Nigeria: The Return Of Decree 4

By Abraham Ogbodo

Last week, I wrote on a proposed bill, which seeks to calibrate free expression into love and hate speeches, with the latter attracting serious penalties including 10 years imprisonment and death. As I wrote from one end, a colleague, Mr. Don Okere, editor of Daily Independent Newspaper was at another end battling to call public attention to the unlawful detention of the Abuja Bureau Chief of the newspaper, Mr. Tony Ezimakor by the Department for State Security (DSS). The reporter was kept for days and incommunicado for refusal to disclose how he got information that the DSS had paid a princely $2 million to secure the release of some of the Chibok schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram terrorists in April 2014.

I do not know, who between Lawal Daura, the Director-general of DSS and President Muhammadu Buhari should take the blame for this. From the little I know of Daura, he is loaded with a lot of native enthusiasm that forbids him from pretence. Most times, and perhaps, without realising it, he presents himself more as a Fulani than he does as a Nigerian. He also does not pretend about his big stake in the Buhari presidency.

Nigeria: Who Will Halt The Bestiality In Benue, Etcetera?

By Dan Amor

Irrational impulses are not surprising in the stress and tension that characterize a demented society. In an atmosphere of violence, reason is sometimes abandoned and humanitarian principles forgotten. The inflamed passions of the time lead men to commit atrocities. But the concern here is not with the psychological pathology of those who commit atrocities but rather with what has turned our nation into a slaughterhouse where human beings are daily killed with intimidating alacrity. Throughout modern history, atrocity propaganda has often mesmerized readers thousands of kilometres from the scene of the crime. Often, the improbability of the actions described suggests that the stories were little more than fantasies concocted for diverse reasons from even more diverse sources.

But the reading public in Nigeria has invariably evinced a morbid absorption with the most nightmarish aspects of this national tragedy. It is indeed fashionable to observe that material which should create a moral aversion to the cruelty of our present times often produces a perverse fascination instead. There is, candidly speaking, an alarming rate of mockery killings in Nigeria, especially under the Buhari administration. There are gruesome stories of rapes, mutilations, perversities and child and mother murders.

Negotiating With Terrorists A Mistake Nigeria Cannot Afford To Keep Making

By Reno Omokri

I have just watched a video by Shuaibu Moni, a Boko Haram commander who was reported by the media to have been freed in exchange for some 82 kidnapped Chibok girls in a deal allegedly brokered by the Swedish government. The fact that a Boko Haram commander released by the Buhari government can threaten Nigeria proves that you should not negotiate with terrorists or pay ransoms to them.

 

By doing so, you become the major financier of terrorism knowingly or unknowingly! In this video, Mr. Moni threatened Nigeria and vowed to show the country that Boko Haram is still fully in control of Sambisa Forest, contrary to claims made by the military and President Muhammadu Buhari. This latest video proves the futility of negotiating with terrorists. 

Hello, Buhari Is Beatable In 2019

By Sufuyan Ojeifo

In 2015, serial presidential contestant, Muhammadu Buhari, emerged victorious through the instrumentality of enclave politics to which the north adroitly resorted in the face of plans by Goodluck Jonathan to ensconce himself in power for another four years. Had Jonathan succeeded, the north, barring any unforeseen circumstances, would have been out of presidential power for ten unbroken years following the demise of President Umaru Yar’Adua.

*Buhari 

 That cold fact apparently nudged the north to throw everything into the mix of 2015 presidential power politics. Many key northern elements in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) deployed political brinkmanship, dismantled loyalty that characteristically underpins leadership-followership construction, betrayed trust and deceived Jonathan in the utilisation of campaign and election funds in order to ensure the defeat of a sitting president, for the first time, in the annals of Nigeria’s presidential election.

President Buhari, Learn From Ghanaian President and Stop Embarrassing Nigeria – PDP

Press Statement

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has called on President Muhammad Buhari to rather use the benefit of his state visit to Ghana to draw lessons from his Ghanian counterpart, President Nana Akufo-Addo on how

to run a peaceful, united and economically vibrant nation.

Ghana's President Nana Akufo-Addo and
 President Muhammadu Buhari

The party also  criticized the President for offering to assist Ghana

in her war against corruption, when his own administration reeks heavily with corruption as evinced by the Transparency International report which exposed the fact that corruption has worsened in Nigeria under his watch.

Why President Buhari Doesn’t Mourn The Dead

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Even without Samuel Ortom shedding tears, history is bound to credit him with a stellar role during the trying time of his people. He could have reached a pact with the devil and secured his cocoon of ease, unperturbed by the howls of his people being slaughtered by Fulani herdsmen.

