Clay Richie

If democracy requires an informed citizenry to function well, Nigeria is in serious trouble. Many Nigerians are political ignoramuses. Ordinary people may not know much about public affairs, but Political ignorance should not be excused because it is deleterious to popular government. Nevertheless, ignorance can be rectified, at least a little. Cognitive ability is mostly set at birth.

History will certainly absolve Fidel Castro because the verdict of history will not be at the discretion of the right wing cynics and reactionary enemies of the Cuban revolution. All lovers of human progress in mourning at the exit of this giant exemplar of humanity should take solace in this logic of history at this period that compels deep and critical reflection.

Over the past couple of months, there have been arguments and counter arguments about the sense in concessioning Nigeria’s prime international airports in Lagos, Kano, Abuja and Port Harcourt. The Aviation Minister, Hadi Sirika, has been very emphatic on how resolute the government of the day is about going through with the process. He has assured us that the facilities would remain properties of the Federal Government and that the institution of infrastructure and service delivery measuring with best international practices, motivated the idea to concession.

The Yorubas have a saying: ' agilinti ti nse ginniginni, iku apaa, ambelente opolo to fi ojojumo gbe ara re sanle' - a chameleon that threads with caution dies, how much more the toad that hops around with much energy.

So much has been said about mis-governance in this part of the world, corruption, miscarriage of justice, financial malfeasance, government’s ineptitude, non accountability in government, looting with impunity, gagging of the press, etc. but not much has been done to change the status quo. This is simply because the conscience of government has gone to sleep a long time ago, and no one has the courage to awaken it. This isn’t peculiar to Nigeria or Africa alone. Even western nations that now practice ideal democracy had issues like this until there was a concerted effort by civil elements toward social revolution. This can only be achieved by over-dramatizing such shameful conditions, and by consistent internal and global vigilance.

In my entire adult life, every government in Nigeria has mouthed the platitude of economic diversification. Whether military or civilian, every administration has gone to the Aso Rock Villa screaming her determination to wean Nigeria of oil dependency from the rooftops. Such administrations wax nostalgic about the groundnut pyramids of Kano, the rubber and palm oil days of the Edo/Delta axis, the cocoa plantations and other cash crops of the southwest. You hear of the abundance of solid minerals that we need to tap into all over the country. And patati. And patata.

Former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, is an enigmatic controversial misunderstood statesman in Nigeria. His national interventions always had an insightful impact on our national life. Millions of Nigerians (at home and abroad) like him for his patriotism, courage and candour when the defense of the interest of Nigeria is concerned. But millions, in equal measure, loathe him for his obtrusiveness, vindictiveness and moral baggage. Personally I am not his fan but I respect him for his fearlessness, fortitude, his pungent takes on national issues. And, of course, the services he had rendered to our nation in different epochs as a statesman.

Last month, my 5-year-old daughter fell off the monkey bars at her school and broke her wrist.  I was told by our family doctor to take her to what he believed to be one of the best private hospitals for orthopaedic emergencies in Lagos.  An x-ray at the hospital confirmed that it was a full fracture at the wrist with the bone almost entirely displaced so the orthopaedic doctor called in the orthopaedic technician who set the bone and applied the cast, while my brave daughter tried not to scream in pain.  They advised us to stay the night to manage the pain, and after a harrowing night, during which she received painkillers every 2-3 hours, we were discharged with an instruction to come back in three days so the doctor could check the swelling.  We did, and he declared that she was healing fine and he would do another x-ray in two weeks to determine if the cast should come off or if we should wait one more week.  We went home and I was glad that she seeme...

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The feeling of being robbed is an intense and painful experience. If you’ve been robbed before, you know that feeling of violation, that feeling of being stripped down in public and the helplessness that covers you like a flood. If you’ve been robbed before, you know too well the moments that haunt you consistently, with flashbacks that make it impossible to live in peace in the immediate present. You know too well the erratic nature of trigger points that could send you back to that moment even when you happen to escape the flashbacks. It could be a word, a color, it might even be a facial expression that holds you ransom and takes you back to the day you were robbed. If the impact of an armed robbery only affected the victim, then its impact might be curtailed but it usually affects the people close to the victim- typically the family, robbing them in immeasurable ways. So the worst part of a robbery aside its immediate effect on the victim is the multiplier effect that makes a...

Nigeria has had a turbulent history and continuing crisis. Marked by upheavals, ethno-religious riots, pogroms, a civil war or ethnic war as many more aptly prefer to call it  and terrorism—all of which has left the nation dripping in blood. Some have suggested Nigeria’s green white green flag should be replaced with red in recognition of the blood that has and continues to be shed on account of her existence. More blood still is spilled on a daily basis on account of decades of bad governance, misrule, human rights violations and looting which has resulted in accidents and all forms of carnages on our roads owing to bad roads, avoidable deaths from treatable and or manageable diseases owing to dysfunctional hospitals, extra judicial executions by the army/police and poverty owing to the absence of social security.

