Kemi Badenoch And Mob Attack Of Pseudo-Patriots

 By Emeka Alex Duru

The trending controversy on Kemi Badenoch, Leader of the British Conservative Party and her disposition to Nigeria, reminds me of an encounter with a media aide to a governor in the South East. 

*Badenoch

An obviously traumatized citizen had posted a comment on his social media Facebook page, chiding the governor for always frolicking in Abuja while the state suffers on account of insecurity and poor governance. That was all that it took for our friend, the media aide to break loose against the hapless citizen.

The Minors’ Tale Of Woes And Torments

 By Dan Onwukwe 

It was a horrifying three-month tale of the bizarre and torment in a custody reserved for criminals. It was like nothing they had experienced in their lifetime, sometimes without food for three days and no sunlight.

And when food was given, it would not go round. With tears rolling down their cheeks as they narrated their travail, those who had stamina to speak up said their harrowing experience also came with being and beaten with sticks until several parts of their body bled.

Who Will Tell Mr President?

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Who will tell Bola Tinubu that his 16-month-old presidency has reduced Nigeria to a living hell? Who will tell Mr President that there is great suffering in the land? Who will tell him to stop insulting Nigerians by his off-handed comments? Who will tell Tinubu that Nigerians are reeling from his ill-digested reforms and the incessant careless, brusque and inconsiderate jibes from the likes of Senate President Godswill Akpabio at the expense of longsuffering Nigerians is adding insult to injury?

*Tinubu

But wait a minute, is Mr President aware that he has reduced fellow citizens to hewers of wood and drawers of water? Chances are that he is. At least he admitted that much in his 2024 Independence Day speech on October 1, when he said: “Fellow Nigerians, as I address you today, I am deeply aware of the struggles many of you face in these challenging times. Our administration knows that many of you struggle with rising living costs and the search for meaningful employment.”

Biden-Trump Debacle: Nigeria Must Not Entrench A Gerontocracy

 By Olu Fasan

Two significant events hit the world from America recently. One is positive, the other negative. The positive is the criminal convictions of former President Donald Trump and Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son. Both are unprecedented: Trump is the first former US president to be convicted of a felony, and Biden Jnr is the first son of a sitting president to be convicted of a crime.

*Trump and Biden 

That suggests no one is above the law in America. However, the negative is the disastrous presidential debate between Biden and Trump. Both the positive and negative events have relevance for Nigeria. That relevance is worth exploring. But my focus here is the nerve-racking debate.

Restructuring: Emir Sanusi Misspoke On Regionalism, Parliamentary System

 By Olu Fasan

There are two forces contending for the future of Nigeria. One is the force of change and progress. The other is the force of conservatism and status quo. The former argues that Nigeria’s political and governance structure is deeply flawed and not working, and that Nigeria must be restructured to make progress.

*Sanusi 

The latter posits that there’s nothing wrong with Nigeria’s structure; so, there’s nothing to restructure. If anything, it submits, what Nigeria needs is good leadership, as if there is any serious country that puts its faith solely in the goodness of a leader and not in the robustness of its institutions, particularly the constitution, which is the central determinant of how a country is governed. 

Blame Tinubu For The Impending Political Inferno In Rivers

 By Olu Fasan

The Most Rev. Matthew Kukah, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, is uncharacteristically complacent. Recently, he upbraided Nigerians for fretting about the Rivers State crisis, triggered by the festering conflict between the current governor Siminalayi Fubara and his immediate predecessor, Nyesom Wike. “We ordinary people cry more than the bereaved,” Rev. Kukah said, adding: “When politicians fight, don’t get carried away because they will fix their quarrel.” 

*Tinubu and Wike 
Really? How many ordinary people must die before the politicians do so? How many properties must be destroyed before they fix their quarrel? The highly respected and cerebral bishop was trivialising a serious issue. Truth is, the stakes are high. It is about political survival, about who controls the political levers in Rivers State. And ahead of 2027, it will become a do-or-die affair, and could morph into a political inferno, a conflagration.

Shettima Goofs: No Forces Want To Pull Down Nigeria!

 By Olu Fasan

Ahead of last year’s general elections, I wrote a piece titled “2023: Shettima Unfit To Be Nigeria’s Vice-President” (Vanguard, September 22, 2022). I argued that despite his education and seeming bibliophilism, Kashim Shettima suffers from negative parrhesia, expressing indecorous views freely without aforethought.

*Shettima

I wrote: “With Shettima’s inherent tetchiness and truculence, he would be gratuitously provocative. And with his uncouthness and indiscretion, he would be utterly divisive and toxifying.” Well, since he became vice-president, Shettima has done enough, with several infuriating comments, to validate my opinion of him. 

