No Shaking! The Igbo Spirit Lives On!

 By Dan Onwukwe 

Nigeria is very much looking like a horror movie that many people troop in to watch in a cinema. Every passing day, news about the country, and the conduct of government, its officials and some of its key institutions, could break the human spirit. This is because, things that are considered abominable and utterly wicked have become the ‘new normal’ in the country. 

A friend of mine called me last weekend from Canada. His voice was shaking. I thought he has lost someone. But it was a different kind of news. I asked him what has gone wrong. He said everything: “Even from afar there’s darkness at the edge of Nigeria”, he said, as his voice began to tremble. He added ,”if the Nigeria Police could arraign scores of hungry-protesting kids for alleged treason, the government must have lost its soul, and the leadership gone astray”.  He ended the call with this cryptic comment, “this is how autocrats begin”.  

Dangote Refinery, Victim Of Nigerian Factor

 By Dele Sobowale

A lot of media people have been talking to Alhaji Aliko Dangote lately; more would give an arm to be able to reach him – all because of the refinery which was advertised as the answer to our perpetual fuel problems. Laymen and women have developed the notion that, when it starts supplying fuel, prices would crash to pre-subsidy removal levels – among other expectations. More unsolicited write-ups have been sent to me by strangers and friends, alike, about Dangote himself and his refinery than I have ever received in a long time.

*Dangote 

Suddenly, the Dangote Refinery, apart from pervasive hunger, appears to be the only subject worthy of attention. The opinion leaders are almost evenly divided – those sympathetic to Dangote and those totally against – even though the latter are often afraid to be identified. That is power – the ability to make people fear you even when you don’t know them.

Save The President From Himself!

 By Dan Onwukwe

Nothing is normal any more in Nigeria. In both scale and scope, the ominous signs are everywhere for any discerning mind to see. The message is simple:  What leaders do while they are trying to get political power is not necessarily what they do after they have it. That, in itself, is lesson in power. Whatever former President Muhammadu Buhari made worse for Nigeria and its citizens, Tinubu presidency is striving to make breathtakingly  much worse in scope.

*Tinubu
If Buhari was, for want of a better word, a nepotistic Northern President, Tinubu is careening dangerously towards becoming, to paraphrase Olusegun Adeniyi, columnist and Chairman, Editorial Board, ThisDay newspapers, an ‘Oduduwa President’. The evidence is no longer in doubt. 

Abati, Arise TV’s PR Show And Buhari’s Dementia

 By Farooq Kperogi 

That even the vaguest pretense to traditional watchdog journalism is in throes of death in Nigeria’s institutional news media was instantiated by the interview Arise TV’s crew had with Muhammadu Buhari last week. It was out and away a PR job that masqueraded as journalism.

*Buhari and the Arise TV Team
 

The questions were feeble, obvious follow-up prompts were ignored, the questioners were diffident, and the viewer is left scratching their head about what they had just watched. It was the journalistic equivalent of a bad circus. 

I am glad famous Punch columnist, Sonala Olumhense, clinically dissected the interview in his Sunday column and showed what a tragic professional theater the interview was. Even though I was initially inclined to comment on the poor quality of the conduct of the interview, I chose to cut the interviewers some slack because I thought managing to get reclusive and tight-lipped Buhari to talk after nearly six years of ignoring the domestic news media was praiseworthy. 

Buhari: Sad And Saddening Interviews

 By Tony Eluemunor

Ordinarily, any Nigerian should celebrate the very fact that President Mohammadu Buhari granted two nationally televised interviews in two days. This was a man who had been dubbed the taciturn one simply because he would clam up even when the cries of a need to address the nation was howling like the harmmattan wind. 

*Buhari 

Yet, what did the average Nigerian get? On very vexatious issues, the average Nigerian has remained as uninformed about the real issues in BUhari’s mind as though the man never spoke. And yet, he did speak volumes. 

This time, the blame does not lie with the President at all. He never at any moment refused to answer any questions and it is to his credit that he never ruled some topics as no-go areas. So, what went wrong? 

What Do Yoruba People Want?

