Nigeria: Must We Have This Census Now?

 By Adekunle Adekoya

It is no longer news that the Federal Government has activated plans to conduct a national population and housing census next month. The last time we had a census was March 2006. There is nothing bad in having a census; indeed, a lot of benefits will accrue if we really know how many of us are together in this country.

Historically, the first census was conducted in 1866 and this was followed by Censuses of 1871, 1881, 1891 and 1901. However, all these earlier censuses were restricted to Lagos Colony and its environs. The 1871 census marked the beginning of decennial census in Nigeria in line with British tradition of census-taking every 10 years.

Why President Buhari And June 12 Can Never Meet

By Jesutega Onokpasa

Apart from his recent June 12 gimmick, President Muhammadu Buhari had hitherto never mentioned MKO Abiola or even June 12 in any positive light. In any case, since Gen Sanni Abacha who stole Abiola’s mandate and whom Buhari happily, thankfully and gratefully worked for remains Buhari’s hero, then that same Buhari cannot deserve any moral credit on account of anything he does about June 12, however laudable.

*President  Buhari 

The bitter truth is that the only viable explanation for his sudden volte face is that Buhari, seeing his Northern hegemony in tatters in the Middle Belt thanks to his rampaging cattle herding kinsmen and clearly perceiving himself to be a drowning man, now finds himself clutching to Abiola (whom he hitherto never showed any regard for) and to June 12 (which he hitherto never expressed any fidelity to) for sheer survival.

Gen Obasanjo's Swan Song And Hubris

By Dan Amor

That General Olusegun Obasanjo, the emperor who misruled Nigeria for eight miserable years ( May 29, 1999 - May 29, 2007) recently raised the alarm that President Muhammadu Buhari was plotting to arrest him, shows how transient or ephemeral power can be! But, to paraphrase Frank Arthur Vanderlip, the great American banker and journalist, "Since nothing is settled until it is settled right, no matter how unlimited power a man may have, unless he exercises it fairly and justly, his actions may return to plague him." Yet, how many Nigerians can see Obasanjo's frustrations and arrogant gaffes as plain as a boil on the nose? As an army general, former head of state and an imperial president for eight years, Obasanjo is a tacit representative of the reactionary faction of the Nigerian ruling class - those shameless apostles of feudal revival who want Nigerians to continue in medieval servitude.

*Olusegun Obasanjo 

Obasanjo's recent alarm is Karma at work. The question is: why is Obasanjo still walking about freely in Nigeria in spite of his crime against the people of this country? For almost eight years, he was the petroleum minister who would not brook any nibbling at shouting down anyone who had the courage to challenge him to appoint a substantive minister to man the oil and gas portfolio. The restiveness, acrimony and rancour which had enveloped the Niger Delta were deliberate creations of President Obasanjo, who would continue to stoke the fire while mindlessly looting the booty. Only a demented despot would spend N200,000,000 daily to maintain the presence of Joint Taskforce in the region that produces over 90 per cent of the nation's foreign exchange earnings while fueling agitations and restiveness among the youths.

Nigeria: Defectors As Jesters

By Dan Amor

It is a sickening reality in Nigeria that defection, the act of leaving one political party for another, also known as carpet –crossing or what the eminent poet and humorist, Uzor Maxim-Uzoatu called “Jumpology” (the political act of jumping from party to party), has been elevated to the height of a national ideology. 

This glamourisation of political prostitution by Nigerian politicians signals the death of commonsense. Before the December 2013 defection of 37 members of the House of Representatives elected on the platform of the then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the then opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) in an open show and fanfare, four PDP governors had led the way in a much more rehearsed, media pampered braggadocio in November 2013.

'Abandoned Property' Was Coined By Those Intent On Perpetrating Daylight Robbery' – COL. ACHUZIA

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THE CHINUA ACHEBE FOUNDATION INTERVIEW SERIES 
November 2005
All Rights Reserved ©

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Joe Achuzia 

*About Col. Joe Achuzia

Born seventy years ago, in the present day Delta State, Col Joe Achuzia has been involved in the programmes and activities of Ohaneze NdiIgbo, the apex socio-cultural organization in Igboland, for the past fifteen years. Since he assumed office as the Secretary-General of Ohaneze NdiIgbo, he has been distinguished by his frankness in public communications and the passion with which he canvases the Igbo position on matters of national and regional interests. He believes strongly in one, united Nigeria, where equity, justice, fairness and mutual respect for one another are unreservedly operational at all levels of governance and social interactions. He is of the opinion that the deterioration in the country is as old as the country itself and that the only way to ensure harmony and progress in the nation is to convoke a conference of ethnic nationalities where the thorny issues plaguing Nigeria could be properly addressed.