Silence In The East

 By Obi Nwakanma

A terrible time has fallen on Nigeria. There is no hiding it. Hunger is not just rampant; it is now an epidemic. There is a food crisis, and it is inevitably leading towards massive national food riots. However, a few weeks ago, a minister in the current government said that there was no scarcity of food in Nigeria. 

Well, I’m not quite certain about this minister, since most of Tinubu’s cabinet is made up of second rate, mediocre, provincial types – but elementary economics theory of scarcity connects with a price theory which is determined by the dynamics of supply and demand. Equilibrium occurs when the rise in supply meets the rise in demand. But disequilibrium happens too. This, when the demand for the resource outstrips the supply, and it leads both to exclusion, and to scarcity.

President Tinubu, Scarcity Is Evident; Chaos Follows

 By Dele Sobowale

“Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man is starving” – O’Henry, 1862-1910.

*Tinubu 
About two weeks ago, your Vice President called Nigerians, who registered their displeasure about the continuing devaluation of the Naira, “clowns” for not supporting the government now when things are tough. Shettima has forgotten that he begged for the job. If he can’t stand the heat, he should resign. But, he cannot be insulting his employers. He was joined by one Felix Morka, the National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who apparently has no relatives, friend or town’s men feeling the pain of hunger. The two, like all the “Yes-men and women” of your administration, are leading your government down the path which destroyed Buhari and others before you.

Nigeria’s Malgovernance, Misgovernance, Bad Governance

 By Oseloka H. Obaze

A recent trending photo of the leaders of the BRICS nations hobnobbing and holding hands across-the-chest spoke eloquently to the group’s vital missing link and presumptive member. That photo brought to mind missed opportunities and lessons learned. It also brought to the fore, the fate of Nigeria: a country that is prima facie qualified to be the sixth member of that intergovernmental organization, but is not.

*Tinubu
Nigeria’s membership would have expanded the name of the group to BRINCS, expanded her sphere of global influence, market, acceptability and balance. Her exclusion from the BRICS expansion coincides with the imminent implosion of ECOWAS under her chairmanship.

2027 Presidency: Atiku’s Political Naivety Beggars Belief

 By Olu Fasan

Atiku Abubakar, former vice president, made his sixth attempt to become Nigeria’s president last year, 30 years after his first foray into presidential politics in 1993. He failed. However, God sparing his life, Atiku wants to make his seventh attempt in 2027, aged 80.

*Atiku 
Leaving aside the age for the moment, what does Atiku think will change in Nigeria’s political landscape in 2027 to make his putative seventh attempt different from his previous six attempts? Simply put, nothing! We are students of our own experience after the event. But Atiku seems to have learned nothing from his past failed presidential bids.

Time Ticks For Nigerian Ruling Elite

 By Suyi Ayodele 

I take a bet. The judgement of God and of the people is nigh! Check your neighbourhood. For weeks, and in some cases, months, there is no electricity. But in your houses, you run your generator. Neighbours come around to charge their phones, rechargeable lamps and what have you in your compound. How do you tell them that you are not part of the oppressors? What about water? As early as 5 am, neighbours are already on the queue in front of your house to fetch water. They don't have the boldness to knock on your gate to wake you up. They know that they are at your mercy, and so, they wait until you wake up to turn on the tap for them. Many of these people grew up with functional water corporations and dams in their towns and villages.

 *Tinubu and Shettima

We are already in the festive period. How many Nigerians have what to eat during this season? How many can afford a bag of rice? How many will be able to buy clothes for their children and wards? How many are already calculating the school fees for the second term which begins by the first week of January 2024? When you consider these, you will realise that there is no time to postpone fixing Nigeria. The elite just have to fix Nigeria now or Nigerians will fix them, and permanently too. The masses are like the sheep. Those are the most gentle of all animals. But they have the most poisonous teeth ever! You can read me again. Sheep have teeth. Just pray they don't bite you with them. There is no anti-rabies vaccine that can cure that. 

Bola Tinubu’s Chicago Blues And Nigeria’s Shame

 By Ugo Onuoha

Three significant things happened in Nigeria and about Nigeria in the last 10 days. And many more happened in the past several weeks, all of them speaking to the state of Nigeria. But the most significant, perhaps, was the story that broke on Sunday to the effect that a United States court in Chicago had rejected Nigeria’s President, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s urgent and desperate plea that a district court should strike down a ruling by a magistrate court that his academic records be released by Chicago State University [CSU].

