That Nigeria May Survive The 2015 Presidential Elections

By Nnaemeka Oruh                                          

 A few days from now, we shall be headed to the polls for the 2015 Presidential and National Assembly elections. Then two weeks later, the governorship and state assembly elections will hold. This year's presidential election will arguably be the most fiercely contested and the closest presidential elections since the history of Nigeria’s democracy. The All Progressives Congress (APC) – the major opposition party in Nigeria, has over the past one year grown to be a robust and influential party which stands within touching distance of taking over from the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP). Few will argue that this development has engendered a sense of insecurity amongst the ruling party and has ultimately become very healthy for our democracy.  Yet, as we go to the polls, it is important that we be careful and desist from certain acts that may truncate this well-worked out democracy.

*President Jonathan and Gen Buhari

One of the most important things we need to watch out for is the circulation of false information. In this era of social media, several false information have been in circulation either to gain cheap popularity, or simply to cause mischief and advance some sinister objectives. With the nauseating desire to 'feel among', many for the sake of attracting retweets by twitter celebrities have gone as far as cooking up fake stories that they know will pander to the desires of the twitter celebrities and proceeded to tweet such false news to them in order to gain acceptance and appear relevant.

Nigeria: Elections In The Season Of Fear

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

On Saturday (March 28, 2015), Nigerians will once again troop to the polls to choose who among the several contestants vigorously campaigning and scheming out there (mostly for self-serving reasons) would be their president and members of the Senate and House of Representatives for the next four years. In several other countries, including even some of our smaller and leanly-endowed neighbours here, election periods usually provide the populace with pleasant opportunities to savour the excitement of democracy.

People go to the polls with beaming faces exchanging pleasantries and banters while waiting to cast their votes. They are not gripped by any benumbing fear that some daredevil thugs might swoop on the voting centres to shoot into the air, snatch away ballot boxes, and, possibly, wound or even kill some people in the process. Even the contestants would just come to the voting centres with little or no security, and without any fanfare unobtrusively cast their votes like every other person.  And as they return to their homes, they are not looking over their shoulders to see if some killers hired by their opponents are trailing them to eliminate them.

The voters, too, would go home and enjoy another night of refreshing and peaceful sleep with their two eyes closed. The atmosphere is completely devoid of fear because they are not expecting that some hooligans would soon start disturbing the peace of the neighbourhood and looking for whom to kill or maim once emerging results begin to show that their paymaster is losing.

The expectation of Nigerians of decent will this time around is that we would be able to prove with this Saturday’s elections that our case cannot just remain egregiously different in the comity of nations, that we would not always be counted among the world’s perennially sick babies who are always distinguished by their inability to get even very simple things right.

Bird Flu: All Eyes On Nigeria?

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Recently (January 2015), Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture, Akinwumi Adesina,   confirmed the outbreak of bird flu in eleven states of the federation. The states affected are Kano, Lagos, Ogun, Rivers, Delta, Edo, Plateau, Gombe, Imo, Oyo and Jigawa states.

Not many Nigerians even heard of the outbreak which could really be very disastrous if not properly managed. This was because the Federal Government not only immediately identified and depopulated the 39 farms affected by the flu in the eleven states, it also approved N145 million for the owners of the farms as compensation for the loss they suffered as a result of the depopulation exercise. As we know, depopulation is one of the most effective measures usually taken to control the spread of the avian flu. Each of the affected farms got N1.4 million which was disbursed within 72 hours of the killing of the infected and exposed birds.  We must also commend the owners of those farms for cooperating with the government to arrest the looming epidemic.

When it was reported that Nigeria had recorded “the first” human casualty from bird flu in 2007, a World Health Organisation (WHO) spokesperson, Gregory Hartl, said cases of humans contracting the H5N1 virus (which causes the bird flu) in Nigeria should come to no one as a surprise, considering the experience in a country like Indonesia, which, like Nigeria, has huge concentrations of poultry where human beings live.

“It does not change anything from a public health point of view. It had to happen sooner or later,” Hartl said.

The New Zealand Herald of February 1, 2007, quotes unnamed “experts” as identifying Nigeria as one of the countries that constitute the “weakest links in the global attempt to stem infections of birds.”

Politicians As Nigeria’s Biggest Headache

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Now, let’s face it. Despite all the empty (and, often, very exasperating) noise about being driven by patriotism and “desire to serve my people” that usually saturates the atmosphere at each election season, a careful, conscientious search on the political terrain can only yield about less than one percent (and one is being really generous here) of aspirants motivated solely by genuine desire to improve the lives of the citizenry and make society a better place.

