South West’s Forest Of A Thousand Demons

 By Festus Adedayo

From my personal ranking of their tragic imports, three events which occurred in the last week constitute leading narratives of where we are today. They are, one, the siege laid to Southwest Nigeria’s Lagos-Ibadan expressway by kidnappers and the suicidal plunge to death of an operative of Nigeria’s secret police, known as the Department of State Services (DSS), into the Lagos lagoon. 

The third was a video clip posted by Tolu Ogunlesi, Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Digital and New Media, in a Twitter post where details of what Buhari discussed with the British monarch, King Charles III, the aftermath of his visit to Buckingham Palace on Wednesday, were released. 

We Need Change Of Tactics In The Anti-Graft War

 By Dan Agbese

It would be uncharitable to suggest that successive Nigerian leaders have spoken from both sides of the mouth in tackling corruption in the land. Dem don try. It would be naïve, of course, for anyone to suggest that the longest running war in the land has either been won or there are prospects it will sooner than later. The fact is that corruption is at an all-time high. President Muhammadu Buhari is unable to kill it. It is killing Nigeria.

There is a need to change tactics in prosecuting the anti-graft war for purposes of obtaining better results. Corruption will not end but it should be possible not to make it a way of life in the country. We have used probe panels to unearth the corrupt in our public services; the landed and other properties of the guilty were confiscated to deny them the right to enjoy the fruits of their corruption. But the corruption grows stronger.

Buhari Women, Poverty And Budget Padding

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Two stories broke in the last one week that tend to amplify the fact that President Muhammadu Buhari’s goal of running Nigeria completely aground continues apace even as his administration, on the home stretch, and its vuvuzelas, continue to play the ostrich.

*Farouq and Buhari

First, the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, disclosed on November 17, that 133 million Nigerians are multi-dimensionally poor. That represents about 63 per cent of the estimated population of about 218 million people.

Ordinarily, this information shouldn’t surprise anyone considering that Nigeria had adorned the infamous ‘World Poverty Capital’ badge since 2018. World Bank data had shown since 2016 that four in every ten Nigerians live below the poverty line of $1.9 per day. Two years later, the country was declared world’s poverty capital by the Brookings Institution, knocking off India from the inglorious perch.

Tinubu As President? Buhari Must Really Hate Nigeria!

 By Olu Fasan

Ahead of the 1993 presidential election, General Ibrahim Babangida, the then military head of state, made a profound statement. He said: “I don’t know who will succeed me, but I know who will not.” Sadly, that statement panned out with the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. Yet, in principle, it was a perfectly reasonable statement. 

*Buhari and Tinubu

Here’s why. If General Babangida had damaging intelligence on MKO Abiola, the presumed winner of the election, an intelligence that could bring international shame on Nigeria, he had a duty to stop him from running for president. 

Babangida’s eternal mistake, assuming he had such intelligence, was to allow Abiola to run, encourage Nigerians to vote and then annul the election. But there was nothing wrong with saying “I don’t know who will succeed me, but I know who will not,” provided it was in the national interest. Of course, in a democracy, a president cannot simply say: “I know who will not succeed me.” But a president should signal a nation’s values.

The Case Against Sex Education

 By Sonny Ekwowusi

Last week, a group of pro-choice NGOs staged a protest against the Hon. Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu for directing the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) to expunge the current immoral sex education taught in Nigerian schools from the school curriculum.

Worried about the immoral content of sex education curriculum in Nigeria and the wrong method deployed in using it to corrupt impressionable secondary school and primary school pupils most of whom are in the age bracket of 5-14 years, the Hon. Minister had directed last week that the immoral sex education should be removed from the school curriculum and that the teaching of sex education should be left in the hands of parents who are the primary educators of their children and religious institutions which are the custodians of morals of young people. 

No To Sex Education In Schools

 By Scholar Elo

I read Mr. Adelowo Adebumiti’s article entitled: ‘‘Why sex education is key to reducing gender-based violence’’ (The Guardian, Thursday, October 29, 2020) with great delight. Great delight because I am a teenager myself and very conversant with the subject matter. First, I must say that the writer’s interest on sex education is quite laudable.

However, the inclusion of a sex education for teens in primary school will not stem the tide of gender based violence in Nigeria. Sex education has been included in the secondary school curriculum in the last couple of years yet the inclusion hasn’t reduced gender-based violence in our schools. So, why include it now in primary school curriculum for pre-teen and teens?

Why Sex Education Should Be Left For Parents

 By Ifeoma George-Ufot

I’m not used to writing rejoinders to things I read about but I couldn’t keep quiet after reading the open letter to the Honorable Minister for Education by Mrs Bisi Fayemi. Unlike you, I was elated, overjoyed and felt vindicated when I learnt that the Honorable Minister has directed the NERDC to remove sex education from the basic education curriculum.

For a long enough time we have had a minister who says that the true teachers of this sensitive topic are the parents and this should be applauded. You cited the story of 13-year-old Tanwa who was pregnant for her neighbour due to her ignorance. While I sympathize with the teenage Tanwa who is forced to become a mother so early, your placing the blame squarely on her ignorance rather than on the paedophile adult doesn’t make a case for your position.

