Caging A Nutcase Called Simon Ekpa

 By Ochereome Nnanna

There is a madman in Finland who has wittingly or unwittingly joined the enemies of the Igbo nation to destabilise the South-East. Reputed to be a Finnish national and an ex-soldier, the 37-year-old wears costumes depicting himself as an Igbo traditional ruler (or native doctor, as some say).

He goes on You Tube and internet radio to spew messages he believes portray him as the placeholder for the incarcerated leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. Kanu’s movement is committed to the peaceful separation of indigenous people from Nigeria through referendums.

On Plight Of Women And Children In IDPs Camps

 By Fatima Ali Busuguma

AN overwhelming majority of Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, in Nigeria are women and children. Even though there are varying statistics about the exact figure of internally displaced persons in Northern Nigeria, all sources examined indicated that women and children constitute more than 50 per cent of the internally displaced camps’ formation.

IDPs are people who have been displaced by natural disaster or conflicts from their homes. In Nigeria, conflicts arising from the activities of Boko Haram in the North-East have resulted in threats to lives and properties, together with the death of many and displacement of several people.

Who Can Save Us From Desperate Politicians?

 By Dan Onwukwe

Nigeria is at a critical juncture. And we may need a few reminders in the closing stages of these electioneering campaigns. One of these reminders is that, nothing happens to any country that is not a reflection of the character and temperament of the politicians in that country. This is in sync with the saying that every country is its own laboratory of democracy.

If you have observed keenly since the end of party primaries, you possibly have noticed what I call the emergence of blood -and- thunder politicians who believe only in “my way- or -the highway” kind of politics. For lack of a better word, they belong to what is called “seat-of-the-pant” politicians. These are men with little tolerance for tedium. They have no real agenda than to dominate other people. They bully free press, and threaten the media. They have temperamental cove and wear their hearts on their sleeves. They are autocrats in civilian camouflage.

Why Are More Nigerians Getting Poor?

 By Ray Ekpu

The descent by Nigerians into the poverty hole seems very rapid despite the country’s fabled wealth. In the 70s we were swimming in wealth. That was why the Yakubu Gowon government approved the windfall called Udoji awards. With the Udoji bonanza, workers were catapulted from being pedestrians to the adorable class of car owners in one swift jump.

The government spread its wings to the West Indies as a Father Christmas picking up the bills of civil servants in a couple of those countries. That was the time that the government felt that money was not a problem. What was a problem was how to spend it. And did we spend it? Yes, we did. That is how we had the rice and cement armada, which choked our ports and proved to be a curse rather than a cure for our existential problems.

Easing The Niger Bridge Traffic Agony At Christmas

 By Luke Onyekakeyah

Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola’s recent announcement that work on the Second Niger Bridge has been completed made cheery news, especially, for motorists and other travellers who use the Niger Bridge at Onitsha at Christmas. The route is usually bedlam, indeed, hell on earth during Christmas and New Year festivities.

There is hysteria that the suffering and pain experienced at the Onitsha-Asaba Bridge head would, henceforth, be a thing of the past once the Second Niger Bridge is commissioned and opened. Fashola’s announcement came on the heels of the ministry’s acting Federal Controller of Works in Anambra State, Seyi Martins, who announced earlier that the bridge would be ready for use in December 2022.

Kill All The Lawyers

 By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” – William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2

Tamuno Igbikiberebima is an unlikely star in an action movie. He is a lawyer employed with Nigeria’s national hydro-carbons monopoly. On 17 December, 2020, Tamuno was home in Rumuigbo, in Obio/Akpor Local Government Area (LGA) of Rivers State, in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, contemplating Christmas in the season of COVID-19 and on his phone in front of the gate into his premises, when a Toyota Camry car pulled up beside him.

