MAJOR GENERAL Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) bows out today as the fourth Executive President of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, and the fifth in its history, and across the country and its far-flung diaspora, a loud, collective sigh of relief can be heard. It has by a wide consensus been eight locust years of privation, insecurity, division, shortages of essential food and energy and of despair. Buhari misgoverned Nigeria, deepened its political and social fault lines, enthroned sectionalism, and nepotism, oversaw two economic recessions and undermined democracy and the rule of law. Most Nigerians are happy to see him go.

Some did not survive to see this day as thousands died in the rage of the insecurity on his watch, others were displaced from their homes, many more have slipped unto poverty, and millions are unemployed. Hunger stalks millions; farmers in various parts of the country are distressed by a poor operating environment exacerbated by Fulani herders’ and bandits’ despoliation. Businesses face turbulence and millions of small ones have crashed.

Rising to power on a wave of popular discontent against 16 years of corrupt misgovernance, he met a country in trouble. He postured as a driver of change: an anti-corruption crusader, tough on crime and insecurity, a unifier in a fractured polity. Though he had projected an image of moral rectitude, in office, Buhari ended up adding only little value across the board – economic, political, and social – but ratcheted up many minuses.

A considerable proportion of the population view him as Nigeria’s worst leader since independence. But in the midst of despairing criticism, Buhari has a retort: “I have done my best.” For Nigerians, however, his best was simply not good enough.

Posterity will eventually settle the argument. For now, however, stakeholders have found him wanting. Buhari and his supporters, including regime officials, appointees and members of his party, family, and kinsmen, insist he has done well, citing policies and projects to support this. The Presidency’s ‘Factsheet’ provides a long list of such achievements and his ministers do too. Unarguably, the capital projects he undertook, though too little to reverse the country’s gaping infrastructure deficit, went further than his predecessors.’

But as he steps aside, it is necessary to take broad views of the national condition in June 2015 and in May 2023; examine Buhari’s own promised agenda, and how he delivered or failed to do so. The main themes are national cohesion and inclusion, the viability of the Nigerian state, leadership style, restructuring and elections.

Buhari’s inaugural speech on May 29, 2015, set out declarations of intent and raised hopes. Had he faithfully followed through, Nigeria should be marching from a solid pedestal unto greatness.

Buhari famously declared: “I belong to everybody, and I belong to nobody.” This resonated widely and taken together with pledges to work for the unity of the country and instil fairness and equity, it inspired hopes of inclusion.

But such hopes were promptly dispelled. Buhari thoroughly mismanaged Nigeria’s diversity. Never in the country’s history, thundered Junaid Mohammed (now deceased), a former federal lawmaker, had any national leader exhibited such brazen sectionalism, nepotism, and exclusionary tendencies in appointments to national offices. Unapologetically, he favoured his ethnic nationality, his northern base, his Islamic faith, family, associates, and narrow political interests in appointments and policies.

He followed through his declaration in a CNN interview to treat those who gave him “95 percent” vote more favourably than those who gave him “five percent.”

With him in office, the Fulani herders, gunmen and militants, joined by tens of thousands of others converged from all over West Africa, unleashing violence across the northern states. They spread their pillaging, massacres, and ethnic cleansing to other parts of the country. By late 2015, the Global Terrorism Index had ranked them as the world’s fourth deadliest terrorist group. They killed 847 persons in five states that year.

Emboldened by a partisan presidency and security forces, the Fulani marauding has become genocidal in Benue, Plateau, Southern Kaduna, and Taraba states. GTI reported that the number of attacks in the first half of 2016 almost equalled the number of attacks recorded throughout 2015. By 2018, Nigeria had moved to the third most terrorised country propelled by Fulani extremism that was responsible for 72 percent of all terrorism-related deaths in Nigeria that year.

Buhari kept making excuses for Fulani herdsmen and their irrational insistence in sustaining the outdated open grazing system; he canvassed their right to non-existent grazing routes and grazing reserves. In succession, he promoted the creation of cattle colonies, federally funded cattle settlements and appeared to blame the victims for standing in the way of the marauders! The Fulani sense of entitlement has grown to gigantic proportions.

He exhibited naked sectionalism in appointing heads of the military, paramilitary and other security agencies, the ministries, departments, and agencies. With the exclusion of other ethnic nationalities, regions and his politicisation of insecurity, Nigeria’s fissures widened. Separatist groups grew, and the clamour for restructuring rebounded with greater vigour. One spin-off from the Indigenous People of Biafra has taken to violence.

Today, the country is on edge. It was ranked 14th on the 2015 Fragile State Index run by The Fund for Peace, a position it retained in 2019, and was ranked 15th most fragile country in 2023 as Buhari leaves.

