Buhari: Same Autocrat Who Failed Nigeria 30 Years Ago

By Ameto Akpe

 Muhammadu Buhari promised to embrace democracy as president, but turned out to be the same autocrat who failed the country 30 years ago.

*Buhari 

It’s been a tough year for Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari. The mood in Africa’s most populous nation is a far cry from the euphoria that greeted his historic 2015 election - the first time in Nigeria’s history that an opposition candidate unseated an incumbent president in a democratic election. For weeks and even months after the vote, Buhari was a media darling, praised at home and extoled abroad.

Since then, the cheers have turned to jeers - even from members of the president’s own party, the All Progressives Congress (APC). Meanwhile, his administration cowers under attacks from a disillusioned electorate, members of the opposition, and even Buhari’s wife, Aisha, who said she might not vote for him in 2019, when he is up for re-election.

What’s behind the swift unraveling of Buhari’s presidency? His inability to formulate a coherent economic plan as Nigeria tipped into recession and unwillingness to make crucial decisions - as basic as appointing a cabinet - in a timely manner certainly didn’t help. But the main reason Buhari has lost the support of his countrymen is that the last year has revealed the central premise of his candidacy to be false:

The man who claimed in the campaign to be a “reformed democrat” has proved to be the same old authoritarian showman who ruled Nigeria in the early 1980s. The man who claimed in the campaign to be a “reformed democrat” has proved to be the same old authoritarian showman who ruled Nigeria in the early 1980s.

Buhari’s first attempt to run Nigeria ended after a year and a half in the same manner it started: a coup d’état. Back then, Buhari launched a campaign to root out corruption, dubbed the “war against indiscipline,” which was accompanied by restrictions on free trade and free speech, as well as repression of his political opponents. Soon Nigeria was embroiled in a political and economic crisis that paved the way for his ouster.

By 2015, however, many Nigerians were ready to give him a second chance. Growing economic hardship and rampant corruption - and the seeming inability of then-President Goodluck Jonathan to tackle either - convinced them to embrace Buhari again despite his checkered past. To many he seemed like a competent leader - at least more so than the weak and feckless Jonathan.

But there is already a strong element of déjà vu in Buhari’s second stint at the helm. He has again staked his presidency on an anti-corruption crusade and again used it as a vehicle to target political opponents. Now, as before, Buhari’s legitimacy was built on empty showmanship, a hyped-up claim of superior morality and discipline coupled with a healthy dose of disdain for elitism, all quickly overshadowed by an economic crisis that he wasn’t equipped to tackle.

The People's Choice: The Story Of Goodluck

BOOK REVIEW 

(A Tribute To Our Former President At  59)

By Dan Amor

Reflection on the existing number of books on former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan might well raise doubt about the desirability of adding to them. But since research does not stand still and its more assured results often take long to reach the handbook, there may be a place for a brief account of the man described severally by different people as a leader who is humble and simple to a fault. Yet, to read Rev. Father Charles A. Imokhai's The People's Choice, his lucid account of the life and times of the former Nigerian leader, is to embark on a delightful journey.

*Dr. Jonathan cutting his birthday cake 

Segmented into four parts, the 194 page book published by AuthorHouse, United Kingdom (February 2015), circulates how gorgeously a child from a humble state did swing across the gloomy and multitudinous chasm of the Niger Delta to become President of the world's most populous black nation by divine providence. As a priest and religious thinker, who has worked for over forty-five years in Nigeria, Liberia and the United States of America in various pastoral and administrative capacities, fortified with a doctorate degree in social anthropology from the University of Columbia, USA, Father Imokhai has produced a book which will have a remarkable vogue and influence on Nigerian youth.

Like General Yakubu Gowon, former Nigerian Head of State who wrote the foreword to the book states, the book, in an easily readable format, tells the story of an ordinary farm boy's rise from his obscure village in Otuoke, Bayelsa State to the pinnacle of leadership as Number One citizen of our dear country, Nigeria. And, like he also enthuses in his foreword, The People's Choice is work in progress "because the Presidency under Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, GCFR is still unfolding." The book which incidentally does not have on its cover the picture of its focal subject, would keep the prospective reader wondering who it's talking about.

Yet on launching into the foreword, the reader is now confronted with the reality of the subject, the figure about whom has clustered the yearnings, the ideals, and the aspirations Nigerians have for themselves and their country. That symbolic Goodluck also stands between the reader and the book. Jonathan does not pretend about his humble background. We know what happened and we cannot undo that knowledge. We read The People's Choice with a different eye. The present changes the meaning of the past. We can get the record straight, as historians like to put it, but the meaning of that straightened record is inextricably involved in the meaning we also try each day to discern in the confusion of the living present.

Buhari Should Dialogue With Nigerians

By Dan Amor

Dialogue has been rediscovered the world over as a subject of public debate and of philosophical inquiry. Politicians from the ideological divides, leading intellectuals, and concerned citizens from diverse backgrounds are addressing questions about the content of the human character. In our country, Nigeria, the imperative for an all-encompassing dialogue cannot be overemphasized. Immediately after the Civil War in 1970, what our leaders ought to have done was to call for and host a national dialogue to cut a new deal and move the nation forward. But they were smug in their self-assurance. Unfortunately, they saw the entire polity as their war booty and were blissfully unaware of its consequences. The outcome was that desperation among Nigerians became infectious.