            Buhari, President Jonathan and the Chairman
            of PDP and APC

For the majority, the sole incentive is the golden opportunity politics offers to gain access to government coffers and cart away as much free money as one could grab before one’s tenure elapses. This is just the raw, plain truth. Indeed, it is a simple case of organized banditry and every politician in Nigeria knows that we know this.

There is, however, a very insignificant few who, although also inspired by the same primitive craving for the very unfairly lucrative political jobs, are content to just go home every month with only their usually jumbo salaries and allowances. Although, they do not find the very outrageously inflated pay packets they have allocated to themselves in the midst of widespread poverty very obscene, they are, however, able to recoil from the mad, free and fair looting that has become the distinguishing feature of political office in Nigeria. The brazenness with which the looting is perpetrated and the most revolting manner its prodigious proceeds are often flaunted before everyone underline the unmistakable impression that shameless stealing has received an official endorsement as part and parcel of governance, a kind of official culture.

What makes the matter even more egregious is that these callous looters are always able to use some tiny crumbs or the usually very reliable intoxicants, namely, ethnicity and religion, to get the same shortchanged and impoverished citizenry to rise in their defense each time there are attempts to pry into their hideous activities in office. It is only in Nigeria that this kind of thing makes sense – that someone among the populace would want to fight and even die for an unrepentant enemy of the people who has so wickedly exploited, dehumanized and grossly diminished him!

Illiberality In An Age Of Conspiracy

By Dan Amor

For those who have a profound appreciation of power and its most penetrating insight as well, the fact of the matter, as the Italians once succinctly put it, is that power cannot be wrested no matter the paradigm one uses without certain attributes by the group or individual that jockeys after it. Popularized as the Three Cs in political parlance, any group that earnestly seeks power must be cohesive. It must be coherent. And it must be conspiratorial. 

*President Jonathan 

In an attempt to wrest power from President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, even before the Senate's Doctrine of Necessity following the untimely death of President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, some hawks have tried to employ certain machinations including coercion and brigandage to humiliate him from the pinnacle of power.

Few Nigerians have been so persistently, so perversely and so pertinaciously maligned in the folklore of our political evolution. Even before Yar'Adua was officially pronounced dead, there was  cataclysm in the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) arising from the sharp division between defenders of entrenched interests who insisted that the North must retain power and those who insisted that the sanctity of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria must supervene.  That is where Jonathan's problem started. With the intervention of the Senate, he assumed the Presidency in acting capacity and later as substantive President. In 2011, northern politicians insisted that Jonathan should not run, which is grossly unconstitutional. Again, the Constitution gained upper hand, and Jonathan, in what was considered a free-and-fair election by local and international observers, won a pan-Nigerian mandate as the country's fourth democratically elected President.

National Seminar On Chinua Achebe At Indian Women's College

National Seminar on legendary African author, Chinua Achebe, held at the JSS College for women

"India needs to know more about the significant writer of Africa, Chinua Achebe and his influence toward the people in Africa through his straight forward narration with representations of folk stories, proverbs, and oratory which made him a man of people as well his writings reflected the  voice of people", said M L Jadhav, Chairman, Department of English, Shivaji University, Kolhapur, Maharashtra.

Speakers at the seminar 

He was speaking at UGC a sponsored national seminar on ‘Foregrounding Chinua Achebe: Indian Response’ organised by the Department of English in association with The Postgraduate Department of English of University of Mysore at JSS College for Women.

With thorough knowledge of the colonisation of Africa, the writer exposed the ground truth of the people who were repeatedly sabotaged by the European colonialists, especially British empires. He criticised the massacre of Africans by the colonialists. He x-rayed the pain of the black people of Africa across the world. His major writings were on the contest of traditional values in the absence of nativity which attracted people of the country, the professor explained.

Cross section of participants 

H B Suresh, HoD, Department of English, JSS College for Women, K M Chandar, Department of English, University of Mysore, Mruthyunjaya P Kulenur, Additional Director, College Education Division, JSS Mahavidyapeetha, N Nagaraja, Principal, JSS College for Women, H C Honnappa, Dean Academic, JSS College for Women were present. About 800 students attended in the seminar.

--Newskarnataka

Where is Muhammadu Buhari?

By Chuks Iloegbunam 
Yes, indeed. That is the question. Where is the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC)? The man left Nigeria in mysterious circumstances sometime between February 15 and 19, 2015. His manner of disappearing raised eyebrows across the country, for he suddenly melted into ether. To divert the attention of the curious, his handlers posted numerous false pictures on the Internet and planted same in national newspapers. There, suddenly, was Muhammadu Buhari, confidently emerging from airport formalities at either Heathrow or Gatwick! There, suddenly, was a relaxed Buhari in some well-appointed London studio, granting a press interview. 

