Nigeria: A Season Of Scandals

By Bright Emenena

Lest we forget, like many past government, this administration rode to power on the back of the promise to fight corruption. It is safe to say though, that more than any previous administration, the present administration comes top on the perception that a government will actually fight corruption. For many Nigerians, the one reason why this government was voted into power was the belief that corruption which was perceived as the problem of Nigeria shall be brought to a stop.

President Buhari then General Buhari was the symbol of this perception. For many who voted for him, he was an embodiment of integrity, a man capable of doing no evil, an incorruptible disciplinarian and in their view, was what Nigeria needed at the time. He was even applauded by many when he claimed he could not afford the presidential nomination form of his party despite having served as a military head of state, a key player in another military government adjudged as most corrupt by both local and international bodies, a former military governor, a petroleum minister and chairman of the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF), an agency that was also alleged of corruption. This was perceived by his supporters as evidence of his incorruptibility.

Nigeria's Unending Leadership Crisis

By Dan Amor

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo's recent bombing of President Muhammadu Buhari does not make him a better candidate for national heroism. After all, the outcome of his letter to former President Goodluck Jonathan is the person whom he has just attacked. If care is not taken, the next president in 2019 might even be worse than Buhari. This is not a death wish for my beloved country. Never. Far from it!

*Babangida, Buhari, Obasanjo, Shagari and Jonathan

But Nigeria is a nation of experts without roots. We are always creating tacticians who are blind to strategy and strategists who cannot even take a step. And when the culture has finished its work the institutions handcuff the infirmity. But what is at the centre of the panic which is our national culture since we are not yet free to choose our leaders? Seeing how ineligible dunces who don’t even understand the secret of their private appeal, talk-less of what the nation needs jostle for power, I realize all over again that Nigeria is an unhappy contract between the Rich and the Poor. It is not that Nigeria is altogether hideous, it is even by degrees pleasant, but for an honest observer, there is never any salt in the wind.

President Buhari: Welcome To Reality

By Onuoha Ukeh

It is a dawn of new reality in Nigeria. Nigerians, as a people, and Nigeria, as a country, are now better informed about “the state of things as they actually exist,” as distinct from “idealistic or notional idea of them.” At present, nobody can be hoodwinked. As they say, he who wears the shoe knows where it pinches. Nigerians of all classes know the bad state of things in the country. They wear the shoe. They know where it pinches. And they are expressing themselves in various ways.

*Buhari 

Within the week, former President Olusegun Obasanjo left nobody in doubt about his realisation that Muhammadu Buhari’s government is a disaster. The Owu man who, directly and indirectly, supported the election of Buhari in 2015, could no longer pretend. Looking at the state of things, he made a conclusion to the effect that things are going from bad to worse. He did not mince words in saying that Buhari should “consider a deserved rest at this point in time and at this age.” 

President Buhari And Obasanjo’s Red Card

By Wale Sokunbi

If the widespread support of the people is the sole determinant of the outcome of electoral contests in Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari may well be on his way to kissing the presidency goodbye in 2019. Irrespective of his desire or otherwise to seek another term in office, it is actually becoming very difficult to imagine how he could ride over the growing gale of disenchantment with his person and government, especially in the Southern part of the country, to win a second term in office.

*Buhari 

What initially began like the mumblings of disgruntled elements of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that had just been routed from power in the early days of the Buhari administration soon turned into a howl over the new government’s tardiness in forming its cabinet, which took all of five months. The government’s roaring nepotism and disregard of the multi-ethnic and multi-religious nature of the country in its appointments also helped in no way to decrease its approval ratings.

Beyond Obasanjo’s Letter To Buhari

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

No profound insight has been offered in former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s declaration of President Muhammadu Buhari as having not passed muster. He only articulated what has not only been in the public domain but has equally been kept in focus in the domestic sphere of the president. Of course, we cannot forget so soon that Aisha, the First Lady, has been warning her husband of the political misfortune that could trail his re-election bid if he fails to make necessary amends and rescue his governance style from being a blight on the citizens’ lives. Even in the early days of this government when it was still unvarnished amid the seeming towering popularity of Buhari and when the whimpers of protest against his lack of leadership acumen were easily dismissed as emanating from ‘wailers’ who were nostalgic for a dark past of the nation, Mrs. Buhari was already giving forebodings of the sad end of this administration.

*President Buhari and Obasanjo 

Yet, we must appreciate the significance of Obasanjo’s letter which lies in its ineluctably ominous character. Obasanjo could be seen as an angel of death or an undertaker whose letters only serve as the hearse to convey a government that has irredeemably crashed to its grave. This was the case of former President Goodluck Jonathan.

On President Buhari, I Stand With Obasanjo

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Again, we are in the political silly season. Not that it just kicked off. No, Nigeria is a country in a permanent state of politicking. In reality, there is never time for governance. The end of one election circle jumpstarts another and the actions of incumbents are informed not by the desire to deliver on good governance but the need to win the next election.

