Nigeria: Requiem For Our Departed Glory

 By Obadiah Mailafia

Nigeria is dying. A dying elephant, encircled by vultures and hyenas. Waiting to feast on the carcass. A fractured, broken nation. The ghost continues to limp aimlessly in the shadows. The question is: Who will bury it?

Dr. Mailafia 

Every nation is born with a peculiar glory. Britain isn’t the most powerful nation on earth; but its name somehow evokes a certain radiance. The same goes for Japan, Germany, France, Switzerland, Russia and Sweden, to give but a few examples. There is this aura and prestige around some nations that speaks for them more than macroeconomic indices such as GDP, per capita income and external reserves. The very essence of national greatness.

Our glory once irradiated the nations. Nigeria was an illustrious country. Our naira was at par with the pound sterling and was stronger than the American dollar. Our armed forces acquitted themselves with distinction in international peace-keeping operations. When we spoke, the world listened.

Buhari’s Insistence On Open Grazing Will Destroy Nigeria

 By Charles Okoh

From all indications, President Muhammadu Buhari is hell-bent on breaking the country. A president who is desirous of building an egalitarian society where the rule of law is supreme cannot consistently be insisting on having his way even when it is obvious to all discerning minds that the path the president is toeing is fraught with troubles that are capable of tearing the nation apart. It is not a mark of strength that a leader insists on always having his way and never caring a hoot how the people feel and yet Buhari claims he is exercising the mandate given him by the people. 

*Buhari 

Since coming to office, the president has pursued only the agenda of the Fulani cattle breeders. That he is their patron cannot explain why he insists that it is only what pleases the pastoralists that he will spend eight years of the nation’s time and resources pursuing. The country is grappling with various challenges too numerous to mention, yet the president seems to be wasting his time creating more conflicts and disputes among the people he claims to be leading. 

Nigeria: Buhari’s Legacy As A Failure Already Sealed

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi 

President Muhammadu Buhari never ceases to confound. Even his most strident supporters, who are ever willing to cut him some slack, are gradually but inexorably coming to the inevitable reality: he is a study in hypocrisy.

His claim to higher standards is a ruse. Too often, he fails to follow his own expressed moral rules and principles.

I will come back to this shortly.

*Buhari

On August 19, the National Security Adviser (NSA), Maj-Gen Babagana Monguno (rtd.), reported Buhari as telling his Service Chiefs that he was not ready to leave office a failure.

Two days earlier, the Nigerian army claimed that at least 1,000 Boko Haram/Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) members had surrendered and army spokesperson, Brig-Gen. Onyema Nwachukwu, said the terrorists would be received, processed and passed on to the relevant agencies of government for further assessment in line with extant provision.

Babangida Should Just Apologise To Nigerians

 By Charles Okoh

For about two weeks, the nation has witnessed the activities around the 80th birthday of former military president, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. For some, especially those who have had direct dealings with him, it has been a flurry of praises for the man whom many have come to know as the Maradona and affectionately referred to also as IBB or the evil genius. 

Babangida has the unenviable record of aborting what everybody has come to accept as the best thing to happen to our electoral evolution as a nation. He scuttled the June 12, 1993, presidential election which he midwifed and for which he received accolades for organizing the best election ever held in the country. 

*Babangida 

First, it was Babangida in an interview with Arise TV, where he clearly spoke like the intelligent man that he is. He also showed that apart from the troublesome leg which has practically left him immobile, he did not disappoint with his intelligent responses to questions put before him. His ability to vividly recall all events around his life as a soldier and a military president even at age 80 stands him out as a brilliant officer. He clearly stands out among his peers and his understanding of issues within and outside the country you can hardly find that with many of our leaders today. 

Babangida And Recent Nigerian History

 By Dan Amor

To live on this sinful earth for 80 years (whether it is original or official age) is no mean achievement, especially in these terrible times when conditions have sapped real life out of comparative existence leaving the average lifespan of a Nigerian at just 55. But here is General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (retd.) celebrating 80 years with pomp and pageantry in the midst of family members, friends, associates, former colleagues and country men and women. Since Tuesday August 17, his date of birth, Nigerians from all walks of life have paid tributes to this former military President, from varied perspectives. 

