The Limits Of President Buhari’s Powers

By Obi Nwakanma
 Adams Oshiomole, former President of the Nigerian Labour Council (NLC), immediate past governor of Edo State and, most recently, National Chairman of the All Progressive Congress (APC, has called on the Federal Government to “deal ruthlessly with looters” of the national treasury. The reports of Oshiomole’s statement carried in the Nigerian newspapers variously led with this headline “Buhari should deal ruthlessly with looters.”

*President Buhari 

My problem is: I do not know exactly if Oshiomole is actually conflating the president with the Federal Government of Nigeria. The president is Head of the executive branch of the federal government, and thus head of state, since the executive is that branch of government that is constitutionally mandated to manage the executive functions of the state by the act of the federation. The executive is however not the “Federal Government of Nigeria.” It is a branch of the Federal Government of Nigeria.

The Wailing Of Madam Oluremi Tinubu

By Modiu Olaguro

"For what Ricardo foresaw was the end of a theory of society in which everyone moved together up the escalator of progress. Unlike Smith, Ricardo saw that the escalator worked with different effects on different classes, that some rode triumphantly on the top, while others were carried up a few steps and then were kicked back down to the bottom. Worse yet, those who kept the escalator moving were not those who rose with its motion, and those who got the full benefit of the ride did nothing to earn their reward. And to carry the metaphor one step further, if you looked carefully at those who were ascending to the top, you could see that all was not well here either; there was a furious struggle going on for a secure place on the stairs.”

—The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers by Robert L. Heilbroner.

*Oluremi Tinubu

Remi Tinubu’s outburst on the seeming side-line of her hubby, Bola Tinubu, by the Muhammadu Buhari administration illustrates the existence of an acrimonious struggle for dominance by actors in the political space. It connotes the very fact that the poor masses of Nigeria are not the only victims of the serial subterfuge by politicians who find their thumbs useful before elections only to find their faces unworthy after.

Of Parliament, Poverty Of Debates And Corruption

By Dan Amor

In mid 2007, at the emergence of the Mrs. Patricia Olubunmi Etteh as first female Speaker of the Federal House of Representatives, a very close friend of mine who was then covering the Lower Chamber of the National Assembly for a top flight national newspaper called me on phone. His message: "Dan, Nigeria has elected a Speaker who cannot speak." My friend, a honed history scholar-turned journalist, is a thorough-bred professional most interested in written and spoken words and their applications. And his message was loud and clear. He spoke against the backdrop of Etteh's alleged legendary grammatical inadequacies.

*Speaker Dogara and Senate President Saraki

As beneficiary of the old Nsukka tradition of history and intellectual erudition, my friend had lamented the complete absence of a culture of informed debate on the floor of the House of Representatives, and even the Senate.  Poor him! He had thought that our politicians would cultivate the habit of formal debate which is the hallmark of the parliament anywhere in the world and which is as old as education itself. It dates back at least in the invention of dialectics and more specifically to Protagoras of Abdera, who introduced this method of learning to his students nearly 2,500 years ago.

In fact, the rudiments of dialectics emerged from the misty past, when grunts grew into language and men discovered that language could facilitate both the making of decisions and changing them. Debate as a medium for policy-making came into being in the first crude democracy when words as well as force became tools of government. In its maturity, it prevailed over the city-state of Greece and the republic of Rome, where skillful debaters such as Demosthenes and Cicero moved empires with words. Aristotle himself considered rhetoric to be the first and most important art. The highest purpose of debate is to develop, as Emerson described it, "man's thinking in the total milieu of society and the world around him." Ultimately, debate attempts to improve a man by laying a foundation for a better understanding of himself and those around him, to inculcate habits of mind, breath of interests, and enlargement of spirit. The process of debate, therefore, becomes as important as the issues contained within it. Lest we deviate, it was this process of intellectual confrontation that my friend said was lacking in Etteh's House.

Before We Destroy Nigeria

By Malachy Uzendu

Nigerians are superbly interesting set of people. Every moment presents itself as placebo for throwing away serious punches. We seem to love to be dribbled; we enjoy flash in the pan situations. We seem not to have deep thinking faculties. Our handling of situations is always on the ephemeral plane.

*Buhari 

A few months ago, the issue on the lip of Nigerians were “Senate Standing Rules” forgery or no for­gery; whether it was the national leadership of the ruling All Pro­gressives Congress (APC) that holds the prerogative of determin­ing who becomes a principal offic­er of the National Assembly or not. It did not matter that people who were elected to that arm of govern­ment from the different constitu­encies in the country have even if we chose to call it some form of pedigree, neither did it matter that they have a contract with their var­ious constituencies. A privileged few must determine who becomes what and what happens there.

Nigerians made a lot of noise on this issue: some people called for the public execution of Sena­tors Bukola Saraki and Ike Ekw­eremadu. Some people who were obsessed by their self righteousness even postulated that National As­sembly members should not on their own aspire to any portfolio in that arm of government but should wait for portfolio to be assigned to them by the executive arm of gov­ernment either directly or indirect­ly through the instrumentality of the ruling political party.

Conversely, some persons who hold alternative view points insist­ed that capitulating to that level was dictatorial, diversionary, myopic and banal and had nothing to do with the essence of true democracy.

