How Nigeria Can Break From The Poverty Trap

 By Banji Oyelaran-Oyeyinka

The SDGs, among others seek to reduce poverty, improve access to health care and education, mitigate the effects of climate change and attain food security by 2030. We are not meeting the key Goals.

Africa is unable to feed itself. We found during COVID-19 that we cannot produce a large percentage of drugs we need. The region relies on imports for food and will remain so unless there is an urgent paradigmatic shift in the structures of African economies. Food imports cost Africa US$55 billion a year but this could double to $110 billion by 2030. Many African cities will double in size by 2050, increasing demand for food and other infrastructure and services.

Confronting The Doctors’ Brain Drain

 By Cosmas Odoemena

It’s no longer news that Nigerian doctors are leaving the country in droves for greener pastures. According to the Nigerian Medical Association, of the 75,000 Nigerian doctors registered with the NMA, more than 33,000 have left the country, with 42,000 left to take care of more than 200 million people. It’s not only doctors that are leaving: nurses, physiotherapists, radiographers, pharmacists, medical laboratory scientists, etc. But this piece is focused mainly on doctors.

Brain drain among doctors is not a new phenomenon. In Nigeria, it has been ongoing for years. But it has never jolted the Nigerian healthcare system as it has now. This is because the number of doctors leaving has risen astronomically. Doctors are voting with their feet. Specialists, medical officers, retired doctors, and those fresh from medical schools are all leaving. In final-year medical school classes, migrating abroad after qualifying is what is trending.

Help! Tribunals Are Hurting Democracy

 By Andy Ezeani 

Let no one deceive anyone; the processes and structure of democracy in Nigeria are presently in grave danger. There is no exaggeration in talking of a democracy in intensive care unit (ICU) at the moment. The danger is clear, present and escalating by the day.

Unless there is a quick, drastic containment of the excesses that have seized the democratic process in the country, no special gift of clairvoyance is needed to predict an imminent debacle. Smothering the pervasive voices of discontent and disapproval at the widening corrosive abuse of the system, as seem to be the strategy of the powers that be, can last but for a short while.

Presidential Election Judgement And Implications Of The 37th State

 By Sola Ebiseni

The  judgements of the Presidential Election Petition Court just delivered last week, precisely on Wednesday, September 6, 2023 are expectedly the predominant and trending issue in the Nigerian polity. We do not intend to do an  intensive analysis of the judgments here today considering the fact that our final position is circumscribed by the decisions of organisations to which we subscribe in membership, principles and ideologies.

It, however, suffices to say that the judgements, as one, is a landmark in its most damaging revisionist dimensions for our laws generally, election jurisprudence in particular and for the Nigerian polity and politics. It did not require much literacy from anyone listening to the delivery of the judgement to decipher from the very beginning that the petitions were really undergoing butchery rather than any forensic legal analysis that may lead to justice.

Losers, Winners And An Orphaned Nation

 By Owei Lakemfa

Nigerians last week had no democratic choice but to have their ears on the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal verdict. It was not that they hoped the result would assuage their hunger or reduce banditry which has made a steady inroad in the most protected city, Abuja.

They could as well have switched off their television sets as all networks for over half a day covered the verdict live. But for many, it was the fear of the verdict. No matter where it swung, it was the beginning of wisdom; the spectre of violence was all over.

The Cursed Continent: Thoughts On African Leadership

 By Dan Agbese

It was the dark continent. It is the cursed continent. Thus, did it happen that Africa, perhaps the luckiest continent in the world with unbelievable natural resource endowments, and a population of 1,466,649,930, accounting for 17.89 per cent of the world population, is the wretched of the earth.

It is a beggar continent, dependent on handouts from the other continents for the survival of its 54 nations and their increasingly impoverished people. 