*Babangida 

It is only natural that we greet such a human dynamo with overwhelming gusto. Happy 80th birthday anniversary to General Babangida. I have read big, meaty, skillfully conceived and carefully executed tributes to the gap-toothed former maximum ruler, constantly relating them to the larger story. Some have treated his story with compassion and with a critical probing pen and have achieved brilliantly their aim of following Babangida’s long journey out of the innocence of his turbulent years. Yet, since men must do their work in warmer temperatures, cold light may not be a sufficient condition for the study of men’s lives. 

Ibrahim Babangida Years: Despotism In Full Sail

 By Tony Eluemunor

Please take your mind back to 1990 when Sadd­am Hussein’s Iraq invad­ed and annexed Kuwait; the price of crude petroleum jumped because the ensuing war disrupted oil supplies. A totally unforeseen windfall, earning for Nigeria $12.1 billion. But did the windfall benefit Nigeria? A re­port put it thus: “Fiscal discipline broke down once more (because) established budgetary proce­dures were by-passed and the strategic planning processes that had been established under the Structural Adjustment Pro­gramme were largely ignored. Of major concern was the expendi­ture of the oil revenue without any budgetary authorization.”

*Babangida 

This huge amount of money was fluffed away though Nigerians had by then been suffocating under SAP for four whole years! And wait for this; the 1991 budget suffered a defi­cit spending of N35.5 billion. It was as though that oil bonanza never happened.

I know that those who celebrat­ed former Military President Ibra­him Badamosi Babangida (IBB) as Nigerians best ruler as he turned 80, never failed to mention the Na­tional Economic Reconstruction Fund (NERFUND) the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) Peoples Bank of Nigeria (PBN) the Directorate of Food, Roads and Rural Infrastructure (DIFRRI) and others as programmes and bodies he established. But have they told us how such benefitted Nigeria?

Six Days With Kumuyi: The World At His Feet

 By Banji Ojewale

It has been claimed that an archetypal Nigerian politician’s perfect pastime is preying on poor people in their milling millions. When he invites the manacled, malleable and mesmerised masses to the campaign grounds, all the politician offers is a table of yet more death-dressed promises that drug his listeners to buy into his boast that he could construct concrete castles in the air. Opiated, ossified and overpowered, the citizens believe him and cede their loyalty to the vote-hunting orator: their world is trapped in the man’s bottomless pocket.

*W.F. Kumuyi 

Now, it isn’t inconsiderate to put a good number of some of our religious leaders in the same cage as those politicians, given the cognate experience in history and in our clime. They pull crowds to draw the world back to the age of Johann Tetzel, the 15th Century German friar notorious for raising money for a church building in Rome. He sold to the gullible people so-termed relics and souvenirs of departed saints like Peter, John, James, Paul etc. and claimed that if you possessed those items you were excused from temporal punishment for your sins. Supported by the Church leaders of the day, Tetzel called his merchandise, Indulgences. There is a tradition, disputed though, that Tetzel also held that these Indulgences could secure peace for friends and relatives who had died in rebellion to Heaven.

Nigeria: Abubakar Malami's Incredible Faux Pas

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

The best value sincere friends and associates of the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Mr. Abubakar Malami, can inject in his career now would be to ensure that he schools himself to always speak sparingly and recognise the need to regularly deploy more time and effort to benefit from informed legal inputs before responding to very serious issues. The office he occupies is such an important and strategic one whose submissions on legal controversies Nigerians can confidently rely upon. It is always very disheartening whenever his interventions on very weighty national affairs are easily faulted by Nigerians, including even street traders and roadside mechanics. 

  *Malami with the British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Catriona Laing

When the 17 Southern governors met in Asaba on May 11, 2021, and   announced a ban on open grazing behind which gun-wielding Fulani herdsmen had for several years now hidden to commit various atrocities like brutal rapes of women and daughters, wanton destructions of crops, maiming or killing of farmers and the invasion and razing of communities, AGF Malami had rushed out to describe the governors’ resolution as “unconstitutional” and “dangerous.”