*Obasanjo and Buhari 

So, ministers and board members of government agencies are appointed not on the basis of capacity and competence, but who has the political muscle and “structure” to deliver on the next election. Ditto for heads of security agencies who are appointed on extraneous considerations such as who helped in rigging the previous election and who can be counted upon in the next election.

Can Obasanjo’s ‘Letter Bomb’ Cause Buhari Electoral Fatality?

By Fredrick Nwabufo

 I was in a meeting when former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s “letter bomb” rent the “news-sphere”. When I received the news alert, I hastened my business because I was seized by capricious anxiety to read the former president’s missive.

*Obasanjo and Buhari 

I must say, Obasanjo has taken the art of letter-writing to an enchanted stratosphere. And I admire his preferred means of intervening in Nigeria’s socio-political malaise. 

Nigeria: Who Are Fulani Herdsmen?

By Hope Eghagha

Bala: What is this big noise and cry over herdsmen?

Ankpa: Have you been sleeping Bala? Don’t you know the terrorists, the bloody murderers, masquerading as herdsmen?

Bala: How can cattle-rearers be killers? Their business is cattle-rearing, not killing people.

Ankpa: That’s what we thought until we found some going about with AK 47 guns!

Bala: Are you sure the Boko Haram scoundrels, those anti-Islam elements have not infiltrated the herdsmen group?
Ankpa: that is left for the State to fish out. 

Nigeria Is On The Boil Again

By Dan Amor

There is a lamentable and disturbing magnitude of violence in Nigeria. So is crime. The country is constantly on the boil. The atmosphere in the country has been nothing but a tawny volcano. The situation conveys at once the chief features of the Nigerian spirit: it is vertical, spontaneous, immaterial, upward. It is ardent. And even as tongues of fire do, it turns into fire everything it touches. What we are experiencing today is induced by poverty, hunger, frustration, apathy, desperation and sectional or tribal expansionist ambition.

In the midst of the misery and lack that is the lot of our youth and other Nigerians, a few Nigerians are still swimming in affluence and under the best security system and protection one can think of. What has indeed compounded the Nigerian misfortune is the sheer bravado, if not braggadocio with which Fulani herdsmen are butchering other Nigerians on a large scale across the country. This is even happening without the sitting government raising an eyebrow against it. Many Nigerians even believe that the Federal Government of President Buhari is culpable in the mass hysteria afflicting the country. It hardly seems a time for timidity and restraint.

Buhari’s Presidency: Facts And Fiction

By Abraham Ogbodo

I am worried about the ongoing narrative that Nigerians desired a change from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) misrule and agreed in 2015 to kick out Goodluck Jonathan and vote in Muhammadu Buhari as President.

Nothing sounds more fraudulent. Was there a consensus at anytime on that? The answer is no. Rather, the Buhari presidency was a risk specifically undertaken by a tiny but powerful clique solely for its benefit and not the benefit of Nigerians.

*Jonathan and Buhari

Now that the risk has failed and woefully too, the same clique is trying to change the narrative and make the mistake look like everybody’s mistake. It will not happen. I know the truth is always a casualty when history is being hurriedly written from many perspectives. But not this time please because I am going to tell the truth to shame the devil and stop it from escaping with vain glory. 

How President Buhari Falsified Professor Achebe's Greatest Thesis

By Jimanze Ego-Alowes

I have a certain interest in President Muhammadu Buhari. It is not as a fellow citizen. My interest in Buhari is as an object of study. And this is in the course of my day job as an independent scholar, a lay historian.

*Chinua Achebe

And matters get interesting. It is only that one small aspect is missing. To some preempt oneself, one wishes that Professor Chinua Achebe was well and alive. Achebe is the lead and most famous proponent of the thesis that the problem of Nigeria is a problem of leadership deficit. And it is all well with and for us.

President Buhari And The Herdsmen’s Endgame

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

Of the many traumatic marvels of the President Muhammadu Buhari government, its predilection for crashing deeper into the abyss when we thought that we would no longer be jolted by its blunders, is striking. If his linkage to marauding and bloodthirsty Fulani herdsmen were only a staple of blackmail sustained by his traducers, he has just stoked the suspicion of his fidelity to their ghoulish vision with his response to the killings in Benue State.

*President Buhari 

Buhari did not bother to visit Benue for a first-hand apprehension of the tragedies that the Fulani herdsmen inflicted on the people. Nor was he seen to have expressed deep regret over the killings, except the platitudes that were regurgitated by his aides after a grudging approval from him. Or is this not a true measure of his lack of humanity and a perverted sense of justice and patriotism that while the nation was gripped by grief, Buhari and the governors from his northern region were preoccupied with his re-election in 2019?

Nigeria: Herdsmen’s Killings And A Forsaken Nation

By Emmanuel Onwubiko

I was very rudely awakened from a deep sleep today’s wee hours by a rash of text messages that buzzed noisily for nearly a minute.

These messages were six in number and came in torrents from family members and friends who live in Aba, Abia State; Ogoja in Cross Rivers State and Otukpo in Benue State.