*Muhammadu Buhari 

It didn’t take a century for the pack of lies to crumble. It turned out the pictures released of Buhari by his handlers were of the man on a UK visit during 2013. It turned out that the Buhari interview was years old, and had been conducted not anywhere in Europe but inside an Abuja Transcorp Hilton suite. Ekiti State Governor Ayo Fayose personally visited the suite and demonstrated beyond every iota of doubt that it was the venue of the so-called interview the APC claimed its presidential candidate had granted in London. Eagle-eyed journalists supported Fayose’s findings by detailing features of the interview picture that pinned its origin to the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja.

Robert Mugabe: Double Celebration At 91?

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Last Saturday (February 21, 2015), President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, the oldest head of state on planet earth, turned 91. He has ruled Zimbabwe for 35 years – since 1980 when the country gained independence from Britain.

Supported by wife, Grace, and children, Mugabe 

cuts his 91st Birthday Cake on 28 February 2015

 at Elephant Hills, Victoria Falls

For many years now, Mugabe’s birthday bash has become a big, lavish event in Zimbabwe – a country where majority of its 14 million people live below the poverty level. This year’s celebrations which will be held a week later on February 28 will, according to reports take place at a “championship golf course at Elephant Hills, a plush hotel resort with spa, pool and tennis courts near the Victoria Falls.”  

The ceremony is estimated to cost about US$1million (one million dollars) and part of the money is being sourced from the citizens. There were even reports that some impoverished villagers are also being compelled to “freely donate” money so that Mugabe could have his big party. Zimbabwe’s Daily News quotes the head of the Progressive Teachers’ Union, Mr. Raymond Majongwe, as saying that teachers all over the country are being forced to part with between one to ten dollars (depending on the status of the school where one is teaching) to fund the very expensive feast. This has however, been denied by Tongai Kasukuwere, the Finance Secretary of the ruling Zanu-PF’s Youth League who urged anyone “being forced to donate to the gala [to] report to the police.”

The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has, however, dismissed Mugabe’s birthday party as an “obscene jamboree.”

Is Robert Mugabe’s Fall Symbolic?

Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye  

Not a few across the world are convinced that it has become completely impossible to feel any sympathy for President Robert Mugabe no matter what happens to him. Mugabe’s 35-year old rule which has rewarded Zimbabweans with untold hardship has continued to defy any attempt at rationalization.

Robert Mugabe tripped and fell at Harare Airport 

But when he tripped on a red carpeted staircase last Wednesday (February 4, 2015) and came crashing down to the ground as he descended a podium at the Harare International Airport after addressing a very enthusiastic crowd of Zimbabweans, I could not help nursing some discomfort over the prompt, massive celebrations that greeted the accident across the world. I almost found myself agreeing with the Zimbabwean Information Minister, Jonathan Moyo, that the global bacchanal over Mugabe’s tumble amounted to “morbid celebrations.”  

Mugabe must have been in a very pleasant mood that Wednesday. He had just returned from the 24th African Union (AU) Summit in Addis Ababa where, despite stiff oppositions from Civil Society organisations, he was crowned the new Chairman of the 54-nation body, a position that would now afford him a more elevated platform to periodically deliver well-aimed sound bites to the West, his mortal enemies.

Also, as his plane touched down in Harare and he saw such a large crowd of supporters waiting to receive him, he must have reassured himself that his western antagonists would once more get the message he has been trying hard to send across to them, namely, that he is still in power because Zimbabweans want him. 

Libya: Getting Geneva Right

Middle East and North Africa Report N°157

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Libya’s deteriorating internal conflict may be nearing a dramatic turning point. Over six months of fighting between two parliaments, their respective governments and allied militias have led to the brink of all-out war. On the current trajectory, the most likely medium-term prospect is not one side’s triumph, but that rival local warlords and radical groups will proliferate, what remains of state institutions will collapse, financial reserves (based on oil and gas revenues and spent on food and refined fuel imports) will be depleted, and hardship for ordinary Libyans will increase exponentially. 

(PIX: AFP PHOTO/ABDULLAH DOMA)

Radical groups, already on the rise as the beheading of 21 Egyptians and deadly bombings by the Libyan franchise of the Islamic State (IS) attest, will find fertile ground, while regional involvement – evidenced by retaliatory Egyptian airstrikes – will increase. Actors with a stake in Libya’s future should seize on the UN’s January diplomatic breakthrough in Geneva that points to a possible peaceful way out; but to get a deal between Libyan factions – the best base from which to counter jihadis – they must take more decisive and focused supportive action than they yet have.

