A Peter Obi Truth

 Today, Tuesday, July 19, 2022, is the birthday of former Anambra State Governor and Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi. 

We present here an excerpt from The Promise of a New Era, a book by Chuks Iloegbunam out in August 2022 

Until the run up to the 2003 general elections, I was unaware of Peter Obi’s existence. Our first meeting was in Asaba late in 2002, when Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu led an APGA delegation on a campaign trip to Delta State. I had travelled from Lagos to Asaba, to assist Prince Ned Nwoko, a friend from my London days, who was the APGA gubernatorial candidate for Delta State. 

Former Biafran Commando Colonel Joe “Air Raid” Achuzia led the Delta APGA reception team. With Ned exchanging pleasantries with some party supporters under a tree on the far side, I joined a handful of others who listened as Chief Achuzia stood by his car and delivered an impromptu lecture. This was happening on the grounds of the Grand Hotel, and while we waited for General Ojukwu’s team to arrive, Achuzia spoke on the need for everyone to always be on the alert for his or her safety. “If I got found today wielding an automatic rifle,” he said, “that would be trifling. I’ve gone past that age. But any of you young ones here with a job and salary for six consecutive months without acquiring an AK47 is foolish.” 

Looking back now, I wonder whether Achuzia spoke in that vein because he had foreseen the calamitous security situation that has now drowned Nigeria. Anyway, Ojukwu’s convoy soon swept into the Grand Hotel. With the visitors from Anambra State, we formed a sizable crowd that soon plunged into a brightly lit hall. 

Nigeria: Kuje Prison Down, Is Aso Rock Next?

 By Dele Sobowale

“I am disappointed with the intelligence system. How can terrorists organise, have weapons, attack a security installation and get away with it? I am expecting a comprehensive report on this shocking incident.” 

(President Buhari, at Kuje Prison, Abuja, July 5, 2022). 

Man proposes; God disposes. I planned a different article for today, titled, “Emilokan Brought Us Buhari And Anarchy” – a comprehensive catalogue of all terrorist activities for the month of June. But my colleague, Nnamdi Ojiego, had done a better job by publishing a more comprehensive report from May 1, 2022, in Sunday Vanguard of July 10, 2022, on page 24.

I challenge anyone who is not a candidate for a mental hospital to read Ojiego’s article without feeling that anarchy is definitely here. There was no single day in June 2022 when killings, kidnapping and mob violence by hoodlums and Fulani herdsmen were not reported. Katsina, Buhari’s state, was among the worst four. If you still have any doubt that the All Progressives Congress, APC, and President Buhari have brought us into pure anarchy, then the two attacks occurring on the same day should get your brain working – if you have any. 

Nigeria Is Not An Emirate

 By Chidi Odinkalu

November 28, 1988 was a Monday. In Abuja, Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory, FCT, a Constituent Assembly inaugurated by military ruler, Ibrahim Babangida, had been in session for just over six months since May 11, 1988. At the helm as its chair was Anthony Aniagolu, then a recently retired Justice of Nigeria’s Supreme Court. He was a Christian from Enugu State. His deputy was Muhammadu Buba Ardo, then Chief Judge of Gongola State, who died suddenly in 1991, two years after the Assembly completed its work. He was Muslim.

*Buhari 

The Secretary to the Constituent Assembly was one Alhaji Babagana Kingibe, whom the country has since then got to know a lot more eloquently, a Muslim from Borno State. Kingibe’s assistant was Amal Inyingiala Pepple, who would rise to the height of the civil service in Nigeria, before retiring in June 2009 as the Head of Service of the Federation. She is a Christian from Rivers State.

In those days, Nigeria had 21 states: Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bauchi, Bendel, Benue, Borno, Cross River, Gongola, Imo, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kwara, Lagos, Nigeria, Ogun, Ondo, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers, and Sokoto states, plus the FCT.

The Constituent Assembly, which Justice Aniagolu chaired, comprised 567 members drawn from all these states. A total 458 were elected, while 109 were nominated by the Federal Government, including the Chairman and his Deputy (both of them male), and drawn from the ranks of judicial figures, senior lawyers, titans of industry, traditional rulers, experienced public servants and administrators, academics and other professionals.

2023: Muslim-Muslim Ticket Is Worse Than Another Northern President

 By Olu Fasan

Unless there’s a miracle and a third force succeeds next year, Nigeria faces two disastrous choices. One is another president from the North succeeding President Muhammadu Buhari. The other is a Muslim-Muslim presidency, with a Muslim president and a Muslim vice-president. Nigeria would either have a President Atiku Abubakar, a Northerner, or a President Bola Tinubu, a Muslim, with a Vice President Kashim Shettima, also a Muslim. Either outcome would severely undermine the unity and stability of Nigeria, a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country. 

