The World Ahead 2023: Whither Nigeria?

 By Marcel Okeke

The World Ahead 2023” is the 2022 end-of-year special publication of The Economist (of London) in which the journal reviewed the global economy in the outgoing year and made detailed projections about 2023, including what issues are most likely to dictate the trends in the coming year. It says: “After two years when the (COVID-19) pandemic shaped the immediate future, it is now the Ukraine war.”

The journal gave four things to think about for 2023, namely: (1) the impact of the conflict; (2) the struggle to control inflation; (3) chaos in energy markets; and (4) China’s uncertain post-pandemic path. Going granular in its analysis, the publication gave ten themes and trends for 2023—thus: all eyes are on Ukraine; recessions loom; climate silver lining; peak China; divided America; flashpoints to watch (India-China, Turkey-Greece); shifting alliances; revenge tourism; metaverse reality check; and New year, new jargon.

'Anya-Ndi-Igbo' Condemns Worsening Insecurity In Igboland

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Anya-Ndi-Igbo

2 Felix Chucks Okoye Close. Independence Layout, Enugu. Enugu State. 

e-mail info.anyandigbo@gmail.com 

STATEMENT NUMBER 3                     December 27, 2022

 

A STATEMENT ISSUED BY ANYA-NDI-IGBO ON THE PERSISTING SECURITY CHALLENGES IN THE SOUTH EAST REGION ON NIGERIA: 

Compelling Need to Stop the Destruction of Lives and Livelihoods

1.   Generally, Nigerians from all works of life are facing the biggest threat to their lives and livelihoods. The framers of our Nigerian Constitution starting from the 1999 constitution to the last amendment, foresaw today. This explains their provision of the primary duty of government as protection of lives and property. It is therefore, the inalienable right and entitlement of every Nigerian to benefit from the primary duty of government to protect lives and property. 

2.  In recent years and particularly in the past three years, the scale and depth of insecurity in the South East has become unbearable. Terrorist-type invasions accompanied with massacre and sacking of entire communities, which are hardly countered by Federal and States Governments have become a common feature of the region. Other types of merchants of crime, violence and torture have joined the rampage, thereby creating hell on earth for residents and travelers in the region. 

Nigeria Police And Extrajudicial Killings: The Bolanle Raheem Murder

 By Muiz Banire

By the law setting up the Nigeria Police Force, the officers and men are meant to primarily maintain law and order in the country. Specifically, they are to provide security and protection for the civilian population. At a point in history, they discharged this responsibility so well that the country was substantially safe for all and Nigerians were proud of their police force. In fact, on the international plain, they earned accolades and laurels from time to time in peacekeeping operations and other assignments.

*Late Bolanle Raheem

However, with the incursion of the military into the country’s governance, the Nigeria Police Force gradually started losing its potency and relevance. Part of the reasons accountable for the ugly trend was the deliberate act of the military rulers to amputate the police in order to forestall any threat to its rulership.

Achieving Zero Hunger And Ending Malnutrition

 By Emmanuel Osadebay

To gain the nutritional substances that provide energy for activities, growth and other functions of the body in keeping the immune system healthy, food is essential for a human being. The United Nations global facts show that in 2020, between 720 million and 811 million persons worldwide were suffering from hunger, roughly 161 million more than in 2019.

A staggering 2.4 billion people, reflecting above 30 per cent of the world’s population, were moderately or severely food-insecure, lacking regular access to adequate food; and globally, 149.2 million children under the age of five (22%), were suffering from stunting (low height for their age) in 2020.

133m ‘Multidimensionally’ Poor: Buhari’s ‘Gift’ To Nigeria In 2022

 By Olu Fasan

President Muhammadu Buhari has a victim mentality. He takes absolutely no responsibility for anything that goes wrong under his watch. Instead, he treats legitimate and fair criticisms of his leadership failure as harassment.

