Ganduje, Sanusi And Other Monarchs

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

With a hasty dismissal of Abdullahi Umar Ganduje and Emir Sanusi Lamido Sanusi as victims of self-induced embroilment in a power tussle, we are denied vital lessons for national development. Again, there is the cynicism that Ganduje who is allegedly steeped in corruption, fecklessness and vendetta lacks the altruism that should underpin his dismantling of the Sanusi monarchy. But until Sanusi secures judicial validation, his royal influence remains vitiated as his centuries-old Kano emirate is split into five. 

*Gov Ganduje and Emir Sanusi

We must appropriate the development in Kano State as an opportunity to assess once again the relevance of the traditional institution to contemporary existence. In Nigeria, like some other parts of the world, communities at inchoate stages of development where they lacked defined institutions for cohesion might have had a need for traditional rulers. But with the development of great institutions for self-regulation, Nigeria does not need the traditional institution.

27 Years In The Hangman’s Noose

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

One of the enduring tropes of human comeback and survival is associated with Fyodor Dostoevsky who gained reprieve from execution at the last minute. 

Yet, the glistering success of the Russian writer in his post-near-death epoch would not have effectively obviated the ordeal of the pall of an imminent death that hung over him before his sudden freedom.

*Clinton Kanu 

But quite unlike Dostoevsky, that tragic hiatus was not short-lived in the case of a Nigerian citizen Clinton Kanu. In 1992, at the age of 29 when he brimmed with the hope of conquering the world, Kanu was sentenced to death for murder. Kanu’s ordeal began when his in-laws were accused of stealing a generator and fluorescent tubes.

Nigeria: Buhari And A University Of His Own

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

With the current preoccupation of President Muhammadu Buhari with the setting up of his own university, his flatulent claim of being actuated by public interest has suffered further repudiation. His pet project has unravelled him not as a touchstone of integrity, moderation and patriotism but as another victim of the acquisitiveness of the nation’s leadership that has ceaselessly undermined good governance.

President Buhari and wife, Aisha 

 To be sure, it was not Buhari himself who publicly vouchsafed his plan to set up a private university. It was his wife who disclosed that she would set up a university with the name Muhammadu Buhari University. But even if Buhari were not the originator of the idea, the fact that his name is associated with the project shows that he is fully behind it. After all, he has not disavowed his wife’s claim since the news broke.

Buhari And Northern Elders’ Awakening

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It is the height of delusional optimism if northern elders expected to crawl out of their cocoon of safety and complicity in the troubles of their region unscathed. They are as guilty as their past and present leaders whom they have blamed for the depravations of their region. They cannot convincingly give up their decades-old role of chorus leaders for bad governance for that of beacons of development signposted by the plenitude of security.

*Buhari 

The tragedy of their region that they have whined about is compounded by the fact of their obliviousness that they are too late in realising that President Muhammadu Buhari lacks the capacity to guarantee security. Without almost the entire swathe of the north including Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Benue, Niger, Plateau and Taraba states being rendered a wasteland by bandits, these northern elders would not have experienced this epiphany. These blood-hungry bandits have been abducting, killing both citizens and foreigners and destroying their means of livelihood. The northern elders bemoan how ruination has become the lot of agriculture as banditry has kept farmers in the north from their farms. 

Nigeria: Police March Of Murders

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Whenever trigger-happy cops kill an innocent citizen, they have only given expression to the adversarial relationship they have cultivated with the rest of the citizens. They have not done anything different from what others who occupy positions of authority do. Those who preside over the affairs of our nation see society as bifurcated between themselves and the rest of the citizens who should be subjected to ill treatment at their hands. 

To them, government does not exist for the people but for a handful of leaders and a coterie of their loyalists. Or why do our leaders not feel the pain of the citizens? How would our leaders feel the pain of driving on a pothole-ridden road when they fly above it? Would they feel the pain of being treated in a slaughterhouse that is outlandishly christened a general or teaching hospital when they fly abroad for medical treatment at the expense of the taxpayers?

Nigeria: Delta’s And Bauchi’s Brutal Schools

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

How much our public schools are not yet primed for the production of the geniuses and patriots of the future is often borne out by the insalubrious developments in them that have become their regular features.

This is not a blight that is peculiar to the public tertiary educational institutions. Their sad fate roils the public imagination simply because the teachers at this educational level easily find a voice under the auspices of their associations such as the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to express their perennial grievances.

Two Easiest Jobs In Nigeria

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Despite the varied perfidy that sullied the recent elections, they are not irredeemably impaired after all. They have provided us with some vital lessons to navigate our labyrinthine political space. Clearly, they have once again jarred us into the consciousness of our seemingly indissoluble deficit in political enlightenment. 

It is such a societal malaise that propels the citizens to cast their votes without knowing the explicit reason they are doing this. In their minds, these remain unresolved posers: Is it really for the vote-buying lucre that is transacted far from the prying eyes of other citizens? Is it on account of the candidate’s past performance either in private or public offices that redounded to the well-being of the citizens?