The country’s divisions manifest in everything. The wars on insecurity, corruption and poverty are hobbled. The 2023 national elections widened the wedge between some nationalities and geopolitical zones. Mutual suspicion between the roughly equally split Christian and Muslim population, simmering for decades, is close to conflict situation. A former Defence Minister, Theophilus Danjuma, has repeatedly warned that few countries ever survive a sectarian civil war.

In times of crisis, leaders take charge. Buhari’s leadership style was exclusionary, unfeeling, and detached. He took charge of nothing, save to tend to his own health, with frequent travels abroad, and attending international engagements while parts of Nigeria burnt, massacres and disasters occurred, or bandits/terrorists undertook their industrial scale kidnapping of schoolchildren.

Among many others, he made very few visits to communities in distress. He tarried in Daura where he was holidaying, just two hours away from Kankara, Katsina State, when 300 schoolboys were kidnapped there.

By failing to take charge, he could not crush corruption, insurgency, and criminality, or revive the economy. With an inattentive leader, appointees and private individuals close to him usurped power. The heads of some key security agencies shamelessly took their infighting to the public space. Security chiefs engaged in corruption and impunity. Effectively, the regime’s key programmes were subverted from within because there was neither coordination, firmness nor consequences for failure, incompetence or disobedience of the law or presidential orders. One Inspector-General of Police famously ignored his order to relocate to Benue after yet another Fulani herders’ genocidal attack and all Buhari did was to whine in public; the IG served out his term.

His distraction manifested in the 2023 elections: he released money to the umpire, gave orders to the security agencies and insisted on his neutrality; but he turned his back thereafter, allowing desperados in his own party and the opposition to manifest their criminality.

While he and his party, the All Progressives Congress had promised to support the restructuring of the country during the 2015 campaigns, Buhari promptly reneged on assuming office. Bowing to public clamour, the APC set up a Committee on True Federalism headed by Nasir el-Rufai, the immediate past governor of Kaduna State, in 2018 that made 10 recommendations to devolve more power to the states and retool Nigeria into a proper federal polity.

Buhari ignored the report. Rather, he has opposed the clamour, arrogantly saying the restructuring agitators had not explained what they meant, as if Nigerians owed him explanation for wanting to exercise their fundamental right to determine their own future.

In the twilight of his tenure, March 2023, he signed 16 of the 35 constitution amendment bills transmitted to him in January by the National Assembly that made minimal federalising impact, and entrenching absurdities such as renaming LGs, an aberration in a federal constitution. Essential adjustments such as state policing and resource control were ignored.

Lee Kuan Yew took charge, ran a merit-based administration and waged war against corruption, economic saboteurs, and insecurity without favouritism. He built modern Singapore, whose economy is ranked the most open and the joint least-corrupt country in the world on the Corruption Perception Index. Rwanda’s Paul Kagame is demonstrating how purposeful, visionary leadership can help a poor traumatised country rise from civil war, genocide, and privation to deliver robust growth, stability, and inclusion. Ukraine is resisting the full military might of a nuclear-armed superpower inspired by a president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, demonstrating courageous, hands-on leadership.

Exhibiting his military instincts, the Buhari regime rode roughshod over the rule of law and disobeyed court orders it found inconvenient. In 2019, in response, The PUNCH titles resolved to henceforth prefix his name in referring to him with his last rank in the Nigerian Army, Major General, until he purged himself of his martial disposition. He never did.

In the end, Buhari was a divisive, polarising president. Contrary to his inaugural speech promise, he belonged to his favoured ethnic nationality, his region, his religion, and his family; not to everybody. He alienated many sections of the diverse polity of over 250 ethnic nationalities, and faiths.

Buhari failed the leadership test, leaving in many places, what the late legendary musician, Fela Kuti, called “sorrow, tears and blood,” a divided population, battered economy, rowdy elections and a wobbly natural federation run like a unitary state, and hurtling towards state failure. He will not be missed.

Today, May 29th, a certified drug dealer and the head of the mafia that has held Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, in a suffocating grip, will be inaugurated as President of Nigeria.

It is a pity the late Africanist, Stephen Ellis, who has devoted so much time to researching and writing about the unholy alliance between state actors and criminal gangs in both South Africa and Nigeria won’t be alive to witness the entire criminal takeover of the state itself.

In the 1990s, Ellis systematically showed how all state actors in South Africa got entangled with, legitimized, armed, and collaborated with various criminal, drug smuggling, and illicit trade gangs to get the upper hand in the heydays of apartheid.

