Biden-Trump Debacle: Nigeria Must Not Entrench A Gerontocracy

 By Olu Fasan

Two significant events hit the world from America recently. One is positive, the other negative. The positive is the criminal convictions of former President Donald Trump and Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son. Both are unprecedented: Trump is the first former US president to be convicted of a felony, and Biden Jnr is the first son of a sitting president to be convicted of a crime.

*Trump and Biden 

That suggests no one is above the law in America. However, the negative is the disastrous presidential debate between Biden and Trump. Both the positive and negative events have relevance for Nigeria. That relevance is worth exploring. But my focus here is the nerve-racking debate.

Evil: Joe Biden Hijacks AIDS Programme to Back Abortion in Africa

  By Tony Ademiluyi

US President Joe Biden is criminally hijacking a programme meant to tackle AIDS to aggressively promote abortion in Africa.

*Biden 

The United States spends at least $40 billion annually on foreign aid including health programmes to support people around the world, especially in emerging economies and third-world nations. However, the unscrupulous Biden under the cloak of foreign assistance is promoting and exporting the culture of death called abortion in these countries which is causing a furore not only in the US Congress but even in the countries that are the prime targets of his state-sanctioned policy on the murder of the infants.

Soyinka, Chimamanda And Other Burning Issues

 By Valentine Obienyem

The last election in Nigeria was the worst in its electoral history. Have you asked yourself why it was only APC and Sen. Ahmed Bola Tinubu that failed to condemn non-transmission of results from the polling booths to the central server even before the results were announced? The election has created  deep divisions among Nigerians, who belong to diverse ethnic and religious groups because Tinubu charged his supporters to secure victory for him by any means possible. Alas, we have seen how his followers used the ethnic and religious card, Ayo masquerade festival, guns, cudgels, threats, and psychological warfare to secure unmerited victory for him.

*Soyinka and Chimamanda 

 

The unconscionable  action of Tinubu was a clear example of his readiness to bring Nigeria down owing to his vaulting  political ambition. The practical disfranchisement of Nigerians had removed the mental stimulus that comes from free political activity and a widespread sense of liberty and power.

Let Our Best Brains Move Nigeria Forward!

 By Ayo Oyoze Baje 

 “Where there is no vision, the people perish”

—Proverbs 29:18

The piece of heart-warming and inspiring news that three Nigerian lecturers, Dr. Aliyu Isa Aliyu, Tukur Abdulkadir Sulaiman and Abdullahi Yusuf have been listed among the top 2% most-cited scientists in the world soon after another Nigerian-born,31- year old Silas Adekunle became the youngest and richest robotics engineer in the world at the age of 26 is thought-provoking.  

Not left out of the praise-worthy exploits of Nigerian-born scientists, inventors,  engineers, innovators, lawyers and entrepreneurs is the interesting fact that Nigerian doctors, nurses, hi-tech entrepreneurs rank amongst the best and highest in number in the United States(US). For instance, it is gratifying to know that Myma Adwowa Belo-Osagie (nee Bentsi-Enchill), a Nigerian, serves on the Global Advisory Council of the Office of President of Harvard University, and she is also a member of the Harvard University Center for African Studies. 

2023 Presidential Election: Chimamanda Adichie Writes President Biden

"The smoldering disillusionment felt by many Nigerians is not so much because their candidate did not win as because the election they had dared to trust was, in the end, so unacceptably and unforgivably flawed. Congratulating its outcome, President Biden, tarnishes America’s self-proclaimed commitment to democracy. Please do not give the sheen of legitimacy to an illegitimate process. The United States should be what it says it is."

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Dear President Biden,

Something remarkable happened on the morning of February 25, the day of the Nigerian presidential election. Many Nigerians went out to vote holding in their hearts a new sense of trust. Cautious trust, but still trust. Since the end of military rule in 1999, Nigerians have had little confidence in elections. To vote in a presidential election was to brace yourself for the inevitable aftermath: fraud.

*Chimamanda Adichie 

Elections would be rigged because elections were always rigged; the question was how badly. Sometimes voting felt like an inconsequential gesture as predetermined “winners” were announced.