Last week, former President Olusegun Obasanjo at the first Akintola Williams lecture, called on President Muhammadu Buhari to brace up and stop giving excuses. Nothing new, at least for some of us who have been shouting ourselves hoarse that the present government would do well to focus on the future and stop complaining about the past. Good enough that the advice this time is coming from one who takes pride in Buhari’s election and one who has served eight years in the same office.

Barely three weeks after the chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), John Odigie-Oyegun, said party leaders would prevail on President Muhammadu Buhari to run for a second term in 2019, presidential spokesman Garba Shehu confirmed last week his principal will indeed run. Every Nigerian is entitled to seek public office, and to serve as many terms as the constitution allows.  To that end, President Buhari is qualified to seek a second term, but 18 months into the current term, amidst mounting doubts, is an awkward time to be thinking about another four years.

Reno Omokiri, has, apparently become desperately enamoured in making his former boss, Dr Goodluck Jonathan look good in the eye of the Nigerian public. Well, perhaps, we should submit from observed inclination of his writings which tend more to hagiography, that he’s still active in the employ of Jonathan. No one begrudges him his employment status, what with the hardship associated with our contrived recession and, of course, a certain bitterness arising from his parting ways with the privileges of office in the wake of the exit of the former President from the Nigerian presidency.

Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the passing of General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu (rtd) in London. Coincidentally, another revolutionary who fought for his people, Fidel Castro of Cuba, also died yesterday. Castro succeeded and ruled Cuba for 49 years until 2008. Ojukwu was stopped in three years, but the seed of his revolution has survived and borne fruit. For want of anything new to say about Ojukwu, I hereby republish extracts from the tribute I paid him almost five years ago:

The death of Fidel Castro was long expected and when it finally came on Friday night, there was very little surprise across the world. He was 90, and in August, he had himself predicted that he would not live beyond 90. He had been sick for about ten years, compelling him to hand over power as Cuba’s leader in 2006. It is instructive that Castro’s death, like his life, was attended by divided opinions. No other man has been more controversial in Latin America and indeed in the whole of the Americas in the last 50 years.

This must be a joke. An armed robber, on realising that his gang’s victim was a born-again Christian, decided to pray for him. “Father,” he said, “everything we are about to take from your dear son, we ask that you replenish a hundredfold in the name of Jesus. We ask you, O Lord, to give him beauty for ashes and oil of joy for mourning.” It has to be a joke.

Sometime in 2014 in Abuja I took an airport taxi headed to town. While conversing with the cabman, whom I happened to find out was from Plateau State, he told me that in his village they have a saying that goes like this: “If you go to a place and don’t find an Igbo man there, then that place is unsafe.” That wasn’t the first time I would hear the Igbo described in such manner.

The recent defection of Orji Uzor Kalu, former governor of Abia State, from the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA) to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), has kept tongues wagging on the motive(s), appropriateness or otherwise of it and the timing of such a move.

Nigeria is a country of great men and women, each making their mark in various sectors of our existence. It is a privilege to celebrate these accomplished ones in our midst when they are alive, rather than when they pass away to the great beyond and cannot hear or appreciate our words. Former Vice President and chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, Atiku Abubakar, stands out for his immense contributions and accomplishments in more than one sector of life in Nigeria. As this great man turns 70, I will highlight his notable achievements in just three sectors: Education, agriculture and government — three areas which are key in the progress and future of our great country, Nigeria.

Fellow Nigerians, something big is about to happen in our dear beloved country. I wish I could foretell a pleasant development. I truly wish. But what I see is total confusion. I refuse to see mayhem out of faith and not by conviction. I’m praying, fasting and hoping that our benevolent God would avert yet another dangerous crisis hovering over our great country. Nigeria has suffered too much since attaining Independence in the year of our Lord 1960. We have tried all sorts of permutations and configurations but nothing has work to our collective benefit. Each time we thought we were close to Eldorado, something came from the blues to dash our hopes and put us all into absolute disarray.

I was numbed by the numbers by the time I finished my extrapolation of the statistics. The criminal ugliness that happened in our country in recent months is something that should make this government nervous about its future with the people. Clearly, President Muhammadu Buhari’s inability to keep a simple promise of internal security could make him fall out of favour completely

When aggrieved politicians within the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) decided to join forces with members of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and the All Progressives Peoples Alliance (APGA) to form the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2013, they had well-defined, if not so clearly stated, even if poorly conceived objectives: to send President Goodluck Jonathan out of power, displace the PDP which had clearly become a dominating hegemonic party, exert vengeance and offer the people an alternative.