*Buhari

​Even when the military decided to hand over the reins of governance in 1979 to their civilian counterparts they hurriedly put together a phony constituent assembly and drew up a constitution without the input of the authentic representatives of the Nigerian people instead of opening up a forum for national dialogue. The upshot was that the Second Republic was soon to collapse like a pack of cards. In 1993, after the annulment of one of the most placid Presidential elections ever conducted in Nigeria by the military, the people openly canvassed for a Sovereign National Conference in which they would discuss the basis for the corporate existence of the country. But the Khaki boys in their wisdom repudiated this idea. Of course, Gen. Sani Abacha later organized his own conference in 1995 to give legitimacy to his illegitimate regime. Despite the stark illogicality of the military praxis, a few courageous politicians led by the late iconoclastic Yoruba leader, Chief Abraham Adesanya, called for, and hosted a well–attended All Politicians Dialogue in Lagos in 1997. This helped to galvanise support for the massive agitation for a return to civil democratic governance which became a reality on May 29, 1999.

​Again, the administration of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2007), the first civilian government after a protracted period of military gangsterism, rapacity and greed, bungled a great opportunity to host a formidable National Political Conference in 2005 due largely to the plot for tenure elongation of President Obasanjo. The Goodluck Jonathan administration, by husbanding the 2014 National Conference in which Nigerians of all faculties were adequately represented, had succeeded in providing a platform on which the nation would be re-invented. Yet many continue to associate dialogue with a prudish, Victorian morality or with crude attempts by government to legislate peace. It is against this backdrop that all well-meaning Nigerians should advise President Muhammadu Buhari to dialogue with the aggrieved, from his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) which has manifested clear evidence of division in its infancy, to other Nigerians who feel shortchanged by his administration. The government seems to be fighting so many wars: the Boko Haram insurgents, militants in the Niger Delta, the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, the Shiites religious group in the North West, etcetera.

Gov Ugwuanyi And Enugu Workers

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Enugu State governor, Mr. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, has enjoyed a rather impressive portrayal in the media since he assumed office. I have seen several articles parroting his “marvelous achievements” and some of the articles have even found their way to my email box for publication on my blog – which I published even though they were always sent by a totally unfamiliar name.

*Gov Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi 

Although, after the horrendous tragedy perpetrated in Ukpabi-Nimbo in Uzo-Uwani by murderous herdsmen, pictures of Mr. Ugwuanyi in flowing ‘agbada’ grinning from to ear to ear while shaking hands with President Muhammadu Buhari (who, many believe, had done nothing to avert the callous slaughter of those innocent villagers) had deeply shocked many people who had expected to see him in a mourning mood, the Enugu governor has still managed to pass himself off as a public officer trying his best to impress his people.

During the last May Day celebrations, the Enugu State chairman of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Mr. Virginus Nwobodo and his Trade Union Congress (TUC) colleague, Mr. Chukwuma Igbokwe, had heaped praises on him for what they called his “dynamic leadership in promoting government-labour relationship” and creating “a peaceful industrial atmosphere” in Enugu State.

But in mid-October, I was in Enugu and was shocked to learn that some workers absorbed into the State Civil Service from one of the government parastatals were being owed arrears of salaries for the past 15 months! Indeed, it is difficult to believe that any public officer could have the heart to subject his fellow human beings to such a harrowing ordeal. But then, this is Nigeria where leaders derive strange animation from riding roughshod on the people with utmost impunity.

Following the decision of the previous administration of Mr. Sullivan Chime to absorb the permanent workers of a number of parastatals and corporations (ESBS, Enugu State Capital Territory, ENADEP, Enugu State Sports Council, Enugu Fertilizer Company, ESWAMA etc.), into the State Civil Service, several of the affected workers were duly verified, their data biometrically captured and they were received into the general public service.  And since then, they have been working and receiving their salaries. Even though there are some workers who are being owed a few months arrears of salaries, they are still hopeful since their absorption into the general service has been fully effected.

But in the case of ESWAMA (Enugu State Waste Management Agency) the workers were verified and biometrically captured in batches. In 2010, the first batch was fully absorbed and all of them have since been posted to several ministries where they have been receiving their salaries.  In August 2014, the second and final batch made up of about 91 permanent staff of ESWAMA (some of whom may attain retirement age in a couple of years from now) underwent their own absorption process. This was duly communicated to the Enugu governor through a letter jointly signed by the Secretary to the Government and the Head of Service (Ref: ENS/SSG/M.505/11/227) dated August 6, 2014. Another letter on the issue dated August 11, 2014 (Ref: GHS/33/XXX/11/100) was also written to the governor. By April 2015, just before the new administration of Mr. Ugwuanyi was inaugurated, the verification and posting of these 91 workers were concluded and their letters of posting to the various ministries to which they have been redeployed were handed over to them. What remained now was the approval of the governor for their biometric data capturing to enable them to start receiving salaries through the state’s e-payment system.