*Atiku and Tinubu

Truth be told, the best outcome for Nigeria is neither success for Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, nor success for Atiku, the candidate of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. Rather, the best outcome is victory for Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, and his respected technocratic running mate, Datti Baba-Ahmed, founder and pro-chancellor of Baze University, Abuja.

Nigerians Can’t Wait To See Buhari Go

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

President Muhammadu Buhari has finally admitted that he is overwhelmed by the job he craved and cried for. But Nigerians came to that conclusion long before him. Having waited patiently, albeit fruitlessly, for the president to deliver on his 2014 campaign promises, beleaguered Nigerians who are still wondering how they allowed themselves to be conned seven years ago, have, however, moved on.

They no longer place any stock on his ability to get the job done. Even members of his party – All Progressives Congress (APC) – are too ashamed of the mess Buhari has made of governance.

*Buhari

So, when the president quips that he is eager to go as he did on Monday when he received some APC governors, legislators and political leaders at his residence in Daura, Katsina State, he needs to be told that the feeling is mutual, Nigerians are more eager. They can’t wait to see his back in Aso Rock.

“I am eager to go. I can tell you it has been tough. I am grateful to God that people appreciate the personal sacrifices we have been making. I wish the person who is coming after me the very best,” Buhari said.

Of course, whoever that will succeed Buhari needs all the prayers because the damage is enormous but it sounded ridiculous hearing him lament the phantom toll official duties had taken on him.

When he talks about his personal sacrifices in running the country, it smacks of entitlement. The hubris is insufferable. Buhari thinks he is doing Nigerians a favour being president when he is not.

Nigeria: That Audacious Attack On Kuje Prison!

 By Ayo Oyoze Baje

 “There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny. They should be setting the examples” -Edward Snowden

They come in with guts, grits and such a high level of gruesomeness to unleash terror on innocent Nigerians and yet go Scot-free! The dare-devil bravado of these unpatriotic elements cannot but ignite in you the urge to ask the million-naira question of who really owns this country, Nigeria? Right from 2009 the mindless mission of the terrorists (call them Boko Haram insurgents, bandits or ISWAP) has been to turn the apple cart against the peaceful cohabitation of the good citizens of the country, by deploying ethno-religious sentiments.

Unfortunately, they seem to be succeeding in the heinous crimes against Nigerians and smiling all the way to their blood banks! That brings in the pains, considering the several thousands of those who have lost their lives to their deadly attacks; others who have lost loved ones and thousands of those left to stew on in preventable anguish in several IDP camps. Add the humongous public sums budgeted every blessed year, surreptitiously to fight the insurgency and the pitiable plight of the people in the face of insurgency and the nebulous picture gets clearer. But, it is only part of their nefarious agenda to bring the indigenous people of Nigeria to their begging knees.

Boris Johnson Vs Donald Trump: Parallax Snaps

 By Ichie Tiko Okoye

There certainly was more outrage in his voice than the sadness he professed to feel at being forced to “give up the best office in the world,” when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson read out his resignation letter in an address to the British people last Thursday (06 July 2022). His resignation announcement came right after it finally dawned on him that a sizeable number of top government officials and Tory MPs were no longer interested in buying into the distracting conjuring tricks he was deploying in response to a recent slew of ethics scandals. 

*Boris Johnson

To all intents and purposes, Johnson has been the English equivalent of America’s Donald Trump. Both are charismatic front men with a knack for manipulating the media. Just as Johnson crystallised a decisive electoral victory with the memorable tag line of “Just get Brexit done!” Trump equally mesmerised American voters with his campaign psychobabble of “Make America Great Again!” – MAGA for short. 

Johnson and Trump are perceived to be born-winners with a cult following and mammoth fan bases. But truth be told, their popularity is more the result of political sleight of hand than genuine political pedigree. Both men are incorrigible liars, whether it is unabashedly looking their fellow citizens in the eye and spewing lies in furtherance of their own personal interests and agendas or momentarily succumbing to the malady of selective amnesia whenever convenient or spreading falsehoods about a “stolen election.” 

Muslim-Muslim Ticket: A Disastrous Error!

 By Babachir Lawal

I thought I will be able to avoid commenting on the disastrous error by my very good friend, Sen Bola Ahmed Tinubu, in his choice of a running mate.

