2023 Presidential Election: Can We Get It Right?

 By Chiedu Uche Okoye

Why is Nigeria, a country endowed with humungous human and material resources, still trapped in the cocoon of   economic and technological quagmire and backwardness?  Why has she continued to bring up the rear on the global ladder of countries’ development? The answer to the above question is not far-fetched. The military incursions into our politics had dealt a severe and devastating blow to our democratic growth and national development. And we have not got it right, politically since Nigeria became a sovereign country in 1960.

 

The departing British imperialists laid the foundation for the egregious culture of imposition of national leaders on the populace in Nigeria. They surreptitiously helped Alhaji Tafawa Balewa to become our Prime Minister in 1960. Was Tafawa Balewa better than Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Rt. Hon. Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, who were intellectual giants and political juggernauts? Not surprisingly, Alhaji Tafawa Balewa failed to unite the Peoples of Nigeria and set the country on the path of sustainable economic growth and irreversible technological development.

Niger Republic As Nigeria’s 37th State

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Constitutionally, Nigeria has 36 states and a Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja. But under President Muhammadu Buhari’s watch, the country seems to have added one more state – Niger Republic – making it 37. The 37th state, ironically enjoys more federal attention than some of the country’s bona-fide states. Nigeriens enjoy more rights than most Nigerians.

It may sound absurd that the president of a country has greater affinity for another country than his own. But that is one of the incongruities that the Buhari government has thrown up in the last seven and half years.

*Presidents Buhari and Bazoum of Niger Republic 

It didn’t start today, though. As military head of state in the 1980s, Major-General Buhari allegedly supported a Nigerien, Ide Oumarou, rather than a Nigerian, Peter Onu, for the post of the Secretary-General of the then Organisation of African Unity, OAU, which is now African Union, AU.

An editorial comment in the Vanguard Newspaper of February 3, 2015 put it thus: “Between 1983 and 1985, Peter Onu of Nigeria was Acting Secretary-General of the OAU. At the 1985 Summit in Addis Ababa, statesmen like Julius Nyerere, President of Tanzania, lobbied for his election as substantive Secretary-General. However, there was a major stumbling block to Peter Onu’s candidature: his Head of State, Muhammadu Buhari, was campaigning against him.

“… In the election of the OAU Secretary-General in 1985, Buhari voted against Nigeria and for Niger instead. He secured the election of Ide Oumarou, a Fulani man from Niger; as opposed to an Igbo man from Nigeria. By so doing, Buhari became the first and only Head of State in the history of modern international relations to vote against his country in favour of his tribe.”

Impeaching Buhari? History Will Deliver A Harsher Verdict!

 By Olu Fasan

Two weeks ago, some senators gave President Muhammadu Buhari six weeks to tackle the worsening insecurity in the country or face impeachment. Speaking after a closed-door session, the Senate minority leader, Phillip Aduda, said: “So, we agreed that we will give the President an ultimatum failing for which we will move to give an impeachment notice.”

Of course, the threat to impeach President Buhari is not a credible one, and the presidency wasted no time in poopooing it. In a statement, the presidency dismissed the threat as “performative and babyish antics”. Femi Adesina, President Buhari’s senior media adviser, later described those behind the impeachment threat as “the minority of minorities” and accused them of giving “flippant ultimatums”, saying “it’s bravado”!

*Buhari 

In his characteristic condescension, Adesina was making the point that, with both Houses of the National Assembly controlled by the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, the dissident legislators lacked the numbers, two-thirds majority of all members of each House, to impeach the President. True. But that would change if APC members in the National Assembly put country before party, as British Conservative Members of Parliament did recently when they removed their own errant leader and prime minister, Boris Johnson, from power. 

Battling With Terrorism Under Gen Buhari

 By Segun Ige

NO doubt terrorism has taken different shades and sizes under the Buhari administration, ranging from political, economic and even administrative. The difficulty arising from nipping in the bud these manifestations of terrorism derives from the overshadowing insecurity challenge immersing the polity, which is a fatal distraction to nation-building and national development after over 60 years of independence.

*Buhari 

The threat of terror – particularly targeted towards the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, together with Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai, is most arguably the hallmark of danger and recklessness of any nominal democratic entity. 

