Fubara: Governor Only In Name

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

In trying to understand the curious conduct of Siminalayi Fubara since his reinstatement as the governor of Rivers State after serving out a six-month suspension slammed on him by the headmaster of Nigeria’s democracy, President Bola Tinubu, and his class captain, Ezenwo Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, I have had to take a second look at the term, “Stockholm syndrome.”

*Fubara and Wike 

An AI overview of the phrase explains that in August 1973, four employees at the Kreditbanken Bank in Stockholm, Sweden, were held hostage by a robber named Jan-Erik Olsson and his accomplice, Clark Olofsson, for six days. During the standoff, the hostages developed an emotional connection with their captors and became afraid of the police. One of the hostages, Kristin Enmark, famously stated during a call with the Swedish Prime Minister that she trusted her captors but feared the police more.

The Return Of Fubara, Nigeria’s Most Diminished ‘Governor’

By Olu Fasan

Siminalayi Fubara returned as “governor” of Rivers State last week, six months after he was magisterially removed from office by President Bola Tinubu, following his declaration of an emergency rule in the state. Fubara returned with his tail between his legs, utterly humiliated.

*Fubara, Wike and Tinubu

Henceforth, anyone who refers to Fubara as governor must put the word in inverted commas. Why? Well, truth be told, he’s not a governor in the true sense of the word. He owes his existence in office not to the people of Rivers State, but to President Tinubu, the National Assembly and Nyesom Wike, the former Rivers State governor, now Tinubu’s self-aggrandising and untouchable minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja.

A Beautiful Afternoon At The Office In September 2025

 

Ugochuwu Ejinkeonye (September 2025)

A Word On Nigeria’s Deadly Enemies

 By Banji Ojewale 

Our leaders are our deadliest enemies.

 

Not given to altruism, these leaders don’t also subscribe to the law of the power of example. This is the golden rule insisting that rulers aren’t graded great until they exhibit selfless, sacrificial and Spartan conduct that sparks same virtues in the citizens. But our leaders, elected, selected or ‘dictated,’ believe in the precept of the example of power. Here, the goal is, as you grab power, you must dig in, you must live in it and flaunt it and extend its frontiers like you’d be in its embrace forever.

 Buhari and Tinubu 

They invest their all in it, nursing it with a lusty affection that outlaws competition or regard for other existential concerns. They bequeath a depressed economy after fattening their personal bank accounts and acquiring more property than they had at the point of entry. They exploit the led and desecrate their sacred office. They arrange a superannuation that glides them into a lifetime of cloying affluence and luxury.

Politicians As Nigeria’s Worst Headache!

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Now, let’s face it. Despite all the empty (and, often, very exasperating) noise about being driven by patriotism and “desire to serve my people” that usually saturates the atmosphere at each election season, a careful, conscientious search on the political terrain can only yield about less than one percent (and one is being really generous here) of aspirants motivated solely by genuine desire to improve the lives of the citizenry and make society a better place. 

For the majority, the sole incentive is the golden opportunity politics offers them to gain access to government coffers and cart away as much free money as they could possibly grab before their tenures elapse. This is just the raw, plain truth – a simple case of organized banditry! Indeed, every politician in Nigeria is fully aware that most Nigerians know this. But they always bank on what I would like to refer to as the “collaborative passivity” of the citizenry. 

Ghana Celebrates Nkrumah's Birthday More Than A Century After

 Last week, on September 21, 2025, the world marked the 116th posthumous birth anniversary of the founding President of Ghana, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah. Today, we recall a piece written in 2020 by BANJI OJEWALE to celebrate the great Pan-Africanist and liberation fighter when Ghana marked its 63rd year of Independence. Enjoy it.

 The independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa. – Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972) First President of Ghana.

 

February 24 slid into history again a couple of days ago, hardly remembered by many as the 54th anniversary of the military coup that toppled Kwame Nkrumah as Ghana’s president and temporarily halted the greatest anti-colonial move of the era. The putsch came just when the Black Star nation was preparing to celebrate nine years of liberation from its imperial lords in London. The rest of the free world across Africa and beyond, which had been thrilled by Nkrumah’s bold experiment in post-colonial sovereignty were also eager to felicitate with the Ghanaians.

Fake Titles Are Not Nigeria’s Problem

 By Chiwuike Uba

A group of Nigerian academics has launched a petition against the misuse of “Dr.” and “Professor” titles. Their outrage is directed at quacks, diploma mills, and honorary degree holders who prefix their names with academic distinctions they did not earn. They call it a national disgrace.

But titles are costumes, not character. As the saying goes, the robe does not make the monk. Societies are built by conscience, not by prefixes. When the conscience collapses, credentials become nothing more than decoration. That is why this entire debate feels like a misplaced priority. Nigeria’s real disgrace is not fake titles; it is what the so-called legitimate holders of those titles have done with them.

