Clay Richie

  It is my opinion that insecurity in Nigeria now is Elite Orchestrated Insecurity (EOI)! Improvement in banking service occasioned by the deployment of ICT, has greatly reduced armed robbery in the country.

The article reproduced here was written in 2015. It predicted the comeuppance of Bola Tinubu in the APC. I have decided to re-submit it for publication because what was obvious to so many of us on the sidelines what oblivious to Bola Tinubu. We always knew it was a matter of time before he was used and dumped by his Northern coalition partners. But Tinubu was so blinded by ambition, he could not even see his nose in the mirror.

Except something else occurs that grabs the headlines and dominates Nigerian social media, the big news of the past week would probably be the death of Senator Abiola Ajimobi and the political drama that it has generated.

  Much as one tries, it has been difficult to find something for which to commend Nigeria’s current Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami. He has been the chief law officer of the country since he was first appointed by President Muhammadu Buhari at the take-off of his administration in 2015, and re-appointed in 2019 as Buhari returned for a second term. Malami is one in the privileged club of distinguished lawyers who tag their names with that smug title of SAN (Senior Advocate of Nigeria), a legal title keenly coveted by the typical Nigerian lawyer. But he also comes across as one who is essentially unfaithful to the law.

That the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Nigeria police continues to use torture and other unlawful tactics in the discharge of their law enforcement duties is not exactly a newsworthy item; we have always known this. If a poll were created now on Nigerians’ perception of that unit, the result would be easily predictable. Police brutality is a major concern with SARS and in late 2017 as demands for accountability became stronger, the #EndSARS campaign was birthed.

“You must gain control over your money or the lack of it will forever control you” – Dave Ramsey President Buhari had signed the 2020 budget before the end of 2019, in a clear departure from previous experiences where the budget did not get to be passed until the middle of the year. To the relief of most Nigerians, we had finally got it right for once and it was something to be celebrated. Little did we know that coronavirus was on the way.

You do not need to have special skills to deduce the cynicism and unbelief amongst the majority of Nigerians with regard to Covid-19. This regrettable situation is accentuated by the fact that those who should know better, the elite or the more educated citizens, are driving the cynical narrative which tends to discredit the effort being made by the government to manage the pandemic. Of course, the consequence has been low compliance to the health and safety instructions being disseminated to the public. It must be stated, however, that the cynicism and unbelief is not peculiar to Nigeria as can be seen on global news channels and social media.

  In 2006, President Olusegun Obasanjo came up with Vision 20:2020 — an audacious dream to make Nigeria one of the 20 biggest economies in the world by 2020. There were plenty projections that were supposed to combine to make Nigeria attain the goal, but the one that always catches my fancy was that we would be generating 10,000 megawatts of electricity by 2007 and 35,000mw by 2020. When President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua launched the blueprint in 2009, the ambitious projections were re-sized and toned down: installed capacity was to grow from 6,000mw in 2009 to 20,000mw by 2015. President Muhammadu Buhari has now promised us 25,000mw by 2025.

Of the 109 senators of the 9th National Assembly (NASS) with only 7 women (representing 6.4% one of the lowest in the world -- with only 1 woman out of 57 senators from the 19 states of the entire northern Nigeria) 2 women are among the 10 best performing senators by number of bills sponsored. The 2 incidentally are from Anambra, Stella Oduah (Anambra North) with 26 bills, and Uche Ekwunife (Anambra Central) 16 bills.

Mallam Nasir el-Rufai must be a very angry man each time he visits Abuja. He would be upset at the turn of events in a city he staked his life and reputation. He would bemoan a wasted effort.

A whopping N1.7 trillion! Yes, that is the amount of tax payers’ money injected into the power sector in the last five years as intervention fund by the Buhari government; yet, there is no corresponding improvement in electricity supply. This figure was unveiled during a recent public hearing on “the power sector recovery plan and impact of COVID-19 pandemic", organised by the senate committee on Power.

