Author: Azu Ishiekwene

The journey to Kuriga in southern Kaduna, North-west Nigeria, did not start with the kidnap of 287 students last week. In the early 1990s a neighbouring town, ZangoKataf, was the boiling point. About a decade later, the beast of sectarian violence, which had reared its head in Kaduna, surfaced several hundreds of miles away in two major places that have become the epicentres of insurgency: Borno and Yobe States, both in the North-east. Even though misery travelled southwards aided by Mohammed Yusuf, the itinerant extremist Muslim preacher in Yobe whose activities heightened the rise of extremism in the early 2000s,…

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I don’t know how it is in your part of town. But it’s been a nightmare in mine, a supposedly middle-class residential area in Abuja, Nigeria’s federal capital. Rolling blackouts do not begin to explain the depth of the misery. It’s been a dreadful time of rolling and erratic blackouts. Like surfing an angry wave, if you understand what I mean. Generators and other alternative sources of power, mostly inverters, solar panels and repurposed domestic gas, have replaced public power supply. Private power supply has become the main source; while public supply, if you ever get it, has become the…

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The resolutions following the Extraordinary Summit of the Heads of Government of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), at the recently concluded summit of Heads of State and Government in Abuja, were truly extraordinary. Seven months after threatening to deploy force in Niger, one of the four delinquent states – the others being Mali, Guinea, and Burkina Faso – and three months after wide-ranging economic sanctions were imposed on all four, the regional body backed down spectacularly last week. If the Afrobeat icon, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, had rendered a welcome tune for the embattled regional leaders as they met in Nigeria’s…

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Nigeria’s politicians have perfected the art of burying themselves with one foot sticking out.And it appears that the All Progressives Congress (APC) will, once again,stage this rite of self-destruction in the forthcoming governorship election in Edo State. The party’s primaries on Saturday was such a shambles, it has now been forced to conduct it again, with no guarantee of a sensible outcome for an exercise involving perhaps less than 500,000members (parties routinely inflate their roll). If Governor Godwin Obaseki’s ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP), had paid to put a spell on APC, the outcome would not have been more potentially…

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I was going through some old files in my closet the other day when I saw some documents and receipts that absolutely cracked me up. Among the browning, time-worn papers was the receipt from a private primary school for the payment of my first daughter’s fees. It was a middle-class school that charged N5,000 naira per term. Attached to the fading receipt was a thank you note by the bursar. I rocked with laughter. This was in 1995 when, after nearly seven years of working, my monthly salary was around 60k or so. I will not forget how my mother…

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As the troubled Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) convenes its Ministerial Council meeting in Abuja on February 8 to discuss the quit notice served by three of its members – Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger – the situation in Senegal might well be the elephant in the room. Three weeks to the presidential election earlier scheduled to hold in that country on February 25, President Macky Sall announced that the election had been postponed, without immediately giving a new date or any believable reasons. After a wave of protests, he instigated the Senegalese Parliament to announce December 15…

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Mali and Burkina Faso obviously have a lot more in common than squaring off in a game of football like they just did in the Round of 16 knockout stage of the African Nations Cup (AFCON), in Cote d’Ivoire. Along with Niger, these countries have been a great source of misery for the continent in the last four years, with rogue military leaders there playing a game far more deadly with the lives of their countries than anything football can ever hope to imitate. They announced to the continent’s shock and surprise last week, that they were pulling out of…

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The report was treated like a footnote in the main press, but social media and online news platforms gave it a wider play. It’s the story of the launch of a nomadic vigilante service by Miyetti Allah, a group of herders turned political pressure group, comprising mostly Fulani. The national president, Bello Bodejo, said in Lafia, Nasarawa State, where the launch took place, that the vigilante service, which had already recruited 1,144 Fulani youths, would assist security agencies in the state to combat criminal activities. Four years ago, the Nnamdi Kanu-led separatist group, IPOB, made similar doubtful claims when the…

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After futile attempts by others to get the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate allegations of genocide against the parties in the war in Gaza, South Africa raised the stakes by filing a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Unlike the ICC, the ICJ is an organ of the UN for civil complaints, and Israel is a signatory to its charter. But South Africa’s latest action may well be symbolic. It means nothing to Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has sworn not to stop the war in Gaza until the last member…

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“Subsidy on petrol will go, sparking initial higher prices and demand for higher public sector wages by union leaders who know the truth but prefer to play to the gallery. To tackle the scandalous difference between the official and black-market exchange rates, expect the new government to adjust the official rate from the current N430-450/$ to around N550/$ in the first instance” – What You Might Expect in 2023, December 29, 2022 This is my fourth forecast since 2019. Apart from a few occasions when I have had eggs in my face from unforeseen events like that wrecking ball called…