But for reasons that have remained inexplicable, Gov Ugwuanyi has chosen to sit on the fate of these poor workers, thereby, subjecting them and members of their families to unspeakable hardship and trauma. As somebody under employment, it is such a torturing experience trying to imagine what it would be like not to be paid salaries for a couple of months. But here are our fellow citizens who have been denied salaries for a whole 15 months! How heartless and callous could some of our leaders be!

Sylvester Akhaine’s Logic Of Struggle And Humanism

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

The world is a theatre of struggle. Every stage one finds oneself at, one should know that it is a struggle; it is one of the principles of social Darwinism – Sylvester Akhaine

With Donald Trump clinching the United States’ presidency on the back of the promise to privilege the welfare of Americans and deport immigrants he considers as parasites, such foreigners have only the option of making their own countries great to cater for them and obviate the need of seeking succour overseas. To make their countries to attain a level where they do not need to be economic refugees in foreign countries like that of Trump imposes on such citizens the necessity of a struggle to remove impediments to the development of their societies.

*Sylvester Akhaine

For African states and other formerly colonised countries of the world, the need for a struggle to attain their national destinies is very familiar. It was such a struggle that paved the way for political independence in the 1950s and 1960s in African countries. Thus for these African states to overcome their new masters, whether internal or external, there is the need for them to resume the path of struggle. This validates the intervention of Sylvester Odion Akhaine, through The Case of a Nursing Father, in the contemporary discourse of resistance by the citizens of post-colonial states against their economic and political oppressors to create prosperous societies.

Beneath the veneer of a preoccupation with existential affairs such as those at the home front as signified by the title of the book are weightier issues of a people’s struggle to be free from oppression in its multi-faceted forms. But then, even at the home turf, a struggle is required for the solidification of humanism. This is demonstrated by the author’s refusal to align with the members of his elite class who objectify their fellow human beings by making children from poor homes as housemaids.

While such housemaids spend their days in drudgery in the service of oga, madam and the children, no one spares a thought for their education. The author resolves the conflict that could ensue from his resistance by becoming a nanny in order to accommodate the professional demands of his medical doctor wife. By both husband and wife accepting to take turns to care for their first child, they avert a feminist war of equality.

Thus, in the African context, there is the robust possibility of mutual help between a husband and a wife as counterpointed by a brand of Western feminism that breeds an unnecessary gender hostility.

Chinua Achebe At 86: A Tribute

By Dan Amor

When the celebrated and consummate novelist, Prof. Chinua Achebe died on Thursday March 21, 2013 in a hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America at 82, his loss was mourned not only by African writers but by statesmen and citizens of the world whom one would not readily accuse of an interest in literature. What this means is that the romantic emphasis upon the human ego which is implied in the last degree of subjectivity in romantic thought brought about a characteristic motif in the twentieth-century social life-the cult of the superman, the leader, the hero, the born man of genius, who can raise himself above the common herd and lead his people to greater height of attainment than mankind had previously reached. There seems to be a commonly held view, even among literary practitioners, that Achebe was a genius- the Eagle on Iroko in the African literature forest. He was a novelist. But there are novelists and there are novelists.

*Chinua Achebe 

In fact, there were great novelists before him in the vast cosmos of comparative literature: Henry James, Thomas Hardy, DH Lawrence, etcetera. Yet, Achebe was a logical successor to these great men of letters in the last literary generation of the twentieth century. Prof. Abiola Irele, easily one of Africa's most distinguished literary scholars and critics, noted in his reaction to the news of Achebe's death: "My first reaction when I heard the news of Achebe's death was of sadness. I am very sad to hear the news of the death of Achebe. It is a great loss. I have known him since 1962. He was a wonderful man personally. Somehow, he was not sentimental. It was Achebe who shaped African literature and gave it a standing in the world. It is something that should be commended".

There was indeed no African writer who ever influenced the thinking of his time, either in his literary output or political interventions, more than Achebe. By working so conscientiously at the interface between indigenous and English literatures, Achebe more than any living African novelist, has cultivated the English language with superstitious veneration. No writer has conceived it possible that the dialect of peasants and market women should possess sufficient energy and precision for a majestic and durable work. Achebe ventures African thought into the English language with remarkable simplicity. He detects the rich treasures of thought and diction, which still lay latent in their ore in the African traditional life. He refines them into purity and burnishes them into splendor thus fitting them for every purpose of use and magnificence.

Who Killed Bridget Agbahime?

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

When Bridget Agbahime was murdered on June 2, 2016, in the presence of her husband, Pastor Mike Agbahime, by Muslim fundamentalists in the name of “Allah”, Nigerian leaders made the usual noises.

Agbahime, who hailed from Imo State, and was a member of the Deeper Life Bible Church, was said to have prevented Muslims from performing ablution in front of her shop at Kofar Wambai Market in Kano, where she sold plastic wares.

