Nigeria: Between Hope And Hopelessness

By Dan Amor

In 2015, during the Presidential campaigns, the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) then in opposition, promised Nigerians heaven on earth. They said they would turn Nigeria to a new paradise in Africa. Boko Haram would be defeated in six weeks. The pump price of petrol would be brought to forty Naira per litre. Naira, the Nigerian currency would be made to be at par with the American dollar. Primary and secondary schools students would be provided free food daily. Unemployed Nigerians would be given a welfare stipend of five thousand Naira (N5,000) each every month.

 

                                                                                  *pix: cnn

The list included over 150 promises, too numerous to be accommodated here. More than sixteen months of the APC in the saddle, Nigerians are told to be prepared to make sacrifices, that the change must begin with them. Boko Haram has been defeated only on paper.  Sambisa forest has been liberated by federal forces. But the insurgents have metamorphosed into killer herdsmen who are being pampered and protected by security forces to kill armless Nigerians. The Nigerian currency has nosedived several octaves below its metropol. It now exchanges for almost 500 to the dollar from N165 to the dollar in May 2015. Petrol which sold for N86 as at May 2015 now sells for N145 per litre. Millions of school children are still at home more than a month after schools have resumed across the country. Everywhere, there is hunger and gnashing of teeth as inflation has risen above rooftops. But, in his October 1 independence anniversary broadcast to the nation, President Muhammadu Buhari asked Nigerians to hope for tomorrow, that tomorrow would be better. Are Nigerians hopeful of the day after? Will tomorrow ever come? The collective answer to this poser is a resounding NO. Tomorrow hardly comes.

If Nigerians are no longer hopeful of tomorrow, they deserve pardon. For, never in the history of mankind have a people been so brutalised and tortured by the very group of people who are supposed to protect and nurture them. They ought to be pardoned knowing full well that their manifest state of hopelessness has extended beyond disillusionment to a desperate and consuming nihilism. Which is why the only news one hears about Nigeria is soured news: violence, arson, rape, killing, maiming, kidnapping, robbery, corruption, official lying, etcetera. It is sad to note that Nigeria is gradually and steadily degenerating into the abyss. Even in a supposedly democratic dispensation, a sense of freedom, a feeling of an unconditional escape, a readiness for a genuine change, is still the daydream of the entire citizenry. Everything is in readiness for the unexpected, and the unexpected is not in sight. You cannot possibly conceive what a rabble we look. We straggle along with far less cohesion than a flock of cattle or sheep. We are, in fact, even forced to believe that tomorrow will no longer come. Quite a handful of us are simply robots without souls; as we are hopeless because we are conditioned to a state of collective hopelessness.

Count Buhari Among The Judges

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

By unleashing the Department of State Services (DSS) on some judges, President Muhammadu Buhari has succeeded in portraying the nation’s judiciary as reeking of corruption. The clampdown which has rightly provoked so much condemnation is a manifestation of the president’s long-held notion that the corruption of the judges has been an obstacle to the successful prosecution of his anti-corruption campaign. But there is one fact that must be remembered in the raging debate about the appropriateness or otherwise of the action of the DSS since the judges do not have immunity against investigation – the president’s complicity in the alleged misdeeds of the judicial officers. 

*Buhari 

For while it is true that the allegations of corruption against judges and lawyers predate the emergence of Buhari as president, the brazenness of the perversion of justice that riles him is only reflective of the current era of the collapse of the sanctity of the constitution that Buhari and his government have precipitated.

To be sure, we are all outraged at the judiciary’s loss of a moral compass that ought to guide its activities and therefore through every pronouncement reinforce the notion that it is the last bastion of justice for the common man. Rather than deterring corruption, the Bench and the Bar have become ready sources of its perpetuation in the society. Lawyers bribe judges for their clients to win cases. Justice is now for the highest bidder.

Politicians who empty the public treasury are allowed to plea-bargain and go home to enjoy their loot. Those who steal their organisations’ money to buy property all over the world are allowed to recover from phantom ailments in luxury hospitals while the shareholders suffer penury. But the poor person who steals a phone is sentenced to many years in prison without even an option of a fine.

With the return of democracy, corruption in the judiciary has become democratised. The numerous disputes over elections have become opportunities for judges to amass wealth. The late Justice Kayode Esho once alerted us to how some judges had become billionaires by giving judgements that were paid for.

The Dirty Little Lies Of Buhari’s Biographer

By Femi Fani-Kayode

Professor John Paden, President Muhammadu Buhari’s official biographer, is a man that is very comfortable with distorting the truth and telling lies. He is also a man that has been doing so for virtually all his adult life.

