Freeing Nigeria

 By Obi Nwakanma

By every index, Nigeria as a nation, has very nearly, finally collapsed. It is held together now only by a very weak thread called fate.

*Tinubu

Basically, Nigeria has slipped to the symbolic phase of nationhood. It can only perform symbolic actions of nationness: convoke a parliament which only sits symbolically because it is actually not a parliament; issue laws, which carry only symbolic authority because they have no life, and are unenforceable; issue executive papers that have no administrative force, because it is not connected to institutions that serve citizens. There are no citizens.

Nigeria: INEC’s Shit-Show

 By Obi Nwakanma

The governing All Progressives Congress (APC) had no sterling records on which to run and return to power in the federation of Nigeria in this election. The facts were stark. Compared to February 2015 when the party, an alliance of the discontented, fielded the ex-military dictator, Mr. Muhammadu Buhari, a former Major-General and at that time serial contestant for the office of the president of Nigeria, the mood had swung so heavily against the APC nation-wide in 2023. 

*Prof Yakubu, INEC Chair

Nigerians were measuring the time of the PDP, from 1999 to the time of the APC, from 2015 to the current year. As a Nigerian engineer told me, “you could say anything about the PDP, but what you could never say was that they put Nigerians through hunger. Under the PDP Nigerians took for granted that you could put food on the table without much hassle. But since the APC, all those things you took for granted – just food – including ordinary cereal and milk for kids have become unbearably exorbitant and impossible to buy.”