Clay Richie

“You look dull. I hope you are good” “What else can the son of man do, with all the problems on someone’s head in this country?”

In the recent past, some international organisations, including agencies of the United Nations, have been issuing some reports whose parameters are unknown and whose outcomes raise a lot of doubt, for those who have knowledge of the issues in focus. Take for instance the recent pronouncement that Nigeria has overtaken India as the country with the largest number of people living below the poverty line. Credible indicators or parameters which formed the basis of the conclusion of the UN were not provided, nor was the UN available to face questions on this controversial report.

As I have earlier noted, raiding Caramelo nightclub was not about law enforcement. It was not a move to rectify an illegal use of a property or to combat noise pollution or traffic challenge in the city. The Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) used these reasons to mask their more sinister motives, and to legitimize their illegal clamp down on the operation of nightclubs and women attendees in Abuja.

In a response to an enquiry by the Punch Newspaper on the controversial‘’private visit’’ of President Muhammadu Buhari to the United Kingdom and the President’s refusal to transmit a letter to the National Assembly which would have enabled the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, to become the Acting President pending Mr. Buhari’s expected return to the country on May 5, 2019, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr Garba Shehu told the Punch Newspaper thus:

The first time President Buhari left for the United Kingdom for medical treatment; those who are being paid to speak for him did not want Nigerians to know, as if PMB is a tin-god who cannot take ill. As far as they were concerned, Nigerians did not deserve to know, but when “baba” returned from the first long trip to the UK that did cost Nigerians about 104 days (and till now, how much was spent on him in the UK is still a mystery), PMB uncovered the nakedness of those who are being paid to speak for him, saying that he had never been that sick in his life. Since that time, I stopped listening to those—who speak for President Buhari, because they have completely betrayed my trust. They are being paid to speak for Mr. President, not to either fool or misinform Nigerians.

The allegory of the tortoise that willfully refused entreaties from concerned friends who desperately tried to dissuade him from a disaster prone journey fascinates me. Asked when he would return, his “not until I am disgraced” retort was both instructive and foreboding. His friends, aghast, must have wondered what would spur him on such nihilistic mission. 

Cross River State sits precariously on the periphery of safety under incumbent Governor Ben Ayade. Ayade’s ascension to power after the gubernatorial contest of 2015 was perceived as a moment of liberation for oppressed Cross Riverians. Curiously, and for the umpteenth time, Cross Riverians hopes of a humane leadership have been dashed after a period of two decades that have produced a chain of disastrous governors, whose only visible effort is the extent of pervasive decrepitude in the State.

Marie Antoinette, the last Queen of France before the French Revolution, had taken the liberty to pass a mean comment on her people like Chris Ngige, Nigeria’s Minister of Labour and Employment had done last week. Antoinette was married at age 14 in May, 1770 to then Prince Louis-Auguste who was heir apparent to the French throne and later became Queen, upon Louis XV1 ascension to the throne. Antoinette was however roundly disliked by the French populace on account of accusations that she was wasteful, profligate and promiscuous.

Last night, the United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc held its 2019 CEO Awards Ceremony, to which I was invited. This year, the bank is celebrating its 70th anniversary — having been established as the French & British Bank Limited (B&FB) in 1949. It took the name “United Bank for Africa” in 1961 following its metamorphosis and incorporation under Nigerian laws after the exit of the colonial masters. Although there was plenty to eat and drink at last night’s event, dining is the least exciting thing for me. Something else has been playing on my mind: when will Nigerian brands begin to play really, really big on the African continent and, indeed, all over the world?

The Nigerian Army Resource Centre (NARC) was in the works for quite sometime. So was the Army War College. Then came the tenure of the current Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Lt. Gen. Buratai, and both institutions were kick-started. They now offer laudable contemporary training programmes, effectively reinforcing the National Defence College (NWC), among others, in continuous and progressive human capital development for the officer corps of all the armed services, security agencies and paramilitary organisations. These, essentially military establishments, have also since opened themselves to measured collaborative engagements. They have expanded the frontiers beyond narrow operational matters, having seen that a lot more can be achieved through knowledge exchange programmes of proven value and relevance.

