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Opinion

Saturday, 23 June 2018 04:37

Forces in the current power struggle - Edwin Madunagu

Although participation in “bourgeois politics” – as we used to call electoral politics – has never been absent from the Nigerian Left’s general programme, it has also not been made a “categorical imperative”. I am, however, now persuaded that it has become generally accepted in the ranks of contemporary Nigerian Leftists that intervention and participation in the country’s electoral struggle - for office or for power, as an organized political force and in alliance or acting separately - have become both categorical and urgent. The following notes are offered as a searchlight in support of this anticipated revised programme of…

Wednesday, 20 June 2018 04:30

Super Eagles and Marcus the pig at the World Cup - Reuben Abati

There has been nothing in recent memory like the build up to Nigeria’s first match at the on-going 2018 FIFA World Cup tournament in Russia. Football is Nigeria’s greatest unifier: when it is football, our compatriots drop all ethnic, religious and ideological differences and profess the missing faith and ideology of one Nigeria. They have expressed similar solidarity over whose jollof is sweeter in the competition between Ghanaian jollof, Senegalese jollof and Nigerian jollof - the way Nigerians defend our national cuisine, you would think we are a nation of gourmets, but nothing compares to the magic of football and…

Monday, 18 June 2018 04:41

Where is the ‘African’ in African Studies? - Robtel Neajai Pailey

We need to put the ‘African’ in African Studies, not as a token gesture, but as an affirmation that Africans have always produced knowledge about their continent. Last week, I was invited by Eritrean-Ethiopian masters student Miriam Siun of Leiden University’s African Studies Centre to give one of two keynote lectures on the topic, “Where Is the African in ‘African’ Studies?” I took a long-range view, declaring that Africans have always produced knowledge about Africa, even though their contributions have been “preferably unheard” in some cases and “deliberately silenced” in others. For those who question what constitutes an ‘African’ in…

Sunday, 17 June 2018 05:11

A paradise for maggots - Festus Adedayo

If you are a keen follower of the narratives of corruption in Nigeria in the last ten years or so, you must have encountered a book written by Oxford University professor and Chair, African Studies, Wale Adebanwi, with the above title. A paradise for maggots details the war waged by the first Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, (EFCC) Nuhu Ribadu against state governors, considered to be economic weevils of the Olusegun Obasanjo years, two of whom have recently been led to the slammer. So, today, rather than trade any view, I have elected to go reportorial, as…

Sunday, 17 June 2018 05:09

Buhari’s dual loyalty - Shaka Momodu

This article sets out two central developments revolving around President Muhammadu Buhari and two key figures. The first is his sudden recognition of the late MKO Abiola and the second, his reported idolisation of the late head of state, General Sani Abacha. Buhari just pulled off a great political “masterstroke”, crowed a friend and a fierce Buhari apologist. Well, so it seemed to many of his apologists. Not exactly his apologists alone. Even his diehard critics were left breathless and bewildered. Not necessarily by the genius of the political calculus underpinning his canonisation of Abiola, but by the sheer contradiction…

Friday, 15 June 2018 04:40

Why the bounce from declaring June 12 ‘Democracy Day’ may not last long - Jideofor Adibe

Let’s give it to Buhari and his advisers. Whoever suggested making June 12 the country’s ‘Democracy Day’ (rather than May 29, which it has been until now) gave the Daura General a master stroke. It was a decision that especially excited the sensibility of the South-west – even more than Jonathan’s decision to give Ojukwu state burial with full military honours excited the people of the South-east. Yes, the motive for changing the ‘Democracy day’ from May 29 to June 12, was definitely political but since policies flow from the political process, it can be argued that every policy is…

Thursday, 14 June 2018 04:41

In this 20th year of ‘democracy’ - Edwin Madunagu

Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, which is currently running, was born on May 29, 1999 – with Olusegun Obasanjo as inaugural executive president. A year later, on May 29, 2000, the president proclaimed May 29 of every year Nigeria’s “Democracy Day”. The day was also added to the list of the country’s national public holidays. It was a unilateral executive decision – by which I mean that neither the proclamation of “Democracy Day” nor the declaration of public holiday was endorsed, before the acts, by the constitution or any legislative body or any other institution of the Nigerian state or any organized…

