Beyond The Seizure Of Presidential Aircraft

 By Ugo Onuoha

Gracious and humane creditors? Or how else can we describe the gesture of Zhongshan Fucheng Industrial Investment Co. Limited who are on the winning side, at least for now, of an arbitration dispute with Nigeria. The company has a standing Paris court order with which it impounded three of Nigeria’s presidential jets.

 

They were grounded in France where two of the aircraft had gone for servicing. The third, a recently acquired Airbus, Nigerian president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s latest luxury toy, was reportedly flown to France for retrofitting and sundry luxury upgrades to suit the status and taste of the ruler of the country which since 2019 has been designated as the global capital for the abject poor.

Waffling Ohanaeze And The Igbo Aspiration

 By Ugo Onuoha

In light of the challenges facing the Igbo today in Nigeria, the last thing that the beleaguered people should have to contend with is a fractionalised socio- political umbrella body. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Ohanaeze Ndigbo has been grappling with for some years. And it seems the situation is deteriorating rather rapidly. 

*Iwuanyanwu 

The Igbo who are the only large, in terms of population, group of people who are indigenous to Nigeria [a fuller exposition on this another day] have been facing existential threats. The threats to emasculate and possibly annihilate the Igbo have been on for the better part of a century. And evidence abounds.

Is Dave Umahi Also Igbo?

 By Ugo Onuoha

Yes, he is. A bonafide Igbo for that matter. After all, he was a two term governor of Ebonyi, one of the five states in the south east of the country. And south east is the core of the Igbo nation. It really does not matter that some elements in Ebonyi state do not really see themselves as Igbo. 

*Umahi and Obi 

There are many dialects of the Igbo language. Sure. But there is something common in the dialects- almost all Igbo people understand and comprehend themselves no matter the dialect they speak. However, there is a particular part of Ebonyi state who, when they speak their dialect, the typical Igbo person from outside their community will never make out any meaning from their words. This assertion is not designed to exclude or make any part of the south east less Igbo. 

Lagos-Calabar Highway Robbery

 By Ugo Onuoha

The intention may have been noble when the former President, Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo sowed the seed of the Lagos – Calabar Coastal Highway in 2006. For those who may not know or are unable to connect the dots, the notorious East- West road in the Niger Delta region of our country was actually conceptualized and designed to be constructed as a phase of the project that has metamorphosed as the Lagos – Calabar Coastal Highway.

 The problem was that the lack of clarity, purpose, buy-in and transparency that dogged the Obasanjo East – West road now appears to be afflicting the current President, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Lagos – Calabar Coastal Highway. But this one is dripping with a carefully crafted fraud.

Creeping Media Clampdown In Nigeria!

 By Ugo Onuoha

Three things happened in the past week that signpost the looming frosty relationship between the press and the regime of Nigeria’s President, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The government is already struggling with the widespread deleterious effects of its own policy missteps of the removal of the so-called petrol subsidy and the ‘floating’ of Nigeria’s national currency, the naira.

In their different ways the ill-conceived and badly implemented policies have ensured the destruction of the Naira, spiralling inflation and pauperization of more Nigerians than at any other given period in our 53-year history as an Independent country.

2024: Governments As Our Enemy

 By Ugo Onuoha

A happy new year wish will be in order though it is certainly obvious this will be a thoroughly unhappy and extremely troubling year for a majority of Nigerians. From the 1960s, and especially since the return of democracy [read rule by civilians], governments at all levels, have steadily proved themselves to be enemies of the people. 

At least since 1999, the expectation has been that we will experience government of the people, by the people and for the people. No. That has remained an illusion. What we have had has been government of the rulers, by the rulers and for the rulers. The government as a force for good does not apply in our clime.

The Bola Tinubu Papers

 By Ugo Onuoha

Alhaji Bola Ahmed [or Adekunle] Tinubu’s plot to become Nigeria’s president was not incubated only over the last 24 years as appears to be the refrain in recent years. It has been a lifelong ambition and he said so himself in the presidential villa in Abuja in January.

A man who had no sinister plot will not willfully erase and expunge and diligently hide his beginning and his early childhood as Tinubu has done successfully or so it seems, until now. Even if he was born in the Dark Age, there was no way his first twenty-something years on earth would have disappeared to the extent that they have almost become irrecoverable.