*President Buhari 

 A peril of his sense of filial obligation to his people has been his humiliation at the hands of his colleagues. In their midst, he is burdened with a pariah status. One of them, Plateau State Governor Simon Lalong, might have given expression to what they were inhibited by political correctness from letting out . In a moment Lalong was overwhelmed with a sense of vindication of his prescience, he reminded Ortom that he warned him against making a law to stop Fulani herdsmen from destroying the people of Benue and their means of livelihood. Yes, Lalong attempted to recant, but this did not vitiate his stand.

Africa: A Continent Without Democrats

By Reuben Abati

The second wave of democratization in Africa, beginning in the 80s, and the gradual establishment of democracy as the new normal in the continent brought much hope and excitement. As we have seen in the recent intervention by the military in Zimbabwe, coup d’etats have become unpopular and unacceptable in the entire continent in deference perhaps to dominant global politics. 

*Mugabe and Museveni

In the past two decades, there have been many electoral transitions across the continent indicative of a pattern of democratic consolidation. In reality, however, mercenaries of democracy, dictators and a military culture dominate African politics. The form of governance may have changed, but the form of politics has remained seemingly unchangeable. We are forcefully reminded of this by certain recent developments across the continent. In Burundi, President Pierre Nkurunziza has just ensured that the officials of a football team, which rough-tackled him during a football match last year, have been sent to prison. Nkurunziza, a graduate of Sports Education (1990), loves to play football, even as President. He owns a football team, Haleluia FC, and a choir, “Kameza gusenga” which means “pray non-stop”.

President Muhammadu Buhari, His Two-Headed Dragon And His ‘War’ Against Terror (Part 1)

By Femi Fani-Kayode

“No-one is more hated than he who speaks truth”- Plato.

These deeply profound and insightful words of Plato, Ancient Greece’s greatest and most revered philosopher, who was a student of the great Socrates and a teacher of the great Aristotle, are as true today as they were in 400 BC when he wrote them.

*Femi Fani-Kayode

 You will not read the following account about President Muhammadu Buhari’s so-called “war against terror” in Nigeria’s mainstream media because they have mostly been compromised and intimidated by the Federal Government.

You can however read it in this two-part essay if you are interested in
knowing the truth. I urge as many of those that care and that can get through it to spread the word and let the international community know the truth about what the Nigerian people are passing through.

Good Leadership, Effective Economic Management As Elements Of Good Governance

By Ben Nwabueze

*Prof Ben Nwabueze 

Good leadership

The qualities and credentials needed for good leadership can readily be identified. The primal credential is good education, such as would enable the leadership to combine “ideas and power, intellectualism and politics.” Leadership is a critical part of Nigeria’s problem of governance because the educational qualification prescribed for our political leaders by section 131(d), as amended by the National Assembly in 2010, and section 318(1) of the Constitution does not equip them to be able to combine “ideas and power, intellectualism and politics.”

In these days of widespread “expo”, certificate faking and general degeneration in the standards of education in our schools and colleges, primary six school leaving certificate prescribed by the Constitution for those seeking elective political office is really next door to illiteracy. A semi literate President or Governor is what the prescription tantamount to.

The Myth About Buhari’s 12 Million Northern Votes

By Sufuyan Ojeifo

Short of saying, whether you vote or not, we will win, Kano state governor, Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje, who is locked in a supremacy battle with his erstwhile boss, former governor of the state and current senator, Rabiu Kwankwaso, for the political soul of Kano, was boasting, the other day, of his capacity to mobilise and return five million votes for President Muhammadu Buhari, if he contests, in the 2019 presidential election. That is quite massive in a situation where it is realistic or doable! 

*President Buhari 

For me, Ganduje’s declaration was nothing but a day-dream. But then, it could be preparatory to some advanced forms of rigging because, in the first instance, the figure of registered voters in Kano in the 2015 general elections was 4,943,862. Assuming, arguendo, that the figure goes up to between five and six million after the continuous voter registration, can the governor guarantee that five million voters would cast their votes for Buhari, especially if the leading opposition party decides to field a formidable northerner and possibly a Fulani man against the president? 

Achuzia, Biafra Spirit And South South Igbo

By Onuoha Ukeh

As a kid during the Biafra War, I did not know the major actors of the battle, which claimed more than two million Igbo. At that time, I never knew Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu, Yakubu Gowon, Emmanuel Ifeajuna, Philip Effiong, Olusegun Obasanjo, Joe Achuzia and others, who played one role or another in the internecine war. This was expected. Little kids, in their innocence, do not know about wars.

*Achuzia

However, I will never forget the day my parents took my siblings and I into the bush, as we fled from the federal troops, who entered our community in Item, Bende Local Government Area of the present-day Abia State. That faithful early morning, we started hearing the sound of explosive artillery or shelling from a distance into the Item area. The sound of “Kpo, kpo, kpo, kpo” rent the air. Another shooting sound that always followed was “dum.”

