13 Threats To Nigeria

By Tola Adeniyi  

With this title several readers will jump to the conclusion that the dreaded but now degraded Boko Haram terrorist group should occupy the Number one slot while the Fulani herdsmen terrorists and the new Ijaw Avengers would rank second and third respectively. They are wrong!

While the menace of the three mentioned terrorist groups constitutes grave threat and danger to Nigeria’s corporate existence and her economic resurrection, the combined menace of the three will pale into insignificance when placed side by side with the menace of the criminal silence of Nigerians in the face of the serious onslaught perennially and perpetually unleashed on the country by a handful of vultures who have bled Nigeria to near death with their insane looting of the country.

The Number 1 threat to corporate Nigeria is the unexplainable timidity of all Nigerians, the criminal silence of the masses in the face of the huge theft of their patrimony by a handful. Sometimes I wonder if Nigeria is the same country that produced legendary Aminu Kano, Madam Sawaba, Mrs. Olufunmilayo Kuti, Margaret Ekpo, Joseph Sarwan Tarka, Adaka Boro, Tai Solarin, Arthur Nwankwo, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Beko Ransome-Kuti and fiery Gani Fawehinmi among a few others.

Inability to speak out against evil, against injustice, against oppression, depression and deprivation is the beginning of calamitous tragedy. Nigerians have kept too quiet for too long that we now have a deadly monster that has almost swallowed us up as a people. Can we pretend not to know when our school drop-out neighbour who became chairman of local government suddenly started putting up a mansion and assembling porch cars in his yard? Did we not see Ghana-Must-Go bags being loaded and off loaded in the National Assembly? Did we not see our governors, presidents and other public officials suddenly becoming billionaires? We kept quiet.

Buhari And The Niger Delta

By Ken Agala

On Thursday morning news broke that President Buhari had cancelled his trip to Ogoni due to threat to his life from the Niger Delta Avengers. This is a very wrong move as the President must have handed over the required impetus to the militants and thereby emboldened them.

*Buhari

Even Jonathan’s ‘chickening out’ of going to Chibok at the peak of the Boko Haram insurgency, is less of a ‘Chickening out’ than this. But I know a President can’t move against his security report and I wrote about this when Jonathan was called names for cancelling his Chibok trip.

While Nigerians were shocked to read a report that our oil production has gone down from the agonizing 1.4 million barrels to 1.1, a few days ago the Avengers bombed three more crude oil wells even when the military carried out an invasion of Gbaramatu kingdom and other Niger Delta communities.

With the Presidents action, the Niger Delta Avengers have received credible endorsement as a group to be respected and I believe many conscripts will begin looking for how to join them .

Frankly speaking it is despicable to be talking about cleaning up some Niger Delta communities while more environmental degradation is strategically perpetrated by Niger Deltans.

But there is a law called The Law of cause and effect. Every effect is the result of a cause and every cause must have an effect

When President Buhari in his brutally frank manner told his US audience last year that he can’t in all honesty treat regions that gave him 95% votes equally to those who gave him 5%, I expected that his party men from these 5% regions would have openly protested and forced him to withdraw the statement. That statement was very wrong from a President who has a mandate to treat everyone equally.

I expected Mr. Presidents media team to tactically twist that statement in way that it’d give some form of confidence to people from the 5% region but they rather coined the name ‘wailers’ for these 5 percenters .

One Year After: Beyond The Blame Game

By Ayo Oyoze Baje  

Anyone still blaming the former President Goodluck Jonathan-led administration for all our current socio-economic woes, one year after leaving office, must be wallowing in self-deceit or simply living in fool’s paradise. Government is a continuum. Furthermore, when a leader takes over an institution, be it public or private, he inherits both the assets and liabilities. As he builds on the assets, he seeks ways to mitigate the pains inflicted on the people by the liabilities.

*Buhari 

One sweet victory leads to a new set of challenges. It is never a stroll in the park, nor a picnic in paradise. The top of the ladder, as the wise ones say, is not meant for dancing, or dithering to take decisive actions. Successful leaders find the reasons to succeed, not giving excuses for failure.

It would, therefore, do the spokespersons of our president a world of good to henceforth stop looking over the shoulder and laying all the blames of the failure of the Buhari-led government to frontally tackle and reverse the country’s dwindling economic fortunes, on the previous administration. Political campaigns, couched with sleazy slogans should have ended over a year ago. Now is the time for those who the electorate invested their trust and goodwill on to roll up their sleeves and get down to brass tasks.

After all, what is leadership all about? It is about having the vision to identify the led majority’s most pressing challenges and mustering the Capacity, the Character, the Courage and the Commitment to finding lasting solutions to them. It is about engendering team spirit; working with the best of hands and brain to deliver the so called ‘dividends of democracy’ to the good people of Nigeria. It is not about any individual, no matter how knowledgeable, to exhibit a philosopher-king mentality, pretending to know it all and foisting his views, sometimes puerile and out of sync with modern governance practices on his people.

