The so-called Igbo struggle is an enterprise. Individuals from the south-east, who find themselves in the position of political influence, hawk the ‘’Igbo agitation’’ as merchandise in self-seeking ventures. These politicians pursue personal gains robed in the collective agenda. And this is largely because of the people who have become addlepated by barbiturated sentiments, conspiracy theories, and nerve-raising nothings. There are 15 lawmakers from the south-east at the senate and more of this number at the house of representatives, but no single region-centred legislation has reached fruition. In March 2020, these lawmakers in league with their colleagues approved the $22.7…
Author: Frederick Nwabufo
Femi Fani-Kayode makes conceit solemn. He is the sui generis of narcissism. His arrogance dovetails with his foul temper and cutting tongue. There is no shade of modesty, temperance and grace in the son of Remilekun Fani-Kayode (Fani Power). The mealy-mouthed politician takes the “H” in hubris. He is the undisputed crown prince of double-speak. I watched the video of where Fani-Kayode gave a dressing-down to a journalist who asked him an innocuous question which “the Almighty” found irritating and pesky, “Who is bankrolling your tour?” That was it! Femi emptied the content of his pugnacious buccal cavity on the…
Violent crisis of ethnic and religious complexion does not just happen. It grows relentlessly like cancer and metastasises until irreversible fatality. Some of the bloodiest riots in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa have been spawned by conspiracy theories operationalised in religious and ethnic slants. The 1980s religious clashes in Kaduna and Kano, for instance, were ignited by extremist leaders who stoked the furnace. God forbids it that Nigeria slithers down the haunted tunnel of inter-religious crisis again. Nobody wins a religious war. It is the reason religious and political leaders must be disciplined in their utterances. Those who cultivate…
Is the church an enterprise? Yes. Is the church a place of spiritual alliance with the creator? Yes. Naturally, the church as an industry should be detached from incorporeal control. Both must not be conflated. There is the tabernacle of God, which no mundane or terrestrial order has power over, and there is the venture of mammon which must submit to the laws of the land. Caesar must be given his due. The righteous one, Jesus Christ, said so. Bishop David Oyedepo, the redoubtable preacher, took umbrage against the government over a section of the recently signed Companies and Allied…
Nigeria’s ministry of information used to be the preserve of processed, patriotic and disciplined minds. It used to be a place for rational public servants like Chukwuemeka Chikelu, the late Dora Akunyili and Frank Nweke Jr – and not propagandists. I recall vividly the bold undertakings of the ministry under Chikelu, “the debonair and cool-ruling minister”. At the time, Nigeria was just five years out of the clutch of the military with foreign perception liabilities. The country had chalked up a binder of negative depictions. The minister saddled up to the exigency of the situation; he applied himself to re-imaging…
Olusegun Obasanjo is a defining personality in Nigeria’s politics. For decades he has hovered like a wraith over the political cumulus. He is one of the many Nigerian leaders who have profited prodigiously from the country’s undertaking, and he has lived a lifetime on the Nigerian privilege. Fate handed Obasanjo the brick and mortar to set Nigeria on a fine-grained foundation in 1999 – after years of military vandalism. But did he saddle up to the importunities of destiny? Well, I believe we may not be on the current trajectory as a country if Obasanjo had applied his luck judiciously.…
Our society is one which diminishes the young. Being young is a capital offence in Nigeria. We take a loathing to the daring young. Confidence of youth is garbled as arrogance and juvenile vitality is dismissed as imprudence or irresponsibility. We hold fast to the materiality of age – even though inconsequential. An ageist society we are. I have followed with stupefaction the barbs thrown on the path of Naira Marley, the singer, at different turns. It appears the state is just desperate to put a noose on his neck. I recall in May 2019, he was arrested by the…
What makes a revolution? Knowledge. Information. Awareness. Awakening. The biblical Moses was a prince in the ménage of the persecutors of the Hebrews – his people. He did not know their toil because he was far removed from them. He lived in the cloistered world of princes while his people retire to a night of torment and awake to a morning of labour. But one day, a bolt of epiphany hit Moses – the prince of Egypt. He saw his people in servitude – and I guess the prince knew he was not free himself if they were in manacles.…
Nigeria is the collective heritage of about 200 million people of diverse ethnic backgrounds and tongues. There are over 250 ethnic nationalities spread across the country. Nigeria does not belong only to the Igbo, the Hausa and the Yoruba. Unfortunately, these three so-called ‘’ major ethnic groups’’ have defined the political and economic actualities of the country since independence. Even among the ‘’big three’’, there are splinter groups of distinct cosmology. Again, Nigeria does not belong only to the Igbo, the Hausa and the Yoruba. It belongs to every group subsisting in the entity irrespective of population size. But sadly,…
Nigeria’s congress with China is not one of two equal partners forging a mutually beneficial pact and intercoursing common purposes or goals. It is a relationship with a one-sided cruel dominatrix. Though the interrelation may be commensal on the surface, considering the loans we have been able to secure for some projects from China, it is to a great extent amensal. Any entity which launches into a contract with another out of desperation and from a position of destitution is doomed to be marionetted, violated, and risks losing whatever autonomy it enjoys. Sadly, this appears to be the case of…