Bola Tinubu’s Chicago Blues And Nigeria’s Shame

 By Ugo Onuoha

Three significant things happened in Nigeria and about Nigeria in the last 10 days. And many more happened in the past several weeks, all of them speaking to the state of Nigeria. But the most significant, perhaps, was the story that broke on Sunday to the effect that a United States court in Chicago had rejected Nigeria’s President, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s urgent and desperate plea that a district court should strike down a ruling by a magistrate court that his academic records be released by Chicago State University [CSU].

*Tinubu 

A brief on the processes that led to the court’s ruling on Saturday will be needful. About two weeks ago, Nigeria’s former Vice President, who was a contestant during the February presidential election in Nigeria, had approached a Chicago Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Gilbert for the release on oath of Tinubu’s CSU records.

Is INEC Chairman Still In Office?

 By Ugo Onuoha

Election is a serious matter for countries that are serious. In this regard, we are still struggling to place our country in one of the two categories: serious or unserious.

*Yakubu

In some jurisdictions, election is a charade, a make-believe and a joke. Will Nigeria join this dubious league? Before its civil war in 2011, periodic elections were held in Syria where the outcomes were predictable. The Assad family was sure to win any and all presidential elections with wide margins. State power usually moved from father to son. Malawi under Dr. Hasting Kamuzu Banda also conducted periodic elections and the then President won all presidential contests by landslides. Banda was no ‘bushman’.

Nigeria: Rule Of Terror On Steroid Loading

 By Ugo Onuoha

Nigeria’s federal government of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its enforcer, the [In]dependent National Electoral Commission (INEC) must be ruing their failure to stop by any means, fair or foul, Mr. Peter Obi, candidate of the Labour Party (LP or Elup) from being on the ballot in the February 25th presidential and national assembly elections. If the numerous youths of this country had not been on the ballot through their chosen team— Obi and Datti-Ahmad – the President, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari regime and the APC would have casually walked away with the numbing electoral heists of February 25th and March 18th.

*Buhari 

If the presidential contest had been the about the usual Peoples Democratic Party represented by Alhaji Atiku Abubakar versus Alhaji Bola Tinubu’s APC, Tinubu and APC and their collaborators would have been celebrating since March 1st when INEC awarded them the presidential trophy in the dead of the night when majority of Nigerians were sleeping. Nigerians were expected to wake up to a ‘faith accompli’ and to the phrase of ‘go to court’ by INEC and APC to the candidates and political parties who believed that they were raped and robbed.

Nigeria: Tainted Presidency For A Broken Country

 By Ugo Onuoha

Elections are combining with other factors to destroy Nigeria’s democracy. And the country itself. The signs are writ large though we play the ostrich. Elsewhere, especially in saner climes, elections help to strengthen the foundations and building blocks of democracy. Not so here. Since the return of civil rule in 1999, which by the way had been dominated by retired army generals, elections have turned out to be poorly planned and even more poorly conducted.

The consequences are that election results have serially failed to reflect the will of the majority of Nigerians, and so more and more of our people are turning their backs on the ballot box as an acceptable mode of choosing their preferred political leaders. The fear is that the outcome of the 2023 presidential election will compound the loss of faith in democracy.

What APC Can’t Destroy…

 By Ugo Onuoha

On Thursday, February 9, South Africa’s embattled President, Cyril Ramaphosa, went to the country’s Parliament, braced heckling by the militant opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) political party to declare that the country was in a ‘“national state of disaster.” So, what was the problem with that Southern African country? They have been grappling with energy, particularly electricity, supply crisis for about two years. Yes, two years.

*APC leaders

The country has been experiencing load-shedding, read, power outages, where some consumers experience blackouts for up to 12 hours in a day. A mere 12 hours.

Last year, the country’s economic growth fell to 2.5%. This year, the projection is that it would shrink to 0.3%, the declines essentially boil down to South Africa’s electricity crisis. In parliament, Ramaphosa told South Africans: “We are, therefore, declaring a national state of disaster to respond to the electricity crisis and its effects.”