Anyone that doubts that should read his biography on the late Sir Ahmadu Bello, which was written in 1986 and titled Ahmadu Bello, Saurdana of Sokoto: Values and Leadership In Nigeria, and which is essentially a self-serving and comprehensive compilation of Bello’s numerous virtues with little or no mention of his many vices. I read that book twenty years ago and I placed it in the “light entertainment” shelf in my library because it lacked gravitas or any real intellectual stamina.

Aisha Buhari, President Buhari, Gen Gowon,
Gen Obasanjo at the October 3, 2016 book launch
 in Abuja 

It was, at best, a beautiful public relations job for Bello and, at worse, a compilation of disjointed verbiage fit only for the dustbin. Paden’s book on Buhari falls into the same category. It is nothing but an illusion: an extraordinary and fantastic fairy-tale built on a shady foundation of pseudo-intellectual clap-trap and garbage.

To him, President Buhari is infallible. He is, at best, an angel of light and, at worst, a perfect mortal with no warts. Paden’s latest contribution is the greatest exercise in dishonesty and historical revisionism that has ever been undertaken by any foreign or Nigerian historian since independence. The only one that comes close to it in this respect is the book that he wrote on the Sardauna and a number of other books that he authored over the years which were primarily about core northern Nigeria.

Writing rubbish seems to be Paden’s stock in trade. In his latest book, amongst many other glaring and shameless mendacities, he indulged in two particular lies that are an eloquent testimony to his perfidy. The first was that three names were sent to President Muhammadu Buhari for the position of Vice President, namely Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Yemi Osibanjo and Babatunde Raji Fashola in 2014 for the 2015 presidential election. This is false and it is simply an attempt to demean and belittle Tinubu and the role that he played in the whole exercise.

The truth is that it was Tinubu and Tinubu alone that forwarded the only name that was given serious consideration for the Vice Presidential slot by President Buhari. That name was Professor Yemi Osibanjo. Senator Olorunimbe Mamora was also considered by Buhari but he did not have the backing of Tinubu and neither did Tinubu forward his name. The idea that Tinubu’s name was forwarded to be Vice President alongside that of his two protégées in the persons of Osinbajo and Fashola is nothing but fantasy and it was a beautiful and tasteful dish and tale that was spiced cooked up and prepared in the kitchens of Aso Rock.

Nigeria: APC’s Incredible Nepotism

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

No matter how much the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and its leaders emote about their resolve to foster a merit-driven system and serve the whole country, their immersion in winner-take-all politics is obvious to all. Of course, this is by no means out of sync with the party of President Muhammadu Buhari who declared that those who voted for him would enjoy the so-called dividends of democracy more than those who never supported his election.

President Buhari and IGP Ibrahim Kpotum

While it is clear that Buhari has floundered in many other areas of governance, he has demonstrated uncommon fidelity to this commitment since he assumed office. This accounts for his appointing mainly his family members, political associates and other close persons.

This nepotism that has defined the Buhari government is set to interfere with the recruitment of new police personnel. Such interference is alarming against the backdrop of the persistent outrage at the unprofessionalism in the police that is often expressed in their predilection for corruption. They shoot a motorist who refuses to give them a bribe of N50; they collude with armed robbers to prey on the citizens; they turn a witness or complainant into a suspect because of pecuniary gain – and the list of crimes goes on. For all this, the blame rightly goes to the method of their recruitment that shares no kinship with meritocracy. Most police personnel join the force to make money through corruption and not because of the competence and the passion they have for the job. They easily bribe their way through the recruitment and once they have got the job, they brazenly pursue an agenda to recoup their investment.

Thus, we would have thought that a time of recruitment of police personnel would be seized as an opportunity to get citizens who are very competent and passionate to enforce the law and protect the citizens and their property and stop the rapid deterioration of the force into a hotbed for the proliferation of criminals. But now, through the nepotism of the APC, only those who are close to the ministers and leaders of the party are the ones who would be among the 10,000 police personnel to be recruited this year. These ministers and leaders of APC have disrupted the recruitment by insisting that only their cronies should make the list. To placate them, the Police Service Commission (PSC) has been removing the names of those who have meritoriously passed the tests for the recruitment. They have been putting the names of their cronies who have either failed the tests or did not even apply for the job in the first place. Consequently, the recruitment that should have been concluded by now has been stalled.

Nigeria @56 And The Worship Of Baal

By Fani-Kayode

Nigeria is 56 years old today. Consequently it is time to speak some home-truths and look at where we are in the scheme of things. It is time to consider how well our government has fared since coming to power and to compare their record of service to previous governments that were in the saddle before them. Sadly the score sheet does not look too good.

(pix: elombah)

The rigging of elections, the persecution of opposition figures, the demonisation of dissenters, the destruction of the economy, the pauperisation of our people, the introduction of famine, the humiliation of Nigerians coupled with violence, impunity, aggression, intolerance and tyranny: that is all President Muhammadu Buhari and his government have served our people since he was sworn in on May 29th 2015.