Who is the Nigerian government actually working for? Anyone who has followed the campaign for the passage into law of the Digital Rights and Freedoms (DRF) Bill, 2016, and also followed the campaign that led to the enactment of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, 2011, will be prompted to question the disposition of the Nigerian government towards public interests.

Mr. Amaechi Anakwe is one of Nigeria’s finest professional broadcasters who works with African Independent Television (AIT) – unarguably the most independent-minded privately funded television station.

On a day that President Muhammadu Buhari came to Lagos to commission projects that are largely work-in-progress, our labour minister decided to have his own foot-in-the-mouth moment.

The wrath of 200 million angry Nigerians burned like acid against Dr. Chris Ngige, the Minister of Labour and Employment, for his foolishness on Channels TV yesterday. As soon as he made the comment, I knew he would be our punching bag for a couple of days. I have not given him my own uppercut yet. But Nigerians have beaten him and removed his front teeth already, so what am I hitting again?

On Tuesday, I joined journalists from 25 countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, Middle East and Eurasia for the inaugural session of the Belt and Road News Network (BRNN) Council.

Above a year ago, President Buhari came to Lagos to commission an Ultra Modern Ikeja Bus Terminal, shutting down some major roads, making life extremely difficult and thorny for those he did swear to make life easy for. Till this moment, the Ikeja Bus Terminal is yet to commute a singular Lagosian across a route let alone 100,000 of them across 23 routes!

The Hon Minister of Labour and Employment Dr  Chris Ngige Abuja Nigeria 24/4/2019

'Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both' - Wright Mills

One area the opposition in Nigeria played their ill-fated but desperate politics en route the 2019 general election was security. They played the security card to the hilt in their desperate search for a comeback. Together with their allies in retired army generals, religious leaders, tribal groups, corrupt displaced share reapers, the opposition tried to create a hopeless security situation so as to turn the table against President Buhari in the just concluded presidential election. They said that Nigeria had never faced a direr security situation, even when evidence point to the contrary. They said that Nigerians are being killed in their millions, that life had been cheapened, that Armageddon had been let loose on Nigeria. They did everything within their power to recreate a state of hell in Nigeria and these were to discredit the Buhari government and shred its re-election chances. They dramatized and celebrated every mundane case of crisis as hell let loose and ensured that...

 The man who is now presiding over Kaduna state amidst inter-ethnic and inter-religious turmoils, was once the beloved minister of federal capital territory.

Like the reports that preceded it, the 2018 “Migration and Development Brief” of the World Bank that tracks the remittances of immigrants in high- and middle-income countries of the world–which was recently released–is an important document that the Nigerian government should be elated about because of its contribution to and enhancement of the country’s economic life. Just as the previous years, the report says that remittances to Nigeria by her citizens around the world was the highest in sub-Saharan Africa as it stood at $24.3 billion last year, compared to the 2017 figure of $22.3 billion, which means there was a net increase of $2 billion.

Mrs Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde is a combination of brain and beauty. In the vibrant Nigerian entertainment industry she has, over time, demonstrated her natural talent making money and name for herself and garnering local and international awards for distinguishing herself in her chosen endeavour. In Nollywood film industry in particular and elsewhere in general this brilliant beautiful lady has proven her mettle.

Coming at a time when the Police Force is struggling so hard to redeem its battered image, and being viewed by the general public as the worse institution of government due incessant extrajudicial killings and other negative vices connected therewith.

I believe we all have that one family member who thinks that he or she has the right to intrude into your schedule and order you around. When they call you, they won’t give up until you pick their calls. And these people, they can call you liked a hundred times. Send text messages. Whatsapp. Report you to the entire neighbourhood. They can be so ferocious, your phone will keep ringing non-stop, you would think the fire service is at your door. This is exactly that happened to me, for at least two hours, as I sat down to write this piece. I stubbornly refused to take the calls. Wetin? Some people can use the phone to harass and intimidate.  Ki lo de? I could neither think nor write.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently released its Fiscal Monitor report which ranked Nigeria second to last on our sovereign wealth fund.

