Wike And Fubara: Tinubu’s Sham Agreement

 By Ugoji Egbujo

The agreement between a pimp and a prostitute ought not to be written. Because if the pimp and prostitute still have any trace of honour left in them, they wouldn’t want the transaction made legible for their grandchildren to read. However, when shame has fled and taboos have become doormats, a pimp can demand a written document.

*Tinubu and Wike 

And when they have a contractual dispute, a bishop might step in to ask the prostitute to sleep with more clients to satisfy the covenant. If reminded of the sinfulness of fornication and trade in flesh, the bishop might say that he did it in the interest of peace and to safeguard trade customs. Peace and custom are laudable virtues but when shallow peace is purchased at the cost of normalization of evil, society is imperiled. 

Does Killing Babies In Niger Bring Glory To Our Name?

 By Femi Fani-Kayode

A dear and respected friend of mine who was once our Ambassador to a European country, who has relatives and strong links in and with Niger Republic and who is well versed in security and intelligence matters, told me that up to 40 babies are dying each day in Niger as a consequence of our cutting off electricity supplies to them.

*Tinubu and Fani-Kayode

According to him, these babies die in hospitals and incubators across the country as a consequence of the fact that there is no electricity supply and there is no fuel to power their generators.

This was confirmed by one Dr. Abdoul Djibou, a Nigerien medical practitioner, in an interview with Newsonlineng.com. They wrote, “According to a source in Niger Republic, Dr. Abdoul Djibou, there have been reports from Dosso Regional Hospital and Cominak Hospital about the recent spike in infant mortality.

An Open Letter To President Buhari On Police “Checkpoints”

 By Chuks Iloegbunam

Dear Mr. President,

Travelling from Lagos to Anambra State on November 9, 2019, I counted 67 “checkpoints” mostly manned by armed men of the Police Mobile Force along the 371 kilometre stretch from Sagamu to Asaba. Travelling the same route again on Thursday November 28, 2019, I counted 64 “checkpoints”. I was on each occasion behind the wheel, meaning that my calculations may have missed or added a number of “checkpoints”. 

On November 30, 2019, however, Chief Tony Onyima, a respected journalist travelling as a passenger, counted 60 checkpoints on the same tortuous stretch, noting the precise location of each and every roadblock. This means that, on average, there is a “checkpoint” every 6.28 kilometres of the way. It suggests that the notorious stretch boasts more “checkpoints” than Hanoi and Saigon combined ever did all through the 20 years of the Vietnam War. 

Africa Truly Rising

By Tony Ademiluyi

After the return of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu from England in 1957 after a 13-year sojourn for his educational pursuits, his wealthy and influential father wanted him to put his education to good use by joining the family business. He had other ideas as he had a brief stint in the colonial service and then headed to the army then known as the Queen’s Regiment.

A livid Sir Louis Odumegwu-Ojukwu tried to ‘talk some sense’ into the young man and enlisted the support of the then Governor-General, James Robertson to ‘bail him out.’ The British colonial administrator told Emeka point-blank that if he thought what happened in Egypt in 1952 when Colonel Abdel Nasser came to power through a coup could ever happen in Nigeria, he was mistaken. That statement turned out to be prophetic as it marked the pattern of Africa’s governance for the next three decades.

Military rule became the preferred mode of administration for many African nations. Pan Africanism which was largely spearheaded by Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah hurriedly gave way to the spread of cult-like cold-blooded dictators.

The continent bred the likes of Mobutu Sese Seko, Idi Amin, Sani Abacha, Gnassingbe Eyadema and so on whose brutality and visionless leadership saw to the perpetual under-development of the world’s second largest continent.

No form of dissent especially from the impoverished intelligentsia and media was tolerated and the large wave of emigration especially for economic reasons started as a result of the incursion by the men in uniform.

Corruption was another sinister legacy that military rule in Africa bequeathed which is still haunting the continent till date. The practice of salting away billions of dollars from here to the developed economies especially in Europe had its roots during the military rule. Mobuto Sese Seko was allegedly far richer than his Country, Zaire which he ruled with an iron fist for over three decades. Dictators like Ibrahim Babaginda, Idi Amin, Omar Bongo, Teodoro Mbasogo, Jean Bedel Bokassa amassed obscene wealth appropriated from the commonwealth of their countries and so drove their people to destitution that they longed for a return of their erstwhile colonial masters.

