Why All Eyes Will Continue To Be On The Judiciary

 By Emeka Alex Duru 

I cannot recall where, between Benin and Kano, that I first came across the hashtag “#AllEyesOnTheElectionTribunalJudges,” powered by Diasporas for good governance. But I read in it that Nigerians had not lost interest on the last general elections and all that played out in the exercise. Indeed, they should not and ought not! That was a particular election that Nigerians of all ages and classes, especially the youth, saw as one that would change many narratives in the country. 

It was one election which the organisers – the President Muhammadu Buhari administration and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) – advertised as the best that would happen to Nigeria. Buhari, in fact, boasted that the success of the election would stand as a legacy and point of reference for his regime. INEC chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, equally assured the whole world of conducting an election that would mark a radical departure from the past that was characterised by manipulations. 

Nigeria: Kuje Prison Down, Is Aso Rock Next?

 By Dele Sobowale

“I am disappointed with the intelligence system. How can terrorists organise, have weapons, attack a security installation and get away with it? I am expecting a comprehensive report on this shocking incident.” 

(President Buhari, at Kuje Prison, Abuja, July 5, 2022). 

Man proposes; God disposes. I planned a different article for today, titled, “Emilokan Brought Us Buhari And Anarchy” – a comprehensive catalogue of all terrorist activities for the month of June. But my colleague, Nnamdi Ojiego, had done a better job by publishing a more comprehensive report from May 1, 2022, in Sunday Vanguard of July 10, 2022, on page 24.

I challenge anyone who is not a candidate for a mental hospital to read Ojiego’s article without feeling that anarchy is definitely here. There was no single day in June 2022 when killings, kidnapping and mob violence by hoodlums and Fulani herdsmen were not reported. Katsina, Buhari’s state, was among the worst four. If you still have any doubt that the All Progressives Congress, APC, and President Buhari have brought us into pure anarchy, then the two attacks occurring on the same day should get your brain working – if you have any. 

Nigeria: That Audacious Attack On Kuje Prison!

 By Ayo Oyoze Baje

 “There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny. They should be setting the examples” -Edward Snowden

They come in with guts, grits and such a high level of gruesomeness to unleash terror on innocent Nigerians and yet go Scot-free! The dare-devil bravado of these unpatriotic elements cannot but ignite in you the urge to ask the million-naira question of who really owns this country, Nigeria? Right from 2009 the mindless mission of the terrorists (call them Boko Haram insurgents, bandits or ISWAP) has been to turn the apple cart against the peaceful cohabitation of the good citizens of the country, by deploying ethno-religious sentiments.

Unfortunately, they seem to be succeeding in the heinous crimes against Nigerians and smiling all the way to their blood banks! That brings in the pains, considering the several thousands of those who have lost their lives to their deadly attacks; others who have lost loved ones and thousands of those left to stew on in preventable anguish in several IDP camps. Add the humongous public sums budgeted every blessed year, surreptitiously to fight the insurgency and the pitiable plight of the people in the face of insurgency and the nebulous picture gets clearer. But, it is only part of their nefarious agenda to bring the indigenous people of Nigeria to their begging knees.

Muslim-Muslim Ticket: A Disastrous Error!

 By Babachir Lawal

I thought I will be able to avoid commenting on the disastrous error by my very good friend, Sen Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in his choice of a running mate.

I will be the very last person to stand in the way of my very good friend Tinubu’s path to the presidency. This is because, since 2011, my consuming passion has been for him to succeed Buhari as President of Nigeria. 

*Tinubu

It will not be true if I say that I did not see it coming. I have often read his body language, picked up snippets from several discussions with his lapdogs (some of whom, sadly, are Christians but most of whom are Muslims), and I have conveyed my reservations to them against the pitfalls of a Muslim-Muslim ticket towards which I sensed they were drifting.

As part of my obligation to him, a close friend, I had on many occasions argued the merits and demerits of both ticket permutations to him. 

Game Of Death In Rivers State

By Steve Nwosu

I’m not used to too much prayer, but I must begin today’s piece with a word of prayer. I pray that God Almighty visits the killers of Barr. Ken Atsuwete (and their sponsors) with slow and painful death. Amen!
I pray that the divine punishment for the dastardly act of Monday constitutes the largest chunk of the inheritance, which the killers (and their sponsors) would pass on to their children and their children’s children in the fullness of time. Amen and Amen and Amen!

But, one question kept coming to my mind on Monday, as I tried to make sense of the senseless abduction and murder of the activist lawyer in Port Harcourt: Aren’t we back to a not-too-unfamiliar narrative? For, it would appear, Rivers State relapses into a feast of blood as soon as a new date for the now-jinxed re-run election is within the horizon.