In 2016, political pundits opined that the successor to Comrade Adams Oshiomhole would be Pastor Osagie Ize-Iyamu. The Redeemed Christian Church of God Area pastor had come a long way in the game called politics. He started it long before Oshiomhole dreamt of becoming the governor of the state fondly known as the ‘Heartbeat of the nation.’

  Monday June 22, 2020 was an unusually tragic day in Lagos reinforcing the pre-existing atmosphere of multiple rape cases all over the country. On that day alone, two couples were found dead in their respective apartments in different parts of Lagos. In each of the two cases, the man had killed the woman as punishment before taking turns for suicide.

  If you are a keen observer of political developments of Edo and (to some extent), Ondo states, you would have come to two or three painful realisations lately. The first is that politicians in Nigerians are not guided by any idea or principle. Nigerian politics is a jungle where ego and influence peddlers have a field day operating without any rules guiding their trade. We shall return to this point later.

Last month, precisely on the 29th, President Muhammadu Buhari marked five years in the saddle as Nigeria’s president. In what has become its trademark tactic, the government rolled out a list of achievements, amid a fanfare of chest-thumping that but for Buhari, the country would literally have ceased to exist. It is this messianic complex and personal importance that inflates the president’s own sense of knowledge of everything; from economic management to politics, from human capital development to security, etc., made more so apparent by court jesters/Buharists who discount the skills and abilities of others and daily broadcast their loyalty to the president on rooftops from Cape Verde to Cairo.

  Global response to the outbreak of the Coronavirus in Africa has been remarkable, especially following fears that should the virus take hold, its impact on the continent could be catastrophic.

  “Even the obstacles on my way, I predict them before those that will bring them will start to think about them. I plan for betrayal, I plan for backstabbing, I also plan for reunion & forgiveness long before they happen. I expect nothing, I expect anything, I expect everything” — Jagaban Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

My simple question seemed to have thrown the Emir of Katsina, His Royal Highness, Dr Abdulmumini Kabir Usman, off balance. After a brief pause, he countered: “You are asking me how I feel when my people are being killed every day? We can spend a whole day discussing that. We are dealing with murderers, people for whom lives mean nothing but they seem to have overwhelmed the capacity of the state.” He explained the nature of the challenge, the historical decision that disempowered the traditional authority and in the process emboldened criminals within their domains, and added, “When the former Agriculture Minister, Mr Audu Ogbeh visited me last year with the CBN Governor, (Mr Godwin Emefiele) and they gave me some cotton seedlings, I asked what they wanted me to do with them. I told them what I needed from the federal government is protection for my people, most of who in any case have been forced to abandon their farms.”

One thing you cannot take away from the National Security Adviser, Major General Mohammed Babagana Monguno (rtd), is the fact that he is not totally unaware of the challenges hampering the security of the nation.

  Farming is becoming an attractive vocation to Nigerians because food is a basic and essential need for survival. Without food in our stomachs, everything else is meaningless. A hungry man, mind you, is an angry man; and hunger virus, just in case you didn’t know, is deadlier than coronavirus, according to some people. I’m not referring to the famous “stomach infrastructure” which has been formally adopted in our political lexicon. 

Nigerians love to be serenaded and wear appellations as a crown. The politician wants to return to office even when the track record carries the stigma of shame. They promise the people the good things of life but abandon them with empty stomach and a future in destitution. Yet the people praise-sing and those liberated enough to maintain contrary opinions are labelled as enemies of the state and the perennially unhappy souls. But where has praise-singing brought us? A terrible impasse and a future at the crossroads.

For many years, middle class and rich families in Nigeria have made it a ritual to spend the months of June to September overseas on summer vacation, particularly in Europe or America and more recently Middle East and Asia, precisely Dubai. During this period, if you are around the major international airports in Nigeria, the rush to leave the country will make an unsuspecting observer feel there is impending crisis or even war. At the end of the summer vacation period, it will appear as if there is competition amongst families who will come back home with more suitcases.

The National Broadcasting Commission opened itself to a needless controversy in current bid to regulate the broadcast industry. NBC decided to introduce new regulations following the monumental toxicity and hate-inspired campaign that characterized the 2019 general election, which in itself was a fallout of unrestrained campaign of calumny during 2015 elections across board.