The last one year and four months have been the worst since independence in terms of the violation of human rights, civil liberties and court orders by our government. We have witnessed unprecedented mass murder, butchery, carnage and barbarity by well-armed and highly favored Fulani herdsmen and ethnic militias coupled with genocide and unprecedented extra-judicial killings by our military personnel and state security forces.

We have witnessed the resurrection of Abubakar Shekau and the mutation of Boko Haram into two powerful new factions. We have seen them re-take towns and communities that they lost years ago and hoist their dirty black flag in parts of the north-east. Our government has given up on the Chibok girls and we witnessed the humiliation, insults and physical harassment by security forces that those who have fought for their return in the BBOG group have been subjected to in the last few months.

We have seen the rapid depreciation of the naira, the total decimation of our industrial, agricultural and manufacturing sector and the destruction and decay of virtually all our roads, airports, power generating facilities and infra-structures. Our government has squandered our foreign reserves. Driven away local and foreign investment. Caused the dollar to fly away. Created an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty in the markets.

Forced people to spend their life savings and capital just to survive. Reduced many Nigerians to eating just one meal a day. Caused many to withdraw their children from school simply because they cannot afford to pay fees. And they have driven many to depression, suicide and despair. Unemployment is at a record high. The banks and indeed the entire financial sector is dying because there is no liquidity. The naira is approaching 500 naira to one US dollar which represents an over 100 per cent depreciation in the space of one year.

We are in the middle of the worst economic recession that we have suffered in our 56 years of existence as an independent nation-state. Thousands are being laid off on a daily basis. Graduate and non-graduate unemployment is at a record high. Food prices, the price of transport and the price of fuel, diesel and kerosene have shot up. Finally, we have witnessed the total and complete dashing of the hopes, aspirations and dreams of the Nigerian people.

APC: A Descent Into Clannishness

By Alabi Williams  

Nobody expected that all would be perfect in the All Progressives Congress (APC), after it hurriedly coalesced in 2013, and when it was apparent that occupants of Aso Rock were not too concerned about retaining the office. But many thought that the very reason and manner of its emergence and the groundswell of goodwill that greeted it would mitigate the resort to self-help and the rat race that characterizes party system in this clime.

*APC Chairman Oyegun and President Buhari 

When people thought it was difficult to forge the kind of alliances that brought it about, the APC pulled a surprise. Some had dug into Nigeria’s political history, to justify why the north and south west never agree politically, thus, that an alliance between the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and others, particularly from the north was a no-go area. But the stakeholders denied themselves, to prove bookmakers wrong.

It was also unheard of, that a coalition of struggling parties could rally round to unseat a ruling party that has governed for 16 years. So, the APC did not just join forces; it contested a very crucial election and formed government. But what the party has done with its victory is so far, not what onlookers and even insiders bargained for.

Now, everyone knows that our politicians are not so charitable to invest so heavily in power game without expecting returns. Even though the APC is yet to unveil its campaign expenditure for 2015, we all know that a lot of resources went into it. Those who doled out such funds did so because they wanted to leverage on their investment to access more funds. We also know that government is the major source of riches and the richer our politicians, the more they are able to dominate.

However, in the campaigns, APC promised change, which was to lead to a more accountable and transparent government, different from the one they just ousted. We knew that could not just happen. And since there was no forum to explain the new order, members took it as another campaign promise that will need time to fulfill. After all, a number of other promises have been rescheduled till when the economy gets better.

That set the stage for self-help. The first major trouble was how to manage the party’s less than absolute majority in the National Assembly. If the figures were to be poorly managed, the opposition with its sizable number could be tempted to cause some harm. That was exactly what happened on June 9, 2015. The party had gone into government with the same divisions it brought from outside. Blending did not take place and smartness took over. And there were losers and gainers. Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, former governor of Lagos State and one of the leading lights in the APC got bruised in the jostle for space, as his favoured candidates were shoved aside both in the Senate and the House. The man licked his wounds and kept quiet.

The Economist And Buhari's 'Change Begins With Me' Campaign

By Lai Mohammed

Our attention has been drawn to a story by The Economist, datelined Lagos and featured in the paper's print edition of Sept. 24th 2016, entitled: ''Nigeria's War Against Indiscipline, Behave Or Be Whipped''.

*President Buhari and Lai Mohammed

Contrary to the newspaper's self-professed belief in ''plain language'', the article in question, from the headline to the body, is a master-piece of embellishment or dressed-up language. It is loaded with innuendos and decidedly pejorative at best, and downright racist at worst.