Truth is, this administration needs all the assistance it could get. One of such is an economic think-tank, made of top technocrats who could read the next direction the global productive pendulum would swing and internalise it to proffer solutions to existing challenges. Such a group would have informed the president on the need to focus more energy, time and resources on revamping the tottering economy, soon after he took over the reins of governance. But one year after, there is no crystal clear direction where the ship of the economy is heading to.

Niger Delta And The National Question

By Dan Amor

To all intents and purpos­es, the raging war in the South South geopoliti­cal zone between irate militants and the security forces is needless and avoidable. Unfor­tunately, Niger Delta youths have once again played their much-abused region which, ironically, produces the wealth of the na­tion, into the willing hands of the establishment under the watch of a central government with an un­stated or hidden agenda to totally exterminate the goose that lays the golden egg from the face of the earth. Even while the region was yet relatively peaceful, when the reawakened restiveness had not reached fever-pitch, President Muhammadu Buhari, even in his inaugural speech alluded to how he would combat and defeat Boko Haram and Niger Delta militants. One can then safely assume that the current war is directly or in­directly orchestrated by the pow­ers that be just to create room for them to execute their plan against the region.

(pix: amnesty)

Yet, a fact too potent to be dis­puted, is that the deepening grouse of the people of the oil rich Niger Delta has largely gravitated to the growing consciousness that what the Nigerian state and the international monopoly oil com­panies take from their soil is not commensurate with what they give in terms of provision of social amenities, quality of life and the maintenance of a delicate balance between the human being and the natural environment. While not supporting the wanton destruc­tion of major oil installations in the Niger Delta and its concomi­tant degradation of the national economy, reason, no doubt, re­sides in this claim of neglect, which has further been justified and accentuated by the preda­tory disposition of some of the oil companies with the collabora­tive instincts of successive Nige­rian governments over the years. Most of these governments were military dictatorships lacking the requisite legitimacy, sufficient political will and constitutional mandate to protect the people and their environment.

As at Tuesday this week (May 31, 2016), the Senate and House of Representatives joint commit­tee on Niger Delta Development Commission, (NDDC), had is­sued bench warrant on seven oil companies operating in the Niger Delta region for failing to appear before a public hearing to defend themselves over allegation of non-remittance of statutory funds to the commission for the develop­ment of the region. That is how the multinational oil companies have been treating with levity is­sues relating to the development of the region due to their disdain for the laws of the land. Attitudes of successive Nigerian govern­ments actually created a dan­gerous class-a totally frustrated population- who now see the multinational oil companies and government as conspirators in the unholy and rapacious plot to drive them permanently out of their an­cestral homes in order to have free reign out the oil. Former president Olusegun Obasanjo was spend­ing N200million daily to maintain the Joint Task Force in the region whereas the people were dying from hunger and want. The per­sistent Niger Delta crisis is there­fore an economic process caught in a political web.

Restructure Nigeria To Save It

By Reuben Abati  

No one should be surprised by the loud and widespread support that has attended the latest call by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar that Nigeria needs to be restructured. In his words, “our current structure and the practices it has encouraged have been a major impediment to the economic and political development of our country. In short, it has not served Nigeria well, and at the risk of reproach it has not served my part of the country, the North, well. The call for restructuring is even more relevant today in the light of the governance and economic challenges facing us…Nigeria must remain a united country…I also believe that a united country, which I think most Nigerians desire, should never be taken for granted or taken as evidence that Nigerians are content with the current structure of the Federation. Making that mistake might set us on the path of losing the country we love…”

*Dr. Reuben Abati 

In those words, the former Vice President and now APC chieftain simply summarized what is already well known and has helped to draw attention afresh to what has been talked about over time but which Nigeria at the expense of its citizens and its own corporate existence is yet to address frontally and forthrightly. Indeed, Nigeria as presently structured and managed is not working. To save the country, the country must be restructured, not only politically but also in terms of the relationship between the federating units and the values that hold the union together.

Nations evolve on the basis of a creative rethinking of their processes and experiences. When the Americans came up with a Presidential/Congressional system of government in 1787, and wrote a Constitution to express their aspirations and expectations, they wanted to address the cleavages within the union and build a united country. In Nigeria, we inherited a skewed federal arrangement from the colonial masters, failed to improve on this, and ended up with the wages of that defect in the form of political crises and eventual civil war.

We have experienced years of military rule during which an enduring culture of praetorianism and dictatorship was established and when eventually we returned to civilian rule, we simply copied and pasted the American Presidential style of government. We have also borrowed the slogan of federalism, but in reality what we have is a unitary type of federalism, a unitary state, completely de-federalized. This is ironic considering the fact that one of the reasons for the collapse of the Aguiyi-Ironsi administration is commonly accepted to be his introduction of Decree No 34 of May 25, 1966, which in effect, transformed Nigeria into a unitary state.