 By Olusegun Adeniyi

Even with a mask practically covering his face, I saw the expression of surprise when I posed this question to the Osun State Governor, Adegboyega Oyetola. Seated directly in front of his desk at the Osun State Government House in Osogbo, I was observing every gesture.

                        *Awolowo 

After a long pause, he said: “That is a very difficult question but I will answer it.” Another long pause followed during which he was apparently processing his thoughts. Then finally, the governor responded: “What Yoruba people want is a peaceful, secure and prosperous region in a just, peaceful and prosperous Nigeria that every citizen would be proud to call their country.”

The governor was candid as he explained the challenge of insecurity in the South-west, the process that led to the establishment of ‘Amotekun’, the operational guidelines and structures that are still evolving from state to state and the need not to mix security with religion or ethnicity. At the end, I left Oyetola better educated about the problem South-West governors are trying to confront and the stand of the Yoruba nation within a diverse Nigeria. The governor also explained how he was able to defuse the crisis in the Osun education sector as well as the financial engineering and alternative project funding that has helped the state to rid itself of the notoriety for non-payment of salaries while still embarking on a number of infrastructural projects. These of course are issues we will come back to another day.

Nigeria: Of Lawmakers And Bribe-Takers

By Olusegun Adeniyi 

From the judgement of a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos which orders President Muhammadu Buhari to “urgently instruct security and anti-corruption agencies to forward to him reports of their investigations into allegations of padding and stealing of some N481 billion from the 2016 budget by some principal officers of the National Assembly” to damaging allegations by both former Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and former Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, the spotlight is now on our federal lawmakers who are being perceived as no more than cheap bribe-takers. 

*Senate President Saraki and House Speaker Dogara

The situation is not helped by the widespread knowledge that the National Assembly has become the watering hole of high-maintenance ex-governors, semi-literate political contractors, wanted international criminal suspects and some yesterday’s men who are now in desperate need of economic empowerment. Yet, in a situation where lawmakers behave like gangsters, the various executive bodies like ministries and agencies will begin to see their assignments in transactional terms as oversight becomes a ritual of appeasement of the greed of committee members and the budgeting process, which ordinarily should be a serious assignment, degenerates into an annual bazaar. 

Nigeria: A Hard Lesson For Gov Rochas Okorocha

By Olusegun Adeniyi

On 24th March 2012, Chief Rochas Okorocha, then less than a year in office as Imo State Governor, was in Kosovo where he signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for an independent power plant, an agro processing plant and several other industries that he promised would be established in his state. There were neither feasibility studies nor any clear ideas as to where the money to finance these projects would come from but those sorts of things never really worry the ebullient governor. 

*Gov Rochas Okorocha 

A few weeks before the trip to the Balkan Peninsular, Okorocha had declared a four-day holiday for workers in Imo State so they could partake in the take-off of the Community Council Government (CCG) he instituted. And for this extra-constitutional fourth-tier of government, the governor approved the disbursement of N5 million to each of the communities in the 27 local councils from a subvention of N3 billion that was not captured in the 2012 Imo State Appropriation Bill.. He also declared free education at all levels in the state after announcing that he would be paying salaries to all the primary school pupils (yes, pupils, not teachers alone). And to be sure, Okorocha actually went to some primary schools where the pupils were lined up for him to hand them N100 each! 

Maina: Who is Fooling Who?

By Segun Adeniyi

In discussing the controversy around the reinstatement and promotion of the twice-dismissed former Chairman of the Presidential Task ForceTeam on pension Reforms, Mr Abdulrasheed Maina yesterday at our editorial board meeting, a member said something instructive. According to the person, while the former administration ‘democratised’ corruption, the current one has decided to ‘privatise’ it.

*Abdulrasheed Maina

If any proof was ever needed about that summation, readers only have to check out what members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in both the Senate and House of Representatives said on Tuesday in their contributions to the motion on how the former level-14 civil servant with enormous power and wealth suddenly got back his job with promotion and a N22 million bounty in arrears.