Babysitting France In Africa

 By Owei Lakemfa

France is a problem. In Africa, it is a man-child fighting hard to retain its feeding bottle. The United Kingdom-based Socialist Labour organised a virtual conference of Africans to discuss this and the current crises in Africa, with an emphasis on the Francophone countries. Co-ordinator Tokunbo Oke, in commenting on the theme, “The Niger Coup: Imperialism and the Crisis of Francophone Africa”, lamented that to discuss, the African people have to surmount the obstacles of various European languages as they are either Anglophone, Francophone, Iberiaphone, or Luxophone.

Ndongo Samba Sylla, a Senegalese development economist and co-author of the book Africa’s Last Colonial Currency: The CFA Franc, noted that the recent coups in West and Central Africa occurred in the same Francophone Zone and that they are all landlocked. He said the repeated coups in these countries show they have weak institutions and remain underdeveloped.

The Failure Of Democracy In Africa

 By Chiedu Uche Okoye

The rashes of successful military takeovers in some African countries signpost the failure of democracy on the African continent. Before the Caucasoid race brought democracy to Africa, the many different kingdoms in Africa had their pre-colonial types of government.

Then, we had the Dahomey kingdom, Benin kingdom, Oyo Empire, and others. Their respective pre-colonial types of government throve, ensuring and guaranteeing orderly succession of pre-colonial governments in Africa. The evolutionary trends of our pre-colonial governments were stymied by the white people’s introduction of democracy to the African people(s), however.

Nigeria’s New Jobs ‘Data’: NBS Makes Itself A Laughingstock!

 By Olu Fasan

The news came like a bolt from the blue. Nigeria’s jobless rate dropped from 33.3 per cent to 4.1 per cent in August, declared the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS. It was a meteoric rise in employment that called for national celebration. Except that it was a lie, a total fabrication. Nothing changed in Nigeria’s depressing unemployment situation. The sharp ‘drop’ from 33.3 per cent to 4.1 per cent only came about because the NBS changed the methodology for measuring unemployment. It was a shameful statistical sleight of hand!

Every statistical body must crave public confidence in the data it produces, based on the cardinal rule that data must be ethically sound and stand up to scrutiny. But the NBS breached this rule with jobs data that are utterly misleading, suggesting that Nigeria’s jobless rate magically came tumbling down from 33.3 per cent to 4.1 per cent. But nothing magical happened. It was a human contrivance. The NBS said the methodology that produced the jobs data was “in line with international best practices”, saying it was “recommended” by the International Labour Organisation, ILO.

PEPT Verdict: Judiciary As Undertakers Of Nigeria’s Democracy

 By Ikechukwu Amaechi

On Wednesday, September 6, the Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal, PEPT, delivered judgement in the petitions filed by Atiku Abubakar and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Peter Obi and the Labour Party, and the Allied Peoples Movement, APM, challenging the declaration of Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, APC, winner of the February 25 presidential poll.

The five judges that delivered the PEPT judgment 

It is instructive that the ruling came exactly on the day the respondent, Bola Tinubu, marked his 100th day in office as President. It is also worth noting that as the judgement was being delivered in Abuja, Tinubu who ordinarily should be in the eye of the storm, was in far-away New Delhi, India, where he is representing Nigeria on an observer status at the summit of the group of 20 most industrialised nations, G20, the premier forum for international economic cooperation, on the invitation of the incumbent chairman, Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India.

Preventing Military Coups In Africa: Attention, Nigeria!

 By Tonnie Iredia

Two recent military coups in neighbouring Niger and Gabon have heightened discussions in Nigeria of the possibility of military intervention in the politics of the nation. The feeling appears so palpable considering the commonality of causative factors which over the years always influenced military rule in Africa: societal restiveness, poor economy, failed elections, pervasive corruption, extravagance of politicians and the helplessness of civic society accentuated by the disappearance of the middle class.