Nigeria is in urgent need of a “re-set”, a rethinking, a redesign. The view that this is necessary has been in the public domain for more than 20 years, but successive administrations either toyed with it, politicized it, or they got round to it at end of term, so late that they gave a succeeding administration the opportunity to conveniently ignore it. The latest of such efforts was in 2014 when the Jonathan administration organized a National Political Conference, where far-reaching recommendations were made to ensure a restructuring of Nigeria. Sadly, the Report of that Conference, endorsed and supported by the Nigerian people, is hidden somewhere in government closets, gathering dust.

Buhari And The Tragedy Of Politics

By Abiodun Komolafe

“He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles.”
– Harry Emerson Fosdick.

*Buhari 

I am a professed and an active Buharist and I am glad I made a wise choice! Impliedly, given the opportunity again, I will not hesitate to repeat my preference for Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria’s president.

With that said, one cannot but be worried about the direction in which Nigeria is headed. That there is a cloud of darkness surrounding the country is no longer in doubt. No thanks to the impunity of the Jonathanians which turned her into a veiled entity, unworthy of incense.

As things stand, Nigeria’s foundation is not only threatened with predictable consequences, its economy is also castrated. The masses are in total hardship, toiling and suffering; and it seems as if the spirit of Saul is pursuing our David! In this ‘fantastically corrupt’ country, demigods and untouchables in high places who once stole Nigeria blind are using Nigeria’s money to torment Nigeria. And it is as if their Cain is plotting to assassinate our Abel! Civil servants are living in avoidable stress and agony; and it’s as if the Pharaoh which knew Joseph has passed! Though we seek to behave as a country run by laws, there’s an increase in electricity tariff without any corresponding increase in its availability. As if to compound our woes, our intelligence system has become so weak that criminals’ propensity to succeed in their acts has increased. As such, rather than collaborate, our security agencies find it more convenient to compete for recognition and attention.

A recently-released Livelihoods and Economic Recovery Assessment 2016 report on the North-East of Nigeria is not only revealingly disturbing, it is also symptomatic of a looming disaster unless urgent steps are taken to reset the button of Nigeria’s socio-economic situations. According to the report, unveiled by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in partnership with Oxfam Nigeria, “46 per cent of households in that part of the country borrow money to buy food; one economically active member of a household sustains 2.3 non-active members, while a majority of them do not have sufficient food supply.” It did not end there: “41 per cent rely on alternative health care, 21 per cent have migrated to other locations, while 20 per cent send their children out to work and beg. 11 per cent support a member with a mental or physical disability, while 21 per cent include, at least, one member with a chronic illness.”

Buhari In The Summer Of Sectional Discontent

By Louis Odion, FNGE

Ten years ago, yours sincerely received an unforgettable call on a certain Sunday afternoon. It was the ebullient Jimoh Ibrahim that was on the line. The youthful billionaire, though already a friend, was in a combative mood over the day's edition of this column published on the back page of Sunday Sun which I edited then. His beef stemmed not necessarily from the substance of my thesis, but lumping him among those he considered a tribe of the "unlettered".

*Buhari 

In the piece, one took potshots at the fierce infighting among the emergent club of Obasanjo oligarchs. It would seem, one surmised, that whereas OBJ mentored them on the art of making cheap money by being the biggest beneficiaries of an opaque privatization programme, they had failed themselves by not imbibing the apostolic virtue of peaceful co-existence. 

At the end of his friendly fire that lasted several minutes, Araba characteristically teased: "My yeye friend, I'm sure you took a strange coffee before writing that. Well, hold on for General."
To my biggest shock, what echoed next in my ears was the clipped, unmistakable voice of General Muhammadu Buhari: "Louis, I just read your article now. Very, very interesting and humorous. In fact, I read and reread some portions that were most humourous. Like the part where you said some went to the university of buying and selling. Keep it up."

I recall the memory of that phone encounter today to partly dispel certain myths about President Buhari and, more crucially, underline the urgency of remedial steps needed by a leader needlessly buffeted by rising dissent from sections of the country on account of what seems a self-derailment or gradual abandonment of habits that had served him so well. 

Fleeting as our conversation was that day, I was left with the portrait of not the implacable ethno-religious bigot which his then political rival, OBJ, had splurged fortune to project over the years; but a genial grandee at home anywhere in the country. From my findings later, the phone call was made from the home of Ibrahim, a full-blooded Yoruba from rural Igbotako, a riverine community in Ondo State. Of course, Araba happened to be one of the young Turks of ANPP, Buhari's party then. 

After the 2003 presidential polls which OBJ notoriously won by a "moon slide", not only did the negative profiling of Buhari become official policy, ostracization of any business tycoons suspected of ties with him also commenced pari pasu. Indeed, a good number of the northern business/political elite who seem in a hurry today to form an ethnic ring around him were the same characters Obasanjo had recruited to lead and sustain that dirty campaign. 

It was therefore from such a narrow circle –  pan-Nigerian nonetheless –  who refused to be intimidated or blackmailed that Buhari had to draw for emotional balance and funding of his protracted legal battles against those who "cheated" him in the 2003, 2007 and 2011 polls. Among that fraternity was Tam West-David, a decorated professor of virology, who would cap his cult-like loyalty by writing and launching a book in his worship at personal cost when no one was yet sure Buhari could become a president. 