After the Biafra/Nigeria in which he played a prominent role, he was detained by Nigerian authorities. Fearing he might not survive the incarceration, he wrote his book, Requiem Biafra, to articulate his role in the war, and check attempts by later writers to, in his own words, “superimposed falsehood” on him.

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Excerpts:

Col Joe Achuzia in Conversation with Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

THE CHINUA ACHEBE FOUNDATION INTERVIEW SERIES 
November 2005
All Rights Reserved ©

---

*Achuzia

*About Col. Joe Achuzia

Born seventy years ago, in the present day Delta State, Col Joe Achuzia has been involved in the programmes and activities of Ohaneze NdiIgbo, the apex socio-cultural organization in Igboland, for the past fifteen years. Since he assumed office as the Secretary-General of Ohaneze NdiIgbo, he has been distinguished by his frankness in public communications and the passion with which he canvases the Igbo position on matters of national and regional interests. He believes strongly in one, united Nigeria, where equity, justice, fairness and mutual respect for one another are unreservedly operational at all levels of governance and social interactions. He is of the opinion that the deterioration in the country is as old as the country itself and that the only way to ensure harmony and progress in the nation is to convoke a conference of ethnic nationalities where the thorny issues plaguing Nigeria could be properly addressed.

After the Biafra/Nigeria in which he played a prominent role, he was detained by Nigerian authorities. Fearing he might not survive the incarceration, he wrote his book, Requiem Biafra, to articulate his role in the war, and check attempts by later writers to, in his own words, “superimposed falsehood” on him.

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Excerpts:

WHERE THE RAIN BEGAN TO BEAT US

Do you think it is possible to identify a particular period in Nigeria’s history when the deterioration commenced, or should we assume the downward slide is, perhaps, as old as the nation itself?

Nigeria, in my opinion, started deteriorating from day one. The gladiators who fought for our independence made all the classical mistakes. They failed to understand that those who pitch themselves in mortal combats to gain independence for the people should quit the stage for peaceful gladiators to take over. You cannot be a warrior and a peacemaker at the same time. No. But, they tried to combine the two, and so failed woefully. And we’ve been going down ever since.

Why then does your generation speak nostalgically about the good old days?

The good old days is a cliché used by people reminiscing about their secure lives as adolescents, and referring to the past as “the good old days...”The bad old days then begins when they have to start taking responsibilities. (Laughter)

So, there have been no good old days in Nigeria?

No, there has been nothing like that.

Army Should Produce Nnamdi Kanu

By Ochereome Nnanna

The excesses of the leader of the proscribed Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, needed to be put in check, no doubt. But I think the Army totally mismanaged it and put those who signed his sureties at risk. In April this year, Justice Binta Murtala Nyako of the Abuja High Court brought relief to the tensed atmosphere wrought by the continued illegal detention of Kanu and granted him bail on rather draconian conditions.

*Nnamdi Kanu

Apart from being barred from granting interviews, addressing rallies and being in a group of more than ten people at any time, he was required to procure three sureties for the sum of N100 million each, one of whom must be a Jewish religious leader (Kanu being a self-acclaimed adherent of the Jewish religion).

Contrary to expectations, the sureties stepped forward. One of them was a notable politician, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, who represents Abia South Senatorial Zone which covers Aba, the hotbed of the Biafran agitation and the wellspring of Igbo nationalism.

Apart from possible political opportunism, I understood Abaribe’s readiness to accept the risky challenge of standing surety for Kanu. He must have felt duty-bound to obey his constituents’ wishes. I think Abaribe was also convinced Kanu would not jump bail. Yes indeed, Kanu violated all the conditions attached to his bail, except the one that concerned Abaribe and the other sureties: jumping bail.

End The Bad Blood Between The Yoruba And Ndigbo Now!

*Azikiwe and Awolowo 

By Femi Aribisala

The hatred between the Yoruba and Ndigbo has gone on for far too long. Let there be love shared among us!

The Yorubas and the Igbos, two of the most resourceful, engaging and outgoing ethnic groups in Nigeria, are becoming implacable enemies. Increasingly, they seem to hate one another with pure hatred. I never appreciated the extent of their animosity until the social media came of age in Nigeria. Now, hardly a day passes that you will not find Yorubas and Igbos exchanging hateful words on internet blogs.

