Big Waters, Big Floods And Big Calamity: Few Reflections On Moving Forward

 By Godknows Igali

Big Flood 2022, never seen in this part of the world in living human memory or captured in the historical data, visited Nigeria unhindered, especially Bayelsa and the rest of the low-lying areas. Now gradually, effortlessly ebbs away, its trail on many, especially the people whose natural habitat are the flood plains or swamplands. There have been lamentations, wailing and gales of funerals. Life must go on, so the survivors from north to south are rising to restart lives from the scratch.

That natural disasters occur, is a very sordid reality of human existence. From the study of history, archaeology and earth sciences, we have come to know that the world which we know is a product of millions of years of cataclysmic disasters, especially geological (earthquakes, volcanos) and hydrometeorological (floods, tsunamis and strong winds) over time. Some other disasters have been biomedical (plagues).

Buhari And His Dream Of A One Party State

 By Dele Momodu

Fellow Nigerians, where and how does one begin? Whenever you think you have seen it all in our dear beloved country Nigeria, something bigger, bizarre and sometimes even more dastardly occurs. Let me be honest, I have no problem with those decamping in droves from the opposition party PDP to the ruling party APC.

*Buhari 

As far as I’m concerned, they are merely exercising their inalienable rights of freedom of association, speech and movement. However, I have serious issues with only one man, President Muhammadu Buhari who seems to be the Talisman that they all credit with their defection. It is because of him they all turn into turncoat, notwithstanding their previously avowed aversion and derision of this same personage that has been the butt of their ridicule or denigration.

Nigeria: Tracing Grazing Routes Through The Presidential Villa

 By Owei Lakemfa

Alhaji Tanimu Yakubu was Special Adviser on Economic Matters to President Umaru Musa Yar’adua. Before becoming one of Nigeria’s best Presidents in our leadership-challenged country, Yar’Adua was Governor of Katsina State and TY, as Yakubu is fondly called, was one of his cabinet members  for three years from 1999.

When TY was preparing that administration’s first budget in Katsina State, he studied the past trends in the government support for agriculture. He discovered that annually, 80 per-cent of the agriculture budget was allocated for  fertilizer procurement.

Given the fact that there are a number of clearly identified necessities of agriculture, he decided to research why fertilizer alone was consuming four fifths of the agriculture budget.

He appointed consultants to carry out a survey amongst farmers in the state to generate a list of their actual needs; they were 20 items. Then, a second stage of the survey was carried out for the farmers to rank those needs from the most to the least important. The result was shocking. The farmers listed fertilizer as the 13th in their list of their needs! Desertification was ranked number one, extension service, two and  market/profitability, three. The farmers did not even identify subsidy as a requisite. 

Now That Atiku Has Spoken

By Abraham Ogbodo

Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the one better known as Turaki Adamawa has spoken. It is not as if he had been struck dumb by a strange spirit, or something close to such and there had been protracted efforts to recover his speech and good result only came last Tuesday when he spoke at a book launch in Lagos.

In fact, the man has been talking since the beginning of this democracy on May 29, 1999. It is just that he has been saying other things that do not command hot attention. Things like how his love for the new found democracy in Nigeria pushed him and others to stop former President Olusegun Obasanjo from evolving into a life president as Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

He has also been talking on his unequalled leadership prowess, and how such had put him in a better stead to occupy Aso Rock Villa in 2007, instead of late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua; in 2011, instead of Goodluck Jonathan, and even in 2015, instead of the incumbent, President Muhammadu Buhari. It was while waiting till 2019 to represent the same matter that the Turaki, launched more forcefully into the subject matter of Restructuring Nigeria.

He got the right attention for the first time since 2007. Essentially, he said this Nigeria that Nigerians love so much would vanish, leaving everybody fantastically short-changed if we continued in our ways. His words: “our current structure and the practices it has encouraged have been a major impediment to the economic and political development of our country. In short, it has not served Nigeria well, and at THE RISK OF REPROACH (emphasis mine) it has not served my part of the country, the North well. The call for restructuring is even more relevant today in light of the governance and economic challenges facing us. And the rising tide of agitations, some militant and violent, require a reset in our relationships as a united nation.”

Atiku said much more in his about 2000-word message. The choice of that quote is actually to underscore the inherent hesitation in his speech. He came close to confessing that he was being compelled (apparently by forces beyond his control) to say something he shouldn’t say as a Fulani man from Northern Nigeria. In all, ‘Restructuring of Nigeria’ is not among the high topics taught at all levels of intellectual engagement up North. And if it is ever discussed, it is to explain that restructuring of Nigeria into anything other than what obtains currently, is a sin against the North and Islam.

This is why Atiku, in all sincerity, shall need some support from his northern constituency to be able to stand by his big message, come rain or shine. If he remains a lone voice in this wilderness of political restructuring, his people may think he is ‘possessed by demons.’ Although Alhaji Babarabe Musa and even Dr. Junaid Mohammed have said something, voices with higher pitch are required to make the Atiku’s message get close to a reflection of Northern thinking in the light of current national challenges.