A law passed last year, the 2022 Electoral Act, changed everything. It gave legal backing to the electronic accreditation of voters and the electronic transmission of results, in a process determined by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). The chair of the commission, Professor Mahmood Yakubu, assured Nigerians that votes would be counted in the presence of voters and recorded in a result sheet, and that a photo of the signed sheet would immediately be uploaded to a secure server. When rumors circulated about the commission not keeping its word, Yakubu firmly rebutted them.

Time For African Leaders To Look Beyond American Democracy

 By Amos Adegbite

Time has come for African leaders to look inward and come up with a representative government not fashioned after American democracy. This becomes imperative because of another “Summit for Democracy” being organised by America where many African leaders have been invited to be “lectured” by President Joe Biden on democracy.

A grassroots politician in Nigeria, Raphael Adeyanju, is convinced that many African countries will continue to be in crisis if they did not develop a government that will take into consideration, the culture and values cherished by their people. To him, America is not in a position to teach Africans how to govern their countries.

Can Biden Compete With China’s Growing Influence In Africa?

 By Amanda Platts

The race is on for the US to regain its status quo as the world leader and push out China with the showdown for this conflict that appears to be in Africa. During the US-Africa Leaders Summit last week, US President Joe Biden expressed his newfound interest in African countries. He asserted that “The United States is all in on Africa’s influence” which has been perceived as an attempt by Biden to re-assert US influence in Africa in order to counter growing Chinese involvement. However, given the entrenchment of Chinese influence in Africa including their techniques of debt-trap diplomacy, the US may struggle to rival Chinese influence.

*Biden with African leaders at the US-Africa Summit (Dec 2022)

According to the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, China has lent over $143 billion to African countries since 2000. While this has helped finance infrastructure projects and stimulate economic growth, it has also left some African countries with significant debt burdens. For example, Zambia’s debt to China currently exceeds its annual economic output, and the country is at risk of defaulting on its loans. This has raised concerns about the ability of African countries to repay their loans and the potential for them to fall into a cycle of debt and dependency on China.

New ‘Currency’, New Census: Buhari’s Desperate Quest For A Legacy

 By Olu Fasan

For most of his seven-and-a-half years in office to date, President Muhammadu Buhari ran Nigeria with such insouciance that suggested he didn’t care about a legacy. However, as the inevitability of leaving office on May 29 next year hits home, Buhari has shown a minute-to-midnight desperation for “legacy projects.”

Two such “projects” are “redesigning” the naira notes and conducting a population census. But by politicising such issues, he undermines them. To start with, my view is that President Buhari has, so far, no legacy that can endure through time. Economists use the term “value for money” to refer to something that is well worth the money spent on it.

The Major Threats To World Peace Today

 By Uchenna Nwankwo

No doubt, the ongoing Russia-Ukraine faceoff and the China-Taiwan imbroglio stand out as the most challenging problems and threats to world peace today. These are problems that test international diplomacy today, especially given the fact that they constitute major sources of international tensions involving the major blocks in world affairs.

*Zelensky and Putin

As Henry Kissinger (99), the erstwhile famous international diplomat and secretary of state in the President Nixon administration in the US is quoted to have observed:

We (USA) are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to.

Ukraine: US, NATO Must Be Held Accountable

 By Opeyemi Soyombo

For weeks, from CNN through BBC to Al Jazeera, we are fed the same diet on a daily ba­sis. We run the risk of being victims of intellectual kwashiorkor. Hence some of us have to cry out! This exercise is not in defence of President Vladimir Putin, a dictator of no mean measure. I reject fascism, communism, Nazism, militarism, sit-tightism and all forms of tyran­ny. Putin epitomises monocracy. 

*Zelensky 

I like democracy of the Westminster model. The United States presiden­tial system of government is fasci­nating. When it comes to the rule of law, freedom and right to dissent, I belong to the West (the US). I reject the strangulating, despotic govern­ments in China and Russia. They are an open sore on our humanity. The Kim Dynasty in North Korea must fall. Everything must be done to bring down autocracy everywhere in the world. The world must stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Myanmar (Burma), Chad, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso,etc. and take all legitimate measures, including use of force, to remove the unconsti­tutional governments and usurpers of political power.