The more you try to understand Nigeria the more confused you get. A nation that has all it takes to be so great and be the envy of other nations is wallowing in chaos dubiously created by the leaders to defraud the led. How long can we continue to tolerate this absurdity called governance in this country? Recently, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) in its report said the price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) popularly called Petrol rose by over 81 percent in the past three years despite the federal government paying over N6 trillion as subsidy within the…
Author: Ifeanyi Izeze
The report by an online newspaper that Mele Kyari, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has been named and fingered in a couple of controversies involving sleaze in the nation’s apex oil concern, “but it appears he enjoys some sort of cover from way up”, was not taken seriously at first but twist of events is forcing the allegation to attract serious attention from several quarters of our national life especially the National Assembly. Only months back, renowned Nigerian Newspaper, ENigeria Newspaper exposed the involvement of Mele Kyari in the multi-billion-naira…
Without mincing words, the upcoming general elections especially the presidential election of 25th February in our country is a rescue mission to save the soul of the nation. There appears to be consensus that Nigeria under the current configuration is either not working at all or working very sub -optimally. As serially said, “we must restructure to recover Nigeria.” On the agitations by different sections of the country- the Igbos, Yorubas Ijaws etc it should be clearly understood that what most of the agitators want is devolution of powers another term of Restructuring and this is not too much to ask…
Whether the outburst and fleet of allegations ascribed to the former minister of information, Chief Edwin Clark, concerning the administration of Governor Ifeanyi Okowa, was true or not is immaterial as the elder statesman has a right to express his views on any matter especially as it concerns the state to which all of us belong. My worry is that Pa Clark had to wait for almost nine months since after the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential primaries that threw up the Delta state governor as the vice presidential candidate of the party. Now you want him to resign his…
Na person wey never go another person papa farm de think say na him papa farm big pass for their village! Whether anybody wants to hear this or not, the Governor Nyesom Wike –led Peoples Democratic Party in Rivers state is possibly not going to have any candidates at all in the forthcoming elections except he swallows the humble pile and retrace his steps which now could best be described as self-destruct and at worst broad day suicide. If not for the blindness of inordinate ambition, Wike and his group have realised that practically nobody in the country is interested…
In his paid damage control effort, the Consultant and Coordinator of President Buhari Legacy Projects, Mr. Patriot Ata Ikiddeh ended up muddling the issue of the successes achieved by the Nigerian navy in government fight against crude oil theft in the nation’s oil region – onshore Niger Delta and offshore arenas. The Legacy Project Consultant in his recently released compendium had declared that the General Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government has arrested over 50 vessels on account of illegal oil bunkering. If it was an image laundering effort for the Nigerian Navy, then it came out doing more damage than good…
How else to describe Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s “Poisoned Communion” metaphor if not to say it is very offensive and an outright insult to the body of Christ, the Church? And any Christian who does not see it that way should actually re-examine his or her believing. It is unacceptable any how you look at it and then coming from a non-believer of the Christian faith, it depicts a deliberate attempt to bring the very soul of Christianity to ridicule more so considering where it was said. While addressing the Arewa interactive committee on Monday 17th October in Kaduna, Tinubu had…
Gone are the days of Labour Unionism as serious pressure-mounting groups in this country. What we have these days is a bunch of self-seeking people that carry themselves not very different from the gang at the National assembly whose only interest is their self-aggrandisement to the detriment of the entire peoples of the country including the very workers such unions/associations were meant to protect. First, it was a threat by the oil workers senior staff association (PENGASSAN) to shut down oil operation in Nigeria following the federal government insincerity in the negotiations with the Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities…
The problem in this country is that we know the truth but always try to dodge from it. We must learn to respect the truth because there is nothing we do that will work to change the pathetic situation this country has been thrown into if we are incapable of accepting the truth. The truth about what is going on with crude oil produced in Nigeria has not been spoken. Give it to the Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC LTD), Mele Kyari who at the 49th session of the weekly ministerial insisted that…
The Nigerian Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) which came alive last year was an effort to refit the regulation and governance of the nation’s oil and gas industry with a view to strengthening and making it more commercially viable as a business entity. Recently passed into law by the National Assembly, the PIA created the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPC Limited); a corporate entity incorporated under the Companies and Allied Matters Act. PIA as we were told commercialised the nation’s apex oil concern turning it into a commercial entity that is valid in law as if it is real. Now,…