*Buhari 

More likely, he’ll see this piece on the shocking levels of multidimensional poverty in Nigeria, fostered under his government, as harassment. To mimic Shakespeare: He does protest too much, methinks!  Last week, in a documentary shown at a private event to mark his 80th birthday, President Buhari was asked whether he would miss anything about the presidency.

Buhari: Nigerians Owe Bishop Kukah A Debt Of Gratitude

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

As you read this, it will be exactly three days to the end of the year and 152 days to the end of Muhammadu Buhari’s second and final term in office as president. And Nigerians are hurting badly. In the last seven and half years of his baleful presidency, all the indices of human development – I mean all – have gone south, literally and metaphorically.

*Kukah and Buhari 

Today, Nigerians are neither guaranteed a healthy life, access to knowledge nor a decent standard of living. Paradoxically, the so-called leaders are overreaching themselves in their toadying jaunts that Buhari is the best thing to happen to Nigeria since October 1, 1960. Those who climbed on the rooftops just yesterday to shout themselves hoarse over perceived poor governance have suddenly gone mute.

Children’s Sacred Souls And Toxic Music

 By Oshiomhole Inuma

Being a natural part of the environment of all early-human and pre-human species, it is a piece of creative art of leisure that possesses invincible powers capable of taking captive of our emotions and thoughts. Its ability to directly or indirectly convey unsolicited messages soul-to-soul to us is unimaginable. It is an embodiment of the good, the bad and the ugly, whose cunning influence on us unconsciously becomes social life and value. 

Its influence on humans and nature is powerful and charming enough to heal the most painful memory, soften the hardest heart and bring tears to our eyes. 

Dangerous Times In The Dear Country

 By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

The demons of death are on the loose, arranging mayhem and spreading annihilation all over Nigeria. We walk an ungodly but very familiar Nigerian road littered with shattered bones and broken dreams.

The struggle for political power is all the rage with the ruling party presenting a Muslim-Muslim ticket in a multi-faith country while the main opposition party presents a Northern Fulani Muslim candidate to succeed a Northern Fulani Muslim incumbent after eight years of incumbency. There is the third force rousing the youths into fervid activity such that if the elections are tampered with the EndSARS riots may pale into a child’s play. The dangerous times of Nigeria today cannot but force one to look back in anger at the country’s history on how the land came to this pass.

Bishop Kukah’s Final Scorecard On Pres. Buhari

 By Rotimi Fasan 

As was the case this time last year, the Catholic Bishop of the Sokoto Diocese, the Rev. Matthew Hassan Kukah, has again issued a damning score card on the Muhammadu Buhari administration. Kukah has become a consistent critic of President Buhari and of the All Progressives Congress, APC, party-led government.

*Buhari and Kukah

Aside what has become an annual December ritual of assessing Buhari’s performance in office, the bishop has also taken other available, “out-of-season” opportunities to ask searching and inconvenient questions of the ruling APC government.  That he is at it again, just two months to the next presidential election and less than five months before Buhari’s second term in office expires, should be enough measure of his conviction that President Buhari has failed as a president. This on account of his inability to live up to his electoral promises in 2015 through 2019. 

Why Then Did Buhari Weep?

 By Ifeanyi Maduako

Unlike women, it’s natural that men rarely weep or shed tears. Whatever makes a man weep must have overwhelmed him emotionally in such a manner that he cannot hold back tears. Therefore, when a man weeps in public, it’s possible that he may have wept several times over in his closet. Whatever makes a general to weep on camera before the whole world must be on something that touches on his nerves beyond emotional control.

*Buhari 

Against the foregoing background, when the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari(retd.), wept before the cameras sometime in 2012 after losing the 2011 presidential election which was his third attempt at the presidential seat, the world was taken aback seeing a retired general shedding tears publicly ostensibly over the state of the nation.

