Grave errors of judgment often occur by default, and so is the appointment of retired military officers to the role of Administrator/ Chief Executive of the Federal Government Amnesty Programme. There is a reason products of the military institution have registered underwhelming performance in sustainable transformational, socioeconomic development that reaches the grassroots of the Niger Delta Region. The factors are rooted in distrust arising from the history of conflict in the Niger Delta region and the role of the military in containing it. This phenomenon must be properly evaluated given the growing demands to restructure the region’s economy in line…
Author: Law Mefor
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s legal team has been putting up a valiant fight to keep him from disclosing his true status and identity at Chicago State University (CSU). People are typically proud to show off their diplomas and degrees as evidence of their academic accomplishments. However, in this case, the president and his legal advisors feel that his academic achievements are his own and should not be made accessible for public assessment. But by making his CSU degree his only academic qualification to run for president, he willingly waived this privilege. For starters, INEC required that candidates for president submit…
The authors of the iconic book “Why Nations Fail,” Daren Acemoglu and James Robinson, stated that it is the parasitic political and economic classes that are the primary cause of why nations fail. What counts to them is what they get out of the system, not what they put into it. Nigeria has not only the worst breeds of them but has also added to the mixt ethnic jingoism. Nigeria has fallen into the abyss. History frequently repeats itself. Muhammadu Buhari, who left Nigeria like a lawless state, presided over some of the worst periods for the country. It may…
The Igbo term for apprenticeship is ‘Igba Boi.’ It involves learning a trade or craft under someone who is already well-established in the field and is now a master in his own right aka ‘Oga’ in local parlance. Though Igbo apprenticeship had been around for a while before the Biafra war, its significance resonated in addressing the Igbo people’s debilitating poverty resulting from the war. The war brought hunger and sickness that ravaged the whole Igbo world, and those who had been prosperous before the war had all fallen into poverty. Men who survived had to start from scratch. The…
Leadership determines whether a family, society, or country succeeds or fails. Indeed, everything rises and falls on leadership. The Bola Ahmed Tinubu Presidency heralds the rise of a new era in Nigeria and unless this changes at the Supreme Court and even before then, the South-East has to reposition itself to make the best of it. With the ongoing realignments, geopolitics has become more important than ever, although the South-East has so far had the least of its impact. States in a federation with a presidential system of government plan how to develop and remain important to the polity from…
The 2023 General Election will go down in history as the most significant opportunity lost in the country’s electoral history. Going by the presidential tribunal judgement, the general election is just another disturbing illustration of the tactics utilised by the cabal in Nigeria that has been in control of the country’s state power for decades. The fact is: this general election has the best preparations. All of the money was generously and on time released. The Electoral Act 2022, which Muhammadu Buhari kindly signed into law as president, also provided the legal framework and essential missing piece, namely electronic components…
For more than a decade, Professor Udenta O. Udenta and I have walked closely together. This September, he will turn 60 and enter the sixth floor of life. So, I thought it was appropriate to look back on his extraordinary life and great intellectual outputs and contributions as a creative mind and political thinker. Udenta is a well-known, bright, and erudite public intellectual whose written works and other social and cultural contributions are appreciated not just by academic audiences and readers but also by society at large. He is indeed a consummate and profound intellectual of uncommon hue. Udenta has…
Given his antecedents and personality, strategic thinkers would wish Nyesom Wike to be deployed to the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Works, or Ministry of Power. As pillars of the country’s economy, these ministries and some others require special attention. Insecurity is the main cause of the nation’s devastated economy. Food insecurity and instability of the polity are caused by herdsmen, bandits, and terrorist activities; despite investing trillions of naira since 1999, when civil rule was reinstated, Nigeria has not been able to consistently generate, transmit, and distribute 5,000 megawatts of electricity; and Nigeria’s lack of infrastructure has also reached…
It is political and self-incriminating to destroy billboards for reading “All eyes on the judiciary.” This is a message of patriotism dressed up for the general good, which all honourable people should identify with. Therefore, it is shocking that top officials of the Advertising Regulatory Council of Nigeria (ARCO) have been suspended and their unit disbanded following the “All eyes on the judiciary” billboards that surfaced in Abuja and a few other states. The statement is targeted at no one and solely calls on the judiciary to exercise caution and extreme diligence in carrying out its duties because the issues…
A Memo To Southeast Governors, Leaders On Security And Regional Development Perhaps for the first time since the country’s return to democracy in 1999, the meeting of the South-East Governors’ Forum recorded full attendance of the 5 governors of the zone. In the past, governors would typically send their deputies and infrequently attended the zonal meetings in person probably because they believed the forum to be of little importance. The forum’s meetings were consequently infrequent. The current crop of governors appears to view the forum as essential to effectively addressing security, regional development, and integration. This is a positive development…
