Abacha Loot: Matters Miscellany

By Sufuyan Ojeifo

I got a credible information last week from some grapevines in Abuja that the much-talked about outstanding sum of $322 million (not $321 million as has been widely reported) stashed away in some secret accounts by former military dictator, the late General Sani Abacha, in Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland, routinely referred to as Abacha loot, has been repatriated and it is sitting pretty in a dedicated account in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

This calls for pomp and ceremony, especially by the office of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami (SAN), which had committed to ensure that the loot was repatriated, regardless of the shenanigans and blackmail from within and outside some official quarters in Nigeria. 

*Late Gen Abacha

 A powerful Nigerian delegation, led by Malami and comprising a team of Nigerian law firm of Oladipo Okpeseyi and Co., had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Swiss Federal Council and the World Bank on December 7, 2017 for the repatriation of the loot, composed of $250 million traced to Liechtenstein and $72 million traced to Luxembourg, which was confiscated by the Court of Switzerland. 

President Buhari And The Irresistible Allures Of Lagos!

By Olugbenga David

On Thursday, after commissioning a bus stop - Ghana will in May, commission their new and futuristic Kotoka International Airport - in paralysed Lagos, President Buhari went to the main event that brought him to Lagos, the Bola Tinubu Day, which has now been surreptitiously made into a national holiday.

 

*President Buhari, Bola Tinubu, Oluremi
Tinubu, during Buhari's visit to Lagos

And while Mr. President was attending events to mark this birthday, the Army was burying 11 soldiers in a very lowkey funeral in Kaduna. The soldiers were killed at Birnin Gwari, Kaduna State, several days earlier, reportedly by late Buharin Daji’s murderous bandit group.

This was the same day also, that dozens were killed, for the umpteenth time, in Zamfara, said to be by the same Buharin Daji’s murderous group. But the President did not care to even ask for a minute’s silence in honour of the murdered soldiers. Nor silence in honour of the poor peasants killed. He only had time and words of praise for the Jagaban Borgu, whose electoral value is suddenly attractive, valuable and desirable to the President. After all, 2019 elections are here, and John Odigie-Oyegun has no electoral value in the new turn of events and scheme of things. So the Jagaban must be vigorously courted, and be properly romanced.

Nigeria: Leah Sharibu On My Mind

By Mazi Ohuabunwa

I was feeling low last week and began wandering what was weighing me down. Yes my mother, Madam Mathilda Nwannediya Ohuabunwa, who recently finished her race on the Earth will be laid to rest this week’s Friday, 6th of April 2018 in my home town- Arochukwu in Abia State. So it was natural to feel that was my problem. But I shook that thinking away because since our mother got called back to The Lord, my siblings and I had maintained an attitude of gratitude. After what our mother went through to raise 12 children (seven boys from her womb and five other children from the womb of her mate) and lived to the ripe age of 90, we felt God had done so well for her and for us. And having come to that conclusion, we have remained upbeat as we prepared for her interment.

*Leah Sharibu

Later, it dawned on me that my mood was caused by the pain that I have had in my heart even before we heard of the dramatic release of the girls abducted by Boko Haram from the Science & Technical Secondary School in Dapchi, Yobe State. Actually the pain started on February 19, when the men of Boko Haram marched unchallenged to abduct our school girls the same way, they abducted the Chibok girls in 2014. One would have expected that my pain would ease with the news of the release of 104 or 105 or 106 of the girls (as the total number has kept changing from 110 to 112 to 113).

Nigeria: Treading The Road To Rwanda

By Brady Nwosu

History is replete with nations that fought wars, survived and came out stronger, but nations that are at war with themselves hardly survive or come out stronger. The so-called Nigerian civil war was rather an invasion of the Eastern Region. Every civil war, in fact all fought wars thereafter, go with lessons and a cause never to repeat itself. But it was not a civil war because there was no spread of ill experiences, except in the conquered enclave. While the people dwelling in rest of Nigeria were going about their normal live, banks and other utility institutions were actively functioning, age grades overlapped their delayed mates in the invasive eastern conquest.

*Buhari 

Today, Nigeria is at war with itself; pushing itself to negative entropy. It is at the precipice and could fall apart sooner than predicted. Nigeria is described in the Failed Index State as extremely fragile. By extreme fragility, they mean, when a country is unable to supervise its territorial areas.

Nigeria: Time To Rework APC

By Alabi Williams

The fortunes of the All Progressives Congress (APC) have plummeted seriously since the party won the 2015 presidential election. The party had drifted aimlessly for three years, and some of us waited for the time someone will halt the drift.

