Author: Sufuyan Ojeifo

Nigeria is the world’s fifth largest federation after India, the United States, Brazil and Russia. Almost 60 years after independence, Nigeria’s political leadership has rather been incapable or unwilling to make the necessary effort to respond to the challenges encapsulated in her peculiar history. This history actually positions the Muhammadu Buhari presidency at a crucial crossroads from which Nigeria and Africa must be rescued and reinvented. It’s against this backdrop that the position of national chairman of a political party should be appreciated because it carries considerable weight, especially in charting the course of informed engagements with the critical elements in a…

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In 2015, no room was created to interrogate the conduct of the presidential election in which an incumbent president kissed the dust. Both the process and outcome escaped obligatory queries and essential indictments. Had the process and outcome been subjected to painstaking reviews, especially at the court, perhaps, the political and governance arrangements would have been different from what they are today. But through his historic phone call to the opposition candidate, Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC), to concede defeat even before the announcement of the presidential poll results by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), former…

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According to John Donne, 17thCentury Jacobean metaphysical poet-cleric, “any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” Four centuries after, Dele Giwa, the late founding editor-in-chief of The Newswatch magazine, echoed Donne’s compelling insight: “One life taken in cold blood is as gruesome as millions lost in a pogrom.” Indeed, the essential theme of both existential insights speaks to the sacrosanctity of human life and not to the number of fatalities. In other words, it stresses the importance of a life as being the same as…

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The military is a disciplined institution with a command structure that brooks no disrespect for constituted authorities. Hence the tendency by the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Tukur Yusuf Buratai to be finicky in dealing with any directive from the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, who is himself a retired army general. Since last Monday, when Buhari said he would direct the nation’s security forces to deal ruthlessly with ballot box snatchers, including ensuring that influential politicians who mobilised thugs to the polling units to snatch ballot boxes, did…

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By Sufuyan Ojeifo In Monday’s opening ceremony of the caucus meeting of the All Progressives Congress (APC), broadcast live from the party’s national secretariat, Abuja, President Muhammadu Buhari reacted fully to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) postponement of the presidential and national assembly election, 48 hours earlier. The convergence of top-echelon APC members provided a very good opportunity for Mr. President to ventilate his disappointment and anger at what he read as incompetent management of the critical electoral process by the Commission. It was clear that Buhari spoke to the issue of postponement from his heart. Dropping his prepared speech,…

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On the eve of the rescheduled February 16 presidential and national assembly elections, I got a call from my illiterate 86-year old mother from Owo in Ondo State, advising that I should exercise caution during the election. I remember we had discussed a number of times before then and had agreed that she did not have to go out to vote on the Election Day even though she has always had her permanent voter card (PVC).           She had suggested that I should consider staying away from the polling centres and voting because of the killings somewhere in Kaduna and I could…

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The most distasteful theatre of the absurd yet in the electioneering drives of the two leading political parties – the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) – played out during the presidential campaign rally of the APC in Abeokuta, on Monday (February 11).  Nothing close to the oddity of the self-inflicted embarrassment had ever happened at the level of intra-party setting to such calibre of officials of government and party. Perceived from whatever prism(s), what happened at the MKO Abiola Stadium, the rally venue, while President Muhammadu Buhari was on the podium to raise the hand…

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The perceived wrong procedure adopted by President Muhammadu Buhari in suspending the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Walter Nkanu Onnoghen, has spawned much controversy. Before his suspension, Onnoghen had been listed for arraignment before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) by the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) over alleged failure to declare some of his assets as prescribed by law. The President acted on an ex-parte order by the CCT made in chamber to suspend the CJN.  But Onnoghen’s position has been that he had acted on the asset declaration matter in line with the provisions of Section 3(d) of…

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On Tuesday, January 29, I watched the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential rally in Owerri, the capital of Governor Rochas Okorocha’s Imo State. Though that will soon become history, as the quirky emperor has been mercilessly undercut and greatly diminished in the battle for the soul of the Southeastern enclave. Cut to the bone, the Owelle is operating from a position of political disadvantage. While the rally was on, I saw the theatrics that characterised the event.  They all pointed, overall, in the direction of Okorocha’s imminent final eclipse. The atmosphere was charged. The outgoing governor’s offence on this day…

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A number of dramatic incidents have been recorded since President Muhammadu Buhari came out on the hustings, preparatory to the February 16 presidential election. Those incidents have compelled a revisit of the Jubril el-Sudaniya narrative. Politicians’ imaginations are fertile in the making of propaganda and deployment of the same in demonising the other camp and its members. To be sure, the narrative, as it had since been confirmed, was from the outset, nothing but a carefully-crafted tale by a doctor of spins about a celebrated impersonator in Aso Rock Presidential Villa who, in fact, resided in the prolific mind of…

