Aisha Alhassan’s Declaration

By Ray Ekpu

Aisha Alhassan aka Mama Taraba is the Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development in the cabinet of President Muhammadu Buhari. She is a lawyer and the first woman in Taraba State to hold the position of Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice. She also served as a Registrar of the Federal High Court, Abuja and as a senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Mama Taraba also fought valiantly in the last election to register another first as the female Governor of Taraba State. She did not get there. But her political credentials are amply acknowledged by those who know her.

*Aisha Alhassan 

With such a formidable curriculum vitae and her acknowledged political battles many people have wondered why she made the unguarded public statement she made recently. Here are her words: “Atiku (Abubakar) is my godfather even before I joined politics and again Baba Buhari did not tell us that he is going to run in 2019. And let me tell you today that if Baba said he is going to contest in 2019 I swear to Allah I will go before him and kneel and tell him that Baba I am grateful for the opportunity you gave me to serve your government as a minister. But Baba, just like you know I will support only Atiku because he is my godfather. That is if Atiku said he is going to contest. As we are talking now Atiku has not said he is going to contest.”

Nullification of Kenya’s Presidential Election: Implications for Nigerian Democracy

By Arthur Agwuncha Nwankwo
The recent nullification by the Kenyan Supreme Court of the August 8, 2017 presidential election in Kenya has stolen the headlines in both local and international media and has dominated conversations among so many people and groups. While the courage and boldness of the Kenyan Supreme Court is emulative and instructive, one impression that the international media has tried to create is that this is not in the character of African politics- for the judiciary to affect the political process in the manner the Kenyan Supreme Court has done. I agree that this is the first time in Africa where the judiciary has stuck to its convictions and fended off executive pressure and blackmail to deliver what has reverberated across the globe as a historic feat.

In real terms, it is in the character of Africans to expose and distance themselves from evil and deceit. This character of justice and equity is woven into the African psyche and consciousness but was significantly eroded at the behest of alien values imposed on the continent by colonial experience; an experience that has elevated the warped and otiose idea of “political correctness” far and above moral conscience, truth, justice and equity. I am, indeed, overjoyed that in my life time, Kenya, through its Supreme Court has given me hope that African values of truth are still alive; it has pointed the way forward for other African countries; it has shown that our old values of speaking the truth at all times without really caring whose ox is gored can be reinvented; and that being politically correct at the expense of truth and justice is the perfect recipe for the death of nations.

Nigeria Police And Audacity Of A Squealer

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

After years of a tempestuous relationship with the police, the citizens have become very familiar with a plethora of cases that reify the ignoble identity of that security institution of government as a site of unbridled corruption. Thus, they were by no means suddenly hoisted onto an uncharted territory when the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) last month alerted them to the egregious indices of the corruption under which the police chafe. Nor did the recent allegation by Senator Isah Misau that the police reek of corruption expressed in cronyism, patronage and financial misdeeds come to them as a surprise.

*President Buhari and IGP Idris

Indeed, Nigerians live daily with a catalogue of woes the police inflict on them. We are quite familiar with these: the police shoot to maim or kill commercial bus drivers or motorcyclists popularly referred to as okada riders because of their refusal to part with N50. They do not respond to emergency calls when the citizens are under the siege of armed robbers. It is only when the armed robbers have finished their operations and gone that their victims would be harassed with the sounds of police sirens. And that is if the police come at all. In most cases, they place obstacles in your way: they tell you that they cannot respond to your call because they have no vehicles; if they have, they are faulty; and if they are not faulty, there is no fuel in them. If you go to make a report at their station, the police would ask you to pay for the pen and piece of paper with which to make your complaint. After the complaint, you need to give them money to investigate your case. On the walls and doors of a typical police station would be emblazoned the warning: bail is free. But you must pay for detainees to secure their freedom. 

Unlocking The Likes Of Prof Yemi Osinbajo

By Banji Ojewale 

Nigeria’s Vice President Yemi Osinbajo is the father of modern-day bureaucratic jurisprudence of Lagos State… He was discovered by Governor Bola Tinubu… He went on to become the state’s Commissioner for Justice and Attorney-General in the Third Republic in 1999… He undertook notable reforms in grassroots judicature and in court room procedures… Through his prudent counsel coupled with Tinubu’s own smart politics, Lagos successfully launched the historic creation of 37 local Council and Development Areas and floored the mighty federal resistance of Olusegun Obasanjo’s government… The councils have come to stay due to the firm substructure Yemi Osinbajo laid… Later, he was retrieved from political retirement again by Tinubu to play a role in the central government in the current dispensation. 

