Buhari And APC Are Corrupting Democracy!

 By Mike Ozekhome

The staggering sum of N100 million fixed by the APC NEC for its presidential nomination form has rightly sent shock waves of righteous indignation across the country.

The APC had fixed N30 million for the “expression of interest form” and N70 million for the “nomination form”, making a total of N100 million. The party hopes to rake in N1.5 billion from the 15 aspirants that have so far declared interest in the presidential race. By this singular act, the APC has shown a shocking insatiable bacchanalian propensity to corrupt democracy, and democratic ethos, and also scam the entire country.

*Buhari, APC Chairman Adamu and other party leaders

The vulgarity of this exercise lies not just in the abominable fee prescribed, but more in the party’s pretentious mantra of fighting corruption, using a well-orchestrated and carefully oiled Hitler’s Goebel’s propagandist machinery of dubious pedigree. It is the more abhorrent when we realize that this is miles apart from (indeed more than double) the price fixed by the party’s whipping child, the opposition PDP, which has fixed it at N40million (N5 million) for the nomination of interest; and N35 million for the nomination form. The N100m is also over 100% of the N40 million fixed by the same APC for 2018, presidential nomination form.

Bola Ige: Perhaps, Closed Files Should Remain Just That — Closed?

 By Wole Soyinka 

Barely three months have passed since the twentieth anniversary of the murder of the late Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Bola Ige, an occasion that I utilized to remind President Mohammed Buhari, of a subsisting election pledge.  That pledge was to re-open the files on the spate of unsolved political assassinations that had plagued the nation in recent decades. Prominent among those cases was that of the Minister of Justice, murdered on his way to take up a prestigious position with the United Nations. 

*Soyinka 

Presidential response was swift . Buhari ordered  the Inspector-General of Police to re-open those files and resume investigations.  The nation has patiently awaited even a hint of Work in Progress. Most, I am certain, expect no less than a revaluation of prior investigative efforts. None, to my knowledge, has attempted to rush the Chief of Police and his team into judgment.  We all take solace in the knowledge that the wheels of justice grind slowly, but they arrive.  Eventually. 

Open Letter To Ndigbo By John Nnia Nwodo

My Dear Ndigbo

My attention has been drawn to a recorded speech made by Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, leader of IPOB, now streaming in the social media. The speech was ostensibly made in Germany ahead of a visit, Sen. Ike Ekweremadu and I were scheduled to make to Germany for a meeting of Ndigbo. In that video, Nnamdi peddled unprintable lies about me and rebuked Igbos in Germany for inviting me and threatened that I will not leave Germany alive. I would have ignored this speech as I have ignored many of his previous abuses and deliberate falsehood previously broadcast against me.

*Nwodo

I had ignored them in the past not only because the distortions and falsehood were indirectly countered by the robust publicity of my activities and utterances which negated his representations but also because I thought it was indecent for a father and his son to be engaged in public disputations, especially when such disputations in our present circumstances will weaken our solidarity and portray us as a divided and unserious lot.