No Cure For Yakubu Gowon Fever

By Tony Iwuoma

Former head of state, Yakubu Gowon, was gifted with opportunity for atonement when he recently appeared on AIT’s People, Politics and Power programme. Unfortunately, the man, who wanted to ‘go on with one Nigeria’ (Gowon), flunked the grace of history.

*Gowon

Perhaps, the greatest take-away was Gowon’s inadvertent exoneration of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. He had actually set out to vilify the venerable Biafra leader by heaping inordinate falsehood on the dead, who can no longer defend himself. Gowon claimed he went to Ghana for the famed Aburi Accord unprepared. That, according to him, accounted for why highly cerebral Ojukwu bamboozled all of them and wringed the concessions he got. He added that secession was not on the card in Ghana and, of course, it couldn’t have been. It was not on Ojukwu’s agenda either. However, secession crept into the matter when the pogrom against the Igbo in the North continued unabated and Gowon, admittedly, could not halt it. According to Gowon and rightly so, the Igbo saw Biafra as the only hope for safety and freedom.

Gen Yakubu Gowon Should Think Again

By Amanze Obi

It does appear that General Yakubu Gowon, the man who became Nigeria’s Head of State under very controversial circumstances, is weighed down by a certain hangover. He still thinks that the only way a country can be ruled is by diktat. He is yet to come to terms with the fact that power, in a democratic setting such as ours, must flow through popular consent. More than 40 years after he was booted out of office, Gowon still wishes for a static Nigeria, where the old order must continue to hold sway.

*Gowon

When, the other time, some secessionist groups gave Nigeria cause to worry about its unity, Gowon clearly went livid. He made nostalgic references to the Nigeria he fought to keep together. He was afraid that the trophy he took home some four decades ago was about to be snatched away from him. Many clearly understand the passions of the likes of Gowon over one Nigeria. He considers Nigeria’s unity as his life-time legacy. He does not want it to be toyed or tinkered with.

Why Buhari Should Recontest In 2019

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It is only those who are unfamiliar with the politics of mutual backslapping in these climes who are surprised by the verdict of the governors of the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC). At the meeting of the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) in Abuja on Tuesday, the governors declared President Muhammadu Buhari fit to recontest for presidency in 2019. The governors strove to justify their decision. Buhari has done very well in the past two and half years and thus he needs to be rewarded with another fours years, so their argument goes. To them, no other person in the APC possesses so sterling credentials that conduce to the unity of the party and the country and the wellbeing of its citizens as Buhari.

*President Buhari and Zimbabwean
President Robert Mugabe

But for now, the NEC does not share the enthusiasm of the governors. Thus, the governors were not able to convince the NEC to give automatic ticket to Buhari to recontest. However, it is unlikely that the NEC would deny Buhari an automatic ticket at the right time; the governors were just the first to declare their position. It is clear to the citizens that these governors have only flattered the president for various selfish reasons. Of course, the governors are aware of the power of incumbency that could be used to hunt them if they were opposed to the ambition of the president to recontest. Most of these governors have not conducted their financial affairs in a manner that could make them different from those the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has hung charges of corruption on. Again, most of the governors rode to power in 2015 on the back of the popularity of Buhari. Thus, the calculation of the governors is that once Buhari recontests, they are likely to return to power. 

Fayose Wants Army To Shift Attention To Fulani Herdsmen Menace

The Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, has called on the military to direct its Operations Python Dance and Crocodile Smile to those areas in Nigeria, especially the North Central States of Benue, Plateau as well as North East States like Taraba and Adamawa where Fulani herdsmen are killings Nigerians and destroying farmlands worth several billions of naira.

The governor who described the reported threat by Miyeitti Allah Kautal Hore, a splinter group of Miyeitti Allah Cattle Breeders Association, over the Benue State Anti-Open Grazing Law as reckless and open threat against the sovereignty of Nigeria added that the silence of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government over the Fulani herdsmen menace was a sign of complicity on the part of the federal government.