Rumpus, said the report from a well-respected online medium, had erupted at the Oyo State Government House. An aide to Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State’s wife, Florence, had reportedly stolen part of an over N1billion being siphoned out of the Government House. This was March 25, 2019. Two days later, specifically on May 27, Ajimobi was subject of the medium’s cudgel again. Niyi Ajao, Special Adviser on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to Ajimobi, who “has a long history of using the Governor to dishonestly enrich himself,” had been suspended. His crime, for which penal sanction was a loss of place in the Governor’s good books, according to the medium, was his “mismanagement of funds meant to provide ‘logistics’ to APC leaders and foot soldiers during the general election.”

When I was growing up, my parents told me, 'Finish your dinner. People in China and India are starving.' I tell my daughters, 'Finish your homework. People in India and China are starving for your job.'” - Thomas Friedman

To borrow the words of colourful First Republic politician, Chief Ozumba Mbadiwe, "come has finally come to become" for President Muhammadu Buhari, as he has won election to serve a second term in office, after a pulsating contest. The country, nay, Africa, and the world looks forward to the inauguration on May 29, 2019.

The law of attraction says like attracts like, which explains why Muhammadu Buhari is a magnet for mediocrities. Almost all his appointees are, like him, underwhelming, intellectually incurious rubes. It’s no wonder that even the lawyers he assembled to defend his unprecedentedly audacious electoral robbery are also risible dolts.

In July 2005, aboard an Egypt Air flight from Cairo to Lagos, a number of Nigerians spent hours discussing the state of the nation. We were from different parts of the country and different religions. We discussed virtually every topic — from the horrible roads to the unending importation of petroleum products, from the inhospitable hospitals to the abysmal education sector. We spoke extensively on corruption in public institutions across the country, the bazaar of contract awards, the hyperinflation of contract costs, as well as the obscene lifestyles of civil servants, politicians and political appointees. I was fully charged as passengers narrated their experiences.

On September 21, 2011, the hearing room of the Code of Conduct Tribunal was overflowing with lawyers, journalists and spectators. A “big masquerade” was expected to be huddled in the dock.  It was Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

The news, last week, that the Economic & Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had procured a warrant of arrest against the immediate past Attorney-General of the Federation & Minister of Justice, Mr Mohammed Bello Adoke, as well as a one-time Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mr Dan Etete and four others, might yet prove to be another manifestation of the tendency of our public institutions to confuse motion with movement. My reasons will be outlined anon.

As a concerned citizen and student of Nigerian politics, I was relived at the emergence of former Vice Atiku Abubakar as the main contender with President Muhammadu Buhari in the 2019 presidential elections. The relief is on account of the immunity of their shared Northern (Fulani) Moslem identity against the potential of presidential elections in Nigeria to assume violent ethno regional fractiousness. The big elephant in the room of Nigerian politics is its vulnerability to negative identity politics-the tendency of political mobilisation to approximate the cleavages of ethnicity, religion and regionalism. This development was of course not an accident. It was derived directly from the zoning principle that preemptively alternates the Nigerian Presidency between the North and South-thereby precluding a fraught situation in which the North is arrayed in opposition to the South in political contest and conflict. It also serves as political insurance against inadvertent political m...

I have always wondered how Abubakar Atiku came to believe that he won an election that was monitored from polling booth to polling booth in Nigeria, by foreign observers, newspaper reporters, online news media, bloggers and all manner of busybodies in Nigeria, and he lost by 3.9 million votes!

In 1914 Lord Frederick Lugard, the British Governor-General of Nigeria, described northern Nigeria as the “poor husband” and southern Nigeria as the “rich wife”. He went further by boldly proclaiming the marriage of the two regions by British fiat and declared, without consultation with either of the two “spouses”, that this was a marriage that had “no prospects of divorce” and that “would last forever”.

Who will probe the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Maikanti Baru, for inflated fuel consumption figures?

I first came in cyber-contact with IG Wala many years ago when he resigned a certain appointment in Gombe ((I think it was a SURE-P committee or so) over issues of corruption. He claimed he was being pressured to do wrong things. I recall praising him to the highest heavens as an exemplary Nigerian. And so he became my friend here.

That those saddled with the responsibility of protecting Nigerians are beginning to behave like assassins is a troubling challenge the Acting Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mr Muhammad Adamu has decided to confront. Henceforth, electro-muscular disruption technology known as teaser will replace the use of firearms for routine patrols, arrest duties and other low-risk operations. This, according to Adamu, is a “strategic approach towards reducing incidents of fatalities associated with misappropriation of lethal weapons by the Police as first line of response to any threat.”

