Big For Nothing Nigeria

 By Tony Eluemunor

When Egypt and Ethiopia, but not Nigeria, were the two African countries invited to join the BRICS bloc last month, many Nigerians were not surprised. Our leaders did not even betray any anger that Nigeria was not among the six new countries invited to join the BRICS bloc. 

*Tinubu 

On 27 August 2023, a Nigerian newspaper, the Business Day published a story: “What is Nigeria missing by its non-membership of BRICS”? Its answer: “But why will Nigeria join the bloc, if one may ask? The bloc, comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa has since its formation as BRIC in 2009 and later BRICS in 2010, with the addition of South Africa, proven itself as formidable force against the overbearing and manipulative influence of the West”.

Slavery Is Not An Option

 By Pat Utomi

Beginning from age 17 as an undergraduate at the University of Nigeria I have rallied resistance against injustice.

My early cry for doing things right peaked with my calling out students at UNN to protest police killing of University of Ibadan Student, Kunle. Given the emotions of the times when UNN students lost three years as they watched friends and family die like chicken while UI students were in class during the Civil war was a hard sell. But we joined forces with Bassey Ekpo Bassey and founded the Students Democratic Society because we prized human solidarity.

Ending The Anguish Over NIN

 By Adekunle Adekoya

The National Identification Number, NIN, is a project of the Federal Government embarked upon to achieve a number of objectives, with the establishment of the National Identity Management Commission, NIMC, to actualise the purpose. An enabling law, the NIMC Act 2007, was enacted to give legal life to the commission.

There actually had been a previous effort through the Department of National Civic Registration, DNCR, which achieved very little. According to information on the website of the NIMC: “The National Identity Management Commission, NIMC, established by the NIMC Act No. 23 of 2007, has the mandate to establish, own, operate, maintain and manage the National Identity Database in Nigeria, register persons covered by the Act, assign a Unique National Identification Number, NIN, and issue General Multi-Purpose Cards, GMPC, to those who are citizens of Nigeria as well as others legally residing within the country.”

When Will Buhari Be Quizzed Over His Stewardship?

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Clapping back at the former Minister of Justice, Mohammed Adoke, who recently criticised former President Muhammadu Buhari for running “the most incompetent government we have ever seen in this country,” Mallam Garba Shehu dismissed him as corruption personified.

*Buhari and Tinubu
Adoke was scathing in his criticism, not only labelling Buhari the most incompetent president Nigeria ever had and will never have again, but also said his ruination of Nigeria was enabled by a set of political morons he personally assembled. That was a total take down.

PEPC Judgement: The Verdict Can Destroy Presidential Democracy In Nigeria

 By Olu Fasan

Last week, I put everything aside to watch the ruling of the Presidential Election Petition Court, PEPC, from start to finish! With rapt attention, I picked up the minutiae of the extremely detailed verdict. But after the 13-hour-long ruling, I was utterly despondent about the future of presidential elections in Nigeria. 

*The 2023 PEPC Judges 

Let me start with two general observations. First, the judges worked to a predetermined answer. Because they couldn’t bring themselves to invalidate the election of a sitting president, unprecedented in Nigeria, they found every reason to affirm Bola Tinubu’s election. Courts of first instance are fact-finding courts that seek to get to the bottom of a matter and do justice. But the PEPC used every conceivable procedural technicality to reject virtually all the facts and witnesses presented by Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar.

Kayode Fayemi: A Witch’s Confession

 By Ochereome Nnanna

I have noticed the tendency of elements of the Tinubu political family to confess the perfidy their group commits in the process of “grabbing, snatching, and running away” with power. In my new book, Buhari: Tinubu: How They Snatched and Shared Power, Pa Ayo Adebanjo claimed that Bola Ahmed Tinubu, as a governorship aspirant of the Alliance for Democracy, AD, in Lagos in December 1998, disrupted primaries in some of his opponents’ strongholds, which led to the abortion of the governorship primaries in those areas.

*Fayemi

The guidelines for the primaries said the exercise should be cancelled wherever there was a crisis. Tinubu capitalised on this loophole and defeated his closest rival, Funsho Williams, whose name had already been submitted by the state chairman of the AD, Alhaji Ganiyu Dawodu, as the winner.

How Nigeria Can Break From The Poverty Trap

 By Banji Oyelaran-Oyeyinka

The SDGs, among others seek to reduce poverty, improve access to health care and education, mitigate the effects of climate change and attain food security by 2030. We are not meeting the key Goals.

Africa is unable to feed itself. We found during COVID-19 that we cannot produce a large percentage of drugs we need. The region relies on imports for food and will remain so unless there is an urgent paradigmatic shift in the structures of African economies. Food imports cost Africa US$55 billion a year but this could double to $110 billion by 2030. Many African cities will double in size by 2050, increasing demand for food and other infrastructure and services.

