Palliatives In Nigeria = Two Cups Of Grains!

 By Dele Sobowale

“Blessed are they that expect nothing; for they shall never be disappointed” – Pessimist motto.

Hope renewed is becoming increasingly dream deferred. When President Tinubu announced during the inaugural address that “subsidy is gone”; and followed that with partial harmonization of exchange rates, the “hit the ground running” brigade went berserk with jubilation.

At last, a courageous leader, ready to make the tough decisions and set the nation on sustainable economic prosperity, has arrived. Those of us, who knew from bitter experiences in Nigeria and abroad, were not so sure all was well. We counseled balancing hope with realism. Talk is cheap.

Nigeria Should Avoid The Era Of Technical Hitches

 By Tonnie Iredia

In the life of a nation, especially in the third world, some strange occurrences occasionally take the centre stage to the anxiety of the people. No one is usually able to dissuade everyone from superstition during such periods especially because the occurrences are felt across board in the relevant community.

From history, we know for example, that a short period after the annulment of the famous June 12, 1993 presidential elections in Nigeria, two major leaders associated with the development died suddenly. The two leaders, General Sani Abacha who was then Head of State and Chief Moshood Abiola from whom the electoral victory was snatched reportedly died within the space of one-month in 1998. Their dissimilar deaths were attributed to what was called cardiac arrest. 

Buhari’s Huge Parting Debt Profile

 By Eric Teniola

The outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, has made sure he is leaving a huge debt profile of N80 trillion when he leaves the villa on Monday, May 29. Well, well, well. While he will be celebrating in Daura or in Niger Republic, we shall be sorting out the mess he has created for us in last eight years. No problem. By popular demand, I want to republish an article I wrote that was published on 21 January 2021.

*Buhari 

“In June 2005, we were so ecstatic in celebrating the debt relief offered us, a relief of over $20 billion, which was beyond the total revenue of Nigeria for one year. So happy were we that President Olusegun Obasanjo, GCFR, had to make a broadcast to the nation on June 30, 2005. He followed the broadcast by appearing before the joint sitting of the National Assembly on July 26, 2005 to speak on the issue.

Buhari’s Frivolous Medical Trips Abroad

 By Charles Okoh

When the presidency announced that the out-going (thank God) President Muhammadu Buhari would be visiting the United Kingdom for the coronation of Charles III and his wife, Camilla, as King and Queen Consort of the United Kingdom penultimate Saturday, something told me that the presidency was telling its usual lies and that the president ultimately was going for a medical trip. And I said that openly to those around me.

*Buhari 

Now, the president is human and like every other human being, is liable to fall ill and deserves all the best the country can give as a nation to its president. But I dare ask, must the best healthcare be delivered outside this country? What image is the president portraying of Nigeria to the larger world? That we can’t even treat his dental challenge locally?

The Mass Killings In Benue State

 By Etim Etim

It is so difficult to understand why Nigerian authorities are unconcerned about the mass killings of the people of Benue State by terrorists and militia groups in almost a weekly basis.

Children, women and even pregnant moms are slaughtered every now and then in many parts of the state by terrorists and ethnic militias in the plains and troughs of Benue.

Fascists? Look No Further Than The Ruling Party

 By Olu Fasan

As a creative writing scholar at Oxford University, I have been reviewing the legendary literature Nobel laureate Professor Wole Soyinka’s latest book Chronicles from the land of the happiest people on earth. Reading the book, a political fiction, I’m enthralled by its linguistic and literary quality. Imagine my bafflement, therefore, when Professor Soyinka recently used the word “fascistic” to describe Dr. Datti Baba-Ahmed, vice-presidential candidate of Labour Party in February’s presidential election.

What drew Professor Soyinka’s ire was Dr Baba-Ahmed’s controversial interview on Channels TV. “Whoever swears in Mr Tinubu has ended democracy in Nigeria,” he said, adding: “Mr President, do not hold that inauguration. CJN (Chief Justice of Nigeria), your lordship, do not partake in unconstitutionality.” Baba-Ahmed argued that Bola Tinubu “has not met the requirements of the law”, having failed to secure 25 per cent of the votes cast in Abuja.

