Why Akume And Ortom Should Shut-Up!

By Comfort Obi

Former Governor of Benue state and now, the Senator representing Benue North-West Senatorial District, George Akume and, the incumbent Benue state Governor, Samuel Ortom are disgracefully tearing at each other. 

*Comfort Obi

In the face of the sufferings of Benue people – economic, physical, emotional – Akume and Ortom are dancing naked in the market square. They are telling the people why both of them should be spat on the face. The irony: Both see themselves as leaders of their people.

My sincere advice to them: Shut-up and hide your faces in shame! While Benue is burning, you are playing Rome’s Nero.

Nigeria: Kemi Adeosun’s Mendacity And Buhari’s Integrity

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

After pussyfooting for 69 days, the former Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, finally did the needful by resigning her commission on Friday, September 14. She was accused of parading fake National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) exemption certificate with which she secured employments contrary to the country’s extant laws.

*Buhari and Adeosun 

NYSC which was set up by the General Yakubu Gowon administration on May 22, 1973 as a tool for re-building the nation and reconciliation after the civil war and backed up by decree No. 24 makes it an offence for any Nigerian who graduated before the age of 30 not to serve.

President Buhari’s Appointments, Seiyefa And DSS

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

When posterity reflects on this dark political epoch whose principal actor is President Muhammadu Buhari, it would be racked by the disappointment that some people were so swayed by self-interest or naivety that they made him their number one citizen.

Perhaps, it would be dissuaded from unleashing a harsh judgement on its forbears after the realisation that the emergence of Buhari as the president has eternally served to demystify him. Stripped bare of his much-trumpeted integrity as cases of official sleaze cascade around him, he has irrevocably rendered himself unfit for the pantheon of statesmen.

How To Clap For Buhari, Kemi Adeosun, Amaechi And Ngige

By Reno Omokri

 At last, Kemi Adeosun, Muhammadu Buhari’s cockney accented Minister of Finance has finally resigned. Kemi claims she did not know her National Youth Service Corps exemption certificate was forged and I believe her.

*President Buhari and Dr. Ngige

  I read her letter and it made sense. I believe she is an unfortunate victim of circumstances. Ordinarily, I would have called for her prosecution, but this was an honest mistake and she should not be punished beyond her resignation.

Having said that, it is surprising that President Buhari accepted her resignation on the ground that she has a forged certificate. The question is what should a man whose certificate is suspected not to have ever even existed do in such a circumstance? Muhammadu Buhari claims to be a man of integrity, but when challenged to provide his West African School Certificate results for perusal, the famously boastful Buhari responded by hiring thirteen Senior Advocates of Nigeria to hide behind a wall of legalese.

APC Has Scaled Up Its Proclivities For Violence Against The Opposition – PDP

Press Statement

2019: Hold APC Responsible Should Harm Befall Atiku, Others, PDP Insists

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) says the All Progressives Congress (APC) should be held responsible should any harm befall former Vice President Abubakar Atiku or any of the PDP Presidential aspirants ahead of the 2019 general elections.

PDP's position is predicated on its comprehensive consideration of all issues relating to the threats to the life of the former Vice President, as well as similar threats and harassments of other presidential aspirants in our fold, just as our party places all these threats at the doorstep of the President Muhammadu Buhari-led APC.

Forgery: Kemi Adeosun Resigns As Nigeria’s Finance Minister

Nigeria’s Finance Minister, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, has resigned her position in President Muhammadu Buhari’s cabinet, reports say. No reason has been given for her decision to step down from office.

*Kemi Adeosun 

 It is, however, believed that the resignation may not be unconnected with the controversy that has engulfed her National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) exemption certificate which an online medium, Premium Times, had alleged was forged. 

President Buhari Has Failed Nigerians – US

The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) said outcome of research it conducted across states in Nigeria revealed that most Nigerians believe that the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration has failed to meet their expectations since coming to power on May 29, 2015.

*Presidents Buhari and Trump

The report also predicted an upsurge in electoral violence and voter apathy during the 2019 general elections.

The report entitled, ‘Nigeria’s 2019 Elections: Change, Continuity and the Risk to Peace’, is a presentation of USIP’s electoral violence risk assessment research which was arrived at after interviews conducted in some selected states across the country.

President Buhari And The Moral Burden Of Leadership

By Dan Agbese

It is difficult to live in our country without being confused. Things are getting messier when they should be getting clearer. President Muhammadu Buhari captured our imagination in 2015 as a man totally intolerant of corruption or at least practices that give the country a bad name at home and abroad. So, we flocked to him and we gave him the vote and he became our president.

