…As search to recognise and reward Nigeria’s extraordinary children begins
Dufil Prima Foods Ltd, makers of Indomie Instant Noodles, on Thursday May 9, officially announced the commencement of the 16th edition of its corporate social responsibility initiative, the Indomie Heroes Awards, the nationwide search exercise that seeks to identify, recognize, celebrate, and reward the positive and heroic efforts of by children aged 15 years and below.
By Ugo Onuoha
In light of the challenges facing the Igbo today in Nigeria, the last thing that the beleaguered people should have to contend with is a fractionalised socio- political umbrella body. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what Ohanaeze Ndigbo has been grappling with for some years. And it seems the situation is deteriorating rather rapidly.
The Igbo who are the only large, in terms of population, group of people who are indigenous to Nigeria [a fuller exposition on this another day] have been facing existential threats. The threats to emasculate and possibly annihilate the Igbo have been on for the better part of a century. And evidence abounds.
By Kenneth Okonkwo
On 1st March, 2023, Prof Yakubu Mahmood, Chairman Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) at about 4:30am, while most Nigerians were asleep, proclaimed Bola Tinubu as winner of the presidential election held on the 25th of February, 2023, in apparent disregard of the laws and rules of collation of results which he made for himself and for INEC.
He even boasted that there will be a big television screen revealing the electronically transmitted election results for the whole world to see to confirm and corroborate the manually collated presidential election results which he will be announcing. He failed woefully and deceitfully announced presidential election results without following due process he made for himself, and blamed technical glitch for failing to obey the laws. Till date nobody has been held responsible for the glitch that purportedly occurred that day. The people in charge of the systems then have been said to have been handsomely rewarded with promotion.
By Casmir Igbokwe
Last week, when I wrote that this government lacks a human face, I never knew that more harsh policies were in the offing. If not that President Bola Tinubu is a Muslim, I would have thought that his other name is Zaccheus. The biblical short man called Zaccheus was a tax collector, deeply hated by the people. Although the first name of the executive chairman of our Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) is Zaccheus, he is innocent of the recent taxes the Federal Government imposed on Nigerians.
The most recent one is called cybersecurity levy. According to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), all money deposit banks, mobile money operators and payment service providers will soon begin to deduct 0.5 per cent on electronic transactions in line with Section 44 (2)(a) of the Cybercrimes (Amendment) Act, 2024. The levy is to be remitted to the National Cybersecurity Fund (NCF) administered by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA).
By Ugo Onuoha
Yes, he is. A bonafide Igbo for that matter. After all, he was a two term governor of Ebonyi, one of the five states in the south east of the country. And south east is the core of the Igbo nation. It really does not matter that some elements in Ebonyi state do not really see themselves as Igbo.
There are many dialects of the Igbo language. Sure. But there is something common in the dialects- almost all Igbo people understand and comprehend themselves no matter the dialect they speak. However, there is a particular part of Ebonyi state who, when they speak their dialect, the typical Igbo person from outside their community will never make out any meaning from their words. This assertion is not designed to exclude or make any part of the south east less Igbo.
By Casmir Igbokwe
Former Ekiti State Governor, Ayo Fayose’s brother trended on the social media recently. The outrageous amount of money he pays as electricity tariff every week was the crux of the matter. Some Nigerians apparently thought he was joking in the video where he claimed his weekly electricity bill was N100,000. And this is for three rooms. He said he used to spend this N100,000 in one month.
Fayose is not alone. All electricity consumers on Band A category are feeling the same pinch. Simply put, what they used to spend on electricity in one month is now spent in one week. What happened was that the Federal Government increased electricity tariff for these Band A customers on April 3, 2024. From N68 per kilowatt-hour, the tariff went up to N225 per kWh, an increase of over 200 per cent. These B and A customers reportedly have electricity at least 20 hours in a day. Customers on Band B, C, D and E do not have to worry about the increase in tariff for now as they are not affected in this pilot phase. The plan is to co-opt them into the tariff-hike prison within a period of three years.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu,
Nigeria’s president since May 29, 2023 is a man of many parts, talented in
multiple areas of life. As someone who is able to do many different things
almost effortlessly, Nigerians perceive him as a superman – the “ideal superior
man of the future,” as described by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, the 19th
century German philosopher in Thus Spake Zarathustra, “who could rise above
conventional Christian morality to create and impose his own values.”
