By Ayo Oyoze Baje
The most immediate source of disconnect between Nigeria’s wealth and poverty is a failure of government at the federal, state and local levels” – Hillary Clinton (2009)
The poem titled, ‘Our Children’s Anthem’, was written by yours truly and published by the Nigerian Herald back in 1988, sincere concern was raised over the quality of life of the upcoming generations of Nigerians, if the political leadership did not get it right, as a t that time.
By Olu Fasan
Outrageous! How dare you say the United Nations should help run elections in Nigeria, a sovereign state? That’s how some will react to this intervention. But leaving aside the fact that countries often seek United Nations electoral assistance, what’s truly outrageous and utterly shameful is that Nigeria, so-called “Giant of Africa”, cannot conduct free, fair and credible elections, something less endowed African countries do routinely and successfully.
This week, on October 1, Nigeria turned 64 as an independent nation. Sadly, it’s 64 years of sham elections and hollow democracy. As John Campbell and Matthew Page said in their book, Nigeria: What Everyone Needs to Know, “massive election rigging has been characteristic of Nigeria since independence”.
By Luka Danboyi
The self-immolating tendency for people to be indifferent to situations in which they are not directly involved seems to be playing out in the debacle in Rivers State. Curiously, there are people who are enjoying the political drama between Governor Siminalayi Fubara and his predecessor-cum-godfather, Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT.
There is no question that the vast majority of Nigerians are inured to the shenanigans of a disoriented political elite that hardly reckons with the plight of the people. Only such a situation would produce the present economic nightmare afflicting a country so richly endowed that, less than 50 years ago, other countries were visiting to understudy its impressive developmental effort and to borrow ‘seeds’ for their agricultural revolution.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
When I came home on Saturday, August 31, 2024 to meet my wife, Chioma, lying on the bed with bloodshot eyes, I was alarmed. When I asked what the problem was, she retorted, “Check your phone.” She accuses me of bad telephone etiquette – not reading text messages and responding timeously – with a warning that if I don’t change, sooner than later, I would miss out on an information that needed urgent attention. From the tone of her voice, I had a hunch that foretold day may have come.
I quickly checked my phone and froze. “My mother is no more,” was her pithy message at exactly 4.01pm, more than five hours before I came back. I was shocked because we had spoken to the old woman the previous day and she was not only in high spirit but also, typically, prayed for everyone. There was no premonition whatsoever which explains why the news hit me like a thunderbolt, even when we all knew that at her age, she was at life’s departure lounge.
By Charles Okoh
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) may have with recent events, proven to those who never believed in its abilities to properly prosecute financial fraud offenders without bias, that it has outlived its usefulness. An anti-graft agency that seems only out to diligently hunt and prosecute small fries while bungling high-profile cases involving men and women of means certainly cannot provide the much desired check on economic and financial crimes that hold this nation hostage.
*Tinubu and Bello
At the outset of the agency, incidentally under Nuhu Ribadu, who is the current National Security Adviser to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, there were at least some attempts to prosecute high-profile cases. Even though it was argued that ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo and succeeding presidents after him, have been using the agency to persecute political enemies but it was still not hopeless as it currently is.
By Jane Uyi Orobosa
As far as many people are concerned, the declaration of the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Monday Okpebholo, as the winner of the Edo State gubernatorial contest on Sunday, September 22, was simply a fait accompli and not the outcome of an election. For them, it was long predetermined. All that happened was working from the answer to the question by shameless national institutions. An unmitigated travesty of electoral contest.
It is an open secret that before the election, an alleged viral video of Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu, while canvassing votes from would be delegates in the 2023 presidential election, allegedly vowing to hand over Edo State to APC as a sitting President, was repeatedly circulated. It was ostensibly to remind Tinubu, the institutions involved and the general public that there was an ‘existing pact’, or so it seems, to deliver Edo State to APC by hook or crook.
By Owei Lakemfa
Events of monumental proportions are happening in the world. The assassination of Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasarallah, may signal the commencement of all-out war in the Middle East.
Those who love conquest would
celebrate his elimination. Those who seek peace would recognise that his death
drives humanity closer to an avoidable war.
Since we all agree that we now live in a global village, we should be concerned about such events in the world. But Nigerians are not prepared for such a fall-out.
By Dele Sobowale
I didn’t come to look for money and exploit the situation; I came to work. I asked for the votes, and Nigerians gave them to me” – President Bola Tinubu, September 20, 2024.
Small correction is needed before getting to the heart of the matter. Nigerians gave candidate Tinubu 33 per cent of their votes; 67 per cent did not want him. INEC and the judiciary finished the job for him. Furthermore, no President has ever confessed that he was looking for money. But, why are they always far richer after than before going into office? To the best of my knowledge, Tinubu had no AIRBUS 320, even Tokunbo, before he became President. That costs a lot of money! One of the best attributes of great leaders is leadership by example
By Adekunle Adekoya
Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime. — Aristotle (384-322 BC).
The state of affairs in our dear country, Nigeria, as at now, is simply bothersome. When an Ijebu man is finding it difficult to afford garri, which he wants to soak in water and gulp down with either a piece of meat, a cutlet of fish or a handful of groundnuts, then there is a hell of a lot of things to worry about. Two weeks ago, I was at home, in Ijebu-Ode for the burial of an in-law. Returning after the affair, I detoured to the popular Oke-Aje Market, near the Moslem Praying Ground to buy garri, which I really can’t do without.
