By Ejike Anyaduba
If there is anybody eager to rewrite history just to intone falsehood and malign a group of people, it is the squit called Reno Omokri.
It is not clear what informs his choice of being an ethnic profiler. But whatever his reason, be it complex(inferiority) or the need to generate traffic on his X handle (formerly known as Twitter), or both, one thing is certain he has chosen for himself an unenviable task that offers no good reward.
By Jideofor Adibe
In my last week’s column (Beyond the PEPT’s Judgement), I argued, among other things, that the Western brand of liberal democracy we currently practise does not, and cannot work in our type of society where the basis of even statehood remains contested.
By Abiodun Komolafe
There’s always a general tendency which is often ignored at the peril of governments; and that’s the fact that bad governance brings exposure. Of course, this exposure comes in all ramifications. When people get dissatisfied at home, they look abroad for succor. Human beings are like that.
By Chidi Odinkalu
On a Friday in July 2005, Bayo Ojo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, quietly absconded from work in an office in Victoria Island, Lagos, from where he functioned then as the president of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA. The next working day, a Monday, he turned up in Abuja as President Olusegun Obasanjo’s fourth Attorney-General in five years.
Less than three months after assuming office as Attorney-General of the Federation, on October 6, 2005, Mr. Ojo filed a five-count charge before the Federal High Court against Alhaji Mujahid Asari Dokubo, at the time the self-proclaimed leader of the Niger Delta Peoples’ Volunteer Force, NDPVF. Asari was also a leading member of the Pro-National Conference Organisation, PRONACO. The crimes charged included two counts of treasonable felony, two counts of running an unlawful society, and one count of publishing “a rumour…. which is likely to cause fear and alarm”.
By Owei Lakemfa
President Bola Tinubu on September 2, 2023 recalled all Nigerian career and non-career ambassadors across the universe from their duty posts. His action, he said, is to transfuse his renewed hope agenda into foreign policy and ensure service delivery to all. He, however, made two exceptions: the country’s United Nations, UN, Permanent Representatives in New York and Geneva.
Generally, foreign relations can be quite slippery, so an ambassador is the eyes and ears of his country. Therefore, his recall is a serious matter. But making two exceptions tells of the importance of both missions.
By Obi Nwakanma
I watched with extreme difficulty, and not insubstantial pain, the interview in Stellenbosch, South Africa, in which the poet, playwright and Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, very painfully, tried to subvert the truth about the Nigerian election, by claiming that the Labour Party “came third” and knew that they “did not win the election.” That the Labour Party had become a regional movement. That Peter Obi and the party leaders were trying to push young people into the streets to protest.
Here, let us reproduce Soyinka in full: “One party took over the Labour Movement and then it became a regional party…my own organization has a monitoring unit, and so I could say categorically that Peter Obi’s Party came third, not even second! And that the leadership knew it. But they wanted to do what we call in Yoruba, ‘Gba Jue!’
By Ike Willie-Nwobu
The United Nations pauses on August 21 annually to remember and pay tribute to victims of terrorism. Terrorism represents what is arguably the greatest evil of the modern world. This tragedy of creed and cruelty has made the world riotously unsafe as things stand. Today, more than ever, its victims are deserving of reflection, attention, action, and tribute.
In Nigeria, the effects of terrorism are as stark as they come. In April 2014, a bomb went off in the Nyanya Area of the FCT. About 15 people were killed and many more injured. In April 2011, a bomb went off at the UN office in Abuja killing 21 people and wounding about sixty. In December, 2011 while worshipers looked with eager expectation at Christmas that was just a few hours away, a bomb went off, killing dozens and leaving many others injured.
By Ugoji Egbujo
Professor Soyinka is a genius. Besides his exceptional creativity in drama and poetry, he has fought oppression like an attendant spirit. However, in the last few months, he has spent more time proving that he is human than engaging the demons of corruption and injustice. Before Tinubu, his friend ran for president, Soyinka would dwell on the credibility of the electoral process and dream of mass participation.
And if INEC spent two years seeking the authority to transfer polling unit results electronically to enhance transparency and eliminate substitution of results at collation, Soyinka would insist it was non-negotiable. And if INEC ran into a suspicious glitch on election day, leaving room for mischief at collation centres, Soyinka would worry about the integrity of INEC and lampoon the credibility of the process.
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.
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”.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