The Economist wrote that President Buhari wants to ''tame'' Nigerians with the ''Change Begins With Me'' Campaign. For those who are the owners of the English language, the use of that word is unpardonable, the verb ''tame'' suggests that Nigerians are some kind of wild animals that must be domesticated, and the usage reveals the mind-set of the authors of the article: a deliberate put down of a whole people under the guise of criticising a government policy.

The paper, in striving to reach a preconceived conclusion, also insinuated that some 150,000 volunteers are being trained as enforcers of the ''Change Begins With Me'' Campaign. This is not true. In his speech at the launch of the Campaign on September 8th 2016, the President, a globally-acknowledged leader who believes strongly in the rule of law, left no one in doubt that moral suasion, the very antithesis of force, will be employed to achieve attitudinal change among Nigerians. In that speech, the President said: ''I am therefore appealing to all Nigerians to be part of this campaign.'' To the best of our knowledge and, surely the knowledge of those who own the language, the words ''appeal'' and ''enforce'' are not synonymous.

In its rush to discredit the ''Change Begins With Me'' Campaign, The Economist, a widely respected newspaper, fell below its own standards by choosing to be economical with the truth. Enforcement is not part of the strategies to be employed under the Campaign, and nowhere has it been said that the ''moral police'' will be unleashed, as reported by the newspaper. In writing the story, the paper did not even deem it necessary to speak with any official of the government, thus breaching one of the codes of journalism, which is fairness. It chose instead to quote a ''critic'' of Mr. President in a perfunctory manner.

Again, The Economist made the same mistakes that most critics of the ''Change Begins With Me'' Campaign have made: Rushing to comment on a campaign they do not understand. The Campaign had barely been launched when the critics brought out their big guns to shoot it down. In the process, many of them ended up shooting themselves in the foot. Had they tarried a while to allow the government to roll out the details of the campaign, they might have shown more circumspection than they did in their criticism.

Nigeria: Obituary Of A Political Party

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

It was only those who lacked prescience in the heady days of the campaigns for the 2015 elections that failed to realise that the All Progressives Congress (APC) was a contraption waiting to unravel. All that was needed was the appropriate time for the party to suffer an implosion and disrupt its self-valourisation for being different from the much-pilloried People’s Democratic Party (PDP). And now in less than two years after assuming power, the party is in the grip of crises from which recovery may not be possible.

This should have been expected in so far as the APC grew out of a myriad of crises of other parties. These crises have continued to haunt the APC in a way that has rendered its performance since its emergence less than stellar. Of course, no one makes the case that the existence of conflicting interests is aberrant in a democracy with its attendant plurality of perspectives. One moment of such a contest of interests that culminated in discontent was the quest for the chairmanship of the party that led to the exit of Tom Ikimi and his supporters.

But the troubling reality is that these crises have worsened since the APC assumed the reins of power. They have negated all expectations that after the electoral victory, previous differences would be relegated for a common front to tackle national problems. Thus, the only area where the APC could be said to have done well aside from winning the 2015 elections remains in its playing the role of an opposition party. It succeeded in demonising the then government of the PDP and eventually made it unacceptable at the polls.

What has dogged the APC and prevented it from building on its electoral success is a lack of a clear ideological vision that is underpinned by a holistic pursuit of service to the citizens. It is in this ideological vacuum that has festered all shenanigans for the appropriation of the party by its members as a vehicle for realising their selfish goals. In other words, what has marked out the party is its members’ Darwinian struggle for supremacy. In this quest, the disparate members owe no fidelity to the common ethos that binds them together in the party; thus it can be used and dumped as they have done to other political parties. It was this that led to the emergence of Bukola Saraki as Senate President and Yakubu Dogara as House of Representatives Speaker in utter disregard for the desire of some of the party’s leaders.

It is not only the party that its members brutally disregard to pursue their selfish interests. They have also disavowed their own promises to the citizens. But the citizens are not beyond blame; they have had too high expectations from politicians of the Nigerian hue. For despite all the pretensions, these politicians who decamped from the PDP could not be expected to do anything good to improve the lot of the people.

At his inauguration, President Muhammadu Buhari in a moment that was seemingly preceded by a great introspection declared that he belonged to everybody and belonged to nobody. If this were a clear repudiation of all obligations that might have negated national interest, the citizens would have appreciated it. But from the performance of Buhari in the past 16 months, he has been far from proving that he understood the heavy weight of the thoughts he expressed. For it is clear now that far from what he would like the citizens to believe, he is beholden to some interests that conflict with the collective good of the citizens.

Mr. President, There’s Blood On The Dance Floor

By Seyi Olu Awofeso  

Dear President Muhammadu Buhari: One reason the joys of electing you as president abruptly stopped is because there’s now blood on the dance floor. You alone have to decide if to call off the party or mop the dance floor; but either way, you’ll need spatial awareness of why bleeding occurred to spoil the party.

