Tinubu’s Minority Government Faces A Legitimacy Challenge

 By Olu Fasan

Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the newly installed president of Nigeria, is a product of two great institutional anomalies. One is a deeply flawed Constitution designed to delegitimise the presidency of Nigeria. The other is a Might-Is-Right state that manipulates state agencies to impose its will on the people. These anomalies deny Tinubu’s presidency the strong mandate and legitimacy it badly needs to govern.

*Tinubu

Let’s start with the constitutional anomalies. Under section 134 (2) of the 1999 Constitution, a candidate is deemed elected as president, where there are more than two candidates, if: (a) he has the highest number of votes cast at the election, and (b) he has not less than one-quarter of the votes cast at the election in each of at least two thirds of all the states in the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

Pastor Tunde Bakare And The Lies Of A Failed State

 By Chuks Iloegbunam 

Pastor Tunde Bakare of The Citadel Global Community Church recently spoke through his hat while preaching a sermon. He told his congregation that, during the January 15, 1966 military action that toppled the First Republic, the soldiers that took Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewa removed his turban, poured wine on his head and force-fed him with the alcohol. For abominating him, Balewa, just before he was shot, pronounced a curse on Ndigbo, to the effect that no one from the ethnic group will ever bear rule over Nigeria. Mr. Bakare’s story, fanciful as it sounds, is a pack of lies. This article, therefore, is to educate Mr. Bakare and others of his misguided persuasion with the truth, of which Jesus, the Christ said in John 8: 32: “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” 

*Awolowo, Azikiwe, Balewa

 

On the mundane level, no one removed any turban from Sir Abubakar’s head. The turban is a headdress. Soldiers invaded the Prime Minister’s official residence at around 3am, when the man was in bed. Did he sleep turbaned? Do people sleep in their headdresses? Apart from that picture in which presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari appeared in suit and tie, wearing a wan smile and looking almost comical with his receding hairline, there hardly is another photograph of the man in which a cap does not adorn his head. Would his traditional fondness for full dressing gear ever mean that he went to bed in a hat? Do women sleep with all those accessories they routinely assembled on their heads for public events? Tafawa Balewa’s turban was not removed because he wasn’t wearing one when his adversaries closed in on him.

Fuel Price: See What Politics, Hypocrisy Have Caused!

By Onuoha Ukeh

Last week Wednesday, when the Federal Government announced the increase in the price of petrol, from N86. 50 to N145 per litre, I went to a filling station to buy fuel. The time was 11.15pm. On the queue before me was this commercial tricycle operator, who was, surprisingly, excited that he was paying N145 for a litre of petrol he had bought N86. 50 a few hours ago. As he handed his money to the filling station attendant, after being served, he said, with a wry smile on his face: “If they (government officials) like, they should increase the price further. We will continue to buy fuel. Nigerians must survive, whether government likes it or not.”

I saw on the man’s face an obvious scorn for government. Where he was supposed to be angry that a government and a group of politicians, who had made Nigerians to believe that the previous government was clueless, incompetent and unpatriotic, are simply hypocrites, who say one thing and do completely another, he appeared overwhelmed by shock, which has turned to disdain and derision. Like this tricycle operator, most Nigerians would rather mock the government than cry for an action, which would definitely increase their suffering and hardship.   It is a feeling of regret, a feeling that one has when his trust has been betrayed.  It was such a feeling that Julius Caesar had when he was stabbed by Brutus, during the conspiracy that claimed his life. Caesar had exclaimed, when Brutus thrust the dagger into his back: “Et tu Brute?” (Even you, Brutus?).

To be sure, when the hike in the price of fuel was announced last week, most Nigerians felt betrayed. Who would have believed that President Buhari would approve the hiking of fuel price, having opposed this previously? Indeed, Nigerians will not forget January 1, 2012, when the government of former President Goodluck Jonathan announced the removal of subsidy and effected an increase in the pump price of fuel to N141 per litre. When this happened, President Buhari, who was then smarting from defeat in the presidential election of 2011, about seven months earlier, condemned the action. Former Lagos State governor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, kicked against it. Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, rejected it. Erudite Pastor Tunde Bakare not only preached against it but also participated in a mass action organised by the Save Nigeria Group he co-convened and other groups. Many members of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who were in Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) and the All Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) then, spoke against the increase in fuel price. The Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Trade Union Congress (TUC), human rights groups and activists opposed the price hike. Indeed, the groundswell of opposition gave fillip to a street protest, wherein the opposition took over a square in Ojota, Lagos to hold what could pass for “political adoration.” And for days, Lagos and some major cities were grounded. We remember that the President Jonathan administration, face-to-face with imminent crash of government and democracy, buckled and reversed itself, only making a slight increase to N87 per litre.