Wednesday, 13 June 2018 04:38

What June 12 reveals about Nigerian democracy - Femi Aribisala

The 1993 election was annulled because a free and fair election in Nigeria is fundamentally unacceptable to the powers-that-be in the North. Exactly 25 years ago, a landmark election was held in Nigeria after ten long years of military rule. There were two main contestants: Moshood Abiola of the Social Democratic Party and Bashir Tofa of the National Republican Convention. Abiola was from the South-west: Tofa from the North-west. Although the results of the election have never been officially certified, nevertheless, they are well known and readily-accessible. Abiola won with 8,243,209 votes; while Tofa lost with 5,982,087 votes. The election…

Tuesday, 12 June 2018 04:12

‘Just do good’: A June 12 story - Reuben Abati

I used to have a friend we called Alhaji Bashy. He was not a Muslim. No. But he called himself Alhaji Bashy, even if that was not his real name. You want to know his real name? It was Theophilus. And his wife was named Ruth. His children? He was yet to have one. Even Ruth was called his wife by designation. We were all young in those days, and any woman to whom you wrote regular love letters and poems, and she gave you attention was your wife. In those days, you didn’t have to give a woman a…

Sunday, 10 June 2018 05:05

Buhari’s Ejigbadero tactics - Festus Adedayo

At critical times, even the worst of governments are never in short supply of maverick game-changers who suddenly reconfigure the game in the middle of a tempest. Such persons spin a yarn that holds the crowd spellbound and in many cases, succeed in upturning the prevailing narratives. In many regards, the tactics they deploy conform to the theory of hegemony, a fundamental ruling class weapon of maintaining social and political control over the people. A brainchild of Italian Antonio Gramsci who devised it while in Mussolini gaol, with hegemony, the ruler gains legitimacy by saturating the minds of a people…

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Sunday, 10 June 2018 05:04

What religion gives us (that science can’t) - Stephen T. Asma

It’s a tough time to defend religion. Respect for it has diminished in almost every corner of modern life — not just among atheists and intellectuals, but among the wider public, too. And the next generation of young people looks likely to be the most religiously unaffiliated demographic in recent memory. There are good reasons for this discontent: continued revelations of abuse by priests and clerics, jihad campaigns against “infidels” and homegrown Christian hostility toward diversity and secular culture. This convergence of bad behavior and bad press has led many to echo the evolutionary biologist E. O. Wilson’s claim that…

Saturday, 09 June 2018 04:50

Obasanjo, NASS members are ‘hardened criminals’ - Buhari’s aide

In 2015, Nigerians began the process of recovering their nation from the hardened criminals who hijacked Nigeria for sixteen years. With an APC majority in the National Assembly, we had hoped for a speedy recovery and transformation of our nation, believing that we all understood the meaning of change. For starters, it took the better part of five months of President Buhari swimming through the mud to finally have a glimpse of what looked like a nation from where Ministers would be nominated. He was determined to begin to address the issue of marginalization in appointments. Where possible, he reached…

Saturday, 09 June 2018 04:49

The move of a desperate President - Umar Ardo

The desperation of President Buhari to retain power at all costs has again manifested itself in his illegal act of both changing the National Democracy Day and the investiture of National Honours of GCFR posthumously to late MKO Abiola and GCON to Amb. Babagana Kingibe. Having realized that he has lost public support across the country as a result of his dismal performance in office, and poor handling of issues affecting his Political Party, the NASS, the Judiciary and key stakeholders of the country, particularly the Senate President, the Speaker, Presidents Obasanjo and Babangida, the president ill-advisedly came up with…

Friday, 08 June 2018 03:59

Buhari and the June 12 saga - Reuben Abati

There are three aspects - the strategic, the political and the legal - to the Federal Government’s decision to replace May 29 with June 12 as Nigeria’s Democracy Day, and to confer on the late Chief MKO Abiola, the highest honour in the land. Strategy: Long before now, the Buhari government had needed to review its strategy of engagement with the public, move from blame-passing, propaganda, in-fighting, enemy-seeking approach to a more legacy-driven, result-oriented mode. It is like this: when a government is in decline, and it is losing popularity and goodwill, then it is time to change the narrative.…

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