*Buhari 

You stoked price vectors to let the inflation genie out of the bottle and then burnt up Nigerians’ cash assets with 68% Naira devaluation starting in the last week of May, after increasing electricity tariff by 45% in March and after  increasing pump price of petrol by 67% few weeks earlier, to send all things up in the air – with nothing settled as yet; not even Nigeria itself, which badly convulsed in feverish price hikes, country-wide, after reeling for long from rocket-propelled grenades fired by hundreds of militias doubly armed with improvised explosives now rampaging all across Nigeria.

As news of Nigeria’s mounting horrors spread, London’s Evening Standard reported it on September 7:  “Western firms can be forgiven for shying away from investing in Buhari’s Nigeria,” the Evening Standard said – with reasons ranging from untrammeled treasury thefts to your having no clearly seen honest resolve to fight corruption. A slew of foreign investors may as well be closing its files on Nigeria. They are reportedly put off by the way things are going awry.

 Schools crumble in Nigeria without books as hospitals lay bare without imported medicines – all of which can’t be bought at the current price exchange rate of N425 to a Dollar versus the much lower April exchange rate of N260 to one Dollar. Workers are being laid off in thousands and the casualties near 4.5 million Nigerians sacked under your 15-month perplexing regime, according to anecdotal evidence.

Those spared mass sackings are pitch-forked to half salary – in defiance of anything contracts law say on the sanctity of existing agreements in an increasingly anomic Nigeria – where, besides routine beheading on the streets from neighbourhood spats, the Court of Appeal in Lagos division then declared a few weeks ago that wearing the Muslim Hijab head-cover is superior, as Islamic Law, and overrides any other law that a state government may enact as ‘school uniform rule.’

A false bottom for this rather zany declarative order was quickly constructed judicially and called ‘fundamental human rights’…in a country contradictorily self-described in its 1999 Constitution as ‘secular.’ In just under 16 months Nigeria now looks eerily strange – like a horror film – to those looking in from outside.

But to be sure, Nigeria was not as much a puzzle or hardscrabble place as this. Nigeria was, contrarily, a fragile and less horrific and much less hopeless place.  So, what happened to CHANGE, President Buhari? That’s the crux. No two broom-wavers on your APC side of the Nigeria’s party politics divide ever understood what CHANGE means from get-go. In retrospect, it would seem like a mere slogan just thrown in to replace absent thought-process inside the party. It could even be worse. For after you won the election on that abstract sloganeering you alone now have the writ to decide what CHANGE means for a whole nation, since your party members were just carried away by the sound of that word and mindlessly ran to town with it.

Nigeria At An Anti-Corruption Rally

By Dan Amor

For most dispassionate observers of the Nigerian political scene, the only thing which has destroyed the fabric of this country even more than any conventional war, is corruption. This hydra-headed monster has become Nigeria's middle name. Aside from the untoward image this menace has wrought on the country and the insult and embarrassment it has caused innocent Nigerians abroad, it has inflicted irreparable damage to the basic foundations that held the country together. Corruption has stunted our economic growth, our social and physical infrastructure, our technological and industrial advancement and has decapitated our institutions, which is why our over 40 research institutes are no longer functional because they are headless. 

(pix: AFP)

Even our academic and military establishments and other security agencies cannot in all sincerity be exonerated from the deadly effects of unbridled corruption. The determination of President Muhammadu Buhari to combat corruption and to go after suspects irrespective of their ethnic or political leanings should enlist the sympathy of all well-meaning Nigerians. It is the more reason why even the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, which controlled the central government and a greater number of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, until May 29, 2015, recently endorsed the corruption war.

As Nigerians we certainly do not need any soothsayer to tell us that ours is a corrupt country. We see corruption live everyday. We see Mr. Corruption stalk the streets, the roads and the highways across the country. We see Mr. Corruption bid us goodbye at the airports and welcome us back into the country. We Nigerians greet Mr. Corruption at the seaports and border posts as we clear our cargoes into the country. We shake the juicy hands of Mr. Corruption as we savour the winning of a lucrative contract. Truly, Nigeria, which in 1996 was ranked by Transparency International as the second most corrupt country in the world, achieved the utmost when in 1997, it was voted the most corrupt country on the face of the earth. Ever since, the country has had the misfortune of being grouped among the five most corrupt countries in the world. There can never be any stigma as heinous as this in the comity of nations across the world.