Robert Mugabe Prepares For Lavish 91st Birthday Celebrations

Zimbabwe’s president and guests to enjoy a $1m party at a luxury golf course amid widespread child malnutrition and high unemployment

President Robert Mugabe enjoys his 85th birthday
cake in in 2009 
(Pix: Philimon Bulawayo/Reuters)

By David Smith

John F Kennedy being serenaded by Marilyn Monroe apart, most presidents tend to make their birthdays private, low-key affairs. Not Robert Mugabe. Year after year the leader of Zimbabwe holds a lavish celebration, regardless of the state of the economy, and his 91st birthday will be no different. 

There will be music, dancing and elephant meat on the menu as an estimated 20,000 guests gather on a luxury golf course near Victoria Falls for a jamboree set to cost at least $1m (£650,000). Opposition MPs have branded the feast obscene in a country where the UN says one in three children are stunted because of hunger.

Nigeria: Seasonal Brinkmanship Again

Banji Ojewale

An old star departs, leaves us here on the

Shore, Gazing heavenward for a new star

Approaching. The new star appears, foreshadows

Its going, Before a going and coming that goes

On forever … 

 –  Christopher Okigbo, in Path of Thunder.

*President Jonathan (right) and General Buhari

Nigeria appears to be falling again under the excruciating spell of a star presaged by this remarkable poet of limitless possibilities.   At the time Christopher Okigbo wrote the poem shortly before his death in 1967 the young republic had writhed in a series of setbacks dating from the Western Region upheavals.

Okigbo  had a keen mind that correctly interpreted these rocking crises as the shadows of some bigger, more devastating whirlwind into which we were being drawn.  As he studied the events of his time, he decoded an abiku-like character in them.    The details and nuances which chroniclers ignored or gave little attention to, he noted and scrutinized to find out why they exerted such powerful but hardly visible influence.

Shed Your Own Blood, Mr. Politician!

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Whenever Nigerian politicians threaten that blood would flow if they lose in an election, what they always have in mind is not their own blood or that of their children and wives.  Even their distant relations and friends do not figure in their calculations.

*Post-election violence: who dies? (pix: salon)

What they have in mind is the blood of grossly impoverished Nigerians (people totally unfamiliar and unrelated to them whose death or impairment would not interfere with their happiness, assuming they even get to hear of it) whom they believe they would always be able to easily brainwash and deceive with dirty naira notes to unleash violence. These sometimes waste their lives in the service of those selfish and ultra-callous politicians who do not even place the slightest hint of worth on the lives of other Nigerians. These politicians have also learnt to deploy two usually highly reliable intoxicants, namely, ethnicity and godless religion, to confuse and blur the reasoning of the people and lure them into the streets to embrace their wasteful deaths.

Soyinka’s 60 Reasons (2)—An Investigative Report

By Chinweizu

07feb15

Soyinka says he has 60 reasons for not voting for Jonathan?  

 Is this one of them?

China Signs $23Billion Oil Deal With Nigeria

http://www.globalresearch.ca/china-signs-23-billion-oil-deal-with-nigeria/19390

By Trevor Johnson

Global Research, May 28, 2010

Or is this one of those off-the-radar reasons that it pays not to mention to the people?

Now, about my friend and old sparring partner WS. If you want to know what the Western powers are up to in Nija, you just watch WS. He has been their boy-in-the-hood ever since one of his lecturers at IU inspired him to set up his Pyrates as cover for a Nija network branch of British intelligence. And you think he got his Nobel for his unreadable books? But that’s another story.

Anyway what has that deal, signed in May 2010, got to do with Wole’s pro-Buhari position, or with the momentum of the Buhari campaign despite his being prima facie the Boko Haram candidate?

The report about that China deal concluded on this note:

“Western policy on Nigeria is driven by the super-profits generated from the extraction of oil and its processing. While publicly the US and its allies proclaim the need for democracy and openness, this is window dressing. Anything that impedes their drive for profits, whether from local opposition or from a rival nation, will be dealt with ruthlessly when required. The latest moves by China will have caused consternation in the boardrooms of the big oil companies, and countermeasures are all but inevitable.”

That’s the link, I tell you, to events now unfolding in the 2015 elections.

Is the pro-Buhari campaign momentum part of the countermeasures? An effort at regime change by orchestrated propaganda?

To appreciate that possibility, go watch the film “A Very British Coup” to see how such is done.