He showed how both the Apartheid National Party government and the combined forces of the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP) recruited, armed, and actively encouraged and collaborated with various criminal gangs in a bid to come out on top.

This led to the complete criminalization of the South African state such that even after the end of apartheid and a democratic election in 1994, South Africa remained gripped in the vortex of crime, murder, and illegal trade and trafficking to this day.

Ellis also did a lot of work on the activities of criminal gangs in Nigeria. At the end of his life, he undertook a gigantic project of trying to understand the history and dynamics of organized crime in Nigeria. Although he died before the book was published, This Present Darkness: A History of Nigerian Organized Crime traces the history of organized crime in Nigeria to historical colonial constitutions, clashing cultures and attempts at cultural integration, various political engineering, and to various economic opportunities in Nigeria.

In the dying days of colonialism when regional governments were handed to the local elite, the need to raise funds for political parties and party campaigns led to the phenomenon of kickbacks in contract awards, where contractors gave back a percentage of the contract sum to the party or official.

This innocuous practice soon assumed a life of its own, metastasizing into the pervasive government corruption being witnessed since independence, helped no doubt by the oil boom and a culture of entitlement to the riches of the state.

As the oil boom came to an end, Nigerian youth and university graduates ventured into other crimes since they could no longer benefit from the famed oil boom. That began the rise of organized crime, drug trafficking, cybercrimes, and various fraudulent activities for which Nigeria has become quite famous.

The return to democracy in 1999 saw attempts by members of many criminal gangs and solo criminals to legitimate their wealth by entering politics. While some were easily discovered and expelled, others like James Ibori, a petty criminal in the UK, and Bola Tinubu, a Chicago drug kingpin, had immunity from prosecution because of the office they occupied.

Naturally, they employ the tactics they used in the criminal world, to buy and ensure loyalty such that they develop a huge following and influence that they become indispensable in the political arena. This can be seen in the influence and control James Ibori wields in Delta state such that even after his arrest, conviction, and jailing in the United Kingdom, he still controls the politics of Delta state and absolutely no one can challenge his hold on the state.

The criminals became so powerful that they began to threaten to take over the Nigerian state in its entirety. In 2012, the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, ran the story: “James Ibori: How a thief almost became Nigeria’s President”.

The story detailed his enormous political influence and only Obasanjo personally prevented him from becoming Yar’Adua’s vice president. Had he, he would naturally take over power upon the death of Yar’Adua.

While the BBC and many Nigerians heaved a sigh of relief that Nigeria dodged a bullet in 2011, another of Ibori’s co-traveller in Lagos, in typical mafioso style, quietly went about building his own political empire by first dismantling the region’s gerontocratic system, which places emphasis on elders for political direction, and the displacement of the region’s elite.

Using Lagos’ huge economic wealth and potential, he succeeded in building a formidable political structure from scratch and quietly and incrementally extend his influence to other states. To date, only he – and maybe Ibori in Delta state – have been able to keep all successive governors of their states and appointed officials on a leash and permanently answerable to them.

Interestingly, what Ibori was not able to achieve in 2007 and 2010, Tinubu has been able to accomplish in 2023 through strategic alliances, patience, subterfuge, insane wealth accumulation, and deployment of money to buy up political patronage, votes, election officials, neutralize all vestiges of opposition, and bypass every institutional challenge.

Long before his ‘winning’ the presidential election, he enabled and normalized a system or pipeline of crime to power in Nigeria. Thanks to him, many ex-convicts in the United States now hold strategic positions of authority in Nigeria – from the Lagos and Ogun state governors to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, deputy Senate President and many others.

Businessday

Labour Party presidential candidate during the last presidential election, Peter Obi, has urged the Nigerian judiciary to utilise the election cases before it to reaffirm its integrity.

Obi, a former Anambra State governor, also urged Nigerians to face the current reality and seek ways to change the bad narratives through legal and acceptable means.

The former governor made the call on Monday morning, hours to the inauguration of the President-elect, Bola Tinubu.

Independent National Electoral Commission declared Tinubu the winner of the February 25, 2023, presidential poll. The former Lagos State governor defeated Obi and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party to win the election.

Dissatisfied with the outcome of the poll, Obi and Atiku approached the court to reclaim their “mandate”. The duo claimed the election was marred with irregularities and that they both won the poll.

But in a series of tweets on his verified Twitter handle on Monday, Obi explained that it had become imperative for Nigerians and his supporters to review “our missed opportunities and disappointments”.

He also said it was important for the Nigerian judiciary to prove its independence to Nigerians.

