Constituency Projects: Legislators Manipulating Nigerians

 By Tonnie Iredia

Federal legislators  in Nigeria especially senators imagine that they are the smartest people in Africa, South of the Sahara and even North of the Equator. Perhaps they are actually smart considering the ease with which they get away with a legion of transparently repulsive allegations. Indeed, no one has been able to hold our senators down to the undesirable financial transactions that people know and see about them as a group.

When analysts raised the alarm many years back that Nigerian legislators were the highest paid in the world, they published their basic salaries which were not excessive but successfully hid their several secret allowances from sundry sources. They allegedly got paid for ghost legislative aides but  no one could prove it beyond reasonable doubt; just as they virtually hypnotised public officers from going public with their dirty oversight functions.  

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.

The “Oshiomhole Must Go” Coalition

By Reuben Abati

Chief John Odigie Oyegun, former National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) must be having a good laugh wherever he is. If he is just finishing a meal, he can afford to pick his teeth and belch from the deepest part of his biological system, and even turn up his nose as he asks for a glass of water. He can also look around and thank Karma for being kind to him, as he gulps down the water and reflects on the circumstances of the APC since he was shunted aside and Adams Oshiomhole, former Governor of Edo State and former labour leader, supplanted him.

Oyegun’s waterloo was the election in Ondo State and the emergence of Rotimi Akeredolu as Governor, and before then, his power-tussle with some key stakeholders in the South West wing of the ruling party. Oyegun was accused of being disdainful of reconciliation within the party, and not willing to work with some prominent stakeholders. He was seen as an obstacle to party cohesion. He was sacrificed. His place was taken by Adams Oshiomhole.

Nigeria: Dancing Naked In The Market

By Sam Ohuabunwa

Those who are familiar with how madness begins to manifest in a person, will tell you that no man becomes mad in just one day. Madness follows a sequence. Of course psychiatrists and those who work in the mental health area can easily notice when a patient goes through the stages or sequence. But for the ordinary folks like us, we also sometimes notice this sequence more so when the subject is closely related to us. Signs of mental illness may start with the subject being unusually moody which could represent depression or in some cases the subject may become unusually aggressive and hyperactive called hyperactive disorder. 

If the subject is subjected to treatment at these early stages, psychiatrists tell us, the mental health can be corrected but if not, the situation could deteriorate. Soon the subject begins to neglect his personal hygiene and then may begin to speak incoherently similar to what is called psychotic disorder. I am told that even at this stage the situation can still be remedied if urgent medical attention is sought and the patient can be persuaded or compelled to take the prescribed medicines.

Nigeria: APC Congresses Of Blood, Tears And Sorrow

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Beleaguered Senator Din Melaye got a mischievous dig in at his own political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) on Saturday May, 2018. Shortly after a contentious state congresses of the party, Melaye tweeted, "Congratultions tot he 72 new state chairmen of APC. Everywhere na double double. What a blessed party!!!!" 

 As at the time I stumbled on the tweet on Sunday morning, it had been retweeted 968 times with 2,103 likes.

Dr. Doyin Okupe, a chieftain of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), re-echoed Melaye’s tweet three hours later.

“36 states, 72 chairmen. APC! Going! Going. Who is d bastard now?” Okupe tweeted.

Nigeria: Who Says Army Cannot Takeover?

By Ike Abonyi

"In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia"— George Orwell 

In the title of this piece is the harmful question asked by the Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu that set the polity and military authorities talking? It is one contribution to a debate last week at the nation's parliament - the Senate, that ignited a tense conversation in the polity. The topic was on the incessant human rights abuses especially on the Senators by their obsessional state governors.

Ekweremadu was reacting particularly to a report from a Kogi state Senator Ahmed Ogembe to the effect that his youthful controversial state Governor, Yahaya Bello, has been sending political thugs after him and threatening to chase him out of his constituency.

Rebirth Of PDP And The Challenge To Buhari

By Yakubu Mohammed

By which ever means the panjandrums of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, were able to patch it up, their national convention, the first since its ouster from power in 2015, has come and gone leaving in its trail the usual post- convention trauma that features some teeth gnashing, some wailings, some threats, real and imaginary and lots of conjectures about what would be and what would not be thereafter. 

But nobody, not even the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, can dismiss what the opposition party, the PDP, successfully put up as a non-event. What is left now is to see how the PDP executives under the chairmanship of Uche Secondus, manage themselves from now through to the 2019 presidential election.

Nigeria: Corruption War Has Lost Momentum

By Lewis Obi

Compared to his 1984 offensive President Muhammadu Buhari’s current war against corruption is looking like a child’s play.  Granted, he does not have the same tools he had in 1984-85, the dictatorial powers which enabled him unleash a blitzkrieg which herded scores of politicians into prison.  But it is also true that the tools he has now, moral leadership, freely granted him by the people, are grossly under-utilized.  Then in 1984, he was literally a young man of 42 with all the impetuosity that comes with youth.  But now he is wise, mature, deliberative but slow.  There’s probably no other way to explain how he did not see the “security report” delivered to the Senate by the Department of State Services on his nominee for chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

*Buhari 

A Nigerian president is a very busy man and is not expected to see most of the things done in his name.  But the fight against corruption is considered Buhari’s priority on which he has staked his reputation and honour.  He is expected to know the demands of Murphy’s Law, and if he would be unable to see the confidential information being forwarded to the Senate about his nominee, his leg man, his liaison to the Senate, should and ought to have seen it, because, conventionally, he is to shepherd the nominee through the confirmation process.  Indeed, it is his primary task to ensure that the nominee is confirmed and it is required of him to do everything, including previewing the DSS report, before it ever gets to the senate chamber.  He, the liaison man, ought to be the one to blow the whistle, to alert the President about the unfavourable DSS report, and to alert the President of the onerous task of securing the nominee’s confirmation, and, if need be, to ask for a replacement, given the negative report.

Thus, the investigation of whether Mr. Ibrahim Magu was suitable or not for the crucial position of the anti-corruption czar ought to have been done before his name was forwarded to the Senate.  The vetting of any official whose position depends on a favourable confirmation by the senate must necessarily be done first by the executive branch with a more rigorous benchmark than the Senate’s, to prevent the kind of embarrassment which has occurred in the last few weeks.  First, it was the $29.9 billion external loan, tossed by the Senate for lack of appropriate documentation.  Now, even if the Senate has an axe to grind or is making political demands, the Presidency ought not to provide the body even better ammunition.