Nigerians: A completely different kettle of black Africans
I am a student of politics. However, I hate politics. It is ungodly, it is false, and it is practiced with deceit. You cannot be a successful politician and, at the same time, be committed to the truth. Therefore, my interest in politics does not go beyond the academic. I write about politics primarily to expose the deceit of politicians. I could never be a politician. Neither can I ever be interested in occupying a political office.
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The beginning of the end of the Bola Tinubu dynasty
KING Nebuchadnezzar gloried in his kingdom and declared: “Is this not magnificent Babylon, which I have built as a royal capital by my mighty power and for my glorious majesty?” (Daniel 4:30). While the words were still in his mouth, a voice came from heaven to inform him that the kingdom he was boasting about had been taken away from him.
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A Muslim/Muslim presidential disaster for the APC – Femi Aribisala
Bola Tinubu is standing on the horns of a dilemma. He became the godfather of the APC out of burning personal ambition to seek greener political pastures for himself in Abuja.
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Stephen Keshi: The wrong coach for the World Cup
This World Cup is done and dusted as far as Nigeria is concerned. We would be extremely lucky to get past the first round. There is no doubt in my mind that, barring an act of God, Nigeria’s chances are next to nothing. The only team we have a chance against is Iran and, even there, we are more likely to draw than to win.
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Lamido Sanusi: The wrong emir of Kano
OF all the cities in Northern Nigeria, Kano is perhaps the most important. Although it used to be subject to the Sokoto Caliphate, in many respects it has since become a far more important city in Nigeria than Sokoto. Kano was the administrative capital of the entire Northern Nigeria under British colonial rule.
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We are all Boko Haram
I WAS fifteen years old when the civil war broke out in Nigeria. Although we were living in Ibadan in the South-west at the time, my sympathies were totally and unequivocally with the Igbos. When a people have been so brutally butchered by their countrymen as happened to the Igbos, I felt they had no choice but to insist on leaving the country.
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The Boko Haram are not Northern Nigerians
IN the late 1980s, I was appointed Special Adviser to Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, then Nigeria’s Minister of External Affairs. At the time, I was a Research Fellow of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA). The Director-General of the Institute, Professor Gabriel Olusanya, advised me not to take the job.
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Aliko Dangote: The quintessential Nigerian entrepreneur
Alot is reported about Nigeria in the news every day. However, much of this is bad. Nigerians are people the world seems to love to hate. When you read about Nigeria, corruption is often the preferred topic. Then there are the kidnappings and the Boko Haram terrorism.
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A season of conspiracies against Goodluck Jonathan
THE Yorubas have a proverb. They say: “A witch cried out yesterday and a child died today. Who does not know that it was the witch who killed the child?” Some people have gone to great lengths to declare that if President Jonathan dares to run for re-election, they would make Nigeria ungovernable.
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Decision-time for the South-West
PRESIDENT Olusegun Obasanjo is a relation of mine. My late mother, who was from Abeokuta, was Obasanjo’s aunt. I think that makes Obasanjo my uncle.
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Murtala Nyako should be removed as Governor of Adamawa State
VIce-Admiral Murtala Nyako is the Governor of Adamawa State. He was once Governor of Niger State. He was formerly Chief of Naval Staff of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
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The 2015 presidential election will not be televised
THE Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria entitles the president to run for a term of four years renewable for another four.
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There is nothing progressive about the APC
Regressive alliance: Rather than being a progressive party, the APC is regressive. Indeed, it is a cruel joke to describe it as progressive. A party led by a former military dictator and a civilian dictator cannot be progressive. Can any right-thinking person actually mistake Buhari for a progressive? Would a progressive truncate a democratic government? Would a progressive muzzle the press? Would a progressive arrest and jail people without trial? Would a progressive call for rioting and bloodletting if he loses an election? Certainly not!
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Why is there no regard for human life in Nigeria?
A court-verdict ordered that 50 million naira compensation should be paid to the suspended Central Bank Governor for his unlawful detention for 24 hours. How much compensation should be paid for the senseless deaths of innocent job-seekers?
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The surprising merger of the PDP and the APC
THE sudden decision to merge the PDP and the APC has caught everyone by surprise. When the announcement first came up last night, I thought it was a big joke. But then I saw it on BBC and CNN and quickly had a rethink. When I also heard it announced by Reuters, I concluded that what we are experiencing in Nigeria is nothing short of a miracle. Just when you think they are going to drag the country into the ditch, Nigerian politicians pull back from the brink and come up with the most unexpected solutions.
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A Jerry Rawlings solution for Nigeria
AS the crème de la crème of the Nigerian intelligentsia are currently gathered in Abuja to craft a new roadmap for the country’s political future, there is a very popular option for solving the country’s problem that you can be sure they will not be discussing because many of them are politicians. That option regularly comes up in discussions about how to address the malaise of corruption in Nigeria.
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The South Africanisation of Nigeria
NIGERIANS are so overwhelmed by the inadequacies of Nigeria; we easily ignore its strengths. I am not talking here about Nigeria’s potentials; I am talking about Nigeria’s current actual status in the world economy. I am talking about Nigeria as a country with the biggest consumer market in Africa. Just think about it: the entire economy of Kenya is only equal in size to that of Lagos State in Nigeria.
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Nigeria cannot do without the North
IN 2005, Goldman Sachs Investment Bank forecast that Nigeria will be the 20th largest economy in the world by 2025 and the 12th largest by 2050; ahead of Italy, Canada and South Korea.