*President Buhari 

These hugely unexpected messages had similar information on the rumoured invasions simultaneously of these places of their habitation by armed gangs of Fulani herdsmen who are said to be getting ready to invade some communities which are agrarian and whose land owners had protested earlier cases of invasions by cows and herdsmen resulting in the destruction of their crops that are awaiting harvest.

Benue Massacre: Are Fulanis Fighting To Conquer Nigeria?

By E.O. Eke

November 2016, after Fulani herdsmen attacked had innocent villagers in Benue and Anambra states, I wrote an article entitled, Is Nigeria Still A Democracy? (Published 16 November 2016).

This is the worst of times, this is the best of times. This is a time to think, this is a time to prepare.

You murder peace when you kill justice. You end unity when you justify discrimination. You lose the trust and confidence of people when you practice nepotism. You invite violence when you make peacefully change impossible. You provoke violent response when you brutalise people by responding to peaceful protest with disproportionate force. These are natural imperatives which hold constant as the law of gravity.

President Buhari And The Herdsmen

By Paul Onomuakpokpo

In a seeming bid to douse his increasing credibility crisis, President Muhammadu Buhari has now belatedly realised the need to absolve himself of killings by herdsmen. No longer does he find comfort in his practised silence in the face of the citizens’ outrage at the atrocities being committed by herdsmen.

*Pres Buhari and Gov El-Rufai

But Buhari’s newfangled disposition has failed to prove the fast-expanding camp of the naysayers wrong. Rather, what has become clear is that Buhari has bungled another opportunity to shore up his credibility. Thus, Buhari’s defence of himself ended up being a reinforcement of his history of incapability to meet the demands of his high office.

Buharism: A Brand Damaged By Nepotism

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

Until recently, the Muhammadu Buhari brand was, perhaps, the most potent and compelling brand in the country. In the north, he was “Mai Gaskiya” (truth avatar). Even as he never gave anyone scholarship, never built a vocational centre or any industry to employ youths or get almajiris off the streets, he continued to get millions of votes from there.

*President Muhammadu Buhari

In the south where he didn’t enjoy the same cult status, he was completely rebranded shortly before the 2015 elections so much so that the Buhari myth became so persuasive almost to the point of deification.

But time makes all the difference in the affairs of not only men but also nations. 

After Victor Umeh’s Senatorial Triumph

By Chuks Iloegbunam

The argument wasn’t on whether or not Victor Umeh would emerge victorious in the January 13, 2018 Anambra Central Senatorial rerun election. It had to do with the range of victory he would post. In the November 18, 2017 Anambra gubernatorial election, Governor Obiano had won in all 21 local government areas in the state. The 100 percent result had led to Obiano acquiring the new sobriquet of '21 over 21'. Was Chief Umeh also going to post a 100 percent result by winning in all the seven local government areas of Anambra Central? He did win all over, earning himself the nickname of Seven Over Seven!

*Gov Obiano and Umeh

Not surprisingly, there have been two antipodal reactions to Chief Umeh’s emphatic triumph. APGA chieftains and foot soldiers are in uproarious celebrations; the losers have been whimpering. The celebrations are not about to end. The licking of wounds will linger for a while more. Both of them are transient, ultimately. They will cease. After they have passed, the pertinent and enduring question of what next will surface and entrench itself. That is the central concern of this piece.

Nigeria: Now An Abattoir Under President Buhari

By Reno Omokri

In July 2012, clashes between natives and herdsmen reached a head in Plateau state leading to tens of deaths on both sides. Then President Goodluck Jonathan, when briefed about the situation insisted that there wouldn’t be such impunity under his leadership and immediately ordered the army to go to the affected communities and fish out the perpetrators and bring them to book.

The military immediately obeyed the then President’s orders and sent troops to Barkin Ladi Local Government Area. They ordered all residents to leave their residence for temporary accommodation provided for them so they could conduct a joint air and ground operation to flush out the armed herdsmen who had been suspected of killing innocent Nigerians. 

Political Killings In Rivers State

By Peter Ovie Akus 

Rivers of blood flowed in Omoku,  Rivers State, on New Year day when over 20 people were killed and 12 more injured after they were attacked by unknown gunmen as they journeyed home after their participation in New Year’s Eve services in various churches.

This bloodletting, which was carried out on a day that was meant to be a day of celebration for all, has been trailed by condemnation from all and sundry with many calling for the investigation, arrest and prosecution of all those involved in this dastardly act.

George Weah: A Remarkable Feat

By Dan Agbese

Remarkable. That about sums up the incredible feat of the newly elected Liberian president, George Tawlon Manneh Oppong Ousman Weah. Bedecked, not burdened, with six names, he is sure to stand out among African and world leaders.

*George Weah, Liberian President-elect

Let me begin this by offering you the obvious information about him. Weah is a former professional footballer. It bears repeating that he is a remarkable man and achieved remarkable feats in the world of soccer. When he retired from professional football, he left his large footprints, not on the sands of time but on the soccer marbles for all time.