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…
Author: Law Mefor
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…
One of the most challenging things in life is decision-making. It is like being at a crossroads, a point at which a crucial decision must be made which will have far-reaching consequences. A wrong decision at this point can lead to lifelong regrets or bliss. That’s why one has to be careful when at crossroads. The coming presidential election presents such a dilemma to the Southeast. Yes, a dilemma for the Southeast in particular, and Ndigbo in general. Though the rest of Nigeria has to deal with the same decision to varying degrees, no case of any section of the…
Finally, the trial of the former Deputy President of the Senate, Ike Ekweremadu, and his wife, Beatrice, and others over the alleged conspiracy to traffic an initially ‘15-year-old’ in London is underway. But while the trial goes on, the curious role played by Nigeria in the Senator’s matter should be a lesson that citizens must ponder. The tales of woe by Nigerians abroad are commonplace. But citizen abandonment is not even the case in Ekweremadu’s ordeal. His case is worse.The emerging details of the key role of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, in Ekweremadu’s failed bail applications, as…
The currency redesign and the cash crisis it has engendered have exposed the treacherous nature of Nigeria’s ruling party(APC) and ruling elites. They have sought power and wealth as ends in themselves and not as means to better the society and lots of ordinary Nigerians. Their rallying points are the Nigerian governors who congregate under the amorphous and illegal body called the Nigeria governors forum (NGF). The NGF group is illegal and unconstitutional because they have no such right or mandate; nor is the forum a creation of any law. Some of the governors led by Nasir El Rufai have…
“Clark and the South and the Middle Belt forum members should be reminded that some of them were the ones that prevailed on Dr. Goodluck Jonathan to run in 2015 when it was the turn of the north and brought this zoning crisis upon Nigeria…” One read with consternation the embarrassing claim by elder statesman Chief Edwin Clark and some Southern and Middle Belt leaders that Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta state betrayed the South by accepting to be the running mate to Atiku Abubakar, the presidential flag-bearer of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Chief Clark and the South and…
“Was Tinubu planning to be the president of the living or the dead?…” Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor. He is best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime during the late 1930s and his widely quoted 1946 poem featured on the United States Holocaust Memorial, it reads: “First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out -because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews,…
Growing up, there was this expression we took both as a joke and a rebuke for one exaggerating: no one who examines him or herself has ever failed. This maxim filled the mind while hearing or reading President Muhammadu Buhari score himself as excellent. Mr. President came away with the ‘A’ for his scorecard, unabashedly claiming: “I have not failed Nigerians “. Haba Mr. Presido! The President did not however state the aspects of governance where his promises to Nigerians scaled so excellently for him to thump his chest so loudly and come away with such an amazing grade. One…
Plato made one eternal statement long ago – ‘The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men’. But the Nigerian experience is curiously different. Here, the so-called good men install evil men in power who they know are up to no good and watch them predictably ruin the country. Before addressing our minds to the hullabaloo being raised by Festus Keyamo, the APC presidential campaign chief spokesman, it will help to keep in view two incidents. Both will help form the canvas to paint the bleak future for the proposed Tinubu/Shettima presidency.…
Prof ABC Nwosu just resigned his membership on the PDP Board of Trustees, protesting jettisoning of the zoning principle by the main opposition PDP. The value of his resignation needs to be calculated by interrogating his role in the Ortom zoning committee. History is a bitch and the burden of it can hardly be shaken off by those who fall on the wrong side. As a reminder, Prof Nwosu represented Anambra state in the Governor Samuel Ortom Committee on the zoning of the Presidential ticket of the main opposition Party, PDP. The 37-member zoning committee, which included two other governors…
Dear General, I sincerely hope this letter meets you in your usual high spirits. A boy advising his father is rather a very difficult task. His effort can easily suffer ad hominem (the advice being misconstrued as directed against the person rather than the position they are maintaining). In traditional Nigerian society also, a son cannot chide his father openly. An Igbo adage states, If a boy lifts his father his sight will be covered by the old man (his father)’s scrotum. However, another proverb in turn says that it gets to the point when some individuals have to wear…
In Nigeria, to serve is to die. With terrorists swarming around, to make the security of Nigeria one’s lifework and day job is to risk death every day. It would prove almost impossible to put a figure to the losses Nigeria has suffered at the hands of non-state actors in the last decade. However, whenever such a grim assignment is set upon, Nigeria would discover to its chagrin that it has raked in many losses indeed. In defence of the country from numberless and ruthless terrorists, valiant men and women have been dying like flies. Every day, in the different…
A swan lets out one last croaky cry and wild kick before giving up the ghost. That is the bird’s one last gasp of air and futile attempt to clutch to life. Governor Nyeson Wike and his G5 Governors now cut such a tragic sight. They are either going or returning from London, wasting their States’ resources seeking attention while the larger PDP family train has since moved on though leaving the door wide open in case these prodigals want to return home. They are wailing like children seeking maternal attention in such a shrill tone that is now irritating…
By Law Mefor Nigeria is yet again on the threshold of history. This historic time is different and filled with omens. Since the return of the country to the current democratic dispensation, elections have been marred by irregularities. Rigging and all other forms of manipulation have been the norm. The 2023 general election promises to be way different for several reasons. The introduction of BVAS and the vow of President Muhammadu Buhari and INEC chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu to hold a free, fair, and acceptable election are the real factors making the 2023 general election uniquely different and exciting. Buhari…