*President Buhari 

On his assumption of office his aides served notice to those of our country and women who have problems with resisting soiling their fingers with palm oil that a new sheriff was in town. A sheriff is a strong-minded law man, a thief-catcher, no less. Buhari has kept his promise to wage the anti-corruption war with the passion and the courage befitting a sheriff until this pathetic nation rises from the ashes of its failures and begins to live the hope of our founding fathers.

When What We Eat Turns Poisonous!

By Kayode Ojewale

“Let your food be your medicine, and your medicine be your food.”

– Hippocrates (460 – 370BC), Greek Doctor.

Audu Ogbeh, agriculture minister, sometime ago in a piece published by a national daily titled, ‘Nigeria, Global Standard In Food Production And Trade,’ wrote “What you eat, if you eat well, will determine your state of health and your longevity as a human being.

Unfortunately, most of the time nowadays, we are actually eating poison because of the way we handle our food production.  From the seed we cultivate, to the fertilizer we use, to the chemical we spray, to the way we process the food, or even preserve the food, or package the food, we are determining whether we are eating well or eating badly.”

Dear President Buhari, Please Look In The Mirror

By SKC Ogbonnia
Dear Mr. President,
I am beginning with an Igbo proverb which says that a heedless lizard falling from a tall palm tree typically wrestles to clutch at any available straw on its path before its imminent crash. My father also never fails to tell me that a habit of excuse is the best friend of failure. Nowhere are these sayings more manifest than the case of your presidency.

*Buhari 

Today, the general view is that you are at it again, trying so desperately to cling on to another excuse to avoid responsibility for the crises that have befallen our great party, the All Progressive Congress (APC) and, by consequence, the entire Nigeria.

Is Africa Ready To Educate Every Child?

By  Joel Savage

Third World Countries are plagued by crisis. Among the most critical is poverty, which has taken hundreds of children out of the classroom. Children are the world’s greatest resource, future leaders, and assets to national development, thus; it is, therefore the right of every child to be educated; unfortunately, worldwide many children aren’t aware of what education is, instead, serving in fields under child labour or as child soldiers in wars.

As a child growing up in Africa, I find myself in an environment witnessing how many parents struggle to educate their children. Every weekend, I go hawking as a trader with banana, eggs, and bread, just to make some extra money to help my parents to keep me in the classroom.

Nigeria: The Rule Of Man

By Sufuyan Ojeifo

President Muhammadu Buhari chose the most auspicious place to officially declare his disdain for the rule of law and his avowed preference for the rule of man, his own rule, in the Nigerian nation-state, where he has been deploying his might in its vast capriciousness and whimsicality since he stepped in the saddle on May 29, 2015. 

*Buhari 

The declaration was last Sunday at the International Conference Centre, ICC, in Abuja, venue of this year’s Nigerian Bar Association conference. Members of the Bar and the Bench were there in their numbers. The assemblage of officers in the temple of justice was representative of the nation’s judiciary, an independent arm of the trinity of government.

Why Nigeria Under Buhari Is World Headquarters For Extreme Poverty

By Reno Omokri

On Wednesday the 29th of August, 2018, British Prime Minister, Theresa May, visited Nigeria with a plane full of business people to help Britain make money in Nigeria. So meticulously choreographed was her visit, that she came with businessmen and women that sold or manufactured every item you could imagine from air fresheners to Scotch whiskey.

*Buhari 

Mrs May, who I met twice last year, demonstrated the main thrust of her visit by travelling with David Schwimmer, the Chief Executive of the London Stock Exchange. Her entourage to Nigeria was chockfull of business and industry folk and very lean on civil servants and politicians. In fact, only two members of her cabinet joined her on her African trip. If there was any spare space on the Royal Airforce Jet that flew her to Africa, that space was reserved for people who could bring jobs and capital to Britain.

Presidents’ Health: Missed Opportunities For Nigeria’s Health

By Sam Ohuabunwa

I believe that I am not alone in feeling distressed about the situation of healthcare in Nigeria. Everywhere you look, the problems stare you on the face.

In the public health care space, you face poor infrastructure, old or inoperative equipment and generally, poor attitude. 

*Buhari 

Even skill and competency levels are often suspect. If you have taken a seriously ill patient to our public health facilities – primary, secondary or tertiary institutions, you will know that many more people are healed by faith in Nigeria than by medical care. If you go to the private healthcare institutions, may be infrastructure and equipment may be better, attitude and skills are subject to national averages.