Late Mrs. Bridget Agbahime 

The punishment for such a “crime” was death, in the opinion of her traducers, who promptly accused her of blasphemy and lynched her.

She was murdered at 74 by those young enough to be her grandchildren. Even her age could not act as a leash on their murderous impulse.

The market was preparing to close for the day’s business when the soulless characters carried out the gruesome murder. So, it was in broad daylight. Those around saw and knew the murderers.

The hideous characters didn’t wear masks. In their usual impunity, like the axiomatic son whose father sends him to steal, and who, therefore, kicks the door open with his foot, the religious bigots, didn’t care a hoot.

They knew that nothing had happened to their fellow blood-thirsty zealots who beheaded Gideon Akaluka in the same Kano and paraded the streets with his head hoisted on a spike with blood dripping on their hands.

Because the murderers were known, it was not a surprise when police headquarters in Abuja announced almost immediately that two suspects had been arrested, even as then Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, called for calm while assuring that justice would be done.

A statement issued by then Force Public Relations Officer, ACP Olabisi Kolawole said: “In order to ensure a diligent and professional investigation, [Arase] has directed the deputy inspector general of police in charge of the Force Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (FCIID) to deploy the Homicide Section of the Department to immediately take over the investigation of the case and ensure a meticulous investigation and speedy prosecution of the arrested suspects.”

Judgment Day Comes For Homosexuals

By Tony Iwuoma

I have never hidden my distaste for homosexuals and lesbians. That God prescribes death sentence for this scurrilous conduct highlights how revolting and abominable it is. If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their blood guiltiness is upon them. (Leviticus 20:13)

However, in this libertine age of misconstrued grace, society has been overly tolerant of the evil. Even in the 17th century, New England and some American colonies adopted this biblical recommendation of death for homosexuals until 1786, after the Revolution, when man rebelled against God, with Pennsylvania in the lead by dropping the death penalty. Of more recent is the June 26, 2003 US Supreme Court ruling in the Lawrence versus Texas suit that annulled the Texas same sex sodomy law on the grounds that sex was covered by the liberty rights of the US constitution. Ever since, morality has taken a steep decline, even in traditional African societies and the church.

In a recent post, a young undergraduate of the University of Port Harcourt met a homosexual on the social media. He was sent N20, 000 to come to Lagos for sexual tryst. After the romp, somewhere in Ifako area, he was paid N150, 000. To his utter shock and amazement, soon after, he started developing multiple organs – five full-blown penises (the picture too repulsing to publish here). By this time though, his homosexual partner had vanished into thin air, leaving the young man in quandary.

Much as one is not rejoicing over this avoidable tragedy, it is timely warning for similarly inclined men and women to make a detour from the ignoble path of perdition lest greater calamity befalls them. The same message goes to the fallen Miss Anambra, whose disgusting video of sex act, using cucumber of all things was trending in social media and all same sex inclined perverts.

God still loves them though, both homosexuals and lesbians. But He hates their despicable conduct and unless they repent, they will surely perish. They may hide from man but not from God.  It is obvious that God seems to have taken up the task of enforcing His own laws, which no man can annul.

Donald Trump is the man of the moment for whom the impossible has happened. The much-hyped presidential election in the United States climaxed last Tuesday, posting a most unexpected result. The candidate of the Republican Party, Donald Trump, a billionaire business mogul, trounced the candidate of the Democratic Party, Hilary Clinton, former first lady, former senator, former secretary of state, and former this and that.

Trump was trailed by many controversies all the way from the primaries, including tax evasion and philandering with different women, some of whom openly accused him of groping them. But he braced all of the odds stoically and weathered the storm alone, even when leading lights in his party abandoned him. Trump was a one-man riot squad, who could even be described as an independent candidate though he contested on the Republican Party’s platform.

Between Buhari and Jonathan

By Ebere Wabara

I have a strong conviction that President Muhammadu Buhari is overwhelmed by the challenges he met on assumption of office and the novelty of fresh missteps by his administration. The country is just faltering and floundering like a ship without a compass. Its analogical equivalence is driving a vehicle with the driver’s eyes blindfolded. One thing is certain, if the veil is not swiftly removed, there is a very high certitude that the vehicle will crash and its occupants involved in ghastliness and fatalism!

*Jonathan and Buhari 

Issuing from the above and other deteriorations which I will explicate shortly, it would be justifiably correct to declare that President Buhari is irrefutably more clueless than his predecessor, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GEJ)!

This government is spending precious time battling people who are not our immediate problems at all. If it is not Dasuki, the leadership of the National Assembly comes to the fore in a serial spectacle that offers comical relief. The vogue of course is Femi Fani-Kayode, the former Aviation Minister and media campaign arrowhead of GEJ in the last presidential election, and lately Dr. Reuben Abati, spokesman for ex-President GEJ. In all of their cases and other tangential ones, the stream had been obviously witch-hunt. All the justificatory rationalizations are like a mirage that you cannot behold in what is plainly a circus show that may serially run for the next two years.