This year, there was some feeling of nostalgia about May 29 as Nigeria’s Democracy Day. When a few persons called me to ask if there were special plans for Democracy Day on May 29, I had to remind them that Democracy Day was now June 12. On June 6, 2018, President Buhari proclaimed June 12 as the new Democracy Day. I guess with time, Nigerians will get used to the new order, and June 12 will “take root” firmly as new Democracy Day. Hopefully no government will show up in the future to reverse what may well be remembered as one of the good deeds of President Muhammadu Buhari. As events turned out, on May 29, this year, many state governors marked either their first or fifth year in office; other states talked about Democracy on June 12. Ahead of June 12 itself, the Federal Government released a document outlining the achievements of the Buhari administration in five years. On June 12, President Buhari addressed the nation. Other political leaders issued statements. But there was no cele...

Perhaps for the first time in the life of the Buhari administration, all the security chiefs jointly addressed the media Thursday last week. At the press conference, National Security Adviser Mohammed Babagana Monguno led Defence Minister Bashir Salihi Magashi; service chiefs, Gen. Abayomi Olonisakin (Chief of Defence Staff), Lt. Gen. Yusuf Tukur Buratai (Army Chief), Vice Admiral Ibok-Ete Ekwe Ibas (Naval Chief) and Air Marshal Sadique Saliu Abubakar (Air Force Chief); Inspector General of Police Mohammed Adamu; and intelligence chiefs Yusuf Magaji Bichi (Department of State Services), Ahmed Rufai Abubakar (National Intelligence Agency) and Mohammed Sani Usman (Defence Intelligence Agency) to express the president’s disappointment with their failure in arresting the worsening insecurity in the country. Buhari, through Monguno, for the first time publicly chided the security chiefs in what could be described as his mea culpa, his acknowledgement of his error, while vowing not to accept...

These are indeed turbulent times for the entity called Nigeria. One cannot wrap his head around the myriad of issues confronting the nation, and, making a case for each of the problem(s) would be an exercise in futility because each problem is uniquely and distinctively complex that it awed even the most meticulous policy scholars. In the preceding weeks, we had witnessed horrific spate of violence perpetrated by humans on fellow humans. The carnage can best be described as something out of a movie script.

It is an undisputed fact that the Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba ethnic groups are the largest ethnic groups in Nigeria. It is a fact that the Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba languages are widely spoken in Nigeria aside English language. It is a fact that the official language of Nigeria is English and in special circumstances Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba.

So when there is no shooting inside the Presidential Villa, involving the aides of the First Lady, (an office itself which is a subject of demystification of this administration and the head of it) and the presidency, there is the drama of the First Lady versus members of Mr. Muhammed Buhari's family.

The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), the federal agency that regulates — and strangulates — the broadcast industry in Nigeria, always gets away with murder. If you ask me its major contribution to the development of broadcasting in the 21 years of our democracy, I can only remember the frequent imposition of sanctions on broadcast stations for violating some rules and regulations, mostly political, with the NBC usually trying to please the government of the day. They have also been granting licences to governments and individuals to operate radio and TV stations. I almost forgot: they licensed PayTV services. Anything else? I honestly cannot remember much.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom announced the merging of the U.K.’s Department for International Development (DfID) with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in what is now to be known as the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. DfID has, in the years of its existence, been key to offering development assistance to countries with high numbers of people living in poverty in the areas of primary education; access to reproductive health care; and the tackling of infant, child, and maternal deaths, and this role substantially aided many developing countries towards the achievement of the erstwhile Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This announcement, which came barely a month after President Trump threatened to end the United States’ relationship with the World Health Organisation (WHO), signals a de-prioritisation of foreign aid by the governments of the U.K. and the U.S., and with current global economic realities, this could appear to be t...

To me anybody can be in a position of authority in Nigeria. It is not an exaggeration if I say that a child (foetus) in the womb is qualified to be in any leadership position in this country. The reason is that being a leader in this part of the globe does not need any fresh idea, just “copy” what your predecessors did in a similar situation and “paste” it.There is basically nothing new to add in leadership as the people have been taught intuitively to live as if they had none.