Why Gov Nasir El-Rufai Must Arrest Religious Mayhem In Southern Kaduna

By by Erasmus Ikhide

Mallam Nasir El-Rufai has been unfortunate to be voted in as the “accidental governor” of Kaduna State. Since 1980, the crocodile state has been floating on the river of blood visited on it by those who find it nauseating to reside in the same neighbourhood and space as those who do not share the same faith and religion. How we arrive at this mind-wrecking and anti-humanistic station in our journey into nationhood — even when all religion preach tolerance and peaceful cohabitation is something that constitutes a blight on us, as people.

*Gov El-Rufai

The latest Christian and Muslim clash in Southern Kaduna that took place at Kasuwan Magani town in Kajuru Local Govenment Area of Kaduna State, over which over a 1,000 houses were torched and several souls lost two days ago is not salutary to whatever efforts the Kaduna State Commissioner of Police claimed to have made. 

Dear President Buhari, Lying Is Corruption!

By Reno Omokri

I have just read President Buhari’s speech to the All Progressive Congress members who visited him at the Presidential Villa on Monday the 26th of February, 2018. It is rather unfortunate that a man who once deceived the nation with his fabled ‘integrity’ can descend so low as to spew forth very obvious lies and a revision of history.

*President Buhari

If nothing else justifies the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index rating which revealed that corruption in Nigeria has worsened under President Buhari, this latest Presidential act of deception does.

In psyching up the APC for 2019, the President, obviously aware of the defeat that awaits him and his lying brigade, said as follows:

Nigeria: Is Dapchi A State Conspiracy?

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It is a robust measure of how much the President Muhammadu Buhari government has lost credibility that the abduction of 110 pupils of Government Girls Science and Technical College, Dapchi, Yobe State, has spawned conspiracy theories. Racked by unfulfilled promises, fervent backers of the Buhari government who were ready to vouchsafe the eternal integrity of the president no longer accept that his position can be trusted. They strive to ferret out what could be the real motive for the action or inaction of the Buhari government.

To be sure, we should not dismiss the purveyors of these conspiracy theories as sadists who inscrutably derive fulfillment from the suffering of others. As fellow citizens, they share the pain of the families of the abductees and the nation. They are not unaware of the agony parents are subjected to when a child they have sent to school to learn is abducted. They understand the gnawing anxiety of parents over the current condition of the abductees, whether they are alive or dead and whether they would see them again. Their worry is not unfounded. Still fresh in their memories are the ordeals of the Chibok abductees and those of their parents. For a long time, nothing was heard about them. Even after the rescue of some of them, others cannot be accounted for as they have died or the Boko Haram leaders have made good their threat to sell them off as sex slaves.

'Abandoned Property' Was Coined By Those Intent On Perpetrating Daylight Robbery' – COL. ACHUZIA

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

THE CHINUA ACHEBE FOUNDATION INTERVIEW SERIES 
November 2005
All Rights Reserved ©

---

Joe Achuzia 

*About Col. Joe Achuzia

Born seventy years ago, in the present day Delta State, Col Joe Achuzia has been involved in the programmes and activities of Ohaneze NdiIgbo, the apex socio-cultural organization in Igboland, for the past fifteen years. Since he assumed office as the Secretary-General of Ohaneze NdiIgbo, he has been distinguished by his frankness in public communications and the passion with which he canvases the Igbo position on matters of national and regional interests. He believes strongly in one, united Nigeria, where equity, justice, fairness and mutual respect for one another are unreservedly operational at all levels of governance and social interactions. He is of the opinion that the deterioration in the country is as old as the country itself and that the only way to ensure harmony and progress in the nation is to convoke a conference of ethnic nationalities where the thorny issues plaguing Nigeria could be properly addressed.

After the Biafra/Nigeria war in which he played a prominent role, he was detained by the Nigerian authorities. Fearing he might not survive the incarceration, he wrote his book, Requiem Biafra, to articulate his role in the war, and check attempts by later writers to, in his own words, “superimpose falsehood” on him. UGOCHUKWU EJINKEONYE interviewed him in Lagos for Chinua Achebe Foundation.

---

Excerpts:

President Buhari’s Anti-Corruption Conundrum

By Sufuyan Ojeifo

There is common sense in the submission that the anti-corruption crusade of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s government has slumped.

This is validated by the slipshod, ineffectual and selective manner the administration has so far executed the vaunted crusade. 

*President Buhari 

There has been so much mismanagement of the process, so much misapplication of the momentum, and so much floundering of the philosophy underpinning the anti-corruption agenda. The corollary, thus, is a concomitant contention, which will be explicated shortly. 