Africa: Epitaphs For A Failing

By Dan Amor

Africa, my beloved continent, appears to have lost out in the world's debate. Aside from the achievements of its founding fathers, the continent which habours the largest population of the black race in the world has almost gone comatose politically and economically. Africa is indeed the only continent in the world in which it takes a fortune teller for its leaders (looters) to realize that something is really lacking in their character.

The black continent has been reduced to a guinea-pig laboratory in which wanton denigration of corrosive state power has been carried out in its unspoken barbarity. In no other continent than Africa have the citizens been so abused by the powers of the state. In their idiotic, shameless and sadistic mentality, our rulers think that the people are destined to last, unmoving throughout the cataclysms of the surrounding world in the face of national usurpers and foreign conquerors. With the physical exit of the whiteman, African rulers ostensibly formed a new generation rebellious at its inheritance of a cynical and hypocritical legacy.

Today, Africa has produced more treacherous dictators than any other continent in the world and even any other race in history that could even make the Age of Antiquity and tyranny of the Renaissance green with envy. Even as some of them now pretend to be democrats, they still cannot cover their inner colours with their new 'democratic' skin. Yet, how do we appreciate the nebulous fancy of the average African dictator? How do we extrapolate his consummate excesses? How do we vitiate the nuances of his personal pride and ambition? And, finally, how do we impugn the Johnsonian epigram about the innocuousness of corruption and the mentality of the African dictator? It takes only serious thinking for analysts to decode that much of the savagery connected with the African tragedy can be explained in the violence inherent in Western manners. African leaders are therefore hapless tools of that logic of history which leaves a minority determined to assert itself against the majority with no choice of methods than using terror as not merely an attendant phenomenon, but a vital function of insurrection.

Almost six decades after gaining political independence from European exploiters of their resources, Africa, easily the most naturally endowed region on the face of the earth, has been turned into a theatre of war no thanks to the lackeys who took over the mantle of political leadership from the colonialist. It has been a monumental tragedy that Africa is yet to find its bearings more than fifty years into self rule. 

Patrice Lumumba: An Amazing Story

Malcolm X called him the most impressive black man ever to walk the African continent. Just six months after becoming the first prime minister of the newly independent Republic of the Congo (later called the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and two days before John F. Kennedy’s inauguration in January 1961, Patrice Lumumba was shot down by a firing squad. But Lumumba’s surprising path and sudden death serve as a powerful reminder that for political leaders in many parts of the world, true reform has only one major prerequisite: survival.

Few countries today are as troubled as the Congo, a land of 68 million nestled near the center of sub-Saharan Africa. Belgian invaders looted the country for almost a century, during perhaps the most brutal colonization in Africa. But Congo, rich in mineral resources like rubber, was once poised to be an African success story, thanks in no small part to the man his people called by one name: Lumumba.

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Remembering The 'Rumble In The Jungle'

By Banji Ojewale

Forty years ago on October 30 1974, the world was rocked by the celebrated fight between Muhammad Ali, ex-heavyweight boxing champion of the world and George Foreman, the title holder. The colorful Ali aptly called the bout the Rumble in the jungle because it took place in thickly forested Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Muhammad Ali

(pix: Reuters)

It was a huge, larger-than-life affair put together by an imperial president Mobutu Sese Seko with many unprecedented features. It was the first heavyweight championship contest in Africa; it brought together two of the planet’s greatest pugilists; it saw Mubutu budget more than ten million dollars to promote the show; it gave the fighters their biggest ever earnings; finally, it offered Africa the rare opportunity to see two of its eminent sons battle for supremacy on their own soil. They had always been forced to do it away from “home”.

The African leader was said to have traveled this expensive route in order to cover up for years of his corrupt era, egregious human rights abuse and misrule, all of which pauperized the country. He did not succeed. He failed to exploit the potential salutary public relations of the fight to improve the lot of the people. Actually it would appear Zaire got the rough end of the stick, because two years later in 1976, the country gave the international community the dreaded Ebola Virus Disease (EVD).