The backlash over the $19.4 reported as professional legal fee in Seplat Energy’s half-year result presents us as a people in the cast of the French Bourbons of whom the French statesman and foremost diplomat, Charles-Maurice de Telleyrand-Périgord, 1st Prince of Benevento, said they learnt nothing and forgot nothing. We not only repeat the same mistake, but also fail to heed warnings. At page 42 of the document, Seplat reports: “General and Administrative (G&A) expenses amounted to $65.8million, 42.0% higher than $46.4million incurred in 6M (H1) of 2022. This increase in G & A cost was mainly due to professional…
One cannot be envious of the Presidential Election Petition Court (PEPC), as the 180 days that the current laws give the Presidential Election Tribunal to render verdict are about to expire. The concern, however, is that the high hopes are progressively giving way to perceived uncertainties that the country would be forced to deal with a compromised judiciary and a desperate incumbent president whose election is being contested. These issues are gradually replacing high hopes, which is a cause for anxiety. Perhaps the only place in the world where a president-elect gets sworn in before the legitimacy of his election…
If the recent report on the investigation by the Department of State Security (DSS) into the discharge certificate feud between the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) and Governor Peter Mbah of Enugu State surprised anyone, it wasn’t me. Even though I was of the view that both parties should be allowed to prove their respective case, NYSC’s story never looked straight to me, especially knowing the ineptitude, underhand practices, endemic corruption, shoddiness, and the poor and analog record keeping that have become the hallmarks of most of our public institutions. As a psychologist, my field of study teaches me that…
Over the weekend, Prof. Fabian Ajogwu, SAN, resigned from the Board of Directors of Seplat Energy PLC. This piece would not have been necessary if the Learned Silk and Nigeria’s first Professor of Corporate Governance had quietly moved on after his Seplat fiasco. But his publicists went to town misleading Nigerians on the Seplat crisis. He forgot that when he points a finger, the rest will naturally point back at him; more so when a cursory look at the crisis in Seplat today, boils down to two things: a staggering failure in crisis management gross abuse, and failure of Corporate…
There is a Peter Obi witch-hunt that is ongoing. Undoubtedly, certain forces are after him. You can call it Obidients-phobia or Obi-phobia. Both are equal in the eyes of the attackers. These sustained attacks on Obi, Datti, his running mate, as well as the Labour Party and the Obidient family, are simply because they have upended the system and are devoted to creating a new Nigeria that would be beneficial to all Nigerians. They hope to overthrow the corrupt system using the ballot and the law because Nigeria today solely benefits a small number of kidnappers of state power, and…
The race for the leadership of the 10th National Assembly has reached its defining moments. Zones and other political interests in the country have been making their cases. However, concerned Nigerians need to weigh in and point to the greater need for experience and competence as very crucial factors that need to be balanced out with other political considerations. No matter what anybody would say about the leadership of the 9th National Assembly led by Senator Ahmed Lawan as Senate President and Femi Gbajabiamila as Speaker, experience, and competence are key to the outstanding achievements of the 9th National Assembly.…
No true freedom fighter can obfuscate voices of freedom and democracy and still claim to be one. Professor Wole Soyinka has pitched his tent with the oppressors and enemies of the people. If he has not, he must recant and retrace his steps, and that way regain perspective and realign with old Soyinka. This new Soyinka is rather strange, looking more like a product of uncanny incestuous intercourse. Wole Soyinka in his most iconic quote told us: “The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.” The quote is drawn from his prison memoir, The Man…
The Department of State Services (DSS) is an interesting organization. It is one place the citizens love to hate. The body thrives on Reverse Psychology and gaslighting, saying one thing and meaning the exact opposite and making the citizens doubt and blame themselves for the failures of their leaders. Inimitable also is their ambivalence and amorphous deception in the line of duty and secrecy. Their operatives do as they like, answerable to none but the President and to the President alone. Their allegiance is therefore not to the country or the Constitution. Their patriotism means standing with the President, even…
In life, it is not the much said that matters but the much done of the much said. That’s what President Muhammadu Buhari just demonstrated by signing some devolution of powers into law. Restoration of federalism to Nigeria as agreed between the nation’s founding fathers (Zik, Awo, Ahmadu Bello, et al) and colonial Britain is what the deafening clamor for restructuring is all about. The 1999 Constitution could be the worst in the nation’s annals for imposing a unitary system in a federal environment, with 68 key items on the Federal List compared to a little over 30 flimsy and…
In politics, philosopher John Locke is best known as a proponent of limited government. He uses a theory of natural rights to argue that governments have obligations to their citizens, have only limited powers over their citizens, and can ultimately be overthrown by citizens under certain circumstances. This is not the case in Nigeria. Our governments feel no obligation to the citizens and the suffering they inflict on them through insensitive policies is proof. What the government has for the Nigerian masses is utmost contempt for their overlords. Probably the best-known, simple, and short definition of public policy has been…
