The Clown In Imo State Government House

By Shaka Momodu

In October 2015, I wrote an article titled, ‘Okorocha Puts Imo in Chains.’ That piece was written as a direct response to Okorocha’s incompetence, maladministration, mismanagement of bailout funds, failure to pay workers’ salaries and pensioners’ entitlements, and the state’s poor infrastructure, particularly in Owerri. His government was riddled with corruption, outright thievery and official celebration of inanities as achievements. But the comic has shown an unrelenting inclination to betray the trust of the people by beating his own worst record of poor performance.

*Gov Rochas Okorocha

I had posited in the referenced article that “one is tempted to call for a psychiatric evaluation of the governor because clearly, something is wrong with a chief executive who wouldn’t construct roads, and who begs for a bailout to pay workers’ salaries – only to go on a wild spending binge abroad with scarce foreign exchange in the name of attracting foreign investors to his state. It is almost unbelievable the level of decay and rot that confronts anyone who visits Owerri”.

It is a shame that the situation in Imo has grown progressively worse such that it has reached a crisis proportion. Angered by my article, the boy-boy deputy governor wrote a disparaging and utterly vacuous counter-narrative to please his master. He tried to practise new highfalutin words he had just learnt on me. But today, we know better.

Governors And The Politics Of Succession

By Reuben Abati

The recent Governorship elections in Edo and Ondo states threw up a number of issues about the politics of succession in Nigeria. In Edo state, you would think it was the then incumbent Governor Adams Oshiomhole seeking re-election. He campaigned more than the candidate.  He danced, waved the broom, his party’s symbol, far more enthusiastically than the man who wanted the office...

*Reuben Abati

He even did more to put down the opposition and any likely threat to Godwin Obaseki’s ambition. His pretty wife was always in tow during the campaigns, and did she dance? Oh yes, she did too. Godwin Obaseki’s emergence as the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in that election caused much disaffection within the party. He was said to be Oshiomhole’s anointed candidate with the allegation that everything was being done to ensure his victory at the polls. Oshiomhole had his way. Obaseki is now Governor of Edo State.

       The incumbent Governor in Ondo State also did as much if not more to manage the politics of succession in the just concluded Governorship election in that state.  He anointed the candidate of his party, followed him everywhere, and “fought” for him, even in the courts and on the streets of Akure. The election was more about Dr Olusegun Mimiko and what he wanted. The situation was not helped by the fact that Mimiko’s choice, Eyitayo Jegede, SAN hails from the same Senatorial district with him, but by far the biggest problem was the division within the PDP, which produced two candidates on the same platform for the same election, with the courts having to decide mid-way and at the late hour, with a superior court overruling the lower court. This confusion created a scenario whereby Jimoh Ibrahim emerged for a while as the party’s candidate, only to be dismissed through a court order two days to the election.

     This did not bother the businessman-lawyer-politician, though. Giving the impression that he was not so desperate to be Governor, he declared that his mission was to make it impossible for Mimiko to achieve his goal of installing an anointed successor. On the eve of the election, he urged his supporters and the people of the state to vote for the candidate of the APC. Under normal circumstances this would be considered an anti-party activity but the PDP is right now in such a confused state as a political party - its ranks are filled with disloyal, one-leg-in-one-leg-out members.  For this reason, in Ondo state, the PDP defeated itself from within even before the election. Mimiko can also be held responsible for his chosen candidate’s defeat. He overplayed his hands in the febrile politics of succession in the state.

     There is perhaps nothing new about incumbents, at state, local and national levels, showing interest in who succeeds them. Being politicians, they could plead that they are duty bound to support their party’s candidate, but where the problem lies is the desperation that attends the choice of such candidates, beginning with the party primary. In the United States, which is an example that can be readily cited, President Barrack Obama openly supported the candidacy of the Democratic Party standard bearer, Hillary Clinton, but he did so only after she had won the nomination. If Bernie Sanders had been the party’s choice, he would still have received President Obama’s support out of loyalty to the party. In other words, it would be difficult to speak of an incumbent American President or Governor anointing a successor and imposing that successor on the party and the electorate.

What Does The President Carry In His Pocket?

By Banji Ojewale

There is this apocryphal tale that the president of the United States of America, said to be our planet’s most powerful country, travels carrying a bag that holds the key to war and peace in the world. It is claimed that the briefcase contains the code the US leader may unravel to release the huge atomic arsenal of God’s Own Country in the event of an attack.

*President Buhari

If he’s away from the US and he’s briefed on his hotline, all he does to enable a lethal hit-back is to go for the bag and probably a key in his pocket. But if he wants peace, he simply allows his pocket be at peace.

Early in 2016 however, sitting President Barack Obama spiked this story of one man playing  God, one man who upon a cryptic call thousands of kilometres from Washington, can decide the fate of billions of souls worldwide, can trigger a contest to destroy mankind. He told a YouTube interviewer that all he holds in the trousers pocket are harmless mementoes, none approximating a nuclear lock.

The gay broadcaster Ingrid Nilsen fired the question that laid all bare: what does President Obama carry in his pocket? The US leader dug into his right trouser pocket and out came an assortment of keepsakes: a rosary given to him by Pope Francis, a tiny Buddha, a metal poker chip he said he got from ‘a bald biker with weird mustache’ in 2007,a Coptic Cross from Ethiopia and a Hindu statuette of monkey god.