Everything – including kidnapping, armed robbery and, as is in this case, heinous assassination – suddenly begins to take a political coloration. It is either that ‘blood-thirsty’ Governor Nyesom Wike is trying to intimidate opponents with violence (the APC narrative), or Rotimi Amaechi and his APC gang are unleashing mayhem in order to underscore their claim that Rivers State is not safe for any election to hold there.

And now, the murder of Atsuwete perfectly fits the bill: He is not only the lawyer of a former council chairman, who is facing trial in a murder case, but is also representing the 22 council chairmen elected on the platform of the APC and who were sacked by the Wike administration.

Expectedly, the APC says the lawyer’s assassination is the worst politically motivated killing in recent times, while PDP says the APC is politicising criminality and trivialising a serious matter. But while they’re vomiting all the high-sounding nonsense, somebody’s husband, a father, a breadwinner, a community leader, a voice of the voiceless lies stone cold. Dead!

Incidentally, while members of the NBA were holding their conference in Port Harcourt last week, I had fantasised about some hooded goons kidnapping a few prominent (and some not-so-prominent) lawyers – just to underscore the narrative that Rivers State was still not safe. Luckily, it never happened.

But before Wike and his camp could pop champagne, the goons mowed down Atsuwete, casting ominous pall over the proposed end-of-October date for the legislative re-run elections.
Of course, it’s understandable: The ‘insecurity’ narrative is the thin thread on which the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has hung its stubborn refusal to conduct outstanding National and State Assembly elections in Rivers State.

Lessons From The Rivers State Rerun Election

By Moses E. Ochonu

INEC has declared the recent Rivers State rerun election inconclusive. How many inconclusive elections have we had under the new INEC chairman? How about all of them? I am not sure you can do your job so shoddily as many times as this rookie has and still get to keep said job, but he is new so I guess he deserves to make his mistakes and learn from them.

*President Buhari and Rotimi Amaechi

The conduct of the election aside, how did we get to a point where elections become wars of egos?

By the way, why did Rotimi Amaechi, a federal minister who was not running in the Rivers re-run election, relocate the perks, might, and intimidating aura of his office to his home state for an entire week for the election? Why the inflammatory, reckless statements designed to provoke, undermine, and challenge the authority of his successor? 

Why the personal abuse of Wike (“Wike can’t speak English”)? Why the thuggish behavior on the part of a federal minister (“I will flood Port Harcourt with soldiers”)? And why the bizarre boast about controlling the army, a boast so embarrassing the army had to issue a statement to refute it? What about the puerile demand for Wike’s resignation, among other comments unbecoming of a minister of the federal republic?

Quite frankly, Amaechi reflects terribly on President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB).

As for Nyesome Wike, well, Wike is Wike, a street politician given to gutter-sniping and uncouth outbursts. But he is governor and Amaechi should respect and accept that. Amaechi is already well compensated for helping to finance Buhari's campaign. Two of his political children have been appointed MDs of NIMASA and NDDC respectively, in addition to his own appointment as minister of transportation. In politics as in life, you cannot have it all.

It is political greed to insist on upending Wike by installing your stooges in the state assembly and as Rivers State's legislative contingent in the national assembly. It's a petty, narcissistic pursuit that is about personal ego and nothing more.

No wonder, even his former chief of staff, Tony Okocha, an APC candidate who lost to his PDP opponent, has railed against Amaechi's negative, counterproductive role in the election. He is right.

All politics is local, and if voters feel that someone is leveraging the power derived from an external source to force a particular political outcome locally, they often resist by voting in the other direction. 

Bailout: Is Buhari Rewarding Profligacy?

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

The recent N400 billion bailout approved for the states by President Muhammadu Buhari to offset the backlog of salary owed to civil servants would certainly bring immense relief to the affected workers and their families. It is difficult to imagine how these Nigerians were able to survive the trauma and pain of existing for several months without salaries, especially, when one considers that even when these salaries were paid regularly and as at when due, they were hardly enough to solve even the basic needs of these public servants. In some cases, we have husbands and wives as state employees, and one is sincerely scared of imagining how life has been for them and their children these past few months.

*President Buhari and some governors  

One hopes that as this money is released, the story we would hear from all the states is that these hapless Nigerians have been paid ALL the arrears of salary owed them to enable them see the extent they would go to sort out their horribly battered existence – lives that have been heartlessly messed up by the gross irresponsibility and unspeakable callousness that now constitute the enduring character of governance in this part of the world.

Considering that we have just emerged from an election in which many state governors were squandering money as if all they did to get loads of it was just to walk to their backyards and pluck them from some trees that generously grew them, Nigerians deserve to know the exact reasons why these governors were unable to pay salaries.

In a place like Osun State , for instance, state workers were heartlessly owed salaries for about seven months. The state governor, Mr. Rauf Aregbesola, who recently won a second term in a bitterly contested (and obviously unimaginably expensive) election and who also may have equally contributed his own quota to achieve the “change” that now exists in Aso Rock must be compelled to tell Nigerians how his state achieved such an unimaginable descent.