In a statement in Ado Ekiti on Monday, by his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, Governor Fayose said: “If the Federal Government does not want to be seen as protecting the Fulani herdsmen, attention of the Army’s python that is dancing in the Southeast and crocodile that is smiling in the Southwest and South South should be focused on the killer herdsmen.”

Anambra: APC’s Farcical Campaign Flag-Off!

By Chuks Iloegbunam

 Salvation was to befall Ndigbo! So went the media hype. Salvation’s landfall was slated for Onitsha. And once it set down, every Anambra indigene would be happy ever after. It was the APC campaign flag off for the November 18 gubernatorial ballot. Appropriately, the conveyor of the balm to turn Anambra from ill to glory was the Gombe-born Ibrahim Jalo-Waziri, APC’s Youth Leader. Given his eminence, therefore, it was with a swagger that Alhaji Jalo-Waziri found his way to the podium.

*Anambra Governor, Willie Obiano

 Given again that most of those in attendance were in their teens and twenties – as if they had been corralled from secondary and tertiary institutions – there was rapt attention and immense anticipation. The Youth Leader had hope to deliver. Most of those drowned in mire or shot dead for carrying Biafran flags and seeking self-determination were in the same age bracket as those Jalo-Waziri would address. Perhaps he would explain to them the rationale behind the heavy-handedness. The man cleared his throat. “Vote for APC,” he intoned. “Our victory will connect you to the big contracts of Abuja”!

Mr. President, Under Your Watch Corruption Only Changed Its Tactics And Swagger!

By Ishaq Sani

Dear Mr. President,
Thank you for rewarding our die-hard loyalty with betrayal. Before the 2015 election, those who told us never to believe in you, and described you as nepotistic and tribalistic, and called you an unrepentant fundamentalist have been vindicated. Those who ascribed your 1984 war against indiscipline and corruption fight to Gen. Tunde Idiagbon did not lie.

*President Buhari 

Shortly before the 2015, I likened you with my idol Thomas Sankara, and deified you like the Greek god Apollos, but like the popular cliché “the leopard cannot change the colour of its skin,” you proved our opponents right.

Under your watch the lives of animals appear to be more sacred than the lives of humans; killer herdsmen or better still, unknown gun men, as you would prefer them to be called, are the second most deadly terrorist group in Nigeria and not IPOB as your government tried to establish.

At Last, Buhari Sacks Babachir, Oke, Names New SGF

*Babachir Lawal 

In a move that may have caught many Nigerians by surprise, President Muhammadu Buhari has relieved the suspended Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr. Babachir Lawal, of his post.

Also sacked is the Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency, Mr. Ayo Oke, who has equally been on suspension following his role in the Ikoyi fund scandal that  rocked the nation some months ago.

This was made known by the president’s special adviser on media, Mr. Femi Adesina.

Mr. Adesina announced Mr. Boss Mustapha as the new SGF.

Gov Okorocha’s Dishonourable Outing

By Ray Ekpu

Mr. Rochas Okorocha, Governor of Imo State is one of the leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC). The APC’s signature tune is anti-corruption. Okorocha has just shot himself in the foot. He rolled out a red carpet for a man who doesn’t deserve it; he named a street undeservingly after him; he erected a multi-million naira statue to honour a man to whom honour is not due. He gave Imo State’s highest award to him as well.

*President Jacob Zuma of South Africa
and Gov Rochas Okorocha of Imo State 

Many governors in Nigeria do whatever they like because they have sycophantic houses of assembly who have a rub-my-back-I-rub-your-own, avaricious and gold-digging symbiotic relationship with them. It is a shame that the Imo State House of Assembly could have the temerity to defend Okorocha’s ignominious awards and rewards to a man whose countrymen and women hold in absolute contempt.