Concerned Nigerians have also consistently expressed worry why the anti-corruption crusade should primarily, preferably exclusively, be targeted at only members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Again, the usual perfunctory elucidation by government functionaries is that it will soon get to the turn of the ruling party, the all Progressives Congress (APC). The whole thing looks like a charade.

Amid all these, the cost of living is not just spiraling but has gone out of description even by lexicographers and etymologists. It has never been so bad for my fellow countrymen. Not even in the choking days of the Structural Adjustment Programme and other belt-tightening measures of the past. What is going on now is like official strangulation of citizens! And because we are so timid, docile and indifferent to our environment and all matters that get thrown up in this part of the world, our so-called leaders (better still, rulers) capitalize on this citizenship weakness and drive roughshod with us. All of us keep hands akimbo and hope that there would be divine intervention soonest—even without helping ourselves!

The festering hardship and obnoxious cost of living are such that prices of basic items change virtually by the hour these days. You buy an essential product in the morning at a price that would have changed by noon and it goes on like that interminably. There are no official explanations, management of the bursting prices, cushioning programmes or anticipatory interventionist initiatives. Everyone is just carrying on as if we were in the time of King Pharoah a la to your tents oh Nigerians.

Buhari's Tale Of Empty Treasury And $30 Billion Loan

By Onyiorah Paschal Chidulemije

Ever since he was sworn in as a democratically elect­ed President of Nigeria on May 29, 2015, one frivolous trend that has conspicuously character­ized President Muhammadu Bu­hari’s administration is the inces­sant and boring tale of how he inherited empty treasury from the past government of Presi­dent Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. Like a nagging spouse, the Pres­ident would always explore and exploit every small or big oppor­tunity, either within or outside the country, to blabber on about how he came in to behold an empty treasury.

*Jonathan and Buhari 

Just recently, while addressing members of the National Insti­tute for Policy and Strategic Stud­ies who visited him in the State House, the President was report­edly quoted as saying that he al­most ran away from office after taking over from President Good­luck Ebele Jonathan.

Please hear him: “Actually, I felt like absconding…I asked if there was any savings and I was told there was no savings”.

Strangely enough, like a rea­sonable person will ask, is this why a man who had repeatedly contested for the Presidency of Nigeria and, thus, implicitly          pre­pared himself – psychological­ly and otherwise - to change the course of the country, should have taken to his heels? Oh my God! 

Now, let us return to the is­sue of President Buhari’s unending tale of empty treasury. Obvi­ously, it is no longer news that for umpteenth times, many a Nigerian had urged Mr. President to make public the hand-over notes bequeathed to him by the immediate past government of President Goodluck Jonathan so that the citizenry too could empirical­ly share a good deal with him on this lingering tale of having inher­ited an empty treasury from his predecessor. But all to no avail. Yet, this is an “honest” man and President who wants all and sun­dry to believe that he is not to a very large extent or, worse still, solely responsible for the current economic recession bedeviling the country (?).

Red Card, Green Card – Notes Towards The Management Of Hysteria

By Wole Soyinka  

I shall begin on a morbid note. One of the horror stories that emerged from the Daesh (Isis) controlled parts of Iraq was the gruesome tale of the mother who had a daughter affected by wanderlust, even in that endangered zone. One day, when she looked for her to attend to some home chores, she found that she had gone missing yet again. As she searched, she shouted in frustration: “As Allah is my witness, I’ll kill that girl when I catch up with her”. A neighbour overheard and reported her to the Hisbah. The mother was summoned by the mullahs who ordered her to put the child to death, since she had sworn by Allah. She refused, so they took the child by the legs and smashed her head against a wall. End of story. True or false? It certainly was published as true testimony.

*Wole Soyinka 

That is all I have to say to the “literalists” who obsess over a time scheme of their own assessment. Thus, failure to have torn my Green Card “the moment” that I learnt that Mr. Donald Trump had won the presidential elections of the USA. It did not matter what I was doing at the time – teaching, eating, swimming, praying, under the shower or whatever. Or a family member saying, “Wait for me!” – speculatively please, no such disturbance ever took place. If it did however, I am supposed to contact the Nigerian media – to whom I have never spoken, and who never contacted me – except one – to beg permission to pursue a realistic definition of “the moment”. Media fascism is however, a subject for another day,

For now, that moment having passed, I must be culpable of breaking a solemn promise. By the way, since we are on the terrain of literalism, has anyone attempted to “tear” or rip apart a Green Card? Even a Credit Card? For the average hands, that would take some doing! I have actually considered garden shears for a dramatic resolution, this being closer to my real profession.

