Nigerian Army Must Re-Brand Itself

By Ochereome Nnanna

If the current Nigerian leadership still has any conscience, it must be shocked and sobered by the reaction of the people of the South East over the unfounded “Army vaccine” rumour that took place last week.

It was a conclusive proof that due to the prevailing unsavoury atmosphere foisted by the regime on major national institutions, a section of the Nigerian populace no longer sees the Nigerian Army as their own. They are now feared and despised, rightly or wrongly, such that even when they are involved in noble activities in the interest of the common man, they are suspected.

Following the outbreak of the monkey pox virus epidemic, the story, manufactured from devil knows where, made the rounds in the theatre of Operation Python Dance, that some individuals dressed in army uniform had invaded schools in Imo and Abia States forcibly administering vaccines to spread the monkey pox diseases within the Igbo population. Unfortunately, people believed this story, even though no one had any evidence to that effect.

Can The Break Up Of Nigeria Be Peaceful?

By Remi Oyeyemi

The above question is necessary to wake us up on and to the realities confronting us. The need to provide answers to it is very pertinent.

In my view, what is needed to save Nigeria is intractably antagonistic to Nigeria's NATURE and CHARACTER as a STATE.

What are needed to save Nigeria are basic and simple but yet humongously overwhelming for and to our WILL, if we have it at all. I have suggested and still suggest that it is important that we allow individual ethnic nationalities to have greater controls on their economic, social and political issues. A replication of the EUROPEAN UNION model could work to save Nigeria. But such a beautiful idea would not be allowed by those who want to dominate, enslave and exploit others.

APC, NNPC And Procurement Disease

By Alabi Williams

I wonder how Governor Nasir el Rufai of Kaduna State feels at the moment. I wonder what his thoughts are now of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Remember his ‘kill NNPC or NNPC will kill us’ theory in the early days after the enthronement of their party? He waxed lyrical about his prescription for the corporation and the oil industry, which at the time was thought to be in a hopeless state, after the last regime made mincemeat of it.

It was in July 2015, the new government had been installed and all those who worked for the party, saints all of them, were upbeat on how to unleash a sinless regime where there is no corruption. El Rufai was to deliver a media lecture to mark the 81st birthday of Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka. He got for himself a fitting topic on how to sanitse the NNPC, which in its apogee of malfeasance was about to kill Nigeria. He thus propounded the topic urging that we kill NNPC before it kills Nigeria.

That Ill-Advised Search For Oil In The North

By Bolaji Tunji

On Monday, President Muhammadu Buhari was said to have met with three state governors from the northern part of the country. The meeting was to discuss what is becoming a desperate, continued search for oil in the north.

Sokoto governor, Aminu Tambuwal, one of the visitors to the president, was quoted to have called on the federal government to support the search for oil in the Sokoto basin, as that area had been discovered to have oil reserve as far back as 1957.

No To 'Operation Crocodile Smile' In The Niger Delta

By Dan Amor

To all intents and purposes, the reported mobilisation of soldiers to Cross River State and other states in the South South geopolitical zone in a military jamboree code named "Operation Crocodile Smile", is needless and avoidable. Unfortunately, Niger Delta youths who call themselves militants 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.

Stay Away From All Forms Of "Free Medical Programmes" – NMA

Press Release

The Nigerian Medical Association, Imo State, wishes to inform the General public that whereas immunization is necessary for the prevention of some killer diseases especially in childhood, there is no officially approved immunisation programme going on in the state presently. 

As a result, parents and teachers are advised not to submit their wards to persons or group of persons for any purported form of immunisation. 

This is on the backdrop of alarm being raised about "forced immunization" in some places in the state on Wednesday 11th October, 2017.

Similarly, The Nigerian Medical Association Imo State advices the general public to stay away from all forms of "free medical programmes" that do not have the approval of Nigerian Medical Association, while we keenly monitor events unfold.