A pathetically torturous video of Abuja-Kaduna train abductees, which poses a psychological pressure on Buhari, has precipitated a certain Peoples Democratic Party’s minority caucus in the Senate – championed by Senator Philip Aduda – to cast impeachment threat on Mr President – “All we are saying: #BuhariMustGo.”

INEC’s Daylight Disenfranchisement Of Nigerians

 By Bolanle Bolawole

The supposedly Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has ended the registration of (new) voters despite the fact that there were hundreds and thousands of would-be or intending voters milling around voter registration centres or points all over the country. We saw pictures of agitated Nigerians struggling to get registered.

*INEC Chair, Yakubu

Many slept at the registration centres. Others got there very early in the morning and left late in the night, doing that day-in day-out; yet, they failed to get their names on the voters’ register. I experienced the INEC shenanigans at its Agege office in Lagos where prospective voters were directed to come as early as 4am to register and then return by 8pm to start the waiting, pushing and shoving battle! And no matter how early one got there, there were close to 50 names already on the make-shift register! And only 70 names, out of the hundreds milling around, were entertained per day!

Exposed: The Real Peter Obi!

 By Promise Adiele

Today, I am possessed by the spirit of exposure. Without let or hindrance, resistance or disputation, I surrender to the service of my fatherland to expose, perhaps in the process, educate the foolish and enrich the wise, nothing more. While exposing, I didn’t consult the Ifa oracle or Delphic oracle, both Yoruba and Greek prognostic divination essences famed for revelation. 

*Former Governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi (left), receiving The Voice Achievers Award 2014 from Mr. Joop Berkhout (right) for his outstanding example in Leadership and Governance at the Netherlands (pix by The Nation newspaper of October 20, 2014)

Exposure, that act of revealing the unknown, invades my conscious mind. It goes beyond the paralyzing mental hypnosis suffered by victims of religious ecstasy. I am fully aware and awake, with no hallucination, reverie, or phantasmal anecdote. I have no choice in the matter, therefore I must expose. Exposure is different from prophecy, the alter ego of prediction. While exposure reveals what exists but is not known, prophecy reveals what does not exist, therefore not known. Today, I am not predicting anything. Every presidential aspirant must be exposed, nothing hidden. No guesswork. No half-truths. 

Will Northern Politicians Do To Tinubu What They Did To Wike?

 By Rotimi Fasan

The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has been spending the last couple of few weeks fence-minding the relationship between their presidential flagbearer, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, and his closest rival and challenger at the convention that produced the presidential flagbearer, Nyesom Wike.

*Buhari and Tinubu

The winning side of the contest initially acted like a short visit to Wike, whose hope of being selected as the winner’s running mate was not only dashed when Ifeanyi Okowa, Delta State governor, was picked over and above him, but was also portrayed as patently unfit for any position outside the one he presently holds as governor of Rivers State- the Atiku team acted as if snubbing Wike in the manner it did required nothing more than an advertised short visit of party members to his home to soothe his bruised ego.

This it promptly did and went about its way planning for the next phase of the presidential contest while its foot soldiers went about with their narratives of triumph, highlighting the unmarketability of an Atiku-Wike ticket on account of the real and perceived inadequacies of Wike that are too well-known to be repeated here.

Is Buhari For Nobody And For Everybody?

By Wole Oladapo

I have read quite a number of analysts of convenience claiming that President Muhammadu Buhari’s response to APC’s defeat in the just concluded Osun State gubernatorial election lends some credence to his claim to be for nobody and for everybody at the same time. Those analysts missed out on the proverbial tortoise that Buhari is, the one that named himself Mr Everybody to have to himself the food served to all visiting animals at a heavenly feast thrown to assuage their hunger. It takes careful observers to correctly read Buhari’s statement as “I am for nobody and I am for myself,” because he, like the tortoise, is Mr Everybody. Like that tortoise, Buhari chooses when to be for nobody and for everybody, absolutely to the gratification of his ego.

*Buhari 

In a necessary detour, let me foreground Buhari’s incurably self-serving nature with a case, the strike action embarked upon by university unions, ASUU, SSANU, NASU, and NAAT. Public universities across the country have been shut for over five months, and the president was unruffled by it. He set up a committee to re-negotiate an already re-negotiated agreement and still refused to accept the recommendations of his own team.