Fresh and Hot!
American book experts always tell us that Fall (Autumn) is usually the time when blockbusters hit the shelves...
Veteran journalist, eminent writer and public
relations expert, Kanayo Esinulo, has been under tremendous pressure
to give the world this book.
In Biafra, he worked closely with General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu at the Biafra State
House, and stayed with him as one of his closest aides in exile in the Cote
d’Ivoire. He saw everything at very close quarters, including all the details
of “the years in exile and the deft moves that led to Gen Ojukwu’s return to
Nigeria in 1982.”
I can’t wait to devour this long-awaited book which will be
presented to the public in November … and, then, bare my mind in a
review...
Everybody needs to read this book...
Press Release
Achebe Masterworks Announces Development Deal with A24 for TV Series Adaptation of Things Fall Apart
Published in 1958, Things Fall Apart established African literature on the global stage and remains the most widely read African novel, with over 30 million copies sold and translations in more than 60 languages.
By Olu Fasan
Last week, I wrote about the dire economic consequences for Nigeria as a petrostate almost solely reliant on oil and gas exports. This week, I want to address another aspect of that intervention: the climate impacts of Nigeria’s deepening commitment to burning fossil fuels.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
I had very instructive discussions with two A-list Nigerian politicians before and after the Edo State governorship election; the first being on Wednesday, three days before the poll. Both men have held positions of immense responsibility in government both at the state and federal levels.
The first politician dismissed those who believed that given the pedigree of the 18 candidates and sophistication of the Edo electorate, the odds favoured the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, candidate, Dr. Asue Ighodalo, as unrealistic.
By Emeka Obasi
Genocide does not happen in one day. It is triggered by individuals with skewed minds raging with hate and spewing evil through their speeches, body language or pen. Ahmed Bako should prepare for summons by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Bako, who taught History at the Usman Danfodiyo University Sokoto used what should have been his Valedictory Lecture but was tagged the institution’s 50th Inaugural Lecture to descend on the Igbo. He painted them as Diaspora in Kano, killers of Sardauna, and separatists, whose aim from the beginning was to use education to dominate.
By Nick Dazang
Apart from an army of voluble commentators holding successive governments to account and speaking truths to them in the most parliamentary and patrician fashion, Nigeria is blessed with scores of irrepressible elder statesmen.
Whenever matters come to a head and Nigeria teeters at the brink of precipice, these statesmen weigh in with their thoughts. They intervene by way of statements or well calibrated pronouncements. Sometimes they do so by authoring scathing epistles. Some of these statesmen, such as Chiefs Gani Fawehinmi and Anthony Enahoro and Dr. Tai Solarin have departed this sinful world.
By Richards Ibe
The ex-Governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello, who handed over to the current governor of the state, Usman Ododo in January this year after his two terms of four-years-tenure, has consistently been in the news in the past eight months.
It has been from one drama to the other bordering on his stewardship and
how he handled the affairs of the state under his tenure.
Bello, who was alleged to have defrauded the state to the tune of N84 billion during his tenure, have done everything in and out of the books to avoid his trial spearheaded by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
By Ugoji Egbujo
The glory has departed. In the Obasanjo era, politicians dreaded the EFCC. When Ribadu was at the helm, the EFCC didn’t do tales by moonlight. Obasanjo and Ribadu were not saints, but against corruption, they barked and bit. Under their watch, the Eagle would have broken its beak and neck rather than allow this Bello-Ododo charade. It’s getting messier. The EFCC looks castrated.
How then does Tinubu seek to renew hope if his government cuddles the most high-profile political criminal suspects so shamelessly.
By Ochereome Nanna
Nyesom Wike, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, must be feeling on top of the world right now. He has successfully retrieved the structure of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Rivers State from Governor Siminalayi Fubara.
By Olu Fasan
The latest foreign trade data show that Nigeria recorded a trade balance of N6.52 trillion in the first quarter of this year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS. Expectedly, President Bola Tinubu seized on the figure as evidence that his economic reform is working. Given that the positive trade balance significantly reversed the negative balance of minus N1.4 trillion recorded in the fourth quarter of last year, one should cut Tinubu a slack. After all, a trade surplus, any trade surplus, is better than a trade deficit!
However, dig deeper, there’s little to gloat about: for nothing has changed in the structure of Nigeria’s export trade. Crude oil exports, at N15.5 trillion, account for 80.8 per cent of the total exports. If you add other petroleum oil products, including natural gas, at N1.9 trillion or 9.92 per cent, oil and gas represent 91 per cent of Nigeria’s total exports. Thus, non-oil exports, at N1.8 trillion, account for a minuscule nine per cent of Nigeria’s total exports. Surely, then, Tinubu’s economic reform has done nothing to change the structure of Nigeria’s export trade, which remains almost totally dominated by crude oil and natural gas.
By Tony Onyima
On Friday, September 20, 2024, Omalicha Radio 91.1 FM, Owerri, a beacon of independent development broadcasting, will celebrate its first anniversary. Founded by the seasoned journalist and editor, Ms. Angela Agoawike, the station has become a critical platform for community empowerment and sustainable development, especially in the heart of Owerri and beyond.
As we mark this milestone, it is fitting to reflect on the significance of the station's achievements and the role it continues to play in the landscape of communication, community development, and the bridging of critical divides.