Politics Of Fuel Subsidy

By Sunday John

ONCE  again, the issue of fuel subsidy has come to the crucible of socio-economic life of Nigerians. Politics of fuel subsidy withdrawal has been a recurring issue over the years, from the time of General Yakubu Gowon as head of state. No government has come without harassing and intimidating Nigerians with fuel pump price increase and/or complete removal of fuel subsidy, otherwise called deregulation. It appears to have become a pastime for our rulers especially when they want to make scapegoats for their corruption, failures and economic naivety.

All governance ineptitude by the political rulers are heaped on fuel subsidy. It is the reason for the country’s backwardness, abysmal infrastructure, debt burden, poverty, corruption, etc. That is the reason the populace is intermittently administered with some obsolete concoctions of the benefits of subsidy removal by every successive government. Buhari may not have engaged in this sophistry of the benefits of subsidy removal because of some want of oratory. Indeed, as long as fuel subsidy is concerned, Nigerians have gone through a lot of torture in the hands of various governments. We have been harassed, tormented and bamboozled.

 Protests against fuel pump price increase/subsidy removal have cost lives, wastage and destructions. The ruling class are, of course, not the victims. The victims are the commoners, on whom they unleash their mediocrity and sadism. Like the ancient Roman emperors, the governments of Nigeria revel in seeing their subjects fight with the beast of subsidy now and again in the amphitheater.

 It is entertainment for them to hear us cry, see us abandon our legitimate duties and spill to the streets in protest, and our children roam the streets because schools are shut. Otherwise, how can a president or the ruling class that say they understand our pains add to the same pains instead of ameliorating it? The government knows that petroleum products, especially the Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, is one thing that affects the lives of all Nigerians irrespective of their social status or age. All aspects of life is based on it, and that is why the people do not react happily to any tampering with its price. With a high currency exchange rate that has triggered inflation and put private businesses at risk, the removal of fuel subsidy at this time is nothing but rubbing salt in a putrefying sore.

Soyinka’s 60 Reasons (2)—An Investigative Report

By Chinweizu

07feb15

Soyinka says he has 60 reasons for not voting for Jonathan?  

 Is this one of them?

China Signs $23Billion Oil Deal With Nigeria

http://www.globalresearch.ca/china-signs-23-billion-oil-deal-with-nigeria/19390

By Trevor Johnson

Global Research, May 28, 2010

Or is this one of those off-the-radar reasons that it pays not to mention to the people?

Now, about my friend and old sparring partner WS. If you want to know what the Western powers are up to in Nija, you just watch WS. He has been their boy-in-the-hood ever since one of his lecturers at IU inspired him to set up his Pyrates as cover for a Nija network branch of British intelligence. And you think he got his Nobel for his unreadable books? But that’s another story.

Anyway what has that deal, signed in May 2010, got to do with Wole’s pro-Buhari position, or with the momentum of the Buhari campaign despite his being prima facie the Boko Haram candidate?

The report about that China deal concluded on this note:

“Western policy on Nigeria is driven by the super-profits generated from the extraction of oil and its processing. While publicly the US and its allies proclaim the need for democracy and openness, this is window dressing. Anything that impedes their drive for profits, whether from local opposition or from a rival nation, will be dealt with ruthlessly when required. The latest moves by China will have caused consternation in the boardrooms of the big oil companies, and countermeasures are all but inevitable.”

That’s the link, I tell you, to events now unfolding in the 2015 elections.

Is the pro-Buhari campaign momentum part of the countermeasures? An effort at regime change by orchestrated propaganda?

To appreciate that possibility, go watch the film “A Very British Coup” to see how such is done.

But what was the deal for? Why did it give offence and cause consternation in the boardrooms of the western oil giants—Shell, ExxonMobil and the lot?