Dr Dike Victor O.
Secretary, Nigerian Medical Association (NMA)

Imo State

Corruption And Aisha Buhari’s Testimony

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It is increasingly becoming obvious that the President Muhammadu Buhari government is chafing under the affliction of a one-week-one-scandal syndrome. Unless they are irrevocably befuddled by their partisanship, Buhari’s loyalists who have been consumed with the notion of his unrivalled integrity would not fail to observe the dark atmosphere of corruption in which the administration is immersed. But of course, while most of these loyalists are apologising for allowing themselves to be used to pave the way for the Buhari presidency, there are some who would counter that those who accuse the government of corruption are the shellacked members of the opposition. After all, the Kachikwu-Baru affair which is the latest scandal in the Buhari government has not been declared by a competent court as an unimpeachable case of corruption.

*Aisha Buhari 

But the evidence of financial sleaze such unalloyed believers in the integrity of the Buhari government may not be able to dispute is no longer from the members of the opposition and other citizens whose moral sensibilities are daily affronted by corruption cases. Now, the evidence is from an unlikely quarter. It is from Aisha Buhari, the wife of the president. Just a week after the nation was scandalised by the $25 billion heist in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) which has no rival in the alleged financial misdeeds committed by the Goodluck Jonathan government, Mrs. Buhari alerted us to the possible mismanagement of over N4 billion at the Aso Rock Clinic in less than two years. She was shocked that despite this allocation, the clinic did not have a single syringe. Mrs. Buhari’s alarm came shortly after her daughter Zahra was outraged at the lack of syringe and common drugs like paracetamol at the clinic. 

At 57, Nigeria Is Not Near Greatness

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

On Sunday, October 1, Nigerians marked the 57th anniversary of the country’s independence from Great Britain. It was all pomp and ceremony.

Being a Sunday, the Christian community weighed in forcefully. Many churches became de facto cultural centres. Congregants were asked to dress in national attires to showcase the country’s rich cultural heritages.

The Federal Government, as it is wont to do, declared Monday, October 2, public holiday. For a country in recession where the economic indices continue to look south, that was one more day sacrificed on our national alter of mendacity.

“Leaders” sent out beautifully crafted congratulatory messages, telling us how much they love Nigeria and how prepared they are, if need be, to make the ultimate sacrifice in defence of her territorial integrity.

Gov Obiano Asks Army To Halt Vaccination Of Pupils In Anambra

Press Release 

*Gov Obiano

Army Medical Outreach 

The attention of the State Government has been drawn to an on going medical outreach being undertaken by the Army in Ozubulu, Ekwusigo Local Government Area.

The State has been made to understand that the exercise is part of Army social responsibility to members of the public.

However, strong apprehension among the populace has followed the exercise leading to withdrawal of students from schools by parents, misconception of the actual motive behind the exercise by stakeholders, community leaders and a general reservation by the public for whom the outreach is intended.

Nigeria: That October 1 Hate Speech

By Steve Nwosu

If I say President Muhammadu Buhari’s October 1 speech was pre-recorded, that could amount to “hate speech’. Especially, as I have no documentary evidence. So, I’ll not say what I think.

*President Buhari

Similarly, if I say the Independence Day broadcast is the second hate speech I’ve heard from the president in a space of 40 days, I would also be incorrect. Especially as the details of what constitutes a ‘hate speech’ is increasingly looking like the proverbial Malawian constitution of Kamuzu Banda’s. It is whatever they tell us is the law that we accept as the law.

So, I’ll only recall that, after being away for 103 days, President Buhari returned to deliver one angry-speech (where he berated us for behaving badly, especially on the social media, while he was away), and that about 40 days later, he delivered yet another one (where he took Igbo leaders and elders to the cleaners, over the Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB)).

The Kachikwu-Baru Story: Memo To President Buhari

By Mfom Bassey-Wellington 

The August 31, 2017 letter from the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, complaining of the insubordination of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Group Managing Director, Dr. Maikanti Baru, began to generate ripples less than 24 hours after it was made available to the media. The Senate, for example, the next day resolved to set up an ad hoc committee to investigate grave allegations against the NNPC chief executive.

The decision followed a motion by Senator Samuel Anyanwu asking for a probe into the enormous and constant jobs given to Duke Energy, a motion which Senator Kabiru Marafa successfully prayed the Senate to include an investigation into the charge that Dr Baru has awarded $25 billion contracts without due process.

