Clay Richie

Kindly permit me some space for a rejoinder to your column dated 22nd December, 2018 with the above title. My locus standi is established by the fact that I am running for president and I am one of those who strongly believe that government has a strong role in job creation – especially in a toddler economy and society like ours. In fact, I believe that we don’t as yet have a public sector and we would be well-advised to start building one. This will require a lot of employment in areas that the private sector may find unattractive and un-bankable; areas where we may not be able to point to the relevant cashflows and profitability which excite privet sector players.

Let’s cut the crap, folks! The Nigerian government is not interested in ending the Boko Haram war. It would seem they are the ones fueling it because to them, it has become a conduit pipe.

As frightening and devastating as the current security situation in Nigeria, particularly in the North is, it may concern many of us that what we don’t know may far be more than what we know regarding the current spate of violence, atrocities and senselessness bedevilling the land. For example, about forty kidnapping, robbery and related incidences were locally reported in communities within five local government areas of Katsina State in the space of one month, but virtually none managed to make a story in our major national dailies or broadcast media houses within the first five days of occurrence; more than two third of these incidences were never even mentioned out of the localities they occurred at all.

“Bandits” have emerged as the new bogeyman for insecurity in Nigeria, joining a long (and still growing list) that includes Boko Haram, cultists, herdsmen, kidnappers and militants. In different parts of the North-West, from Birnin-Gwari in Kaduna to Tsafe in Zamfara, Bandits are offered as the trope for an intolerable carnage, and the inexplicable haplessness of a federal government that doesn’t appear to care for much else in an election season. As this lamentable state metastasizes, it may be worthwhile to reflect on banditry in Nigeria.

Few Presidents in history have been castigated as much as President Mohammadu Buhari, sometimes unfairly. Some charge that he introduced a fractious religious divide into Nigeria.

Fellow Nigerians, this is one of those weeks when what you never planned decides to jam what you already planned. I had planned to write on my encounter with one of the youngest Presidential aspirants, Fela Durotoye, who visited me at home recently with his very creative wife, Tara. We spent some quality time together and I’m sure we were all able to gain better insight about the Nigerian political vista from that encounter. I had cause to speak to Fela again after I got wind of some situations affecting his campaign. I was able to give him some more tips on how to forge ahead with his campaign and not get disillusioned. We’ve come a long way together as Ife boys, though much younger than me, but he’s always felt totally at home with me on anything concerning him and his wife. He calls his wife my baby and she’s playing a very pivotal role in this campaign. It is through her that I’m able to track and measure Fela’s progress.

In 2009, when terrorism started in Nigeria and our people were blowing themselves up, we were lying to ourselves that Nigerians can never blow themselves up. We even came up with an ugly lie that we were the happiest people on earth, but this is the question we failed to ask ourselves: how can a people be the happiest, who are wallowing in the dirt of poverty, power-outage and pot-holes-ridden roads? Today, it is very clear to all that our people are so hopeless and that’s why they have joined the league of those who daily take their life.

If any other indication of the corruption-ridden nature of this governmental dispensation is needed, this can be inferred from the conduct of the Ondo, Ekiti and Osun States’ elections. Beyond other atrocious manipulations, the attribute that stood clearly to be counted by observers in those dress rehearsal elections, was the unanimity of opinion on the distinct and unprecedented subversion of the election by outright vote buying. Intuitively and analytically, the generalization can be made from this typical behavior that there is a positive correlation between pervasive vote buying and the degree of corruption in public life. In other words, the greater the degree of corruption in public life, especially governmental corruption, the more pervasive the incidence of outright vote purchase. By the same token, the lesser the degree of corruption in public life, the less pervasive will be the subversive role of the highest bidder culture.

There is a way in which one can see a parody of Nigeria in the movie, ‘Chief Daddy’: the chaos caused by having numerous children from different women who were not aware of the existence of one another, the dysfunctionality in the family that bred corruption and the mutual suspicions and recriminations that rendered difficult the unity of purpose without which there could neither be peace nor prosperity. Even with the prospect of enormous wealth to be shared through collaborative efforts, each of the characters would rather cut a deal with their individual greed trumping the collective need.

The news that President Muhammadu Buhari was interrupted and booed intermittently by some lawmakers while presenting the appropriation bill to the National Assembly recently has been trending on the social media.

