President Muhammadu Buhari’s ‘’rice revolution’’ is laudable. Before the ‘’crop rebellion’’, Nigeria spent about $1.65 billion annually importing rice from Thailand and India. But the country is not yet home and dry in food production. In December 2018, Godwin Emefiele, governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), said as of 2015, the country’s food import bill was $7.9 billion, but that the figure plummeted to $1.6 billion in 2018. However in September, 2018, Audu Ogbe, former minister of agriculture, put Nigeria’s annual food import bill at $22 billion. The fact is, Nigeria was spending its future away importing food. It…
Author: Frederick Nwabufo
Why are Nigerian politicians ravished by the thought of election? They complot and machinate over it. And when they eventually get into office, they spend four years scheming for another turn instead of honouring their contract with citizens. There is always a blue-print for the next election, but a subterfuge for governance and duty. The last general election was held in February, and just eight months after, there are already ‘’crusades and evangelism’’ ahead of the next one in 2023. How can we make progress this way? We need to ask ourselves some uncomfortable questions? Do we keep reprocessing the…
I have always assumed that ‘’the cabal’’ or the kitchen cabinet in any administration exists at the pleasure of the president or the leadership; hence members of this clique owe him and everything that comes with him, unsoiled loyalty. My assumption was underpinned by some classical examples. In 2010, the kitchen cabinet was Turai Yar’Adua’s bulwark when the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua was in a vegetative state. In fact, the first lady was the head of that cabal which went overboard in seeking to hold on to power. In Taraba state in 2013, a reprise of the Yar’Adua saga…
One man can induce rippling change in a system. One man can stop illegal detention, arrests, and govern the impulse to clamp down on free speech and citizens’ rights. One man can rebuild relationships and cause harmony to exist among disparate peoples. That man is the president; If only he is willing. In Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, the young, charismatic prime minister, has effectuated expansive reforms in the country. He brooks opposition and harbours no political prisoner. In fact, one of his first assignments after becoming prime minister was to order the release of political prisoners. He appointed women to about…
The flatulent size of the national assembly accents the orthodoxies and paradoxes of Nigeria. Nigeria’s lawmakers are some of the highest paid in the world, in a country where about 100 million people live on less than a dollar per day, and where citizens are expected to be stoic and exist in deficit while their representatives in parliament ensconce themselves in surplus. Is it not pharisaic that while the government insists on burdening citizens with more taxes and increasing the yoke, there is no reciprocity on their part? What is the government doing to shrink the cost of governance?…
It is 9:10am, and former President Goodluck Jonathan arrives at the mouth of the aircraft at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport. His hat gives him away too soon as he saunters into the waiting metal bird. I cast a piercing glimpse at him, and said to myself, ‘’that was once the most powerful man in Africa, and perhaps, the most misunderstood’’. We then journeyed on the wings of the bird from Abuja through Abidjan to Niamey. But wait. I was an irrepressible critic of Jonathan, yes, and I exercised this right as a citizen of Nigeria maximally under him. I was not arrested,…
You can accuse Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo of being ‘’down-to-earth’’, considering his pint-size. You can also accuse him of intellectual exuberance, but you cannot tack corruption to him. It will not stick. Over the years, the maelstrom of anger against Osinbajo has widened. The reason for this, perhaps, is the perception by some Nigerians that he is not standing up enough for his own – the Christian fold and the south — when it matters. Another reason is the amplification of this perception by some members of the opposition who deploy propaganda to ‘’divisive finale’’. Osinbajo’s faith and calling – as…
President Buhari shares paternity with Paul Biya of Cameroon in leadership style. Both men are joined by the umbilicus of repression and abrasion. In 2010, Bertrand Teyou, an author, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for insulting the wife of the president, Chantal Biya. The Cameroonian government filed charges against him for this spectacular reason. Under Biya, Southern Cameroon has become the scene of a volcanic crisis – killings, illegal detentions and arrests. Specifically, the government is zeroing in on dissenting voices in effecting these violations. I think, the situation is much more execrable in Nigeria than in Cameroon. Amnesty…
‘’What will Osinbajo do now?’’ I asked a senior colleague. He blurted: ‘’He has his role cut out for him already. He is in charge of Tradermoni and condolence visits.’’ Really, what is Yemi Osinbajo’s detail in the government now, considering the recent staggering upshots? Has he been lame-ducked and functionally vasectomised? The last time Nigeria had a vice-president with the potency to make and execute decisions was under the Obasanjo administration. The extensive economic programmes initiated by the administration were machined by former vice-president Atiku Abubakar – before the fall out. Atiku supervised the privatisation of public enterprises, and…
Democracy is freedom; freedom to exist and to exercise the full catalogue of natural rights. The quality of democracy in an ordered system is assessed by the quantity and level of freedom the citizens enjoy. Any type of government – military, fascist or totalitarian – can deliver services of material nature to its citizens; building hospitals, schools, roads and providing other social amenities. But not all types of government can allow citizens be citizens — not subjects or minions. This is where democracy stands out. The office of the citizen is a critical one in a real democracy as legitimacy…
