The President, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the
Federal Republic of Namibia, Retired General Mamodu Basiri sat in his palatial
office ruminating over the events of the past three and half years since he
assumed the mantle of leadership of the Namibian nation as a democratically
elected civilian despot. The tides of reckoning were moving too fast, and his
country men and women were subjecting him to certain ‘uncharitable’ assessments
of his stewardship. Too much had been said and written about his messianic
mission for his beloved country.
He had mounted the saddle of leadership with
the promise to clean the Augean stables and set his country men and women on
the part of economic rediscovery and glory. But the burden of leadership has
overstretched his sanity almost to breaking point. He was no longer sure how
effective his sense of rational judgment was. One thing though, was very clear
to him. He has failed woefully in his much touted messianic mission. But he was
determined to cling to power at all costs. Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Monday, December 3, 2018
Rising Incidence Of Illicit Trade In Tobacco
By Nkemdili Nwadike
There has been an explosion in global and cross border trade for
some decades now. With this burst also comes the menace of illicit trade,
otherwise known as the underground economy. As markets open and demand grows, people try
to engage in illegitimate trade by producing, importing, exporting, purchasing
or selling items without complying with relevant legislations.
Illicit trade is a massive problem for
manufacturers, governments, regulators and multilateral agencies and indeed any
legitimate operator in the industry value chain. It extremely undermines government’s objectives on taxes and revenues, places
burdens on government’s regulatory and enforcement agencies and undercuts the potential
benefits of international trade.
Friday, November 30, 2018
Nigeria: Metele As Price Of National Swindle
By Paul Onomuakpokpo
Aside from the occasional death of soldiers in their battle
against Boko Haram, the nation is now confronted in Metele with a seeming
culmination of the military’s losses to the insurgents in the north-east. The government has often fumed at the obduracy
of its traducers who instead of trumpeting the wonders of its military in
Sambisa Forest have rather warned that more still needed to be done to defeat
the insurgents in the light of the occasional suicide attacks on civilians and
losses of two or four soldiers to the insurgents.
But the recent killing of about 100 soldiers
in Metele, Borno State, so shattered the charade of triumph over the insurgents
that President Muhammadu Buhari had to dispatch his defence minister to Chad
for more collaboration in defeating them. Clearly, the dead soldiers deserve all the garlands for their bravery and
patriotism for which they have paid the supreme price.
President Buhari As Prisoners’ Taker
By Tony Afejuku
What is the
significant significance of President Muhammadu Buhari to us in contemporary
Nigeria? For readers who possess a medical or psychological or religious or
even chauvinistic perspective he is Mr. President, who, always in his Northern
medieval-like chausses, impresses or tries to impress as an answer to the
illness, to the sickness of our contemporary times.
*President Buhari |
For those readers with
a forward-looking view he is a mere undertaker, who proffers no constructive
plan to living Nigerians who are being denied living wages and fabulous
education and bodily and economic health they direly need. The man has simply
fluffed his three years plus pre-presidential election promises and wishes. And
his new next level theory – which I won’t bother to read – will not make him
the saccharine president of our dreams. His next-level wishes must enter our
Nigerian psyche as those of a political and presidential homunculus.
‘Technically Defeated’ Boko Haram: The Sad Case Of Metele
By Reno Omokri
A most disturbing
thing happened in Nigeria .
Over a period of 3 days last week, the allegedly ‘technically defeated’ Boko
Haram managed to overrun multiple military bases and reportedly killed close to
a hundred Nigerian troops and carried away heavy military hardware.
But that is not the disturbing thing that occurred.
The killings were shocking, but something much more disturbing happened. The
Nigerian President, who is the Commander-in-Chief of the military and who is
supposed to be the most pained over these avoidable deaths had time to:
*President Buhari with COAS Gen Burutai |
*attack former President Jonathan for agreeing with
Transparency International that corruption had increased in Nigeria
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Who Will Be Nigeria’s Next Mistake In 2019?
By Banji
Ojewale
“In all science,
error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last” —Horace Walpole (1717-1797) English writer and politician.