Addressing Ethnic Profiling And Tribal Tensions In Nigeria

 By Klistivivi Ogunlana

On July 27, 2024, a popular X (formerly Twitter) user, @Lagospedia, tweeted a disturbing message. The user claimed the upcoming #EndBadGovernance protest, scheduled for 1 to 10 August 2024, was an Igbo-led attack on Lagos State. As a result, @Lagospedia demanded that all Igbos in Lagos and other southwestern states vacate the region within 30 days.

This is not the first time such a threat has been made. In 2017, the Arewa Youth leaders also issued a 90-day ultimatum for Igbos to leave northern Nigeria. These ultimatums violate the constitutional provisions that guarantee Nigerians’ rights to move freely and reside in any part of the country. If these actions continue, ethnic tensions could escalate into large-scale violence, forced displacements, and encourage genocide. 

Tinubu De-Markets Nigeria With His Penchant For Overseas Travels

 By Olu Fasan

Earlier this week, President Bola Tinubu’s spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, announced that the president had cut short his two-week vacation in France and returned to Nigeria “to resume official duties”. Given that Onanuga previously described the president’s trip to France as a “working” holiday, one must wonder why Tinubu stopped working remotely from France.

*Tinubu

Truth be told, President Tinubu was wrong to embark on that trip in the first place. Whatever forced him to truncate his stay in France already existed before he left this country: Nigeria was in a dire strait; insecurity was overly uncontrollable, acute poverty and hunger were dehumanising ordinary Nigerians, and the government was rudderless and bumbling. By choosing to travel abroad under those dreadful circumstances, Tinubu behaved like Nero who fiddled while Rome burned!

Charles Soludo Vs. Peter Obi

 By Emeritus Professor T. Uzodinma Nwala 

I wish Prof Charles Soludo would unwind and assert his energy in a different and more positive direction. The question is not how we made him, because he knows how he was made. 

Obi and Soludo

The question is that Peter Obi’s path does not need to cross his own if he has enough intellectual and moral self-confidence!

After Soludo won the Anambra Governorship election, I immediately went to his house in Enugu in the company of some members of the Alaigbo Development Foundation (ADF) to make one request of him.

The Godfathers Who Own Nigeria

 By Stephanie Shaakaa 

Since 1999, Nigeria has called itself a democracy. Every four years, Africa’s most populous nation lines up to vote, and the rituals of elections are performed with fanfare. But beneath the ceremonies lies another truth. Nigeria wears the clothes of democracy but lives under the rule of godfathers.

We pretend to elect leaders, but what we really do is ratify the decisions of men who pull strings in the shadows. In Nigeria, ballots don’t choose, godfathers do.

This is the Godfather Economy. Politics here is not about ideas, competence, or vision. It is about who owes who, who kneels to who, and who dares not bite the hand that feeds.

While Nigerians Starve, Their Governors Clap At Jets

 By Stephanie Shaakaa

There was a time when the word governor carried weight and governors carried themselves with dignity.

The men elected in 1999, for all their faults, would never abandon their states just to line up at an airport and wave at a departing president. The men of the First and Second Republics, who truly won elections without leaning on presidential whims or the “magic” of electoral bodies, would have considered it beneath them. They commanded real followership, drew their legitimacy from the ballot, and would have laughed at the thought of waving at a president’s jet like secondary school prefects.

Abike Dabiri-Erewa: When Duty Is Betrayed, Price Must Be Paid

 By Elsie-Bernadette Onubogu

It is no hyperbole when I say the internet erupted in a storm of tweets this past week. Unlike the cliché – ‘a perfect storm,’ there was nothing perfect in the sense of the word about this storm.

*Abike and Tinubu

That tweet on the ‘X’ platform soon found its way to other social media avenues in particular – WhatsApp. On the train to Ontario from New York, I realized I had missed several calls due in part to unstable network going through nature’s wooded scenery that allures me into taking the train to Canada rather than flying.

Upon investigation, I realized the raison d’etre for the storm was ‘the endorsement of a hate speech’ by a public officer appointed to represent and be the face of Nigeria in the Diaspora. Yes, there was outrage on the internet, and I keyed into that outrage. I did so because, in sharing and forwarding a tweet that was not only derogatory, bigoted, discriminatory, dehumanizing and denigrating, that Nigerian officer betrayed the sworn duty to promote respect, unity, and the dignity of every Nigerian irrespective of ethnicity, gender, class, religious belief or age.

Chinua Achebe’s Booker Award, Nigeria’s Glory

 By Farooq A. Kperogi

(This article was first published in 2007...)

The recent international recognition of the literary excellence of our peerless literary icon, Chinua Achebe, and the equally richly deserved crowing of the prodigious literary prowess of U.S.-based, up-and-coming novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have been such comforting news especially for those of us living outside Nigeria who have had the unpleasant burden of explaining (actually, in most cases, explaining away) to our friends all the bad international press we’ve had in the last couple of months.

*Achebe 
Since May this year, every well-informed American I have met has asked me about our outrageously fraudulent elections and, of course, about the kidnappings of foreigners in the Niger Delta. These two issues seem to be the only topics people here know about Nigeria when they strike up a conversation with you. I don’t blame them, though. Their news media has had a rather unhealthy fixation with these stories these past few months.