“For all Nigerians, this is a time for deep reflection. It is also a time to re-examine our assumptions, even as we reaffirm our hopes. Let us calmly review our aspirations, in order to recalibrate our expectations and pin down the causes of our missed opportunities and disappointments.

“We stand at that critical moment in time when, as a people, we must collectively come to grips with the reality of our injured destiny as well as the reasons for that injury. It is for us to reassess our plight as a young democracy and identify clear pathways to a better and greater future for us all.

“As we await the verdict of the election tribunal, I urge all Nigerians to use this opportunity to renew their commitment to the Nigerian ideal. That ideal remains noble and worth every sacrifice we can make.

“Nigeria remains our only patrimony and it is a patrimony we must protect, rather than violate. We have no other nation but this, so let us remain committed to rescuing and rebuilding it.

“The judiciary is part of the democratic enterprise and a critical governance tool for determining the propriety of the decisions and actions of every citizen and every institution of state. To that extent, and for that reason,

“I urge everyone to treat it with the respect and dignity it deserves. We expect that the Nigerian judiciary will use the election cases now before it to reaffirm its independence and integrity. It has to do so, for all our sakes and for itself.

“Nigerians must, therefore, remain peaceful and law-abiding. No matter the depth of anyone’s reservations about what is going on in the polity today, no matter the real and imagined provocations, and no matter the disagreement out there, we should remember that this will not last forever.

“I remain committed, and untiring, in my determination to work with like-minded fellow Nigerians to end the curse of missed opportunities and squandered hope that has become our lot here.

“I will never shrink from that original commitment, because I firmly believe that we must change from the present politics of criminality, and corruption, in order to make a new Nigeria possible.

“I call on fellow Nigerians, especially the youths to remain steadfast, calm, patient, and peaceful. Our journey may be long and difficult but it is worth it in every way. Victory is assured. We have to work together to move our beautiful country from corruption and criminality to a centre of productivity rather than aimless consumption.”

Punch

House of Representatives has passed the amendment to the 2022 supplementary budget to extend its implementation to December 2023.

The house, in an emergency session on Sunday, also passed the bill to amend the CBN act.

Under the CBN act, the ways and means provision allows the government to borrow from the CBN to finance budget shortfalls.

The amendment increases the CBN advances to the federal government from five percent to 15 percent.

The bill, sponsored by Victor Nwokolo, chairman of the house committee on banking and finance, was passed for second reading on Thursday.

During the emergency plenary, the bill was considered by the committee of the whole and passed for third reading without any opposition.

The national assembly can now transmit the two bills to the president for assent.

Earlier in the month, the national assembly approved the request by President Muhammadu Buhari to convert the N23.7 trillion loan to a 40-year bond.

Speaking before adjourning, Femi Gbajabiamila, the speaker, commended the lawmakers for attending the emergency session despite the short notice.

On Saturday, the senate extended the implementation of the 2022 budget to December.

The senate also amended the CBN act to increase its advances to the federal government from five percent to 15 percent.

Gobir Abdullahi, senator representing Sokoto east who sponsored the bill, said it was to enable the federal government to meet its immediate and future obligations.

“Mr President, my respected colleagues, permit me to lead the debate on this bill, which seeks to amend the CBN act to increase the total CBN advances to the federal government from five percent to a maximum of fifteen percent,” Abdullahi had said.

“This amendment is very consequential and it needs the support of us all, it is to enable the federal government to embark on very important projects that will inflate and rejig the economy.”

The Cable

Latest information on flight live tracker ‘flightrader24.com’ currently shows the Nigeria Air aircraft is back to Ethiopia where it was brought in from.

As of Saturday evening, the flight tracker showed the aircraft was enroute Addis Ababa, approaching from Central African republic.

Later on Saturday evening, the flight tracker read, “The flight with callsign ETH8950 is currently not tracked by Flightradar24. It’s either out of coverage or has already landed.”

However on Sunday morning, the flight tracker showed the plane has landed at Ethiopia.

BusinessDay’s had reported Hadi Sirika, the minister of aviation contacted Ethiopian airlines to provide an aircraft that would be presented to Nigerians as an aircraft belonging to Nigeria Air.

Ethiopian airline had obliged by repainting and rebranding one of its Boeing 737-800 aircraft.

Investigations revealed that the Boeing 737-800 has registration Number ET-APL, Mode S Q4005C and serial number: 40965/4075.

Further investigations pointed out that the national carrier is about 11 years and and first flight with the aircraft was done on June 22, 2012 as Ethiopian Airlines aircraft.

The aircraft became Malawi Airlines on 16th February 2014 and released to Ethiopian Airlines on August 12, 2015.

BusinessDay’s checks show that the aircraft changed colours but ownership remains that of Ethiopian Airlines.