The Clown In Imo State Government House

By Shaka Momodu

In October 2015, I wrote an article titled, ‘Okorocha Puts Imo in Chains.’ That piece was written as a direct response to Okorocha’s incompetence, maladministration, mismanagement of bailout funds, failure to pay workers’ salaries and pensioners’ entitlements, and the state’s poor infrastructure, particularly in Owerri. His government was riddled with corruption, outright thievery and official celebration of inanities as achievements. But the comic has shown an unrelenting inclination to betray the trust of the people by beating his own worst record of poor performance.

*Gov Rochas Okorocha

I had posited in the referenced article that “one is tempted to call for a psychiatric evaluation of the governor because clearly, something is wrong with a chief executive who wouldn’t construct roads, and who begs for a bailout to pay workers’ salaries – only to go on a wild spending binge abroad with scarce foreign exchange in the name of attracting foreign investors to his state. It is almost unbelievable the level of decay and rot that confronts anyone who visits Owerri”.

It is a shame that the situation in Imo has grown progressively worse such that it has reached a crisis proportion. Angered by my article, the boy-boy deputy governor wrote a disparaging and utterly vacuous counter-narrative to please his master. He tried to practise new highfalutin words he had just learnt on me. But today, we know better.

Is The Devil Winning The Game?

By Osondu Anyalechi

Ugly things have been repeating themselves in recent times. It is either a man is defiling his teenage daughter or a 70-year-old man is doing so with his neighbour’s daughter. The plea of one of them was that he was misled by the devil. Another man said that he did what he did under the influence of alcohol. Well, the effect is the same, irrespective of their plea. An innocent girl has been exposed to an evil practice. A little girl has been abused and cheated. A man is suffering from what his fellow man has done to his daughter. It is all about the devil, rightly called devil [deviser of evil].

 In one case, Uncle admitted that he defiled his daughter but blamed the native doctor, who had told him that it was a quick means of getting rich. And he obeyed! He must have put his daughter and wealth on the scale and then made his choice. Money became more important to him than his daughter. There are many people who are in pains because they have no children, and yet, they are very wealthy. To them, children are more important than wealth. Not Uncle!

Maina: Who is Fooling Who?

By Segun Adeniyi

In discussing the controversy around the reinstatement and promotion of the twice-dismissed former Chairman of the Presidential Task ForceTeam on pension Reforms, Mr Abdulrasheed Maina yesterday at our editorial board meeting, a member said something instructive. According to the person, while the former administration ‘democratised’ corruption, the current one has decided to ‘privatise’ it.

*Abdulrasheed Maina

If any proof was ever needed about that summation, readers only have to check out what members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in both the Senate and House of Representatives said on Tuesday in their contributions to the motion on how the former level-14 civil servant with enormous power and wealth suddenly got back his job with promotion and a N22 million bounty in arrears.

Gowon's Aimless Cut On Odumegwu-Ojukwu

By Sunny Igboanugo

Wouldn't it have been better for former head of state General Yakubu Gowon to just say that his inexperience, age and poor education were responsible for the Nigerian civil war rather than sticking to a 50-year-old propaganda, which has refused to stick.

*Gowon and Ojukwu eating from the
same plate in Aburi 

Having gone to Aburi "unprepared" and completely overwhelmed by an Oxfords-trained graduate, wouldn't it have been better for him to just accept that he simply fell to the manipulations of the British and bureaucrats back home rather than blame the war on "Ojukwu's lies?" 

ls the Nigerian Military Strong Only Against The Weak?

By Magnus Onyibe

On December 12, 2015 in Kaduna State, north central Nigeria, the military allegedly mowed down hundreds of Shiite Muslims who allegedly tried to obstruct their path. Till date, their leader, Ibrahim El zakzaky and his wife are still in detention, although authorities like to sugar coat it as protective custody.