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In the last one and a half decades, Rabiu Kwankwaso has been the most charismatic politician out of Kano after the passing of Abubakar Rimi. Kwankwaso is not just charismatic; he is consequential, with a cult-like following that responds twice, even when he calls once. He is facing yet another defining moment in his political career. The outcome of the ruling of the Supreme Court in the case between the Kano State Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) and his rival, Nasiru Gawuna, of the All Progressives Congress (APC), could well determine if the sun…

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The only thing that trumps the mocking viral videos of the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, are the live footages of the State House of Assembly being demolished on Wednesday morning by a dozen bulldozers in what appeared like a scene from Gaza. Reporters were even warned to steer clear. It was no longer renovation as planned; it was a full-blown war zone. Happening on Wike’s 56th birthday, it was the most unlikely birthday present from the government of Siminalayi Fubara that he installed six months ago in Rivers, Nigeria’s richest South-South state. If there was any…

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Ondo is one of Nigeria’s most enlightened states. It is, perhaps, side-by-side with Oyo, one of the most significant political bellwethers of the South-West. Apart from Olusegun Agagu’s four-year spell as governor, that state has maintained its progressive credentials in the last 24 years. But that illustrious tradition has fallen on bad times. And you know this when the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which has governed the state for only four of the last 24 years, begins to suggest to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) how to manage what is obviously a delicate intra-party power transition. With nothing…

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Liberia and Sierra Leone have a common historical legacy and often tend to imitate each other in war and peace. But events in the last two weeks suggest that while Liberia may be turning a new, refreshing page, Sierra Leone remains trapped in its troubled past. First, the good news from Liberia, whose capital, Monrovia, was named in honour of America’s fifth president, James Monroe. After one six-year term, President George Weah announced that he was done, even before Liberia’s electoral commission finished counting the votes in the November 17 run-off elections. The football legend didn’t wait for the referee’s…

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It’s not only the poor that are mad, if you get my drift. Even folks who once thought of themselves as middle class, that is, neither wealthy nor poor, are in maddening distress. They can hardly believe how life has come to be what it is today. Perhaps the most frequently asked question is: how did we get here? My mother used to pray that things should never be difficult for her and for those who could help in a time of need. Now, both the needy and the helper are in distress. When you have to think twice to…

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“Every morning a lion wakes up, it knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve to death…It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle, you better be running” First attributed to Dan Montano in The Economist, but popularised by Thomas Friedman in The World is Flat. If, 20 years ago, you asked me whether big technology (or big tech) companies were a threat to journalism, my answer would have been an emphatic yes. After all, these companies do our job without our job description. They also disrupt the media space while taking little responsibility…

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Elections in Nigeria this year might be nearly over but the war by other means could well receive fresh fire from three state elections this weekend. The year began with general elections in February and March, and is closing with off-cycle elections in Imo, Bayelsa and Kogi on November 11. Conducting elections for three governors after the major round of governorship elections in March that covered 28 states, including the legislatures in dozens of states, and the federal elections before that, might ordinarily look easy. But they are not. These three off-cycle elections are in fact products of either violent…

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Former vice president and presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, said on Monday that Nigeria was the bigger loser in last week’s decision by the Supreme Court to uphold the election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. That was a convenient exaggeration to hide his misery. But it was unnecessary. After unsuccessfully contesting to be president six times, it would have been human for him to admit that this loss, on what might well be his last attempt, was difficult to bear. He didn’t need to frame it as a national tragedy, because quite frankly, it wasn’t. It’s the…

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Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, 60, is a medical doctor and retired army captain. But he has not had a job after retirement 37 years ago. His day job since has been bandits’ advocacy. He has become so used to getting away with saying what he likes when he likes and how he likes it, he hardly knows when he needs help to extract his foot from his mouth. He could use such help. Not only for his own good, but perhaps for the good of those taking him seriously as well. In a rambling no-holds-barred sermon last week, Gumi lashed out at the Minister of…

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I grew up thinking that a judicious mix of crime, sex and money might not only help a publisher turn a good profit but could also be the catalyst for a better society. But my friend, the Publisher/Editor-In-Chief of NaijaTimes, Ehi Braimah, subscribes to a slightly different model. When he sent me a collection of the editorials by the online newspaper to review, it was obvious that he believes it is possible to change society – for the better – by using a genre different from my old, familiar mix. Which is a bit of a surprise because in his…