One of the books President Buhari must have read, or should read, is Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. But of course, there are others. Why should he? Well, let’s defer this part of the discussion until another time. Here and now, however, let’s briefly talk about Obasanjo’s character and his unstated intention towards Buhari. At the very least, it seems to me that General Obasanjo is disappointed, and getting inpatient with Buhari and his administration.

Forget the staging of placards in Sokoto asking former President Goodluck Jonathan to come back to power tomorrow. The jesters have earned their pay and gone their way. They know that not even a Trumpian miracle can put together again the thousand broken pieces of the Jonathan era.

Without mincing words, there is definitely something that is going on within the NNPC system that ordinary Nigerians and even those in leadership positions cannot understand. The report that Nigeria, despite the difficulties in sourcing funds to service this year’s national budget, spent N958.3 billion importing Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), also known as petrol, from May to September 2016 is at best embarrassing for this country of double-speaking leaders. And tying this huge import figure to the government-inflicted worsening foreign exchange position this country has found itself is even more embarrassing because it is at best a very wrong impression and at worst an outright deceit.

One and a half years after he left office as Gov¬ernor of Enugu State, Mr. Sullivan Chime is still in court over the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ticket with which he won the 2011 gubernatorial election. The case is currently before the Supreme Court where his opponent, Chief Alexander Chukwuemeka Obiechina is challenging the validity of the 12th January 2011 PDP primaries which produced Chime as the governorship candidate. Should he win his case, Obiechina will get a meaningless judgement, essentially because lawyers and judges have conspired to foist on our nation a system that no longer serves the end of justice.

Dear Nigeria, I am Nigerian. I love this great country with diverse cultures and customs. What make us resilient people are our brilliance, compassion and love of country despite our ethnic and tribal differences. We are a people blessed by God, yet cursed by our human greed and leadership.

A worrying trend in Nigeria today is that people consider it right for public officials of their ethnicity and religion to amass wealth through corrupt means. In the process, they are supportive of bribery in the society and encourage the crooked through their indifferent behavior. What they forgot is that as Nigerians (fortunately and/or unfortunately), we are all united by corruption. Corruption has no class, no color, no ethnicity and no religion.

From the recent meeting between President Muhammadu Buhari and some senators from the South East region, it is obvious that the Nigeria’s leader initial promise to be fair to all sections of the country has come into fruition. It is understood that the leaders from the region tabled issues related to infrastructural development such as roads, railway, power, airports and seaports. They also raised issues surrounding the exclusion of the region in the security architecture of the country. As legitimate as the demands are, the large-heartedness of President Muhammadu Buhari to address the problems of the South East as being canvassed by the senators signifies his desire to develop Nigeria equitably.

Since 1962, through its first National Development Plan (NDP), Nigeria has had several economic aspirations. The country has strived to employ a considerable number of economic strategies, plans and programs to achieve development. One can factually debate that Nigeria has had more economic policies than any other developing country. Virtually all models of development have been experimented in the country including nationalization, indigenization,

There is a parable told by Jesus about the rich man. The man had recorded a bounty harvest and was wondering on what to do with it. “What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops”, he asked himself. Then he said to himself, “this is what I’ll do, I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “you have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry”. Unfortunately for him, God had other plans for. According to the Bible, God said “you fool! This very night your life will be demanded of you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself”? The man couldn’t make it to the next day to carry out his great plans for the future.

Two weeks ago, while the world faced the frightening prospect of a Trump presidency in the US, an equally tragic event took place thousands of kilometres away in Nigeria. Except that in the case of Nigeria, the people did not elect—pardon the pun—to foist on themselves the cataclysm that may yet consume the nation. Both events—the emergence of Trump as president-elect and the “not guilty” verdict pronounced by the judiciary, and by extension the Nigerian state, on some vermin in human skin posing as God’s arbiters, bear uncanny similarities.

In a move that will shock molecular biologists, I can now confirm that something is inherently wrong with Nigeria politicians DNA. No, this is not about racism, neither is it one that will mortify my molecular biology teacher at the University of Ibadan, the revered Mark Nwagwu; but one that shows that most of our politicians are actually lower than animals in some instances.

The office or position a man has is not as important as the man holding an office or position. No office can make you great if you are not yourself great. This is the lesson we learn from Donald Trump’s ascendancy. Everybody who was anybody in the establishment thought that Hillary Clinton would defeat Donald Trump because she had held several offices and because she was more mainstream that Trump. Moreover, she was backed by a popular incumbent president and had an almost infinite amount of funds to promote her candidacy.

The Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III has recently attributed the current economic recession in the country to the will of God and urged Nigerians to seek holiness and repentance. Sultan Abubakar III made this statement at one of the events that was organized to mark ten years since he was enthroned. The head of Muslims in Nigeria made it clear that piety and repentance was the way to resolve this economic downturn. He said: “The only solution to this is for us to show piety and repent”.

Of the many promises President Buhari has made to Nigerians, one that appears to be prioritised is his fight against corruption. Earlier this year, while receiving the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Ms Christine Lagarde, the president promised to stop financial leakages by looking inward, enforcing regulation and adopting best practices to mitigate the effect of dwindling oil price on the Nigerian economy.

Let me begin this piece by making a solemn confession: ever since Donald Trump was declared the victor of the American presidential poll penultimate Wednesday (November 9) I had been in a mourning mood. No one died in my household, no sibling, or relative or friend but I found myself in a state of melancholy nonetheless. I could not put my thoughts together nor write nor read. I complained to my wife about my situation of psychological breakdown following the trumping of Hillary but she dismissed it on the ground that I was neither an American nor living in the States for me to be so much concerned with or consumed by the presidential outcome in Uncle Sam.

The Sunni-dominated Northern political and clerical establishment is using the machinery of the Nigeria State to wage war against their co-religionists and rival, the Shia Muslims, whose organisational umbrella, the Islamic movement of Nigeria, IMN, is currently under siege.

Different Nigerians view the performance of the Buhari-led administration with diverse lenses. To some, Buhari is The Immaculate, The Perfect! while to others, he is the worst thing to have happened to Nigeria after the civil war!

Last week, a news analyst for a Lagos radio station suggested that Justice Adeniyi Ademola—of the DSS infamy—ought to present his case in court, and not engage in issuing media statements. When someone reminded the analyst that, in fact, the EFCC had used this style of media engagement to make damning insinuations against some judges, he responded: two wrongs don’t make a right. This, to me, is a prime example of how educated Nigerians shift critical assessment from the acts of government to the acts of individuals targeted by the government. We ask citizens to defend themselves against the might and resources of the government rather than ask the government to justify its use of power against the citizens. This is worrisome.

In my essay titled "Head Bloodied But Not Bowed And The Ascension Of President-Elect Donald J. Trump" (Part 1) I wrote the following:

Last week, former Abia State Governor Orji Kalu, joined the All Progressives Congress (APC). Kalu, a businessman, and political party promoter, was welcomed into the ruling party not like some sort of hero, with National Chairman John Odigie-Oyegun leading the honors at the APC headquarters in the federal capital.

Fellow Nigerians, before I get into my main gist of today, let me quickly apologise for my inability to write this column last week. Truth is I had a mental block, pure and simple. Contrary to speculations that I couldn’t write because my great heroine, Hillary Clinton, lost her election, I was just so physically and mentally fatigued because this is one year that I’ve worked so hard on every project at hand. There was no doubt that I was solely disappointed that Donald Trump won the American presidential election but I was able to adjust quickly.

In Anthony Sampson’s bestseller, The Seven Sisters, sleaze and oil go hand-in-hand. If there was a Nigerian version of that book, not only will sleaze and oil go hand-in-hand, they’ll be inseparable bedmates and incompetence their guardian angel. NNPC will be their nest.

The former vice president, Atiku Abubakar, says Nigerian universities cannot measure up with his secondary school, which he founded.

This must be a depressing hour indeed for the man who “fashioned the drama of existence” and first black Nobel prizewinner in Literature, Professor Wole Soyinka. A comment uttered in what could only be a protest against the willful trampling on the dignity of the African immigrants and other "underdogs" has, alas, been twisted out of its moral joint and now forms the singsong of some idle parrots, the horde of little minds, barricading the social media.

Sometimes, I wish President Muhammadu Buhari would have been as proficient in arresting Nigeria’s recession as he is in arresting his critics! How I pray that this administration was as eloquent at announcing to the public what it has done as it is expert in informing the public what it is that ex-President Goodluck Jonathan allegedly did not do! If only this government applied itself to generating wealth for the nation the way it has devoted itself towards borrowing $29.9 billion. Wouldn’t they have been popular if only they took time to sell their ideas and programs to Nigeria the way they lobbied to sell national assets that more serious governments acquired for Nigeria in times past. But alas, this is an administration that believes in propaganda instead of proper agenda!

It is no news that many states in Nigeria are still unable to pay workers who are being owed salaries of a minimum of six months. And this is despite that the federal government had last year granted the distressed states bailout package of N713.7 billion and an additional N90 billion loan with some financial discipline conditionalities.

Once again, Nigeria’s democratic march is being undermined by unscrupulous elements whose actions are threatening to bring down the peace and rip law and order to shreds. You find these elements within the political class, the electoral body and the judiciary all conspiring to undermine the democratic process.