But what was the deal for? Why did it give offence and cause consternation in the boardrooms of the western oil giants—Shell, ExxonMobil and the lot?

A Humbling Reality!

By Banji 0jewale

One day in the very near future, naysayers of the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency are going to be confronted with the greatest and indisputable evidence of their error and ignorance: the aircraft in which they travel to take care of their vast business empire straddling the length and breadth of Nigeria and sometimes across our shores will be handled by pilots trained under the Amnesty scheme of the Jonathan Administration! When their jets and helicopters would have flown safely through the turbulence of the sky and landed to the applause of both the passengers and loved ones waiting to receive them at well-lit airports maintained by electricians including trainees of the Amnesty school, the critics would be humbled by a numbing reality: Jonathan isn’t “clueless” after all!

*President Jonathan

But it is not only in that field the president has confounded his captious compatriots. In education he has become the first president of Nigeria to address the vexatious issue of federal universities being the exclusive preserve of some states. By causing the establishment of nine of such institutions in the states that had none, Jonathan has ensured that each state in Nigeria now has at least one federal university either in existence or under actual construction.

Robert Mugabe Falls At Harare International Airport

As he left the podium after addressing supporters... 

Mugabe falls after addressing supporters at Harare
International Airport

Zimbabwe's 90-year-old president, Robert Mugabe, fell down a staircase Wednesday as he left the podium after a speech.

There was no indication Mugabe was hurt by the fall, and presidential spokesman George Charamba refused to discuss the incident with reporters.  

The president had just finished addressing supporters at Harare International Airport upon his return from an African Union summit in Ethiopia, where he was elected AU chairman.

Witnesses say Mugabe missed a step and fell while walking down the stairs. The president was helped to his feet by aides, who escorted him to a waiting car while dusting off his suit.

Video of the incident 

Security agents quickly rounded up journalists covering the event and ordered them to delete all pictures of Mugabe's fall.

Journalists have often complained of censorship in Zimbabwe, where Mugabe has ruled with an iron fist for nearly 35 years.

Civil society groups opposed his election as AU chair because of alleged election rigging and human rights abuses.

 -VOANews 

2015 Presidential Election Issues (3)

By Chinweizu

Part II of “2015-- Between Liberation and Slavery (3)”

Copyright © by Chinweizu, 2015

Sundoor999@gmail.com

 31jan15

A contribution to the Abuja symposium on “NATIONAL CONFAB AND THE 2015 GENERAL ELECTIONS” on MONDAY, 2^ND FEBRUARY  2015

VENUE: LAGOS/OSUN HALL, TRANSCORP HILTON HOTEL

-----------------------------

 ===========================================

2015 Presidential Election Issues

After that historical backgrounder, I shall now examine 4 election issues, the two on everybody’s mind —Corruption and Insecurity, with insecurity in the two forms of Boko Haram and The Fulani militia, plus two others that are not but should be on everybody’s mind namely, the 1999 Constitution—hereafter referred to as the Constitution; and Candidate Buhari.  So all in all I shall examine 5 distinct election issues: Corruption; Boko Haram; The Fulani Militia; the 1999 Constitution; Candidate Buhari.

------------------------------------------------

1] On Corruption, I submit that, under the Constitution, no President of Nigeria can tackle corruption without inviting impeachment, simply because corruption is encouraged and protected by the constitution which he is sworn to enforce.

2] On Boko Haram, I submit that it is partly funded through the structures of the Constitution and can’t be extinguished without first discarding the Constitution. I also submit that a military solution to Boko Haram is not possible under the Constitution.

3] On The Fulani Militia, I submit that it is an ethnic cleansing and land grabbing instrument of the Caliphate and a mortal danger to all other Nigerians, and that it can’t be curbed under the Constitution.

4] On the Constitution, I submit that it is the godfather of corruption, as well as the codification of the sources of all the vices that plague Nigeria, and that Nigeria cannot be reformed without discarding it. Though ostensibly democratic, its frauds make it a fake-democracy constitution.

5] On Candidate Buhari, I submit that he has neither the will nor the ability to discard the Constitution but has every reason to perpetuate it. Accordingly he can’t solve any of the problems whose solution requires discarding the Constitution. So, those who expect him to change Nigeria by solving these problems are taking themselves for a ride.

From these submissions I argue that because these top problems—Corruption, Insecurity in its Boko Haram and Fulani Militia forms--- can be solved only after scrapping the Constitution; so, the principal election issue becomes the Constitution itself and how to replace it.  Hence, this election should be decided by the answer the candidates give to just one question: What’s your program for replacing the Constitution?

I shall now discuss these submissions one by one.