This Commander-In-Chief Is AWOL

By Lewis Obi

As President MuhammaduBuhari was completely unperturbed by the Army’s mas­sacre of hundreds of Shi’ites, so was he utterly indifferent to the slaughter of hundreds of local farmers by Fulani herdsmen. His silence was astonishing, his inaction frightening.

*Buhari 

The Shi’ites are a tiny minority Muslim sect often looked upon by the majority Sunni as a nuisance at best and fool-hardy, stubborn in their beliefs and doctrines. They are exactly the kind of group that a president must go the ex­tra mile to protect. Not only are they politically weak and they tend to have a persecution com­plex, they are also easily bullied or victimized. The President was asked what he thought about their massacre. He was dismissive of the mat­ter, but he made the remarkable statement that he has been told the Shi’ites constituted “a state within a state.” He did not elaborate. In classi­cal times ‘a state within a state’ readily attracted a charge of treason. In any case, he said, the Kaduna State Government was already taking care of the matter. It was heart-breaking to see a Nigerian President shirk his primary respon­sibility, contracting out his responsibility to pro­tect Nigerian citizens. It was like the Biblical Pontius Pilate washing his hands off the case of Jesus Christ.

Now, Kaduna State Governor Nasir El- Rufai, an otherwise deliberative man, from whom the President took his briefings on the matter, had arraigned, tried, and sentenced the Shi’ites. He was so sure their leader, Sheikh Ibraheem El-Zakzaky, would be tried for whatever crimes he must have commit­ted. He didn’t say what those crimes might be, but it was the government’s way of warn­ing that the Shi’ites were expendable.The most cursory observer could see that taking a cue from El-Rufai, the Northern Gover­nors began venting and piling on the Shi’ites, forcing everyone to run for cover. It was like kicking a man when he is down. So, when the commission of inquiry was announced, it looked like an after-thought and an attempt at a cover-up.

If the President’s silence on the Shi’ites af­fair was astonishing, his indifference to the slaughter of local farmers by herdsmen was dangerously confounding. The conflict of farmers and Fulani herdsmen is not new. But herdsmen armed with weapons of war are novel. Worse, President Buhari himself is a cattle breeder and is expected to understand the conflict of the interests of both sides. But it would appear that his ascent to the throne got the herdsmen intoxicated with power which ought to have been anticipated and squelched. Hence the impunity.

Unlike the Army’s attack on the Shi’ites which was a single orgy of blood-letting and destruction spanning three days, the attacks on the farmers are a repetitive provocation and savage aggression. As late as this week, on Monday to be precise, Fulani herdsmen attacked Tse Aondo and Tse Ankou farming communities, in Benue State, killing seven.

Each Fulani attack was in the pattern of a violent Genghis Khan-style “destroy what you can’t kill, burn everything that can be burned.” Thousands were rendered homeless and more thousands became refugees. Hun­dreds of women were raped, hundreds were killed and thousands wounded.

Nigeria: A Stunted Democracy?

By Eddie Mbadiwe

Winston Churchill’s speech to the House of Com­mons in 1947 in the course of which he said that de­mocracy is the worst form of government except for the other forms that have been tried from time to time now has universal acceptance. China, Russia and Cuba, apart from the Western world and the so called Third World countries practise one form of democra­cy or the other. The icing on the cake is that even North Korea as recently as three weeks ago had democratic elections and crowned Kim as Supreme leader.

For Nigeria, the journey has been long and ardu­ous starting with the pre-independence struggle led by Herbert Macaulay, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo and the Sardauna of Sokoto. The military intervened post-independence and we had many years of stagnation and little growth. NADECO stepped in to drive away the military and there were lots of sac­rifices and casualties but the heroes remain MKO Abiola and the aborted June 12 election.

Democracy involves active people participation and you can take it as given that nobody will attempt to rig the June 23 European Union Election in Britain. More than 70% of eligible voters will actively take part. Same can be said of Canada, Australia, Norway and Denmark. As the Buhari Administration just clocked one year in office, there has been a lot of parroting of seventeen years of uninterrupted democracy. The question is at which cost and at what level of develop­ment. This is not a critique of the PDP which had been in power at the centre for most of those years or the APC. We must be courageous and accept our collec­tive incapacitations, afterall 60% of the major players in APC had executive power as PDP Governors etc. As one preacher paraphrased on radio not long ago, we have all sinned and have fallen short of the glory of our maker, God.

For people like me, it is important to know our past and that is why I think it is wrong not to make history com­pulsory in WAEC. However, dwelling daily on the failure of past administrations is not only irritating but a sign of unpreparedness to govern. What is the way forward – that is the real issue today.