Dark Clouds Over The Nigerian Economy

 By Dakuku Peterside

Rome is burning, and Emperor Nero and Roman elites are busy revelling in gladiator rendezvous and despicable hocus-pocus with the empire’s future. The leadership in Nigeria is playing Nero, and the Nigerian elites are side-tracked by the macabre dance of preparing for the next elections.

Whilst neglecting the harsh truth that millions of Nigerians’ backs are broken by the harsh tripartite economic realities – hyperinflation, especially food; massive unemployment; and energy crisis occasioned by the Russian–Ukrainian war in a post-COVID 19 economy. The political class seems indifferent to the crumbling economy and collapsing living standards of Nigerians.

These days the average Nigerian may be an economic illiterate or may not be interested in economic indicators, but almost all Nigerians know by impact and experience that the economy’s health is in shambles. You do not need to be an economist to know that a loaf of bread you bought for N500 in June sold for N700 by the end of July or that cost of 10kg of cooking gas almost doubled in a space of four months from March to July 2022.

Nigeria’s State Of Hopelessness

 By Ohima Agans-Oliha

When you totter around, you eventually stumble in your objectives or constitutional responsibilities and so you have no one else but yourself to blame.  If the National Assembly had remained rigidly fixed on its assessments of the capabilities of ministerial candidates at the inception of the current regime, obvious competence and capability flaws would have been discovered, hence forcing the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari retd., to amend his ministerial choices. But now, an outmanoeuvred NASS finds itself grovelling and crawling to an empowered executive arm.

*Buhari 

The NASS is essentially now unable to exert its independence and unable to fulfil one of its more important constitutional obligations.  The political dilemma now becomes a matter of spectacular interest for everyone, if in fact, NASS can actually enforce its impeachment threat against the President under the longer standard process, or a quicker and shorter route.

Take The War To The Terrorists!

 By Nick Dazang

By dint of the legion of dastardly and wicked attacks by terrorists of all hues over the past seven years across the country, leaving in their trail deaths and mayhem, the chickens have been coming home to roost. Only, and unfortunately, no one hearkened to them. Not even President Muhammadu Buhari whose solemn remit it is to protect and defend the country.

If anything, his aloofness, his complacency and smug indifference suggest, not to a few Nigerians, that he may have been at one with the terrorists. The government, under President Buhari’s watch, treated the terrorists, at best, as untouchables and at the worst with kid gloves. This is even as it dealt in draconian fashion with others in their ilk.

The government -until now? – has been slow and tardy in decimating the Boko Haram terrorists such that the terrorists became emboldened. And such that ordinary folks were tempted to conclude that government had betrayed them and that it was in cahoots with the terrorists.

Sam Omatseye’s Death Wish

 By Obi Nwakanma

What was Sam Omatseye thinking? That he could traduce an entire Igbo, and get resounding applause for his hackery? Everyone knows that Sam Omatseye does a hack job in contemporary Nigerian politics, and since he could not fit in properly at the Denver Post, where he did the last bit of real journalism inside him, he went to the dark side.

*Peter Obi

He came home to Nigeria to roost, and he became what the ‘Mad Maxim’ – mad only because like his kinsman ‘Jadum’ celebrated in the poetry of Okigbo, he tells prescient truth – called a “Kept Man.” Reckon with that, dear reader: Sam Omatseye as a “Kept Man.” The image is so very apt, if indeed it means that a kept man is one in whom and through whom a pervert patron relieves and performs all kinds of pervert fantasies. I’m still trying to discern some reason inside Omatseye’s death wish – his distinct form of professional self-immolation.

Ndigbo: Caught Betwixt And Between In Nigeria - 6

 Which Way, Ndigbo? (2)

By Ichie Tiko Okoye 

Before those whose regular trademark is to argue rather than debate topical issues showcase their prosaic apoplectic malady with vitriolic abuses and infantile ad hominem arguments’ let me hasten to declare right from the outset that I do not claim to be the repository of all wisdom. Igbo elders say that wisdom is like a goatskin bag with each individual carrying his own. A similar adage posits that there are more than one way to travel from Onitsha to Abuja.

