Nigeria: Corruption And Politics Of ‘Winner Takes All’

 By Jerome-Mario Utomi

This piece primarily stemmed from a recent Nigeria-focused conversation with a Delta state born but Florida, United States of America (USA) based practicing Lawyer who studied in England, Finland, Sweden, and Norway among others. 

Aside from using the opportunity provided by the conversation to explain how today politics in Nigeria is not tailored to the development of the country, but to the individual players and their various interests, the Legal luminary highlighted the corruption challenge in the country with a sustainable strategy to arrest the monster. He deeply advanced approaches to sanitizing the nation’s political space in ways that will not only change the economic and public leadership narrative in the country but pave the way for well informed, self-contained and quietly influential Nigerians to participate in politics while bringing coordinated development in the country. 

When The American Hawk Decides To Devour The Nigerien Chick

 By Owei Lakemfa

The threat of the mighty United States of America, USA, on Tuesday, August 7, 2023  to invade little Niger Republic is not for its love of democracy, Nigeriens or Africans. It is basically in the nature of hawks to circle the sky looking for prey, especially chicks. There were American and French troops in Niger before the coup because it is in the nature of black vultures, not only to target and kill small live animals, but also to have the patience to wait and devour carcases.

So, the July 26 military coup in Niger Republic is a pretext. The USA Acting Deputy Secretary, Victoria Nuland, in   threatening to invade Niger, declared in the usual American arrogant manner: “So we’ll be watching the situation, but we understand our legal responsibilities and I explained those very clearly to the guys (the new Nigerien  leaders) who were responsible for this and that it is not our desire to go there, but they may push us to that point, and we asked them to be prudent in that regard and to hear our offer to try to work with them to solve this diplomatically and return to constitutional order.”

The United States Recurring Memory Loss In Diplomacy

 By Owei Lakemfa

Four archenemies of the United States, US, met variously in its Latin American ‘backyard’ this week. It was the five-day Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s to Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. No, the quartet did not make themselves enemies of the US, it was the latter which at various times had dictated to those countries, that designated them as such.

All four are under the unilateral sanctions of the US which punishes any country that dares befriend them. So only the independent-minded and strong countries maintain trade relations with them.