Re-Thinking Nigeria: Beyond Myths, Illusions And Self-Deceit

 By Pat Utomi

Nigeria is a mess right now. A huge mess. Even the blind can see it. And the deaf can hear the cry of anguish of Nigeria’s children. Can the country be rescued? Possibly. But the myths, years of delusions of grandeur and criminal capture of the Nigerian state threaten the possibility.

*Utomi

Last week one of the great TV interviewers in Nigeria, Charles Aniagolu, asked me the big question. How did we get here?

I resisted the temptation of the immodest but frank answer:   go and read just about everything I have written in the last 40 years.

Senate And The Poor Next Door

 By Andy Ezeani

The Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, as with most public institutions in the country, hardly gets embarrassed with anything or under any circumstance. Were it otherwise, the upper chamber of the country’s National Assembly would have ended last week with its tails between its legs. It ought to. But that was not so. On the contrary, the lawmaking institution embarked on a bullish pushback against an obvious gaffe that it ought to feel thoroughly embarrassed at. 

*Akpabio and Tinubu

The strenuous effort last week, marshalled by the chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Publicity, Yemi Adaramola, on the umbrage taken by some citizens at the seeming mockery of the poor on the floor of the Senate led by the Senate President himself, was quite pathetic. Couched in highfalutin language that came across more like a students’ union composition than any purposeful communication from such height, the Senate missed an opportunity to cast a better image of itself. 

The Big Tent Odyssey And Saving Democracy In Nigeria

 By Pat Utomi

There are many still in shock about February 25th and March 18 elections. This is understandable. In the week before the 20th of February it appeared the Obidient movement had pulled off a miracle and already made good of the first part of the first promise of the Obi/Datti manifesto: To unite and secure Nigeria.

From Sokoto to Sagbama, Lagos to the lungus of Borno the youth of Nigeria were gyrating to the same beat of the president we need. Were we finally close to the words of our first national anthem, “though tribe and tongue may differ, in brotherhood we stand”.

Nigeria: How Obi Changed 2023 Presidential Election

 By Dominic A. Okoliko (PhD)

By February 25, 2023, Nigeria’s next president will be decided, and the choice is between Peter Obi (Labour Party), Bola Tinubu (All Progressives Congress), and Atiku Abubakar (People’s Democratic Party) with Rabiu Kwankwaso (New Nigeria Peoples Party) as a possible fourth. My argument is that Obi’s emergence as a candidate in the election strikingly distinguishes the 2023 election from previous ones. It is therefore, important to know the conditions that made this turn of history possible.

*Obi

A symbol of political revolution, rebellion

Observers of this election can agree that whether Obi wins the election or not, he will be remembered for giving the establishment parties a run for their monies and extreme influence. Until his emergence, a third force unsettling the status quo was a mere wish. Nigeria’s electoral history post-1999 shows that presidential elections used to be a two-horse race between an incumbent party and an often-weak main opposition party.

Why Character Matters In Politics

By Patrick Utomi

One of the sad paradoxes of Nigeria’s political journey is the current widely held view that in politics anything goes. To explain the most disgraceful personal conduct, it seems ‘okay’ to just say ‘na politics na’. 

                                                                     *Prof Utomi 

This dominant vice of politics, as the art of the indecent, rather than the art of the possible, which is dominant in contemporary political culture in Nigeria is exactly opposite the core issue in Western political thought and history. There the central issue has been morality or public virtue, as Montesquieu calls it. 

The great escape from misery for Western civilisation, beyond Angus Deaton’s case for the contribution of health care and the discovery of the germ theory of disease, has largely come from freedom that democracy offers. 

Nigeria: A Nation Of Cowards And Docile Citizens

By Nnanna Ijomah

It is said that “a nation of sheep is governed by wolves”. Nigerians have not only become sheepish and docile but also whiners and cowards. Docility has become our middle name and we have come to display it on our chests as badges of honor. I don’t know when we became this way but I’m sure it’s been long in the making. Over the years it has become more evident that we have become a very timid and spineless people, with a high degree of acceptance and tolerance of whatever mistreatment our leaders, both at the local, State, and Federal levels mete out to us. There is a popular saying, “the future belongs to those who change it”.

In Nigeria today, we have as its citizens, though ethnically, linguistically and culturally diverse, a people who are scared or reluctant to effectively bring about real change and not the fake change promised by the APC. A people who continuously elect and re-elect people whose past track records does not show any evidence of any real effort in terms of policies or actions to improve their lives or their standard of living. This is what Aribisala said not long ago about the President on this issue.

“He, Buhari commanded the support of a significant number of the Northern poor, in spite of the fact that there is absolutely nothing in his curriculum Vitae about advancing the interest of the poor.”

Here he, the President is not alone. The same can be said of most of our Governors and national Assembly members. The reality of our situation in Nigeria today is that we wallow in the status quo and seem to be content with it. We whine and complain daily about our leaders and the deplorable state of our existence but fail to acknowledge our role in electing them or the courage to hold them accountable.

The more I read about events in Nigeria or the state of the nation, the alarming scope of corruption despite the war against it, the ineffective or none -existent economic policies and its aftermath, the increasing poverty rate in the country especially in the North, the complicity of INEC and our security officials in rigging elections, the non-payment of worker’s salaries both at the state and federal levels, the religious massacres by herdsmen and the lack of a tough response or arrests by federal government officials and the financial appeasement by a state governor, the instability in the Niger Delta, the agitation for Biafra by the Igbo’s, the unending blame campaign of the President of his predecessor, etc. etc., the more I feel morbidly entranced like a homicide detective gazing into a pool of freshly spilled blood. I use the phrase freshly spilled blood literally because that’s what each new unfortunate event looks like. If I may borrow the words of Pat Utomi in a recent comment he made, “Nigeria is a paradox of progressive degradation, where every Government is worse than the one that preceded it”. As the new year begins this month I have become more apocalyptic about the future of the country and its political stability.