On April 28, US President Donald Trump in his accustomed cadence said his administration would send 250 ventilators to Nigeria, according to him ‘’Nigeria will do anything for ventilators’’. On May 21 while touring the Ford Motor Plant in Michigan he summarily ballooned the figure of the medical equipment to 1,000. It has been three months since this pledge. Ventilators are not apples. They are expensive – a single unit can cost as much as $5,000 or $30,000 – depending on the brand. I have always wondered – who foots the bill for the medical equipment — 1,000 of…
If Nigeria’s young are timid, tractable and apathetic to economic and political issues affecting their country blame the anvil on which they are forged. The government, the formative schools, the universities and the predatory politics – all are the forgers of today’s youth. A system which lobotomises the young from nascency has already denied them not only the ability to emote, think, act, but also the power to speak up for themselves, fight for their rights and defend themselves. There was a time in Nigeria when the youth held the fort. They were unbending to the caprices of the military…
There is no executive or administrative corruption without civil partnerships. What we often see on the surface as corruption in government agencies is deeply tap-rooted — with connectors to social crusaders, polemists, activists and civic groups. Corruption in Nigeria has a long value chain. The probe of the management of the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) over serious allegations of corruption by the national assembly is two peas in a pod. The NDDC is like a cookie jar, those probing and those under probe all have their hands stuck in it. Last Thursday, Kemebradikumo Pondei, acting managing director of the…
The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) has been asphyxiated. It is out of oxygen. It now runs on the noxious gas of corruption; its usefulness outlived and outpaced by fraud and mindboggling moral and financial depravity. The agency is a convincing argument against the mushrooming of regional commissions which end up becoming cash machines of a few. What is happening in the NDDC is a big whale feast — with the indiscriminate and soulless butchering of the agency’s treasury. Nigerians in the Niger Delta asked for development, but they were sectioned to endure pauperisation and the purloining of their patrimony.…
A few months after the presidential inauguration in 2015, the Buhari administration launched a Jihad against corruption and applied itself to pseudo-reformist proselytising. The government caterwauled over how the Jonathan administration magicked the public treasury into exclusive pockets. The biggest news headline at the time was — STOLEN $2.1 BILLION ARMS FUND. Sambo Dasuki, former national security adviser (NSA), was the first casualty of the Buhari anti-corruption blitz. I witnessed how security operatives converged on his residence in July 2015; the intrigues, and his subsequent arrest. The government accused him of being the wheel from where corruption in the Jonathan…
Social media/internet freedom is a basic human right. It is unalienable. In the pool of freedoms, it is as basic as the right to exist. Take away the power of thought and expression from a man, and you have a breathing cadaver. On June 25, The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Community Court of Justice ruled that the September 2017 internet shutdown ordered by the Togolese government during protests was illegal and an affront to the applicants’ right to freedom of expression, this is according to Business and Human Rights Resource, which also reported that ‘’the court ordered…
‘’It has been long coming. Expect things to be done differently from now on,’’ a source in the thick of things told me regarding the ‘’arrest’’ of Ibrahim Magu, acting EFCC chairman, by security operatives. Magu’s fall – even though delayed – preceded him. He walked on molten magma. He had chalked up lots of professional liabilities before he became the EFCC czar. In August 2008, when Farida Waziri was the commission’s chairman, Magu was alleged to be in the possession of some sensitive documents which were not supposed to be at his disposal. These documents were allegedly discovered at…
How much progress has Nigeria made with its ethnic-motility politics? Since 1999, we have had presidents of different ethnic extractions – Yoruba, Fulani, and Ijaw – who were largely elected on the portfolio of ethnicity and religion rather than on the content of their minds? But how have we fared? The Obasanjo administration despite investing billions of dollars, estimated to be around $16 billion, in the power sector, did not crack a fire; the country is still trolled by the undersupply of electricity. And subsequent administrations, including the current one, are yet to find the X of the power problem.…
I came in full cognisance with the normality of influence peddling for jobs when I was covering the national assembly. It is a run-off-the-mill practice, which has become permissive, for lawmakers to scribble a long list of names of cronies and hangers-on and send it to any government agency soliciting jobs. I have seen lots of these lists myself. It is the appalling summation of how we view and conduct government business in the country. Government jobs are considered as private holdings of those in power and of those with access to power rather than the commonwealth of every Nigerian.…
Screeching on television in February 2018, Remi Tinubu, wife of Ahmed Tinubu, the Jagaban of Borgu, let out a bellow. She said her husband was ‘’trashed’’ (her word) after the 2015 election. Her wailing: “I was hurt [by] what they did to my husband after the campaign …he didn’t say a thing. We were running three campaigns in my house and for him to be trashed like that…’’ Really, Tinubu has had it coming. The All Progressives Congress (APC) he co-founded has largely been weaned off his influence. In the heat of the tumult in the APC in 2018, he…