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Re-inventing Igbo politics in Nigeria
AMONG the different ethnic groups in Nigeria, the Igbo are without a doubt, one of the most remarkable. So remarkable, indeed, that some have even traced their ancestry to biblical Israel, as the far-flung descendants of Jacob, the Jewish patriarch. Gad, Jacob’s seventh son, is said to have had three sons who settled in South-eastern Nigeria.
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Why Lamido Sanusi should end up in Kirikiri
ONE of the more annoying things about Nigeria is that our thieves are bad thieves. Conventionally, thieves operate at the night, out of respect for the homeowner and law-enforcement agencies. Not in Nigeria: thieves operate here in broad daylight in absolute contempt of everybody.
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There is no Goodluck in corruption
IN its days of arrogance, when some of its members boasted they would rule Nigeria for a proverbial thousand years, the PDP (Peoples Democratic Party of Nigeria) proclaimed itself the largest political party in Africa. Today, the party is afraid that the rival APC (All Progressives Congress) would declare far larger membership strength than the PDP as a result of its recent membership-registration drive. What a difference a day makes in Nigerian politics.
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Bullying the South-South minorities
WHILE speaking recently on a current affairs programme on Liberty Radio, Kaduna, General Muhammadu Buhari boasted that the APC (All Progressives Congress) will wipe out the insecurity bedeviling Nigeria. The General conveniently forgot to tell us how he intends to do this. Since even the Americans with their military might and sophisticated intelligence outfits have not succeeded in wiping out Al Qaeda in over 25 years, one may well wonder how Buhari proposes to work his magic and wipe out the Boko Haram in Nigeria within four years.
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How to become a highly-esteemed Nigerian
THERE are an estimated 170 million Nigerians. The overwhelming proportion of these will live and die unknown and unsung. Airports will not be named after them. Neither will universities be established in their honour. A hundred years from now, people will not even remember they ever existed, except that they might have some children and grandchildren hanging around.
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What does Bola Tinubu want?
OVER the past few years, Bola Tinubu has made himself something of a colossus of South-Western politics in Nigeria. Against the onslaught of vociferous PDP electoral manipulations in 2003, Tinubu drew the line in the sand and held on to the biggest prize: Lagos. He became, in effect, the lone survivor of his party in the South-West. By 2007, using just Lagos State as his stronghold, he fought back to wrest ACN control back in all but one of the South-western states. By 2011, he had consolidated his hold in the region. With 2015 looming, it would appear to be high time for Tinubu to unfold a national, as opposed to a merely regional, agenda.
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Why Buhari will never be president of Nigeria
ON Friday, 23rd August, 1985, the military government of Major-General Mohammadu Buhari decided to place me under arrest. My crime was that I wrote, among others, an article entitled: “Counter-trading Nigeria’s Future” in the National Concord, exposing the government’s scam of diverting public funds into private coffers through barter-trade with Brazil. A man by the name of Benson Norman was sent from the State Security Services (SSS) to my office to get me. Not finding me, he left a note that I must present myself unfailingly at the SSS office at 15 Awolowo Road, Ikoyi Lagos the next Monday morning.
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The ‘Northern’ blackmail of Nigeria
I HAVE never voted in a Nigerian election. I have only ever voted once, but it was in Britain and not in Nigeria. As a Commonwealth student in England in the 1970s, I was allowed to vote for the re-election of Harold Wilson’s Labour party. However, I am seriously thinking of casting my vote, for whatever it is worth, in Nigeria’s forthcoming elections in 2015. There is only one reason for this. I am determined that a “Northerner” must not be the next president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
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Dear President Obasanjo by Femi Aribisala
I am replying your letter with a very deep sense of humility, mindful of the fact that you are, and will always be, my Godfather. I learnt all the tricks of the Nigerian political scene at your feet. You taught me all the tactics I employed in securing the nomination of the PDP in 2011. I also relied on your wealth of experience in rigging the 2011 presidential elections. I am not an ungrateful son as you allege. I agree that you are the real president. It is just that I wish you would not continue to embarrass me publicly.
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Dear Goodluck Jonathan
I have decided to write you this 18-page letter BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. If I don’t write it now, people may start considering you as a good president; forgetting that I am the only good president Nigeria has ever had. There is no one like me. As far as Nigeria is concerned, I am the Baba of the Babas. I am the president of the presidents. Before me, Nigeria had no president. After me, there will be no other president.
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How to deal with thieves and robbers in Nigeria
NIGERIA is a country of thieves and robbers. Anybody in the country can be a thief and a robber, from your plumber, to your doctor, to the traffic-warden on the road. But the biggest thieves are government officials. Whenever you are dealing with Nigerian officialdom, be on your guard; you are going to be robbed.
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Down memory-lane with Africa’s sit-tight presidents
AS we celebrate the life of Nelson Mandela, it is important to highlight what makes him so exemplary, especially on an African continent so bereft of good leadership. Why are there so few Nelson Mandelas in Africa?
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The day of my resurrection from the dead by Femi Aribisala
TWENTY years ago, on 26th December, 1993, I was cornered by armed-robbers on the way from Murtala Mohammed airport in Lagos. When I slammed into a lamppost trying to escape from them, I heard a “still, small voice” which said: “Femi, nothing is going to happen to you here.” Thereafter, I was shot in the leg. Nevertheless, the voice insisted: “There is nothing wrong with your leg.”
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The day of my death, by Femi Aribisala
I WAS born on 12th April, 1952. I died twenty-years ago on 26th December, 1993. I was killed by armed-robbers on the way from Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos.
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