In Nigeria, the division of society into two classes only; that is those who have everything and those who have nothing is more visibly felt than anywhere else. This has left many people to pray not just for something to change but for it to come through the efficacy of a military coup. The recent decision of the military hierarchy in Nigeria to formally dismiss such undemocratic undertones in the land is instructive.

The Comedy In The Tragedy Of Ali Bongo’s Ouster

 By Rotimi Fasan

It has never stopped raining for some of Africa’s fragile governments and reconditioned democracies. It’s been pouring. There’s a big scramble by some of the continent’s sit-tight leaders to protect their autocratic stools. Panic as well as unease is also spreading to other parts of the continent where election outcomes are either in dispute or the winners are yet to consolidate their position. From Uganda to Rwanda, Zambia to Nigeria, the story is the same. Yet the realities may not exactly be the same – at least that is the case with Nigeria where the presidential election tribunal for the February 2023 presidential election is getting set to deliver judgement.  

*Bongo 

Only days after television images showed him with smug imperturbability casting his vote in the flawed election that returned him to power after 14 years in the saddle, President Ali Bongo emerged, in a room in his presidential palace-turned-prison, asking for help and a way out of the dungeon in which he had suddenly found himself trapped by the very people he hired to protect him.

Why Nigeria Needs State Police Urgently

 By Victor Anya

The recent declaration of emergency on food by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu can’t be achieved since there is large scale insecurity in the country. It would have been better for Mr. President to have declared emergency on insecurity instead of emergency on food. This is because without security there can never be food security since farmers can’t go to their farms for fear of being killed by blood thirsty criminals.

There is no magic wand that will guarantee security in the country if state police is not established to complement the efforts of the Nigeria Police Force. Successive governments have downplayed this very crucial demand by thoughtful Nigerians on frivolous excuses.

Ali May Be Gone But The Bongo System Survives In Gabon

 By Chidi Odinkalu

Citizens of Gabon, the small Central African country and former bastion of French colonialism in the Congo Basin, broke out in spontaneous celebration at the news of the ouster of President Ali Bongo Ondimba, on August 30, 2023. This is the 22nd coup attempt in Africa since 2013, and the 11th successful coup across eight countries since Zimbabwe’s soldiers sacked President Robert Mugabe in 2017.

*Ali Bongo makes first public appearance after suffering a stroke 
This is also the third coup attempt in Gabon’s history and the first to succeed. The coup began on the fourth day of a nation-wide curfew accompanied by a shutdown of the airspace, borders, and the internet and shortly after Gabon’s electoral commission announced under cover of darkness that President Bongo had won another seven-year term in elections in which he allowed no observers.

Chinua Achebe International Symposium and 10th Memorial Celebration Hold At Princeton University

Princeton University’s Africa World Initiative and Program in African Studies in partnership with The Christie and Chinua Achebe Foundation are hosting the Chinua Achebe Symposium and 10th Anniversary Memorial Celebration on September 29th and 30^th, 2023.

The symposium on September 29, with an international cast of senior and emerging scholars, marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of Achebe’s blistering political treatise The Trouble With Nigeria. Three panels will examine new directions in Achebe studies, the politics of canonicity, and African literatures in the age of historical reckonings, while a roundtable discussion focuses on leadership and statecraft in Nigeria and Africa.

FG Palliatives: A Grain Of Rice For Each Household!

 By Tunde Olusunle

If you were a student of English in my generation, there were au­thors and titles, African and for­eign, you just had to encounter. Nigerian writers like Daniel Fagunwa, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Chris­topher Okigbo, John Pepper Bekeder­emo-Clark, Timothy Aluko, Gabriel Okara, Elechi Amadi, Ola Rotimi, Zulu Sofola, Buchi Emecheta, Flora Nwapa, all members of the “first generation” of Nigerian writers; they were irrevo­cable constants.

