2023: Nigeria Cannot Afford An Emperor As President

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Delivering the 2022 TheNiche Lecture titled “2023 Elections And The Future Of Nigeria’s Democracy” on September 8, the guest speaker, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, former governor of Lagos State and Minister of Works and Housing, disagreed with those who hold the view that next year’s elections will be momentous. 

*Buhari and army officers 

Though Fashola admitted that “no two elections are the same; and the intensity always varies anyway as indeed the number of voters and sometimes the number of parties; and the novelty of some candidates,” he nonetheless orated that rhetoric like “this will be a most defining election; this will be an election like no other; and so on and so forth… is common in every democracy and at the onset of a new election cycle,” and no one should be surprised hearing them.

Nigeria's Democratically-Elected Tyrants

 By Andy Ezeani

The exit of the military from political administration of Nigeria in 1999 and the attendant restoration of democratic order was expected to engender the ethos of civil contention of ideas and liberal disposition in the political space. These, after all, are the hallmark of democracy, the antithesis of the command structure of the military that had gone.

Considering that military rule prevailed for a very long time in the country, it was not unexpected that some mannerisms of the defunct regime will linger after them. But for how long? This is the question that has become relevant and increasingly worrisome, against the backdrop of disturbing undemocratic tendencies that seem determined not to go away, years after the military left the scene.