Like in any field of scientific research, proper diagnosis is 50% of the cure or solution. Long – term mass education must remain at the core of our social emancipation. But what of the short and medium – term objectives? As long as politics remains attractive in terms of remuneration, so long will money which is at the root of all evils continue to occupy centre court in Nigeria. Courage demands that we take the bull by the horns and bring public officers’ pay at par with what obtains in civilised countries. There is a league of pay structure and Nigeria has to decide where she falls in.

The next thing Nigerians cannot afford to sweep under the carpet is the 2016 Appropriation bill. Section 58 (4) of the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (Amended) states “When a bill is presented to the Presi­dent for assent, he shall within 30 days signify his assent or that he withholds assent” The President said he refused to assent because there was a lot of padding (a word new to our lexicon) and it took another six weeks presum­ably for the bill to be unpadded. One is on the same page with the President and will not sign what is shrouded in dense clouds. The question now is, who has contravened our constitution and are there any consequences? The six weeks delay will negatively affect budget implementation .

Dambazau’s Bigotry

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

With people like Abdulrahman Bello Dambazau in the government of President Muhammadu Buhari, it is no wonder why the much-touted quest for positive change has remained a mirage. If Dambazau who is the Minister of Interior had ever made any pretentions to being pan-Nigerian, this façade has been exploded by the recent appointments he made in his ministry for Nigerians to comprehensively apprehend who he is: A bigot who is only beholden to the narrow interest of his tribe and religion.

*Abdulrahaman Dambazau

Dambazau attained a top rank of a lieutenant general before he retired from the military. He also served as the chief of army staff. For a person with such a breathtaking military career that was rendered possible by his country, we would have thought that he had developed a broad vision of the nation. After all, it is commonly believed that the military institution is impervious to the fissiparous tendencies in the larger society. And this is why former President Olusegun Obasanjo and President Muhammadu Buhari do not brook any objection to the existence of Nigeria as one entity as long as they have a role to play in deciding the fate of the nation.

It is regrettable that Dambazau does not see his being in public office as an opportunity to serve the whole nation. He rather sees it as a means of favouring only those with whom he shares ethnic and religious affiliations. This was why when Dambazau made appointments in his ministry, he only considered those who shared his religious and ethnic ties. Brazenly, Dambazau appointed only northerners as heads of all the paramilitary agencies under his ministry. The agencies are the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), whose new Comptroller-General (CG), Mohammed Babandede, hails from Kano State, where the minister is from and the Nigeria Prison Service (NPS) where Ahmed Ja’afaru of Bauchi State is the Controller-General. Before now, Abdullahi Gana from Niger State had been the head of the Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) while the Controller General of the Federal Fire Service (FFS) was Joseph Anebi from Benue State in the North-central. At the NIS, Dambazau opted for his preferred candidate Mohammed Babandede.

Buhari’s Uninspiring Democracy Day Speech

By Mike Ozekhome

I carefully listened to and read President Buhari’s Democracy Day Speech. I must confess that I felt quite hollow after it all. He lost a golden opportunity to engage Nigerians to buy into his change agenda. The speech did not give the much needed hope, did not fire up ebbing nationalistic and patriotic embers in Nigerians, and did not ignite the drooping and sagging dreams of Nigerians for a better tomorrow, with nerve, verve, éclat, gusto, zest and vivacity. It was bland, colourless, full of sound and fury.

*Buhari and his wife, Aisha 

By the way, I do not believe May 29 should be Nigeria’s Democracy Day. I’ve argued this over the years. It should be June 12. That was the day real democracy berthed in Nigeria.  For another day.

PMB’s speech, rather than being engaging, pacific, placatory and conciliatory, from the father of the nation to his hapless children, was bellicose, belligerent, militant, combative and simply pugnacious. I blame his speech writer for this, for woefully failing to capture, or mirror the angry and disillusioned mood of the nation, to Mr President. The speech accordingly lacked colour, panache, assurance, animation, elan and vitality.

The speech failed to address the multifanous problems, besetting Nigeria and government’s deliberate efforts at redressing them. It dwelt too much on damage assessment of the past, rather than the  panacea, the present and the future. It failed Albert Einstein’s theory that “we cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”. John Burroughs, it was, who said that “a man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else”.  PMB’s Federal Executive Council is now derisively called “Federal Excuses Council”. The speech blamed everyone else, but the government.

I hereby plead most earnestly with Niger Delta Avengers to drop their arms and come to the negotiating table with the government. Blowing up pipelines will compound, not only Nigeria’s socio-economic woes, but theirs, as well. You do not cut your nose to spite your face. But, PMB did not help matters. He threatened and talked tough. He could easily have demobilised them with assuaging and soothing words. Kind, persuasive and tranquilising words are deadlier than any armada of military force. The speech did not create for Nigeria an anti-corruption template, which seeks to extirpate it from the very root, rather than the present fight, which is merely superficially predicated on loot recovery alone. We are treating a dangerous ailment of cancer with drugs meant for skin eczema. Fighting corruption must have a template, which deals with a total re-orientation of our debased national psyche and value system from primitive acquisition, to honour, character and dignity.