Notwithstanding, it has become glaring in the 11 months of his presidency that what is still unknown about him far outstrips what people thought they knew. For instance, Nigerians didn’t reckon with his ability to do a disappearing act on them. Again, how could anyone have imagined that Tinubu had the ability to cast a spell on an otherwise vibrant people and turn them into zombies so much so that even in the face of egregious conducts, the people would rather relapse into portentous silence?
By Adekunle Adekoya
Penultimate Wednesday, the Lagos State Commissioner for Environment and Water Resources, Tokunbo Wahab, on Wednesday, said the state government he works for has discovered dwellings under the Dolphin Estate Bridge, Ikoyi, where tenants pay N250,000 annual rent.
According to the commissioner, the under-bridge
dwellings, which he called apartments in his post on the matter on his X
(former Twitter) handle, had 86 partitioned rooms, sized “10×10 and 12×10”.
He added that the enforcement team of Lagos State’s Ministry of Environment and Water Resources had successfully removed all structures, including a container utilised for various illegal activities, from beneath the Dolphin Estate Bridge.
By Chidi Odinkalu
“Fools at the top would cause
damage to any system not to talk of the fragile institutions of a fledgling
democracy.”—Charles Archibong, A Stranger in Their Midst: A
Memoir, 97 (2021)
In the last week of April, 2024, Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Olukayode Ariwoola, co-convened and chaired a “National Summit on Justice” in Abuja, Nigeria’s federal capital. Addressing the participants “with a profound sense of responsibility”, the CJN invited them “on a journey of comprehensive reform to ensure that justice is not only dispensed but also perceived to be dispensed fairly and impartially.” More specifically, he asked them to identify “gaps and inconsistencies that hinder the efficient administration of justice.”
No issue is as afflicted with such gaps in knowledge and inconsistencies of practice and yet so dispositive of outcomes in justice administration as judicial appointments in Nigeria. Yet, it is the one area about which little is public and debate is discouraged.
By Ike Abonyi
“It’s in the character of a very few men to honour without envy a friend who prospered.” – Aeschylus
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Envy and jealousy drive political rhetoric in Nigeria, particularly among handicapped Igbo politicians. David Umahi, the former Ebonyi State Governor and current Minister of Works, has been mistaking envy towards Peter Obi, the Labour Party's presidential candidate for normal political behaviour. The minister's recent outburst against Ndigbo is a desperate and disingenuous effort to impress his political allies and gain favour from the Aso Rock Villa.
By Olu Fasan
Recently, the International Monetary Fund, IMF, lamented Nigeria’ low tax revenues. Two weeks ago, when launching the IMF’s Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa, the Fund’s Director for Africa, Abebe Selassie, said: “For a country like Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, with all those development spending needs, we think it is problematic that the tax revenue to GDP is only 8-9 per cent when it should be a lot higher.”
A few years ago, in its 2019 Article IV Consultation with Nigeria, the IMF made the same point. It said Nigeria suffered from “low tax mobilisation”, adding: “The revenue base is simply too low to address the current challenges”. Compared with the sub-Saharan African average of 18.6 per cent, Nigeria’s 8-9 per cent is minuscule and truly shocking. Like the IMF, successive Nigerian governments have fretted about it.
By Adekunle Adekoya
As a people, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves when it comes to electricity. Since 1972 when the Electricity Corporation of Nigeria, ECN, was merged with the Niger Dams Authority to create the National Electric Power Authority, NEPA, millions of Nigerians have been born and have died with their dreams of living in a country with reliable power supply unrealised.
By Banji Ojewale
Most of us agree with Chinua Achebe, Africa’s late literary colossus, that Nigeria’s chief post-Independence headache has been the challenge of leadership.
He said in his 1983 book, The Trouble with Nigeria: “The trouble with Nigeria is simply a failure of leadership… The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are hallmarks of true leadership… Nigerians are what they are only because their leaders are not what they should be…’’
By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu
Josiah Majebi is the fifth chief judge of Kogi State (in North-Central Nigeria) in four years and the fourth to exist almost entirely in the pocket of the state governor. He has been in office as substantive chief judge since the beginning of February 2023, having acted in that role since 26 June 2022, when his predecessor, Richard Olorunfemi, retired. Henry Olusiyi served in that office for just under seven months from the end of June 2020 until January 2021. Sunday Otuh, who succeeded him, spent eight months in office before retiring in September 2021.