If we go by what our politicians (the major presidential candidates
notably) are saying about each other this campaign season, we can’t but
conclude that they are all ‘misfits’ for office in 2019. They have smeared
themselves. They have used invectives dug from the gutter to paint themselves.
They have cancelled one another from the log of men and women of integrity.
*President Buhari |
They have thrown away their gloves and bruised their faces with bare
fists. They have either asked the umpire to stay off or have left the ring
altogether to slug it out in the mud. Now it’s a bloody street fight all the
way. When the vote is cast and the result declared, both the winner and
defeated and spectator would be losers, none a victor, even if there is a
coronation. Why? It would be a pyrrhic triumph, where you’d ask yourself if you
haven’t run all this marathon race only to end up with a mistake as your
leader.
Monday, November 26, 2018
Why Many Nigerians Are Checking Out
By Dan Amor
It sounds very much like an
apocryphal tale. But it is true that the joke is once again on the Nigerian
society. What I am saying is that Nigeria is constantly losing
batches of experts to the larger world. Thousands of highly trained medical
doctors and other professionals are daily departing these shores for greener
pastures abroad.
They are going to join millions of
talented Nigerian intellectuals, academics and professionals, who had been
driven out of our land by the harsh realities of our current existence. It is
not a matter of profound argument or intellectual debate to say that the death
of the Nigerian middle class due to equivocation and compromise has long been
awaited. Yet, implicit in the very meaning of compromise as a means of
harmonizing the best features of opposing values is an element of tension.
Friday, November 23, 2018
Self-Medication Is Kiss Of Death
By Kayode Ojewal
In Nigeria ,
the open sale of drugs – both traditional and pharmaceutical— through
unregistered outlets is a major concern. It is not strange to see unregistered
‘doctors’ and ‘pharmacists’ advertising and selling medicines in commercial
buses and by the roadsides.
These drug hawkers are sometimes seen selling
prescription-only antibiotics and other powerful painkiller drugs. They do not
only prescribe drugs, but they also go as far as recommending the dosage to be
taken to these unsuspecting commuters. Some street hawkers have their shops, stores and makeshift ‘clinics’ located in
motor parks and market places where they offer ‘general body checkups’ and also
display their medicines for sale.
The Death Of Truth In Nigeria
By Passy Amaraegbu
People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before
an election
– Otto von Bismarck.
The first documented census in Nigeria was carried out by Britain in
1866. Following this, others in 1971, 1896, 1901, 1911, 1921 and 1952/53.
However the first census after independence
was in 1963. Thereafter, the degree of reliability of the figures has been on a
spiral descent and decline. The official Nigeria
position is that Lagos State with a population of 9,013, 534 is second to Kano with a first
position of 9,401, 288 (Nigerian Finder). However, the Lagos State
government puts the census of the State at 22 million while the United Nations puts it at 14 million.
Waiting For Atiku’s Women
By Banji
Ojewale
There is no tool for
development more effective than the empowerment of women
—Kofi Annan (1938-2018), former UN
Secretary-General.
I am among millions of Nigerians who can’t wait for the
day God will bless our dear country with a visionary and radical female
president, along with a great host of the fairer sex of kindred spirit
governing the states and heading the MDAs. The tragedy of an effete economy,
social stagnation and political paralysis that we have lived with over the
years is the consequence of the neglect of this formidable section of society
by our leaders.
*Atiku Abubakar |
Developing society and its constituents boils down to
making use of all the functional human capital at your disposal. The moment you
succumb to so-called imperatives of culture, false religion or superstition,
and you drop the women, youth and the working class from your strides, you
begin to enter a reverse march. That’s been Nigeria ’s misogynist history,
always drawing us into the bottomless depths of backwardness.
Thursday, November 22, 2018
Who Controls The Quality Of Products Supplied To Africa?
By Wolff Geisler
Sahara (Black Africa).
Only 10% of the world's population lives in the region, but 70% of them have
AIDS!
