By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu
In 1991, Nigeria was in the full throes of the interminable transition to civil rule programme of General Ibrahim Babangida.
The effort by the regime in 1991 to relocate their terminal date from 1992 to 1993 coincided with a planned meeting in Ibadan, south-west Nigeria, of the leadership of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS).
By Andy Ezeani
“Without death penalty, 90% of Nigerians will continue to see corruption as God’s blessings. The anti-corruption campaign will be a huge waste of time. We are already heavily populated, why can’t we sacrifice the top criminals to save the country’s future?” – Nasir el-Rufai
Now, the House of Assembly in Kaduna State, the state Nasir el-Rufai governed until May 29, 2023, says the former governor is corrupt.
*El-Rufai
Any report of the political demise of el-Rufai may not just be exaggerated, to call up that legendary construction by Mark Twain, it may also be premature.
By Olu Fasan
The Most Rev. Matthew Kukah,
Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Sokoto, is uncharacteristically complacent.
Recently, he upbraided Nigerians for fretting about the Rivers State crisis,
triggered by the festering conflict between the current governor Siminalayi
Fubara and his immediate predecessor, Nyesom Wike. “We ordinary people cry more
than the bereaved,” Rev. Kukah said, adding: “When politicians fight, don’t get
carried away because they will fix their quarrel.”
By Olu Fasan
A nation is civilised not because of its aesthetic, its beautiful architecture. Rather, a nation is civilised because of how it treats its citizens, because of the duration and quality of life of its citizens. That’s why social security or safety net for the poor is a badge of the heathy society. However, Nigeria creates billionaires but eviscerates the middle classes and makes everyone else poorer without meaningful state support.
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo once bragged that he created many billionaires while in government. “My aim when I was in government was to create 50 billionaires,” Obasanjo said. “Unfortunately, I failed. I created only 25.” But how? Well, he banned imports of certain products, allowing some manufacturers to enjoy a protected domestic market and rake in billions; he granted waivers of import tariffs to favoured people, who imported large shipments of consumer products, such as rice, tariff-free and sold them expensively, thereby becoming billionaires; and he gave oil blocs to a select few, turning them into billionaires. It’s crony capitalism, a rentier state. Capitalism is rigged to favour a small elite.
By Olu Fasan
Atiku Abubakar, former vice president, made his sixth attempt to become Nigeria’s president last year, 30 years after his first foray into presidential politics in 1993. He failed. However, God sparing his life, Atiku wants to make his seventh attempt in 2027, aged 80.
By Owei Lakemfa
In the 2023 Christmas
period running from December 23-25, armed assailants in co-ordinated
attacks wiped out 20 communities in Magu, Bokkos and Bakin areas of
Plateau State. They killed over 200, injured a minimum 500 and put over 10,000
in flight.
The headlines expressing ‘Outrage over Plateau killings’ are tragically, familiar and might have as well been cast ten, fifteen years ago. The perpetrators are same; a trained, vicious, co-ordinated bunch, some assembled from West and Central Africa states.
By Chidi Odinkalu
In July 1977, the Organisation of African Unity adopted a Convention for the Elimination of Mercenarism in Africa. It offered a definition of a mercenary to include someone who “is motivated to take part in hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and in fact is promised by or on behalf of a party to the conflict material compensation.” The drafters of the Convention for the Elimination of Mercenarism in Africa probably did not foresee that it would encompass the conduct of judges.
Yet, at the beginning of this month, the immediate past president of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, Olumide Akpata, took to the floor of the International Bar Association, IBA, conference in Paris, the capital of France, to invite the association to take an active interest in a new species of judicial subornation in Nigeria which can best be described as judicial mercenarism.
Minister Ezenwo Nyesom Wike, I
join many Nigerians in welcoming you to the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, as
its minister. You are no stranger to the country’s capital, having been a
minister under the Jonathan administration. You arrived at the FCT last Monday
with a bang, and since then, the mass media have not stopped buzzing, with some
predicting that with you as Minister, the FCT will be ‘hot’. Brother Wike, do
not be a conventional Nollywood character whose notions and moves are
predictable. Don’t be an archetypal Patience Ozokwor in Nollywood or Clint
Eastwood in Hollywood. Rather, be a governor in the FCT whose primary duties
are the well-being and security of all Nigerians.