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This is the moment the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu always feared with great anxiety. Yet when Hamas launched a deadly attack on Southern Israeli border towns in the early hours of October 7, Bibi and Israel’s elite security forces were unprepared. In a bizarre fabrication intended to complete Bibi’s humiliation a few days into the war, social media claimed, falsely, that an antisemitic crow had given the victory to the Palestinians in a mystic moment of avian fury. The truth is more nuanced and complicated. After over five decades of bloody conflicts, the Israeli-Palestinian war has not produced winners or…

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In a country of 133 million multidimensional poor, with youth unemployment at 53.40 percent, it would be a pity if anyone looking for an opportunity to earn a living missed the chance to hear the Imo State Governor Hope Uzodinma recently.  In a campaign speech for his second term, Uzodimma promised, as my father would have said, what Napoleon in all his extraordinary conquests and ambition could not even have dreamed of. In my humble view, it’s Japa 2.0, a giant leap forward for the youth delivered in a moment of creative genius, the last of which was seen when…

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In the Bible, Keren-happuch was the youngest of the three beautiful daughters of Job, who against the norms of a patriarchal society, inherited her father’s vast latter-day wealth along with her two other sisters. But in the sometimes inexplicable twist of fate, this is the story of another Keren-happuch whose sun set before it rose. Her story as told by her mother was hard to follow. Even if I had eaten the head of a tortoise, the fabled medicine for anhedonia, the woman’s story, especially her futile search for justice, would still have broken my heart into many pieces. Perhaps…

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Following the G-20 summit held in India, I have been amused by the debate about whether or not Nigeria should be more than a guest again at the next G-20 meeting in Rio, Brazil. If South Africa is a member, why not Nigeria? How do you offer Africa’s largest economy only a complimentary ticket every time to such an important global event, leaving it with the rather humiliating option of begging for a place? I thought that we had outgrown the belief that respect is earned by size or by simply hanging out with the right crowd, regardless of performance.…

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It’s not often that you meet Supreme Court justices, serving or retired. I first met retired Justice Sunday Akinola Akintan casually at a reception in Abuja, for my friend and radical lawyer, Yinka Olumide-Fusika, who had been admitted to the inner bar. Then, we met again about one year later, this time, through his book. Years after his retirement from the Supreme Court in 2008, Justice Akintan wrote a book, entitled, “Reminiscences: My Journey Through Life,” which Olumide-Fusika, SAN, asked me to review. What struck me was one of Akintan’s motivations for writing the book. It was an answer to T.O.S Benson’s…

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It’s more than one year to the next governorship election in Edo State, which prides itself on being the “heartbeat of the nation”. But in a maelstrom that has forced the state’s heart to beat faster than is good for it, you would be forgiven to think the election is tomorrow. The bad blood between Governor Godwin Obaseki and his deputy, Philip Shaibu, is so bitter and so strong it has spilled beyond Osadebe House in Benin, splattering as far as Abuja courts, and daily smearing the front pages of newspapers. Reports last week said the governor, fed up of…

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Abuja is not in a hurry to change. However, in a city famous for its bad habits fostered by wayward politicians, I think the dial may have moved a bit in the right direction. It’s hard to say if this slight movement has been fortuitous, or whether it had anything to do with the threat of the new minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike, to tackle lawbreakers with an iron hand. I have noticed that one week after Wike’s swearing in, more traffic lights in and around the Central Business District began to work. More than I can…

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It was not meant to be this way. But like a good number of things Nigerian, the story is hardly complete without a twist in the tale. And so it has been for at least three years now with the story of the gas car that was supposed to lessen, if not end, Nigerians’ petrol misery. Sometime in 2020, state oil company, Nigerian National Petroleum Company (now NNPC Limited), launched what it advertised as the National Gas Expansion Programme (NGEP). The major objective of the programme, according to NNPC Group CEO, Mele Kyari, was to harvest gas for car fuel.…

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Engaging Nigerien Military President Is Like Having Sex with Someone You Hate A good number of people, including me, seems opposed to Nigeria leading the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to war in Niger. In one of the most telling anti-war metaphors, a Nigerian columnist and Editor, Lasisi Olagunju, likened military intervention to rubbing buttocks with the porcupine. Doves everywhere are flying the flag of peace. Protesters are also waving placards reminding Nigeria’s President and ECOWAS Chairman, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, not to start a war he cannot finish. As if he lacks awareness, Tinubu has also received reminders,…

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 If President Bola Ahmed Tinubu hit the ground running, it was because problems chased him into office. Yet, it wasn’t long before he tripped on a matter in which his genius has been acknowledged: forming his cabinet.  One of his credentials for eight years as governor of Lagos, and even outside public office for 16 years, has been his gift for spotting talents and putting them to work. He campaigned on this record in the last election. You can therefore imagine the disappointment in some circles when he not only waited 60 days, nearly exhausting the legally allowed time, but…

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