Confronting The Doctors’ Brain Drain

 By Cosmas Odoemena

It’s no longer news that Nigerian doctors are leaving the country in droves for greener pastures. According to the Nigerian Medical Association, of the 75,000 Nigerian doctors registered with the NMA, more than 33,000 have left the country, with 42,000 left to take care of more than 200 million people. It’s not only doctors that are leaving: nurses, physiotherapists, radiographers, pharmacists, medical laboratory scientists, etc. But this piece is focused mainly on doctors.

Brain drain among doctors is not a new phenomenon. In Nigeria, it has been ongoing for years. But it has never jolted the Nigerian healthcare system as it has now. This is because the number of doctors leaving has risen astronomically. Doctors are voting with their feet. Specialists, medical officers, retired doctors, and those fresh from medical schools are all leaving. In final-year medical school classes, migrating abroad after qualifying is what is trending.

Help! Tribunals Are Hurting Democracy

 By Andy Ezeani 

Let no one deceive anyone; the processes and structure of democracy in Nigeria are presently in grave danger. There is no exaggeration in talking of a democracy in intensive care unit (ICU) at the moment. The danger is clear, present and escalating by the day.

Unless there is a quick, drastic containment of the excesses that have seized the democratic process in the country, no special gift of clairvoyance is needed to predict an imminent debacle. Smothering the pervasive voices of discontent and disapproval at the widening corrosive abuse of the system, as seem to be the strategy of the powers that be, can last but for a short while.

Presidential Election Judgement And Implications Of The 37th State

 By Sola Ebiseni

The  judgements of the Presidential Election Petition Court just delivered last week, precisely on Wednesday, September 6, 2023 are expectedly the predominant and trending issue in the Nigerian polity. We do not intend to do an  intensive analysis of the judgments here today considering the fact that our final position is circumscribed by the decisions of organisations to which we subscribe in membership, principles and ideologies.

It, however, suffices to say that the judgements, as one, is a landmark in its most damaging revisionist dimensions for our laws generally, election jurisprudence in particular and for the Nigerian polity and politics. It did not require much literacy from anyone listening to the delivery of the judgement to decipher from the very beginning that the petitions were really undergoing butchery rather than any forensic legal analysis that may lead to justice.

Losers, Winners And An Orphaned Nation

 By Owei Lakemfa

Nigerians last week had no democratic choice but to have their ears on the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal verdict. It was not that they hoped the result would assuage their hunger or reduce banditry which has made a steady inroad in the most protected city, Abuja.

They could as well have switched off their television sets as all networks for over half a day covered the verdict live. But for many, it was the fear of the verdict. No matter where it swung, it was the beginning of wisdom; the spectre of violence was all over.

The Cursed Continent: Thoughts On African Leadership

 By Dan Agbese

It was the dark continent. It is the cursed continent. Thus, did it happen that Africa, perhaps the luckiest continent in the world with unbelievable natural resource endowments, and a population of 1,466,649,930, accounting for 17.89 per cent of the world population, is the wretched of the earth.

It is a beggar continent, dependent on handouts from the other continents for the survival of its 54 nations and their increasingly impoverished people. 

Babysitting France In Africa

 By Owei Lakemfa

France is a problem. In Africa, it is a man-child fighting hard to retain its feeding bottle. The United Kingdom-based Socialist Labour organised a virtual conference of Africans to discuss this and the current crises in Africa, with an emphasis on the Francophone countries. Co-ordinator Tokunbo Oke, in commenting on the theme, “The Niger Coup: Imperialism and the Crisis of Francophone Africa”, lamented that to discuss, the African people have to surmount the obstacles of various European languages as they are either Anglophone, Francophone, Iberiaphone, or Luxophone.

Ndongo Samba Sylla, a Senegalese development economist and co-author of the book Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc, noted that the recent coups in West and Central Africa occurred in the same Francophone Zone and that they are all landlocked. He said the repeated coups in these countries show they have weak institutions and remain underdeveloped.

The Failure Of Democracy In Africa

 By Chiedu Uche Okoye

The rashes of successful military takeovers in some African countries signpost the failure of democracy on the African continent. Before the Caucasoid race brought democracy to Africa, the many different kingdoms in Africa had their pre-colonial types of government.

Then, we had the Dahomey kingdom, Benin kingdom, Oyo Empire, and others. Their respective pre-colonial types of government throve, ensuring and guaranteeing orderly succession of pre-colonial governments in Africa. The evolutionary trends of our pre-colonial governments were stymied by the white people’s introduction of democracy to the African people(s), however.

Nigeria’s New Jobs ‘Data’: NBS Makes Itself A Laughingstock!

