Nigeria: Siege, Plot Against Democracy

By Oshineye Victor Oshisada

The recent siege on the National Assembly was an aberrant behaviour. The institution is an august law-making organ of governance. However, its hallowed status was disdained when the Department of State Services (DSS) barricaded its gates to shut out the law-makers on August 7, 2018. That occurred on the assumption that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) was contemplating of sacking the Senate President, Bukola Saraki and his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu.

 The hooded security men shouted that they were on the orders not to permit anybody –members or staff- to have entrance.

Assumption of the removal of the Senate President by the APC is not tenable. In law, one cannot take assumption for reality; it is not evidence. An assumption is based upon suspicion. Chapter V, Part I Section 50 (2) takes care of the removal of the President or Deputy President of the Senate. The Constitution of 1999 is supreme, and not a kangaroo method of removal.

Buhari, Just Come Back Home!

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Whether President Muhammadu Buhari has been irrevocably hobbled by ill-health or is sound in bound and mind and prancing around in the Abuja House in London is a puzzle that would not be unravelled until he returns home.

*Buhari 

Even if all the state governors, the officials of the presidency and political parties travel to London and return with the verdict that Buhari exudes great health and a stellar sense of humour that belies the stern stuff he is made of, this would make no difference to Nigerians. Let Buhari write again to his Guinean counterpart that he is well and that he would soon return to Nigeria to assume the responsibilities he has abandoned for months, this would not still douse Nigerians’ doubts. They would maintain the skepticism that Buhari is yet to recover from his debilitating sickness that has kept him away from Aso Rock.

This cynicism is well founded. The officials of government have so much lost the citizens’ good will that they cannot be trusted. Remember? It was the same way that politicians and even clerics visited the late President Musa Yar’Adua but when they returned they did not tell Nigerians that he was incapacitated. It was only the then Minister of Information, the late Dora Akunyili who had the courage to shed off the carapace of propaganda for Nigerians to be confronted with the reality: the truth that the health of their president was beyond recovery. Yes, we take cognisance of the fact that a glaring misalignment of the creeds and deeds of politicians, especially the ones in these climes, oftentimes makes trusting them as amounting to self-immolation.