I will be the very last person to stand in the way of my very good friend Tinubu’s path to the presidency. This is because, since 2011, my consuming passion has been for him to succeed Buhari as President of Nigeria. 

*Tinubu

It will not be true if I say that I did not see it coming. I have often read his body language, picked up snippets from several discussions with his lapdogs (some of whom, sadly, are Christians but most of whom are Muslims), and I have conveyed my reservations to them against the pitfalls of a Muslim-Muslim ticket towards which I sensed they were drifting.

As part of my obligation to him, a close friend, I had on many occasions argued the merits and demerits of both ticket permutations to him. 

Peter Obi And His Supporters

 By Promise Adiele  

Femi Osofisan’s play Morountodun derives its historical substratum from the Agbekoya uprising of 1969 in the Western part of Nigeria. Popularly known as the ‘farmers’ revolt’, the incident occupies an iconic place in Marxist revolutionary ethos which is why many critics describe Osofisan as a helpless Marxist writer, an emblem he unsuccessfully tries to discard. 

*Peter Obi

In 1969, while the civil war was raging in the Eastern part of the country, illiterate, uninformed, uneducated farmers, without any political structure, took up arms and fought the government in Western Nigeria. Their pain was manifold but they bore it with equanimity. They lived through deprivation, government irresponsibility, official rascality, decayed infrastructure, and many other aberrant social conditions. 

But a time came when the farmers could not take the pains anymore, they revolted. The immediate cause of their revolt was the introduction of higher taxes which meant that they had to pay more. Throwing all cautions to the wind, they adopted a guerrilla approach, fought the government and overthrew the prevailing superstructure. In the end, the government was forced to the negotiating table. 

A Husband’s Touching Testimony About His Wife...

 

…He discovered his wife was such a rare, precious angel when it was already too late… 

When I got home that night as my wife served dinner, I held her hand and said, I’ve got something to tell you. She sat down and ate quietly. Again I observed the hurt in her eyes. 

Suddenly I didn’t know how to open my mouth. But I had to let her know what I was thinking. I want a divorce. I raised the topic calmly. She didn’t seem to be annoyed by my words, instead she asked me softly, why? 

I avoided her question. This made her angry. She threw away the chopsticks and shouted at me, you are not a man! That night, we didn’t talk to each other. She was weeping. I knew she wanted to find out what had happened to our marriage. But I could hardly give her a satisfactory answer; she had lost my heart to Jane. I didn’t love her anymore. I just pitied her! 

With a deep sense of guilt, I drafted a divorce agreement which stated that she could own our house, our car, and 30% stake of my company. She glanced at it and then tore it into pieces. The woman who had spent ten years of her life with me had become a stranger. 

Obi’s Mass Movement And The Rekindling Of Youths’ Reawakening

 By Chuks Ucheagu

A chilling anecdote purportedly written by Chingiz Aitmatov and attributed to the former Soviet leader Josef Stalin tells how it is easy to govern ignorant people. The allegory describes how the dictator asked that a live chicken be brought to him. Next he plucked all the feathers off.

*Peter Obi dragging his hand-luggage to board a commercial 

flight with other Nigerians 

He then cast the chicken by his feet and began throwing some grains of wheat at it. Bloodied and in crushing pain, the chicken began eating the grains and followed Stalin wherever he went. Over the years in Nigeria, the political class amplifies their survival by ensuring that the people are kept in most profound ignorance.

They continue to dominate and control the people by impoverishing them. They formulate policies that will serve their interests first and do not really bother about the welfare of the people. They loot and steal from the public till with impunity and on industrial scale. When nothing is left to loot, they go into borrowing frenzy and thus mortgage the future of their youths.

With this level of brigandage on and heist of our commonwealth, all the indices of development are neglected. Because the monies meant for development fritter into private pockets. Therefore, inflation sets in because productive sectors of the economy are neglected.

Why Nigerians Are Flocking To Peter Obi

 By Luke Onyekakeyah

The burning desire by Nigerians to see a turnaround in the country underscores the reason why Nigerians are flocking to Peter Obi and the Labour Party.

There is an urgent expectation for a new dawn to manifest in Nigeria without delay to give Nigerians a new lease of life. People are fed up with the status quo. Any political platform that could guarantee the desired rebirth becomes the centre of attraction.

*Peter Obi 

As it were, Nigerians have suffered untold hardship, pain and anguish brought by selfish and greedy politicians. The political and economic system has been ruined. Long-suffering is a norm in Nigeria as people bear the burden of misrule. The virtue of patience has been overstretched beyond the limit and this is understandable.