I have been asked several times – interestingly only by the foreign media, with the exception of THE INTERVIEW – whether indeed I did make such a statement at any time, and whether I still intended to carry it out, and the answer remains a categorical ‘Yes’. Not recently, mind you, nor, in the inaccurate blazing PUNCH headline of Thursday Nov. 16 , but in the accurate wording that is contained in the actual story on page 9. So, where and when did I first notably make that declaration. Answer: Addressing a group of students at Oxford University and fielding questions. It was NOT a public lecture. I have never summoned a press conference on the issue. The organizers did not invite the (unregistered) Association of Nigerian Internet habituees. It was the accustomed student seminar format that moved from the light-hearted to the serious, the ridiculous and (hopefully) the profound and back again. I even used the encounter to compare my threat with the public antics of a former president – unnamed, I assure you – who tore up his party membership card of a moribund ruling party. Whatever my failings, I do not lack originality, and I was not about to be find myself indebted to that contumacious general!

Nonetheless, did I mean what I said – that is, ‘exiting’ the USA? Absolutely, and that is the very theme of this address. It will not attempt to deal with the notion of an exit time-table as conceived by others, as if even the incumbent US president and his replacement are not even permitted over two months to pack their bags and prepare to move in and out of the White House, but must exchange positions the very moment that a winner was proclaimed. Anyone would think that the Brexit Vote made it imperative for the Brits to plunge into the English Channel instantly, instead of negotiating two years for an orderly withdrawal. Plebians like me of course need far less time, nevertheless they do not uproot overnight. Any other proposition speaks of a permanent agenda, of frustration and hidden histories – such as opportunities to rehabilitate themselves in the public eye. There is also recession in the land, and I can understand the psychology of impotence and thus, transferred aggression. Let it be understood – before I move even one word further – that I interrupted my present commitment in the United States solely for an urgent meeting with the Ooni of Ife on an ongoing project. I am obliged to return to the US in a matter of two or three days to complete my interrupted mission. Fortunately, that mission is guaranteed to end long before the United States becomes Trumpland Real Estate.

IGP And The Missing Police Vehicles

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

Since governance in these climes is often appropriated by those we entrust with leadership as a means of unbridled material acquisition, we are regularly scandalised by sleaze in public offices. The reports on such venalities come to the public with such rapidity that we do not infrequently fail in a bid to track them. But this rapidity serves well the opprobrious cravings of our public officials. Let the scandals break today, they are not bothered – by tomorrow other scandals would break that would take away the attention of the citizens from those of today.

*President Buhari and IGP Idris

Yet, at a time of economic recession that has thrown up the overarching need for transparency and prudent management of fast-vanishing resources for effective governance, we would not allow an opportunity to conserve the nation’s money to slip by. One of such opportunities that we must seize is the recovery of some police vehicles that have been allegedly stolen.

We have been told that the office of the inspector-general of police has been stripped bare of its vehicles. The culprit has been identified as the former inspector-general of police Solomon Arase. He allegedly took away 24 vehicles of the police at the end of his tenure. Among these vehicles were two BMW 7 series, one armoured. The incumbent Inspector-General of Police, Ibrahim Idris first made the allegation in July. He lamented how the haemorrhage of police vehicles led to his using a rickety one to travel somewhere with President Muhammadu Buhari. When the latter saw it, he was so outraged that he asked him what he was doing with it.

Three months after, the allegation is still on. But this time, the allegation has been framed in a way to present Arase as admitting to stealing 24 vehicles, out of which 19 have been recovered. But Arase has insisted that he did not steal the vehicles in the first place. He has asked his successor Idris to make available the registration numbers of the vehicles allegedly stolen.

Nigeria: In Search Of The Messiah

By Bayo Ogunmupe  

The alert that the occupants of the Bakassi Peninsula will soon become stateless, (being refugees) in Nigeria now, gives cause for concern. This alarm was sounded by the representative for Nigeria and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) at the signing of the memorandum of understanding with ECOWAS Parliament in Abuja recently. The alert drew the attention of the world to the displacement of the people of Bakassi. These people are Efiks with linguistic and cultural affinity with Efiks of Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. Being Nigerians until Bakassi was ceded to Cameroon in August 2008 by the International Court of Justice.

Since then, Bakassi belonged to Cameroon but its residents remained Nigerians. Worse still, the two countries have not been serious in governing the territory inhabited by this people. Due to neglect by the Nigerian government, these people have nowhere to call their country. But evidence abounds that they are Nigerians because they registered and voted at Dayspring Island, Cross River State, Nigeria in 2015.

The people of Bakassi have chosen to remain Nigerians in spite of neglect. This is why we need a messiah to rescue Nigeria from predators who don’t see more than cornering oil money in Nigeria. We need a leader ready to tackle those seeking to balkanise Nigeria to satisfy their security concerns. Like the Jews who are still waiting for their messiah, we should start searching for an emancipator now. We need a leader who will emancipate Bakassi and lift us out of poverty.

Amidst the great yearning for a messiah came the confirmation by the First Lady, Mrs. Aisha Buhari that the government of her husband had been hijacked by a mafia. The Senate President, Dr. Bukola  first broke the news at the height of his feud with Buhari over his alleged alteration of Senate standing orders last year. The confirmation of the mafia takeover was a huge blow to us who view Buhari as the much awaited messiah that will transform Nigeria to the Utopian land of our dreams. It means this government is in the hands of a few jejune individuals.