President Buhari’s Militocracy

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Unless the citizens resolve to prosecute an urgent rescue agenda, the nation’s hard-won democracy would collapse at the hands of President Muhammadu Buhari. And above the rubble would be autocracy and anarchy. These are not far-fetched. We already have their precursor in the now burgeoning militocracy whose chief promoter is Buhari.

*President Buhari 

Ever since Buhari succeeded in conning the citizens with his pretensions to being a born-again democrat, he has never hidden his contempt for the obligations of his newly-found calling. Yet, the citizens make allowance for the blossoming of the democrat in him. But the more they expect him to demonstrate the readiness to abide by the tenets of democracy, the more they are disappointed.

Buhari, El-Rufai And Other Body Bag Democrats

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Any doubt about the nation being imperilled by its warped leadership recruitment has been counteracted by sundry developments in this electoral season. We are again confronted with the stark reminder that in over five decades, those we have entrusted with leadership have often unravelled as a bunch of incompetents who strive to plumb the nadir of retrogression. Thus, the tragedy is that in every epoch, the messiah we think has been thrown up to reverse the savage depredations of his predecessor uncannily considers himself as holding the mandate of surpassing the greed and a lack of direction of past national villains.

*President Buhari and Gov El-Rufai 

 To be sure, this bleak state of national affairs becomes inevitable as long as it is not those who have prepared for leadership that we allow to lead. We are neither attracted to them by the incipient genius in leadership they have demonstrated in community service nor their championing of a pro-people cause. Eventually, those we are saddled with as leaders, in the words of Nasir El-Rufai are “accidental public servants.” 

Buhari Not Wanted On This Journey

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Until after the election of Saturday, we are denied the prescience to tabulate its winner and losers and thus the nation’s president in the next four years. Clearly, poll predictions, even when they seem to be highly informed, have oftentimes been trumped by reality. But one thing is certain: We should be preoccupied with a post-Buhari era if we are genuinely interested in the continued existence of the country . In other words, the citizens should muster sufficient patriotic fervour to consign the re-election ambition of President Muhammadu Buhari to the realm of unrestrained fantasy.

*President Buhari 

The country is on the cusp of a new era where Buhari does not fit in. For in less than four years, we have seen enough of the president to be secure in the conviction that he is a blight not only on the nation’s corporate existence but also on individual citizens’ lives. Or why has Buhari’s second coming brought so much hardship to the citizens? Why has he been a source of massive unemployment resulting in several suicides?

Buhari, Onnoghen Et Al And Their Common DNA

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Except the unabashed pretenders to the throne of equity and transparency, Nigerians need not be shocked by the murkiness and ravenous appetite with which the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen, has been identified. If the alleged fraud of Onnoghen centres on his not claiming what is his, a greater tragedy is the Nigerian state and its leaders claiming what is not theirs.

*Justice Onnoghen 

In that case, how could it be strange that the chief judicial officer allegedly pleaded amnesia to mitigate his culpability when the entire fabric of the Nigerian nation is steeped in fraud? It was fraud that actuated the cobbling together of Nigeria in the first place.

Nigeria: Outsourced Campaign And Presidency

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Even in saner times, the citizens are confronted with an epic struggle in an attempt to trust their politicians. Bogged down by decades of treacheries that have manifested in the repudiation of promises on whose back politicians got to office, the prospect of the citizens trusting them is effortlessly rendered nugatory.

*President Buhari

All the citizens could see is a land strewn with broken promises and the politicians as a venality-plagued species of humanity who veil their self-serving ambitions as the inevitable means of the people attaining development.  Yet, because politicians are indispensable components of the democratic experience, the citizens have to learn to tolerate their peccadilloes, vanities and cupidity. The duplicities of politicians often gain heightened expression in the times of campaigns for offices. Our country is in such times now.

Musings On President Buhari’s Eldorado

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

By not preceding his quest for re-election with an apology for his current poor performance, President Muhammadu Buhari has taken the citizens he is seeking their votes for granted. His is a campaign driven by the notion of the citizens as not being discerning enough to know what is right for them. Buhari and his party are propelled by the illusion that the political enlightenment of the majority of the voters is still at an inchoate stage. 

*Buhari 

Buhari would only realise the falsity of this notion when he has been sent back to Daura. In Daura, he would rue his not taking cognisance of the fact that it was the same voters whom former President Goodluck Jonathan and his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) disdained by not living up to their expectations who sent them out of Aso Rock.

President Buhari, Let IGP Idris Go Home!

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

If the President Muhammadu Buhari government’s patent obsession with plumbing the depths of cronyism gains fresh expression in the extension of the tenure of Inspector General of Police Ibrahim Idris, it would not really be a source of shock to the citizens. By January next year, Idris would have put in 35 years of service and thus by his terms of employment he should quit the police. But the suspicion is rife that Buhari would extend his tenure. Such suspicion may not be unfounded. After all, that was how Buhari extended the tenures of the nation’s service chiefs last year when they were supposed to retire.