The Nigerian civil war ended in 1970. Nevertheless, it continues to rage today on social media mostly by people who were not even alive during the civil war. In blog after blog, the Yorubas and the Igbos go out of their way to abuse one another for the most inconsequential of reasons. This hatred is becoming so deep-seated, it needs to be addressed before it gets completely out of hand. It is time to call a truce. A conscious effort needs to be made by opinion-leaders on both sides of the ethnic divide to put a stop to this nonsense.

Both the Yorubas and the Igbo stereotype one another. To the Igbo, the Yorubas are the “ngbati ngbati” “ofemmanu” who eat too much oil. They are masters of duplicity and deception; saying one thing while meaning another. To the Yorubas, the Igbo are clannish and money-minded. They are Shylock traders who specialize in selling counterfeit goods.

But the truth is that stereotypes are essentially generalisations and exaggerations. In a lot of cases, they are unreliable and untrue. Stereotypes must be recognised at their most effective as a joke. They are the stock-in-trade of seasoned comedians; the garnish for side-splitting anecdotes at weddings and social gatherings. Stereotypes should not be taken seriously. We should laugh at them without being offended by them.

How To End Governors’ Profligacy

By Bayo Oluwasanmi

Arguably, many Nigerians see state govern­ments as bankrupt. Given their financial conditions, many state governments are currently facing dire financial straits that have resulted in non-payment of workers’ salaries.

The bad news is that there is a zero chance that solutions are near. The problems are one hundred per cent caused by the governors, not by the reces­sion, not by dwindling oil revenues, and not by dwindling allocations, from Abuja.. There is pov­erty, hunger, anger, disease, killings, kidnappings, abductions and insecurity all across the states.

President Buhari and Nigerian some governors 

Former Governor of Abia State, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu recently spoke the minds of a majority of Ni­gerians about the prodigality and profligacy of state governors. He attributed the inability of state gov­ernors to pay workers’ salaries to what he described as propensity to squander public funds on personal luxury.

Speaking to State House correspondents in May while leading a delegation of investors in the power sector to a meeting with Vice President Yemi Osin­bajo at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, he said some governors claim as much as N35 million as trav­eling allowance on one trip. According to Kalu: 

“These governors don’t have enough funds to work for their people because if you check, the money drawn as security votes, they should stop that...Un­less they stop drawing security votes, they will not have enough funds to work with and most of them are living in absolute luxury. So, it is impossible to continue living in this manner.

“Most of the governors are even living in Abuja now. They don’t live in their states. Honestly, if you look at the books very well, for a trip they make, they will take a traveling allowance of N35 million. What are you going to do with that? So, how are we going to progress? Let them sit down and do the job they are elected for.”

The governors of these insolvent states would want Nigerians to believe that their states are broke. In a state broadcast, Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State said: “I want to thank you for your pa­tience, endurance so far in the face of this strike and our financial challenges … What I don’t have I can’t give. Ekiti State is broke.” His Ondo State counter­part, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko addressing protesting workers over the non-payment of salaries for months, said: “So, we can no longer pay salaries, even when they are due…. buckle up for a financial crash, as the state is broke”.

1999-2015: Akpabio As Best Governor

By Dan Amor

One major sign of the growing sophistication of Athenian society in the Golden Age was the rise of history as a critical record of the nation's past. As myth gave way to more accurate chronicling and prose replaced verse as the medium for preserving fact, the fifth century Greeks came closer to the scientific spirit of free inquiry in modern times. In fact, it was then that Plato declared that a life not examined was a life not worth living!

Memories are made of these. Yet, nothing seems more characteristic of the present age than the homogeneity of  its world view. We may frown at its developmental smugness but we must admire its optimism, its cosmopolitanism, its intellectual refinements, its spirit of true enlightenment and the critical engagement with which it examines the world and its leaders. For, it is always instructive for the serious student of history to start by trying to determine what an age thought of itself.

Such an investigation is made the easier by studying the lives and times of the important men and women that shaped the age with their actions. In documenting the life and times of a towering personality, exciting experiences are selected, which present emotional and spiritual values, to interpret the tale as it is rehearsed in imagination or told to an admiring listener or hearer. As a faithful servant, a dedicated realist and reformer, who bridged all gulfs, leveled all mountains and put a lamp in every tunnel, as exemplified by his selfless stewardship to the people of Akwa Ibom State since the past eight years, Obong (Senator) Godswill Akpabio CON, the immediate past governor of Akwa Ibom State, has undoubtedly come to be seen as a modern day phenomenon whose corpus requires a large canvas.