Since the current democratic political experiment started in May 1999, all successive governments have had to place anti-corruption war as part of their programmes of action, popularly known as manifestos or agendas. Yet, all had paid lip service to the fight against corruption except the current administration of President Muhammadu Buhari which is showing signs of its determination to tackle the monster head on. As can be deduced from the body language and actions of the President himself, Nigerians are now confident that this battle will commence with the resoluteness it deserves. Successive administrations, in spite of their much vaunted hoopla over corruption war, were ironically refuting the claims of the Berlin-based Transparency International (TI) that Nigeria was stinking with the evil stench of corruption.

Change Begins With Buhari And APC

By Lucky Ofodu

The recent launch of ‘Change Begins With Me’ campaign by the Muhammadu Buhari’s administration goes against the moral etiquette of leadership by example. In his speech at the ceremony, the president shifted the responsibility of his Change agenda to Nigerians instead of the other way round. He seemed to be blaming Nigerians for the mélange of problems facing the country under his watch. He urged the citizens to change their orientation and attitude for the country to get out of its current misfortune.

*President Buhari and Lai Mohammed

In other climes, it is the leadership that sets the standards for the followership. The President’s remarks were hardly surprising. Followers of events since this administration came to be would agree that this government has not for once taken responsibility for anything. All it has been doing is to blame others for its glaring shortcomings; always passing the bulk. The government forgets that a leadership that does not take responsibility is a failed leadership. People are voted into power to solve the problems confronting society. They are expected to dig deep and come up with solutions in order to uplift the lives of the citizenry.

They are not elected to lament and look for those to blame for their lack of performance. Unfortunately, blame game and propaganda have become essential ingredients of governance in Nigeria in the last seventeen months. The problem of Nigeria has not been with the citizens, but those who lead them. So there is need for value orientation and change. And this should be directed at the leaders first of all. This is what Lai Mohammed and the egg heads at the National Orientation Agency should have done instead of turning the campaign on its head. With the wrong attitude with which the Change campaign has started, one can state categorically that it is as good as dead.

Come to think of it, the timing of the ‘Change Begins With Me’ campaign is patently wrong. With starvation and unprecedented hardship pervading the land, many Nigerians view this as adding insult to injury. As they say, he who come to equity must come with clean hands. The kind of campaign Nigerians want to see right now is such that would put food on their tables; campaigns geared towards paying the backlog of arrears of salary owed state and local government workers across the country; campaigns that would alleviate the suffering of pensioners; campaigns made up of think-tanks proffering solutions to the country’s economic quagmire; campaigns aimed at alleviating the horror Nigerians are going through right now; not one asking them to be disciplined or that blaming them for government’s ineptitude. The situation has gone beyond political rhetoric and blame game. How do you discipline a starving populace?

Nigeria: The Crisis Of Buharism

By Tony Afejuku

There is no iota of doubt about it after all: we have ceaselessly experienced a crisis of Buharism since our present president, Buhari, was exalted by us into the presidency of our country.

Glaringly, diurnally it is entering our exalted consciousness and imagination that our pre-election idea or picture of him was one that exalted a man who had (and still has) an exalted impression of himself. But we must make no mistake about it. The man has elegance, but we have come to realize that this elegance that enabled some persons to call him “Mr. Integrity” possesses some veneer that is not well irriguous.

*Buhari 

Perhaps I, in my creative imagination, am deficient in my employment of language to characterize the kind of president that we have witnessed since Buharism entered our authoritative lexicon of political thought. In the present writing I am not too certain of the language to employ to depict Buharism. In fact, I am inclined to employ a language that cannot but be deader than Latin: the language called Fula of the Fulani people.

How I wish and itch in vain to speak and write Fula! Let me be uneconomical with words. I itch to understand and express Buhari’s thoughts in Fula, but how deader than Latin is Fula to me! Thus in vain and in vain will I try to understand the great man Buhari and his Fula philosophy of political governance in a democracy and republic such as ours, such as our country’s – our Nigeria’s that always we must hail. Recently I had a lengthy conversation, which spoke volumes, with an octogenarian who is based in the South West of our country.

The octogenarian is fully at breast with our president’s mind-set and the happenings in Aso Rock. Lengthy  conversation He bared and opened ad infinitum his mind on the Buhari presidency. He informed me, among other things, pertinently of how Hadza Bala Usman came on board as the current managing director of our Nigerian Ports Authority.

Those Who Killed (And Are Killing) Nigeria

By Dan Amor

Every real nation state is an historical product. It is, in Marx's celebrated phrase, "the official resume of the antagonism in civil society", but under historically determinate circumstances. As such, it is the product of the historically specific constellation of class relations and social conflicts in which it is implicated. It may, therefore, indeed, it must, if it is not to rest on its monopoly of the means of coercion alone, incorporate within its own structure, the interests not only of the dominant but of the subordinate classes. In this quite specific sense, then, every real nation state has an inherently relative independence, including, as well, the independence to understand the dynamics of its made-made domestic crises. In consequence, therefore, the general characteristics of the Nigerian nation state today may be seen in terms of the enormity of its domestic crises and social contradictions. 