*Ichie Okoye

And while it remains an incontrovertible fact that there are indeed many ways of travelling from Onitsha to Abuja, one would expect the rational traveller to diligently ascertain which of the ways would be most effective, say in terms of pricing, and efficient, say in terms of safety, comfort and duration. I’m hoping that that my piece elicits the same intelligent, robust interrogation.   

It bears repeating that while Ndigbo have remained giants in trade and commerce, we have pitiably regressed to Lilliputians in politics since the end of the civil war. It would appear that our proclivity for profitable commercial ventures with a short gestation have engendered a zero-tolerance for medium- and long-term strategic thinking. Everything has to happen ‘in-the-now’! 

Economic Implications Of An Unsafe Abuja

 By Cheta Nwanze

A country’s capital is the city where its national government is located. This location is usually carefully chosen and designed to offer the best impression and position for a nation’s government and people to connect optimally with citizens and visitors. Sometimes nations change their choice of capitals to get new ones that adequately serve these purposes and this was the idea behind the Nigerian Government moving the federal capital from Lagos to Abuja in 1991.

Thirty-one years later though, what we have is a situation where Abuja is dealing with a significant terrorist threat that began as a spate of armed robbery attacks on the outskirts of the Federal Capital Territory and recently manifested as prison breaks that had arrested terrorists and criminals being freed.

The situation should be shocking but it really isn’t. It has sadly been rather predictable and began with the regime of retired Major General Muhammadu Buhari responding to attacks on Northern minorities with a disdainful lack of concern that had many onlookers believing it was complicit in some way.

Nigeria, Going , Going…?

 By Magnus Onyibe

Imagine a man standing at the edge of a cliff and a demon is standing behind him wielding a bazooka firearm menacingly, with the intent to blow the man off the cliff, or simply just give him a kick from behind so that he would fall to his death. That in my estimation,(and l believe in the assessment of most Nigerians)is the dire situation in which our country and indeed our compatriots are currently trapped.

No matter, how government spin doctors try, they can no longer pull-the-wool over-our-eyes with the false claim that since Boko Haram is no more holding swathes of Nigeria’s territory in the north which was the case before 2015,terrorism has not only been highly degraded, but it is in the throes of death and technically defeated.

In my view, Boko Haram and ISWAP are no longer interested in holding territories where they could be engaged in conventional warfare with Nigerian army that has superior fire power with which it could be defeated in direct confrontations or conventional war.

Racism In South Africa: Why The ANC Has Failed To Dismantle Patterns Of White Privilege

 By Mandisi Majavu - The Conversation

One of the sources of social discontent in post-apartheid South Africa is the legacy of white racism. This toxic legacy is evident in racialised poverty and inequality. It is a historical fact that the economic prosperity of whites in South Africa is based on the racist exploitation and impoverishment of blacks.

*Ramaphosa

The long history of racism enabled white South Africans to enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world by the 1970s. In his new book, titled Can We Unlearn Racism? , Jacob R Boersema, a New York University academic, shows that by the 21st century white South Africans' “lifetime work-related earnings on average are four times higher than for Africans”.

Add to this corruption , rampant crime , frightening levels of gender based violence and failing political institutions : the outcome is a social horror show that produces misery for millions of black people. This is what former president Thabo Mbeki was referring to in his recent scathing critique of the governing African National Congress (ANC).

Nigeria: End The NYSC To Save Lives!

 By Luke Onyekakeyah

The reported death of a member of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), Chioma Eunice Igweike, who was allegedly abducted and later found dead with vital parts of her body missing has added to the long list of innocent and promising youths who have lost their lives on account of being called to serve their fatherland under the now lackluster NYSC scheme. There is no doubt that under the alarming and frightening insecurity situation, the NYSC scheme is an aberration, which ought not to be because it exposes youths to danger that pervades the entire country. No place is safe in Nigeria.

Government ought to have reviewed the scheme with a view to scraping it, given the highly volatile situation in the country. Besides, the conditions that warranted the establishment of the NYSC no longer exist. It is only for selfish reasons that the scheme is allowed to run because some top government officials are reaping huge benefits from it on the grave of those being killed. This is insensitive and unpatriotic, to say the least.