Dr. Ibe Kachikwu and President Buhari 

In the letter to President Buhari, Kachikwu, who is also the chairman of the NNPC Board of Directors, revealed that the NNPC GMD has since his appointment sidelined him in the affairs of the organisation. He cited the example of recent appointments as part of the NNPC reorganisation done without his knowledge, as he read about the changes only in the media, like any other person. The irony is that the appointments were made shortly after the corporation’s board held a meeting which, presumably, Baru attended. In other words, he did not deem it fit to intimate the board of the impending development.    

The Asaba Massacre Trauma, Memory, And The Nigerian Civil War

–A Review By Chuks Iloegbunam 

Authors: S. Elizabeth Bird and Fraser M. Ottanelli.

Publishers: Cambridge University Press (2017).

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

We find this introduction in the book:

“In October 1967, early in the Nigerian Civil War, government troops entered Asaba in pursuit of the retreating Biafran army, slaughtering thousands of civilians and leaving the town in ruins. News of the atrocity was suppressed by the Nigerian government, with the complicity of Britain, and its significance in the subsequent progress of that conflict was misunderstood. Drawing on archival sources on both sides of the Atlantic and interviews with survivors of the killing, pillaging, and rape, as well as with high-ranking Nigerian military and political leaders, S. Elizabeth Bird and Fraser M. Ottanelli offer an interdisciplinary reconstruction of the history of the Asaba Massacre, redefining it as a pivotal point in the history of the war. Through this, they also explore the long afterlife of trauma, the reconstruction of memory and how it intersects with justice, and the task of reconciliation in a nation where a legacy of ethnic suspicion continues to reverberate.”

Having read the book, I attest to the veracity of the above claim. The credibility of the publication is grounded in the impeccable academic credentials of the authors. Bird is Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Florida. She has to her credit more than 80 articles and chapters on popular culture, media, heritage, and memory, as well as five books, two of which are award winning.

Ottaneli, her co-author, also of the University of South Florida, is Professor of History. He has authored and co-authored four books and several articles and essays on radical movements, ethnic history, and comparative migration in the twentieth century.

Yet, credibility often rides on more than the currency of academic triumph. On Africa, for instance, notable literary voices like Chinua Achebe and Ngügï wa Thiong’o have argued that the continent’s stories are better rendered by Africans and in their own tongues. But their standpoint does not invalidate the benefit of detachment often achieved by non-partisan non-Africans. This point profits from the consideration that, through half a century, Nigerians have failed to agree on what actually happened in Asaba on October 7, 1967.

The authors are mindful of the fact that they are liable to the charge of appropriating and running with a story not their own, a charge that, of course, pays scant attention to the reconstruction of today’s world as a Global Village in which what happens in Alaska is much the business of its denizens as it is the concern of the inhabitants of Sarawak. Thus, they take the pains to state that funding for their book did not come from Africa, while the story they have told is the result of extensive research, and the aggregation of the voices of massacre survivors, the relations of the victims and other assorted quarters. All told, 77 people were interviewed. The result is a 239-page book of six chapters:

Is President Buhari’s Integrity Overrated?

By Martins Oloja

This thing called integrity is the most powerful weapon of mass distraction General Muhammadu Buhari’s point men used to win most supporters’ hearts in 2015. Yes, their intangible but lethal missile got us at our very point of our need as a nation. We had then really needed a man of integrity, a good Nigerian indeed in whom there was no guile. We wanted a clean and strong vessel who could rescue us from the years the locusts had eaten at least up to that point. And most of us found a man we could trust in the lanky General from Daura. And in March, 2015, the election agency we all believed said he (PMB) defeated the then incumbent President, Goodluck Jonathan, who also meekly joined the nation in congratulating Mr. Integrity who trounced him to the delight of many.

*Buhari 

But is appears that barely two and half years after the election, the arrogant illiterate of the 21st century around ‘the man of integrity’ are making most of us to have a rethink that the integrity of the taciturn former head of state may have been massively overrated after all, just as Collin J. Browne, an organisational culture expert, noted in a 2015 classic titled, “Integrity is massively overrated”.

Meanwhile, the concept of “the illiterate of the 21st century” is not original to me too. It is to Alvin Toffler I have quoted several times here. The sociologist and writer on organization development and leadership says, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn”.

Nigeria: Independence Without Culture Or Identity?

