By Tonnie Iredia
The Independent National Electoral Commission INEC, says it is set to conduct a governorship election in Ondo state as scheduled for next Saturday November 16, 2024. The commission has also given firm assurances that all would be well. Whether or not people believe the electoral body is not easy to tell.
By Dele Sobowale
“A society can be judged by the way it treats its children” – Nelson Mandela, 1913-2013.
Few Nigerians now harbour any hope that this country would produce a Mandela among its present crop of old politicians. And, if the young member of the House of Representatives, from Abia State, exhibiting delirium of power, as well as all the young Ministers, just sacked, represent the next generation of power seekers, then, we might have to wait until those in nursery school grow up.
By Dele Sobowale
I am delighted to announce here today that just three days ago, the African Development Bank board of directors approved $100 million for the establishment of the Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Bank for Nigeria.” — Dr Akinwunmi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank for Africa, AIDB, Friday, October 18, 2024
All the people present at the event, when the AfDB fulfilled a promise made in June last year, must have given a thunderous ovation. To some extent, there is a need to cheer that a global bank is still willing to invest in Nigeria’s future. All is not gloomy; there is still some hope.
Book Reviewer: Cosmas Omegoh
Even in death, fingers keep pursuing General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the leader of the defunct Biafra Republic. And that is largely because of the pivotal role he played during the 30-month Nigeria/Biafra war (1967- 1970).
Even more than five decades after the war ended and a decade after Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, the Ezeigbo Gburugburu's death, anything and everything said about him is adjudged emotive and emotional by many, including those who have no cause to be so. That is why this factory-fresh book, Ojukwu: Exile, Diplomacy And Survival, written by Kanayo Esinulo, the General’s aide in exile is sure to be of immense interest.
By Adekunle Adekoya
For some time now, the detention and arraignment of under-age protesters by the Police dominated conversations at home and abroad.
In August, a nationwide protest against the harsh economic policies preferred by the federal administration led by President Bola Tinubu began, tagged #EndBadGovernance. Largely driven by social media conversations, organisers sought to mobilise the populace to register their displeasure with the way things have turned and are still turning for them. So, August 1-10 was billed as protest days. Before the day, government machinery went into overdrive, with massive resources committed to ensuring that the protests did not hold.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
On Wednesday, November 6, Donald Trump, the 45th U.S. President, pulled off what, to all intents and purposes, is an extraordinary political comeback – an exceptional feat that has catapulted him once again to the enviable position of the president-in-waiting. On January 20, 2025, he will take another oath of office as the 47th U.S. President.
When Americans went to the polls on Tuesday, November 5, to elect President Joe Biden’s successor, the odds weighed against Trump. Here is a president who was impeached twice during his presidency, refused to accept electoral defeat four years ago, sparked a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol before vacating the White House and was subsequently convicted of felony charges.
By Olu Fasan
The International Monetary Fund, IMF, and the World Bank have long struck a raw nationalistic nerve in Nigerians. Romantic patriotism drives the nationalistic urge to reject any perceived IMF/World Bank ‘interference’.
Several years ago, as a magazine publisher, I interviewed Dr Kalu Idika Kalu, then finance minister under General Ibrahim Babangida’s regime, when he stopped over in London on his way to the IMF/World Bank meeting in Washington. I asked him why Nigerians detested the multilaterals. “I think in Nigeria we’ve tended to be isolationist,” he said. Nigerians, he implied, loathed foreign institutions telling them what to do, even in the face of a self-inflicted crisis.
By Tonnie Iredia
Many Nigerian scholars are agreed that a major problem of their nation is that the constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria 1999 was not freely authored by the people. Rather, it was imposed by the military which had cause at certain periods of history to intervene in the politics of the country. For this reason, a number of provisions in the constitution are unacceptable to some Nigerians.
However, what stands out clearly as the people’s contributory negligence to the imperfection of their constitution is that many of us further complicate the situation by adding to the same constitution, many unacceptable things that were originally not included by the drafters of the document. A good example is seen in the way many leaders who are not covered by the immunity clause enjoy it without qualms.
By Dele Sobowale
“If they go about solving the problem this way, how many more problems will they have created by the time they are through” -James Baldwin, 1924-1987, VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ, p201, available online.
By any objective measure known to adults globally, what we have on our hands with regard to fuel problem is a fiasco. You cannot ask any of those in control of our fate in this regard a straight question and receive a reliable answer. Two Presidents, the Minister of Petroleum, the Minister of State for Petroleum, the Minister of Finance, the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, the Debt Management Office, DMO, the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, all the regulatory commissions and agencies of government. The conspiracy of falsehood started since the Dangote Refinery was nearing, but still far from, completion in March 2023.
By Obi Nwakanma
Culturally, the East of Nigeria has two things going for it: one is a contiguous and compact geography that is very culturally connected, and the second is a very enterprising and driven population, with no sense, until very recently, of a domineering monarchical spirit.
By Dan Onwukwe
Nigeria is very much looking like a horror movie that many people troop in to watch in a cinema. Every passing day, news about the country, and the conduct of government, its officials and some of its key institutions, could break the human spirit. This is because, things that are considered abominable and utterly wicked have become the ‘new normal’ in the country.
