A Word On Nigeria’s Deadly Enemies

 By Banji Ojewale

Our leaders are our deadliest enemies.

Not given to altruism, these leaders don’t also subscribe to the law of the power of example. This is the golden rule insisting that rulers aren’t graded great until they exhibit selfless, sacrificial and Spartan conduct that sparks same virtues in the citizens. But our leaders, elected, selected or ‘dictated,’ believe in the precept of the example of power. Here, the goal is, as you grab power, you must dig in, you must live in it and flaunt it and extend its frontiers like you’d be in its embrace forever.

Tinubu and Buhari

They invest their all in it, nursing it with a lusty affection that outlaws competition or regard for other existential concerns. They bequeath a depressed economy after fattening their personal bank accounts and acquiring more property than they had at the point of entry. They exploit the led and desecrate their sacred office. They arrange a superannuation that glides them into a lifetime of cloying affluence and luxury. 

Zik’s Day Beckons!

 By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu 

The man fondly called Zik of Africa deserves his day. Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s foremost nationalist and first president, deserves his birthday, November 16, to be slated as a national holiday.

*Azikiwe 

It is a deserving honour for the pivotal leader who led the charge for Nigeria’s independence on October 1, 1960. 

As a result of his unparalleled efforts Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe would in the course of time become the only black Governor-General of Nigeria, the first President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, the only Nigerian whose name appeared in a Constitution of Nigeria, the first Senate President, among many other sterling firsts. 

The Failure Of Democracy In Africa

 By Chiedu Uche Okoye

The rashes of successful military takeovers in some African countries signpost the failure of democracy on the African continent. Before the Caucasoid race brought democracy to Africa, the many different kingdoms in Africa had their pre-colonial types of government.

Then, we had the Dahomey kingdom, Benin kingdom, Oyo Empire, and others. Their respective pre-colonial types of government throve, ensuring and guaranteeing orderly succession of pre-colonial governments in Africa. The evolutionary trends of our pre-colonial governments were stymied by the white people’s introduction of democracy to the African people(s), however.

Achebe: The Leadership Crisis in Nigerian Politics

The Leadership Crisis in Nigerian Politics

By Chinua Achebe

David and Marianna Fisher University Professor, Brown University, RI, USA 

There is a story about Bernard Shaw arriving at the New York harbour, and being immediately surrounded by journalists as he stepped off the ship. But before even the quickest of them could open his mouth, the celebrated playwright stopped them cold as he fired off: ‘Don’t ask me what you should  do to be saved; the last time I was here I told you and you haven’t done it!’

 

I feel very much the same way about what is happening in Nigeria. We know what we should do, yet we refuse to do it. Instead we have been “blowing grammar” all over the country as if our problem stems from

insufficient argument. So I have turned down or simply ignored all previous  invitations to join the talking.

 

My little book The Trouble with Nigeria published twenty seven years ago  on the eve of Shagari’s second term opens with these words:

                

The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigeria character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which is the hallmark of true leadership…

 

So the question of leadership was and is, pre-eminent, in my view, among Nigeria’s numerous problems. The little book does go on to identify other perennial issues such as tribalism, corruption, indiscipline, social injustice, preference for mediocrity over excellence, etcetera. But my thesis is that without good leadership, none of the other problems stands a chance of being tackled, let alone solved.

Niger Republic As Nigeria’s 37th State

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Constitutionally, Nigeria has 36 states and a Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja. But under President Muhammadu Buhari’s watch, the country seems to have added one more state – Niger Republic – making it 37. The 37th state, ironically enjoys more federal attention than some of the country’s bona-fide states. Nigeriens enjoy more rights than most Nigerians.

It may sound absurd that the president of a country has greater affinity for another country than his own. But that is one of the incongruities that the Buhari government has thrown up in the last seven and half years.

*Presidents Buhari and Bazoum of Niger Republic 

It didn’t start today, though. As military head of state in the 1980s, Major-General Buhari allegedly supported a Nigerien, Ide Oumarou, rather than a Nigerian, Peter Onu, for the post of the Secretary-General of the then Organisation of African Unity, OAU, which is now African Union, AU.

An editorial comment in the Vanguard Newspaper of February 3, 2015 put it thus: “Between 1983 and 1985, Peter Onu of Nigeria was Acting Secretary-General of the OAU. At the 1985 Summit in Addis Ababa, statesmen like Julius Nyerere, President of Tanzania, lobbied for his election as substantive Secretary-General. However, there was a major stumbling block to Peter Onu’s candidature: his Head of State, Muhammadu Buhari, was campaigning against him.

“… In the election of the OAU Secretary-General in 1985, Buhari voted against Nigeria and for Niger instead. He secured the election of Ide Oumarou, a Fulani man from Niger; as opposed to an Igbo man from Nigeria. By so doing, Buhari became the first and only Head of State in the history of modern international relations to vote against his country in favour of his tribe.”

