Rotimi Amaechi’s Glib Talk And Threat To Democracy In Rivers

 By Alabi Williams

Rotimi Amaechi, former minister and governor of Rivers State, at a public lecture on Thursday, October 26, sounded rather melancholic. For a man who has been in government since 1999, first as two-term speaker of Rivers State House of Assembly and later as governor for eight years, before he served as minister of the Federal Republic for another eight years, all on a platter, the privileges he amassed do not justify the grief he attempted to offload. And he was most unfair and incorrect as he tried to blame the polity’s woes on the people.

*Rotimi Amaechi

That same week, Port Harcourt was in turmoil as former governor Nyesom Wike vainly and desperately sought to protect a so-called political structure he claimed to have built. In a democracy, do individuals own political structures to the exclusion of the political party? And whose resources did he deploy to build the structure, Rivers’ taxpayers’ monies?

TheNiche Lecture: Why Does Nigeria Stride And Slide?

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

On Thursday, October 26, the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, NIIA, Nigeria’s foremost think-tank on foreign affairs, will host the 2023 edition of TheNiche Annual Lecture spearheaded by the TheNiche Foundation for Development Journalism.

The lecture series, TheNiche’s annual corporate social responsibility initiative, is aimed at fostering the much-needed but ever-elusive national renaissance. Nigeria is at a crossroads, no doubt, teetering on the brink, facing the abyss. And this is not about being a prophet of doom. All the indices of human development, without any exception, are not only pointing south but are getting worse by the day. 

President, Governors Disown The Poor!

 By Dele Sobowale

“Fish rots from the head.”

If you want to know how good or bad a country is, just take a look at the top politicians. It is now becoming an axiom of political science, that it is almost impossible to have a great country with absolutely atrocious leaders in charge. It all starts from the President or Prime Minister. 

*Buhari

Was there an African or black person anywhere who was not proud when Nelson Mandela was President of South Africa? Who else among the mob that was elected and ruled in Africa who has given us that sense of pride in being African and black? Mandela achieved everlasting fame, universal acclaim and respect in just five years. See what we have got in Nigeria after seven and a half years of Buhari. Surely nobody would be dishonest enough as to call him a great leader – given the legacies he and the First Lady, FL, are likely to leave behind.

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.