Understandable in the sense that the country has been raped and bastardised and Nigerians denied the good things of life since independence. The desire for a productive country started on October 1, 1960. That desire did not materialise. Barely six years into independence the country was plunged into a fierce fratricidal civil war that claimed over a million lives and truncated the political and economic trajectory.

Shiroro Massacre: An Entire Battalion Wiped Out And Buhari Still Stays In Abuja!

 By Obi Nwakanma

On Wednesday, terrorists operating in Shiroro, Niger State, massacred numerous people, including about 42 Nigerian soldiers and policemen, and an unknown, unaccountable number of civilians at a mining site. Among those missing, according to certain media reports, are some Chinese. Just for context, the areas around the Shiroro Dam are where ISWAP fighters months ago mounted their flag, claiming them as their territory.

*Buhari

The story of this attack seems to have very plainly justified their assertion of sovereign control over that part of Niger State, or any other part of Nigeria, where security reports indicate, to all intents and purposes, that the Nigerian authorities seem to have lost control.

According to media reports, these attackers came heavily armed and started shooting in the Ajata-Aboki area where the mines are located. What they are mining with the Chinese, nobody knows. But the soldiers in the nearby town of Erena, not far from the scene of the massacre, were alerted, and deployed. They fell into an ambush. In the  firefight, about 32 soldiers were said to have lost their lives. Wrap your heads around this figure, dear reader, and it will slowly sink in: that what was destroyed is an entire battalion! How did this happen?

ASUU Strike: Buhari Should Resign Now!

 By Tunde Akingbondere

Over the years, Nigeria has suffered the glitches of not just insurmountable challenges but deliberate ones, cleverly woven into a web of barricades by some overbearing elements whose job it is to plunder the country.

*Buhari 

These are the enemies strategically planted by providence to ambush the peace, development and accelerated progression of the dear country.  They have their ancestry in history and had infiltrated our marketplaces, educational institutions, public offices, churches and so forth.

No wonder Osita Agwuna wrote a fierce newsletter, which was presented publicly as a lecture under the Chairmanship of Chief Anthony Enahoro in the year 1948. The provocatively blunt newsletter canvasses the call for a sweeping revolution, it borrowed the diction of Thomas Sankara in clamouring for a total overhaul of our different sectors while laying to rest the factors which gave birth to the general strike of 1945, the Burutu Strike of 1947 too.

Tinubu And The Certificate Scandal That Refuses To Die

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

IF there is anything that the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, would want to die down at this critical moment, it is the certificate scandal that has dogged his political career for more than two decades. Though he survived the scandal when it first reared its ugly head in 1999 even as the then Speaker of the House of Representatives, Salisu Buhari, accused of the same scam, lost his plum office, it has refused to go away.

*Tinubu 

Tinubu survived the scandal then because the same gladiators who forced Buhari to resign on July 22, 1999, exactly 49 days after he clinched the coveted seat of the House of Representatives Speaker, turned around to save his neck from the political guillotine. 

And what was the case against Tinubu? 

Like Salisu Buhari who claimed to have attended University of Toronto in Canada and graduated with a degree in Business Administration, when he did not, shortly after he was sworn in as governor of Lagos State on May 29, 1999, there were allegations that Tinubu had perjured and forged the credentials that qualified him to run for the governorship election.

The allegations were contained in a petition dated August 12, 1999, written by Alhaji Jameed Seriki and Dr. Waliu Balogun-Smith. They alleged a discrepancy in Tinubu’s age since the profile published during his inauguration stated that he was born in 1952 and the age on his transcript at the Chicago State University claimed that he was born in 1954.

I Am A Nigerian Voter! I Am Available For Sale To Highest Bidder!

 By Dare Babarinsa

During our one-year National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), between 1981 and ‘82 in Abeokuta, capital of Ogun State, our monthly stipend was N200: 00. Yes N200: 00, which today, cannot buy a standard loaf of bread.

At that time, it was a princely sum as the national minimum wage was N100: 00. After collecting a one-month salary, I approached my cousin, Mr Ayo Olaoye, then a manager with the CFAO, who helped me to buy a giant double-cabin Frigidaire standing refrigerator for N200.00.

Today, N200.00 cannot buy a single vote in Ekiti State, once the intellectual powerhouse of the Yoruba people of the South-west. You will need N10, 000.00 for that, or at least 20 loaves of bread. With that princely sum too, the collector of money-for-vote would be expected to make a pot of soup that is going to last him or her till the next governorship election in four years time.

