As Governance Confounds Okpebholo

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

When my attention was drawn to Governor Monday Okpebholo’s “Now, it is confusing me” video, I thought his political enemies were at work aided by Artificial Intelligence. The one-minute, 17-second video captured him stuttering while presenting the 2025 Appropriation Bill to the Edo State House of Assembly.

*Monday Okpebholo

Struggling to pronounce the numerical value of the Bill which he christened “Budget of Renewed Hope for a Rising Edo,” the governor said: “The Edo State 2025 budget… appropriation bill of six billion, sixty and fifty, six hundred five billion, seventy six thousand, seventy six million, seventy six.”

Shock Therapy? Tinubu Is insensitive To Human Suffering

 By Olu Fasan

Recently, the Financial Times interviewed me for a special report on Nigeria. The FT had interviewed me a few times before. So, when I received a call from David Pilling, the newspaper’s Africa Editor, I knew he probably wanted to interview me again. “I read your article on Tinubu’s economic reforms,” Pilling said. “I want to speak to you about it as I am writing a report on Nigeria.” We spoke. 

*Tinubu

About two weeks later, on July 10, the report titled “Tough times and tough measures” was published in the newspaper’s “Big Read” section. The FT said, rightly, that I described the economic reforms of Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s president, as “half-cooked”, and criticised the excesses and profligacy of his administration. “You cannot say the economy is bad and spend money like a drunken sailor,” the FT quoted me. 

Rivers Of Impunity And Absurdism

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

In his 1961 book, The Theatre of the Absurd, Martin Julius Esslin, a Hungarian-born British journalist and professor of drama, lamented what he called absurdism, “the inevitable devaluation of ideals, purity, and purpose.”

*Fubara and Wike 

Esslin, who died in London, United Kingdom on February 24, 2002, aged 83 years, couldn’t have had the oil-rich state of Rivers, Nigeria, in mind when he wrote his famed book 63 years ago.

But nothing captures the state of affairs in Rivers State today more profoundly than Esslin’s “theatre of the absurd”.

Peter Obi As Democracy Role Model

 By Dan Onwukwe

Every election campaign has its cadence and rhythm, style and sparkle that sets it apart from previous ones. Similarly, it throws up unique individuals that have strength of character and conviction that the rest of us look up, especially in turbulent times. In all sincerity, looking back at the February  25 Presidential election, Mr Peter Obi, the Presidential candidate of the Labour Party, is an exemplar, a role model for anyone still searching for a solid philosophy that should guide and drive his ambition in life. It’s even more so for our new generation of politicians, the youth, in particular.

       *Peter Obi  

It’s not for nothing that when Obi declared his ambition to contest for the presidency, the country was aglitter. The  youths who have been yearning for  new ways of doing things, became very excited. Peter Obi, it seems, woke them up from slumber.  

President, Governors Disown The Poor!

 By Dele Sobowale

“Fish rots from the head.”

If you want to know how good or bad a country is, just take a look at the top politicians. It is now becoming an axiom of political science, that it is almost impossible to have a great country with absolutely atrocious leaders in charge. It all starts from the President or Prime Minister. 

*Buhari

Was there an African or black person anywhere who was not proud when Nelson Mandela was President of South Africa? Who else among the mob that was elected and ruled in Africa who has given us that sense of pride in being African and black? Mandela achieved everlasting fame, universal acclaim and respect in just five years. See what we have got in Nigeria after seven and a half years of Buhari. Surely nobody would be dishonest enough as to call him a great leader – given the legacies he and the First Lady, FL, are likely to leave behind.

President, Governors Disown The Poor

 By Dele Sobowale

“Fish rots from the head.”

If you want to know how good or bad a country is, just take a look at the top politicians. It is now becoming an axiom of political science, that it is almost impossible to have a great country with absolutely atrocious leaders in charge.

*Buhari and some governors

It all starts from the President or Prime Minister. Was there an African or black person anywhere who was not proud when Nelson Mandela was President of South Africa? Who else among the mob that was elected and ruled in Africa who has given us that sense of pride in being African and black?

Mandela achieved everlasting fame, universal acclaim and respect in just five years. See what we have got in Nigeria after seven and a half years of Buhari. Surely nobody would be dishonest enough as to call him a great leader – given the legacies he and the First Lady, FL, are likely to leave behind.

What Is Wrong With Africans?

 By Tochukwu Ezukanma

In his Philosophy of History, the 19th Century German philosopher, Friedrich Hegel, wrote so disparagingly about Africans, “The African exhibits the natural man in his wild and untamed state; there is nothing harmonious with humanity to be found in his character”. 

And “the undervaluing of humanity among them reaches an incredible degree of intensity: cannibalism is looked upon as quite customary and proper. The devouring of human flesh is altogether consonant with the general principles of the African race.” We can disregard Hegel on the grounds that, as of the 19th Century, the Europeans’ prejudiced and inadequate knowledge of Africa could not have given an accurate and objective account of Africans.