David Hundeyin, an independent journalist on Saturday drew people’s attention to the flight tracker.

“Behold your freshly commissioned “Nigeria Air” Boeing 737 heading back to Addis Ababa right now as we speak, where the hurried paint job will be removed and it will go back into @flyethiopian regular service,” Hundeyin had said.

In a statement by Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON) on Sunday issued by Obiora Okonkwo, spokesman, AON, it stated that the aircraft that landed at Abuja on Friday, May 26, 2023 was greeted with a water salute, or shower. Water salute, which is usually used to mark the first flight of an aircraft to an airport.

However, the aircraft that was used for the static display in Abuja on Friday was not the first flight of Nigeria Air into Abuja, he said.

Okonkwo stated that this is because Nigeria Air has not commenced flight operations as required by law, adding that the proposed carrier has not been issued with an Air Operators Certificate (AOC) by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), which is the legal authority for the issuance of such certificate and as such, cannot conduct flight operations.

“Further to that, the aircraft is an Ethiopian Airline property that, even during the static display in Abuja, operated with an Ethiopian registration number as ET-APL,” Okonkwo said.

“A further check at Nigeria Airspace Management Agency (NAMA) will show that the flight entered Nigeria as an ET flight,” he stated.

He explained that the Air Operators Certificate (AOC) is also a safety certificate by which the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) certifies that the holder has demonstrated that it is fit to conduct safe flight operations.

To achieve this, a prospective airline is put through a rigorous five-phase certification process before it is granted, he said.

According to him, implication of granting an AOC to Nigeria Air without it successfully going through the process is considered by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) as serious infraction, which is also punishable.

He said this is capable of causing Nigeria to be blacklisted by aviation safety agencies like the US FAA and the EASA (European Aviation Safety Agency).

Further implications, he said, include that the airlines of those countries will not come into Nigeria, and Nigerian airlines will not be allowed to operate into those countries.

“It also means that Nigeria will definitely fail the upcoming ICAO audit and, by way of further penalty, lose its FAA CAT-1 Certification. Nigerian airlines will also not be able to lease aircraft to boost their operations because no lessor will trust the safety certification process of the NCAA.

“As indigenous operators, we are happy and grateful to the NCAA for saving us from this punishment by resisting the pressure from Hadi Sirika to grant an AOC to Nigeria Air without going through the due process.

“Besides, aviation is an essential sector which is critical to economic development of Nigeria or any country. If tampered with, it will have negative expanded multiplier effect on all aspects of the economy and life of Nigeria.

“AON, as strong stakeholders, have a national and patriotic duty to guard against such happening. Otherwise, our investments in the aviation sector of Nigeria, running into billions of dollars, would have been jeopardised.

“Hence, we in the AON continue to salute the courage of the NCAA team led by Musa Nuhu, for insisting that the right things must be done in order to protect the safety and integrity of the Nigerian aviation industry, which they have nurtured to enviable world standard,” AON stated.

Businessday

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Kyiv hit by massive Russian drone attack as city marks its founding

Ahead of the anniversary of its founding in 482 A.D., Kyiv suffered the largest drone attack since the start of the war with Russia, Ukrainian officials said Sunday.

Ukraine’s air force said in a statement on Telegram that a “record number” of 54 Russia-launched, Iranian-made “Shahed” drones were launched at the city overnight, although it added that it had shot down 52 of them. NBC News was not able to independently verify these figures.

The attack was primarily directed at military facilities and critical infrastructure in the center of Ukraine, including Kyiv, the statement said.

In a separate Telegram post, the Kyiv City Military Authority said the attack “was carried out in several waves, and the air alert lasted more than 5 hours.”

It added that it was “the most massive drone attack on the capital since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, namely with the ‘Shahed’ barrage of ammunition.”

Shahed drones are self-detonating aerial weapons in which the munition can loiter over a target until instructed to attack, destroying the weapon in the process. Iran is believed to have sent hundreds of these weapons to Russia since the beginning of its invasion last February.

At least one person was killed and another was taken to hospital after being hit by falling debris from buildings that were struck, the military authority said.

A shopping mall and a three-story warehouse also caught fire as a result of the debris, causing 10,800 square feet of destruction, it added.

Vitali Klitchko, Kyiv's mayor, also said on Telegram that buildings had caught fire in the historic neighborhood of Perchersk in the city center, which is famous for its monastery containing the relics of saints.

Bolstered by sophisticated Western-supplied systems, Ukraine has been adept at thwarting Russian air attacks — both drones and aircraft missiles. Earlier in May, Ukraine prevented an intense Russian air attack on Kyiv, shooting down all missiles aimed at the capital.