By Dan Amor

Culture is the artistic and other activity of the mind and the works produced by this. It is also a state of high development in art and thought existing in a society and represented at various levels in its members. But culture as a thematic focus in this piece, concerns the particular system of art, thought, custom, beliefs and all the other products of human thought made by a people at a particular time; in short, the way of life and identity of a people. This essay is therefore informed by the urgent need for a new sense of national identity and character in Nigeria.

What special qualities would distinguish the citizens of this country considered to be the largest and most populated black nation in the world? For instance, under the influence of Montesquieu, Abbe du Bois, and others the eighteenth century placed great emphasis on delineating national character. The Spanish, for example, were said to be brave, mystical and cruel; the English practical, phlegmatic shopkeepers; and the French refined, artistic, and immoral. Each nation was thought to have a special significance, a character, evident in its history, the impression made on travelers, its climate, and in the features of its land. Most nations possessed a long, mysterious past from which its character had simply come into being. The United States of America, on the other hand, could see its origins clearly and explicitly. Moreover, its people were largely British with minorities of Germans, Dutch, French, and others in some of the provinces. Yet, in curious, unselfconscious ways, these transplanted Europeans, even in early colonial days, seemed somehow a different breed of men.

$25 NNPC Scandal: Money For Buhari's Reelection – PDP

Press Release

NNPC’s 25billion Dollars Scandal And The Hypocrisy Of Buhari’s Anti-Corruption War

*President Buhari 

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) wishes to express our shock at the loud silence of President Muhammadu Buhari on the humongous corruption scandal and other illegalities currently being exposed at the nation’s cash cow, the NNPC in which two of his henchmen, the Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu and the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Maikanti Baru are the dramatis personae.

1. As a political party, we expect that the President, who prides himself as an indefatigable corruption fighter, would for once try to live above board, by genuinely allowing one of his own, accused of corruption, get properly investigated and prosecuted as a show of his impartiality in the war against corruption.

2. He should do this to correct the open impression Nigerians have about his so called anti-corruption war; that it’s just a tool of persecution of perceived enemies.

 3. We view the allegations levelled against Baru by Kachikwu as too grave to be swept under the carpet and we insist that the NNPC GMD must be treated like an accused who should not have the opportunity to influence investigation into his alleged misdeeds.

African Oil Producers Cannot Think Beyond Crude Oil

By Farouk Martins Aresa

Why do Africans wait until it is too late for our rescue? Right now most African oil producing countries are still fighting about which regions produce more oil. Areas that are not producing oil are exploring other regions for oil. Many of us lost our thinking faculties in hedonism, greed and are spread all over the world beyond value to Africa. So, No Thinking Beyond Crude Oil!

Only in Nigeria do looters go to court to recover loots or oil blocks! Oil became a curse in Nigeria. Many now wished oil were never discovered around their areas because of the devastating effect it had, leaving their land an environmental swamp. Farmers cannot cultivate crops and fishermen have been idled. Parents watched children restlessly forming gangs of kidnappers, thugs used by politicians and militias as a way to make a living and use the poor’s plight to enrich themselves.

Yet, all the planning to divest away from oil have not materialized after many years. Right now, it is a race against clean energy. Many countries have promised to stop producing automobiles that are powered by oil in about ten years or less. While fear has griped right thinking Africans, we are still waiting for African innovation in automobiles powered by other forms of energies like electric, water, hydrogen or just air. Our scientists are too busy looking for the next meal.

What Do The Igbo Really Want?

By Ike Abonyi

“Those who lie to Mr. President that he is doing well in building a nation are unfair to him. Since he became our President in 2015, we have not seen much of that leverage of the personality of the President to mobilise and unite” –Oby Ezekwesili

That is the red hot question in the country now. Everyone in and out of government, are asking the question and many are struggling to provide the answer. What has become very clear however is that there is no unanimity to the answer even among the Igbo themselves. But what really do the Igbo want in Nigeria? Is it possible pigeon holing their desires into one straight answer? Why is Igbo always the issue among all ethnic groups in the country?

John Nnia Nwodo,
President General, Ohaneze Ndigbo

Why are they the issue now after they were the issue 50 years ago? Why is everyone now talking about the Igbo and the Nigeria question? Why has the Igbo question dominated the nation’s political space to the extent that the President had to make two national broadcasts under two months on it. To effectively provide appreciable response to these whys, I intent to use a story illustration to further give insight into the problem and possibly reinforce and bolster the historical journey of this crisis.