*Osinbajo 

But let us be clear about this: history isn’t going to rate Osinbajo on Lagos only in the long run. The ruthless history we all know would demand more from Osinbajo. Had he stayed quietly in the background after his tour of duty in Lagos, he might have tamed the extinct records to favour him. However, having succumbed to the temptation to stage a comeback at a higher level, he must wrestle with the dialectics of politics of an upward plane. History is clad in an iron creed: to whom a higher measure of responsibility is given, less can’t be demanded. 

Nigeria: An Example Of Profligacy

By Oshineye Victor Oshisada

On August 16, 2017, there were news reports that some Federal Government officials took their documents to ailing President Muhammadu Buhari in London for his signature. That action was flabbergasting, because it was a clear case of bare-faced profligacy. They wasted money and time and insulted the intelligence of Nigerians.

When the President was travelling abroad for his medical treatment on May 7, 2017, he said that the length of his stay in London would be determined by his medical team. Therefore, he transmitted a letter to the National Assembly in that respect. The Senate declared that Professor Yemi Osinbajo would function as the Acting President pending the return of Buhari from the medical vacation. The upper legislative chamber appropriately over-ruled Buhari’s statement that Osinbajo would only “co-ordinate the affairs of government as Vice President.”

Kogi State Is Bleeding: A Call For Collective Rescue Mission

By Usman Okai Austin

Today, empirical and observatory facts have clearly shown that Kogi State is in a state of coma and economic doldrums that require an urgent attention. On all fronts, Kogi State spells failure. The indices for any vestige of development remain abysmal.

*Gov Yahaya Bello of Kogi State 

Poverty rages, unemployment increases in astronomical dimension, Infrastructural facilities are in decay, education sector is struggling to survive, salaries are unpaid, hunger, despair and destruction now haunt the state. The people are indeed living in very trying times: dissatisfied with the present and face the future with much trepidation. If Kogi State today were a living entity, it would be perceived as a blind entity groping aimlessly without direction while pretending to be on a purposeful mission of institutionalising the change agenda.

Texas Not A Mere Geographical Space

By Chinedu Ogoke

[Texas] “is no longer a mere geographical space”— John O’Sullivan, 1845

‘[I]n my early youth,’ as a kid, two books I won in a competition brought some locations in America so close that I could physically touch those places. The names Colorado and Colombia rang in my ears like booming sounds at a distance. The abundance of water touching down from great heights was vivid. Everything could rank with paradise. I traveled freely in my imagination. Adventure stole my heart and took me away from my shadows.

Years later, as I watched late night movies, it began to settle in that films I watched were often about Dallas. Texas then occupied a place as an abode of the unscrupulous oil magnates. I recall a Texaco (The Texas Company) filling station close to our house. Decades later, when huge oil was discovered in São Tomé and Principe, there was outrage among some of us over that country’s links with Texas, which included sudden daily commercial flights.

I discovered another America in Germany. There, America found a fantasy land where life all seemed like bowling and filling a giant plastic cup with Coca-cola at the tap while you enjoyed a discussion. I interacted with Americans, who were mostly soldiers. Every American was bound to tell me, “You know what, Shinedu, you need to visit Missouri (or Atlanta or Virginia) at some time.”

Nigeria: The Illegality Of Post-UTME

By Luke Onyekakeyah  

The confusion that has trailed the re-introduction of the post University Tertiary Matriculation Examination (post-UTME) in higher educational institutions across the country over the fees payable by candidates forced me to dig into the legality or otherwise of the test that now determines our children’s educational destiny. There should be an established law for post-UTME otherwise, it should be scrapped. The test has become so controversial and ought to be challenged in court of law.

Is there a law that established the post-UTME? I called some lawyers to get their view on the legality of the post-UTME. All the lawyers said, to the best of their knowledge, there is no known law that established the post-UTME in Nigeria.

If that is the case, why leave an illegality to rule the system and even truncate the aspirations of most candidates? Who introduced the post-UTME in the first place and for what purpose? 