I don’t know whether it is the electorate that is forcing the politicians to pay to vote, or it is the politicians that have reduced the electorate to the level where they now need to get a pot of soup from the politician before they cast their vote in his/her favour. Or in exchange for power, the politician gives one loaf of bread per week for four years. What a bargain!

High Blood Pressure Can Be Lowered By Simple Hand Exercises

 By Joel Savage

Scientists have shown that after a few weeks of hand exercise, blood pressure returns to normal. A very long time is spent on getting results, while pharmacological activity and the therapeutic effect are contrasted.

As a few simple workouts can effectively manage hypertension, but not provide the purpose of providing quick relief, scientists advise paying attention to hand training to drop the pressure.

It will take a few weeks or perhaps months to stabilize the pressure, so you shouldn't anticipate a one-time effect, but the outcome will still be to your liking. It is even conceivable in some circumstances to decline blood pressure-regulating drugs after consulting with your doctor.

Nigeria: A Sick Society With Unhinged Citizenry

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Nigeria  is a sick country, very sick. What is worse, Nigerians have increasingly become unhinged. Many of the things happening in the country are bizarre and it takes only an unhinged population to condone the maladies. 

You are wrong if you think I am talking about the importation of adulterated fuel which has grounded almost the entire country and destroyed many vehicles. In any other country other than Nigeria where there are consequences for actions of state officials, heads would have rolled by now.

The petrol supply chain was disrupted last week when the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, NMDPRA, otherwise known as The Authority, announced that it discovered methanol quantities above Nigeria’s specifications in imported petroleum products.

Even as the queues get longer at the petrol stations, the noise has lessened and we have all gone back to our pastime – grumbling. Nothing will happen because the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd, NNPC, the regulator and sole importer of petrol in Nigeria, which is busy pointing fingers of blame at four marketers, including its own Duke Oil, is the major culprit.

Nigeria At Intensive Care Unit!

 By Hashim Amao

Across sectors, the tempest in Nigeria had doubled, and in some cases, tripled with the failed regime of the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.). Sai Baba is not the sui generis of Nigeria’s woes, but he has forced Nigerians to tread more throes. Like Umar R.A would smile and sob anytime he remembered the dark days he made his god with Meccan dates, worship and still feast on it when hunger visits; anytime this writer recalls the days of his stellar support for the “godsend Buhari,” the superficial things he did to sell Buhari to his people, laughter and sadness would knock in synchrony. For, we had thought Nigeria was sick then, but now, it is at the intensive care unit, gasping between life and death.

Crippled economy, insecurity, hunger, hike in commodity prices, incessant strikes, corruption and disregard for the rule of law; frankly, in Adipele’s multi-layered dentition, I don’t know how many teeth to count. But one thing so clear is: Baba Yussuf has failed Nigerians, deplorably, that his wife had once vented her vexation as a result of her “sense of justice, and not confrontation or disrespect.”

Nigeria ranks sixth in the 2022 Global Terrorism Index, no thanks to Boko Haram, Unknown Gunmen, killer pastoralists, kidnappers and other agents of doom that have provoked the peace of Nigeria. Sadly, Nigeria is no longer sitting on a powder keg; it is reclining on an atomic couch, while we hope it does not explode. Human lives have been devaluated that, sometimes, people get slaughtered in some parts of the country and there is low media coverage for the attacks.

South Africans Continue To Pay Nigeria’s Good Deeds With Evil

 By Sandra Ijeoma Okoye

There is no denying the fact that South African youths and some elders that may in this context be considered to be accomplices have for the umpteenth time been seen to have marched along the streets with banners and placards demanding that Nigerians, Zimbabweans, and other foreigners of African origin leave their country. The protesters were at each time in their xenophobic display cried out that foreigners are taking away their jobs and committing crimes such as doing drugs and trafficking; the same narratives they often use to attack foreigners and their properties.

Without any iota of exaggeration, there have over the years been growing tension among Nigerians living in South Africa as they are needlessly attacked by riotous South African youths at any point in time. Surprisingly, on the trail of every attack, they would be calmed by high ranking diplomatic officials, such as the South African High Commissioner, and in the same vein urged to dismiss such fears, and assured that the issues will be addressed. But never! The deadly scenario has continued to play out like a vicious cycle.

At this juncture, it is expedient to ask, “How long will the vicious cycle of fears and denials continue to haunt Nigerians seeking the proverbial greener pasture in South Africa?

Permit me to disclose in this context that I was on the night of June 12, Saturday, 2022, through a telephone call from South Africa woken up by a friend. In our tele-conversation, he said, South African authorities on Saturday (the same day he phoned) locked up all Nigerian Shops in Yeoville Market.