Nigeria@63: Politicians’ Jumbo Pay And Impunity Must Go!

 By Ayo Baje

To strike the delicate balance between Nigeria’s vast, God-given resources of oil and gas, fertile fields for huge agricultural practices, rare solid minerals, places of scenic, spell-binding tourist attractions and the persisting paradox of pervasive poverty of the led majority is not rocket science for Nigerian-born best of brains such as the Philip Emeagwalis, the Gabriel Oyibos, Jelani Aliyus  or Silas Adekunles. No! The salient reasons behind the ever-widening, socio-economic gap between the leaders and the masses is patently obvious.

In fact, not a few of our crop of political leaders-spanning the spectrum of the so called democrats and the military despots-have, out of overt greed, over the decades, brought the country to its begging knees. So, when yours truly refers to their antics as “a restless run of avaricious locusts”, it is stating it as it is. If in doubt consider these startling statistics.

Everyone’s Obituary Is Inevitable

 Chuks Iloegbunam tells Sam Omatseye to cleanse his journalism 

*Peter Obi

 Some have called you foolish, dear Sam Omatseye. Others insist that you are plain stupid. There are those who hold you to be beneath contempt. Their howls of execration upon you are in reaction to your August 1, 2022 article entitled Obi-tuary. For me, however, you are a dear friend. Our friendship started in the 1980s at Newswatch magazine where both of us practiced journalism before you travelled to the United States for further studies.

 

It continued upon your return and strengthened to the point that, sometimes, you get the producers of your TV Continental programme to connect me to field questions live. Besides, living in different states, we often chat by telephone. I demonstrated our amity again last May when I was in Nigeria’s commercial capital for the Lagos International Book Fair. I phoned you and, within the hour, you were at my stand where we spent quality time reminiscing about the good old days and prognosticating on the future of our dear fatherland.

 

Armed with this handle of friendship, I have just the one advice for you: Be careful. It is in elaboration of this counsel that I write all that you read hereon. Please look back to the time of the Nigeria-Biafra war of 1967 to 1970. You will find that, military or civilian, none of the political actors of that era is still in a position to fight elections today. The final curtain long fell for most of them. Of the lot that remains, some have become vegetables, or are propped up with a suffusion of drugs or would not find their way to the loo unless hired attendants or swearing relatives point it out. Together with the handful that is still blessed with something close to robust health, they have one thing in common. They are seated, restless or restive, in various existential departure halls, clutching fitfully at their boarding passes and waiting for that inevitable voice that cannot be disobeyed, to announce their flights into past tense. 

What Do The Igbo Want?

By Obi Nwakanma

In an angry retort to a question thrown at him in his recent Media chat not too long ago, President Muhammadu Buhari asked, What do they (Igbo) want? Who is marginalizing them?

*Ojukwu 

In Biafra, under three years, they were making their own rockets and calculating its distances; distilling their own oil and making aviation fuel, creating in their Chemical and Biological laboratories, new cures for diseases like Cholera, shaping their own spare parts, and turning the entire East into a vast workshop, as Ojukwu put it.

At the end of the war, the Ukpabi Asika regime brought together these Biafran scientists and set up PRODA. The initiative led, in the first five years between 1970-1975 under the late Prof. Gordian Ezekwe and Mang Ndukwe, to designs of industrial machinery models and prototypes for the East Central State Industrial Masterplan, which remain undeveloped even today. The Murtala/Obasanjo regime took over PRODA in 1975 by decree, starved it of funds, and basically destroyed its aims.

Nigeria Cannot Survive Without The Igbo

 By Femi Aribisala
Out of the three major ethnic groups in Nigeria, the Igbo have by far the worst politicians. Among the different ethnic groups in Nigeria, the Igbo are without a doubt, one of the most remarkable. So remarkable, indeed, that some have even traced their ancestry to biblical Israel, as the far-flung descendants of Jacob, the Jewish patriarch.

Gad, Jacob’s seventh son, is said to have had three sons who settled in South-eastern Nigeria. These sons; Eri, Arodi and Areli, are believed to have fathered clans in Igbo-land and to have founded such Igbo towns as Aguleri, Arochukwu, Owerri and Umuleri.

Igbo genius Even the bitterest adversaries of the Igbo cannot but admit that, as a people, they are very resourceful and ingenious. Indeed, this has often been the cause of their envy and dislike by others. However, more enlightened non-Igbo Nigerians see this as a cause for celebration.

While today, the centre-point of Nigeria’s manufacturing is situated in the Lagos/Ogun axis, there is no doubt that the real locomotive of Nigeria’s indigenous industrialization lies farther afield in Aba and in the mushrooming cottage-industries of the Igbo heartland. In one of the paradoxes of Nigerian history, the terrible civil war provoked homespun industrialization in the South-East.

Governors And The Politics Of Succession

By Reuben Abati

The recent Governorship elections in Edo and Ondo states threw up a number of issues about the politics of succession in Nigeria. In Edo state, you would think it was the then incumbent Governor Adams Oshiomhole seeking re-election. He campaigned more than the candidate.  He danced, waved the broom, his party’s symbol, far more enthusiastically than the man who wanted the office...

*Reuben Abati

He even did more to put down the opposition and any likely threat to Godwin Obaseki’s ambition. His pretty wife was always in tow during the campaigns, and did she dance? Oh yes, she did too. Godwin Obaseki’s emergence as the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in that election caused much disaffection within the party. He was said to be Oshiomhole’s anointed candidate with the allegation that everything was being done to ensure his victory at the polls. Oshiomhole had his way. Obaseki is now Governor of Edo State.

       The incumbent Governor in Ondo State also did as much if not more to manage the politics of succession in the just concluded Governorship election in that state.  He anointed the candidate of his party, followed him everywhere, and “fought” for him, even in the courts and on the streets of Akure. The election was more about Dr Olusegun Mimiko and what he wanted. The situation was not helped by the fact that Mimiko’s choice, Eyitayo Jegede, SAN hails from the same Senatorial district with him, but by far the biggest problem was the division within the PDP, which produced two candidates on the same platform for the same election, with the courts having to decide mid-way and at the late hour, with a superior court overruling the lower court. This confusion created a scenario whereby Jimoh Ibrahim emerged for a while as the party’s candidate, only to be dismissed through a court order two days to the election.

     This did not bother the businessman-lawyer-politician, though. Giving the impression that he was not so desperate to be Governor, he declared that his mission was to make it impossible for Mimiko to achieve his goal of installing an anointed successor. On the eve of the election, he urged his supporters and the people of the state to vote for the candidate of the APC. Under normal circumstances this would be considered an anti-party activity but the PDP is right now in such a confused state as a political party - its ranks are filled with disloyal, one-leg-in-one-leg-out members.  For this reason, in Ondo state, the PDP defeated itself from within even before the election. Mimiko can also be held responsible for his chosen candidate’s defeat. He overplayed his hands in the febrile politics of succession in the state.

     There is perhaps nothing new about incumbents, at state, local and national levels, showing interest in who succeeds them. Being politicians, they could plead that they are duty bound to support their party’s candidate, but where the problem lies is the desperation that attends the choice of such candidates, beginning with the party primary. In the United States, which is an example that can be readily cited, President Barrack Obama openly supported the candidacy of the Democratic Party standard bearer, Hillary Clinton, but he did so only after she had won the nomination. If Bernie Sanders had been the party’s choice, he would still have received President Obama’s support out of loyalty to the party. In other words, it would be difficult to speak of an incumbent American President or Governor anointing a successor and imposing that successor on the party and the electorate.