After several months of legal fireworks, propaganda and pub­lic odium for Saraki and Ekwere­madu, the executive arm of gov­ernment, withdrew the forgery lawsuit slammed on the two prin­cipal officers. To Nigerians it was a matter of case closed; no qualms, life moves on to the next issue. The master has spoken and so be it. The public never bother about the eco­nomic and social costs. This was a typical case of the executive dis­tracting the legislature and the pub­lic, the polity pays the price.

Nigeria: Obituary Of A Political Party

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It was only those who lacked prescience in the heady days of the campaigns for the 2015 elections that failed to realise that the All Progressives Congress (APC) was a contraption waiting to unravel. All that was needed was the appropriate time for the party to suffer an implosion and disrupt its self-valourisation for being different from the much-pilloried People’s Democratic Party (PDP). And now in less than two years after assuming power, the party is in the grip of crises from which recovery may not be possible.

This should have been expected in so far as the APC grew out of a myriad of crises of other parties. These crises have continued to haunt the APC in a way that has rendered its performance since its emergence less than stellar. Of course, no one makes the case that the existence of conflicting interests is aberrant in a democracy with its attendant plurality of perspectives. One moment of such a contest of interests that culminated in discontent was the quest for the chairmanship of the party that led to the exit of Tom Ikimi and his supporters.

But the troubling reality is that these crises have worsened since the APC assumed the reins of power. They have negated all expectations that after the electoral victory, previous differences would be relegated for a common front to tackle national problems. Thus, the only area where the APC could be said to have done well aside from winning the 2015 elections remains in its playing the role of an opposition party. It succeeded in demonising the then government of the PDP and eventually made it unacceptable at the polls.

What has dogged the APC and prevented it from building on its electoral success is a lack of a clear ideological vision that is underpinned by a holistic pursuit of service to the citizens. It is in this ideological vacuum that has festered all shenanigans for the appropriation of the party by its members as a vehicle for realising their selfish goals. In other words, what has marked out the party is its members’ Darwinian struggle for supremacy. In this quest, the disparate members owe no fidelity to the common ethos that binds them together in the party; thus it can be used and dumped as they have done to other political parties. It was this that led to the emergence of Bukola Saraki as Senate President and Yakubu Dogara as House of Representatives Speaker in utter disregard for the desire of some of the party’s leaders.

It is not only the party that its members brutally disregard to pursue their selfish interests. They have also disavowed their own promises to the citizens. But the citizens are not beyond blame; they have had too high expectations from politicians of the Nigerian hue. For despite all the pretensions, these politicians who decamped from the PDP could not be expected to do anything good to improve the lot of the people.

At his inauguration, President Muhammadu Buhari in a moment that was seemingly preceded by a great introspection declared that he belonged to everybody and belonged to nobody. If this were a clear repudiation of all obligations that might have negated national interest, the citizens would have appreciated it. But from the performance of Buhari in the past 16 months, he has been far from proving that he understood the heavy weight of the thoughts he expressed. For it is clear now that far from what he would like the citizens to believe, he is beholden to some interests that conflict with the collective good of the citizens.

Nigeria: Chronicles Of Tragedy And Absurdity

By Okey Ndibe

As a novelist, I frequently experience the sensation that I could never invent imaginative events that, in their tragic or absurd extraordinariness, can stand beside the strangeness of life, as it is lived in Nigeria. Indeed, I follow public events in Nigeria with a certain sense that some grand master of fiction, versed in absurd tragedy, stands just out of sight to shape and orchestrate these events. For me, to read the pages of Nigerian newspapers is often akin to reading the most wrought fabulist fiction. Except that the events one encounters in news reports, bizarre as they may appear, are deeply rooted in and describe the shattering realities of Nigerians’ lives. These are often events that trigger the declaration, “Only in Nigeria…”

Before I get to recent illustrations, I must quickly cite some classic examples that have become so woven into the essential fabric of Nigerian life that they hardly strike Nigerians anymore as odd much less astonishing.

It’s only in Nigeria that God “votes” in elections – and, in fact, casts the decisive vote. So, Nigeria’s election riggers invented the disingenuous mantra that only God gives power. If Candidate B is declared winner of an election, even though everybody knows Candidate A won it handily, all the imposter has to say to settle it all is, “God has given me power.”

It’s only in Nigeria that public officials fatten their bank accounts from funds budgeted for public purposes – and then demand that the people whose lives they have impoverished must fast and pray for better electric power, to be spared death in road accidents or death in ill-equipped hospitals.

It is only in Nigeria that a governor would declare that he has “totally transformed” every sector of his state – and then promptly fly abroad for medical treatment the instant he experiences a headache.
It is only in Nigeria (as happened in Ilorin, capital of Kwara State in January 2009) that a commissioner of police would call a press conference and point to an “arrested” goat, as a robber who turned himself into an animal just as pursuers were about to grab him. Newspapers around the world reported the absurd drama. It is only in Nigeria that the said officer would make such a global ass of a major national institution and retain his job.

Nigeria must be one of the few places in the world – perhaps the only one – where governors are effusively declared “performers” for paying the salaries of state employees. And if these governors happen to invest some funds in the rehabilitation of a few kilometers of roads, why, they are simply canonised.

Nigeria is arguably the world’s most notorious location where a mindless embezzler of public funds is no longer a thief if s/he belongs to the right (ruling) party, the right religion, the right state and the right circles. Nigeria is a country where just about anything is rigged or riggable in favour of the rich and connected where the police would hardly ever disturb the peace of a well-placed suspect, however grave the crime, and where many judges are only too willing (for the right price) to oblige well-heeled suspects and accused every manner of justice-evading legal gymnastics.