Therefore, those who murdered Nigeria, and are still killing its residues include, but not limited to: a big and comprador bourgeoisie that has abdicated its political aspirations and allied itself to semi-feudal interests; a discontented small and medium bourgeoisie made up of a certain class of professionals and intellectuals, potentially revolutionary, but which hesitates to renew the struggle for its national liberation. There is a sleeping working class which is supposed to be the prime revolutionary force but which cannot define clearly its trade union tasks and political aims. There is a large crowd of youths, the student body that constitute about 60 per cent of the national population, which has abdicated its responsibility of serving as light to the national ideal due largely to intellectual dishonesty, ignorance or docility arising from poverty of ideas. There is also, a peasant mass of small landless factory hands, artisans and motorcycle operators otherwise known as "Okada riders", who need a clear vision of their tasks and a framework within which to organize their own action in unity with the working class. Above all, a group of shameless, opportunistic and sadistic Generals (retired and serving), domestic tyrants and usurpers who, because of their prolonged crime against the people of this country, do not want political power to shift to its rightful owners for fear of being probed. And, of course, a handful of totalitarian Devils called traditional rulers who, having been aware of their gross irrelevance in a democratic society, strive to ally themselves with dictators, expired warlords and anti-democratic elements in power in order to entrench feudal power in the local government councils.

It is in this context that we must examine critically the way forward to the present logjam in the country. It would be recalled that the deepening crises that resulted in the Nigerian Civil War were the aftermath of the cumulative anger of the forces of real change against the reactionary superstructure that was the First Republic. After the bloody civil war, and thanks to the oil boom which provided them with the rare opportunity to line their pockets, the military rulers in collaboration with the agrarian mercantile big bourgeoisie, together with a small sector connected with industry, tied their future more and more to the semi-feudal structure inherited from the colonial system. Because of their quantitative and qualitative weaknesses and the fear of the workers' movement and the surge of the masses, they were, at the beginning, disposed to ally themselves with whatever was acceptable of foreign monopolist capital, then in the process of conversion to a neo-colonialist framework.

Before The Umpteenth 'Herdsmen' Attack

By Emmanuel Ugwu

If a perceptive artist was commissioned to draw a portrait of President Muhammadu Buhari, he would have to think of how to present an image of a conflicted, two-faced commander in chief. Buhari is a hawk and a dove. A lion and a lamb. A war monger and a pacifist.

He is waging wars against cattle rustlers and Niger Delta militants while winking at the prolific mass murderers that parade as ‘herdsmen’. He is fighting to secure Nigerian cattle and oil facilities even as he literally feigns ignorance of a genocidal phenomenon claiming countless Nigerian lives.

The double standard is not as a result of an oversight. Buhari receives daily security briefings. He is constantly updated on the condition of safety of lives and property in Nigeria. He is furnished with processed data on past and present security threats and predictive intelligence on future scenarios. His rich knowledge of the security situation of Nigeria is critical to his ability to fulfill the fundamentals of his job description as the president of the republic.

So, why is Buhari treating the wastage of Nigerians by the ‘herdsmen’ with asymmetric indifference? Why does he condone the killing of Nigerians when he is raging against cattle rustling and pipeline vandalism? Aren’t human lives incomparable, in value, with cattle or crude oil? Shouldn't the protection of endangered human beings come before that of animals and oil?

This question is important because Buhari and his generals categorize every serious security challenge as a battle and create a special military operation to defeat it. They dedicate a new operation to any pattern of criminal behavior that they consider too dangerous to be allowed to wane on its own timetable.

This inclination to resort to military operation is the reflex of a Buhari presidency that feels it is under obligation to use any effective means to de-escalate any spiral of criminality before its perpetrators develop a false sense of invincibility.

Constitutional purists take exception to this new normal of deploying the military to undertake law enforcement assignments that fall under the purview of the Nigerian police. The idealists say that repurposing the military as a quick fix talisman for suppressing domestic crimes is essentially unlawful and potentially risky. They argue that fitting the military into the vacuum of weakness of the Nigerian police, in the long run, could have the effect of orienting the focus of the Nigerian military away from their core mission. They surmise that the perennial distraction of the Nigerian military with police duties may be eroding the professionalism of our armed forces, and therefore, vitiating the readiness of the Nigerian military to defend the country against external aggression.

The Nigerian Army is presently prosecuting two military operations to combat violent crimes that the Buhari administration deems to be beyond the capacity of the Nigerian police to confront. Operation ‘Harbin Kunama’ is addressing the menace of cattle rustling in some parts of the North. Operation ‘Crocodile Smile’ is battling the sabotage of oil installations by militants in the Niger Delta region. But there is no hurricane-name-sounding, operation-scale military response to the runaway terrorism of the ‘herdsmen’.