On Channels TV, Malami pronounced: “It is about constitutionality within the context of the freedoms expressed in our constitution…For example, it is as good as saying, perhaps, maybe, the northern governors coming together to say they prohibit spare parts trading in the north.”

The magisterial carriage with which this obviously very pedestrian and preposterous intervention was delivered must have deepened the astonishment of many Nigerians. How can a “learned gentleman” (least of all the AGF) compare violent herdsmen who appear to derive hideous animation from wantonly destroying farmlands and visiting their owners with diverse destructions and violations to motor spare parts traders who peacefully hire shops from their owners, pay taxes to government and undertake their business in ways that do not inflict any harm on anyone?

Nigeria: Kanu, Igboho And Buhari’s Misplaced Priorities

By Charles Okoh

Surviving in Nigeria is now a herculean task. Poverty continues to spiral and hunger and general hardship are gaining geographical spread in exponential proportion and something urgent needs to be done to arrest this development. To say Nigerians are hungry would amount to stating the obvious. The prices of items in the market are permanently sky-bound.

*Buhari

To tackle these seemingly insurmountable hiccups would call for a multi-pronged approach where all hands must be on deck because to juxtapose excruciating hunger with the alarming rate of idle hands and jobless Nigerians, especially the restless youths, would lead to outcomes unimaginable. 

Recently, two women were lamenting the rising cost of living and the difficulty they go through to put food on the table for their families. These women both have jobs; one of them a civilian, and the other a naval personnel. With so much anguish on their faces, they lamented that it had become difficult for them to buy foodstuffs like yam, tomatoes, rice, plantain etc. What actually interested me was the expression of despondency on the faces of these women and one cannot but wonder if those with jobs are lamenting this way, then what is the fate of those without jobs at a time like this. 

Nigeria: If Only AGF Malami Would Learn To Talk Sparingly

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

The best value sincere friends and associates of the Attorney General of the Federation (AGF), Mr. Abubakar Malami, can inject in his career now would be to ensure that he schools himself to always speak sparingly and recognise the need to regularly deploy more time and effort to benefit from informed legal inputs before responding to very serious issues. The office he occupies is such an important and strategic one whose submissions on legal controversies Nigerians can confidently rely upon. It is always very disheartening whenever his interventions on very weighty national affairs are easily faulted by Nigerians, including even street traders and roadside mechanics. 
  

*President Buhari and Malami

When the 17 Southern governors met in Asaba on May 11, 2021, and   announced a ban on open grazing behind which gun-wielding Fulani herdsmen had for several years now hidden to commit various atrocities like brutal rapes of women and daughters, wanton destructions of crops, maiming or killing of farmers and the invasion and razing of communities, AGF Malami had rushed out to describe the governors’ resolution as “unconstitutional” and “dangerous.”

Indeed, This 9th National Assembly Is Irredeemable!

 By Charles Okoh

That the Nigerian National Assembly has charted its own course is well-known. That this otherwise bastion of democracy has opted to attach itself as an appendage to the executive arm of government is also well documented fact, but what is all the more troubling is how low they are prepared to condescend just to be seen to be subservient and yes-men to the executive. 

*Lawan, Buhari, Gbajabiamila 

Last week, the Senate turned down the nomination of the garrulous nominee of President Muhammadu Buhari, Lauretta Onochie, as INEC commissioner to represent Delta State. The lily-livered Senate had been having sleepless nights on how to deliver what was an obvious decision without hurting the president. 

Stakeholders, including Civil Society Organisations, CSOs, and the main opposition party, the PDP, had staged a series of protests at the National Assembly against Onochie’s nomination by the President, arguing that she is a card-carrying member of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC.

The North Is Bleeding While The Elites Are Fighting For 2023 Presidency

 By Buhari Olanrewaju Ahmed

The rate of poverty in the Northern region of Nigeria is quite unfortunate despite the abundant resources and human power in the region. 