*APC leaders: President Buhari and
Bola Tinubu

 That nearly happened last week, when President Buhari, as the foremost leader of the party told his party men to take another look at the contentious tenure elongation that was gratuitously handed to the John Odigie-Oyegun-led national executive, as well as others in the states and local governments.

On February 27, at the end of its National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting, the party, without due consultations suddenly extended the tenure of its National Working Committee (NWC), by one year. 

Rape And The Nigerian Condition

By Promise Adiele

A first glance at the title of Alexander Pope’s poem The Rape of the Lock immediately rouses the sensibilities to his deployment of the word ‘rape’. Although the mind instantly acquires a sexual cognition of ‘rape’, Pope’s use of it connotes entirely different meaning in the context of the poem. For Pope, ‘rape’ means to take away or remove something from its original place thereby depriving the owner of its importance and service. Indeed, this appears remote from ‘rape’ which describes the forceful initiation of sex without the consent of one of the persons involved. 

Before we begin to scrutinize rape, let us establish that the symbolic ethos of any society is essentially composed in its moral order by which the conduct of members is regulated. A breakdown of moral order in any society through rape signifies a dislocation of cosmic harmony and therefore requires propitiation, sometimes punitive; in order to salvage humanity’s doomed fate before chthonic gods. Rape is an undesirable, anti-social act which must be consistently repudiated and abhorred. I do not know of any religion, culture or creed that condones rape. Whether as an act of sexual perversion or an act of stealing, rape today – like all other social vulgarity – stands trial in the court of public opinion.

Winnie Mandela Dies At 81

Mrs. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, a veteran of the anti-apartheid struggle and wife of the late former South African president, Mr. Nelson Mandela, is dead. She was 81.  

Her PA‚ Zodwa Zwane‚ confirmed the ant- apartheid struggle veteran’s death on Monday afternoon. She said the family would issue a statement later in the day.

Born in Bizana in the Eastern Cape in 1936‚ Nomzamo Winifred Madikizela-Mandela moved to Johannesburg to study social work after matriculating.

She met lawyer and anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela in 1957 and they were married a year later.

President Buhari Can’t Fight Corruption, He Is A Direct Beneficiary Of Corruption Freebies — PDP

Press Statement

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) says President Muhammadu Buhari has no moral rectitude to fight corruption being a direct beneficiary of the corruption freebies deployed by his party leaders to fund his 2015 presidential campaign.

*President Buhari 

The party said the President who declared that he had no resources to run a presidential campaign in 2015 ought to have known, particularly as a leader, that the billions of naira deployed for his campaigns were proceeds of corrupt activities of known All Progressives Congress (APC) governors and leaders.

The party further challenged Buhari to make open the sources of fund available to his campaign in the 2003, 2007 and 2011 race as well as the names of the donors.

The Petroleum Industry Governance Bill (PIGB) – A Watered-down version of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB)

By Idowu Oyebanjo

The 8th Senate has passed the PIGB which, when assented to by the President, will give birth to a new era for the Petroleum Industry in Nigeria. Most of the countries that established National Oil Companies as did Nigeria have actually developed their Petroleum Industries to benefit their citizens and nations especially in making electricity available as a free commodity which in my opinion can also be implemented in Nigeria.

*Buhari: President and Petroleum Minister 

After several years of attempts to reform the oil and gas industry in Nigeria, the watered-down version of the original Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) may be on its way for Presidential assent with a 5% levy on fuel sold or distributed in Nigeria.

Nigeria’s Arrested Development And Bill Gates Wake-Up Call

By Magnus Onyibe

By now, most Nigerians would be familiar with Bill Gate’s incisive perspective on Nigeria’s development because his speech to the National Economic Council has gone viral. So there is no need repeating the fact that he identified health and education as sectors that Nigerian policy makers have to rejig in the Economic Recovery Growth Plan, ERGP to enable the full realization of our country’s potentials. This is because he noticed that even if the ERGP boasts of being focused on Nigerian people via investment in healthcare and education which are the critical elements of human development, attention seem to be skewed in favor of physical infrastructure to the detriment of sustainable human development from birth.

*Bill Gates

According to Gates, for real development that would make reasonable impact on the polity to take place, both human and physical infrastructure have to be developed pari pasu.

To me, Gates’ perspective is a pretty straight forward analogy of the prospects and impediments to Nigeria’s much anticipated lift off from the poverty trap. But such positive optics of Gates presentation is not shared by Nasir El Rufai who was part of the audience at the forum. He faulted Gates’ presentation and offered a counter view which is that the ERGP is a great document as it is. He is of the view that it only needs to be adopted at the state level for the vision behind it to be accomplished.