I have pondered on Atiku Abubakar’s case against President Muhammadu Buhari at the presidential election petition tribunal. I have also cerebrated on the counter arguments of the president. By my ratiocination, the arguments of both parties are nourished with so much ridiculousness that the case itself appeals more as comic relief. The president under propped his argument with the claim that Atiku is not a citizen of Nigeria by birth, and that he ‘’ought not to have even been allowed in the first place, to contest the election’’. Truly, the Nigerian constitution prescribes citizenship by birth as a requisite for…
How do you measure the virility of an administration; its potency to impregnate the economy, infrastructure and welfare of citizens? Should it be in the first 100 days of its life; in two or four years? Well, I will measure in the little steps, in actions and in the agenda. 100 days may be too short to gauge the failure of a government, but it is certainly not brief to check for signs of health or of convalescence. In medical science, symptoms are typically expected to improve in three days after the administration of medicine. In 2015, when President…
Reports say a Nigerian, who had gone to lodge a protest against the dispatch of his fellow countrymen by a ravening, xenophobic bloodhound in South Africa at Shoprite, Lekki, Lagos, ended up becoming a victim of the untamed violence of Nigeria’s security agents. Tragic! How can the lives of citizens matter abroad, when they are killed unchecked in the country? Really, I do not know how to feel about this. Since the importunate attacks on Nigerians in South Africa, I have not read or seen it anywhere that the country’s security agents killed any arsonist, aggressor or slasher. In…
A scathing detraction to professionalism in Nigeria is the customisation of public offices. Institutions are built around personalities rather than on principles and service. The corrugation of Nigeria’s public offices and institutions has a long history. But of significance is the brazen privatisation and deployment of public office to insular ends by Michael Aondooakaa, attorney-general of the federation (AGF) under Umaru Musa Yar’adua, in 2009. Aondooakaa was AGF and in the same breath, counsel to George Akume, then Benue state governor, who was being investigated by the EFCC for alleged corruption to the tune of N2 billion. Being Nigeria’s chief…
In the heat of the lynching of Igbo citizens in Asia in 2013 over alleged criminality, I wrote an essay entitled, ‘The Igbo fallacy’. In it, I appealed to the Igbo to de-emphasise the culture of profligacy, decadent opulence and vanity which fuels the pursuit of crime by their own. I also suggested the need for value re-orientation – a task that must be actuated by all groups – the age grades, unions and traditional institutions. Really, it is enervating for me that my kinsmen are taking the inglorious front row in ‘’money crimes’’ – drug peddling and internet fraud…
It has been 20 weary days since Omoyele Sowore was taken into a hovel of silence by the DSS. The outrage over his abduction and detention is tapering off; dissolving with every quotidian day. It is human nature to quickly glide past shock, happenstance or pain after sometime, but in Sowore’s case we must bring this weakness into capitulation and into conformity with the realities of our country. Sowore could have elected to stay in the US, where he is a citizen, and enjoy the salubrity of a well-managed country. He could have chosen to clink glasses and drink champagne with…
There is pain. There is anger. And there is collective rage in the land. Nigerians are empty of options and are seeking avenues for a purge; for catharsis. The season of retribution may be upon us sooner than we imagine. The physical abuse of former deputy senate president Ike Ekweremadu at an Igbo forum by some young men in Germany, though condemnable, betokens the onset of nemesis. In a video recording in circulation, while the lawmaker was being assaulted, his abusers could be heard saying: “What have you done? People are dying.’’ This is the question most Nigerians have been…
Before he was given the heave-ho, Okoi Obono-Obla, ex-chairman of the Special Presidential Investigation Panel for the recovery of Public Property (SPIP), bagged notoriety as a ”serial power abuser” and a ”carefree violator” of due process. Obono-Obla’s success is, perhaps, more in the aspect of motoring controversy and bringing attention to the public property recovery panel than in fighting corruption. In March 2018, before his latest knotty involvements with the Petroleum Equalisation Fund (PEF), a London-based private ‘investigator’, Victor Uwajeh claimed he was hired by the panel to trace the hidden assets of public officers abroad. But in May that…
Are Nigerians poorer today than they were in 2015? Yes, if we go by data and economic indicators. In June 2018, a report by the World Poverty Clock revealed that Nigeria had overtaken India as the top-tier country with a cosmic community of poor people on the planet. Also, the report evinced that every minute, six Nigerians become extremely poor. And that in fact, 88 million Nigerians now live in extreme poverty, and with 1.1 million citizens slipping into extreme poverty between June and October, 2018. In July, a report by the UNDP said that 98 million Nigerians were ‘’multi-dimensionally poor’’.…
The DSS cannot be accused of being fair-handed and unprejudiced. It has always been the political police of the existing regime. I recall in 2014 when agents of the service invaded the offices of the APC in search of incriminating materials; hounded the staff of the party and made a spectacle of them for droll offences. The agency was serving the PDP government at the time, now it is serving another regime – the same pattern; the same objective; the same repression; the same pursuit. But when will the DSS serve Nigerians and not a regime, considering that it is…
