Buhari at one, and democracy at 17
IT has been one momentous year for the Muhammadu Buhari presidency. In line with the president’s promises to fight corruption before it killed Nigeria and restore normality to the Boko Haram-ravaged...
View ArticleTragedy in Kogi State
TOMORROW, the Kogi governorship election tribunal sitting in Abuja will begin delivering judgement in the disputed November 2015 governorship election case. Hopefully, it should bring to an end the...
View ArticleOverwhelmed Nigeria needs to snap out of paralysis
PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari marked one year in office without ceremony. He was right not to. Nigeria’s multifarious problems helped make the anniversary memorable and momentous. The Niger Delta is a...
View ArticleAtiku on Buhari and restructuring
GIVEN the candour and trenchancy of former vice president Atiku Abubakar’s views on the state of the nation last week in Abuja, federal officials may spend more time analysing his motives than...
View ArticleKogi’s unending absurdities
On February 21, and for the second time in about nine years, Palladium donated his column to an ardent reader incensed at the desecration of the fine arts of politics in Kogi State. The youthful...
View ArticleKogi election petition: A most perverse judgement
Last week, Palladium promised that the June 6, 2016 judgement of the Kogi State Election Petition Tribunal would be subjected to close examination. Here it is. This column is today donated to Bimbo...
View ArticleNASS, Saraki weary the Buhari presidency
SENATE President Bukola Saraki has since last September been facing prosecution at the Code of Conduct Tribunal for alleged false declaration of asset. The case has witnessed many adjournments, not to...
View ArticleInternational NGO battles AGF on Kogi
ON June 23, 2016, a respected and United Nations-recognised human rights organisation, Justice Action & Human Rights Protection International Network (JAHRPIN), published a full-page advertisement...
View ArticleKogi State govt: active, indulgent and retrograde
KOGI State under Governor Yahaya Bello is probably the most feverishly active state in Nigeria. But it is also probably the most incontestably retrograde of states, full of paradoxes, and heading...
View ArticleBuhari presidency needs fresh thinking
SINCE the appointment of Acting Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, analysts, politicians and columnists from the Southeast have been exasperated with President Muhammadu Buhari over his...
View ArticleBuhari and imperfect union
WITH about 250 ethnic groups and over 500 indigenous languages, and fractured and turbulent inter-ethnic relationships that triggered a civil war, series of coups, social and religious upheavals, and...
View ArticleNigeria awaits Buhari, el-Rufai over Zaria Shiite panel report
RESPONDING to criticisms over their handling of last December’s Shiite disturbance in Zaria during which hundreds of lives were lost, both President Muhammadu Buhari and Kaduna State governor, Nasir...
View ArticleThe Atiku-Ribadu jigsaw
BOTH former vice president Atiku Abubakar and former EFCC chairman Nuhu Ribadu are politically footloose. They have oscillated like a yo-yo between Nigeria’s main political parties in the past few...
View ArticleTurkey’s Erdogan loses mind
AS far as coups go, the July 15 coup d’etat in Turkey allegedly inspired by cleric Fethullah Gulen is the most half-hearted ever. Mr Gulen, who has been in self-imposed exile in the United States since...
View ArticleBuhari exhumes ghosts and indicates a mysterious future
NEWSPAPERS squirmed last Monday with the startling story of President Muhammadu Buhari’s post mortem on the 1985 coup that toppled his military regime. He took office himself through a coup d’etat in...
View ArticlePalladium at 10
FOR 10 frenetic and momentous years, this column, like this newspaper, has had the satisfaction of fairly accurately gauging public mood in a way that belies the surprising complexity and...
View ArticleFar less ingenuity in state governments
STATE governments owing backlog of salaries are not the only ones ignoring the lessons and perils of the current economic crisis. Everyone, including the progressively conservative Muhammadu Buhari...
View ArticleAngry judges endure tough governmental challenges
FOR some time to come, Nigerians will remember the Muhammadu Buhari presidency for, among other things, its uneasy relationship with the judiciary. The times are unusual, and to remedy the damage done...
View ArticleBudget padding sails into definitional labyrinth
ABDULMUMIN Jibrin, the bitter and combative House of Representatives member from Kano State, has continued his unrelenting attack on 13 of his colleagues, including Speaker Yakubu Dogara, whom he...
View ArticleNHRC takes bold, sensible lead
AFTER completing its review of the 2007 and 2011 polls, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has released a 284-page report indicting some 118 politicians and officials for criminal offences and...
View Article