In July, Buhari flew to Zamfara State to launch Operation Harbin Kunama. Prior to that time, a part of Zamfara state, particularly Dansadau forest, had become the playground of cattle rustlers. Armed gangs resident in that bush were invading villages from and impoverishing people whose wealth is mainly denominated in cattle.

Buhari went to the forest dressed in military uniform. His physical presence and his appearance in combat gear were a message. He wanted to signal that he took the suffering of the victims of cattle rustling seriously, and that he was committed to doing everything within his powers to end the scourge.

At the occasion, Buhari spoke to the heart of the matter. He said that his government viewed cattle rustling as a crime. He warned, in the clearest terms, that the mandate of the operation he came to kickstart was to achieve a complete wipeout of cattle rustlers troubling the people of Zamfara, Katsina, Kebbi and Niger states.

Buhari Needs No Recession Experts

By Paul Onomuakpokpo  

In their tepid search for solutions to the current economic crisis, our political leaders are fixated on two culprits that gnaw at the nation’s wellbeing.

It is either the past that is chastised for not catering for its future or the militancy in the Niger Delta that has driven oil revenue to its nadir.

*Buhari 

Our current leaders can keep avoiding culpability for the nation’s economic recession. The danger is that any optimism about overcoming the crisis in a short time may soon evaporate as long as our political leaders fail to recognise that it is not only the past that is sullied by the administration of Goodluck Jonathan and his predecessors that should be blamed, but the present that is anchored on the current administration is equally complicit.

We are on the right path to economic redemption only when we appreciate the fact that the affliction that is the source of the recession is simply that our politics reeks of a crude conflation of national and personal interests by political leaders. Actuated by the credo of politics that negates national interest, politicians pursue purely selfish goals and present them to the citizens as targeted at engendering national transformation.

Thus no matter how potentially workable the recommendations from the citizens for the development of their nation, most political leaders do not have that capacity to accommodate them. And this is why all ideas about development, no matter how ill-bred , must come from their cronies because they would not pose any threat to their interests. Or why have all the great proposals for the development of the nation for over five decades not launched it into the league of the developed?

Now that there is a flurry of suggestions from the citizens as regards how to overcome the recession, our leaders may only take the ones that would not threaten their personal interests. President Muhammadu Buhari has been asked to invite experts to help him salvage the economy. Some citizens want him to invite the nation’s best economists to proffer solutions to the economic problems. Some have even canvassed the return of former Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. The former minister has already said she would not be ready to serve under the Buhari government when she is invited as she wants other people to contribute their own quota to development. Okonjo-Iweala may not even be an acceptable choice having been tainted by her association with the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) when she served its government. She is still subjected to excoriation for triggering the crisis in the first place by her feckless economic management.

What Does The President Carry In His Pocket?

By Banji Ojewale

There is this apocryphal tale that the president of the United States of America, said to be our planet’s most powerful country, travels carrying a bag that holds the key to war and peace in the world. It is claimed that the briefcase contains the code the US leader may unravel to release the huge atomic arsenal of God’s Own Country in the event of an attack.

*President Buhari

If he’s away from the US and he’s briefed on his hotline, all he does to enable a lethal hit-back is to go for the bag and probably a key in his pocket. But if he wants peace, he simply allows his pocket be at peace.

Early in 2016 however, sitting President Barack Obama spiked this story of one man playing  God, one man who upon a cryptic call thousands of kilometres from Washington, can decide the fate of billions of souls worldwide, can trigger a contest to destroy mankind. He told a YouTube interviewer that all he holds in the trousers pocket are harmless mementoes, none approximating a nuclear lock.

The gay broadcaster Ingrid Nilsen fired the question that laid all bare: what does President Obama carry in his pocket? The US leader dug into his right trouser pocket and out came an assortment of keepsakes: a rosary given to him by Pope Francis, a tiny Buddha, a metal poker chip he said he got from ‘a bald biker with weird mustache’ in 2007,a Coptic Cross from Ethiopia and a Hindu statuette of monkey god.

A strange collection for a head of state to carry! But he says when he feels tired or discouraged as he battles American and global headaches he reaches into the pocket for relief and mental refreshment. According to Obama, they inspire him and help him “get back to work”.

Now after thrilling myself with Obama’s revelation and observing the travels of our own President Muhammadu Buhari, I have begun to wonder what the Nigerian leader also takes along in the trousers under his flowing agbada. Surely Buhari, the leader of the world’s most populous black nation, would have run into numerous people and well-wishers who would deposit some gifts with him after each encounter.