Within the last five months, some key actors in the President Muhammadu Buhari administration have suggested that support for their principal in the forthcoming presidential election is the only guarantee that agitations for the Presidency by the South-East and the South-West, (which is not actively agitating) could manifest. It started when the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mr Boss Mustapha, indicated, sometime in July, that the South-East could have its near lifelong dream of ruling Nigeria again fulfilled if it worked for Buhari’s return to office.

The event of November 19, 2019 at the floor of House of Representatives’ chamber has clearly shown that, it can only amount to suicide for a sitting president and his party to continuously take for granted, over one hundred and ninety million.

About two weeks ago, I got a call from a friend, who is currently studying for a master’s degree in the United States. She was in a dilemma; the dilemma of virtually every Nigerian student abroad, who are attempting to use local examples from Nigeria to explain global concepts and think up solutions. The dilemma of telling the story of Nigeria as its ambassador in your class, without shaming your country in the process.

On Tuesday, 18 December 2018, Alex Sabundu Badeh, a four star flag officer of the Nigerian Air Force who served as the 18th Chief of Air Staff and the 15th Chief of Defence Staff of the armed forces of Nigeria was shot dead by yet-to-be-identified gunmen, at Tudu-Uku, along Abuja-Keffi road, while returning to Abuja from a routine visit to his farm.

Jimi Agbaje, governorship candidate of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Lagos State, has always based his ill-fated ambition to be governor of Lagos on empty rhetoric and stoking ember of ethnic discord. Predictably, Agbaje’s communication strategy in every election is to reduce Lagosians to slaves who are living in bondage. He has always fronted himself as the man on a civilizing mission to rescue us from bondage.

By way of definition, Rumour is a Nigerian who knows what is happening or can correctly intuit the happenings in the country but does not have any official means of informing Nigerians.

Nigerians have for long languished under debilitating incompetence of the power sector. And we are now better informed that the government should by no means be held responsible for the crisis. Rather, whiners should direct their angst at privately owned electricity Distribution Companies (DisCos) and Generation Companies (GenCos) that are operators of the seemingly jinxed sector.

Politicians are now traversing the length and extensiveness of Nigeria, selling lies to our people and those who are illiterate, when it comes to our own version of shallow politics—are buying those lies. From the highest to the lowest levels, within the context of politics, lies are flying everywhere—lies enwrapped in the swaddling cloth of vain promises. When politicians are looking for power, they can promise to change the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria to Accra.

Sloganeering and symbolism are very effective and critical tools used by marketing experts to attract and retain the attention of their targeted audience. They  are conceived with a view to ingraining messages into the memories of targeted audience through its catchy or clever appellation.

This essay makes three assumptions: That there will be a free and fair election in 2019 That Nigerians know what is good for them and will cast their votes accordingly That the announced results would be a fair reporting of the actual results of the ballot. If any of the assumptions does not come true; the conclusions will not be true.

“Campaign speech”, “lies”, “noooo” rent the air while President Muhammadu Buhari was giving a speech at a joint session of the national assembly on Wednesday.

Whenever I hear some of our economists proposing a stronger naira, I wonder what economic development theory on which they are basing their argument. I’m not only strongly opposed to this kind of economics; I always try to do so with enough convincing evidence to prove my case.

There is a grand conspiracy. A plot hatched in the pits of despair and agony. There are three conspirators involved in this plot – the Nigerian people, top business executives and the international community.

The heat is on in Nigeria, with the 2019 elections around the corner and security is a concern. The Nigeria Police Force (NPF) has been in the spotlight since the last quarter of 2018, stemming from issues allegedly around their interventions in politics such as the upheavals at the Akwa Ibom State House of Assembly, the arrest of political activist, Deji Adeyanju on 28 November 2018 while leading a protest questioning the neutrality of the NPF in the elections, and most recently the incident of Nollywood actor, Gideon Okeke, who shared on social media how he was beaten up on December 08, 2018, by police officers from the Maroko Police in Lagos.

With less than two months to go, concerns by the opposition that next year’s general elections would not be free and fair, appear to be getting louder by the day. The voice of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has, so far, dominated the complaints.

If I were advising the political elites of the various political zones of Nigeria, I would expose to them how politically meaningless, in the broader scheme of interest-based political calculations, occupying the presidency has become.