The political and leadership failure represent the fundamental menace that continue to trouble Northerners whose only joy is that one of their own is in charge.

*Buhari Olanrewaju Ahmed

The instability of the Nigerian government has seriously damaged the educational system in the country. The numbers of students who have dropped out of school is alarming in the region, and this has paved way for the recruitment of insurgency because majority are unemployed.

The children of the ‘common people’ they refused to educate are now asking for a pound of flesh in return. Although some of these self-acclaimed elder statesmen in the North have always known that the calamities will consume them one day, they refused to turn a new leaf. 

Nigeria: Where is the 2014 Confab Report?

 By Dan Amor

In Culture And Anarchy, Matthew Arnold, one of the greatest social and literary critics in nineteenth century England, employs a delicate and stringent irony in an examination of the society of his time: a rapidly expanding industrial society, just beginning to accustom itself to the changes in its institutions that the pace of its own development called for. 

*Jonathan 

Coming virtually at the end of the decade (1868) and immediately prior to W.E. Forster’s Education Act, Culture And Anarchy phrases with a particular cogency the problems that find their centre in the questions: what kind of life do we think individuals in mass societies should be assisted to lead? How may we best ensure that the quality of their living is not impoverished? In this little book of about 238 pages, Arnold applies himself to the details of his time: to the Reform agitation, to the commercial values that working people were encouraged to respect, and to the limitations of even the best rationalist intelligence. 

From Wild, Wild West To National Inferno!

 By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

A seemingly innocuous spark in an otherwise isolated part of a nation can change the course of history. 

Nigerian history as we have it today owes its shape to the handling or mishandling of the Action Group crisis of the early 1960s. The initial crisis led to a chain of events culminating in the Nigeria/Biafra war and the deeply polarized and wounded nation such as we have today.

*Awolow, Azikiwe, Balewa

“May you live in interesting times,” is a twice-told charge; and thus Chief Simeon Olatunde Oloko found himself through forces beyond his control to be in the epicenter as a witness of the events that reshaped Nigerian history. Born at Agodi in Ibadan, the author who studied at the esteemed London School of Economics and Political Science, and was called to the bar of Inner Temple in 1958, served as secretary of the pivotal Western Nigeria Development Corporation (WNDC) from the vantage point of which he lived through the manifold crises that bedeviled the old Western Region and Nigeria.

The Fallacy Of Herders-Farmers Crisis

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Former Lagos State Governor and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Bola Tinubu, made a profound statement when he paid a condolence visit to the family of elder statesman and Afenifere leader, Reuben Fasoranti, in Akure on July 14, 2019. Fasoranti’s daughter, Funke Olakunrin, was gunned down two days earlier at Ore junction on the Sagamu-Benin highway, and her driver, Tayo Ogundare, said hooded men emerged from the bush to attack them.

*Buhari and El-Rufai 

Announcing the tragedy the same day, the then Afenifere spokesperson, Yinka Odumakin, blamed herdsmen for it. His claim was echoed by the deceased’s brother, Kehinde Fasoranti, who told journalists that policemen at Ore police station confirmed that his sister was killed by herdsmen.

Tinubu was not impressed and cautioned against stigmatising herdsmen. “I am extremely concerned about security but I don’t want stigma. I can go through history of kidnapping and we know how it started, where it all started. There are lots of copycats. How many years ago have we faced insecurity in this country and cases of kidnapping?

Soyinka: Celebrating Our Own Kongi At 87

 By Dan Amor

It was once the fashion to single out four men of letters as the supreme titans of world literature – Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe – each the embodiment of a great epoch of Western culture – ancient, medieval, Renaissance and modern. These four literary icons of all time remain secure; but idolatry of Professor Wole Soyinka as the prototype of the inquiring spirit and courageous intellect of modern man has been sharply appreciated in our time, especially as we pass beyond the more leisurely issues of the post-modernist era.