 By Olu Fasan

The news came like a bolt from the blue. Nigeria’s jobless rate dropped from 33.3 per cent to 4.1 per cent in August, declared the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS. It was a meteoric rise in employment that called for national celebration. Except that it was a lie, a total fabrication. Nothing changed in Nigeria’s depressing unemployment situation. The sharp ‘drop’ from 33.3 per cent to 4.1 per cent only came about because the NBS changed the methodology for measuring unemployment. It was a shameful statistical sleight of hand!

Every statistical body must crave public confidence in the data it produces, based on the cardinal rule that data must be ethically sound and stand up to scrutiny. But the NBS breached this rule with jobs data that are utterly misleading, suggesting that Nigeria’s jobless rate magically came tumbling down from 33.3 per cent to 4.1 per cent. But nothing magical happened. It was a human contrivance. The NBS said the methodology that produced the jobs data was “in line with international best practices”, saying it was “recommended” by the International Labour Organisation, ILO.

PEPT Verdict: Judiciary As Undertakers Of Nigeria’s Democracy

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

On Wednesday, September 6, the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal, PEPT, delivered judgement in the petitions filed by Atiku Abubakar and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Peter Obi and the Labour Party, and the Allied Peoples Movement, APM, challenging the declaration of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, APC, winner of the February 25 presidential poll.

The five judges that delivered the PEPT judgment 

It is instructive that the ruling came exactly on the day the respondent, Bola Tinubu, marked his 100th day in office as President. It is also worth noting that as the judgement was being delivered in Abuja, Tinubu who ordinarily should be in the eye of the storm, was in far-away New Delhi, India, where he is representing Nigeria on an observer status at the summit of the group of 20 most industrialised nations, G20, the premier forum for international economic cooperation, on the invitation of the incumbent chairman, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India.

Preventing Military Coups In Africa: Attention, Nigeria!

 By Tonnie Iredia

Two recent military coups in neighbouring Niger and Gabon have heightened discussions in Nigeria of the possibility of military intervention in the politics of the nation. The feeling appears so palpable considering the commonality of causative factors which over the years always influenced military rule in Africa: societal restiveness, poor economy, failed elections, pervasive corruption, extravagance of politicians and the helplessness of civic society accentuated by the disappearance of the middle class.

In Nigeria, the division of society into two classes only; that is those who have everything and those who have nothing is more visibly felt than anywhere else. This has left many people to pray not just for something to change but for it to come through the efficacy of a military coup. The recent decision of the military hierarchy in Nigeria to formally dismiss such undemocratic undertones in the land is instructive.

The Comedy In The Tragedy Of Ali Bongo’s Ouster

 By Rotimi Fasan

It has never stopped raining for some of Africa’s fragile governments and reconditioned democracies. It’s been pouring. There’s a big scramble by some of the continent’s sit-tight leaders to protect their autocratic stools. Panic as well as unease is also spreading to other parts of the continent where election outcomes are either in dispute or the winners are yet to consolidate their position. From Uganda to Rwanda, Zambia to Nigeria, the story is the same. Yet the realities may not exactly be the same – at least that is the case with Nigeria where the presidential election tribunal for the February 2023 presidential election is getting set to deliver judgement.  

*Bongo 

Only days after television images showed him with smug imperturbability casting his vote in the flawed election that returned him to power after 14 years in the saddle, President Ali Bongo emerged, in a room in his presidential palace-turned-prison, asking for help and a way out of the dungeon in which he had suddenly found himself trapped by the very people he hired to protect him.

Why Nigeria Needs State Police Urgently

 By Victor Anya

The recent declaration of emergency on food by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu can’t be achieved since there is large scale insecurity in the country. It would have been better for Mr. President to have declared emergency on insecurity instead of emergency on food. This is because without security there can never be food security since farmers can’t go to their farms for fear of being killed by blood thirsty criminals.

There is no magic wand that will guarantee security in the country if state police is not established to complement the efforts of the Nigeria Police Force. Successive governments have downplayed this very crucial demand by thoughtful Nigerians on frivolous excuses.

Ali May Be Gone But The Bongo System Survives In Gabon

 By Chidi Odinkalu

Citizens of Gabon, the small Central African country and former bastion of French colonialism in the Congo Basin, broke out in spontaneous celebration at the news of the ouster of President Ali Bongo Ondimba, on August 30, 2023. This is the 22nd coup attempt in Africa since 2013, and the 11th successful coup across eight countries since Zimbabwe’s soldiers sacked President Robert Mugabe in 2017.

*Ali Bongo makes first public appearance after suffering a stroke 
This is also the third coup attempt in Gabon’s history and the first to succeed. The coup began on the fourth day of a nation-wide curfew accompanied by a shutdown of the airspace, borders, and the internet and shortly after Gabon’s electoral commission announced under cover of darkness that President Bongo had won another seven-year term in elections in which he allowed no observers.