Showing posts with label Nigerian Television Authority (NTA). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nigerian Television Authority (NTA). Show all posts

Monday, July 22, 2024

For Once, I Agree With Adams Oshiomhole

 By Tonnie Iredia

For the better part of the last two decades, I had cause to severally disagree or oppose the viewpoints, statements or actions of Adams Oshiomhole either as President of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), or Governor of Edo State or National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC). 

*Oshiomhole 

In order not to belabour the issues of the past, I will only just say we fell apart many times and quite often used the media to put our different positions in the public domain. It is therefore quite likely that many people who knew about our sour relationship would be surprised to read this piece which eulogises Oshiomhole’s commendable contributions to debates in the Senate, especially in the last couple of weeks.

Tuesday, January 23, 2024

It’s Time To Hold Nigerian Judges Accountable

 By Tonnie Iredia

The National Judicial Council (NJC) is the body set-up by law to among other things discipline erring Nigerian judges. This was probably to prevent different agencies from harassing judges thereby boosting judicial autonomy. One would therefore have expected that the body would be up and doing in ensuring sanity in the Nigerian judiciary thereby giving no room for outsiders to pry into its internal matters.

But this has not been so. Instead, the NJC has for long shown that it is incapable of effectively performing the function. Many judges who have openly misbehaved to the chagrin of other sectors of the Nigerian society, often got off the hook. Some Nigerians actually believe that the NJC has acted more as a tool for covering-up erring judges on the basis of esprit de corps.

Monday, October 2, 2023

Minister Umahi: Nigerians Desire Strong Societal Institutions

 By Tonnie Iredia

Last week Thursday, David Umahi, Nigeria’s Minister of Works locked out several workers of his ministry for reportedly resuming late to work. For over 5 hours there was confusion in and around the ministry as the workers in turn locked all entrances into the ministry thereby stopping the minister from getting out of his office. Since his appointment a few months back, Umahi has been one of the few ministers seen in different parts of the country carrying supervision to the point of assignment.

*Umahi and Ministry of Works staff

Like his predecessor, Babatunde Fashola, he has been actively engaged in the inspection of federal projects in parts of the country. Unfortunately, workers at the ministry of Works do not appear to have bought into the aggressive posture of minister Umahi to promptly deliver on the promises of the new administration. While some of the workers reportedly   have the habit of coming late to work, many others have been found to close early from work making it difficult for the minister to get relevant information for pursuing certain assignments.

Wednesday, September 6, 2023

Preventing Military Coups In Africa: Attention, Nigeria!

 By Tonnie Iredia

Two recent military coups in neighbouring Niger and Gabon have heightened discussions in Nigeria of the possibility of military intervention in the politics of the nation. The feeling appears so palpable considering the commonality of causative factors which over the years always influenced military rule in Africa: societal restiveness, poor economy, failed elections, pervasive corruption, extravagance of politicians and the helplessness of civic society accentuated by the disappearance of the middle class.

In Nigeria, the division of society into two classes only; that is those who have everything and those who have nothing is more visibly felt than anywhere else. This has left many people to pray not just for something to change but for it to come through the efficacy of a military coup. The recent decision of the military hierarchy in Nigeria to formally dismiss such undemocratic undertones in the land is instructive.

Friday, June 11, 2021

Buhari In Exclusive Interview With NTA

 Press Release

President Muhammadu Buhari In Exclusive Interview With NTA


President Muhammadu Buhari grants Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) an exclusive interview, from 8.30 pm, Friday, June 11, 2021. 

It promises to be revealing and educating. Kindly keep a date.

 Femi Adesina 

Special Adviser to the President

(Media and Publicity)

June 11, 2021

--------------------------------

On Thursday, June 10, Buhari granted an interview with ARISE TV. 

Watch it HERE

Sunday, December 24, 2017

‘The Human Side Of President Buhari’

By Fredrick Nwabufo


The header of this article is the title of a 55-minute documentary on President Muhammadu Buhari.
 
The documentary has been scheduled to air on NTA this evening.

The presidency says “the documentary portrays the president in a light that majority of Nigerians have not seen him”.
 
I find this – ‘human side of Buhari’ – farcical and puerile. Does it mean the president has an animal side? What other human side could he have than his much vaunted “sense of humor”?
 
Buhari’s “sense of humor” has been elevated by his media handlers to a national diadem.
 