A friend of mine called me last weekend from Canada. His voice was shaking. I thought he has lost someone. But it was a different kind of news. I asked him what has gone wrong. He said everything: “Even from afar there’s darkness at the edge of Nigeria”, he said, as his voice began to tremble. He added ,”if the Nigeria Police could arraign scores of hungry-protesting kids for alleged treason, the government must have lost its soul, and the leadership gone astray”. He ended the call with this cryptic comment, “this is how autocrats begin”.
By Kenneth Okonkwo
I attended one high profile birthday celebration in Abuja sometime ago. In that celebration, some physically challenged persons were invited too. I picked interest in one pretty lady among them. My attention was drawn to her when one young guy wanted to chat her up but she wasn’t replying.
When the guy noticed that she was using sign language, the guy apologised to her and their leader and confessed to the leader that he didn’t know that she was deaf and dumb. The young girl was mad when she perceived what the young guy told their leader. She quipped, the mere fact that I am deaf, doesn’t imply that I am dumb. It dawned on me that if you call a person dumb, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the person is temporarily unable or unwilling to speak, it means the person is showing a lack of intelligence.
By Owei Lakemfa
The primary reason a group of Nigerians had a meeting in Abuja with embassy and trade officials from Vietnam on Wednesday October 30, 2024 was to explore business opportunities for cooperation and development.
By Adekunle Adekoya
Since May 29, 2023, Nigerians have been struggling with unrelenting rises in the cost of living following peremptory removal of subsidy on petrol by President Bola Tinubu.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
I am worried that Nigerian leaders have captured the Nigerian state, taking beleaguered citizens hostage in the process and yet carrying on as if all is well.
I am even more worried that the grossly abused citizens, afflicted with the debilitating Stockholm syndrome, rather than standing up to their abusers are actually coping, having over time developed positive feelings toward those who have persistently treated them cruelly, violently and unfairly in the name of leadership. But I am most worried that with the way Nigerian politicians are carrying on, sooner or later something will give and we will all be worse for it.
By Olu Fasan
Recently, Indermit Gill, the World Bank’s chief economist and senior vice-president for development economics, wrote an article in the Financial Times urging Nigerians to embrace the economic reforms of their president, Bola Tinubu. “The country’s elites must forge a political consensus in support of these reforms,” he said.
Like every seasoned policy expert, Gill knows that without a political consensus, no reform, especially a radical one, can succeed. However, what he failed to say is why there is no political consensus in favour of Tinubu’s economic reforms. Yet, addressing that point is, in part, key to understanding why Tinubu is so unpopular, and why few embrace his “reforms”.
By Olusegun Adeniyi
Many Yoruba people voted for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar or the Labour Party candidate, Mr Peter Obi, during the 2023 general election. This despite knowing that the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, is their kinsman.
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It is on record that Tinubu lost Lagos State to Obi and Osun State to Atiku. It is also on record that people from other ethnic groups voted for Tinubu. In fact, a few of his supporters outside the Southwest were almost violent in their endorsement of the man who is now our president. Former Niger Delta militant leader, Mujahid Asari-Dokubo is one of such people.
By Ugo Egbujo
Tinubu has become an unabashed chauvinist. It’s a hard watch. It doesn’t bode well for national unity. Tinubu’s critical appointments have become the most lopsided in the history of this country.
A Yoruba is the police Inspector General. A Yoruba is the EFCC Chairman. A Yoruba is the Head of the DSS. A Yoruba is the Attorney General. A Yoruba is the Chief Justice of the Federation. And Tinubu, a Yoruba, is the President and overseer of all instruments of coercion. The entire criminal justice system is in the hands of one ethnic group.
By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
This Fiction Called Nigeria: The Struggle for Democracy by Adewale Maja-Pearce; (Verso, UK, 6 Meard Street, London; Verso, US, 388 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn, New York; 2024; 185pp)
Adewale Maja-Pearce does not pull his punches in his prolific engagements in public intellectual pugilism. He packs quite a punch, and comes strongly recommended by such eminent worthies as Jeremy Harding of London Review of Books who writes thusly: “Adewale Maja-Pearce is Nigeria’s most dependable journalist.”
There is no denying the fact that Nigeria as a country is in dire straits. It is as though Africa’s most populous nation is forever thrust in suspended animation, especially after the heavily flawed 2023 presidential elections. Incidentally, Adewale Maja-Pearce starts out with these words: “This book was written against the background of the 2023 elections.”
By Tonnie Iredia
The death a few days ago of Professor Humphrey Nwosu, the outstanding Nigerian who supervised the famous June 12 1993 presidential election no doubt reminded many Nigerians of how best to organize an election. Although the winner of that election was never formally declared, everyone knew who it was and across the globe, the contest was unanimously accepted as the best Nigerian election in history. The accolade is yet to change.
Those who knew Nwosu’s strength of character especially those of us who worked with him on the elections must have been elated for the first time hearing President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in a tribute describing Humphrey Nwosu as “as a bold and courageous administrator as well as a patriot and national asset,” who played a major role in shaping Nigeria’s democratic journey. The description was simply apt.
