Clay Richie

  There is a sickening campaign by some unfeeling persons that those who claim there were killings at the Lekki Tollgate on October 20, 2020 or are searching for missing loved ones who went to the protests, should produce the corpses.

  #ZabarmariMassacre! The farm is a place of sowing and reaping, and the most unlikeliest haunt of the grim reaper. But at least 43 citizens who went harvesting on their farm in Borno on Saturday had their souls harvested by the emissaries of hell — Boko Haram.

  ‘Out of adversity comes opportunity’ – Benjamin Franklin On April 27, 2020, in our column titled “Coronavirus: The Morning After” we had correctly predicted another recession thus: “However, while we prepare for extended co-existence with Covid 19, one thing that is clear nevertheless, is that the economy has gone into a tailspin which will ultimately lead us into a recession by October this year. In fact, if care is not taken, it will degenerate into a depression. This is the stark reality and we must begin to think of how to deal with it.”

  The scrapping of History as a subject from our school curriculum is a deliberate ploy by the OLIGARCHY to keep us in the dark concerning their dealings against the rest of the country.

  With the most recent tragic news of the slaughter of over 40 rice farmers by Boko Haram in Zabarmari, Jere local government of Borno State yesterday, virtually all Nigerians must have arrived at same juncture of opinion, something in the neighbourhood of what lawyers call unanimity of purpose, on how we horribly we fare at this critical time. Dozens of rice farmers were reported to have been slaughtered by suspected members of Boko Haram insurgents. They were summarily rounded up and their throats slit like rams while they were harvesting their crops on a rice field at Garin Kwashebe. As usual, President Muhammadu Buhari activated his condolence messages refrain always sauced with mirthless bravado. While speaking through Garba Shehu, his publicist, he “expressed grief over the killings… describing the terrorist killings as insane.”

  In my previous article, I tried to remind us of what we have always known and talked about: that oil boom flatters to deceive. The world is, meanwhile, desperately looking for alternatives to crude oil — with several advanced countries setting dates, starting from 2025, to phase out vehicles powered by fossil fuels such as petrol and diesel. Sadly, Nigeria’s economic (and, perhaps, political) fortune is tied to the price of crude oil. The higher the price, the happier we are, and the merrier our mood. A little fall in oil price and the entire economy goes into a spiral: naira depreciating against the dollar; government revenues plummeting; public debts piling up; and inflation digging holes in our pockets.

  As the Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed Ali, revealed on his twitter page the end of the 72 hours ultimatum given to TPLF fighters to surrender; the region is now in a critical stage and if international intervention is not effective; it could usher in the fragmentation of Ethiopia.

  The governors saw the absolute necessity for another tier of policing in the land a long time ago. They are in the saddle and even if only on paper, they are the chief security officers of their states, a role entrusted in the constitution. Yes, they hold security meetings with security chiefs in their domain, operational control is somewhere else. Thus the governors are no more than town criers. They go to the battle field with mere fists. This cannot be the intendment of the spirit of the constitution, but it is its letters we conveniently cling to. All efforts to have the letters re-written have been stone-walled by Abuja and its allies. There is this worrisome cocky brandishing of an emblem of omniscience even in the face of unassailable proofs that the single policing system foisted on the nation since 1966 is not working. In the military era, a centralised policing system was understandable, given the hierarchical mold of the military and training from which flows the comma...

  The accounts of how families of the abducted students of Ahmadu Bello University negotiated with kidnappers, visited them in the forest and made payments to secure the release of their children are worrisome. In sound societies, the leadership of the security agencies along that axis would have been sacked. The nine students were abducted with scores of others on the notorious Kaduna-Abuja highway on November 15 and were kept in the forest for five days. Parents of the ABU 9 had to lead the drive to free their children because of the lackadaisical attitude of the security agents. When the traumatised families eventually struck a deal with the kidnappers, they were asked to congregate in a forest in Chikun Local Government Area and given directions into the specific location of the kidnappers. The kidnappers were so bold. Our security agents were the least of their worries. They went about the deal unperturbed about our so-called policemen and other security agents.

  Nigeria's 21 years of democracy was tested with the conduct of last year's 2019 general elections. The elections presented an opportunity for Nigeria to consolidate on the gains of the 2015 elections and deepen her democratic transition, but the polls substantially failed to do so.

  The hypocrite minimises his own flaws and makes allowances for imperfections while homing in on and exaggerating the problems of another. We have an even distribution of hypocrites among all sections of the country. But I think there is a more bubbling joint of whited sepulchres in the South-East. Yes, a host of people lost in gyrations of affected piety and plaster saints, who capitalise and summarise their troubles with third-party headlines. They are never responsible for own their problems; there is always someone or some people in the north, south-west or south-south to blame. Even the gully erosion ravaging my area in Anambra is blamed on exteriorised agents.

