Nigeria: Oil Theft Probe: A Test Case For Federal Government

 By Braeyi Ekiye

The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI,  as well as the Pan Niger Delta Forum, PANDEF, and other critical stakeholders in the Nigerian project recently called for the setting up of a Special Investigative Panel on oil theft and losses.

The call was necessitated by the humongous oil theft that has gone unchecked for as long as oil and gas exploration and exploitation began in Nigeria, some 66 years ago. But these thefts at various oil installation locations across the oil producing areas of the Niger Delta became increasingly unbearable in August 2022, the worst month in oil theft record this year, when a foreign vessel capable of lifting over two million barrels of crude oil escaped from Nigerian territorial waters but was arrested by Equatorial Guinean Maritime security forces.

Peter Obi Is Coming!

 By Chuks Ucheagu

Before the electioneering season, Peter Obi had been underestimated in the presidential race and called a loser. The establishment, made up of ruthless political class who do not want their boat of milking Nigeria and its future dry to be rocked by Peter the Rock, taunted him.

*Peter Obi and his wife, Margaret 

They jeered that he had no structure. The old and tired politicians averred he would come distant third. Then they and their minions mocked that he would only win on social media and end up a mere social media president.

The legacy politicians and their cronies were still living in denial when the gale of ObiDatti Movement started sweeping through the land, stirring a tsunami – ably led by the youths whose popular reality show, BBNaija, for the first time did not distract or deter. They are shocked to their bone marrows at the phenomenal accept- ability of Obi’s candidacy and the demand for his presidency by Nigerians across board. Be- cause no political movement had been this massive, spontaneous, organic and revolutionary in our recorded political experience.

Nigeria: The Dilemma Of The North

 By Sola Ebiseni

In spite of the undeniable clear identity of the Middle Belt and its incomparable gargantuan geographical space, those who still fantasise the old monolithic North would not budge. They keep wallowing in the preservation of the North and would not agree that the empire the British helped them create have long served its useful purpose.

The empire is in a constant state of flux either from the exigencies of statecraft which ensure its fragmentation in state creation or the unchecked influx of tribes of all nations in common brotherhood bound either by religion or cultural occupation which puts the earth and its fullness at the unpartitioned disposal of all. In that situation, it requires no research into history to acquire citizenship.