Five weeks ago in Lagos, I attended an event that officially announced the entry of world’s number one outdoor advertising company, JCDecaux, into the Nigerian market in partnership with Grace Lake Partners, a Nigerian investment and advisory firm led by the young entrepreneur, Mr. Ladi Delano. JCDecaux will operate in the advertising sector through Horizon Outdoor Advertising Limited, a fully owned subsidiary of Grace Lake. As officials of JCDecaux and Grace Lake spoke one after the other, what I was seeing was not just outdoor advertising but the frightening potential of this great country. I walked away from the event glad and sad in equal measure.

There is the hoax that the People Democratic Party (PDP) presidential candidate and former Vice President of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar was wanted in the USA for money laundering charges hence he could not visit that country also constituted itself into a dark cloud on the political horizon and therefore a distraction as well as a campaign dampener.

Fellow Nigerians, let me say on this page what I have been saying privately to my friends in Nigeria’s ruling party, APC. I must confess that I have much more friends in APC than in any other party. It is also frustrating to me that some of my preferred Presidential candidates are not in either of the two major parties, APC and PDP. Unfortunately, for whatever reason these talented politicians shun the main stream political parties and thus reduce their electability to almost zero. The truth is that, logically, if you find APC disappointing and must try another party, you must, necessarily, end up with PDP. That is the same party many of us worked hard to sack from power just over three years ago, accusing it of atrocious and abominable sins. This is the dilemma many normal Nigerians face. How can we go back to swallow the same vomit that we spewed out only a short while ago because of the odious bile that it had become in our guts? However, these are abnormal times. And it seems...

It has been another monumental year for the Nigerian economy which continued to display resilience against domestic and external headwinds.

In today’s Nigeria, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, former Governor of Lagos State and National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (whatever that means) is one of those who speak, and everyone listens. Arguably the most formidable political player in what is now known as the South-West zone of the country, Tinubu understands his fortune and deploys it almost without care for what anyone feels. He is the beautiful bride at whose feet every politician desiring patronage in the South-West grovels and the Asiwaju, understanding the game of politics in a way that only few others in the whole mass of Nigeria do, walks and talks power. He loses no opportunity at throwing jibes at political enemies and trumpeting his own credentials essentially comprising his avowed progressive inclination, a wealth that is endless (even by his own testimony) as well as an unbridled ability to throw verbal punches.

Some of the presidential candidates in the 2019 general elections signed a peace accord in Abuja on December 11. Those who did not sign it on the first day have since done so. We can safely accept that none of them wants trouble. It is good and comforting to know.

My boss, dear friend and uncle, Mr Adagbo Onoja introduced a new concept in media lexicon I find useful in making a very important statement on governance in post-1999 Benue State. While analyzing the politics surrounding the selection of Barrister Emmanuel Jime’s running mate – the All Progressives Congress gubernatorial candidate, he concluded by asking “who, between Ortom and Emmanuel Jime, is going to change the sorry story in favour of that elusive thing called Benue Exceptionalism….”? Millennials in Benue State who had a little dose of military dictatorship and much of bad leadership since the return to civil rule in 1999 are less inclined to contemplate a moment of Benue exceptionalism which Mr Onoja talked about.

The campaign for the 2019 election has finally taken a centre stage with the occasion of the vice-presidential debate, but the outcome leaves much to be desired. Instead of addressing the real problems and the practical solutions, the debate turned out an extraordinary display of tawdry campaign tactics and innuendos.

In 2007, before the American presidential election of 2008, the poll numbers were in favour of Republican war veteran, John McCain. McCain had led numerous military strikes for the United States military. In 1967, during the Vietnamese war, he was almost killed by the enemies, who had shot down his military aircraft and captured him as a prisoner of war.

The circumstances under which Air Chief Marshall Alex Badeh died on Tuesday underscore the gravity of the security challenge facing us in Nigeria today. Whatever may have been the motive of his assailants that a whole former Chief of Defence Staff could be taken out just like that is very telling of how unsafe our country has become.

Senior Special Assistant to President Buhari on media, Garba Shehu, in a response to a statement by Phrank Shuaibu, the SA public communications to PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, said the late submission of handover notes by the Goodluck Jonathan administration was responsible for the late appointment of ministers.

The “collapse” (officially, it is a merger with Access Bank, or maybe we should say, it was saved from collapse in the nick of time) of Diamond Bank is inevitable; it was bound to happen.

A friend once described Nigerians as such atypical, hopelessly-hard-to-satisfy creation on the face of the earth that just when you thought it was time to roll out the carpet and beat the drums for you for having satisfied their yearnings and demands, you see them carrying placards and beating war drums again asking for yet another set of yearnings and demands as they are no longer interested in nor appreciative of what you just did for them.