Participants in the joint UN program on HIV / AIDS, claim that between
1981 and 2006, 25 million people died of AIDS! The World Health Organization
(WHO) announced that in 2007 alone 33.2 million HIV-infected people were
registered, and 2.1 million people died.
Leading
the number of infected and the dead is the part of the African continent,
located south of the
In
Eastern Europe and Central Asia , the number of
people living with HIV has increased by more than 150% over the past few years.
And in Vietnam
over the same period, the number of patients doubled. Among Asian countries,
the first place in Indonesia .
2019: The Irony Of Buhari’s Second Term
By Evaristus Bassey
If all politics is local, there must be an exception in Nigeria .
Here, all politics is selfish, especially southern Nigeria politics. If President
Muhammadu Buhari wins another four year term, it wouldn’t be because of any
stellar performances; it would be because of southern Nigeria
politicians. Buhari has always won large in the North East and North West until the
2015 momentum thrust victory into his hands largely because he teamed up with
Tinubu the strong man of the South West.
Just a few months ago the Senate President
Saraki confirmed my earlier suspicion that Tinubu’s aggressive support for
Buhari for 2019 after a lull in their relationship was essentially because he
hoped for Buhari to handover to him in 2023. Tinubu is quoted by Saraki as
saying that he would support Mr. President for 2019 even if he Buhari was on a
stretcher because it was the surest way to guaranteeing his own 2023 ambition
of being president.
*President Buhari |
Nigeria: A Troubled Country In Search Of Redemption
By Chiedu Uche Okoye
Nigeria ’s political troubles
and the vexed issue of her disunity date back to our pre-independence era. We
should remember that we had the 1953 Kano
riot during which the northern people produced the nine point programme and
threatened secession, thereafter. And soon after the country had become a
sovereign nation-state, it descended into an internecine civil war, which raged
for thirty months and caused the loss of millions of human lives.
It is a known fact
that political squabble, which has existed among the ethnic groups that make up
Nigeria ,
is one of the major features of our political history. Have we forgotten the
annulled June 12, 1993 Presidential election, which led Nigeria to a
political cul-de-sac? That Nigeria
didn’t disintegrate owing to that cancelled Presidential poll is a miracle of
high magnitude.
*Nigerian leaders' during the 58th Independence Celebrations |
Nigeria: Jonathan’s Politics As Gold Standard
By Paul Onomuakpokpo
After former President Goodluck Jonathan launched his memoir My
Transition Hours on Tuesday, he might have heaved a sigh of relief. It might
not be because the ordeal of writing and preparing to present the book to the
public was now off his shoulders. Nor because he was now luxuriating in the
cathartic effect of dislodging the single narrative that de-privileges his role
in nation-building and the 2015 elections. Rather, it could be because of the
sweet contemplation of the fresh horizon of possibilities that had opened
before him. Now, he realised that it was not all gloom – he might not have been
denigrated as an irredeemable villain after all.
*Former President Jonathan |
For over three years, Jonathan might have been
shocked by how his legendary good luck has mutated into a source of personal
tragedy as he was weighed down by the thought of his now being eternally
identified with a dark role in the crisis of development of the nation. He
might have felt that he and his government were held in utter disdain by the
President Muhammadu Buhari government that has continued to afflict them with a
rash of allegations of sleaze. The Buhari government has been unrelenting in
portraying the Jonathan government as presiding over the unconscionable
despoliation of the country. It seizes every moment to catalogue the
depredations instigated by Jonathan and his co-travellers.
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
Gov El-Rufai And Temperament To Lead
By Simon Abah
Until we groom good people for elective office, people who are
selfless, driven by a sense of mission, folks who understand the importance of
urgency for change, belief in community, do not wear their opinion on their
sleeve, avoid flagging religious views in favour of egalitarianism and to stop
putting their snout in the trough of the gravy train and free-booting.
*Gov El-Rufai |
Even if a Martian comes from Mars on a white
horse with Marian ideas to transform Nigeria , we would never go above
being the self-proclaimed Giant of Africa. (Simon Abah, The Guardian, 30 May
2017, Between presidential and parliamentary system of government).