Nigeria: Mystery Snake And A Nation’s Comedy Of Errors

By Tayo Ogunbiyi

The Comedy of Errors is one of William Shakespeare’s early plays. It is his shortest and one of his most farcical comedies, with a major part of the humour coming from slapstick and mistaken identity, in addition to puns and word play.

The play tells the story of two sets of identical twins that were accidentally separated at birth but were eventually united after a series of witty events.

Today, the phrase ‘a comedy of errors’ is often used to describe a situation that is so full of mistakes and problems that it seems funny. On that premise, it won’t be out of place to tag our nation as a Land of Comedy of Errors.  Things happen in our clime that you cannot but remember the famous Charley Boy Show where anything can happen.  

Obasanjo’s Sermon In The Creeks

By Abraham Ogbodo

Last week, former President Olusegun Obasanjo was in Bayelsa State preaching love. He went at the instance of the State Governor, Seriake Dickson who wanted him (since the incumbent president is not readily available for such task) to commission projects built by the state government as part of the activities to mark the sixth anniversary of the government of Dickson in the state.

*Obasanjo and Dickson

Obasanjo did a little more outside the official schedule. By some arrangement, he was appropriated to lay the foundation stone of the second private refinery after Dangote’s, but the first in that region of the country, penultimate Saturday.

The Azikel Modular Refinery sitting on about 20 hectares is being powered by Dr. Eruani Azibapu Goodbless, President of Azikel Group in collaboration with foreign partners.  

Col Joe Achuzia in Conversation with Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

THE CHINUA ACHEBE FOUNDATION INTERVIEW SERIES 
November 2005
All Rights Reserved ©

---

*Achuzia

*About Col. Joe Achuzia

Born seventy years ago, in the present day Delta State, Col Joe Achuzia has been involved in the programmes and activities of Ohaneze NdiIgbo, the apex socio-cultural organization in Igboland, for the past fifteen years. Since he assumed office as the Secretary-General of Ohaneze NdiIgbo, he has been distinguished by his frankness in public communications and the passion with which he canvases the Igbo position on matters of national and regional interests. He believes strongly in one, united Nigeria, where equity, justice, fairness and mutual respect for one another are unreservedly operational at all levels of governance and social interactions. He is of the opinion that the deterioration in the country is as old as the country itself and that the only way to ensure harmony and progress in the nation is to convoke a conference of ethnic nationalities where the thorny issues plaguing Nigeria could be properly addressed.

After the Biafra/Nigeria in which he played a prominent role, he was detained by Nigerian authorities. Fearing he might not survive the incarceration, he wrote his book, Requiem Biafra, to articulate his role in the war, and check attempts by later writers to, in his own words, “superimposed falsehood” on him.

---

Excerpts:

WHERE THE RAIN BEGAN TO BEAT US

Do you think it is possible to identify a particular period in Nigeria’s history when the deterioration commenced, or should we assume the downward slide is, perhaps, as old as the nation itself?

Nigeria, in my opinion, started deteriorating from day one. The gladiators who fought for our independence made all the classical mistakes. They failed to understand that those who pitch themselves in mortal combats to gain independence for the people should quit the stage for peaceful gladiators to take over. You cannot be a warrior and a peacemaker at the same time. No. But, they tried to combine the two, and so failed woefully. And we’ve been going down ever since.

Why then does your generation speak nostalgically about the good old days?

The good old days is a cliché used by people reminiscing about their secure lives as adolescents, and referring to the past as “the good old days...”The bad old days then begins when they have to start taking responsibilities. (Laughter)

So, there have been no good old days in Nigeria?

No, there has been nothing like that.

The Wailing Of Madam Oluremi Tinubu

By Modiu Olaguro

"For what Ricardo foresaw was the end of a theory of society in which everyone moved together up the escalator of progress. Unlike Smith, Ricardo saw that the escalator worked with different effects on different classes, that some rode triumphantly on the top, while others were carried up a few steps and then were kicked back down to the bottom. Worse yet, those who kept the escalator moving were not those who rose with its motion, and those who got the full benefit of the ride did nothing to earn their reward. And to carry the metaphor one step further, if you looked carefully at those who were ascending to the top, you could see that all was not well here either; there was a furious struggle going on for a secure place on the stairs.”

—The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers by Robert L. Heilbroner.

*Oluremi Tinubu

Remi Tinubu’s outburst on the seeming side-line of her hubby, Bola Tinubu, by the Muhammadu Buhari administration illustrates the existence of an acrimonious struggle for dominance by actors in the political space. It connotes the very fact that the poor masses of Nigeria are not the only victims of the serial subterfuge by politicians who find their thumbs useful before elections only to find their faces unworthy after.