The most recent attacks came as Kyiv prepared to mark the anniversary of the city’s official founding. The day is usually celebrated with live concerts, street fairs, exhibitions and fireworks, but scaled-back festivities are planned for this year's anniversary celebration.

“The history of Ukraine is a long-standing irritant for complex Russians,” said Andriy Yermak, the head of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's office, said on Telegram on Sunday. “Ancient Kyiv, Ukrainian Kyiv … UAV attack.”

The attack's came as speculation ratcheted up about a long-anticipated counteroffensive from Ukrainian forces.

“We are preparing the battlefield for the new phase of the war. It’s going on now. It is a large number of measures in different sectors of the front line,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told NBC News Saturday.

Conceding that preparation was well underway, Podolyak also praised a slickly produced video posted on Telegram Saturday by Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces.

It showed Ukrainian troops training, swearing an oath and preparing for battle, alongside the caption “The time has come to return what is ours.”

If Ukraine’s top general is suggesting that, he’ll have a good reason, Podolyak said, adding that it showed “that Ukraine may be almost ready to start a big operation aimed at the liberation of its territories.”

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Moscow warns West against ‘playing with fire’

The US and its allies are “playing with fire” by doubling down on their support for Kiev amid the conflict with Moscow, including by planning to provide Ukraine with F-16 fighter jets, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

“Of course, it’s an unacceptable escalation” Lavrov said regarding potential deliveries of American-made warplanes to Kiev in an interview with Russia 1 TV on Sunday. “I think there are reasonable people in the West who understand this. But everything is being dictated by Washington, London, and their satellites inside the EU.” 

According to the minister, it is Poland and the Baltic States – Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia – that are “executing on the ground the aim set by the US to weaken Russia, deliver it a strategic defeat.”

Some in the West “are already discussing ‘decolonization’ of Russia, meaning the dismembering of our country,” Lavrov said, warning that “this is playing with fire. There can be no doubts about that.”

“I hope reasonable people will step away from unconditional support for the neo-Nazi regime that the West itself created,” he added.

The foreign minister suggested that the words of the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, who acknowledged earlier this week that “in the near term,” Ukraine will not be able to recapture the territories it lost to Russia, were a “step forward to understanding the reality on the ground.” 

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has been pressing his Western backers for F-16 warplanes for months, arguing they are crucial for defending Ukrainian airspace amid Russia’s missile campaign targeting military facilities and energy infrastructure.

At the G20 summit last week, US President Biden Joe Biden said that Washington would support efforts by the UK, the Netherlands, and other European countries to train Ukrainian pilots to fly the F-16. White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan stated at the event that the US “will work with our allies to determine when planes will be delivered, who will be delivering them, and how many.”

Several outlets reported that the jets will not be provided by the US, but that the Biden administration would instead allow its allies to transfer their F-16s to Kiev.

Moscow has repeatedly warned that deliveries of more sophisticated weapons to Ukraine by the US and its allies could cross its ‘red lines’, leading to a major spike in the hostilities. Russia has said that the provision of arms, intelligence sharing, and training to Kiev’s troops makes Western nations de facto parties to the conflict.

NBC News/RT

Saudi Arabia, US say Sudan factions posturing for escalation

Saudi Arabia and the United States called on Sunday for the extension of a ceasefire deal that has brought some let-up in a six-week war between military factions, but said both sides had impeded aid efforts and were posturing for further escalation.

Clashes could be heard overnight and on Sunday in the capital Khartoum, residents said, while human rights monitors reported deadly fighting in El Fashir, one of the principal cities in the western region of Darfur.

The conflict between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that erupted on April 15 has left the capital reeling from heavy battles, lawlessness and a collapse in services, driving nearly 1.4 million people from their homes and threatening to destabilise the region.

A week-long ceasefire brokered in Saudi Arabia and U.S.-led talks in Jeddah are due to run until Monday evening.

Both countries are remotely monitoring the truce and called on the army and the RSF to renew the "imperfectly observed" ceasefire to allow for humanitarian work.

"There were violations by both parties that significantly impeded delivery of humanitarian assistance and restoration of essential services," Saudi Arabia and the U.S. said in a joint statement.

BREACHES

The statement cited breaches of the truce, including air strikes and commandeering of medical supplies by the army, and the occupation of civilian buildings and looting by the RSF.

"Both parties have told facilitators their goal is de-escalation to facilitate humanitarian assistance and essential repairs, yet both parties are posturing for further escalation," it said.

The RSF has said it is ready to discuss the possibility of renewal and that it would continue to monitor the truce "to test the seriousness and commitment of the other party to proceed with the renewal of the agreement or not".