*Tinubu 

A brief on the processes that led to the court’s ruling on Saturday will be needful. About two weeks ago, Nigeria’s former Vice President, who was a contestant during the February presidential election in Nigeria, had approached a Chicago Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Gilbert for the release on oath of Tinubu’s CSU records.

Nigeria: A Tribunal From Hell

 By Obi Nwakanma

I watched with extreme difficulty, and not insubstantial pain, the interview in Stellenbosch, South Africa, in which the poet, playwright and Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, very painfully, tried to subvert the truth about the Nigerian election, by claiming that the Labour Party “came third” and knew that they “did not win the election.” That the Labour Party had become a regional movement. That Peter Obi and the party leaders were trying to push young people into the streets to protest. 

Here, let us reproduce Soyinka in full: “One party took over the Labour Movement and then it became a regional party…my own organization has a monitoring unit, and so I could say categorically that Peter Obi’s Party came third, not even second! And that the leadership knew it. But they wanted to do what we call in Yoruba, ‘Gba Jue!’

Help! Tribunals Are Hurting Democracy

 By Andy Ezeani 

Let no one deceive anyone; the processes and structure of democracy in Nigeria are presently in grave danger. There is no exaggeration in talking of a democracy in intensive care unit (ICU) at the moment. The danger is clear, present and escalating by the day.

Unless there is a quick, drastic containment of the excesses that have seized the democratic process in the country, no special gift of clairvoyance is needed to predict an imminent debacle. Smothering the pervasive voices of discontent and disapproval at the widening corrosive abuse of the system, as seem to be the strategy of the powers that be, can last but for a short while.

Nigeria: Is There A Reason To Be Hopeful?

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Is Nigeria making progress? Is there any reason to be optimistic about the future? These are the questions that continue to concentrate my mind as the country and its leadership continue to fumble. Ordinarily, I am a very optimistic person with a positive outlook on life. I would rather look at a half of a glass of water and see it as half-full than half-empty. But wishing Nigeria the best or being hopeful that things will get better does not necessarily translate to reality. The vehicle that transports hope to the destination of reality is positive action.

*Tinubu 

Esther Boyd, the Editorial Director for State of Formation, an offshoot of the Journal of Interreligious Studies, JIRS, in a 2016 article, “Hope is an Action,” wrote: “Hope as an action means pushing boundaries, dismantling barriers, and taking steps – however small they may be – one by one, towards the better that we’re hoping for. To hope for something means to strive towards it, to build it if it doesn’t already exist, and to keep moving forward.” But hope, as Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher and cultural critic, once noted could be “the worst of all evils, for it prolongs the torments of man”.

El-Rufai’s Wish For An ‘Islamic Republic Of Nigeria’

 By Olu Fasan

Mallam Nasir el-Rufai is an unrepentant religious bigot; a militant Islamic supremacist, who believes Islam is superior to Christianity and should be privileged in national leadership. He doesn’t just hold these views, he actively pursues them. As governor of Kaduna State for eight years, until May this year, El-Rufai ran an Islamic government, with a Muslim-controlled administration, despite the state’s large Christian population.

*El-Rufai 

Now, out of office, he prides himself on installing a successor on a Muslim-Muslim ticket, and entrenching Muslim dominance of Kaduna State governance. More significantly, El-Rufai boasts of foisting his Kaduna State Muslim-Muslim leadership model on Nigeria, and warns Nigerians to brace themselves for a prolonged Muslim leadership of this country

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.

Options Before Bola Tinubu And His Critics

 By Jideofor Adibe

The Friday, May 26, 2023 Supreme Court’s dismissal of the appeal by the Peoples Democratic Party seeking the disqualification of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu in the February 25, 2023 presidential election over alleged double nomination of his Vice-President Senator Kashim Shettima, essentially removed the last hurdle to his inauguration on May 29, 2023.

*Bola Tinubu

This means in essence that those who cannot bear the thought of Tinubu and Shettima as President and Vice President respectively will have to find a way of adjusting to the reality that they will be stuck with the duo till August this year (at the earliest) when the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the challenges to the INEC-declared outcome of the election. We are of course assuming that there will be no other unforeseen variable in-between. 

Pyrrhic Victory: Tinubu Lacks Legitimacy To Govern Nigeria

 By Olu Fasan

Last year, in his speech at Chatham House, the London-based international affairs think tank, Bola Tinubu made a profound statement that has come back to haunt him, casting a cloud over his declaration by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, as the winner of February’s presidential election.

*Bola Tinubu

In the speech, Tinubu said the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, required under the Electoral Act 2022, would deliver “the fairest and freest election” in Nigeria’s history. His words: “This is particularly important because the next president of Nigeria have some tough choices to make and will not be able to do so with questionable electoral mandate.”