That Danjuma’s Significant Outburst

By Sufuyan Ojeifo

We mean to hold our own.  I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire, said the indefatigable Prime Minister of Britain during World War 11, Winston Churchill, in 1942. But unfortunately, that was what he was compelled to do as recounted by Peter Clarke in his book titled: The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire. In a rave review of the book, Allan Massie surmised that Churchill rightly dominated the book as he was shown, warts and all, from the drawing on the diaries of Alan Alanbooke and Sir Alec Cadogan, as infuriating, often boring, sometimes wandering, arriving at meetings without having read his briefing papers, often unrealistic in his demands, hell to work with.

*Gen Danjuma

Curiously, the more Churchill’s weaknesses were exposed, the more splendid he seemed. According to Massie, If at times Alanbrooke and others wondered how they could win the war with him, they all knew it would have been impossible without him.  To be sure, Churchill, soldier, writer and politician, was one of Britain’s greatest heroes, particularly remembered for his indomitable spirit while leading Great Britain to victory in World War 11.  Churchill wrote his war memoirs and titled the last volume: Triumph and Tragedy. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1953 among other great accomplishments.

Nigeria: So Much Anger In The Land!

By Robert Obioha

There is anger in the land. Nigerians are not happy. They are fuming with anger and despair over failed electoral promises of the ruling party.  They are angry over their miserable living conditions. They are angry over the continuous rape of the country by her unfaithful political leaders. There is no mistake about it. Every Tom, Dick and Harry are bitter about the excruciating Nigerian condition. Even children are not excluded.

*President Buhari

The Nigerian condition is fast becoming beyond prayers and redemption. It has defied all logic and solutions including dry fasting and intercessory incantations. It can be easily felt from the north to the south and from the east to the west. Everybody in Nigeria is angry over the general insecurity in the country dubbed the giant of Africa. Apart from the menace of the Boko Haram insurgents in the North-east and other isolated places, the murderous campaign of Fulani herdsmen across the country has caused much pain and anguish in the land to the extent that a former Defence Chief, Lt. Gen. Theophilus Danjuma (retd), has urged victims of such mindless attacks to defend themselves. 

President Buhari, Danjuma And Looming Anarchy

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Like medieval potentates who fiddled around while their empires were in the grip of mortal perils, President Muhammadu Buhari has since lost the capacity to resolve for us the question of whether our nation is on the brink of anarchy.  

This is because Buhari and his officials are stuck in a reality that does not reflect the pains of the people.

*Buhari and Danjuma 

In other words, if the country staves off a post-Gaddafi Libya-like anarchy and it remains one after the tenure of Buhari, the credit should go to the forbearance and prescience of those who are outside his government. 

During the recession that the government claims to have overcome through its deft economic management, it amounted to blackmail of the Buhari administration to draw its attention to the reality of the suffering of the masses.

Nigeria: Dapchi Rescue And The Nemesis Of Propaganda

By Israel A. Ebije

Let me congratulate parents of abducted Dapchi secondary school girls recently returned after weeks of adoption. I must congratulate security operatives on their consistent absence when the girls were taken and retuned. Let me also congratulate the federal government on successful hostage negotiation, where millions in alien currencies was allegedly paid and ‘just’ a few Boko Haram militants released in exchange. 

I will not forgive myself if I fail to congratulate those in government allegedly involved in hostage on the ransom racketeering for a booming business venture. Let me also congratulate those who have been able to convince Nigerians that the abduction was staged for publicity stunt ahead of 2019 presidential election. Let me, however, condole with the losers, those whose kids died for “money and politics”. My heartfelt sympathy also goes to Leah Sharibu who is held as slave for her religious belief. Let me indeed sympathize with those who have turned the unfortunate development into a religious and ethnic fight.

Nigeria: VP Yemi Osinbajo Still Didn’t Get It!

By Afam Nkemdiche

The federal government’s economic team, led by the National Economic Council (NEC), has once again received a hard knock for its poor understanding of how to grow a national economy.

Bill Gates; yes, Bill Gates of the Microsoft fame, who came calling a couple of days previously, was reported to have told a special session of the NEC that Nigeria’s ongoing Economic Recovery And Growth Plan (ERGP) is broadly flawed.

*VP Osinbajo

He said for the ERGP to be effective, it must reflect the people’s needs, and it should give priority to human capital development over physical capital, contrary to the present composition of the ERGP. 