A strange collection for a head of state to carry! But he says when he feels tired or discouraged as he battles American and global headaches he reaches into the pocket for relief and mental refreshment. According to Obama, they inspire him and help him “get back to work”.

Now after thrilling myself with Obama’s revelation and observing the travels of our own President Muhammadu Buhari, I have begun to wonder what the Nigerian leader also takes along in the trousers under his flowing agbada. Surely Buhari, the leader of the world’s most populous black nation, would have run into numerous people and well-wishers who would deposit some gifts with him after each encounter.

Buhari Plagiarized Obama In “Change Begins With Me” Speech

By Adeola Akinremi

Plagiarism is not a trivial matter. President Muhammadu Buhari made a terrible mistake last Thursday. He plagiarized President Barack Obama’s speech to launch “Change Begins With Me.”

So you didn’t notice that our president lifted from Obama’s 2008 victory speech and passed it off as if the words were his own? The argument will rage, but the moral problem of plagiarism on a day Mr. President launched a campaign to demand honesty and integrity from the people is what we should concern ourselves with.

*President Buhari with US President Obama
 at the Whitehouse

I’m not a wailing wailer and I don’t like the downfall of any man but I also don’t like to be deceived. The very last thing you should do when you’re launching a campaign like this is to be dishonest with the people.

As Buhari talked down on Nigerians during the launch of the campaign spearheaded by no other person, other than the Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Muhammed, known for his trash-talk, particularly for the opposition, I started following the speech line-by-line. I was alarmed to make the discovery. It was a scandal that escaped the attention of our newspapers. It is one of two things: either people don’t pay particular attention to Buhari’s words or we are a nation of anything goes.

Only in July, Melania Trump, the wife of the Republican White House hopeful, Donald Trump, was caught in the web of plagiarism after she spoke at the Republican National Convention. She plagiarized Michelle Obama’s speech. It was a big headline on television screen and national newspapers. Indeed it was a “global” headline. Yes, a prime part of Buhari’s speech to the nation last Thursday to launch a campaign encouraging new culture of transparency, attitudinal change and hard work among Nigerians was plagiarized from America’s President Barack Obama’s 2008 victory speech.

Buhari’s speech during the launch of the “Change Begins With Me”, a new national orientation campaign, contained largely the same sentiment and arrangement of words that President Obama used in his 2008 victory speech after he was elected the first American black president.

The president lifted a whole paragraph from Obama’s speech and passed it off as his own when he said: “We must resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship, pettiness and immaturity that have poisoned our country for so long. Let us summon a new spirit of responsibility, spirit of service, of patriotism and sacrifice, Let us all resolve to pitch in and work hard and look after, not only ourselves but one another, What the current problem has taught us is that we cannot have a thriving army of rent seekers and vested interests, while the majority suffers.”

Enugu Massacre: The Branding Of Buhari As Comedian-In-Chief

By Emmanuel Uchenna Ugwu

What does President Barack Obama do when a hate-drunk man enters a school building and shoots American kids dead?

The busiest and most burdened leader in the world suspends his routine and moves quickly to own the carnage as the ultimate guardian of the United States. He goes on air soon after the news breaks. He comforts the bereaved families and calms a shaken nation. He swears that America would visit the runaway killer with a condign punishment. He changes his itinerary and visits the devastated neighborhood as soon as possible.

*Buhari 

What did our own Obama do after Fulani herdsmen destroyed farmlands, butchered forty eight human beings, and burnt down a church in Nimbo, Uzo-Uwani, in a three-in-one violation of the people’s livelihoods, lives and religion?

President Muhammadu Buhari, the sentinel of our homeland, did something that illustrates the age-old inhumanity and irresponsibility of Nigerian rulership: He observed the umpteenth terrorist attack on a peaceable Nigerian community and did nothing!

He waited for the governor of the depopulated state of Enugu to contact Aso Rock and request for an audience.

When Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi reported for the appointment, the Nigerian media styled his visit as an occasion for the governor to "brief" the president.

The spin emanated from reflex factory of the Nigerian press. It was their salute to tradition.

A tradition in which order works in reverse. A setting where, in the aftermath of a humanitarian disaster, a healthy commander-in-chief rests easy in his office and waits for the governor to fly to Abuja to confirm the fairy tale.

The ‘briefing’ is a reverse condolence visit; the quest of a traumatized citizenry for the sympathy of the aloof leadership of their own country. It is an aberration. But it had to happen because Nigerian rulers are strangers to empathy. They are incapable of breaking out of the bubble they live in to acquaint themselves with the distress of the street.

Buhari received Ugwanyi with imperial condescension. The President hoped to earn praise for deigning to see the governor. Of course, a photo-op with his lowly caller would telegraph that he was magnanimous enough to pay precious presidential attention to the incident.

But Buhari failed to exude passable seriousness.  The honesty inherent in his constitution foiled the attempt of his politician persona to enact a convincing make-believe reality. The pictures of his encounter with Ugwuanyi showed Buhari jesting with his awkward-smiling visitor. They looked as jubilant as if they had met... to celebrate the success of the massacre!

The pictures of an exultant Buhari and Ugwuanyi, people who were supposedly meeting for a ‘briefing’ on the bloody mayhem, were most incongruous. The pictures strongly suggest that State House photographers did not find Buhari possessed of the sobriety appropriate for the situation. So the media team was constrained to select from all the shots taken the ones in which the two men appeared to be least euphoric!