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar made an unpopular statement during the campaign worth a second thought. He said if he was elected president, he would sell off the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), even if it would cost him his life.

The visit to Zamfara State in 2014 was at once frightening, sobering and demoralising. Though seated in a sprawling parlour with massive chairs, we were all unconsciously in a huddled position, as the then Secretary to the State Government explained how he abandoned his farm and ranch because of cattle rustling and fear for his personal safety. Zamfara was at the mercy of the elements and it was impossible to deploy law enforcement agents, even for himself, in any meaningful way. He talked about the humiliating experience some of the men were often subjected to by the bandits. They would take a man’s cattle and probably some of his wives and then still make him drive the cattle for quite a distance into the wilderness for them, before allowing him to go back home, alone.

Between fighting corruption with bare knuckles in an inspired manner and wearing well-padded gloves to do half-hearted battle with a monster that has literally crippled the country, the Buhari administration has to make up its mind on which style to adopt. And because time is not on its side, it had better do so now.

Young people are leading a people’s revolution in Algeria and Sudan, both developments remind us forcefully of the wages of mis-governance, the power of the people to seize control of their own destiny, and the role that the youth can play in a country’s development process.  It is encouraging to see that in both countries, we are witnessing the triumph of the people’s will. In Algeria and Sudan, it is Arab Spring (or Winter?) all over, with the people saying No to Repression, No to Dictatorship, No to the abuse of power.

Can we still save this democracy? Saving Nigeria’s democracy is as important as saving the unity of this country. It is the only way we can protect the future of our children. No one can convince me to believe that the way we are going will lead us to a great democracy and prosperity. No one can tell me that if other countries can get it right we too cannot. No one can tell me that we can develop through the way we are pursuing development. No one can tell me that if others can be pragmatic in their approach to development we cannot use a pragmatic approach to our development too.

Atiku Abubakar is in all circumstances qualified to be President of Nigeria. Before 1st of October, 1960 both Southern and Northern Cameroons were trusteeship  territories under Nigeria in  accordance with Article 76(b) of the United Nations Trusteeship Agreement of 1946. This situation dated back to the period of the first world war. Prior to that war, some part of the old Adamawa Emirate were occupied by the Germans.

What happened in the United States, at the Augusta National Golf Club on Sunday was phenomenal, historic and inspirational - a truly human story in its grandeur and implications. With a single, final stroke, and a hard stare, Tiger Woods won the Masters, his fifth since he won the first in 1997, 22 years ago. History was made. This was his 81st PGA tour win. His first major title since the 2008 US Open. His fourth Masters green jacket was in 2005. As he wore the jacket again on Sunday, 14 years later, he said: “It fits”. Indeed Tiger, “it fits.”

Government leaders often ask me how they can achieve development goals, such as expanding energy access, while tackling climate change. Some say, “Shouldn’t we use our coal resources to give people electricity first, then go low-carbon later?”

The last few days have seen a hypocritical mass awakening to the dire existential torments the people of Nigeria’s northwest face and a dramatic diminution of Buhari’s unearned goodwill in the region. People who had constructed Buhari as an unerring, irreproachable demigod who is worthy only of worship and unquestioned admiration have started to call him insensitive and clueless.

I never knew that it is possible and feasible to become a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) without being licensed to practice in Nigeria. I will not be able to camp around this issue for so long a time because you know I am not schooled in both the spirit and letter of the law, but I appeal to every legal luminary in Nigeria to please enlighten us on how possible it is for one to become a SAN without being licensed to practice in Nigeria in the first place. This is an interesting time in Nigeria.

Before 1914, the geographical space called Nigeria existed in bifurcation – the northern and southern protectorates. And before the British savaged and carved out the area for immanent exploitation, there were thriving kingdoms, ethnic groups, cultures, traditions, and civilisations.

Segun Awosanya more popularly known as ‘Segalink’ is a social media personality that has over time come to be known as the ‘official’ liaison between the police and the common man.In campaigning rigourously against the inhuman treatment meted out to helpless Nigerians by the very police force supposed to be protecting them,he has mobilized Nigerians both on social media and off it to protest against the Nigerian police.