Kidnappers And Ritual Killers In Lagos

By Hope Eghagha 

Kidnapping and ritual killing seem to be on the increase in Lagos and around the country. Another way to express this is that there are more reports of abductions for ritual killings these days than we used to have them. Red Cross says that it has received reports of 10,480 missing persons in Nigeria. Every other week or even day, we read reports about ‘ritualists den’ in Nigeria. Two channels, social media and personal testimonies do a better job reporting the incidents than mainstream media. 

While mainstream outlets can be controlled not to report the incidents (to give a good albeit false image of security) no one can really control reports in social media. The latter presents gory pictures of dismembered bodies. The most recent was that of a 200 level undergraduate at the University of Port Harcourt who butchered a neighbour’s seven year old daughter for ritual, removed parts of her body and attempted to dispose of the body in a garbage heap. Shocking! Horrifying!

Nigeria: A Presidency And Its Contradictions

By Musa Toyyib Olaniyi  

APC! Change! The crowds were mammoth and so was the frenzy generated by the idea of the new coalition which had as its presidential flag bearer, a man reputed to possess the talisman that will conjure out of existence, all the problems of the country.

Today, Nigeria is directly experiencing the Presidency of Muhammadu Buhari which was built on great expectations. Alas, the presidency has been mired in incredible contradictions.

*Buhari 

The presidency of a nation carries its sovereignty and in most cases, come with humongous powers. In Nigeria, the presidency is a leviathan. Because the presidency is an administrative or governmental entity that surrounds the office of the president of a nation or state usually personified by a man or a woman elected for such purpose, it is usually powerful and awe-inspiring. The news making the roundabout rodents eating up the office of President Muhammadu Buhari is a new low that we never bargained for in this administration.

Sometimes, we wonder what might be going through the minds of people of power and their handlers when they do certain things. When the news filtered in, the reaction was a mixed one. The news elicits both a sort of disbelief and at the same time uproarious laughter because of its incredulity. We never thought that a time will come in this country that such lines will emanate from the governing authority. In an administration that budgets billions of naira for environmental services in the Aso Rock villa, rodents ravaging the office of the President to such an extent that major renovations become imperative is a sad development. What sorts of media handlers are these? Is mediocrity so pervasive in Nigeria that the pinnacle of power in the country is not spared the unfortunate reality?

Wanted: A National Coalition Against Rape

By Adewale Kupoluyi

What has become a serious source of worry to many Nigerians is the dehumanising, wicked and heartless cases of rape of minors, girls, ladies and women in the country. Hardly any day passes by without cases of sexual molestation, violence and crime. Rape, the forceful canal knowledge usually of a female, is a serious calamity that can befall any female. Why is there an upsurge in rape cases in the nation?

A gory statistics, according to the Nigeria Police Force, shows that the nation recorded 1,827 rape cases in 2015; 1,959 cases in 2014; and 1,788 in 2013. Furthermore, NOIPolls, country-specific polling services in the West African region, done in partnership with Gallup, United States of America, revealed that four in 10; that is 36 per cent of adult Nigerians, claimed that most often, the alleged offenders involved in child rape were close family relatives and neighbours; amounting to 33 per cent, as almost half; amounting to 49 per cent of those that personally know a victim alleged that they were usually children between seven and 12 years old; while 78 per cent of the respondents alleged that rape cases were reported without any deliberate effort being made by the police to investigate and prosecute the culprits.

No, Don’t Re-Arrest Nnamdi Kanu

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

In a seeming bid to ward off the increasing threats to the stability of the country, the government is floundering from one absurd measure to another. From deploying its security apparatuses to monitor the social media, it has moved on to rein in hate speech by proposing a bill in this regard. No much alarm should be triggered if the government luxuriates in the obliviousness of the inability of these frenzied measures to stave off the dissolution of the people’s union if it fails to reckon with more enduring and acceptable solutions that the citizens have generously proposed.