What Happened To APC Report On Federalism?

By Martins Oloja

As politicians are jostling to secure their positions within #PROJECT2019, defecting to different parties in pursuit of relevance for only themselves, subordinating the sanctity of the rule of law to personal interests, perfecting how to truncate press freedom, we need to ask political leaders in the governing party what they want to do with the most important document they produced and made public in January this year: ‘Report of The APC Committee on True Federalism’.

*Buhari and el-Rufai 

 I am fully persuaded that it is public interest to ask about this all-important document and failure to be genuine about how to implement the contents before next year’s election may undermine national security too. And here is the thing, those who always afraid of the hard questions in the governing APC, should not regard this question on what they want to do with their report as a political question: It is a question on nation building and the future of the world’s most populous black nation, Nigeria.

The North And The Buhari Myth

By Kennedy Emetulu

1.Introduction:

One of the ‘mysteries’ of today’s politics is what some Nigerians see as the continued popularity of President Muhammadu Buhari in the North, despite his evident ineptness and the many, many failures of his government. When these Nigerians see him in outings where massive crowds of young people work themselves into a frenzy as they rent the air with “Sai Baba!” chants, they wonder what diabolical concoctions he must have let loose on them to make them feel this way.

*Kennedy Emetulu

People are being buried in grinding poverty, the economy is on a stretcher, Nigeria is regressing into the Stone Age in every respect and Buhari hops into a plane to London and back or walks 800 meters and the whole place is filled with jubilation in the North, or so it seems. What information do these people have that the rest of us don’t have? What planet are they living on when the nation clearly is on a deathbed?

2. The False Successor:

In the nation’s history, only two Northern politicians have had what can be considered the type of popular support or loyalty that Buhari has today in the North. These men were Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto and Mallam Aminu Kano. But the irony is that as opposed to Buhari, these men actually had political ideas of governance and real track records that gave them credibility with the people.

The Bigger Picture In Ekiti Governorship Contest

By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

A day after the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) announced Dr. Kayode Fayemi of the All Progressives Congress (APC) the winner of the July 14, 2018, governorship election in Ekiti State, a video of Fulani herdsmen brazenly parading their cows on the streets of Ado-Ekiti went viral on the social media. Reports say the video was shared on Facebook by one Isaac, the younger brother of Mr. Peter Ayodele Fayose, the outgoing governor of the state. 

*Fayemi and Fayose 

In a comment accompanying the video (reproduced unedited), the younger Fayose wrote: “Fayemi was rigged in on Saturday against the wish of Ekiti people. Today, Fulani herdsmen have the boldness to rear cow on the street of Ado Ekiti. This is pathetic! This is scary. I pity Ekiti and her people!” 

Political Defections In Nigeria, Causes And Consequences

By Simon Abah

There is an alarming rise in organised political defections in Nigeria.

Although she is being hyped as the giant of Africa, the democracy in Nigeria is not practised like in countries such as Ghana, Sierra Leone, Botswana, Tanzania, Liberia, Senegal and Zambia with stable democracies. Nigeria’s version is a guided democracy and a democracy for the few.

*Saraki

What are the reasons for the surge in defections? Turncoats complain about the absence of internal democracy in their parties and of political witch-hunt by political gladiators.

Do you agree with the beliefs of these defectors?

Particularly since no mention is made about the developmental interests of Nigeria as reasons for changing sides.

Nigeria: A Nation In Need Of Free Speech

By Jerome-Mario Utomi

Merit, taken objectively, is ‘something earned, something owed to a person. Taken subjectively, merit is the right of a person to his earning and is of two types- condign and congruous merits. While condign merit deals with strict justice to a reward, congruous merit is not so much a right as a claim but rests upon what is suitable or fitting in a situation’.

With this words of Paul Glenn in mind, each time I am asked my opinion on the nation’s media industry in relation to free speech/freedom of expression, I usually pause to honestly look at its virtues and attributes both objectively and subjectively, and in all, one thing often stands out; the Nigerian media industry in the writer’s views neither merits nor deserves the inequitable treatments so far mated to it by the successive administrations.

Why Nigeria Needs To Be Re-Structured

By Atiku Abubakar

In a recent interaction in the United States, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo asserted that the “problem with our country is not a matter of restructuring…and we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into the argument that our problems stem from some geographic re-structuring”.

*Atiku

It is a surprise that the Vice President would take such a position and, in particular, fail to appreciate the connection between Nigeria’s defective structure and its underperformance.