Lagos-Ibadan Expressway: Image Of The Nigerian In The Mirror

 By Adekunle Adekoya

Three years ago, on December 20, 2019, to be exact, Dr. Olorunnimbe Mamora, Minister of State for Health, had reason to leave Lagos on January 20, 2019, to deliver a lecture at an event in Abeokuta. According to him, he got trapped in a traffic jam on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, and ended up spending five hours on the journey, normally a breezy trip of about one hour. When Mamora arrived at the event, it was almost over, as most of the other guests, including former President General Olusegun Obasanjo, had arrived, played their roles, and left. 

The minister, apologising to his hosts, said: “I want to apologise for my lateness. I left Lagos early enough. I ended up spending five hours for a one-hour journey. We got ‘hooked up’ with Magodo. The journey that should have taken us one hour, took us five hours. That is the unpalatable state of our roads, even my pilot car could not pilot me through the ordeal.”

Muslim-Muslim Ticket: Christians, Stand Up For Your Faith In 2023!

 By Olu Fasan

This weekend, on December 25, Christians worldwide will celebrate Christmas to mark the birth of Jesus Christ. In every country with a predominant or substantial Christian population, the president or vice-president, the head of state or prime minister, will be a Christian.

However, in Nigeria, where Christians account for nearly half of the population, this year’s Christmas may be the last, for probably the next eight years, that Christianity would be represented politically at Nigeria’s seat of sovereign, the Presidency; that someone professing the Christian faith would be either president or vice-president!

Nigeria: Oil Theft Probe: A Test Case For Federal Government

 By Braeyi Ekiye

The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, NEITI,  as well as the Pan Niger Delta Forum, PANDEF, and other critical stakeholders in the Nigerian project recently called for the setting up of a Special Investigative Panel on oil theft and losses.

The call was necessitated by the humongous oil theft that has gone unchecked for as long as oil and gas exploration and exploitation began in Nigeria, some 66 years ago. But these thefts at various oil installation locations across the oil producing areas of the Niger Delta became increasingly unbearable in August 2022, the worst month in oil theft record this year, when a foreign vessel capable of lifting over two million barrels of crude oil escaped from Nigerian territorial waters but was arrested by Equatorial Guinean Maritime security forces.

Recrucifying Christ At Christmas

 By Banji Ojewale

Marching Jesus Christ boisterously to Golgotha for another experience of execution, excoriation and extirpation is exactly what we attempt to do every Yuletide. Although we gather ostensibly to celebrate His birth, what we really end up with is what we did that sent Him to the agony of Calvary. We shut out the Lord Who bore the death penalty we deserve as we drive ourselves into revelry not His will. We engage in epicurean feasts when we fail to reckon with what He commands: Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.

As we ignore His word in the season’s ceremonies, we also look down on the friends of Jesus, the poor, the poached and the pricked. These pauperized of the society are our modern-day lepers, sentenced to a station of life away from enduring joy. But at Christmas, we lure them into our fold as objects of exhibitionist philanthropy. There’s hyped media blitz to record a one-off show of orgy where these hard-up citizens are sumptuously fed by the wealthy.

Is School Really A Scam?

 By Precious Fasipe 

‘School is a sham!' I’m sure you’ve heard this claim before, or probably even said it. It is a common slogan echoed by many frustrated Nigerian students due to one or many experiences they have had in school. But is school really a scam?

A school is simply an institution that provides instructions, and its main functions are to educate and socialise students.

However, a scam is a dishonest scheme. It can also be said to be a deceptive scheme or trick used to cheat someone out of something. This usually involves both the person who benefits from the scam (the scammer) and the victim (the scammed). “School na scam” in this context means school is a fraud, school is a lie, we do not need school, the school system is corrupt, and someone is benefiting from it.

The Political Structures Of Corruption

 By M.C. Asuzu

Recently, there have been discussions in this country concerning politicians who have no political structures and those with them, as the veritable determinants of those who will be able to win elections and otherwise. But what keeps coming back to the mind of some of us who are incapable of any partisan political persuasions is this: what structures are the people saying these things thinking of? 