Nigeria: Dousing Political Tension In The Land

 By Jideofor Adibe

Elections everywhere tend to be divisive. This is because mobilisation of support hinges on a successful creation of a simplistic binary of ‘we-versus-them’ dichotomy, which is then nourished by all manner of scaremongering. This is why political campaigns are often likened to wars without weapons.

In Africa, it is even more so where politicians seem to have taken literally the exultations by Kwame Nkrumah, a pioneering pan-Africanist and Ghana’s independence leader (1957-1966), to seek first the political kingdom and everything else would be added unto them. In Africa, the allure of political office is exceedingly high. Apart from being perhaps the quickest means to personal material accumulation, there is a pervasive fear that the group that captures state power could use it to privilege its in-group and disadvantage others.

Lai Mohammed And His Treason Allegation

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

On Tuesday, April 4, Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture, did in the U.S. what he knows how best to do – fib. Mohammed, in Washington DC on official engagements with some international media organisations, including the Washington Post, Voice of America, Associated Press and Foreign Policy Magazine, accused the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, and his running-mate, Datti Baba-Ahmed, of inciting people to violence over the February 25 presidential election.

The News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, quoted the minister as saying: “Obi and his Vice, Datti Ahmed, cannot be threatening Nigerians that if the president-elect, Bola Tinubu, of the All Progressives Congress, APC, is sworn in on May 29, it will be the end of democracy in Nigeria. This is treason… Obi’s statement is that of a desperate person, he is not the democrat that he claimed to be. A democrat should not believe in democracy only when he wins the election.”

Stop Blackmailing Peter Obi, NAC Tells FG, APC

 

*Peter Obi and his wife, Margaret, after casting their votes during the 2023 presidential election

The Neo Africana Centre (NAC) has frowned on the treason allegations leveled against Mr Peter Obi by the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, describing it as baseless, malicious and in bad taste.

Mohammed, while addressing some international media organizations and groups in Washington DC on the 2023 general elections, accused Obi of treason. He told his audience that Obi was promoting insurrection in Nigeria by inciting people to violence over the outcome of the February 25 presidential elections. 

New ‘Currency’, New Census: Buhari’s Desperate Quest For A Legacy

 By Olu Fasan

For most of his seven-and-a-half years in office to date, President Muhammadu Buhari ran Nigeria with such insouciance that suggested he didn’t care about a legacy. However, as the inevitability of leaving office on May 29 next year hits home, Buhari has shown a minute-to-midnight desperation for “legacy projects.”

Two such “projects” are “redesigning” the naira notes and conducting a population census. But by politicising such issues, he undermines them. To start with, my view is that President Buhari has, so far, no legacy that can endure through time. Economists use the term “value for money” to refer to something that is well worth the money spent on it.

That U.S. Terror Alert And A Headstrong FG

 By Charles Okoh

On October 23,  the U.S. Mission in Nigeria issued what it tagged elevated risk of terror attacks in Abuja, the federal capital territory. In the advisory, the US government said there is an elevated risk of terror attacks in Nigeria, specifically in Abuja.

It said targets may include, but are not limited to, government buildings, places of worship, schools, markets, shopping malls, hotels, bars, restaurants, athletic gatherings, transport terminals, law enforcement facilities, and international organizations.

Some Western nations including the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Bulgaria, Germany, Ireland and others swiftly issued similar advisories to their citizens.

The Politics Of Naira Redesign

 By Robert Obioha

The plan to redesign the naira by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has, like any other issue in Nigeria, been riddled with controversy and even politics. Ordinarily, the redesign of the naira for the envisaged benefits, which many Nigerians are interrogating, would not have generated the needless acrimony if adequate consultations were made and major stakeholders carried along. 

The differing opinions on the issue from those serving in this government is unnecessary. It is an avoidable distraction. It also shows the level of incoherence among ministers and officials of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. It is unthinkable that such a change in redesign of the naira is being contemplated without the knowledge of the minister of finance even if the law establishing the CBN did not expressly stipulate so.

