Atiku-Obi ticket: The Devil In The Detail

By Banji Ojewale

“There is a great deal of difference between the eager man who wants to read a book, and the tired man who wants to read.”

—G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) English writer

Abubakar Atiku and Peter Obi, the flag bearers of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Nigeria’s 2019 presidential poll, come from two different backgrounds. Atiku is a swashbuckling jolly good fellow. Peter Obi isn’t. Atiku is a rumbustious politician. Obi isn’t. Atiku is a gregarious personality on account of his wealth. Obi isn’t. Atiku is given to raucous peals of laughter that reflect his carriage. Obi isn’t. Atiku is a political figure who has operated at the national level. Obi isn’t. Finally, septuagenarian Atiku’s temperament is predictable. 57-year-old Obi’s isn’t.

*Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar 

Two opposites brought together by the PDP to make Nigeria work again, following a perception that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has underperformed and sunk the country into an abyss of misery, misrule and misfortune. Both Atiku and Obi post ‘formidable’ records in their days in office; the former as a vice-president for eight years after grabbing a governorship seat in Adamawa which he didn’t consummate, and the latter as a governor in Anambra for eight years.

Parable Of The Self-Appointed Messiah

By Chris Nonyelum

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. 

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.

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.

*President Buhari with COAS Gen Burutai 

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:

*attack former President Jonathan for agreeing with Transparency International that corruption had increased in Nigeria

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.

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.

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. 

Who Controls The Quality Of Products Supplied To Africa?

By Wolff Geisler

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 Sahara (Black Africa). Only 10% of the world's population lives in the region, but 70% of them have AIDS!

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.

*President Buhari 

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.

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.

*Nigerian leaders' during the 58th
Independence Celebrations 

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. 

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. 

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). 

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.

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.

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.

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 of Lagos 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.