*Nnamdi Kanu

But we must not ignore the augury of a looming tragedy we are now confronted with in the government’s latest move to sustain the nation’s unity. This is the bid by the government to re-arrest the leader of the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) Nnamdi Kanu. Kanu might have impudently breached some of the conditions for his freedom from incarceration. He might have been found rhapsodising before his hundreds of supporters and putative security personnel about his republic of unrivalled equality and thereby violating the condition that he must not be in a crowd of more than 10 people. He might be considered to have continued on the path of heating up the polity by insisting on his prising a Biafra Republic from Nigeria and securing the support of some Igbo youths who evidently swoon over the prospect of freedom from the stranglehold of their implacable tormentors. He might have been a threat to the state by declaring that no election would take place in Anambra as long as the Biafra question remains unresolved. But these apparent offences do not validate the government’s quest to re-arrest him in view of the rash of grim consequences that such a move would precipitate. 

Nigeria: Before Darkness Falls

By Julius Oweh

The one hundred and four days of President  Muhammadu Buhari’s medical sojourn abroad opened the fault lines of the nation and a clear advertisement that ours is pretending to be a nation. For those days, the ship of the nation was clearly adrift with an absentee president and a nominal acting president that could not deliver effective leadership because of some deep rooted cabals and interest group.

*President Buhari and VP Osinbajo

In fact, the nation was on auto pilot and the information managers did a poor job about the president’s health status. As you read this piece, Nigerians are yet to be told the nature of the president’s illness and how much the nation has spent in treating him. Therefore any talk about the buy made- in- Nigeria product campaign of the present administration is shattered by the medical tourism of the president. 

The less than seven minutes broadcast of the president, failed to address the pressing issues of the moment – restructuring and fiscal federalism. 

Furthermore, the hard stance of the president in his words `the unity of the nation is settled` is a clear indication that the president is very far from the reality of the moment. He has to climb down from the high horse and address the needs of the people especially those of the south.

Akachi Ezeigbo: Celebrating The Literary Icon

By Prisca Sam-Duru & Elizabeth Uwandu

For Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, Wednesday’s reading at the University of Lagos, UNILAG, was a great honour done to her by the institution which doubles as her Alma Mater and where she retired as a lecturer. 

The monthly reading organised by the English Department of UNILAG has turned into an event lovers of literature look forward to and Prof. Ezeigbo’s session didn’t let them down as she treated guests to an outstanding performance of  a dirge for late literary icon, Buchi Emecheta, which  earned her a standing ovation.

The multiple award winning writer and author of so many books which cut across all the genres of literature including children’s literature, opened her reading with her latest short story, “Mr. President’s Change Agent” which is coming out in November. “Mr. President’s Change Agent”, narrates the story of a woman who receives her share of injustice in the hands of an unscrupulous Nigerian police officer after she refuses to give a bribe. Being afraid that she may be shot by the desperate officer, and coupled with the fact that she is already late for her appointment, she parts with the only cash she has with her after she is delayed for over an hour.

How JAMB Is Destroying Education In Nigeria

By Luke Onyekakeyah  

Two shocks in the tertiary education sector that have jolted Nigerians, once again, show how the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) is geared towards ruining the future of Nigeria. It also proves the much-talked about need to scrap JAMB, which has outlived its usefulness, to allow universities admit qualified candidates.

The Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu and JAMB registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede are behind this national embarrassment. Could President Muhammadu Buhari save the future of this country by reversing these retrogressive decisions? This is not the kind of change we need.

First is the appalling and disgusting slashing of university cut-off marks from an awful and lamentable 180 (45 per cent) to a deplorable and scandalous 120 (30 per cent). It is like the 180 score didn’t get Nigeria at the jugular, which the 120 is now out to accomplish. Without equivocation, these say much about the direction the country is headed. 

The second is the re-introduction of post-UTME test that was banned barely a year ago by the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu. What is a post-UTME test going to achieve when failures, who scored 30 per cent, in JAMB are admitted. Is it possible for candidates who scored 30 per cent in JAMB to score 80 per cent in post-UTME test? This is most unlikely and would call for investigation if it happens.

President Buhari Still Doesn't Get It

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

After listening to President Muhammadu Buhari's three minutes, fifty-six seconds national broadcast on Monday, August 21, his first since coming back to the country from a 103-day medical tourism in the United Kingdom, I concluded that he still does not get it.

I doubt if he ever will.

*President Buhari

Prior to his speech, I was not overtly hopeful I would hear anything grand, ennobling and soul-lifting.

Yet, after a three-month absence from duty post, during which time he presumably had time for sober reflection on what ails the country of 180 million people over whose affairs he superintends, I had hoped he would have realised the need to calm frayed nerves and bring people together through moral suasion.