The Managing Director of Chevron Nigeria/Mid Africa Business Unit, Richard Kennedy, deserves a 21-gun salute for mustering enough will-power to be honest in publicly declaring at a panel session at the recently concluded Nigeria Oil and Gas (NOG) Conference in Abuja, that Crude oil theft in Nigeria is “organized crime and should be differentiated completely from host community issues.” Mr Kennedy who made this remark when he was asked to comment on the host community provisions of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA), emphasized the need not to confuse the agitations of host communities of oil-producing areas with the spate of…
Why is it that we have absurdities everywhere you look in this dispensation? The Zamfara state governor’s liberalisation of licensing for gun ownership for all indigenes is sure a progress in error. Ordinarily on the surface, it sounds a desperate measure but beneath it is an outright expression of failure of leadership in the state. How do you now convince the good people of Zamfara state that there is a government and a governor in their state when their very Chief Security Officer is asking everybody to buy gun and defend themselves against the marauding bandits terrorising farmers and villagers?…
Is it not ironic that the NNPC and its downstream oil subsector are kept alive thanks to government life support machines in the form of subsidies, and tragically, supposedly sensible Nigerians are still ferociously arguing in favour of continued draining of borrowed funds to pay for the illicit activities and dummy operations at the refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna? But for how long will government after government continue to bankroll the same refineries that should be the number one source of government revenue? This is the question every concern Nigerian should be concerned about. Can NNPC honestly tell…
Indeed the past was another country not this one we have today. Within a space of ten days we’ve heard of over seven cases of alleged stealing of our commonwealth to the tune of over two trillion naira (cumulative) not by armed robbers, no, but by people former “Mr Integrity,” President Mohammadu Buhari appointed into positions of trust to manage the resources. First it was the Attorney General’s Office and the aides thereof racketeering on sale of Presidential pardon. This was followed by the Office of the Accountant General where it was disclosed that over N80 billion was single-handedly misapplied…
Except we want to continue to deceive ourselves, the north-south relations in this country are defined by mutual incomprehension and the current jostling for the presidential ticket of both the ruling All progressive Congress(APC) and the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) underscores the awkwardness. In the last few days, the media has been awash with news of a Fulani group that purportedly purchased Presidential Nomination and Expression of Interest forms of the All Progressives Congress (APC), in the name of former President, Dr Goodluck Jonathan. In a statement issued on Monday night by Ikechukwu Eze, his spokesman, the former president…
It can’t be said enough that the spate of violent criminal attacks being perpetrated with impunity across the country, do not show a government that is in charge, nor a country that is at peace with itself. What are they governing if people even the poor amongst us cannot freely move around for fear of being kidnapped for ransom, raped or outrightly shot dead? Is governance not about people (the governed) and their welfare which includes safety and security at least? Without mincing words, the inactivity or the inability of the Police, the State Security Service (SSS) and even the…
The narrative is common knowledge that ten years ago, in July 2009 precisely, Nigeria’s security forces swooped in on what was then a relatively little-known Islamic group in the northeast of the country. At the time, that group’s focus was preaching, although it believed al-Qaeda’s path would bring Nigerian Muslims out of their abyss by living a Taliban lifestyle. The joint security clampdown led to the death of scores of its members, including the leader and cleric, Muhammed Yusuf. As a result, the man who succeeded him, Abubakar Shekau, vowed to revenge the killing of their leader and members and a merciless bloody…
The behaviour of some educated Nigerians when it comes to national issues is outrightly incomprehensible. Must we always view critical issues within our partisan political frames rather than being broad enough to call a spade a spade and not a farm implement? Is it right to condone criminal behaviours and rationalise obvious aberrations in our polity simply because it favours you politically? The Presidential Election Petition Tribunal (PEPT) on Monday 24 June 2019, refused to grant the application filed by Atiku Abubakar and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for access to inspect the server and data of smart card readers…
It would have been okay to dismiss reported happenings around the Buhari Presidency as part of political blackmail and negative agenda setting of partisan press but for the publicly manifested interplay of the antics of the gods and demons at the seat of power. Without doubt now, the inordinate ambition of this regime to entrench itself even against the popular will of the Nigerian voters has unfortunately made the political space in this country a place of extremes. Strange things are now afoot in our country and our democratic experiment is now floundering needing our urgent attention to either fix…
As disclosed in a leaked memo from the State House, Abuja, to the Group Managing Director of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), dated March 1, 2019, with reference number SH/COS/24/A/8540 and signed by the Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari, the nation’s apex oil concern through its upstream subsidiary Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) was ordered to take over the entire operatorship of the crisis-ridden Oil Mining Lease (OML) 11 not later than April 30, 2019. The memo with title; ‘Operatorship of Entire Oil Mining Lease 11,’ read in part, “Kindly note that the President has directed NNPC/NPDC…