Is President Buhari From Niger Republic?

 By Reno Omokri

Any follower of Nigeria’s federal budget since May 29, 2015, may be forgiven if they thought that Nigeria, under President Buhari, had performed a Hitler-style Anschluss, and had annexed Niger Republic as part of Nigeria, because of Buhari’s huge spending (of Nigeria’s money), to improve infrastructure in Niger Republic.

                                                           *Buhari

While Seme Border-Badagry express road, the only road currently linking Nigeria to other West African coastal nations, remains in ruins and looks as if it has been bombed, Buhari had spent huge resources developing road networks between Nigeria and Niger Republic.

On February 26, 2020, the Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, announced that the government had awarded a contract for the construction of two roads from Sokoto and Jigawa States up to Niger Republic, at the cost of $81 million dollars.

Lessons From Julius Nwalimu Nyerere

By Banji Ojewale 

Gbolabo Ogunsanwo, Nigeria’s most captivating  columnist of the 1970s who rewrote history as editor of Sunday Times of that era, once returned from Julius Nyerere’s Tanzania and thrilled his compatriots with an account of the stoic exploits of this illustrious African leader. Just like his staid gait, Ogunsanwo said, Nyerere had no airs about him to suggest he was the president of Tanzania.

*Nyerere

This picture of an abstemious statesman sharply contradicted the Nigerian paradigm. Here, our leaders, even at the local government scene, would loot the public till to build personal empires, to  satisfy their palatial palate. The predilection of our leaders for financial rape has always been there and Ogunsanwo was among a small circle of ethical journalists who railed against this evil.

So the Tanzania experience had to excite this colourful columnist. Through his celebrated style of writing that nettled bad leaders and won applause from the public, Ogunsanwo said that if he placed the lifestyle of Nyerere side-by-side with what we had in Nigeria, the weight of the East African leader wouldn’t surpass the wealth of a level 9 officer in the Nigerian Civil Service. A shocked Ogunsanwo said something to the effect that the home of Nyerere had uninspiring furniture compared to what a middle level civil servant in Nigeria might offer. Nyerere’s was a study in Spartan decor.

Years later in 1999 when the beloved Tanzania leader died at 77, the New York Times correspondent, Michael Kaufman, wrote what has gone into the books as a most charitable essay by a Western reporter on an African president who mercilessly chided capitalism as a curse on humanity, thus confirming Ogunsanwo’s point. He admitted Nyerere’s “habits of modesty and ethics.”

President Buhari And The 20-Month Jinx

By Femi Fani Kayode

Permit me to begin this contribution with an interesting and historically accurate observation made by the Vanguard Newspaper on 3rd February 2015.  

*Buhari 

They wrote: "Between 1983 and 1985, Peter Onu of Nigeria was Acting Secretary-General of the OAU. 

“At the 1985 Summit in Addis Ababa, statesmen like Julius Nyerere, President of Tanzania, lobbied for his election as substantive Secretary-General. 

“However, there was a major stumbling block to Peter Onu’s candidature: his Head of State, Muhammadu Buhari, was campaigning against him. 

“Buhari claimed: ‘This generation of Nigerians and indeed future generations have no other country than Nigeria.’ 

“But when the crunch came, his allegiance to Nigeria disappeared. In the election of the OAU Secretary-General in 1985, Buhari voted against Nigeria and for Niger instead. 

“He secured the election of Ide Oumarou, a Fulani man from Niger; as opposed to an Igbo man from Nigeria. 

“By so doing, Buhari became the first and only Head of State in the history of modern international relations to vote against his country in favour of his tribe".

Graphically illustrated and succinctly put, that is the mindset of the quintessential General Muhammadu Buhari for you. Yet even in his triumphs and all his glory he has suffered immense pain and his challenges and travails are legion.

Consider the following. In 1983 he toppled the much-loved democratically-elected civilian President Shehu Shagari in a military coup and became Head of State.

He ruled with an iron fist for exactly 20 months (31st Dec 1983 - 27th August 1985) after which he himself was overthrown in another military coup led by his erstwhile and again much-loved Chief of Army Staff, General Ibrahim Babangida. Thereafter he was detained for three years in Benin City.

Exactly 30 years after he was removed from power in 2015 he was "elected" civilian President on the platform of the APC.

Once again he presided over the affairs of our country for another 20 months (29th May 2015 - 19th January 2017) until he was struck by an undisclosed yet strange and debilitating illness, fell gravely ill, was compelled to formally transmit his presidential powers to the Vice President, was rushed to the United Kingdom where, up until today, he has remained incommunicado and on "indefinite medical leave".