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Sing-songs about the plot by the current administration to rig the February 16 presidential election in favour of President Muhammadu Buhari have taken centre stage. Nigerians must have listened to the recent warning dirges of former president and retired army general, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and his former compatriot in the army, former chief of army staff and one-time minister of defence in his (Obasanjo’s) government, General Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma (retd.) Apparently, prudence is at work here. They have not pointedly accused Buhari of masterminding the alleged plot.  The general drift is that some administration officials have perfected plans to use…

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Who misadvised President Muhammadu Buhari to suspend the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Samuel Walter Nkanu Onnoghen, using the instrumentality of an ex-parte order procured at the black market? Here, Danladi Umar and Julie Anabor apparently re-scripted the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) engagement rules last week, in Onnoghen’s alleged non-declaration of assets case pending before the Tribunal. The order lacked the imprimaturs of a properly-constituted and convened CCT.  The name of the prosecution counsel that moved the ex-parte application on which the order was made was not indicated in the order.  Besides, it has been confirmed that the CCT…

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If voting in the February 16 presidential election were to be influenced by candidates’ performances in the January 19 presidential debate, then both President Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and his strongest challenger, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), would not stand a chance of winning. Both Buhari and Atiku did not participate in the debate. They left the trio of Professor Kingsley Moghalu, Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili and Mr. Fela Durotoye to slug it out with one another. But fortunately for both men, as well as presidential candidates of other parties that were purportedly…

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When the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) issued a press statement on December 3, 2018, to explain the rationale behind its proposed Trans Forcados Pipeline surveillance contract award to Ocean Marine Solutions Limited (OMSL), I had thought the explanation would suffice to assuage the sense of loss and pains experienced by the former contractor, Eraskorp Nigeria Limited (ENL) and its promoters. But ENL had insinuated, in its December 10, 2018 advertorial in some newspapers that the NNPC did not follow due process in the proposed re-award of the critical security contract. Nevertheless, I had, on the basis of the context…

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In a situation of partisan frenzy in Nigeria, it is normal for political parties and their operators to perceive some actions of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as promotional of the interest of the governing party. There is constantly the tendency for observers to deliberately reconstruct the notion of neutrality, denying it the elemental inviolability, in matters of administrative relationship between the executive arm of government and the electoral body, due largely to the influence of the superintending force of the executive.   There seem to be a consensus among politically-conscious and enlightened Nigerians that the so-called independence INEC…

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On September 16, 2015, an online news platform -Premium Times- published an exclusive report regarding the domestic transportation of crude oil contract of PPP Fluid Mechanics (PPPFM) and Ocean Marine Solutions (OMS) Limited with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).  But in a swift riposte, the management of PPPFM attacked the report on the grounds that it contained, “largely in all material facts, false assertions, misinformation and outright misrepresentation of facts.” To be clear, the report had sensationally linked some of the promoters of the two companies, including Captain Idahosa Okunbo and Dr Olatunde Ayeni with the former President, Dr Goodluck…

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From deep introspection, notable marathoner Billy Mills observed that, “Our life is a gift from the Creator. Your gift back to the Creator is what you do with your life.” This perspective speaks to the shared responsibility between the celestial and the terrestrial forces over the subject of life. His position shares a kindred context with Williams Shakespeare’s. The classical poet, one of the greatest playwrights ever, in one of his literary works, described the world as a stage with men and women as actors and actresses, each playing his or her roles and exiting. The legacies left behind are…

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On December 19, 2018, while presenting the 2019 budget proposals to the joint sitting of the National Assembly, President Muhammadu Buhari was heckled by some members. They disrupted the flow of his presentation as they irritably and episodically interjected, forcing him to calmly remark that the whole world was watching. To be clear, the joint sitting was televised live. Although, it was a first time in Nigeria, yet it did not necessarily discount the president’s gravitas.  Buhari’s calm and dignified self-restraint simply ennobled and put him above the scrimmage, even if he was the subject of the contrived theatrics. The stratagem by…

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The staff strength of the Federal Public Service, in 2014, was put at 1.2 million. This was announced before the House of Representatives’ Committee on Health, by the Budget Office of the Federation. But the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria had dismissed the figure as over-bloated. The association did not only insist that the actual figure was 870,000, according to available records but had also doubted the humongous N1.8 trillion being purportedly spent annually on the federal workers on salaries and allowances. Any responsible government in Nigeria should be worried about the huge payout. That should compel a…

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