President Buhari’s Militocracy

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Unless the citizens resolve to prosecute an urgent rescue agenda, the nation’s hard-won democracy would collapse at the hands of President Muhammadu Buhari. And above the rubble would be autocracy and anarchy. These are not far-fetched. We already have their precursor in the now burgeoning militocracy whose chief promoter is Buhari.

*President Buhari 

Ever since Buhari succeeded in conning the citizens with his pretensions to being a born-again democrat, he has never hidden his contempt for the obligations of his newly-found calling. Yet, the citizens make allowance for the blossoming of the democrat in him. But the more they expect him to demonstrate the readiness to abide by the tenets of democracy, the more they are disappointed.

Buhari Not Wanted On This Journey

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Until after the election of Saturday, we are denied the prescience to tabulate its winner and losers and thus the nation’s president in the next four years. Clearly, poll predictions, even when they seem to be highly informed, have oftentimes been trumped by reality. But one thing is certain: We should be preoccupied with a post-Buhari era if we are genuinely interested in the continued existence of the country . In other words, the citizens should muster sufficient patriotic fervour to consign the re-election ambition of President Muhammadu Buhari to the realm of unrestrained fantasy.

*President Buhari 

The country is on the cusp of a new era where Buhari does not fit in. For in less than four years, we have seen enough of the president to be secure in the conviction that he is a blight not only on the nation’s corporate existence but also on individual citizens’ lives. Or why has Buhari’s second coming brought so much hardship to the citizens? Why has he been a source of massive unemployment resulting in several suicides?

Joshua Dariye And The Joys Of VIP Criminal

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It is an uncommon case that negates the Kafkaesque leitmotif that the law is beholden to the privileged, especially in a third world country like Nigeria – a former state governor, Joshua Dariye, was jailed for corruption.

Reflective of his preoccupation with the bizarre conundra of the human condition, Franz Kafka’s “Before the law” confronts us with the huge impediments in the path of the less privileged to get the law on their side. In the rare cases where the law grants access to the poor, it is because its defences have been broken down by bribery or the real fury of the oppressed.

*Joshua Dariye

But in the case of Dariye, the law is not really out to assert its equality before the rich and the poor. As a member of the privileged class, Dariye has found a way to make the law serve him even though he is in prison. Before Dariye went to jail, he was a serving senator. Dariye was Plateau State governor from 1999 to 2007. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) prosecuted him for embezzling N1.162 billion within this period. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison. But after his appeal was decided, this sentence was reduced to 10 years. 

Lai Mohammed And Others Feeding Off El-Zakzaky

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

With a pedigree of an incurable self-advertisement behind it, the Muhammadu Buhari government is not known for half-measures.

Alas, this propensity has not found its profoundest expression in the prosecution of an agenda for engendering good governance. 

*Lai Mohammed 

The upshot is that the emergence of the Buhari government has burdened the citizens with a miserable existence that harks back to a Hobbesian state of nature where life is nasty, brutish and short on account of the half-hearted measures for governance that has been deployed. For the political party of Buhari, the All Progressives Congress (APC), there is the tragedy that this predilection has also become the petard on which it is being hoisted.

Thespian Buhari At The United Nations

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It is not that we have ever doubted the thespian talents of President Muhammadu Buhari that render him eligible to assume the role of an actor before any audience. We have always known that he is like any other wily politician, especially in these climes, who can fit into any dramatic role before a given audience. Remember, in 2015 when Buhari had before him citizens who were desirous of a leader with democratic credentials, he offered himself as perfectly fitting that role. He regaled them about his mutation into a democrat since he was forced by Ibrahim Babangida and his co-travellers to pull off his military uniform and jackboots.

*President Buhari addressing
UNGA 2017

Again, before a south-east audience, he identified with them by dressing like an Igbo man. Still, before the general population as his audience, Buhari played the role of a charmer, the man with a magic wand to solve the nation’s problems and root out corruption in a short time. He made the audience swoon over him. And he was rewarded with the prime prize – the presidency – as the encore continued until it was disrupted by the subsequent months of the reality of hardship.

Now, Buhari has taken these dramatic skills onto the global stage. At the 72nd session of the United Nations General Assembly, Buhari took on a role that was totally alien to his personality. The meeting was about the wellbeing of people. It had the fitting theme of “Focusing on People: Striving for Peace and Decent Life for All on a Sustainable Planet.” Thus, Buhari played the role of an actor who wants to improve the wellbeing of the people and make them to live in peace and live a decent life. 

Osinbajo’s Fantasy Of Presidential Infallibility

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Weighed down by a lack of direction and adherence to constitutionality that is a high point of fidelity to democratic norms, the President Muhammadu Buhari government keeps on spawning despair in the land, with massive economic collapse leading to rampant suicide.

*Osinabjo

Amid this, Buhari’s deputy Professor Yemi Osinbajo appears to represent an illustrious exemplar of sanity in this government. Although decades of serial disappointments by political leaders have made the citizens to cease trusting them, there has been the hope that Osinbajo could be a different kind of political leader who is only actuated by a desire to serve the people and improve their lot.

But at first, Osinbajo proved not to be different from other politicians. The citizens wondered why some illegalities like the government disobeying court rulings and sacking university vice chancellors before the end of their tenures could take place while he is the vice president. He has been silenced by the perks of public office, so the citizens thought.

Planned Detention Of Apostle Suleiman, Bishop Oyedepo: Don't Plunge Nigeria Into Religious Crisis, Fayose Cautions DSS

PRESS RELEASE 

Ekiti State Governor and Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Governors’ Forum, Mr. Ayodele Fayose has warned the Department of State Services (DSS) over the planned detention and trial of Apostle Johnson Suleiman of The Omega Fire Ministries Worldwide and the General Overseer of Living Faith Church Worldwide International (Winners' Chapel International), Bishop David Oyedepo, describing it as indirect invitation to religious crisis in the country.

*Bishop Oyedepo

Governor Fayose alleged that, "There is plan to charge Apostle Suleiman and Bishop Oyedepo for incitement and attempt to cause public disorder on Friday, and make sure that they are not granted bail so to get them remanded in Kuje Prison perpetually."

He said this plan was to humiliate these men of God as well as silence them and create fear in other people that may want to speak against the heinous crime against humanity being committed daily while perpetrators are being shielded by the federal government.

In a statement issued on Sunday by is Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, Governor Fayose said the DSS should tell Nigerians how many of the Fulani herdsmen that killed thousands of Nigerians across the country have been arrested before going after Nigerians who merely expressed their frustration over the to failure of the federal government to protect them.

The governor said: "Even though the DSS has allowed commonsense to prevail by properly inviting Apostle Suleiman as against the gestapo manner with which the service attempted to abduct him last week Wednesday, it is still questionable that the DSS is more interested in a man who threatened to defend himself against any attack by Fulani herdsmen rather than those herdsmen that murdered thousands of Nigerians.”