His media handlers are always quick to play on this harp – “Buhari’s sense of humor” – whenever there is citizen angst.

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

When Will Nigeria Start Getting Better?

By Kanayo Esinulo
Those who are familiar with how the machine of government works will easily tell you that leaders, most leaders, are somehow prisoners of ‘Security Reports’, but what these ‘knowledgeable top functionaries’ of government will never disclose to anyone, including the leader himself and the inquisitive thinking community, is that a good percentage of these ‘Security Reports’ are often hugely inaccurate, sometimes exaggerated and a few times overtaken by unexpected sudden events. They hardly provide the leader the necessary insights and all sides of the actual situation upon which proper policy decisions can be based for the general good.


What is often submitted as security reports contain, largely, what would make the leader happy, stampede him or her into making silly mistakes or even frighten him into becoming a prisoner in Government Lodge. And because our leaders are often caged and over protected from interfacing with us, the ordinary citizens, and knowing how we really feel and how government policies affect our lives positively or negatively, the sweet-heart security reports are taken seriously by them, and policy decisions are then taken, based on the contents and conclusions of the reports. But a good and experienced leader reaches out to the people as much as possible and as much as security considerations would permit.

Let me table a quick coda: Muhammadu Buhari first struck our national consciousness during the bloody Maitesine uprisings in some parts of Northern Nigeria in 1982. He was in-charge of a command in Jos, the capital of Plateau State. Alhaji Shehu Aliyu Shagari was the President and Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces. When Maitesine, the militant Islamic group, was fully contained in Kano, they ran into neighbouring Cameroun and still constituted a menace to our national security from that flank, it was this man, Muhammadu Buhari, who mobilised troops under his command and engaged the rascals, decimated their strength, killed and captured many of them and drove them deep into the Republic of Cameroun beyond the orders of Shagari, the Commander-in-Chief. Instantly, Buhari became a national celebrity. He mesmerised and defeated the ill-trained and ill-equipped Maitesine invaders. I was with NTA News, Victoria Island at the time. We tried to secure elaborate interview with Buhari for our national audience, but he shied away from the national media. But all the same, his gallantry and patriotism became an instant hit.

So, when he surfaced after the events of December 31, 1983 as the popular choice of the coup makers against the Shagari government, he was not totally unknown to most Nigerians. His Second-in-Command in the new government, Tunde Idiagbon, was, then, relatively unknown but soon became a star in the new government, and in his own right too. The character of the regime began to manifest clearly soon after it settled down to business. There were side talks about the sectional and ethnic inclinations of the regime as exposed by the arrests and detention of our erstwhile political leaders: Shagari was kept under ‘house arrest’, while his Second-in-Command, Alex Ekwueme was securely put away in prison.

Governors whose cases were strictly under investigation, Lateef Jakande, Sam Mbakwe, Ambrose Alli, Adekunle Ajasin, Abubakar Rimi, Jim Nwobodo, etc., were scattered in various prisons in the country. Alli virtually lost his sight while in prison and upon his release by the Babangida regime eventually died a blind man. Mbakwe never really fully recovered from the illnesses he contacted while under that rigourous solitary confinement, Pa Ajasin lost form and his usual robust good health withered away while under Buhari’s gulag. Lateef Jakande barely survived the trauma of that prolonged detention in prison.

Alli, Mbakwe, Ajasin and Jakande, as Nigerians later knew, were not rich after all and by any standards. Yet, they were paraded as criminals who looted our public treasuries. Then, the big one: the unprecedented attempt to bring back to Nigeria, by force, and in a crate, Shagari’s Minister of Transport, Alhaji Umaru Dikko, for trial. The exercise failed and the world was outraged. The Israeli abduction technicians who packaged and executed the failed project for the Buhari military regime pocketed their huge price and quietly disappeared into thin air.

The truth today is that possibly Buhari was ill-advised and mis-informed before he approved the very extreme measures that his military government took against the ousted second republic politicians. But so far, he has not openly admitted that some mistakes were made, including the unnecessary ‘invasion’ and rigourous searching of the Apapa residence of the Yoruba political icon, late Chief Obafemi Awolowo. I repeat: all the governors of the second republic detained during the military regime of Buhari, only very few came out of the rigourous solitary confinement with their good health intact. Go and check. The story about Ambrose Alli, a professor of pathology, and former governor of old Bendel State [now Edo and Delta]who went blind while in prison is still a story to be fully told. And Alli died a poor man.