For the umpteenth time, I do wish President Muhammadu Buhari, the Grand Commander of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (GCFR) an impressive 76th birthday. Now that the birthday party is over, it is important and imperative that we return to the sole business that affects those who daily walk all the dusty streets of our country — nation building.  While we all rejoice with Mr. President, but the truth is; birthday celebrations are not going to put any food on the common man’s table.

On the occasion of his 76thbirthday, on Monday, President Muhammadu Buhari who is running for a second term in office, was quoted as having said that he needs more time in office. More time in office means: “vote for me for another term of four years.” “Allow me to serve you as your President for four more years.” I congratulate President Muhammadu Buhari on the occasion of his 76thbirthday. I know him fairly well. I can write a long epistle about him. I can also write on what I know about him and how his path and mine have crossed, but that is one of the many stories in my head that will be told someday. The time for that will come. This piece is meant to congratulate him and advise him.

In a country of 91 political parties in theory but just two in practice, a vice-presidential debate was always going to be a hard sell. For many reasons. When the Nigeria Elections Debate Group (NEDG) and the Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria (BON) announced the five parties to participate in the exercise, not many Nigerians could, off the top of their heads, name the respective vice-presidential candidates. Okay, we know the presidential candidates that are Obiageli Ezekwesili, Kingsley Moghalu and Fela Durotoye, but, for many, it still hasn’t sunk that their parties are Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (ACPN), Young Progressives Party (YPP) and Alliance for New Nigeria (ANN) in that order. Minus the press statements announcing their emergence, ANN’s Khadija Abdullahi-Iya, ACPN’s Ganiyu Galadima and YPP’s Umma Getso were unknown quantities until the night of the debate. The presidential debate, scheduled for January 19, 2019, was always going to be the real deal.

A newspaper published an article “When will National Assembly dare Buhari on pending bills?”  The Electoral Bill was one of those listed in that article…and it had by then stayed over 30 days waiting for Buhari’s signature. In that same publication, a certain human rights activist lawyer said that “it is incumbent on the President to append his signature in the interest of the country”. The lawyer’s name: Mr. Festus Keyamo (SAN).

“One of the questions that came up today in my meeting with Nigerians in Poland was on the issue of whether I‘ve been cloned or not. The ignorant rumors are not surprising. When I was away on medical vacation last year a lot of people hoped I was dead. I can assure you all that this is the real me!” – President Muhammadu Buhari, 2nd December, Krakow, Poland.

The big news coming out of last week is President Muhammadu Buhari’s refusal to sign the amended Electoral Act. In all the emotions and outrage from various groups about this anti democratic action by the President, many have failed to logically ask and answer the poignant question, why does Buhari not want to sign the Electoral Act? Forget about the flimsy reason he gave in his letter to the Senate, the real reason is much more sinister.

On Monday December 17, 2018, President Muhammadu Buhari who is seeking re-election for a second term of office will be marking his 76th birthday and, in his own words, “still going strong.” His age is no longer an issue in this campaign because by the will of God, not by any design, his main challenger is equally in the same age bracket. This election in February next year then comes down to what each candidate will offer.

This new book, ‘My Transition Hours,’ former Nigeria President Goodluck Jonathan blames former United States President, Barack Obama, for his defeat in the 2015 election.

In case you missed it, 71 reps have tabled a bill before the house proposing the adoption of a parliamentary system of government in Nigeria. For some reason, this major development is not trending. But I find the proposal very interesting, in fact exciting. As a staunch advocate of restructuring (not to be confused with the disguised campaign to “punish” some parts of Nigeria on the basis of ethnicity and religion), I have always believed that returning to a parliamentary system would offer us an opportunity to practise a more robust form of democracy. I like presidentialism, which we currently practise, but I love the parliamentary system.

On December 10th 2018, I breezed into the expansive headquarters of the Nigerian National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Yakubu Gowon way in the heart of the sprawling Maitama District in the Federal Capital Territory.

I agree –from top to bottom that fake news can cause what is called—national conflagration, but it is beyond Alhaji Lai Mohammed and the APC as a whole to complain and whine about fake news. They strategically and excellently sowed the seed of fake news and now that the harvest is coming to them in unstinted and bountiful fold, instead of complaining, the APC and Alhaji Lai Mohammed are supposed to be rejoicing. In fact, the APC as a political party rode to power on the back of fake news!