While Nigerians are still mortified by that horrific event in Kaduna, under the disguise of a military exercise code named operation Python dance ll, the military on September 15, 2017 invaded south eastern Nigeria-Umuahia and Aba-in particular, unleashing sorrow, tears and blood on the civilian populace. Coincidentally, in the 1980s, after a fierce and unfortunate encounter with the military, which led to the death of illustrious Mrs Fumilayo Kuti, mother of the highlife music maestro, the late Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the radical musician had released a hit song, aptly tagged  ‘Sorrow, Tears and Blood, them regular trademark.’ Events in the recent past have confirmed that Fela’s odious characterisation of the military was on point.

While the army in particular is basking in the euphoria of killing defenseless civilians (whose tax money is used to fund them) in both north central and south east Nigeria, it is being given a bloody nose by the religious insurgent group Boko Haram, in the north east. 

Maina: The Joke Is On APC, Buhari

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

The unfolding “Mainagate” which is rocking the pretentious Muhammadu Buhari presidency is classical Nigerian drama. Alhaji Abdulrasheed Maina, former chairman of the defunct Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, who was accused of dipping his fingers into the pension honey pot, and fled the country in 2015, sauntered back noisily as if nothing happened.

*Abdulrasheed Maina

On July 21, 2015, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) charged him, along with others, to a Federal High Court on a 24-count charge bordering on procurement fraud including falsified biometric contracts, which resulted in the alleged mismanagement of over N2 billion of pension funds with which he allegedly acquired choice mansions in Abuja. EFCC claimed that one of such properties is a mansion in the posh Jabi Lake area of the FCT, which he bought in June 2012 while he was still pension reforms boss, at a mindboggling sum of $2 million.

And guess what? He paid cash.

Rather than face trial, Maina fled the country and the EFCC declared him wanted on November 2, 2015.

Then, two years into the Buhari presidency, he returned, but not quietly. An Igbo adage says a child sent to steal by his father does not approach his victim’s house stealthily. He rather kicks doors open with a bang.

Rather than lie low, his posters surfaced announcing his governorship ambition in his home state of Borno come 2019. As if that was not audacious enough, he showed up at the Ministry of Interior, behind a huge mahogany desk, and wait for it, not as Assistant Director, his previous position, but acting Director in-charge of human resources department and a whopping sum of N22 million was doled out to him as arrears of his unpaid salary since he was sacked from the civil service in 2013.

On Maina, Blame President Buhari

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Aside from the tragedy of the monumental failure of the President Muhammadu Buhari government, there is also that of the barefacedly audacious attempts to still project him as glowing in the halo of incorruptibility that some have associated him with. To his diehard loyalists, it is not Buhari who has betrayed the high ideals of transparency he has espoused before the public but only those whom he has given responsibilities who are prevented by their greed from living up to the expectations of their high offices.

*President Buhari 

This is the trajectory we are confronted with again as the public is scandalised by the heist and remorselessness of the former Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, Abdullahi Abdulrasheed Maina, and the complicity of high-profile officials of the Buhari government. In the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan, Maina was given the responsibility of bringing reform into the pension system to break the cycle of pensioners dying broke in their post-service years because of their inability to access their pensions. But the reformer soon turned away from his official assignment and became preoccupied with the looting of the billions that he was supposed to guard against pecuniary predators. Before he was caught, Maina had already allegedly stolen N100 billion. Maina was not at a loss as regards how to avail himself of this haul. He launched into a splurge and this civil servant who was an assistant director before he was made to manage the pension system became the owner of posh houses and companies in choice areas of Abuja and other parts of the country. Yes, Maina is presumed innocent until he is declared guilty by a competent law court. But he declared himself guilty before the public. Instead of making himself available to the Senate and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to clear himself of the charges of egregious corruption he fled abroad.

'Mainagate'And The Hypocrisy Of The Buhari Regime

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

The hypocrisy of the General Muhammadu Buhari-led All Progressives Congress (APC) government is nauseating. The behaviour of some of its officials is childish, to say the least. They probably think Nigerians are idiots who don't have the capacity to reason.