Reinforcing failure is trying to solve a problem with the same washed-out tools, methods and live-ware. A president is as good as his cabinet; this is the reason competence and character, and not political value, must take precedence over every other item in a detailing list. Just like in the 2015 appointments, when a pathos-inducing denouement settled in after six months of suspense and wearisome wait, the recent appointments are a reprise of the ennui. I had exorbitant expectations – for change. Perhaps, it is too early to run a judgement report, but why did the president have to wait…
The supreme court is an “ecclesiastical order’’; it sits on high looking down on the ”lowly”. It dispenses in inexorable ‘’justice’’; justice not because it is always just, but because it cannot be interrogated when it is unjust. In the course of my career as a journalist, I have covered a good number of court cases. And I have beheld the power, glory and mesmerismo of judges. I recall a justice of the high court who after delivering judgment on a matter, said: “Here, we judges are God. After us, whatever you don’t agree with, you can take it to…
The eyes see what they want to see. And the mind believes what the eyes see. In the Washington Post’s essay entitled, ‘Psychology explains why people are so easily duped’, Eryn Newman, a postdoctoral scholar in cognitive psychology at the University of California, deduced that ‘’photos and names can have surprisingly powerful effects on our memories, beliefs and evaluations of others’’. Eryn raised two poignant questions: ‘’How do we come to believe that things are true when they are not? How can we remember things that never actually happened?” When a label becomes the routine audio-visual constituent of public conversations,…
On Wednesday, June 12, Adenipekun Ademiju, a staff member of Atakumosa west local government area of Osun state embarked on a journey – of no return. It was a quotidian day like any other, and there was nothing betokening tragedy. He boarded a bus from Osun town heading for Ibadan. On the expressway around Ikire community, a group of bandits emerged from the stout bushes and pumped a volley of bullets into the bus. Ademiju was unlucky. On Friday, 58-year-old Funke Olakunrin, daughter of Reuben Fasoranti, a leader of Afenifere, was killed in a similar manner. She was coming from Akure and heading…
One flaw that detracts from President Buhari’s strengths is tardiness; especially, his dilatory response to matters of importance. This is where an appreciable weakness of the president lies. And most times, the response or actions that follow the intermissions cannot justify the gnawing wait. For example, why wait until July to reappoint the same aides when that could have been done a day after the inauguration of the government? Why this accustomed lethargy? It has been four months since the re-election of President Buhari, and it has been months of no direction for the country. This is reminiscent of 2015, when…
“It will take the next two months before ministers can come on board. Bringing them in now may disrupt the clean-up going on. So, Nigerians just have to be patient.” This was Garba Shehu, presidential spokesman, speaking to Reuters on July 1, 2015 on the hold-up in appointing ministers. He said the president was taking his time to assemble a team of “credible and competent” Nigerians. But after six months of suspense and wearisome wait, some persons of blemished character and of inchoate competence still got hoisted into the cabinet. What a pathos-inducing denouement that was? As a matter of…
“Onye Nigeria, I told you one day, there will be job adverts for positions in the federal civil service, and there will be a clause: ‘No candidate from the southeast allowed’; the exclusion of Ndi Igbo from the leadership of the three arms of government is just the beginning.” That was the message of an Igbo nationalist to me. Nnamdi is a “sparring mate”, who scavenges for daily upsets and annoyances about Nigeria. He has been dutiful in this enterprise. We spend some time arguing the place of the Igbo in Nigeria and related subjects. He believes the Igbo cannot…
The Buhari presidency’s animus against AIT has a four-year history. On April 26, 2015, a reporter and a cameraman of the TV station were estopped from covering the affairs of then President-elect Buhari at the Defence House. And since then, it has been a test of wills. The fount of this hostility is the government’s perception of the broadcaster as an opposition medium. I have perused the long and winding statement of the NBC, explaining the reasons for its “regulatory blitz” on AIT. It is clear the government wants tamed and docile media that will panegyrise it. The NBC said…
In Nigeria, governments come and go, but each one outpaces the other in impunity, non-performance, corruption and incompetence. Before the administration of President Buhari that of Goodluck Jonathan was knocked as the archetypal highhanded, clueless, corrupt and wasteful government. But before Jonathan’s reign, Obasanjo’s administration was pilloried as a corrupt and iron-fisted “regime”, and before that, the military administrations were adjudged the “portmanteau of all evils”. I must say, most Nigerians still consider the military administrations as the “portmanteau of all evils”. And I assent this view. But lately, I chanced on some conversations with the pesky question: “20 years…
Conspiracy theories are the palm oil of Nigeria’s politics. They give taste to falsehood, tension, fear and unrest. And often, they are ignorantly eaten, regurgitated and spewed by the unwary. On December 11, 2013, former President Olusegun Obasanjo wrote a caustic missive entitled, ‘Before it is too late’, searing former President Jonathan and his administration. He alleged that Jonathan was “clannish” and that he was promoting an Ijaw agenda. He also alleged that the immediate past president was arming militants, and that he had pencilled down 1000 people for crucifixion. Obasanjo surmised that Jonathan was training a special killer squad like that…