Reports say Chioma Eunice Igweike left her house on Wednesday, July, 20, 2022, for the three weeks orientation course at the Ogun State NYSC camp. Her friends and former course mates said the Federal Polytechnic Oko graduate was kidnapped and killed by suspected ritualists and dumped somewhere.

My Personal Encounter With Mr Peter Obi

 …I don’t need to verify

By Adim Williams

‘Go and verify’ has become a new slogan since the eventful emergence of the enigma called Peter Obi for the Nigerian presidential race. It’s not just a slogan but actually a new practice; a new culture. Before now, Nigerians used to take whatever politicians said hook, line and sinker. But not anymore.

*Gov Peter Obi inspecting flooded communities in Anambra State 

With Peter Obi’s  ‘go and verify’ challenge, most people now have their fingers on the phones and laptops to Google whatever claim any politician makes to confirm, to contest or to counter it. It’s a good development.

 It explains why the other presidential candidates now dread granting interviews, especially live interviews; so that their lies won’t be busted. However, some of us do not need to verify anything as far as Mr Peter Obi is concerned because, we had firsthand experience of his claims. Experience, they say, is the best teacher.

Nigeria: Writing Buhari’s Scorecard

 By Rotimi Fasan

The consensus among Nigerians across different parts of our country today is that President Muhammadu Buhari has failed both as a leader and a two-term president. His inability to deliver on his electoral promises to secure Nigeria, making it a safe polity for life and property aside food and job security in the wake of what Nigerians then thought was the demolition job of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP-led government of Goodluck Jonathan; fight corruption and relate with the people of Nigeria without fear or favour, in regard to religion, ethnic and gender identity- all of these have conspired to undermine his claim to a favourable place in history.

*Buhari

For a man who at a point enjoyed the unalloyed support and admiration of the vast majority of Nigerians from his part of the country, was accorded grudging respect from other parts on account of his apparent spartan lifestyle (which was seen as the appropriate antidote to the corrupt profligacy of the Jonathan years) and spent the latter part of his adult life aspiring to lead the country he once ruled as a military dictator for almost two years before he was ousted from power in a military putsch, this turn of events is without any doubt tragic. The more so it does not appear there is much the administration can achieve in the few months left before a new government comes into office.

President Buhari, indeed, has just about five active months, between August and February, left to ameliorate the harsh verdict of history. Not enough time to do much to say nothing of achieving a fundamental shift in opinion, expectations of Nigerians or his own capacity for any miraculous transformation in the state of the nation.

Everyone’s Obituary Is Inevitable

 Chuks Iloegbunam tells Sam Omatseye to cleanse his journalism 

*Peter Obi

 Some have called you foolish, dear Sam Omatseye. Others insist that you are plain stupid. There are those who hold you to be beneath contempt. Their howls of execration upon you are in reaction to your August 1, 2022 article entitled Obi-tuary. For me, however, you are a dear friend. Our friendship started in the 1980s at Newswatch magazine where both of us practiced journalism before you travelled to the United States for further studies.

 

It continued upon your return and strengthened to the point that, sometimes, you get the producers of your TV Continental programme to connect me to field questions live. Besides, living in different states, we often chat by telephone. I demonstrated our amity again last May when I was in Nigeria’s commercial capital for the Lagos International Book Fair. I phoned you and, within the hour, you were at my stand where we spent quality time reminiscing about the good old days and prognosticating on the future of our dear fatherland.

 

Armed with this handle of friendship, I have just the one advice for you: Be careful. It is in elaboration of this counsel that I write all that you read hereon. Please look back to the time of the Nigeria-Biafra war of 1967 to 1970. You will find that, military or civilian, none of the political actors of that era is still in a position to fight elections today. The final curtain long fell for most of them. Of the lot that remains, some have become vegetables, or are propped up with a suffusion of drugs or would not find their way to the loo unless hired attendants or swearing relatives point it out. Together with the handful that is still blessed with something close to robust health, they have one thing in common. They are seated, restless or restive, in various existential departure halls, clutching fitfully at their boarding passes and waiting for that inevitable voice that cannot be disobeyed, to announce their flights into past tense.