*Buhari 

Take for instance this Abdulrasheed Maina fiasco. The Ibrahim Magu-led Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is now jumping up and down claiming to be seizing Maina's properties in Kaduna and Abuja and they have journalists to video it and write the stories and create the impression that, indeed, Magu, like his Oga, Buhari, is an anti-corruption czar. And you ask, why now?

Nigeria’s Minorities: Pawn On The Political Chessboard

By Rasheed Kola Ojikutu

In Nigeria, the word “ marginalisation’’ is on the lips of everyone who could utter it, most of who place little emphasis on the context of its usage and the meaning. Although, a social word, it has found profound use in the lexicon of politicians to the extent of its being a major veil for covering political mischief, agitation and sometimes violence. What is marginalisation? What does it mean for a group or an individual to be marginalised?

The Oxford dictionaries define marginalisation as the treatment of a person, group, or concept as insignificant or peripheral. The Business Dictionary.com explained it as the process whereby something or someone is pushed to the edge of a group and accorded lesser importance while the Psychology Dictionary sees it as the process through which the marginal groups and their members are identified as not being apart of the main group. 

Maina’s Reinstatement: A Classical Example Of Honour Among Thieves – PDP

Press Release

Jeffery Archer, the British Author in his classical novel, Honour Among Thieves, postulated that “criminals do not compromise the actions of other criminals."

2. It is in the light of this that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), wishes to state that we are not too shocked at the steps taken by the Administration of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in reinstating a supposed criminal and fugitive, Abdulrasheed Maina to office instead of getting him arrested.

*Abdulrasheed Maina

3. Birds of a feather flocks together.

4. All people of good conscience will not forget in a hurry that Maina, who was given an assignment by the Last Administration of the PDP to superintend the now defunct Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, dipped his hands into the Jar and helped himself to N100 billion of what he was supposed to safeguard.

5. With good conscience at fighting corruption, the PDP Government then, mandated the Anti-corruption Agencies to perform their constitutional duty. Maina fled, only to resurface in the Country four months ago under the Buhari Administration.

Buhari’s Sack Of Maina An Afterthought – Gov Fayose

         Press Release

Ekiti State Governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose, has said the President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive for the immediate disengagement of former Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, Mr. Abdullahi Maina, is an afterthought.

*President Buhari 

He said the President only acted to save his face from the global embarrassment caused him by the outcry of Nigerians on the news of Maina’s reinstatement.

The governor demanded immediate arrest and trial of Maina as well as the dismissal of all those who perpetrated his reinstatement, which he described as fraudulent and shameful.

Army Should Produce Nnamdi Kanu

By Ochereome Nnanna

The excesses of the leader of the proscribed Indigenous Peoples of Biafra, IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, needed to be put in check, no doubt. But I think the Army totally mismanaged it and put those who signed his sureties at risk. In April this year, Justice Binta Murtala Nyako of the Abuja High Court brought relief to the tensed atmosphere wrought by the continued illegal detention of Kanu and granted him bail on rather draconian conditions.

*Nnamdi Kanu

Apart from being barred from granting interviews, addressing rallies and being in a group of more than ten people at any time, he was required to procure three sureties for the sum of N100 million each, one of whom must be a Jewish religious leader (Kanu being a self-acclaimed adherent of the Jewish religion).

Contrary to expectations, the sureties stepped forward. One of them was a notable politician, Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe, who represents Abia South Senatorial Zone which covers Aba, the hotbed of the Biafran agitation and the wellspring of Igbo nationalism.

Apart from possible political opportunism, I understood Abaribe’s readiness to accept the risky challenge of standing surety for Kanu. He must have felt duty-bound to obey his constituents’ wishes. I think Abaribe was also convinced Kanu would not jump bail. Yes indeed, Kanu violated all the conditions attached to his bail, except the one that concerned Abaribe and the other sureties: jumping bail.