Monday, November 19, 2018
What DSS Report Says About Adams Oshiomhole
By Fredrick Nwabufo
The depth of filth in the APC primary election can contain a
tsunami. The “inglorious” exercise and its resulting attrition betray the
anti-corruption sloganeering of the Buhari administration.
*Adams Oshiomhole |
A lot has been said about the alleged
involvement of Adams Oshiomhole, APC national chairman, in the corruption
shin-dig. But what is the position of the Department of State Security
(DSS)? The secret police interrogated Oshiomhole, and really did ask him to
resign over allegations of bribery.
Sunday, November 18, 2018
Kgalema Motlanthe, Fmr South Africa President, To Deliver Chinua Achebe Leadership Forum Lecture
Press Release
*Chinua Achebe |
The
Christie and Chinua Achebe Foundation and the Black Studies Department of the
City College of New York have announced that on December 12, 2018, at 6:30 pm,
in the Aaron Davis Hall of the City College of New York, United States of
America, Mr. Kgalema Motlanthe – Former President of South Africa – will
deliver the Chinua Achebe Leadership
Forum Lecture, a statement credited to Dr. Chidi Achebe, Director of the
Foundation and President and CEO of African Integrated Development Enterprise
Inc, said.
Friday, November 16, 2018
Averting Dearth Of Igbo Language, By Pita Ejiofor
By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
The passion in the man
was like a charge of electricity. Prof. Pita Ejiofor may look calm but when the
subject is the neglect of the Igbo language calmness gives place to passionate
intensity. The celebrated professor was introduced to me in Awka by the Anambra
State Commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment, C. Don Adinuba,
and almost instantly our discussion gravitated to the vexed matter of the
travails of the Igbo language.
*Prof. Pita Ejiofor |
Prof Ejiofor had
served in esteemed positions as commissioner, vice-chancellor and so on, but
what gives him the greatest oomph is the drive to save his beloved Igbo
language from extinction. He has arduously championed the cause for all of 12
years through his group Otu Suwakwa Igbo
that he initiated on February 14, 2006. He laments that a great number of Igbo
leaders can never ever be seen taking the Igbo language issue seriously.
Thursday, November 15, 2018
APC’s 2019 Crumbling Under The Machination Of 2023
By Obi Ebuka Onochie
As 2019 elections draw closer, activities informed by future
projections, calculations and manipulations keep manifesting in different areas
with different people at different times. Take for a striking example of what
is going on in Imo state. It is now breeding many interests and actors within
and outside South East geopolitical zone under the APC. In other flash points
of APC crisis of Ondo, Ogun, Rivers and Zamfara states, they still bear the
same fingers except Zamfara and Rivers states.
Former governor ofLagos state, Bola Tinubu is believed by many
to be at the manipulative center of the commotion. Tinubu hasn’t hidden his
desire to take over from Buhari in 2023 if Buhari wins another term. Let’s go
to the beginning and put things in proper perspective. Buhari promised to do
only one term and he was supported and succession game started almost
immediately he was announced the winner by Prof. Jega in April of 2015.
El-Rufai was said to be hawking himself to the cabals as possible choice to
finish the remaining one term that President Buhari would be leaving behind.
The Lagos boys
led by Tinubu were hoping on unplanned eventuality of events that the Vice
president would serve out the term in case the president could not see it to
the end.
Former governor of
Tackling The Plight Of Niger Delta Region
By Grace Omowumi Semudara
Niger Delta, as a
geographical entity, her folks and the enormous gift of nature (crude oil) have
been the cynosure of all eyes as their struggles dominate national discourse.
It can be said with all sense of humility that the region and her people, by
their endowment with abundant natural resources, should not have anything to do
with stifling poverty, as postulated by many.
But that is not the case, the
tale of the Niger Delta is that of misery, despair, penury and haplessness in
the face of immeasurable wealth, that would have accrued them, if the proceeds
of their crude oil resources are judiciously used to develop their polluted
lands. The region is only a microcosm of the dense citizenry of our African
Giant Nigeria.
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