Buhari, APC: Stop This Hubris!

 By Tony Eluemunor

Why this brazen contempt for any opposing viewpoint. What has made Nigerians known to be the most vociferous critics on Moth­er Earth to lose all convictions?

*Buhari 

Please dear reader, if you were not in Mars during a period of petrol scarcity when the President Goodluck Jonathan-led Peoples Democratic Par­ty (PDP) administration held sway in Nigeria, you would have noticed the cascading of rambunctious criticism both Jonathan and the PDP faced – and rightly too. They had failed to make the refineries work maximally even as corruption trailed the pet­rol importation regime of that era. Apart from the trenchant criticism, all sorts of activists took to the streets to protest the belittling of Nigeria; an oil-producing country that was made to be importing petrol for local con­sumption just because she could not get her petrol refineries to work optimally.

A Lagos Beggar And Other Absurdities

 By Chris Anyokwu 

There she was on a typically busy highway clutching a doll swaddled delicately in finery and passing it off as a bundle of joy heartrendingly exposed at dawn of life to the coarser aspects of human society: the unbridgeable class divide between the haves and the have-nots.  

Some Lagosians, habitually or customarily empathetic, were moved to dole out some money on account of the “adorable baby”, knowing that millions of people the world over are childless; some ready to give an arm and a leg to have a baby of their own even a deformed one.  They always need a child to call their own; a child that would address them as “Dad” and “Mom”.  And as a result of this, some desperate couples go out of their way to adopt a child from orphanages and motherless babies’ homes.

Adapting To Climate Change In Africa

 By Felix Oladeji

Africa is at a tipping point. With temperatures rising higher than the rest of the world and an increase in the occurrence of droughts, floods and other natural disasters, the people, economy and ecosystems of Africa are especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change. An early pilot initiative for climate change adaptation has provided important lessons, data and insights.

Taking these pilot initiatives to scale will require increased capacity and collaborative management approaches, improved engagement with the private sector, empowering actions that engage women and youth, capacity development to improve climate governance, and a holistic approach that looks at climate change not as a series of linear challenges, but as a systematic challenge that requires transformational shifts, innovative thinking and bold action.

Why Nigeria Is Stuck In Underdevelopment

 By Luke Onyekakeyah

If you ask anyone on the street what is Nigeria’s number one problem, he would most likely say corruption. The refrain on corruption is so profound that no one has taken time to ask why there is such abrasive corruption. The reasons behind corruption are known but not addressed. They are totally downplayed. Truth is that corruption is merely an effect. The cause is ignored. Chasing the effect and leaving the cause, as in this case, is senseless. It is like pruning a tree, which would blossom once again after a short while. The only way to effectively kill a tree is to uproot it.

Even if you cut it down, shoots could sprout from the stump showing that the tree is still alive though in a smaller dimension.

To deal with corruption would require a blunt attack on the roots. Nigeria’s corruption is systemic meaning that it is entrenched. A faulty system is responsible. The system is where the problem lies. There are deliberate gaps left in the system that have blended with the body and soul of Nigeria that can’t easily be rooted out. Vested interest would rather shed blood to ensure that the gaps remain untouched. But not until those gaps are closed, Nigeria’s underdevelopment quagmire would persist.

Soludo’s Bile Against Obi Unwarranted

 By Charles Okoh

Whoever advised Governor Chukwuma Soludo on the path he has taken in his unwarranted attack on the former governor of the state and presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi, has obviously and totally misled him. If anything, his reaction was so infantile and lacking tact.

*Obi and Soludo 

What would Soludo say was the reason he went overboard and spewed all those bile when he is not contesting the position of the president? Between Obi and APGA’s Prof. Peter Umeadi, who realistically has a better chance?

After all said and done, Soludo ended up projecting the candidacy of both Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), than he has done for his party’s candidate (Umeadi).

Letter To Chukwuma Soludo

 By Amanze Obi

I had thought that I would give you a little more time before inquiring into your stewardship as the governor of Anambra State. But your recent outburst about the Peter Obi presidential bid has dragged me out earlier than I wanted.

*Soludo

When your long quest for the governorship of Anambra State materialized in November, 2021, I was elated. I felt happy for you, for Anambra State and for Nigeria. I was particularly happy that the intellectual community to which I belong has got a breather through your emergence as governor.

You are certainly not the first intellectual to rise to an exalted governance position in Nigeria.

Detribalised Nigerian Does Not Exist; It Never Did!

By Chidi Odinkalu

In 1989, academics, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, published to great acclaim their study of the evolution of the diverse dialects of English language from different empires. Their title was The Empire Writes Back. The book shows how various outposts of the empire took ownership of the language and adapted its grammar and usage.

*Odinkalu 

Few outposts from Empire have been as prolific in this enterprise as Nigeria. Conceived as somewhat of an illegitimate offspring in the ménage à trois between Sir George Taubman Goldie; his mistress, Flora Shaw; and his successor in propinquity to her, Frederick Lugard, Nigeria became a colonial experiment in the Tower of Babel.

