2024: Governments As Our Enemy

 By Ugo Onuoha

A happy new year wish will be in order though it is certainly obvious this will be a thoroughly unhappy and extremely troubling year for a majority of Nigerians. From the 1960s, and especially since the return of democracy [read rule by civilians], governments at all levels, have steadily proved themselves to be enemies of the people. 

At least since 1999, the expectation has been that we will experience government of the people, by the people and for the people. No. That has remained an illusion. What we have had has been government of the rulers, by the rulers and for the rulers. The government as a force for good does not apply in our clime.

A Half Century Of Banditry In Nigeria

 By Chidi Odinkalu

Since well before Nigeria’s return to elective governance in 1999, the country has been overtaken by a progressive escalation of what Hannah Arendt in her classic On Violence called “a massive intrusion of criminal violence into politics”. In contemporary Nigerianism, the word for this is “banditry”. 

“Bandits” is a conveniently capacious bogeyman for insecurity in Nigeria that precludes necessary questions as to the provenance of the descent into lawlessness. It captures diverse elements that may include terrorists, cultists, herdsmen, kidnappers, criminal gangs, and militants. 

2015-2023: The Years Of Pestilence

 By Adekunle Adekoya

When the All Progressives Congress, APC, came up to challenge PDP’s hold on power since 1999 in February 2013, not a few Nigerians incubated the hope that something refreshingly different will happen to Nigeria. Formed as a merger of three parties — the Congress for Progressive Change, the All Nigeria Peoples Party, and the Action Congress of Nigeria, the APC went ahead to field Major-General Muhammadu Buhari as its presidential candidate against Dr. Goodluck Jonathan of the PDP in the 2015 elections. The rest, as they say, is now history.

*Buhari's 73rd Birthday Dinner - December 17, 2015

Before and after the 2015 elections, Buhari and the APC made a lot of promises about how they would work to ensure that life and living gets on the upward swing for Nigerians. In fact, ahead of the elections, Buhari was at Chatham House, the UK think-tank where he made a lot of proclamations regarding what he would do if elected president. In the opening paragraphs of the Chatham House speech, Buhari said: “When speaking about Nigeria overseas, I normally prefer to be my country ’s public relations and marketing officer, extolling her virtues and hoping to attract investments and tourists.” 

Before Babies Begin To Emigrate

 By Adekunle Adekoya

There must be a problem in the land, a very big one. I am not talking about the usual that we have lived with for decades — lack of potable water, epileptic power supply, parlous healthcare system and all that. I am talking about a feeling of disenchantment, perhaps hopelessness, especially among the youths which has fuelled what we now call “Ja pa.”

On the internet, it has trended for a few days now that 266 Nigerian doctors have been licensed to practise in the United Kingdom. In my hood, I noticed that I have not seen some of the younger men with whom I relate for some time. To be candid, I don’t remember having seen any of them since before the election. I asked around. Someone volunteered that the guys after whom I’m asking have joined the Ja pa train. “They left for Canada three weeks ago,” my informant said. I shuddered in disbelief. 

Stop Terrorists Influx Into Nigeria!

 By Tola Adeniyi 

Buoyed by the spectacular achievement of Major-General Muhammadu Buhari in his rabid drive of the undisguised Fulanization Agenda, 16 countries where the pastoral Fulani could be found were emboldened to gather in Abuja recently to perfect their grand design of taking over the Nigerian space by hook or crook. The theme of their meeting, hosted by the Unitary Government headquartered in Abuja, was the Future of the Fulani in Nigeria or better put, Stairs to the complete Conquest and Subjugation of the Indigenous Nationalities of Nigeria. 

Nobody has been left in doubt that President Buhari who is the Grand Patron of the ubiquitous and muscle-flexing Miyetti Allah [which has unabashedly owned up to serial bloodletting in Plateau, Benue and Taraba states] and also the preferred Chief Negotiator for the one of the world’s leading Terrorist Groups, Boko Haram [‘Attack on Boko Haram is attack on the North’—Buhari 2014] is bent on completing the ferocious Jihad of 1848 on behalf of the Caliphate. 

The die is cast! Tens of large trucks, with Dangote boldly written on some of them, carrying heavily armed terror recruits, are seen on daily basis flooding borderless Nigeria with the avowed intent to unleash unmitigated mayhem and mass massacre on defenceless indigenous peoples of Nigeria on a scale never before seen anywhere in Africa. In fact, by the time they finish the execution of their heartless and horrendous crime against humanity, the Rwanda’s better-forgotten genocide would be a child’s play in comparison.