority of our peoples a feeling of total hopelessness in such a way that the general belief is that there must be a catalyst within the system.

It is now clear to the Nigerian masses that they have been deprived of their sovereignty for more than 50 years by the high ranking military personnel since January 1966 which torpedoed the civilian democratic norms inherited in various discussions with our British colonialists who had acted equivocally in their own self and economic interest. 

We have had 9 constitutions in 25 years to usher in real democracy which our young heroic musician and artist Fela Anikulapo Kuti called “Demon – Crazy” that was a philosophical thoughtful expose but the perspectives of our past decades show that our system of governance has really been demonic till this day! The last 1999 constitution which Nigeria had was initiated by Gen. Abudulsalami Abubarkar. Today we know that the 1999 constitution was a fraud as it was not delivered by the people of Nigeria. 

Why Many Nigerians Are Checking Out

By Dan Amor

It sounds very much like an apocryphal tale. But it is true that the joke is once again on the Nigerian society. What I am saying is that Nigeria is constantly losing batches of experts to the larger world. Thousands of highly trained medical doctors and other professionals are daily departing these shores for greener pastures abroad.

They are going to join millions of talented Nigerian intellectuals, academics and professionals, who had been driven out of our land by the harsh realities of our current existence. It is not a matter of profound argument or intellectual debate to say that the death of the Nigerian middle class due to equivocation and compromise has long been awaited. Yet, implicit in the very meaning of compromise as a means of harmonizing the best features of opposing values is an element of tension.