*Soyinka

The intensely contemporary character of his works has made him the tallest iroko tree in the post-modernist forest of global dramatic literature. Yet, the commencement, two weeks ago, of the Wole Soyinka 87th  Birthday Festival, which ultimately climaxes today, July 13, 2021, his date of birth, unfortunately doesn't seem to wear the official insignia of the Nigerian government especially because he has started telling them the truth about the Nigerian condition. But, it is expected, as Christ Himself says in Matthew 13:57, "A prophet is not without honour, save his own country and his own house."  

Suspicious ‘Hope’, Kanu’s Arrest, The North’s Duplicity

 By Chris Gyang

Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State is the typical Nigerian politician. With utmost dexterity, he has mastered the intrigues of survival in this most brutal and unconscionable trade. For instance, in 2018, Mr. Hope promptly dumped the PDP, his party since 1999 on which platform he served two Senate terms, and joined the ruling APC. 

*Kanu

He had realised that his prospects of becoming governor as an APC candidate were brighter than as that of the PDP. And, true to his reckoning, he later emerged as governor – even though it took a Supreme Court ruling to confirm his victory. Self-preservation and political survival is the name of the game. Apparently, Governor Hope had mastered it so well.

The day before the Nigerian government announced the arrest of Nnamdi Kanu, Governor Hope had advised his fellow Igbo people to support the Buhari-led Federal Government because, “After God in Nigeria, the next person is Buhari. He has the power to dictate where there should be light or not, and it happens.” The governor was widely condemned by Nigerians, some of whom dubbed his utterance as blasphemy for almost comparing Buhari to God.

Nigeria And The Threat Of A One-Party State

 By Dan Amor

Aside from the usual historical rendition that Nigeria became a political reality following the fusion of the Northern and Southern protectorates of the River Niger area in the interior coast of West Africa in 1914 by Lord Fredrick Lugard, a British military administrator, Nigeria actually adopted a Federal form of government in 1954. Even though still under colonial rule, party politics thrived in the country. 

*Buhari

The leading parties were: the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) which stood for political democracy in its classical, individualistic form; the Action Group of Nigeria (AG) which stood for federalist democracy; the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC), which exemplified the modernization of traditional political authority; and its radical opponent, the Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU), which espoused egalitarian democracy. As a strictly regional party, the NPC did not threaten the Southern parties in their home regions. Since the Northern Region was said to have contained an absolute majority of the national population, (though a myth of the 1959 population census), the NPC could control the Federal government by monopolizing electoral power in the North. 

Tobacco: Silently Hiding Smokers In Graves

     By Mukhtar Garba Kobi

Tobacco was historically discovered by a European in the person of Christopher Columbus in 1492, initially, it was only smoked by high-class personalities during festivities but Columbus took it back to Europe where it gained recognition.

Smoking increased dramatically during world wars, it was supplied to troops for free mainly to boost their morale but later in the 20th century, it became less popular due to a rapid increase in its health effects. Several types of research were conducted and books published on the dangers of tobacco to health, some of which are Samuel Thomas in 1795, Benjamin Rush in 1798 and many more. World No Tobacco Day was celebrated on May 31 but not known to many due to poor campaigns.

Whenever Buhari Tries To Be Smart, I Despair

 By Austin Oboh

More than a week after President Muhammadu Buhari spoke in the much celebrated interview on Arise TV, wherein he proffered his improvised solution to herdsmen and bandits’ attacks in states, I am yet to recover from the blatant dishonesty. The event has reinforced my belief that he is not truly willing to arrest the security crisis in the country. Whenever I come across the kind of argument the president made in that interview, I feel hopeless. And my sense of hopelessness about Nigeria is now particularly intense because I realise that nothing can be done about the situation if the man who reserves the privileging of the last word on security and defence is intentionally diverting people’s attention from the crux of the matter. 

*Buhari 

In that interview, President Buhari, who was supposed to give his opinion on the agitation for state police, as usual, went off on a tangent. He said he recently sent back two South- West governors who had come to complain to him about insecurity in their states. Deliberately or not, the president avoided stating his views on the agitation for state police – most observers would claim he was still on course; I don’t agree.