How wrong I was.

Nigerian Unity Is Negotiable

‘Only Restructuring Will Ensure The Unity, Peace And Development Of Nigeria’ – Southern Leaders Forum (SLF)

“President Buhari expressed dissatisfaction about comments on Nigeria (while he was away) that ‘questioned our collective existence as a nation’ and which he said has crossed the ‘red lines’. Against the background of the threat to treat hate speech as terrorism, we see a veiled threat to bare fangs and commence the criminilisation of dissenting opinions in our national discourse. Experience worldwide has shown that any attempt to deal with dissents by force usually drives it underground, which makes it much more dangerous and difficult to deal with.

“The president deployed the imagery of the late Ikemba Ojukwu to play down the demand for the renegotiation of the structure of Nigeria by saying they both agreed in Daura, in 2013, that we must remain one and united. While we agree with them, the meeting between the two of them could not have been a Sovereign National Conference whose decisions cannot be reviewed. The claim that Nigeria’s unity is settled and not negotiable is untenable. If we are a settled nation, we would not be dealing with the crisis of nation building that are affecting us today.

President Buhari’s Illusion Versus Reality

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It should be clear by now to the citizens who are genuinely concerned about saving the country from careering into mortal catastrophes that their first task is to rescue their president. It is not a redemption from his hobbling medical condition. London doctors are equal to this task. This they have uncannily demonstrated by giving President Muhammadu Buhari a new lease of life. Now, apparently far from an afflicted president who was in dire need of the citizens’ empathy and prayer for his good health, Buhari has resumed office with so much vigour that he easily underscores his toughness by casting his expectations from the citizens in fire and brimstone.

*President Buhari in Zamfra (March 2017)

What Buhari is in urgent need of rescue from is his illusions about his fellow citizens, his country and the world. It does not matter that he claimed to be abreast of developments at home and the other parts of the world while he was away. In less than a week since his return, Buhari has shown that he is fixated on his misbegotten notions of governance that he had before his medical sojourn abroad. A graver danger is that these notions have degenerated as they have assumed a misanthropic character. Those who thought that his ill health would have sobered him up and purged him of his self-created distance from the citizens have been sorely disappointed. He has come back home to reprimand them with a sledgehammer for intolerably going errant ways while he was away. After all, in his reckoning, most of those who want a redefinition of the terms for the co-existence of the people have not been confronted with the prospect of their shedding their blood for the survival and unity of the nation.

Of Rats And Rodents Driving President Buhari Out Of Office

By Mike Ozekhome

It is a very shameful and disgraceful statement that emanated from the presidency to the effect that President Muhammadu Buhari (PMB), after a whole 105 days abroad on medical grounds, cannot work from his office because of rats and rodents. So, a whole Julius Berger, the German construction giant has to be called in to drive them away and repaint the office! This statement further derides and shames Nigeria as a country.

Why didn't the same or similar rodents pursue Olusegun Obasanjo, Umar Musa Yar'adua or Goodluck Jonathan during their presidency? For truth, there is another mini office at the villa quite different from the official residence and main office. Let PMB work from there.

Let's see our president working, not through still photo shopping. For how long will this government take the Nigerian citizens for a ride and for robots ? Who told the image makers we are as brainless as they are? Don't they know that lies have expiry date and that propaganda cannot substitute for image making?

Buhari Writes National Assembly On Resumption Of Duties

State House Press Release:

PRESIDENT BUHARI WRITES NATIONAL ASSEMBLY ON RESUMPTION OF DUTIES

In line with constitutional provision, President Muhammadu Buhari has written the National Assembly, notifying the legislature of his return to office, after returning from medical vacation in London.

President Buhari had returned to the country on Saturday, August 19, 2017, and in a letter dated August 21, 2017, he told the Senate as well as the House of Representatives, that he was resuming office.

The letter stated in part: "In compliance with Section 145 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), I write to intimate that I have resumed my functions as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria with effect from Monday, 21st August, 2017, after my medical follow-up in the United Kingdom."

President Buhari had left for London on May 7, 2017, and handed the reins of government to the Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, who functioned as the Acting President.

FEMI ADESINA

Special Adviser to the President

(Media and Publicity)

August 21, 2017.