The last Chief Judge of Kogi State who attempted to hold that office with dignity and independence, Nasir Ajanah, paid with his life, un-mourned and exiled from the state. He was the second Chief Judge of the State to be politically lynched by the government of Kogi State in one decade.
By Dele Sobowale
Cash scarcity reduces demand for some basic commodities; transporters bring less; prices escalate on account of reduced supply and demand plummets even further – ad infinitum
“Love and business and family
and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man
is starving” – O’Henry,
1862-1910.
Sometime ago, your Vice President called Nigerians, who registered their displeasure about the continuing devaluation of the Naira, “clowns” for not supporting the government now when things are tough. Shettima has forgotten that he begged for the job. If he can’t stand the heat, he should resign. But, he cannot be insulting his employers. He was joined by one Felix Morka, the National Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who apparently has no relatives, friend or town’s men feeling the pain of hunger. The two, like all the “Yes-men and women” of your administration, are leading your government down the path which destroyed Buhari and others before you.
By Tonnie Iredia
Nigeria’s anti-corruption agencies, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission EFCC and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission ICPC were established some two decades ago by the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo. The motivation was to set up strategic platforms to deal decisively with the evils of corruption which were generally accepted by all to be at the apex of the nation’s collective malaise.
Nigerians were also aware that their country had been labelled as fantastically corrupt by the international community. This seems to explain the decision of each successive President to make strong statements to end corruption either during his electioneering campaigns or even after having been elected. At a point, the poetic declaration was: ‘if Nigeria does not kill corruption, corruption will kill Nigeria.’ Put differently, corruption is the most notorious bane of Nigeria’s development.
…Donates packs of Indomie Noodles to the disabled, orphans, widows, the elderly, orphans, pregnant women
Dufil Prima Foods, makers of Indomie instant noodles, in partnership with the Human Rights and Grassroots Development Society, extended its goodwill to the shores of Abeokuta, Ogun state, at a product distribution event on Tuesday, 24 April, where cartons of Indomie noodles were distributed to the underprivileged, as part of its ongoing efforts to support families worst hit by the ongoing economic hardship.
By Olu Fasan
The images of Godwin Emefiele, flummoxed as he is chaperoned by state security agents from custody to custody, from courtroom to courtroom, contrast sharply with those of the man who, as governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, bestrode, until just a year ago, the Nigerian financial and banking world like a colossus; the man who daringly wanted to run for president while still CBN governor.
It is a classic case of how life or fortunes can turn in a dime. But one must also wonder what former President Muhammadu Buhari, ensconced in his cosy home in Daura, Katsina State, is thinking as he watches the man whose behaviour he aided and abetted being treated like a common criminal. Why has Buhari abandoned Emefiele? Indeed, why is Buhari free and Emefiele not?
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
It is a settled axiom: All bullies are cowards. Hurting and scaring those who are weaker is not bravery and despite their braggadocio, bullies only prey on the weak using aggression and intimidation to cover up their own feelings of inadequacy and fear.
Former Kogi State governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, has proven that axiom, once again, to be eternally true. Who would have ever thought that the self-acclaimed ‘White Lion’ will ever be afraid of anything or anybody? In the eight years that he superintended over the affairs of Kogi State, he carried on like an Emperor.
By Steve Osuji
Conquered Territory, Burial Industry: It’s all quiet over there in Imo. The quiet of a conquered people. People move about sombrely, not unlike sheep. Death stalks the land quite proactively and burial ceremony is the most thriving business. The emerging economics of burials becomes avenues for one big meal and a quaff of beer in many communities. Not much more seems to go on in Imo State these days than misery, ailments, certain demise, then burials... and more burials.
Meanwhile, our dear governor, Hope Uzodinma, seems to abide in
the clouds these days. He’s grown more chubby and rosy-cheeked; his visage
looking supple and lush like the tenderloins of a nubile damsel.
He's on top of his game as governor of a vassal territory. Now and then, Abuja sends him on serf errand around the southeast – an emissary to a state burial or to the more tacky task ‘managing’ difficult election.