The army said it was discussing the possibility of an extension.

Nearly 350,000 people have crossed Sudan's borders since the fighting erupted, with the largest numbers heading north to Egypt from Khartoum or west to Chad from Darfur.

In Khartoum, factories, offices, homes and banks have been looted or destroyed. Power, water and telecommunications are often cut, there are acute shortages of medicines and medical equipment, and food supplies have been running low.

"We left because of the impact of the war. I have children and I fear for them because of the lack of medical treatment," one resident of the capital, 29-year-old Samia Suleiman, told Reuters from the road to Egypt.

"I also want my children to have a chance of schooling. I don't think things in Khartoum will be restored soon."

SOME RESPITE

The truce deal has brought some respite from heavy fighting but sporadic clashes and air strikes have carried on.

The United Nations and aid groups say that despite the truce, they have struggled to get bureaucratic approvals and security guarantees to transport aid and staff to Khartoum and other places of need. Warehouses have been looted.

There have been increasing reports of gender-based violence, especially from people displaced within Sudan, the U.N. humanitarian office said in a statement.

Violence has flared in several parts of Darfur, already scarred by conflict and displacement, with hundreds of deaths recorded in El Geneina near the border with Chad during attacks that residents blamed on "Janjaweed" militias drawn from Arab nomadic tribes with links to the RSF.

The governor of Darfur, Minni Minawi, a former rebel whose faction fought against the militias in the Darfur conflict, said in a tweet that citizens should take up arms to defend their property.

In recent days, there has also been fighting in El Fashir, capital of North Darfur state.

One El Fashir hospital recorded three deaths and 26 injuries on Saturday, including children, according to the Darfur Bar Association, an activist group. Many more people were missing, it said.

Across the country, the health ministry has said at least 730 people have died in the fighting, though the true figure is likely much higher. It has separately recorded up to 510 deaths in El Geneina.

Reuters

"The measurement of a man is what he does with power." - Plato

Today marks the end of the two-term tenure of a man who came with tremendous goodwill, the kind never before witnessed in Nigeria’s chequered political history. One can still remember some young Nigerians trekking from one end of Nigeria to another in high hopes of the new president. However, unlike Caesar, it is doubtful if he can thump his chest and declare "Veni, vidi, vici"—I came; I saw; I conquered.

Muhammadu Buhari was the first to beat an incumbent president in a free and fair election in 2015.

Buhari had the backing of four major opposition parties that merged into a mega party and was seen as a no-nonsense, stern figure with a low tolerance for indiscipline and corruption, two vile practices that knock out public governance in the country.

Nigeria was struggling with Boko Haram and allegations of corruption, impunity and piling up debt against Jonathan’s administration. Buhari criticised the administration for wanting to borrow $1 billion to fight Boko Haram, which he dismissed with a wave of the hand, saying they "fought the civil war without borrowing."

Though he had a relative success in taming the insurgents, however, in a case of winning the battle but losing the war, the recruitment base of the insurgents and other violent crimes like kidnapping and banditry expanded through the loss of jobs as many small and medium-scale enterprises fell under the biting onslaught of inflation. The national unemployment rate has jumped from ten to thirty-three per cent. This was caused by the government’s closure of borders purportedly to boost local production, as well as an ever-mounting debt profile.

Nigeria’s debt in June 2015, a month after he became president, was ₦12.12 trillion, but he is now leaving it at over ₦80 trillion – the highest in our nation’s history. As of last week, he still wanted the National Assembly to approve another loan of $800 million from the World Bank. They want to use it “to share ₦5,000 per month to 10.2 million poor and low-income households for six months.” In what he called the National Social Safety Net Programme (NASSP), he planned to share it to these poor chaps "through digital transfers directly to beneficiaries’ accounts and mobile wallets."

One may well ask the pertinent question: how many people who need ₦5,000 monthly to survive would have bank accounts? A court last week asked the government to account for a loan of $460 million taken from China in the name of providing CCTV cameras in the nation’s capital, Abuja.

In his speech after being sworn in, the outgoing president assured the nation that "we can fix our problems." Everyone - well, almost everyone, took him by his words. Boko Haram insurgency plagued Jonathan's tenure, and he brought in South African mercenaries to help. As we said, under Buhari's regime, the fight in the Northeast recorded significant progress, although other security issues arose due to economic challenges. Kidnapping and banditry in the North and separatism in the South are the new frontiers, taking their toll on our collective security and well-being.