 

Then first came the cheering news that one pulchritudinous and immensely talented 29-year-old Nigerian lady called Adichie has won the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction for her book, Half of a Yellow Sun. (Incidentally, Chinua Achebe was also only 28 years old when he wrote his magnum opus, Things Fall Apart). She trounced many better known and more established women writers to win the prize. Although news of her win didn’t do much to divert attention from the negative publicity of Nigeria in the Western media, it did provide a comforting alternative subject matter to discuss with people about Nigeria here.

The Senate’s Constitutional Overreach In The Case Of Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan

 By Obiageli Oby Ezekwesili

Memo To The Nigerian Senate, Judiciary And Fellow Citizens: Democracy Dies When Laws Become Weapons and Lawmakers Become Serial Lawbreakers.

*Natasha and Oby 
Six months have passed since the unconstitutional suspension of Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan on March 6, 2025. The Senator, representing the people of Kogi Central Senatorial District, was suspended following her allegation of sexual harassment against Senate President Godswill Akpabio.

These six months have witnessed an unprecedented assault on constitutional principles, judicial authority, and the very foundations of our democratic institutions. Rather than transparently investigate the allegation against the Senate President, an errant political class has used this opportunity to taunt citizens on how successfully they have captured the Nigerian state, perpetrating unlimited abuse with zero accountability or fear of consequences.

Abike Must Resign, Or Render Unreserved Apologies

 By Steve Osuji

Though the comment elicited pure, undiluted outrage one, dithered in commenting about it initially.

*Tinubu and Abike

First, Igbo hating seems like a norm for Abike; a trait she cannot help. It seems to have lodged in her DNA like shrapnel. A number of times, in her unguarded moments, her true colours would peek from the horizon like the rising sun. 

Second, some Yoruba elements have taken Igbo baiting, bashing and hating to a new level in the last decade.

Consider the lineup: a paramount monarch of Lagos, the daughter of the sitting president, the current first lady in Aso Rock and the President's chief spokesman, among others, all have publicly and brazenly made hate remarks against the Igbo people of the southeast of Nigeria. 

Crying For The South-East

 By Casmir Igbokwe

Mr. Nduka Ozor is a fine gentleman from Agwa Community in Oguta Local Government Area (LGA) of Imo State. When he took the microphone to speak about the unlawful killings in his community, everybody listened attentively. Midway into his presentation, he broke down in tears.

International human rights organization, Amnesty International (AI), invited Ozor and some other stakeholders to share their experiences about the atrocities in the South-East region of Nigeria. In a report titled “A Decade of Impunity: Attacks and Unlawful Killings in South-East Nigeria”, AI documented senseless killings, torture, enforced disappearances and arbitrary arrests at the hands of gunmen, state-backed paramilitary outfits, vigilance groups, cult groups and criminal gangs in the South-East from 2021 to 2024. The report was launched in Lagos on Thursday, September 4, 2025.

Banditry, Its Politics And Practitioners

 By Owei Lakemfa

One of the major challenges of Nigeria since colonial times had been corruption. But President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has now proclaimed its death. Corruption is gone! Futuristic laser technology must have been used to carry out such a comprehensive and professional operation on corruption in the body polity of Nigeria.

So sophisticated that we Nigerians were not even aware we were on anesthetics until the operation had been successfully carried out. There also did not appear to be casualties in the final battle that ended corruption; no corrupt persons sent to jail, and no announced recovery of the trillions looted. It is nothing short of a 21st century miracle.

The Fulani And Nigeria

   By Obi Nwakanma

In the 1950s and 60s, the national canard was “Igbo domination.” The Igbo were everywhere in the establishment. They were at the forefront of the anticolonial Nationalist movement. Dr. Azikiwe, himself Igbo, had created the first real National newspaper chain, which had “imagined the nation” into being.

It was clear that Igbo dominated the very process of dissemination which made them visible, ambitious, and as the departing British used to say, “clever.” Yes, those “clever Igbo” who had pushed for a new nation to rise out of colonial control, and were prepared to roll up their sleeves, and build a modern, multi-ethnic and prosperous nation, and had spread across the nooks and carnies of Nigeria, as postmasters, teachers, railway workers, Chemists, treasury clerks, traders, artisans, and so on, seemed too ambitious, and too daring for many other Nigerians, who had settled to more sedentary cultures. The Igbo were always cross-border, boundary breakers. They found land, and they settled. They created new thriving communities. 

Nigeria 2027: If I Were Goodluck Jonathan

 By Tonnie Iredia

For the second time in this column, I am today attempting to reach out to one leader who has had the special privilege of serving as a first citizen of Nigeria. The first time I tried it was in May 2012, when this column featured an article titled “Nigeria: If I were General Buhari.”

*Jonathan
What influenced my write-up at the time was a statement credited to Buhari that the consequences of the rigging of future elections in Nigeria would be catastrophic. Buhari was correct, an election is a game not a war. It has its rules that every responsible citizen ought to respect. In Nigeria, it has never been so, it is still not so; and the probability of a change in the nation’s unwholesome political culture is hard to see.