What do political structures by a single politician mean? Is it individual politicians or the group of people who wish to work together under specific political ideologies that develop such political structures? These organisational groups of people are simply called political parties, is it not? So, when politicians are talking of personal political structures (but not those of political parties), it becomes necessary to examine what these people may be having in mind and what it is that they themselves really have done in those regards.

When Candidates Shun Debates

 By Nick Dazang 

Power wielders/seekers and the media exist in mutual antagonism. They have a love-hate relationship. In spite of this antagonism, they are kindred spirits, of sorts. They find congruence in good governance and what advances humanity. By law, and in a democratic dispensation, the media are expected to rein in the predilection of power wielders to overreach themselves and abuse their offices. They are expected to hold power holders to account. By the same token, the power wielders and politicians need the media to secure visibility and to communicate their visions and agenda.

*Nigerian politicians at a Town Hall Meeting 

In democracies, the media helps politicians grab the limelight. Also, the media and their owners endorse and project candidates, who, in their views, possess exalted visions and the requisite character and capacity. For instance, the media made it possible for the eloquent, svelte and sartorially elegant John F. Kennedy to trounce Richard Nixon in the first ever televised presidential debate on September 26, 1960. 

Why Politicians Need To Address Poverty During Campaign

 By Stanley Achonu

The 2023 elections loom, with politicians making campaign promises that offer hope. Yet, poverty, probably the biggest threat to Nigerians today, has gone unaddressed.

In October, the World Bank released its ‘Poverty and Shared Prosperity’ report outlining progress in the global fight against extreme poverty. According to the report, the world is unlikely to meet the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030, with COVID-19 as a major factor in upending progress made in recent years. The total number of people living in extreme poverty has risen to 719 million globally, with 71 million people added in 2020 alone.

The President We All Need

 By Sonnie Ekwowusi

We can no longer leave the fate of our country and our lives in the hands of political misfits who don’t have the foggiest idea that political leadership basically entails improving the welfare of the people. Almost everyone you meet these days in Nigeria says it, and, I dare join today in saying it: now is our chance to recover our stolen common wealth from the thieving imbeciles.

To this effect, many Nigerian voters across the different divides (the Nigerian young inclusive) have, unlike in the past, irrevocably resolved to vote for a presidential candidate of their choice who will build a new Nigeria, all things being equal, on February 25, 2023. The current Muhammadu Buhari government is a waterless cloud, carried along by the winds; a fruitless tree in late autumn, depraved, dead and uprooted; a wild wave of the sea casting up the form of its suffocating smell; a wandering and wicked crescent for whom the nether gloom of darkness has been reserved for ever.

Balablu-Blu Blu-Bulaba And Other Incantations

 By Tunde Olusunle

For his famous zeal, stamina, energy and verve, Nigeria’s former President, Olusegun Obasanjo had to learn when to draw the brakes. There were those times his spirit was willing, but his body weak. He had to succumb to the body clockwork to catch some rest. If he still desired to drag his body, he was tactfully restrained by his aides. I know a bit about Obasanjo. I served as his campaign media officer, a job I was enlisted into, even before his formal declaration to contest for the nation’s top job. He threw his hat in the ring at his famous Otta Farm, his primordial resort in Ogun State, November 1, 1998.

*Tinubu

I had been previously introduced to him by my respected senior professional colleague and mentor, Onyema Ugochukwu. I served under Ugochukwu, beginning from the glorious days of the Yemi Ogunbiyi restoration and revolution of the Daily Times. I’ve attempted to capture my perceptions and impressions about the works and persons of Ogunbiyi and Ugochukwu, in separate, self-authored, full length academic essays. Both have been published in reputable journals, in 2017 and 2022 respectively. I also accompanied Obasanjo to the State House, Aso Villa, Abuja and served his administration for eight years.