Southwest’s new paradigm
In the 1999 presidential election, the two leading contenders hailed from the Southwest, deliberately so because there was a general feeling of pacifying the zone for its loss caused by the annulment...
View ArticleOduah conjures phantom, intransigent enemies
Responding to President Goodluck Jonathan’s pussyfooting on the bulletproof cars scandal involving her and the Aviation ministry she heads, Stella Oduah has embarked on a frenzy of public relations...
View Article2015: Bad omen all round
“The president’s new ministerial list is not a reflection of the managerial competence of the appointees, or of the short time left in the president’s tenure; it is a reflection of the idiosyncratic...
View ArticleNational conference and perennial half measures
If anything can be said for the national conference the Goodluck Jonathan government is organising, it is that the vacillation over what to call it – national conference, national dialogue or national...
View ArticleAPC and 2015
The All Progressives Congress (APC) boasts an incredibly lofty political and social ethos it wants to midwife for the country. But if care is not taken, it could find itself entangled in pitfalls and...
View ArticleJonathan needs a role model
President Goodluck Jonathan’s supporters and admirers think many of his critics are either deliberately offensive or are zealots of the opposition. They are wrong. His critics, who owe no one any...
View ArticleReligious distinction: before the lights go out
Last Sunday, Muslim protesters, many of them quite young, marched through Lagos streets campaigning for the right to wear hijab in public schools. The protest drew significant attention. But the state...
View ArticlePlacating the Southwest
Consequent upon Dr Jonathan’s piquant but desperate cabinet reshuffle, it has been speculated that some of the vacant positions could be ceded to the Southwest. The president has apparently just woken...
View ArticleThe tragedy of 2015 presidential campaigns
Before the third quarter of this year, the profiles of the two main political parties’ standard-bearers may become discernible. Pessimism should be deplored, but the chances of the two big parties...
View ArticleJonathan’s late salvoes
President Goodluck Jonathan may have eased out four members of his so-far uninspiring cabinet, and seems set to bring in more notable persons, but it is doubtful whether the reshuffle will have quite...
View ArticleGov Shettima, Boko Haram and Nigeria’s future
When Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State hurried to Aso Villa last week to warn the president and country what terrible dangers his state and the entire Northeast confronted in the Boko Haram...
View ArticleJonathan’s impunity
For the duration of his hyperactive and fairly controversial tenure, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi never quite won my unalloyed support for some of his critical policies as Central Bank of Nigeria governor....
View ArticleMuseveni on homosexuals
Both President Goodluck Jonathan and President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda are generally classed as homophobic. But while the former has tended to avoid being pinned down openly on the issue, which both...
View ArticleSenate comes out of their reactionary closet
Last week, I indicated in this place that the Nigerian Senate had unashamedly become a unit of the Jonathan presidency. I was led to that conclusion by the way senators spoke and behaved over the...
View ArticleSham honours and centenary
In a lengthy but uninspiring speech last Wednesday to mark Nigeria’s centenary celebrations, President Goodluck Jonathan indulged one of his curious and often contradictory theological explanations for...
View ArticleNo surprise Nigeria stagnated for decades
Much more than the mileage the Jonathan presidency hoped to achieve with the emblazoning photograph of past Nigerian rulers wearing their medals and displaying their centennial award certificates late...
View ArticleAPC road map: brilliant piece of politicking, but…
All of a sudden, politics has become cerebral. With the unveiling on Thursday of the All Progressives Congress’ social contract with Nigeria, in which the leading opposition party spells out in detail...
View ArticleIs anyone inciting the military?
Last week, the Director of Defence Information , Maj Gen Chris Olukolade, accused politicians of making remarks capable of inciting troops battling the Boko Haram insurgency to mutiny. He did not...
View ArticleBoko Haram: have we learnt any lesson to end the war?
Like most other policies, including the flip-flop on rice import ban and the automotive policy, there is little debate, not to talk of deep, intellectual introspection accompanying the Goodluck...
View ArticleCrimean crisis as a modern anachronism
It is difficult not to contemplate Ukraine’s Crimean crisis with an eerie sense of déjà vu. Jostling for strategic or religious influence in the Holy Land, Crimea and the Black Sea in the mid-19th...
View Article