We have found ourselves in an unfortunate situation we never knew before, where people negotiate with bandits and kidnappers and offer them what they request to release loved ones, or else they till the land and harvest the crops for the marauders. It has reached the extent where even a former commander-in-chief of the Nigerian armed forces had no option but to acquiesce to the brigands’ demands before schoolgirls who had been in kidnappers’ custody for about two years were released along with their children born while in captivity. Never before in our history have non-state actors run narratives and set national agenda as effectively as during the last eight years.

Contradictory responses to crimes were also seen when hundreds of Shiites were killed in Zaria "for touching a General’s chest", according to the president, while those who killed and cannibalised General Alkali in Jos are roaming about freely.

Those that saw Buhari’s coming in 2015 as a new dawn in our country’s history thought they would be seeing the end of clueless governance, and that he would arrest the galloping cost of governance and wanton corruption that bedevilled the administration of his predecessor.

Our democracy is copied from the American presidential system, but unfortunately, we did not adopt the Americans’ seeming desire for prudence, transparency, and accountability in the management of resources.

A vexatious aspect of the waste and unnecessary cost of governance is that whereas US presidents are not fed by the state, Nigerian presidents get more than enough in annual budgets to eat a whole elephant every day.

His altruism and prudence were called into question when he closed the border to the importation of food items, yet the Villa fed on foreign rice, for instance. Instead of closing the border on materials we could manufacture or cause to be assembled here, like vehicles, the Nigerian government spent about ₦100 billion in eight years importing foreign-made vehicles, thereby encouraging capital flight and keeping foreign companies afloat and their nationals employed, to our nation’s detriment.

Many people started to have second thoughts when it took the General six months to produce his first cabinet. Many thought he was sifting through the populace to select ‘saintly’ Nigerians to present a stellar cast to the Senate, but we ended up seeing a cabinet lopsided by the weight of dregs in all ramifications. Many square pegs were placed in round holes as confessed to last week by Adamu Adamu, Buhari's minister of education for eight years, who said he knew nothing about education but he became Nigeria’s longest serving minister of education.

Another controversial act was when his nephew, who was a call card seller before 2015, but now a multi-billionaire in any currency, was given a directorate cadre position at the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and relocated to London with no security knowledge, training, or background! People have been asking whether the boy is just a front and, if so, to which powerful force(s).

At a point, his wife, who knew where history placed him would affect her and her children, came out lamenting how her husband's government was being derailed. Nigerians, who venerated her husband, came down hard on her, and she withdrew to her comfort zone, letting things be.

I was with a sage last week who told us, "Within the eight years Buhari held sway in Nigeria, a lot of people have been born, gone through their full cycle, and returned to their creator. In other words, their life cycle has passed."

Some still support Buhari, but many feel the illusion is gone and time has shown his true nature.

But like everything else in life, including his tenure, that too shall pass.

** Hassan Gimba is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Neptune Prime.

WhatsApp has released a new feature that allows users to edit messages after sending them. In recent years, several messaging apps have introduced features enabling users to unsend or edit messages with typos, grammatical errors, or wrong information. Most recently, Apple released the edit message feature for iMessage with a 15-minute time cap, and WhatsApp is following suit.

Editing a message on WhatsApp is very easy. All users need to do is press and hold a message, then select the 'Edit' button from the pop-up menu. They can then change the message in the text field and resend it. The new message will be displayed with an 'Edited' tag and a time stamp, indicating when it was edited. Editing messages on WhatsApp has been a long-requested feature, and one that has been available on other messaging apps like Telegram for years.

Why You Can't Edit WhatsApp Messages

Since WhatsApp has a large user base, it might be a while before the edit message feature is available for everyone. In an official blog post, WhatsApp says the "feature has started rolling out to users globally and will be available to everyone in the coming weeks." If users don't see the edit button yet, they'll need to wait until the update is available for their device. Those who have turned off auto app updates can manually check if a newer version is available by searching for WhatsApp on the Google Play Store or Apple App Store and tapping the 'Update' button if available.

Although WhatsApp now allows users to modify messages after sending them, this can only be done within 15 minutes of sending the message, similar to Apple's iMessage. If more than 15 minutes have passed since a user has sent a message, they won't see the edit option. Competitor apps like Telegram offer up to 48 hours to modify messages. WhatsApp's shorter time limit reduces the chances of people misusing the feature, as users who realize they've made a genuine typo or error will usually want to change their message immediately.

Before the edit message feature, WhatsApp users only had the option to delete a message they wanted to unsend. Like deleted messages, edited messages on WhatsApp will be displayed with a disclaimer, so that recipients are aware the contents have been edited. However, unlike iMessage, WhatsApp doesn't reveal the user's edit history, so any embarrassing typos will be hidden.

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