On the African scene, Nadine Gordimer, Dennis Brutus, Pe­ter Abrahams, Lenrie Peters, Alan Pa­ton, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Meja Mwangi, Simon Gikandi, Camara Laye, Kofi Awoonor, Kofi Anyidoho, Ayi Kwei Armah, Sembene Ousmane, Frantz Fanon, Sonne Mbella Dipoko, Nagu­ib Mahfouz and so on were featured variously on our reading lists. Indeed, in several instances, we had prior ex­posure to the works of some of these icons in the syllabuses of our ordinary school leaving and higher school cer­tificate examinations respectively. In our multi-generic poetry, prose, drama, oral literature and stylistics classes in the university, these legends were fur­ther encountered in various ways.

Palliatives In Nigeria = Two Cups Of Grains!

 By Dele Sobowale

“Blessed are they that expect nothing; for they shall never be disappointed” – Pessimist motto.

Hope renewed is becoming increasingly dream deferred. When President Tinubu announced during the inaugural address that “subsidy is gone”; and followed that with partial harmonization of exchange rates, the “hit the ground running” brigade went berserk with jubilation.

At last, a courageous leader, ready to make the tough decisions and set the nation on sustainable economic prosperity, has arrived. Those of us, who knew from bitter experiences in Nigeria and abroad, were not so sure all was well. We counseled balancing hope with realism. Talk is cheap.

For Tinubu’s Nigeria, It’s From Frying Pan To Fire

 By Emeka Alex Duru

A friend called the other day from Germany to get a true picture of situations in the country. The initial attempt was to pretend that all was well, that, apart from the dust of the February/March elections, there was not much to worry about. But that seemed a big error, in fact, a terrible one. He blurted: “Old Boy (as we address ourselves), you got it wrong on this. Reports I get every day from people at home indicate that things are not working. The emergence of Bola Tinubu has not helped matters. Except those in the corridors of power, every other citizen is panting. What I get is that, for Nigerians, it’s from frying pan to fire.”

*Tinubu

There was nothing to argue with him. Perhaps, at no time have Nigerians had it as rough as they are going through currently. And to think that this is a country that is not at war, yet the citizens are literally passing through hell in the hands of their leaders. It rankles exceedingly. The cost of every basic item in the land has hit the rooftop. Nigerians are hungry and angry! Minor issues that would have been overlooked can now result in fisticuffs. People wear frowns on their faces as if they woke up to continue with unfinished quarrels.

Mr. President And Rising Hunger, Insecurity

 By Yemi Adebowale

Last Tuesday, residents of the Kpansia area of Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, in their hundreds, invaded a warehouse in the locality where the state’s emergency management agency keeps food. The story was that the agency was hoarding the items despite the hunger in the land. So, hundreds of people gleefully entered the place, disarmed the security men and stole food that included bags of rice, beans, garri as well as cartons of noodles and bottle water. Officers of the Bayelsa State’s security outfit, Doo Akpo, were swiftly deployed to the warehouse to deal with the invaders and secure the building. They could not stop the famished trespassers.

Few hours after the looting, the state government raised the alarm that the goods were “expired relief materials” donated by some concerned Nigerians during the 2022 flood in the state, and urged the raiders to return them to avoid harming their health. “These items are unfit for human consumption,” declared the government.  The looters cared less. As at press time, not even a teaspoon of rice had been returned by the starving Nigerians. I guess they are delightedly enjoying the food.

Gabonese Coup: The Fault Is Not In The Electorate

 By Owei Lakemfa

The scenario has various strands of familiarity. I mean the military coup of Wednesday, August 30, 2023 that removed Gabonese President Ali Bongo Ondimba. An elected African dictator in a well-fortified Presidential Palace finds his palace has become his prison. It is like the fish realising that the water it is swimming in is boiling.

The Praetorian Guards who swore an oath to defend him even if it means losing their lives, are the same arrow head of the coup. The coup leader is, of course, the Head of the Presidential Republican Guard who only yesterday saluted the President, and today, he is the Head of State with the President as his Prisoner-in-Chief.