Buhari Unwinnable Anti-Media War

 By Emmanuel Onwubiko

''Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter''   --Thomas Jefferson. 

''Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost''

 --Thomas Jefferson.

*Buhari 

The history of President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration won’t certainly be complete without a detailed mention of his contrived but well sustained war against media freedoms. The cantankerous relationship between the Present federal administration in Nigeria with the media is a direct reflection of the kind of opaque government that is in place which substantially is devoid of transparency, accountability and integrity.

But this situation is diametrically opposed to what should be expected from a nation that has consistently practiced constitutional democracy for well over twenty years at a stretch after about four decades of military subjugation of the democratic forces under the whims and caprices of the barrels of the guns.

Nigeria: Buhari’s Legacy As A Failure Already Sealed

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi 

President Muhammadu Buhari never ceases to confound. Even his most strident supporters, who are ever willing to cut him some slack, are gradually but inexorably coming to the inevitable reality: he is a study in hypocrisy.

His claim to higher standards is a ruse. Too often, he fails to follow his own expressed moral rules and principles.

I will come back to this shortly.

*Buhari

On August 19, the National Security Adviser (NSA), Maj-Gen Babagana Monguno (rtd.), reported Buhari as telling his Service Chiefs that he was not ready to leave office a failure.

Two days earlier, the Nigerian army claimed that at least 1,000 Boko Haram/Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) members had surrendered and army spokesperson, Brig-Gen. Onyema Nwachukwu, said the terrorists would be received, processed and passed on to the relevant agencies of government for further assessment in line with extant provision.

Nigeria: Buhari And A University Of His Own

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

With the current preoccupation of President Muhammadu Buhari with the setting up of his own university, his flatulent claim of being actuated by public interest has suffered further repudiation. His pet project has unravelled him not as a touchstone of integrity, moderation and patriotism but as another victim of the acquisitiveness of the nation’s leadership that has ceaselessly undermined good governance.

President Buhari and wife, Aisha 

 To be sure, it was not Buhari himself who publicly vouchsafed his plan to set up a private university. It was his wife who disclosed that she would set up a university with the name Muhammadu Buhari University. But even if Buhari were not the originator of the idea, the fact that his name is associated with the project shows that he is fully behind it. After all, he has not disavowed his wife’s claim since the news broke.

Buhari’s Uninspiring Democracy Day Speech

By Mike Ozekhome

I carefully listened to and read President Buhari’s Democracy Day Speech. I must confess that I felt quite hollow after it all. He lost a golden opportunity to engage Nigerians to buy into his change agenda. The speech did not give the much needed hope, did not fire up ebbing nationalistic and patriotic embers in Nigerians, and did not ignite the drooping and sagging dreams of Nigerians for a better tomorrow, with nerve, verve, éclat, gusto, zest and vivacity. It was bland, colourless, full of sound and fury.

*Buhari and his wife, Aisha 

By the way, I do not believe May 29 should be Nigeria’s Democracy Day. I’ve argued this over the years. It should be June 12. That was the day real democracy berthed in Nigeria.  For another day.

PMB’s speech, rather than being engaging, pacific, placatory and conciliatory, from the father of the nation to his hapless children, was bellicose, belligerent, militant, combative and simply pugnacious. I blame his speech writer for this, for woefully failing to capture, or mirror the angry and disillusioned mood of the nation, to Mr President. The speech accordingly lacked colour, panache, assurance, animation, elan and vitality.

The speech failed to address the multifanous problems, besetting Nigeria and government’s deliberate efforts at redressing them. It dwelt too much on damage assessment of the past, rather than the  panacea, the present and the future. It failed Albert Einstein’s theory that “we cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”. John Burroughs, it was, who said that “a man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else”.  PMB’s Federal Executive Council is now derisively called “Federal Excuses Council”. The speech blamed everyone else, but the government.

I hereby plead most earnestly with Niger Delta Avengers to drop their arms and come to the negotiating table with the government. Blowing up pipelines will compound, not only Nigeria’s socio-economic woes, but theirs, as well. You do not cut your nose to spite your face. But, PMB did not help matters. He threatened and talked tough. He could easily have demobilised them with assuaging and soothing words. Kind, persuasive and tranquilising words are deadlier than any armada of military force. The speech did not create for Nigeria an anti-corruption template, which seeks to extirpate it from the very root, rather than the present fight, which is merely superficially predicated on loot recovery alone. We are treating a dangerous ailment of cancer with drugs meant for skin eczema. Fighting corruption must have a template, which deals with a total re-orientation of our debased national psyche and value system from primitive acquisition, to honour, character and dignity.