Once upon a time, in one notable Kingdom, a strong King had emerged bearing in his bag grudges against a particular family in his Kingdom for causing the Kingdom to go to war against itself for which the King was an active player as a youth in the Kingdom’s army. The new leader’s relationship with this family in question has not been the best politically as the family did not support his emergence.

Because of his record as a no gobbledygook leader there was great fear and apprehension when he emerged as the King but he allayed the fear in his installation speech assuring the people that his past was already a prologue as they were seeing a brand new convert from what they use to know.

Buhari, Kachikwu And NNPC

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

No matter how much we strain to sustain the illusion that the President Muhammadu Buhari government is on the right track, we are often jarred into reality by his regular missteps and seemingly intentional negation of the common good. Buhari’s platitudes about patriotism and the indivisibility of the country notwithstanding, we are confronted with a situation where it is clear that he ignores the exploration of the opportunities that have frequently come his way to blur the fissiparous tendencies in different parts of the country.

*President Buhari and Dr. Kachikwu

We have seen this in his refusal to heed the calls for the restructuring of the country as a means of quelling agitations for equity that clearly threaten the unity of the country. Rather, Buhari has a penchant for regarding those criticising him for taking wrong decisions as courting government’s attention in order to be settled – a euphemism for bribery. But by making this argument, the government is rather indicting itself. For the government is only saying that public service in the Buhari era is still fabulously lucrative; a means of self-enrichment as it has not been made less financially attractive. If it had done this and public office had been rightly turned into just a means of serving the people with its attendant sacrifice, it would not have considered government officials as privileged Nigerians who other citizens are striving to join or replace.

Nigeria: Building A Nation Without Nationalists?

By Kayode Komolafe

While Nigeria marked the 57th Anniversary of her independence on Sunday one streak of the national mood was not explicit in the messages sent on the occasion. Here is the point: it is hardly fashionable anymore to wave the flag of Nigerian nationalism or defend the unity of the country as a matter of historical responsibility. The latest fad is that of championing ethnic, regional or religious interests at the huge expense of national integration and cohesion.

*President Buhari

The tragedy of the moment is simply that it used not be like this; a generation of Nigerian youths once made Nigerian nationalism their career. For example, the young men in the Zikist Movement proudly and selflessly fought in the spirit of Nigerian nationalism; they did not champion northern or southern interests. No, a century of British colonialism did not come an end on October 1, 1960 without a fight.

To be sure, there were no guerrilla fighters who went to the bush; but there were radical youths agitating in the cities. As the late Marxist historian, Bala Usman, used to put in his inimitable polemical fashion, the struggle for independence was for the nationhood of Nigeria and not for ethnic or regional divisions. In fact, 70 years ago, some of the young men were so immersed in the liberation of Africa such that Nigerian independence was expected to be the launching pad for the total liberation of the black people. It was not for nothing that the appellation of the chief inspirer of the young nationalists, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, was not “Zik of Onitsha” or even “Zik of Nigeria.”

Nigeria Is A Lost Nation!

By Tijani Sheriffdeen

Countries around the world wake up every new day to do something different, and of course productive. They attend to the challenges their yesterday brought them, and draw brilliant inferences from them to improve on their today. When one understands this, one begins to wonder less why their tomorrow is always a lesson for many others. Nations around the world who mean to develop and grow don’t look down on anything, especially elements capable of irreversible and inerasable growth and development. Developed nations understand the impact every single member of a community has on that particular community, as such; they respect their contributions, suggestions and complaints when they come, because they are only meant to bring about growth or change when need be. Who respect opinions in Africa? Not to talk of Nigeria!

Nigeria is a country with over 180 million people, one of the facts we enjoy telling people, yet, with the status of a developing nation since ever. Why should a country have the number without it amounting to anything? Maybe this question is not as important as when we want to make the number we have count as a nation. Looking beyond population, Nigeria is blessed with bounteous natural resources, but it has only help in tearing apart our nation, rather than helping it gain good grounds. Maybe the only time Nigerians appreciate their ethnic diversity is when they have to come closer with Ayodeji Balogun (Wizkid) hit song titled “come closer.” Our ethnic diversity is a reason for us to worry as a nation, as if other nations are monotonous in this regard.