Buhari: Going Aborrowing On A Market Day!

By Dare Babarinsa  

President Muhammadu Buhari may have been persuaded that the best way to kick-start our economy again is to go to the world with the begging bowl. The austere Buhari, with his simple lifestyle, represents the mood of the nation which is in need of new kind of leadership. He is unbundling the presidential fleet and removing the fat from more conspicuous muscle of the government. He has been trying. But so far, his effort has not yielded the quick fix that Nigerians expect. After all, we are a nation where the danfo driver, in order to see more clearly, consumes more and more paraga. So is this new loan our paraga?

*Buhari 

Borrowing is sweet; it is the repayment that is bitter. The President is looking for $29.9 billion from the European, the Asian and the African markets. He explained, in his letter to the National Assembly, that the money is needed for infrastructure development. With this jumbo loan, all federal roads would be reconstructed to last forever after. We would have electricity and our universities would be first class. Of course, members of the National Assembly too want their own part of the action. They believe the good time would soon be here again once we can borrow money. After all by the time our grandchildren would be paying, most of the members of the National Assembly would have already changed addresses to God’s own headquarters. Now they want the party to begin.

For us, however, it is a familiar road. During the First Republic, our leaders inherited the tradition from the British of trying to balance the budget. There was no need to spend more than you have earned. The leaders who led us to independence were great men who had great vision and tried their best to pursue their dreams. To understand the value of their service, you need to go to the universities they built. I do not know of any university in the South-West of Nigeria, and there are few in the world, that is better built than the Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife. It was a product of the government of Western Region during the First Republic. Ditto could be said about Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, built by the regime of Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, the Premier of the defunct Northern Region during the First Republic.

Aisha Buhari’s Insurgent Self-Assertion

By Alade Rotimi John  

It is perhaps appropriate to begin with the view echoed approvingly by narrators, commentators and analysts with respect to the comments of Mrs. Aisha Buhari in her a recent BBC interview to the effect that a new meaning (or, in fact, a refreshing niche) is being carved regarding the role of the wife of the President. The facile response of her husband rather than complement the deep thoughts of his wife, sadly casts a dark pall on a subject matter that is at once profound and vigorous. 

*Aisha Buhari 

Aisha has bemoaned the absence or non-inclusion in her husband’s government, of “Change!” elements representing the matrix of APC distinctiveness. She has metaphorically contrasted the scenario with a situation in which “Monkey dey work, baboon dey chop”. In this case, the proverbial monkey has worked its arse out but the baboon is mindlessly reaping the fruits of its labour to the chagrin of the apostles of change and their hangers-on.

There may dialectically be discerned in Aisha’s diatribe an almost incoherent ideological ministration regarding conflicting but germane issues of statecraft, intra-party relations, high-wired politics, cronyism, jobbery, etc.’inter se’. All these are critical or significant factors in a moral-ideological situation of a hotchpotch political arrangement which Aisha misleadingly refers to as “a movement”. The idea of a party of all-comers is in itself flawed ab initio. No unifying sense of purpose is discernible in APC’s conception or execution of policies and programmes.

There is no allegiance or commitment, among members, to a common ideal or goal. Groups within the party are working at cross purposes for the achievement of their respective group interests. In such a situation, as we unfortunately have on our hands, governance suffers groaningly. Aisha’s worry, no matter how deep or concerned, cannot take the place of the opportunism or crass selfishness that has already been factored or ingrained into the party’s processes; it cannot reverse or undo the damage which a desultory administration has wreaked on a faithful or trustful people these one and half years. The social and ideological framework for the change of our present unethical or amoral situation lies in the cultivation of a deep-seated culture of a popular democratic social order devoid of ethnic chauvinism, disrespect for hallowed institutions of state and impunity regarding order and set rules, etc.

The response or reaction of President Buhari to his wife’s comment in which he limits her roles to the kitchen, the living room and “the other room” will appear to be anachronistic in this age of proven women super-sonic performance of roles in rocket science, engineering, the professions of medicine and law, the arts, diplomacy and, even, in governance. Buhari’s faux pas is rendered even more repulsive or distasteful as it was made in a clime that has long overcome the bogey of the presumed prowess of the male person in all spheres of life, including in “the other room”. Our exhibit is no other than the headship of affairs and events in such an advanced country as Germany by a ruthlessly efficient Mrs. Angela Merkel. At a most distinguished level, there is now an evolved distinction not glibly as between a man and a woman but between the creative energies, cultivated gravity and gracefulness as may exist between a particular man or a particular woman.

Buhari And Remembrance Of Things Past

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

As the first half of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration lurches into the twilight, it is refreshing that he has given us an opportunity to interrogate his intervention in national politics from another perspective. Beyond the well-worn exploration of Buhari as a profile in persistence, having taken him over a decade to chase a return to power, we can now attend to the   relationship between personal tragedies and national glories.