From the bowels of the car, a young man emerged armed with what the police later confirmed to be an AK-47 rifle and ordered him into the car. Tamuno had the presence of mind to ask why, to which the young man reportedly responded that his mission was to waste him. Tamuno takes the story from here:

“When I noticed how he was handling the gun, it appeared to me that he is not proficient in gun handling. I told myself that ‘ordinarily one-to-one this man cannot beat me.’ ….When he faced the nozzle of the rifle down trying to cock the gun, I started struggling with him.

President, Governors Disown The Poor

 By Dele Sobowale

“Fish rots from the head.”

If you want to know how good or bad a country is, just take a look at the top politicians. It is now becoming an axiom of political science, that it is almost impossible to have a great country with absolutely atrocious leaders in charge.

*Buhari and some governors

It all starts from the President or Prime Minister. Was there an African or black person anywhere who was not proud when Nelson Mandela was President of South Africa? Who else among the mob that was elected and ruled in Africa who has given us that sense of pride in being African and black?

Mandela achieved everlasting fame, universal acclaim and respect in just five years. See what we have got in Nigeria after seven and a half years of Buhari. Surely nobody would be dishonest enough as to call him a great leader – given the legacies he and the First Lady, FL, are likely to leave behind.

A Chatham House Of Horror

 By Don Pedro Obaseki

Chatham House, while trying to repackage and market Bola Ahmed Tinubu, ended up de-marketing itself. While trying, albeit strenuously, to rebrand Tinubu, Chatham House ended up eroding its own brand persona. Its brand equity went bearish, like a bad stock cascading down the index on a bad day on the FTSE or the New York Stock Exchange.

*Tinubu

Tinubu’s handlers not only trashed Chatham House, but also ridiculed the Nigerian nation and her people before the global community. At best, Tinubu’s Chatham House odyssey was a public relations  disaster!

His legendary gaffes got amplified before a global audience that either watched the horrid display on television or via live streaming on the internet. Tinubu’s infamous, yet half-expected comedy of errors turned an otherwise revered platform into a “Chatham House of Horror” or(to bring the adjective closer to home), the “Chatham House of Commotion”.

Political Loyalists: Let Tinubu Be Himself

 

By Tonnie Iredia

Each time I come across a statement by the different support groups and campaign managers of some political parties, I am immediately reminded of certain issues that are yet to change in politics and elections in Nigeria.

One of them is the ease with which the closest sect of loyalists to Nigerian leaders complicate their tenures. It has become the practice for candidates who had during electioneering campaigns rolled out numerous programmes and policies to renege on or deemphasize them once they assume office. 

Big Waters, Big Floods And Big Calamity: Few Reflections On Moving Forward

 By Godknows Igali

Big Flood 2022, never seen in this part of the world in living human memory or captured in the historical data, visited Nigeria unhindered, especially Bayelsa and the rest of the low-lying areas. Now gradually, effortlessly ebbs away, its trail on many, especially the people whose natural habitat are the flood plains or swamplands. There have been lamentations, wailing and gales of funerals. Life must go on, so the survivors from north to south are rising to restart lives from the scratch.

That natural disasters occur, is a very sordid reality of human existence. From the study of history, archaeology and earth sciences, we have come to know that the world which we know is a product of millions of years of cataclysmic disasters, especially geological (earthquakes, volcanos) and hydrometeorological (floods, tsunamis and strong winds) over time. Some other disasters have been biomedical (plagues).

There Was A Country…Remembering Chinua Achebe

 By Banji Ojewale

In the distant past, you wouldn’t talk about Chinua Achebe without instant reference to his mountaintop novel, Things Fall Apart. He was inseparable from his literary creature that outstripped its creator. But Achebe was lucky: he was spared the tragedy of bringing forth a monster which would fatally prey on its Frankenstein god. Achebe’s own genie was genial. Upon escape from the bottle-cage, it gave the illustrious novelist a new identity tag: Africa’s foremost storyteller.