Anniversary Of Truth-Telling Or Propaganda

By Levi Obijiofor

This past weekend has been one of celebrations – celebrations of a government that promised so much but found reasons to explain why it failed to provide for the basic needs of citizens, celebrations of a government that promised to transform our economy, to destroy corruption, to dismantle the Boko Haram insurgency in the North, suppress other ethnic uprisings, create a stable society by enhancing law and order across the country, and to tackle socioeconomic consequences of rising youth unemployment. By the end of the celebrations, Nigerians remain divided on whether the government of Muhammadu Buhari has significantly reduced poverty in the country or whether it has heaped more pain on ordinary citizens.

President Buhari and Information
Minister, Lai Mohammed

This disagreement is not surprising. Before the politicians were elected into office, there was so much hype and mystique built around Buhari, who was presented as the man who would redeem the country and emancipate everyone from 16 years of hardship created by the endemic corruption that manifested in the government of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). Here is propaganda number one.

At a book presentation in Abuja  on Thursday, 18 February, 2016, President Muhammadu Buhari claimed that Nigeria “has the fastest growing economy in Africa and one of the fastest in the world.” It is intriguing to see that three months later, after Buhari’s statement was publicised across the world, a senior minister in Buhari’s government admitted publicly that the bad shape of the nation’s economy should not be used as justifiable ground to explain the failure to provide for the needs of the citizens. If that was the case, why did the president and his ministers and special assistants spread the propaganda that Nigeria had the fastest growing economy in Africa and one of the most rapidly growing economies in the world.   So far, it seems some government officials and some leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) have been feeding citizens with a diet of misinformation concerning the state of the economy.

Away With Democracy Day

By Polycarp Onwubiko 

The federal government should stop the annual jamboree called “Democracy Day” on May 29 because several of us consider it an inanity and brazen frivolity. The annual celebration of the supposed ‘democracy day’ on May 29 exposes the country as a laughing stock and people who are not serious on development and civilized value system. It showcases us as a people who have brazenly refused to join advanced and civilized countries of the world, to showcase scientific inventions but to celebrate electoral fraud and other faux fax. 

The fact remains that Nigeria adopted democracy as a form of government in its 1960 Independent Constitution and 1963 Republican Constitution. Democracy would have taken firm root in Nigeria but for the vaulting ambition of some northerners who want to impose their decadent ethno-religious value systems and control government at all costs. The consequences brought about electoral brigandage and political crises which led to military regimes which for all intent and purposes were led by their kith and kin. The intransigence also led to the fratricidal civil war from 1967-1970.

The military autocrats brazenly maintained the overt and covert agenda of the feudal caliphate and centralized governance, thus bastardizing the principles of federal system of government, which promotes true federalism; thus forcing the country to be practicing jaundiced unitary system of government or ‘hegemonial federalism’. Of course, the consequences are what stares us in the face, and if inch-by-inch leading us to the brink of a failed state. It should be pointed out without equivocation that true federalism is a desideratum to reinvent Nigeria.

However, consequent of the jaundiced mindset of these imperialists who occupied the presidency more than other people, the concept and practice of true federalism were lost. It was this same pull-and-push mentality that forced former President Olusegun Obasanjo to chicken out to the forces they pulled together and became so naïve that he declared May 29 as ‘democracy day’. It should be pointed out that if for anything, if we count out October 1st, the day that should truly be declared ‘democracy day’ was the day the same Obasanjo, in Military uniform, handed over power to Alhaji Shehu Shagari, the first elected politician to take over power from the military. Not that Nigeria had never been ruled by civilians before then, but Shagari’s ascendancy was unique in the sense that it marked real water shed for the democratisation of the country. Even though that republic was short-lived through a military coup led by Major General Muhammadu Buhari, the current civilian president, it remained a reference point in the annals of the democratic history of the country.

Like the foolery called ‘Democracy Day’, it is also instructive that some states in the country, including several that If impunity is not brazenly celebrated in Nigeria, the immediate past President Goodluck Jonathan and now civilianised Muhammadu Buhari, ought to have abolished this non-sense called ‘Democracy Day’ celebrated on May 29. There is virtually no need for ‘democracy day’ to be marked at all or no that day because there is no precedent anywhere in the world.

Fulani Herdsmen: Fayose Bells The Cat

By Bola Bolawole

Governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, has trod where angels would fear to tread: he has banned the medieval practice of grazing cattle all over the place in the state. He has promised to send draft legislation to this effect to the state House of Assembly to be passed into law. When this is done, both cattle and herdsmen caught on the wrong side of the law will be sanctioned. The beasts will be confiscated while the herdsmen will cool their heels in goal.

*Gov Ayodele Fayose 

Not only is the practice of itinerant rearing of cattle archaic, it also negates the giant strides that Mankind has made from the Stone Age. Grazing cattle in an unruly and unorganised manner over farmlands, destroying the means of livelihood of law-abiding citizens and trampling their inalienable rights is an affront to the legal order and an unwarranted assault on those at the receiving end of the bestiality of both beast and herdsman.