The President And The Silent Trumpets

 By Dan Agbese

The late premier of the Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna Sokoto, was once quoted to have said that it was his duty to blow his own trumpet because other people were busy blowing theirs and would not bother to blow his own for him. There appears to be some unquestionable wisdom in that. President Muhammadu Buhari appears to have missed it. He has relied on his appointees to blow his trumpet, but they have failed him.

*Buhari 

On his working visit to Imo State this week, the president opened up on his frustration with the men and women in his administration for failing to trumpet his achievements in the past seven years as president. He has done titanic things worthy of being loudly trumpeted within and beyond our shores. Still, the trumpet is silent. He has waited this long and these many years for the president’s men and women to loudly blow his trumpet. All he keeps hearing is the rich sound of silence. He said: “Those who should be speaking about my government are not doing so.”

That is criminal. Why will the trumpeters padlock their lips as if they were mere observers in the administration whose achievements rub off on its appointees? One could offer one of two possible reasons for this. It is either that (a) his appointees are busy blowing their own trumpets they forget that blowing their principal’s trumpet is a duty incumbent on them or (b) they see nothing worth trumpeting in the sterling performances of the administration. If the president knows what he has achieved and his aides do not, there is a serious problem, I tell you.

Insecurity: Lai Mohammed, Where Are You?

 By Dan Onwukwe

He evokes different images to different people. He’s a talker and a tackler. He lives in denial just like the government he serves. Anybody who has been following his political career carefully and his comments, will understand that this man has an irritating habit of talking too loosely and telling yarn that amounts to nothing other than rough humour. That’s just one of his numerous personality traits. Other traits include peddling half-truths and outright lies. But there’s a darker side of living in denial.  It doesn’t give one the ability to look facts, very unpleasant facts – in the face – without deluding oneself with wishful thinking. 

*Lai Mohammed

Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture possesses these traits in abundance. As any management consultant will tell you: beware! These traits are the blinding lights of success. They are also the secrets of failure. But, Lai Mohammed keeps telling the same tale. Very often, he indulges in outright propaganda to hoodwink the undiscerning . However, the good thing is that half-truths have expiry date, no matter the short-term political gains. Let’s go a bit back in time. In the campaign leading to the 2015 elections, and desperate for power, Lai Mohammed was a forceful presence in the then opposition APC propaganda machine to demonize the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency and make it unelectable. 

Nigeria: Government As Purveyors Of Fake News Today

 By Emmanuel Onwubiko

“A few lines of reasoning’s can change the way we see the World.”— Steven E. Landsburg.

I was actually ruminating on a very important theme that traverses all of humanity and indeed already indulged in my compulsive lifestyle of deeply reflecting on my newly acquired books (75% of my annual income go into buying freshly minted, topnotch books, hard copies) and one of the most recent copies occupied my consciousness because of the opening quotation aforementioned.

*Information Minister, Lai Mohammed

Titled Basic Economics: A Common sense Guide To The Economy, this quotation rather led me to think much more about the threats to the Nigerian economy by the widespread use of fake news by all kinds of government officials with dominant reference to Federal Government officials. Lies, misinformation and outright fake news are increasingly being forced down the throats of millions of Nigerians by those who run the government and therefore have seamless access to our humongous commonwealth and patrimony which they misapply as their whims and caprices dictate to them. 

Nigeria: How Not To Gag The Media

 By Dan Amor

It is a sad story to tell but telling it we must. Before the advent of the present "democratic" dispensation, Nigeria was literally run by buccaneers who plundered the nation’s till into private use and built empires over the painful anxieties of the oppressed people. Upon assumption of office, the present crop of leaders (since 1999 till date) promised to make Nigerians put the pains of the past behind them as they were poised to embark on massive people-oriented programmes. 