Ibrahim Magu, acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), escaped the axe by the gators last week. He was nearly fired. The EFCC chief’s nearly five-year incumbency has been a wild play of intrigues, distraction and confusion. I recall in 2016 when the Senate declined to confirm his appointment, citing a DSS report which was damnatory in complexion. I was startled at the content of that report. I broke the story revealing the details of the intelligence at a time Nigerians were on the edge to get the gist unseasoned. For the sake of perspicuity, I have…
All Progressives Congress (APC) is on the cusp of an implosion. The crisis in the party has reached a frightening crescendo. It has been a gradual but steady plummet for the party since its 2015 unanticipated triumph. I believe, the APC is in the thrall of a curse – the success curse. In March, I wrote ‘Are we having the funeral of APC so soon,’ putting the tumbling fortunes of the party through a dialectical quarry. I said, and I still think working together in a struggle is a much easier enterprise than banding in victory. In 2013, the PDP…
One of the many contraptions that have defied contrivance and evolution in Nigeria is our politics. We still practise the basest, vilest and crudest kind of politics. In fact, there is a more transparent and disciplined political system in the animal kingdom than there is in our country. Some studies have shown that baboons have an ordered democratic system – not based on social dominance but on purpose, merit and importance. Baboons will not follow any member of their troupe based on his rank or social significance but squarely on if that member has direction and purpose. Also, honey bees…
The recent current of the #BlackLivesMatter movement in the US has surged tremendously in Nigeria – a country in the thrall of its unique kind of ‘’racism’’ – tribalism. Nigerians held protests at the embassy of the US in Abuja, condemning the murder of George Floyd, an African-American, by a Caucasian Minneapolis police officer a few days ago. Really, while the protests are for a righteous cause, no doubt, we need to re-wheel and deepen them to square up to our own fundamental imbalances. The US is a society that is attuned to its frailties and rises to the occasion…
One of the five cardinal objectives of the United States foreign policy is ‘’promoting and supporting’’ democracy. The US has fought wars and spent billions of dollars ‘’promoting and supporting’’ its own genre of democracy in other countries – especially in the developing world. The country touted itself to be the emancipator of the world – against communism — during the Cold War. And after the containment of this ‘’threat’’, the US began an aggressive ‘’ democracy proselytising’’. Unlike, during the Cold War when the US pursued its containment policy by consorting with dictators, it sermonised and preached ‘’ democracy’’…
The Buhari administration did not prime itself for leadership but for power. The regime has titillated more attention from controversies stoked by internecine scrimmages than from any milestone project. It has been five years of intrigues, scandals, and the simply unbelievable. Really, the life of the regime has been more dramatic than a Telemundo soap opera. In October 2016, just 17 months after the regime came to power, Aisha Buhari, matron of the villa, spun the conspiracy of a cabal in the government. The first lady said she might not support Buhari’s re-election because he is a titular head puppeteered…
The primacy of the media in any society is indubitable. The media is the iron curtain between tyranny and democracy. It is the bastion of the ethos, truth and spirit of a people. And it serves no interest but the public. Cliched as the fourth estate of the realm, the essentiality of media is commonplace but prodigiously unemphasised. In fact, it is the institution that is accorded a ‘’special envoy status’’ in the Nigerian constitution and even in those of some advanced democracies. Section 22 of the Nigerian constitution says: “The press, radio, television and other agencies of mass media…
Femi Adesina, the presidential spokesman, features in the pantheon of accomplished Nigerian journalists no doubt. In his days of ‘’truth-telling’’ and before the hex of unclean spirits in Aso Rock, Adesina was the man from miyshore – the straight place. He was loved. He cut the persona of a light bearer. But why has the ‘’kulikuli exponent’’ so unravelled? By the way, it was Reuben Abati, Adesina’s predecessor, who regaled us with the tale of paranormal activities at Aso Rock. Abati in ‘Rituals, blood and death: The spiritual side of Aso Rock’, said: ‘’When presidents make mistakes, they are probably…
If the gods want to punish a people, they either invoke plagues on the land or deploy agents of slaughter as leaders. The gods are not happy with Rivers state, obviously, hence the affliction by Nyesom Wike. The state had a chance of averting this ruination in 2019, but it did not take it. The recent brutish actions of Wike in Rivers really knock me into wondering whether the governor superintends over a parallel country. Wike has taken deeper gulps from the chalice of malice, absolutism and despotism. He is now running wild and untamed. In April, the governor ordered…
A society which eats, debases and abuses its young is a coven run by witches. The almajiri children are innocents socialised into a culture and system they did not create. They are just unlucky to be born in an unfortunate axis of the world. They did not make their circumstances or their world; they were thrust into it. They live but are not given a life. They are programmed like hunter-robots to lead a life of the hunt – hunt for alms. I witnessed the almajiri affliction during my stay in Kaduna and visits to Kano and Katsina years ago.…