All over the country are strident cries against the callousness of the herdsmen who not only feed their cattle on, and as a result destroy, farmlands, thereby complicating the problem of skyrocketing prices of foodstuffs in the land; they also main, rape, and kill innocent indigenes of the communities they traduce to the bargain. They kidnap and torture, they demand and collect ransoms before releasing their victims. Most times, the victims still get killed even after ransoms have been paid.

Cattles have been known to cause fatal accidents on the highways. The increasing wave of armed robbery attacks in many of the rural communities has also been traced to herdsmen who wield AK-47 in broad daylight in flagrant violation of the laws of the land, which frown at the proliferation of small arms. The authorities look the other way while these atrocities are perpetrated across the country.

The latest bus stop of the audacious bestiality of the herdsmen was Ekiti State, at a community called Oke-Ako in Ikole Local Government. Not less than two residents lost their lives instantly while scores of others suffered varying degrees of injuries and the community as a whole was sacked. Reports said it was a reprisal or vengeance mission by the herdsmen, in that earlier; the community had repelled a similar attack and got some of the assailants arrested by law-enforcement agents; even though they were reportedly left to go scot-free soon after.

As if they expected the community to simply fold its arms and do nothing, the herdsmen returned penultimate week to teach the Oke-Ako people “a lesson”. The community got wind of it and alerted the security agencies but for reasons, which bother on complicity, duplicity, and dereliction of duty, the appropriate authorities failed to act.

One Year Of ‘Change’: Buhari’s Top Sevens Failings So Far

By Saheed Animashaun

For my criticism to be fair let me cut Baba some slack. This is perhaps the worst possible time to be Nigeria’s President. Nigeria is an oil economy. As a mono-economy therefore, our economy is in normal circumstances bound to move in the direction of oil income. The nation’s income from crude oil sales is at an all time low. The demand for the dollar at the moment far outweighs the supply due to i) Fall in the proceeds from sales of crude which is our primary source of forex, ii) Our non-oil exports being quite too insignificant to fetch reasonable amount of forex iii) the fact that we import majority of the oil we consume thereby having to part with our scarce dollar reserves.

*Buhari 

Also, change is a gradual process. One year is too small to rate an administration that took over from a party that had milked Nigeria dry for a good part of 16 years! Kwarapshun is our ONLY hindrance to development and Baba is ardently tackling it!

Enough of sounding like one of this administration’s many spokespersons! Enough of these excuses!
This administration don fall my hand in many areas. Below is a countdown from seven to one of the most disappointing aspects of the Buhari administration in my opinion!

CAVEAT: Whatever has happened after Buhari got elected doesn’t negate the fact that there was only one right choice between Buhari and GEJ. Nigeria was nose-diving into a seemingly bottomless chasm as a result of the ineptitude of the previous governments. May be with that government still in power, Nigeria would have been auctioned to China by now! Recent revelations have shown that it was that bad! The looting was unprecedented as it has been for several years though.

7. Many pending appointments –
The defence line that it takes time to find the right people is balderdash! You have been trying to be president for more than ten years! Until recently, many appointees of the previous government that were supposedly inept were still running the show in various Ministries, Departments, and Agencies of the Federal government! Till now, many appointments have still not been made. This has definitely affected administrative duties because these individuals already know they would definitely be replaced. They are only not sure of when!

6. The nefarious activities of “Fulani Herdsmen”
While I agree that there are some narratives to this imbroglio that are unknown to many and hardly publicized by the press, the seemingly innocuous posture of the C-in-C has been embarrassing. This dangerous phenomenon has the potential to deteriorate into a huge scale war if not nipped in the bud. I still find it hard to fathom out the reason little to no mention of it was made in the long democracy day speech of the President! This is a disaster waiting to happen that needs to be decisively tackled on a huge scale.

As We Await Buhari's Response To The 50 Nigerians Killed In Benue

By Perry Brimah, Dr.
The account of the massacre given by the governor of Benue state was harrowing. The raiders came in typical style and killed at will, men, women and children. They set fire to homes and farms, burning flesh, wood and brick alike. This time it was Governor Ortom's very own village. These terrorists do not discriminate one farming village from the other. The same way they raid and set farming villages ablaze in Borno is the same way they light them up and fill the paths with blood in Benue, Enugu and Ekiti.

*President Buhari 

Their enemy is clear: the farmers and their farms. A weeping governor Ortom narrated how they burned hectares of rice farms. It does not take a rocket scientist to get what's happening here or what was happening in Borno; with the insurgent and not political Boko Haram, that is.

Chief of Internal Security, Buratai Agrees They Are Boko Haram

Dare I say, to our relief the Nigerian 'chief of global security,' Lieutenant General T. Y. Buratai has finally admitted that these men ravaging the middle belt and south of Nigeria are the same 'ol Boko Haram. It took a lot of convincing for the man Buhari has put in charge of Nigeria's internal security to admit this feature of the spread of terror that we have long wailed about.