Consequently, therefore, Nigerians who had long been living in penury and deprivation felt that the only option left to them was to hope for better days ahead. This is more so as the beauty of any government is its ability to bring together human and material resources and use them for the uplift of society. It would be recalled that during those dark days in our nation’s annals when the military usurped the polity to breaking point, the Nigerian media stood firmly on the side of the people. 

Buhari Is Nigeria’s Problem, Not Twitter!

 By Charles Okoh

President Muhammadu Buhari is a despotic leader. He is anything but a democrat. Those who packaged and presented him in traditional attires preparatory to the 2015 general elections knew that altering the package of a product does not have any effect on the product itself. In their desperation to return power to the north, the northern hegemony sold Asiwaju Bola Tinubu a dummy and he bought into it hook, line and sinker.

 *Buhari

In six years, it has become clear to all that you don’t at old age teach a right-handed person how to begin to use the left hand. The only difference between a military rule and our current quasi-democratic arrangement is that agbada, babariga and ishiagu have taken the place of military uniforms. 

President Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC) rode on the power of the social and traditional media to get to office. They encouraged civil unrest, protest, organised mass mobilisation through the media to get to office. Now in power, they have suddenly realised that the same media they once put to maximum use to serve their purpose as an opposition party, can no longer be tolerated and must be stopped at all cost.

COVID-19 And Nigeria's Pathetic Leadership Deficit

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

There is no better warning about the growing confusion that seems to be gradually beclouding the federal government’s response to the coronavirus challenge than the belief it betrayed last week that, perhaps, all it needs to calm the fears and apprehensions of Nigerians about its ability to halt the spread of the virus is to reel out a catalogue of activities President Buhari was said to have undertaken so far concerning the pestilence, whether the people felt their impact or not.

*President Buhari and his spokesman, Femi Adesina

Now, if your family is starving badly, do you solve the rumbling signs of biting hunger in their stomach with some wild tales of the efforts deployed by you so far to feed them, or just keep quiet, give them food, and they will see and feel for themselves that you have played your role responsively and effectively?  Or if you must talk, tell them something you have done whose benefits they can readily verify and identify with.

Indeed, some Nigerians are beginning to achieve the conviction that there must be something about being in government in this country that seems to diminish the reasoning ability of people once they get in there and deprives them of the capacity to realize when they have stopped making sense or even become downright annoying. This is very pathetic.

Social Media Bill: Short Walk To Total Totalitarianism?

By Matthew Hassan Kukah

I have consistently tried to create levels of differentiation between democracy and dictatorship, especially dictatorships of the military variant as we have had in Nigeria. I have argued that Nigeria is still very far away from the goal posts of what could be called a democratic society. In my view, the environment does not as yet look anything democratic because the actors are largely strangers to the ethos of democratic governance, and what is more, too many of them are tied to the old order, not to talk of the fact that the presence of General-presidents suggest that we are still in the thrall of militarism.

*Kukah

Democracy thrives on debate, consensus building, negotiation, persuasion, argumentation, rule of law, process and inclusion. The military thrives in a coup culture, secrecy, betrayal, violence, command structure, exclusion and lack of transparency. That explains why I have always warned against describing the current charade of violent elections as democracy.

Regulate Unemployment And Poverty Not Social Media

By Bob MajiriOghene Etemiku

Sometime in 2014, and prior to the 2015 General elections, most Nigerians were shell-shocked at the sort of language which certain highly-placed politicians flung here and there at Goodluck Jonathan. The arrowhead cum leader of those who used these irresponsible words to describe their president then was Nasir El Rufai, now governor of Kaduna State, followed by the present minister of information and culture, Lai Mohammed.

*Jonathan and Buhari 

From the way these highly-placed Nigerians used these words, nobody would have thought those words constituted what we now know as ‘hate speech’, ‘fake news’ and ‘irresponsible journalism’. What again made such words as ‘clueless’, incompetent’ and ‘making Nigeria ungovernable’, seemingly harmless then was that the individual who those hateful and highly embarrassing words were directed at appeared to take them with a smile and did so apparently because he understood that insults and aspersions are corollaries to public office, and your ability to accept them, deflect or dodge them makes you a leader or a charlatan.