The State Of The Nation

By Olusegun Adeniyi

Following a recent column which apparently did not appeal to a particular reader, he sent me a tweet that when next I have no important message to convey, I should just simply not write. Today is one of such days and I have decided to follow his advice. The point really is, even if I choose to write, what is there to write about that would be appealing to readers? For instance, the same friend who suggested yesterday that I could write on the crisis within the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)–whose national secretariat called “Wadata Plaza” has been turned to “Wahala Plaza”–also warned me to be careful now that the party is being invaded almost on a daily basis by some Boko Haram Avengers!

*Olusegun Adeniyi

However, even when I have elected not to write about the issue, I still consider it amazing that some PDP governors, in their cold calculations to hijack the party, would be naïve enough to believe they could use and dump a tested politician like the former Borno State Governor, Senator Ali Modu Sheriff. While they told Nigerians that Sheriff was brought in to complete the tenure of Alhaji Ahmed Adamu Muazu which ended three months ago, Sheriff now says the deal he had with them (when they came to “beg him”) was to chair the party till 2018!

Nevertheless, it is interesting that the Senator Ahmed Markafi-led PDP national caretaker committee would alledge, as it did yesterday, that Sheriff was being sponsored by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to scuttle PDP’s chance in the forthcoming governorship election in Edo State. After storming the PDP secretariat on Monday with thousands of his supporters with a “court order” he has refused to produce, Sheriff specifically announced plans for the Edo gubernatorial election and appointed a committee for that purpose. While PDP leaders are now pointing accusing fingers at the APC for the crisis, the pertinent question is: Were they not warned?

In February this year, the Kano State Governor, Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje said the emergence of Sheriff as PDP National Chairman was a good omen for the APC. “We are happy because we believe in the long run he would work for us…Looking at the antecedents, the history of the chairman himself, we all know he is a cross carpeter. He is always on the move in changing from one party to the other. Even when he was in All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) for eight years, he was working for the PDP. Even APC started with him, and then he went back to PDP and we were happy. I am sure in the long run he would work for us,” said Gandoje just four months ago so why should I be concerned about a problem foretold?

Okay, I know there are readers out there who may remind me that if indeed I want to write it doesn’t have to be about the PDP crisis, especially since Osun State is again in the news, this time over the controversial wearing of Hijab by female Muslim students during school hours. To be sure, I am following the sordid drama as some Christian leaders goad their wards to also begin to wear “coats of many colour” to school–garments for Boys Brigade, Girls Guide, Choristers and others. I have seen interesting photographs of what Osun schools have been turned into but I cannot write on the issue now because I am still waiting to hear from Sat Guru Maharaji who is yet to give instructions on how children of his adherents in the state must now dress to school. And then worshippers of Ogun, Sango, Obatala etc must also be bracing up with their own apparels.

Is APC Ready for Leadership?

By Olusegun Adeniyi

To be sure, we are all aware that there was no way President Muhammadu Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC) would have been able to wrestle power from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) without poaching from members of the then ruling party. But now that the APC is in government at the centre, it is not too much to expect that the party would begin to forge its own distinct identity. From the way things stand, however, no such thing is going on. If anything, the PDP is gradually but steadily imposing itself on the polity, essentially because nature abhors a vacuum. There is nowhere that has become more apparent than in the National Assembly.

In most democracies across the world (whether parliamentary or presidential) once a political party becomes the majority in the legislature (even if by just a single vote), its members would assume the chairmanship of standing committees. The essence of that is not only to compensate for victory but indeed to also push the agenda of the new ruling party. But in Nigeria, legislative committees are seen as booties to be shared by the presiding officers with the “more juicy” ones reserved for friends and allies regardless of their competences or lack thereof. It is within that context that one can understand the recent composition of the standing committees in both the House of Representatives and Senate.

*Buhari and Saraki

It must be pointed out that the “political hybrid” in the National Assembly did not start with this administration since minority parties have always been given some committees to chair. But it has never been this pronounced though I will blame it on the way the new ruling party mishandled both the election of presiding officers and its eventual fall-outs. In the present circumstance, since APC members are not united by any shared ideals, it is easy to see why, in the House of Representatives, virtually all the committees that are important for reforms of certain areas of our national life have been handed to the opposition PDP members by the Speaker, Hon Yakubu Dogara, who is evidently more interested in shoring up his support base, in the absence of any coherent policy direction by his party.