Portfolios were not previously affixed to ministerial nominees, so nobody would accuse you of not having a plan for the FCT. Therefore, what I advise you to do is sit down with your aides and staff to write a programme, and most importantly, get the buy-in of the people.
By Olu Fasan
This is a subject I have long wanted to address. It first caught my attention when I watched the inauguration of Professor Charles Soludo as governor of Anambra State in March 2022. As he recited the oath of office, I was struck by how many times he mentioned the words “Federal Republic of Nigeria”, “President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria” and “Federal Government of Nigeria”, while he only directly mentioned “Anambra State” once; yes, once!
The words quoted above, bar Anambra State, are in the governor’s oath set out in the Seventh Schedule of the 1999 Constitution. For instance, it says a governor must exercise the authority vested in him “so as not to impede or prejudice the authority lawfully vested in the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria”, and “so as not to endanger the continuance of the Federal Government in Nigeria”. It goes on: a governor must “devote” himself “to the service and well-being of the people of Nigeria”. Really? Why?
By Olu Fasan
One of the popular myths around Bola Tinubu, stemming from his time as governor of Lagos State, was that he had an uncanny ability to pick competent teams of technocrats to run the affairs of state. Indeed, some genuinely wanted Tinubu to be president and “run Nigeria as he ran Lagos.” But the myths have busted since he became president. Not only has he muddled through policy after policy, the famed gift for talent-spotting gravely eluded him as he unveiled a middling cast of ministers, characterised by two fundamental flaws.
First, Tinubu will have the largest cabinet in Nigeria’s political history. With 48 ministers and over 20 special advisers and senior special assistants, with cabinet-level status, Tinubu will have the most bloated and unwieldy cabinet of any past president.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
On Monday, August 7, the Senate confirmed 45 of the 48 ministerial nominees sent to it by President Bola Tinubu. Surprisingly, it deferred the confirmation of three nominees – former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai; a former senator from Taraba, Sani Danladi; and a nominee from Delta State, Stella Okotete – because of undisclosed security concerns.
Tinubu transmitted the names of the 48 nominees in three separate correspondences to the Senate on July 28, August 3 and August 4, the last list containing the names of Mr. Festus Keyamo, former Minister of State for Labour and Employment from Delta State and Dr. Mariya Mahmoud, a replacement for Dr. Maryam Shetty, whose nomination was withdrawn. Many Nigerians are perplexed at the development because nominees ought to have scaled the security hurdle before coming to the Senate. Does it mean that the Department of State Services, DSS, and other security agencies did not do due diligence?
By Emmanuel Aziken
The recent decision by FIFA to directly pay Nigerian footballers in the ongoing Women’s World Cup tournament their bonuses must be considered a slap on Nigerians and the independence of the country.
However, for many who consider the FIFA decision as an insult, the brag about sovereignty slips into stupidity after watching the charade officially dubbed the ministerial screening of ministers by the Nigerian Senate.
By Owei Lakemfa
Four female students of the Zamfara State College of Arts and Science, abducted by bandits six months ago, may know their fate this week. Their abductors have given the parents of the young ladies, one week within which to pay N12 million ransom or the victims will be married off. This may be an euphemism for selling the young women into sexual slavery.
What to do about these soulless
bandits who maim, rape, murder, loot and visit arson on many states, especially
Zamfara, Sokoto, Katsina and Niger, is no straight forward matter.
There are vested interests. For instance, with the new service chiefs vowing to destroy these bandits who in the last eight years have murdered about 65, 000 Nigerians, there are urgent petitions and campaigns that the might of the military should not be used against them.
By Kenneth Okonkwo
Chief Ozioko Francis Okonkwo was born into the lineage of great men. Unfortunately for him, his own father died at a tender age and he was sentenced to a life of servitude at a very tender age. He served from one household to the other until he attained the age of maturity, at which, he came back to his native land Nsukka to learn vulcanizing. Wherever he went to serve, the household never allowed him to leave because of his sincerity and integrity.
