The recent upheavals generated by the bold move by Governor Nyesom Wike of the Rivers State to contest the right of the Federal Inland Revenue Services (FIRS) to continue collection of Value Added Tax, has brought to the fore several issues that are germane to the success or otherwise of the nation. The current skewed federal structure is largely responsible for the stunted growth of the nation. For those who mean well, the parasitic structure we operate as a federation cannot be in the ultimate interest of the nation. The Rivers State Government had obtained the judgment of the Federal…
Author: Charles Okoh
Hypocrisy has adopted Nigeria for permanent abode and it does not appear ready to take a leave any time soon. In Nigeria, we all see everything going bad but everybody will conveniently turn a blind eye to it. We all know that in doing the same thing over and over again, we can only arrive at the same outcome, but we pretend as though by some divine intervention, by repeating the same exercise, we will get a different outcome. That is the reason worship centres and magic homes are doing very well. Factories are being taken over by worship centres…
From all indications, President Muhammadu Buhari is hell-bent on breaking the country. A president who is desirous of building an egalitarian society where the rule of law is supreme cannot consistently be insisting on having his way even when it is obvious to all discerning minds that the path the president is toeing is fraught with troubles that are capable of tearing the nation apart. It is not a mark of strength that a leader insists on always having his way and never caring a hoot how the people feel and yet Buhari claims he is exercising the mandate…
For about two weeks, the nation has witnessed the activities around the 80th birthday of former military president, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. For some, especially those who have had direct dealings with him, it has been a flurry of praises for the man whom many have come to know as the Maradona and affectionately referred to also as IBB or the evil genius. Babangida has the unenviable record of aborting what everybody has come to accept as the best thing to happen to our electoral evolution as a nation. He scuttled the June 12, 1993, presidential election which he midwifed and…
President Muhammadu Buhari enjoyed a cult image in the run-up to the 2015 presidential election. The followership was so massive and devoted that you would be tempted to think it bordered on hypnosis. But, President Buhari is now a victim of that larger than life image he exuded. He is a prisoner of a variant of loyalty that is clearly not in sync with the everyday man on the street. He is now held in the cocoon of his praise-singing, sycophantic loyalists who are only doing this not for the love of the man or the nation, but for their…
The 2020 Tokyo Olympics which began on Friday, July 23, 2021 and ended yesterday, Sunday, August 8, was a monumental disaster for Nigeria. On the part of the athletes and given our performances at recent Olympics, the 2020 edition may not be a totally bad outing, but on the part of the officials and our sports administrators, it was another case of avoidable heartaches for sports-loving Nigerians. Where does one start from? Is it the disqualification of 10 athletes because Nigerian athletics officials failed to conduct enough drug tests over the past several months as required specifically, by Rule 15,…
He, who feels it, knows it; so says an African proverb. Yet, another African proverb says when you see mourners with a casket; it appears as though what they carry is mere firewood, except if the deceased relates to you. For a very long time we have all pretended that as long as it does not affect us directly, we have nothing to worry about. Now, it is coming home and no one is spared. Now, the killings have gone out of hand and everybody is worried. Emirs are kidnapped every other day, kidnapping hundreds of students is no longer…
Surviving in Nigeria is now a herculean task. Poverty continues to spiral and hunger and general hardship are gaining geographical spread in exponential proportion and something urgent needs to be done to arrest this development. To say Nigerians are hungry would amount to stating the obvious. The prices of items in the market are permanently sky-bound. To tackle these seemingly insurmountable hiccups would call for a multi-pronged approach where all hands must be on deck because to juxtapose excruciating hunger with the alarming rate of idle hands and jobless Nigerians, especially the restless youths, would lead to outcomes unimaginable. Recently,…
That the Nigerian National Assembly has charted its own course is well-known. That this otherwise bastion of democracy has opted to attach itself as an appendage to the executive arm of government is also well documented fact, but what is all the more troubling is how low they are prepared to condescend just to be seen to be subservient and yes-men to the executive. Last week, the Senate turned down the nomination of the garrulous nominee of President Muhammadu Buhari, Lauretta Onochie, as INEC commissioner to represent Delta State. The lily-livered Senate had been having sleepless nights on how to…