He then advised the federal government to review the ERGP – I should interpret that to mean reconstitute the NEC.

T.Y. Danjuma: The Hypocrisy Of A Chief Mourner

By Jude Ndukwe

When on Saturday, March 24, 2018, Gen T.Y. Danjuma sent out a shrill cry to Nigerians using the exalted pedestal of the Taraba State University’s first convocation ceremony as a medium to send out his message, one could see nothing but desperation, frustration and hopelessness all over him as a result of the incessant killings of Nigerians of diverse nationalities by the marauding Fulani herdsmen terrorists. 

*Gen Danjuma 

Such emotions are expected of a man whose kith and kin are directly in the line of fire.

There is no doubt that Danjuma’s call for Nigerians to rise and defend themselves in the face of the immutable failure of security agencies to come to their rescue is germane, it is however too late, too little and too feeble. This is in addition to the fact that Danjuma has since lost his exalted place in the scheme of morality before the ordinary Nigerian.

Dapchi Abduction, Height Of Inglorious, Pathological Deceit And Hoax

Press Release

“The latest drama of the Dapchi school girls release is the height of serial and inglorious, pathological deceit and hoax. In their bid to make unfounded and unthinkable comparisons (with the regime of Gooduck Jonathan) President Buhari and his hegemonic Fulani cabal become antithetic as they are contradictory.

“Apparently, in a hurried orchestra to display their high dexterity of quick response to the manipulated abduction (as against the snail speed approach of the then Jonathan’s regime) the ‘good plan’ was marred by poor execution. Over one hundred girls appearing in new and neat dresses with their big bags of different makes.

“The thought-provoking questions are: Did all the girls dress for a religious or social outing shortly before their abduction? Were they allowed to bring their new clothes on abduction or were they taken to a boutique for their fine ‘uniforms’ before they were brought back?

Nigerian Youths Must Fight For Real Change

By Dan Amor

I am first and foremost a Nigerian child. Then I am a depressed Nigerian youth. Depression obviously has its several roots: it is the doubtful protection which comes from not recognizing failure. It is the psychic burden of exhaustion, and also and very often, that discipline of the will or the ego which enables one to continue fighting, continue working, when one’s unadmitted emotion is in panic. 

And panic, it is, I think, which sits as the largest single sentiment in the heart of the collective members of my own generation. Today, I find myself in an overwhelmingly urban society, a distinctly urban creature. Thus, I am adequately informed of current developments in my country. I am anxious, angry, humorless, suspicious of my own society, apprehensive with relation to the future of my own country. Quixotic, yet optimistic, I am on the prowl for the immediate and remote causes of our national predicament. My nostrils fairly quiver for the stench of some injustice I can sally forth to condemn. Devoid of any feeling for the real delineation of function and responsibility, I find all the ills of my country, real or fancied, pressing on my conscience. Not lacking in courage, I am prepared, in fact, to charge any number of windmills.

Of Hate Speeches, The Nigerian Senate And The Death Penalty Bill

By Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo

Recently, the Nigerian Senate entertained a bill on “hate speech”, the high-point of which is the recommendation of death sentence to any person found guilty of hate speech. I am utterly disappointed that the Senate could at this point in our history be considering such bill even in the face of mounting challenges confronting the country. This is a typical case of treating the symptoms of an illness rather than the root cause of the illness.

*Dr. Arthur Nwankwo 

I am disappointed that life in Nigeria today has become so cheap; that while we are daily assailed by the atrocities of Fulani herdsmen, Boko Haram and other merchants of death, that while other countries are removing capital punishments from their statute books; an institution such as the Nigerian Senate is considering a bill to constitutionalize capital punishment. This is a tragedy of gargantuan proportion and it does consolidate the impression among many that Nigeria is irredeemable. 

The Dapchi ‘Abduction’ Scam: Where Is Leah Sharibu?

By Femi Fani-Kayode

I am happy that the abducted Dapchi schools girls are all back home but I am deeply troubled by the fact that one of them was left behind and by the assertion that five of them died whilst in captivity. The day the truth comes out about what really happened to the Chibok and Dapchi girls and those that were behind these two scams, Nigerians will be shocked and they will spit on the graves of Buhari and his collaborators.

Meanwhile I saw the pictures and watched the video of Dapchi residents cheering on and waving at Boko Haram insurgents as they dropped off the "missing" girls. It was clear to me that they regarded the terrorists as heroes and I was compelled to ask myself the following question, "Are we really one country?"