*Buhari and Idris

The tragedy of these extensions is that they are not reflective of exemplary services that render the beneficiaries indispensable. No, what has become clear is that they are actuated by a desire to cater for the dark motives of the Buhari government. Or why is multi-faceted damage often inflicted in the course of prosecuting these extensions? Consider these: officers in whom the nation has invested so much in terms of professional training are often retired prematurely.

Badeh, Buhari And Legacy Of Insecurity

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

What serves as a stark reminder of the seemingly irredeemable character of the President Muhammadu Buhari government is its blithe appropriation of its failings as the hallmarks of its triumph. Lost in this self-assigned halo of infallibility, it denies itself the capacity for introspection and thus holds no promise of self-correction.

*Air Marshal Alex Badeh 

Hence, while it is clear to the majority of Nigerians that the government has failed in the three major areas – economy, corruption and security – in which it wants the citizens to measure its performance, it is still afflicted by the delusion of having recorded indelible strides in those spheres. The alarming rise of the unemployment rate from 17.6 million to 20.9 million as has just been released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) is obviously disdained by the government.

Joshua Dariye And The Joys Of VIP Criminal

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It is an uncommon case that negates the Kafkaesque leitmotif that the law is beholden to the privileged, especially in a third world country like Nigeria – a former state governor, Joshua Dariye, was jailed for corruption.

Reflective of his preoccupation with the bizarre conundra of the human condition, Franz Kafka’s “Before the law” confronts us with the huge impediments in the path of the less privileged to get the law on their side. In the rare cases where the law grants access to the poor, it is because its defences have been broken down by bribery or the real fury of the oppressed.

*Joshua Dariye

But in the case of Dariye, the law is not really out to assert its equality before the rich and the poor. As a member of the privileged class, Dariye has found a way to make the law serve him even though he is in prison. Before Dariye went to jail, he was a serving senator. Dariye was Plateau State governor from 1999 to 2007. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) prosecuted him for embezzling N1.162 billion within this period. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison. But after his appeal was decided, this sentence was reduced to 10 years. 

Aisha Buhari And The President’s Men

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

A justification for an inevitable return of President Muhammadu Buhari to Aso Rock in 2019 has not unexpectedly accompanied the frenetic campaigns in some quarters. The president’s political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the leaders of his government reel off the epochal achievements that have validated an end to the citizens’ serial negation of his quest to occupy the presidential office.

*Aisha Buhari 

For them, these achievements redound to the bid for his return as a means of completing the good governance he has espoused and enthroned. And more importantly, they want the citizens to appropriate a campaign for his return as serving a purgatorial purpose – a way of discharging their obligation of gratitude to him for bringing uncommon integrity to bear on governance.

Nigeria: Metele As Price Of National Swindle

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Aside from the occasional death of soldiers in their battle against Boko Haram, the nation is now confronted in Metele with a seeming culmination of the military’s losses to the insurgents in the north-east. The government has often fumed at the obduracy of its traducers who instead of trumpeting the wonders of its military in Sambisa Forest have rather warned that more still needed to be done to defeat the insurgents in the light of the occasional suicide attacks on civilians and losses of two or four soldiers to the insurgents.

But the recent killing of about 100 soldiers in Metele, Borno State, so shattered the charade of triumph over the insurgents that President Muhammadu Buhari had to dispatch his defence minister to Chad for more collaboration in defeating them. Clearly, the dead soldiers deserve all the garlands for their bravery and patriotism for which they have paid the supreme price.

Nigeria: Jonathan’s Politics As Gold Standard

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

After former President Goodluck Jonathan launched his memoir My Transition Hours on Tuesday, he might have heaved a sigh of relief. It might not be because the ordeal of writing and preparing to present the book to the public was now off his shoulders. Nor because he was now luxuriating in the cathartic effect of dislodging the single narrative that de-privileges his role in nation-building and the 2015 elections. Rather, it could be because of the sweet contemplation of the fresh horizon of possibilities that had opened before him. Now, he realised that it was not all gloom – he might not have been denigrated as an irredeemable villain after all.

*Former President Jonathan 

For over three years, Jonathan might have been shocked by how his legendary good luck has mutated into a source of personal tragedy as he was weighed down by the thought of his now being eternally identified with a dark role in the crisis of development of the nation. He might have felt that he and his government were held in utter disdain by the President Muhammadu Buhari government that has continued to afflict them with a rash of allegations of sleaze. The Buhari government has been unrelenting in portraying the Jonathan government as presiding over the unconscionable despoliation of the country. It seizes every moment to catalogue the depredations instigated by Jonathan and his co-travellers. 

Lai Mohammed And Others Feeding Off El-Zakzaky

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

With a pedigree of an incurable self-advertisement behind it, the Muhammadu Buhari government is not known for half-measures.

Alas, this propensity has not found its profoundest expression in the prosecution of an agenda for engendering good governance. 

*Lai Mohammed 

The upshot is that the emergence of the Buhari government has burdened the citizens with a miserable existence that harks back to a Hobbesian state of nature where life is nasty, brutish and short on account of the half-hearted measures for governance that has been deployed. For the political party of Buhari, the All Progressives Congress (APC), there is the tragedy that this predilection has also become the petard on which it is being hoisted.