A national anthem composed in 1959, one year before independence which occurred in 1960, acknowledged this reality in the third line of its first stanza, reminding the world of the aspiration to create a country even “though tribe and tongue may differ.” The anthem itself invited citizens to “hail” the country in antiquarian, biblical third person, symbolising a relationship with the country that was fractured from origin. Never mind that the hailing was to be done in the borrowed language of a foreign country.

Power And Politics Of The Written Word: The Legend of Chinua Achebe

Keynote Address - 2022 Chinua Achebe Literary Festival and Memorial Lecture, Wednesday, November 16, 2022 at Prof Kenneth Dike Central E-Library, Awka, Anambra State 

By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

Chinua Achebe lived in glory as the one-man institution who conquered the world for Mother Africa, and the great Kenyan novelist, Ngugi wa Thiongo, put it in these words: “Achebe bestrides generations and geographies. Every country in Africa claims him as their own.” 

On November 16, 1930, Albert Chinualumogu Achebe was born to a teacher-cum-evangelist father of the Anglican Communion in the town of Nnobi, near his hometown of Ogidi, in present-day Anambra State.

Floods: As Poverty Exacerbates Household Vulnerability

 By Victor Okeke

This year’s tail-end rains in Nigeria have been marked by devastating floods. At least 600 people have died and 1.3 million displaced from their homes. Heavy rains combined with poor urban planning have made parts of Nigeria more susceptible to flooding. Evidence has shown that women, the poor, and uneducated are most vulnerable to floods.

Gender, poverty, and education are interrelated and they have indirect effects on vulnerability in flood disasters. Around the River Niger Bridge which joins Lagos to Onitsha and the rest of eastern Nigeria, sizable portions of surrounding communities have been submerged under water, crippling economic activity for many small traders and farmers.

Presidential Leadership In A Time Of Crisis

 By Stanley Ekpa

Since we are faced with complex climate crises, regional wars and sovereign existential challenges in many countries around the world, it is only natural to start this conversation with my condolences to the victims of flood, insecurity and other crises in Nigeria and other parts of the world, particularly in Seoul, Ukraine and Somalia. In the entire history of the world, the world has never existed without challenges. At every phase of human history, leadership is required to change the world: authentic, visionary, assertive, creative, transformative, sincere and disruptive leaders are required to fix and forge their societies forward.

*Buhari 

At the peak of public leadership is presidential leadership, either a prime minister, a president, or a monarch, every nation looks up to the head of state to provide hope, optimism and shared-social possibilities. To lead a country in a time of chaos and complex crisis, the head of a state requires more than just the desire to lead. It requires the trusted ability to simplify complex conversations; take tough decisions; embody firm convictions of patriotism and act decisively in national interest; showcase the wisdom of insights, the audacity of foresights and creative commitment to bold visions.

Corruption: Nemesis Ripens What Our Hands Have Sown

 By Emmanuel Okoroafor

Corruption has woven itself into the tapestry of the Nigeria narrative such that it has become the eternal plague of this most populous African country. For decades, this malady in its various manifestations – embezzling, backhandedness, kickbacks, internet fraud, thievery and all what not – have defined us more than our characters, capabilities and accomplishments. It is so bad that even one United Kingdom (UK) Prime Minister had the cheeks to brand us “fantastically corrupt.”

For a country touted as the giant of Africa, the tragic flaw of corruption has whittled down Nigeria’s goliath stature to that of a Lilliputian. Today, it has become the gangrene eating away our corporate structure, the poison oozing from every pore of our collective body and the bile in our cup of wine. What is worse, even the younger generation has gradually bought into the corruption franchise. It is now fashionable to hear young people say, “If I get there (public position), I go chop (embezzle) my own.” Which means “if you can’t beat them, then join them.”

Obasanjo And His Search For The Ethiopian Twins

 By Dare Babarinsa

If the November 2, 2022 peace deal in Ethiopia holds, it would be the biggest prize ever won by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo since he retired from the Presidency in 2007.

*Obasanjo

For the past 15 years, Obasanjo has become Africa’s most dedicated troubleshooter, dashing from one trouble spot to another in the frequent African bushfire wars. But Ethiopia has a bigger stake. It is one of the most important African countries, sharing the Alpha Grade with Nigeria, South Africa, Congo DRC and Egypt.

Perhaps, it has seen more wars than most African countries. Hitherto, it is the most successful African experiment in state formation. Its unravelling would be a great tragedy. We need to salute all those who are involved in this peace deal.

Gov Soludo’s Pettiness And Unconscionable Tactlessness

 By Robert Obioha 

 In an election season, political campaign can come in diverse forms, including crude use of language to possibly settle an old score or even attempt to diminish someone’s rising fame and political relevance. Even lending support to one’s favourite candidate can be subtly or brazenly done depending on one’s choice of words and deployment of language, which can also be brutal and lacking tact and diplomacy. 

*Obi and Soludo
Although politicians have been tasked by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), National Peace Committee and other stakeholders to engage on campaign based on issues and desist from campaign of mudslinging and calumny, but every day, the polity is suffused with hate speeches, diatribes, incendiary comments, ethnic stereotyping of some leading presidential candidates all in an effort to pull some of them down.