The target is the farmers. Dislodged from the Sambisa forest, these enemies of farmers have spread wide in the hinterland and gone deeper than before. They do not attack towns. They do not attack senators and governors. Their enemy is the farmer. Their need can only be the land.

Election 2016: Another Test For Ghanaians

By Felix Kwaku-Dua
There is no doubt the political temperature is gradually rising as the various political parties in the country are gearing up for the upcoming general election especially as we have some few months for Ghanaians to exercise their franchise to elect who they deem fit to rule this sovereign country.

Worldwide, Ghana is noted for being a peaceful country and the upcoming election is going to put Ghana to another test as it is another avenue for the good people of this country to prove or justify what they are noted for.

For election to be peaceful, most depends on electorates, staunch party sympathizers and other stakeholders.

But I think this leaves a lot of work on the political parties, traditional authorities, religious leaders, security agencies and other corporate organizations who can also in their small aid in preaching peace ahead of election 2016.

The aforementioned stakeholders must work assiduously by having discussions on issues of peace and political tolerance as we have some few months to go to the polls.

The king of the Asante kingdom, Otumfuor Osei Tutti II as part of his efforts to lower the political temperature ahead of the 2016 general elections, has decided to engage all the flag bearers of the various political parties for a golf match. This is a step in the right direction. It is the hope of the monarch that playing a game among themselves will send the right signal to their followers and also will make them see themselves as team players working for mother Ghana rather than rivals.

The Herdsmen Conundrum: Before We Witness Reprisals

By Fred Nwaozor

The popular warning for men to ‘make hay while the sun shines’ would only be considered reasonable and rational when there’s still hay left in the bushes and every arena where it is usually found. Of course, you can only be conscientised to grab something on time when the stuff in question is still available.

Over the years, several communities across the federation had been subjected to untold hardship and seeming perpetual torture by Fulani herdsmen. I can’t forget in a hurry that virtually all the states in Nigeria, particularly those in the Southern region, have tasted a bit of this conundrum at one time or another. The aforesaid set of farmers, rather than concentrating on grazing towards breeding their livestock, end up constituting nuisance in their various host communities, in the name of ‘revenge’ or what have you.

This domineering and nonchalant idiosyncrasy of these armed herdsmen who parade themselves with unspeakable ammunition was arguably overlooked by the government and other concerned authorities, not until they recently unleashed an astonishing terror on the people of Nimbo Community in Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State; an attack that left in its trail tears and blood. In the crisis, which occurred on Monday, April 25, 2016, scores were found dead, countless persons maimed, about a hundred residents injured, several houses and churches razed, thereby rendering over 2,000 dwellers homeless.

The incident might have come and gone, it is imperative to acknowledge that the peril it inflicted on the living victims is unarguably an experience they will all live to recall. Each time I recollect that a certain community in Enugu State sometime in the history of this country woke one morning only to be brutally taken unawares by a group of total strangers, I invariably take solace in the ‘notion’ that it could be a mere dream.

Obviously, the deed has already been done. Instead of indulging in retrogressive discourse or debate, the most logical and viable thing to do at this point is to concentrate on the way forward. In a situation like this, having taken a formidable step towards checking recurrence, the next most reasonable action to take is to harmonise the atmosphere or the ties binding the affected persons or groups.

Who Voted For Muhammadu Buhari?

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Voting on March 28, 2015 for the then presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Muhammadu Buhari, was almost a badge of honour.

At polling booths, voters proudly flaunted their thump-printed ballot papers to prove that they were worthy ambassadors of the “change movement”.

Today, perhaps, the real measure of how much things have changed is that many people no longer readily own up to being part of the historic movement that led to the sacking of a sitting Nigerian president.

*Buhari 

Nobody admits voting for change any more. In fact, to accuse anyone of voting for Buhari has become an offence that people don’t take kindly. How could I have voted for Buhari, God forbid, is the most popular refrain in town today. And you wonder who did.

Well, I did. I am one of those who voted for the Daura-born General last year. I have said so here, severally.

I thought that former President Goodluck Jonathan had no capacity to continue to rule this country. He was not in control of his government and another four years with him in the saddle was, for me, unimaginable. And I still believe so.

I also thought Buhari would make a better president not necessarily because he possessed the intellectual capacity to govern. No.
But I reasoned that unlike Jonathan, he had the requisite character and integrity to be in charge of his government and if he was, what he only needed to do was to gather people with the capacity to drive a 21st century economy in dire need of a shot in the arm.

Sadly, knowing what I know now and having observed happenings in the polity in the last one year, I no longer believe so.

If the election was to be conducted today with Jonathan and Buhari as the frontline presidential candidates as was the situation last year, I would rather not go near any polling booth because, for me, the difference between the two is the same between six and half a dozen.

Jonathan as president was clueless as charged. Buhari is not proving to be any different.

Today, May 29, 2016, is exactly one year since he was sworn in as president and commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Expectations were quite high when he took his oath of office, vowing to give Nigerians a new lease of life. But, 365 days down the road, Nigerians are aghast.