When the Union Jack was lowered in 1960 and the flag of Nigeria was being hoisted, one thing that was on the lips of every giant country at that time was that in a few years, Nigeria would join them, but here we are today, we are not even a 3rd world country, except we want to continue to deceive ourselves!

Deceit. This six letter word aptly describes the biggest hindrance to the battle against insecurity in Nigeria. Until the Buhari government is ready to end all the deceits surrounding enforcement of security in this country, the senseless killings and insecurity across the country will persist. Just imagine Army Chief, Tukur Buratai coming up with a preposterous tale that his men had killed 1,428 terrorists and the Commander-in-Chief is not asking questions. His employers did not ask him when, where and how? The other day, when the Chadians killed hundreds of Boko Haram fighters, we all saw it. Nobody queries Buratai’s fantasy successes. It’s so depressing. We are persistently told stories of thousands of Boko Haram fighters killed, their meetings disrupted and their logistic suppliers slayed. Nigerians are shown aerial bombardments with footages of terrorists scampering for safety, without ground troops mopping up. They follow up with suspicious figures of terrorists killed after the ...

If you still had any doubts, the event at the Jabi Lake Mall Abuja on Saturday and the drama that has followed it, tell copiously of Nigeria’s descent into near anarchy. The country, like virtually every other, is in the middle of a pandemic with unprecedented virulence. The Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 in executing the mandate of President Muhammadu Buhari, imposed a phasal lockdown, which includes a firm restriction on interstate travels except for essential reasons. But a young Nigerian artiste, Azeez Fashola with the stage name Naira Marley boarded a flight from Lagos to Abuja for what is everything but essential services. With that, Naira Marley, having attained notoriety as a prophet of anti social behaviours, once again showed disrespect for national order and disdain for institutions, first by leaving Lagos and then performing at a concert in Abuja.

  Sometimes, when you think you have heard the worst about what is going on in Nigeria; that is just the beginning of contending with the unimaginable. One time, you hear the President’s wife telling the nation that she doesn’t know the whereabouts of her security aides, at another time; you read news report of shootings in the seat of power. As you are still wondering if this is some kind of plot in a blockbuster, almost immediately, a government aide confirms the shootings and at the same time describes the incident as minor. As a citizen, you know that there are obvious anomalies, but you have to figure out these things yourself. Our government does not think it owes us much explanation and because we are already used to being disrespected, we easily ignore some pertinent issues and simply move on. Perhaps, this is what the President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi, expected us to do when he publicly declared that virtual learning cannot...

One of the most worrisome developments in today’s Nigeria is what appears like a firm resolve by the Muhammadu Buhari regime to continue circulating the very distressing impression that it does not know how to solve the endless aggression being unleashed in different parts of the country by Fulani herdsmen, who move and operate as if there are no laws in the land capable of containing the menace of troublesome people.

On the back of his exit from the All Progressives Congress after he was rightly disqualified for presenting questionable academic credentials, Godwin Obaseki, the confused governor of Edo State, has announced that he is yet to make the choice of a political party, with an additional lie that he is presently focused on combatting COVID-19 in the state.

On 2nd October 2017, I used the metaphor of a cow with wooden leg to illustrate the story of Nigeria in a presentation titled, “A Nation on the Edge: Which Way Nigeria?” at ‘Platform Nigeria’. It is a programme of the Covenant Christian Centre hosted annually by Pastor Poju Oyemade in Lagos. The question I posed at the session was: What exactly do we mean by Nigeria? Interested readers can access that paper here.

I goofed, but may be just a little, because this is not how the story ends.    In January, I predicted that the Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, and his protege and Governor of Edo State, Godwin Obaseki, would drag themselves to the brink, but that just when everyone thinks they’ll fall off the edge, they would stop to avoid mutually assured destruction.

Friday June 12 marked Nigeria’s 21 years of steady democracy but in my observation what should be a national day of celebration was greeted by collective indifference save for the political elites, who have profited from the current arrangement, who found a way to regale us with flowery prose and vain promises.