*Achebe 

However, 2012 would deliver another lingering literary lease to this great man of letters. He wrote There Was A Country: A Personal History Of Biafra. More than five decades had passed to serve as a hiatus between the book of Achebe’s youth and the new product of his advanced age. Both were mileposts, the one his first published novel (1958), and the other his last huge work before his death in 2013.

But when on November 16, 2022, the world quietly observed the eminent raconteur’s 92nd posthumous birthday, we were all drawn to his latter-day effort rather than to the one that lionized him. Why?

John Nnia Nwodo: Orator And Apostle Of Restructuring At 70

 By Oseloka Zikora 

His oratorical skill is his spotlight, which catapults him mostly to dizzying heights sometimes not contemplated. Take Ibadan, for instance, where he was an economics student at the then premier university. He was contesting the students’ union presidency and he had a Yoruba student as the leading opponent. How would he, an “alejo,” that is, a stranger, turn the tables against such formidable opposition?

*Nwodo

 Then came the manifesto night: his opponent spoke first and against the rules of the contest concluded his address in Yoruba, appealing to ethnic sentiments and exhorting the predominantly Yoruba student population to vote one of their own. The chant was “tinwan tinwa o, je ka wole (our own, our own, …ours is ours)” and the atmosphere was charged. To make matters worse, the crowd was dispersing in the accompanying commotion. Somehow, confronted by a Yoruba student and chief campaigner of the disadvantaged “Omoigbo”, the electoral officer asked that the hall be locked, insisted that all candidates must be heard.

Reflections On Tinubu’s Drama At Chatham House

 By Tunde Olusunle

Signs that the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu, will run a government by proxy if elected, emerged at his outing at Chatham House, London, earlier in the week. Tinubu, who has made a tradition of avoiding public speaking events in the run-up to the February 2023 elections, jettisoned the Arise Television “Townhall Meeting” organised for the major presidential contenders, Sunday, December 4, 2022. It was the latest in Tinubu’s non-appearance at similar engagements since he won the presidential ticket of his party last June. 

*Tinubu

Last August, Tinubu was conspicuously absent at the annual conference of the Nigerian Bar Association, (NBA). Presidential candidate of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, and the candidate of the Labour Party, (LP), Peter Obi, honoured the invite at the conference held in Lagos. Tinubu’s running mate, Kashim Shettima, stood in for him. In September, Tinubu was again absent when presidential candidates of all the political parties endorsed the “2023 election peace pact.” 

New ‘Currency’, New Census: Buhari’s Desperate Quest For A Legacy

 By Olu Fasan

For most of his seven-and-a-half years in office to date, President Muhammadu Buhari ran Nigeria with such insouciance that suggested he didn’t care about a legacy. However, as the inevitability of leaving office on May 29 next year hits home, Buhari has shown a minute-to-midnight desperation for “legacy projects.”

Two such “projects” are “redesigning” the naira notes and conducting a population census. But by politicising such issues, he undermines them. To start with, my view is that President Buhari has, so far, no legacy that can endure through time. Economists use the term “value for money” to refer to something that is well worth the money spent on it.

Nigeria: Poverty Wins, Buhari Loses

 By Dan Agbese

Some political promises are difficult to keep. The nature of politics induces political leaders to make promises they know they can only keep with soundbites and indifferent public applause. 

*Buhari 

You are not about to hear it from me that President Muhammadu Buhari has clearly failed in one of his core promises dear to the people: wrestling down poverty. He promised to take 100 million people out of poverty in ten years. To show that he meant business, sometime last year he appointed some experts to help him work out a formula for keeping his promise to the people. He does not have ten years, of course, but he has enough time to devise a mechanism or a formula that could be working in his name long after he leaves Aso Rock.