*Buhari

It is now clear from Buhari’s disclosure in Benin during his commissioning of some projects of the outgoing Edo State Governor Adams Oshiomhole that his tragedy of incarceration after his overthrow in 1985 as military head of state remains a stimulant for his quest for regaining power.  Buhari said that he spent 40 months in a bungalow in Benin after he was overthrown by some corrupt army officers. In fact, he said that the coup was a preemptive strike against his crusade against some corrupt officers.

From that crucible of 1985, through the next 30 years, Buhari might have realised the essence of engendering an equitable society. But as he tells us, such a society is not attainable in so far as it remains a bastion for the proliferation of injustice as evident in the complicity of the judiciary in the denial of his electoral victories on three previous occasions. Of course, Buhari’s quest for an equitable society after suffering injustice is not an isolated case. Before him, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, among others appropriated a sense of injustice inflicted by warped state powers to develop their societies.

Even back at home, the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo was prised from prison to cobble together a dismembering nation. But in the case of Buhari, it is unfortunate that while his regaining of power after 30 years might have served a personal cathartic purpose, it is far from playing a significant role in his relationship with the need for the development of the country. For the danger that the nation faces today under the Buhari government is that at the end of his tenure, he would have succeeded in making millions of citizens to feel a sense of injustice and alienation from the society. This is the clear possibility that Buhari would engender through his policies and programmes.

If Buhari had truly learnt the lessons of suffering injustice, he would guard against fostering a sense of injustice. But does Buhari really have consideration for the need to ensure justice for others? Consider his  appointments  since he  became president. How have these ensured justice and the strengthening of the unity of the country?  In those appointments, Buhari brazenly favoured his northern part of the country. It is such nepotism that has thrown up a situation where from the National Assembly, the military, police, Department of State Services,  other security apparatuses, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), to other major government agencies, the heads are northerners.

Ken Saro-Wiwa: 21 Years After

By Dan Amor

Today, Thursday November 10, 2016, indubitably marks the twenty-first anniversary of the tragic and shocking death of Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa and eight of his Ogoni kinsmen, in the evil hands of professional hangmen who sneaked into Port Harcourt from Sokoto in the cover of darkness. By his death, the Sani Abacha-led military junta had demonstrated, in shocking finality, to the larger world, that it was guided by the most base, most callous of instincts. 

*Ken Saro-Wiwa

As a student of Nigerian history, and of the literature of the Nigerian Civil War, I am adequately aware that Ken Saro-Wiwa, against the backdrop of our multicultural complexities allegedly worked against his own region during the War, the consequences of which he would have regretted even in his grave. But I write of him today not as a politician but as a literary man and environmental rights activist. We remember him because, for this writer, as for most disinterested Nigerians, Ken Saro-Wiwa lives alternatively as an inspirational spirit, and a haunting one at that. Now, as always, Nigerians who care still hear Ken's steps on the polluted land of his ancestors. They still see the monstrous flares from poisonous gas stacks, and still remember his symbolic pipe. Now, as always, passionate Nigerians will remember and hear the gleeful blast of the Ogoni song, the song Ken sang at his peril. Yet, only the initiated can see the Ogoni national flag flutter cautiously in the saddened clouds of a proud land. But all can hear his name in the fluttering of the Eagle's wing.

Ken Saro-Wiwa was a modern Nigerian hero who did not sacrifice sense and spirit merely to pedantic refinements. As an aggrieved writer, appalled by the denigrating poverty of his people who live on a richly endowed land, distressed by their political marginalization and economic strangulation, angered by the devastation of their God-given land, their ultimate heritage, anxious to preserve their right to life and to a decent living, and determined to usher to his country as a whole, a fair and just democratic system which protects every one and every ethnic group and gives all a valid claim to human civilization, he was an embodiment of the writer as crusader. There is, indeed, a prophetic, all-embracing commitment to a depiction of the reality of his Ogoni kinsmen in his works about which he seems helpless. For that matter, there is in his writing career, something of an overloading, of avocation and responsibilities variously devolving on the ethnographer, the creative writer, the polemicist, the politician and the activist. No doubt, Nigerians will wake up one day to discover that in the little man from Ogoni, the nation produced, without realizing it, one of the major literary voices of the contemporary world.

If Ken Saro-Wiwa weren't head and shoulders above the ranks of the organized stealing called military regime, and if he didn't amply deserve his position as a recognized and popular Commander-in-Chief of the Literary Brigade of his generation, I wouldn't be wasting my precious time here discussing his contributions to modern artistic creativity and minority rights awareness in Nigeria and the world. The great division in all contemporary writing is between that little that has been written by men and women who had clarified their intentions; who were writing with the sole aim of registering and communicating truth or their desire, and the overwhelming bulk composed by the consciously dishonest and of those whose writing has been affected at second or tenth remove by economic pressure, economic temptation, economic flattery, and so on. For Ken, "writing must do something to transform the lives of a community, of a nation. What is of interest to me is that my art should be able to alter the lives of a large number of people, of a whole community, of the entire country, so that my literature has to be entirely different." It could therefore be seen that as one who hailed from one of the marginalized minority areas of this country, Saro-Wiwa used his literature to propagate the delicate and monolithic national question.