After his mentorship as a Vulcanizer, his mentor was recalled by his own people to relocate back to his own home town. Okonkwo wished to follow his mentor back to his mentor’s hometown but was restricted by his mentor who insisted he must remain in Nsukka as their ambassador seeing his lifestyle of sincerity. Okonkwo remained in Nsukka as the only professional Vulcanizer.
By Sola Ebiseni
I had no intention to join the discourse on what many considered the recent vituperation of Nasir el-Rufai, immediate past Governor of Kaduna State, on the ethnic and religious politics of his state which he brazenly extended to the Nigerian federation.
I changed my mind and decided to take a look at what he had to say that has generated needless furore when I watched this morning (Monday 12th of June) on Arise Television, the encounter between Rufai and my brother, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele on the politics of the leadership of the National Assembly.
By Chidi Odinkalu
Mbabai, the village where Tarnongo Mike Utsaha was buried on April 1, 2023, used to be part of the municipality of Makurdi, the capital of Benue State. It only became part of Guma Local Government Area in Benue North-West in 1987. Current governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom, also comes from Guma.
The LGA derives its name from River Guma, which empties into the River Benue, part of a network of fresh water sources that have historically defined that part of Nigeria as the nation’s food basket. With arable land drained by an abundance of freshwater sources on the foothills of the rainy season, this is a neighborhood that should ordinarily bustle at this time of year.
By Ochereome Nnanna
The recently concluded election in Nigeria was an eye-opener for people of Igbo stock living in Lagos, especially those who slumbered in blissful ignorance of the peculiar situation that this ethnic group finds itself in Nigeria. In June, July 2017, a group that called itself Arewa Youths Consultative Forum, AYCF, led by one Yerima Shettima, issued a quit notice to Igbo people living in the North.
Their offence: the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, led by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, was demanding for a referendum to enable Ndi Igbo and other interested ethnic groups in the South-South to quit Nigeria. This was IPOB’s response to Muhammadu Buhari’s extreme nepotism targeted against them, as well as the violent activities of land-grabbing Fulani militants masquerading as herdsmen. The Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, and Governor Nasir el-Rufai threatened to arrest Yerima and his cohorts. Some of the AYCF hoodlums even dared them to come. IGP Idris and el-Rufai barked but did not bite.
By Olu Fasan
Someday, chroniclers of history will tell the stories of the 2023 general elections, the worst in Nigeria’s recent history. They will narrate the noble and ignoble roles played, respectively, by heroes and villains of the elections. Among the political class, villains abound. But two interest me here: Professor Charles Soludo, current governor of Anambra State, and Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, outgoing governor of Kaduna State. Neither covered himself in glory!
You might ask: why single out Soludo and el-Rufai? Well, few political office holders in Nigeria today entered politics with the technocratic pedigree of Soludo and el-Rufai: the former was a smart presidential economic adviser who became a reformist governor of the Central Bank; the latter, a brilliant director of the Bureau of Public Enterprises who became a transformative Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. Both are first-class technocrats and administrators.
By Kenechukwu Obiezu
If Nigerian politics had a single currency, language, sign language, or definition, it would be money. But very close to it would be the concepts of betrayal and opportunism.
To preclude political opportunism and fry the chances of its elite practitioners in Nigeria, the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria makes salubrious provisions to arrest the vice of cross-carpeting. However, with many of the politicians who have engaged in it over the years getting away with it, it appears that judicial interpretation and enforcement have failed to stop the scourge.
By Owei Lakemfa
A Lebanese man on September 16, 2022, wielding a gun, held up the Byblos Bank in Ghazieh, Southern Lebanon. No, not to rob the bank or its customers. Just to retrieve part of his money trapped in the country’s banks! So, to retrieve part of his money, he had to hold up the bank and take hostages. As news of the holdup spread, crowds gathered in front of the bank to cheer him on.
Two days earlier, there had been two other holdups in Beirut and the town of Ale. Although all the weapons turned turned out to be toy guns, but nobody will confront a desperate armed man believing the gun he is carrying is a toy.