A foremost Nigerian novelist, Professor Chinua Achebe once said: “I have written in my small book entitled The Trouble with Nigeria that Nigerians will probably achieve consensus on no other matter than their common resentment of the Igbo.” Ndigbo have gone through a lot and still go through a lot in Nigeria since the foundation of the country. Perhaps, it is only the Jews that have gone through this level of hostility and still survived. Starting from colonial times, the hostilities the Igbo ethnic group has suffered have been widespread and rooted in no justifiable causes. The ultimate should be…
‘Tinubu’s victory stands’ was the declaration of the Presidency as it replied to PDP, LP, and others on 9th March 2023, in a press conference. The Presidency has said despite the alleged shoddy and shady conduct of the presidential election and the harsh criticism against the Independent National Electoral Commission it generated, the result of the February 25 Presidential election stands. This is coming on the heels of President Muhammadu Buhari’s foreign tour where he drummed support for a Tinubu presidency. Both actions seem to put finality to the presidential election and make any court process a mere academic exercise…
Growing up, two proverbs stuck out for me, one by my father, and the other was a Pidgin English saying. One was: “If one person buries himself, one hand will stick out”. Young, impressionistic, and inquisitive, I asked for an explanation. My father explained it away both as an idiomatic expression and a literary saying. According to him, if one person tries to bury himself, certainly the hand that covered his body with sand would need another hand to cover it. And left that way, the man wouldn’t be fully buried. The other was: “If a cunning man die, a…
WOMEN, WITH THIS POEM, I CELEBRATE YOU ALL TODAY AND ALWAYS! By Law O. Mefor, PhD WOMAN Woman, I Know You Woman, I think I know you You are an unfathomable fountain; Deep, dexterous, far strong above man! Who and who know man’s strength Beyond the Othellian scenes Of fitful acts, rancorous, opium rage? A poor shroud to an already exposed underbelly! A poor shield from the fatal blows of pierced heart! Woe to you man, Knowing her less, you massage an ego, beaming: ‘You’re weaker, weaker; I’m stronger’ When the reverse is an eternal truth Does this undo…
The world over, politicians try to win elections by fair and foul means. That tendency is the reason institutions and laws exist and are operated by men of honour and integrity, who are sticklers to rules and unyielding to pressures from partisan interests. The February 2023 Presidential election in Nigeria is a watershed and a new low in the kind of life Nigerians live as human beings who deliberately refuse to grow up and join civilized societies. Our leaders lack honour and integrity, and have now added impunity by refusing to obey the laws of the land. Nigeria’s problems are…
Since the return of Nigeria to the current democratic dispensation, the judiciary has increasingly made incursions in determining electoral victories and outcomes. In many cases, their judgments are based on technicalities, like the case of Senator Ademola Adeleke in 2019, in which a judge failed to do the needful and Adeleke lost as a result. Each time such judgment is handed down, it rapes democracy by usurping the democratic rights of the citizens to directly choose who governs them. It is a sort of civilian coup. Many may claim this to be a global practice, but the Nigerian experience is…
It is fundamental to state at this outset that there is no presidential election yet conducted in 2023 and that this is one moment when one would wish he were not a Nigerian. INEC started the process and there was voting but the collation of the results veered off the course of the law and has now ended in irredeemable and incurable deformity. Verification and authentication of results must first be done before collation and announcement at Ward, LG, and State levels and in the final stage at the national level. Results of elections from 176,846 polling units ought to…
Unitary Nigeria is essentially a military legacy for the country has always been a federal environment. Colonial Britain recognized this fact since the 30s. Thus Bernard Bourdillon, the Governor-general at that time initiated and laid the foundation of federalism in Nigeria in 1939 by creating three provinces. He later handed over the draft constitution to his successor Arthur Richards and it became the Richards Constitution of 1946. Federalism as a system of distributing power between national and state governments progressed in Nigeria since then, until the military coup of January 1966 when the military imposed a unitary system in Nigeria.…
The treasonable actions of some APC governors over the naira redesign, a matter constitutionally exclusive to the Federal Goverment, should worry all patriots who want the February/March elections to hold. These latter-day saints want the naira redesign policy halted or they truncate the election. Nigeria is indeed a country of anything goes. Nigeria is a presidential democracy where the quintessence of the principle of separation of powers ought to be evident. The functions of the three arms of government are distinctly pronounced in bogey 1999 – the Legislature makes laws, the executive implements and the judiciary interprets. Nigeria is also…
Unknown to most people, Election polls are of two kinds: Opinion polls and Push polls. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence intervals. A person who conducts polls is referred to as a pollster. Opinion polls are often conducted by nonpartisan pollsters who are out to gauge the standings of political parties and candidates at various stages of an electoral contest, from its beginning and to the end. The unbiased assessments help the public and the political parties and candidates…