Tinubu Candidacy And Chatham House Charade

 By Emeka Alex Duru

You would notice that the speech delivered by the presidential candidate of All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Ahmed Tinubu, at Chatham House, London, earlier in the week, has been drowned by criticisms trailing his outsourcing the question-and-answer section to his cronies. That is not without reasons. It falls into our position here, some time ago, on the need for the flag bearers to assume their offices and speak directly to Nigerians on their agenda for the nation and how they intend to go about them.

*Tinubu

Our observation then was that the presidential candidates carry on their shoulders the burden of marketing themselves and their political organisations. In other words, they are the faces of their parties, their poster boys. That is why being the standard-bearer of a political party, is a big deal – a contest for serious minds. It demands a lot. To paraphrase Gerald R. Ford (38th U.S. President) the presidency is not a prize to be won, but a duty to be done.

Poor Governance Should Stop

 By Terry  Adeniji

The government at all levels in the country is collapsing, the non-state actors have hijacked the reign of government from the people in power, especially the regulatory bodies in charge of our critical sectors, and the poor citizens are made to bear the brunt of their non-performance.

In the area of security, the Department of State Services, the police, and other security agents are helpless as the terrorists and bandits continue to terrorise people, killing, maiming and collecting ransom in millions of naira paid in cash and yet, the same huge money finds its way back to the bank and all these security agents can’t track it. Something is clearly wrong with our system, and yet nobody is resigning.

Bola Tinubu’s ‘Teamship’ Doctrine Is A Scam!

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

“Let me demonstrate here one of those philosophies, doctrines that I believe firmly in – teamship – unbreakable team. To demonstrate that, I will choose the first question and assign to Dele Alake and the second question assign to Nasir el-Rufai and the third question assign to Ben Ayade.”

*Tinubu 

Those were the words of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in the 2023 elections, at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London known as Chatham House on Monday, December 5. In the spirit of Tinubu’s teamship, questions posed to him directly following a paper he presented at the think-tank were farmed out by fiat to surrogates.

Reactions, expectedly, were fast and furious. While well-meaning Nigerians termed, correctly, his “teamship” doctrine an abdication, the APC spin doctors went on overdrive. Alake, former Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Director of Strategic Communications of the APC presidential campaign council, said delegating questions to team members is one of Tinubu’s innovations.

COVID-19 Burden Lessens In Africa, Vigilance Crucial As Year-End Season Begins

 Brazzaville, 8 December 2022 

While Africa is witnessing its lowest level of new COVID-19 cases since the onset of the pandemic, a recent four-week rise—the first such sustained increase in four months—underscores the criticality of maintaining vigilance as the end-year holiday seasons sets in.

The continent recorded a four-week long rise until 20 November, but the number of new cases dropped slightly in the past two weeks ending on 2 December breaking the upward trend. However, the new cases reported in late November account for less than 10% of cases recorded in the same period in 2021 and 2020. While deaths rose by 14% in the week ending on 27 November from the week before, they were low at 53—approximately 4% of the deaths recorded in the same period in 2021 and 2020. The current COVID-19 caseload is not exerting any significant strain on health facilities, with hospitalizations remaining low.

Nigeria: Still On The Same Faith Ticket

 By Olu Fasan

Every well-meaning Nigerian must remain outraged by the choice of a Muslim-Muslim ticket by Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the presidential candidate of All Progressives Congress, APC. Every patriotic Nigerian should be appalled by the utter insensitivity and perniciousness of the calculated decision that belittles Christianity and puts religious harmony and internal cohesion at greater risk in Nigeria. Of course, the issue won’t go away; we will discuss it until next year’s elections. My focus here is the symbolism of the choice. 

*Tinubu and Shettima 

Self-servingly, some have mischaracterised the opposition to the Muslim-Muslim ticket. Recently, Festus Keyamo, the Minister of State for Labour and Employment and spokesman of the Tinubu presidential campaign, said it was about “balance of power”. According to him, Christians feared losing power at the centre if Tinubu became president with Kashim Shettima, a fellow Muslim, as his vice-president. He said this was misguided because the vice-president “is powerless”.