“Those whose palm-kernels were cracked for them by a benevolent spirit should not forget to be humble”  — Chinua Achebe This proverb from Chinua Achebe’s famous book, ‘Things fall apart’, reminds us that a man who has found success and overcome obstacles with the help of divine intervention should display humility. The ancient wisdom is lost on the present-day politicians in Nigeria who are now playing God, prancing the landscape like colossuses. They are breaking things, causing damage and doing incalculable damage to the nation’s hard-earned democracy.

1. Today, I write about the worsening and never ending insecurity and blood letting in Northern Nigeria (Arewa) and the deafening silence of many of us who should speak up loud and clearly on behalf of our voiceless people.

The impact of covid-19 on international shipping has been harsh. And it is not likely to go away in the next two years, just as the dreaded pandemic won’t. In the face of dwindling revenues from oil, Nigeria should now be turning to the marine economy for succour. Fully exploited, maritime could make more money for the nation than even oil, a development economist told me recently. 

The announcement of Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as Nigeria’s nominated candidate for the position of the Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) which would now be vacant by September 1, 2020, and not 2021, following the incumbent’s decision to take his exit a year earlier was received with great excitement among Nigerians. This enthusiasm is in itself a reflection of the high regard in which NOI, as she is otherwise known, is held by her compatriots. It didn’t matter that Nigeria’s President had withdrawn an earlier nominee for the post, Ambassador Yonov Frederick Agah, Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the WTO and a long-serving WTO insider (since 2005). 

“All Rape is an exercise in power, but some rapist have an edge that is more than physical. They operate within an institutional setting that works to their advantage and in which a victim has little chance to redress her grievances” – Susan Brownmiller ( Feminist)

The unprecedented global COVID-19 pandemic is changing the face of human society and its systems, from healthcare to education, consumption patterns, the world of work, value systems, political regimes and legal systems. The condition was first reported in Nigeria in February 2020, and within a few weeks of its onset, we had entered the community transmission phase. Today, there are more than 16,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 across 35 States and the FCT, and over 400 deaths and counting. How Nigeria recovers from the effects of the infection will depend on the innovations we are willing to introduce and the reforms we are committed to implementing in the various sectors of our society.

The profile of the avoidable disagreements between our ageless First Lady, Aisha Buhari, and President Muhammadu Buhari’s aides and families who are living inside the Aso Rock, will keep one wondering if Nigeria has never had a first lady. The late Stella Obasanjo, Turai Yar’Adua and Patience Jonathan were once in the Aso Rock as first ladies. Stella till she lost battle to the Hades stood behind Obasanjo and supported his presidency; Turai Yar’Adua was a powerful first lady, who played enviable roles in Yar’Adua’s administration; and Patience Jonathan, will always be remembered for her timely comic skits: “There is God o!”

It is surprising that some people still believe COVID-19 disease is a scam in spite of the fact that the virus has been front page news since the outbreak in Wuhan, China late last year. The massive global awareness campaign on coronavirus and the mind numbing death statistics, it appears, are not sufficient to convince these folks who do not believe we are walking a tight rope with coronavirus. The consequential damages of COVID-19 are widespread forcing a global lockdown and compulsory isolation.

I chanced on a senior politician from Katsina in Katsina state who felt so disappointed and absolutely disgusted with the state of insecurity in the Northern States and especially his home state that he told me that almost the greater percentage of the people feeling the impacts of the mass slaughter/massacre as he calls it are simply fed up with the President who hails from the same state.

Our paths crossed in 2014. I was about to set up TheCable online newspaper. The biggest challenge was getting a good editor to take charge. Having practised journalism for over two decades, I wanted to take the back seat and concentrate my energies on other businesses. But unable to get a suitable candidate, I began to panic. I virtually gave up. Then the application of ‘Fisayo Soyombo arrived. He performed excellently well in the written test — and even better at the interview. Surprisingly, he gave up a bigger salary to accept our offer. According to him, he wanted to be part of TheCable dream. Putting dream above money? In Nigeria? I told myself: this guy will go far in life.