  The Nigerian Deposit Insurance Scheme had an event yesterday, which I was due to attend. Unfortunately, I had to skip town in a hurry, but a colleague attended on my behalf. The NDIC is one of those understated, but very important organisations in Nigeria. It was set up as a safety net for depositors in 1988 following the liberalisation of the banking sector and the reforms that followed.

  On Wednesday November 18, 2020, almost one month to the day, the Cable News Network, CNN, released a report on the Lekki toll gate massacre of peaceful #EndSARS protesters, allegedly by soldiers in Lagos, on October 20, 2020. The report generated reactions from around the world especially in Nigeria as many felt vindicated by the network’s investigation and revelations. Since the horrendous Lekki massacre, there have been many conflicting stories and an obvious attempt to discredit eyewitnesses’ accounts. Even though many followed the events as they unfolded in real time on Instagram and other social media platforms, the official government view has been to discountenance all that seeing as social media is now considered a bigger threat than even Boko Haram. The CNN report arrived in the midst of the confusion. Little wonder many Nigerians, especially #EndSARS protesters responded to the 6-minute report like they had scored a win, which is understandable. However, what doesn’t ma...

  During the COVID-19 lockdown earlier in the year, entertaining WhatsApp videos played a critical role in helping many of us to maintain our sanity. I remember a particular clip by comedian Frank Donga on what it takes to be a successful public official in Nigeria today. Donga (whose real name is Kunle Idowu) taught a class of politicians nine statements to deploy whenever they want to play the masses. After the nine lessons, Donga then added what he said was the real joker that Nigerians would always swallow if all previous ones failed: “Let’s continue to pray!”

  I have known the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, for a long time, I think. Before I got close, I was first drawn to him when he was Chief of Staff to former Lagos State governor, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, even though I had known him earlier at the Nigerian Airports Authority. 

  At a budget defence session in the House of Representatives some days ago, the management of the National Commission for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons, was asked to furnish the lawmakers with a comprehensive database of all the refugees, migrants and the Internally Displaced People (IDP) in the country.

  A political thinker posited that politics is a concentric circle of conspiracies. It is such a conspiratorial game that while statesmen worry about development to cater for the present and coming generations, politicians are busy scheming how to retain, return to, or gain power. Nigerian politicians could pass as the worst hue to be found anywhere. They bend the rules and violate the laws with impunity just to attain the stated private objectives.

  Governments, the world over, as a matter of policy and governance prepared a to-do list, which is a policy document that guides and directs her actions in line with fulfilling campaign promises. There could be numerous of such policies, but, fundamentally,  education, national and human security, strengthening economy as well as healthcare system comes top of the list.

  Few days ago, I threw up an issue on social media waiting for Nigerians to take it up. The torrents of reactions that poured few hours after that simply confirmed that there are so many issues that border on our daily existence, which we prefer not to talk about. We ‘carry’ our faces, as they would say in local parlance, and forget our sorrow.

  Every human alive should be grateful to live in this twenty-first century—a century that has freed humans from slavery, tyranny, and all other forms of medieval imperfections. We should also be grateful to our democratic system and the existing arms of government for creating limited powers to individuals.

  “My brother, how you dey?” “What can we do?” “E ku recession”

  What started as an act of defiance by former senate president, Ken Nnamani in 2016 when he withdrew his membership of PDP, before joining the APC in 2017,  and an unusual step taken in 2016 by Orji Uzo Kalu, former governor of Abia state, when he exited APGA for the APC,  have now crystallized into a ‘bold step’ as President Mohammadu Buhari recently characterized the defection or cross-carpeting of Dave Umahi, the governor of Ebonyi state from the main opposition party, PDP, to the ruling party, APC.

  "Ignore our jumbo pay, focus on our work," was the salvo fired by the Senate President Ahmed Lawan to 200 million Nigerians on behalf of his classmates, the other 107 senators, whom he leads as the president. On the face value, Lawan seems to be saying to Nigerians, our work justifies our pay. As a matter of fact, he went further to establish the inadequacy of fund for them to do the duty for which we elected them, and that many of them are doing things by themselves. 

  It is no longer news that the executive governor of  Ebonyi State, David Umahi, has defected from the Peoples Democratic Party to the ruling All Progressives Congress. Amongst constitutional law experts, this gale of defection has sprouted out a form of controversy as many posited that it might earn Umahi a ticket to being impeached. But, could this really be the case in a country where defection is cheap? What does the law really say?

  It first dropped like a bombshell when a cocktail of political gossips swirled and ballooned about freely for weeks and then dropped as newspaper speculation.

  Do you remember when your mechanic advised you not to buy a car with automatic transmission? If you recall, he said manual cars were the best — easier and cheaper to maintain. What he didn’t tell you was that technology had injured him and left him behind. He had thought the world was going to run on manual transmission forever and did not sharpen his skills to adapt to the new reality. The world had become more sophisticated. His fear was that if you bought an automatic car and everybody else started doing so, he would soon be out of job. If he was wise, he would have started improving and adapting his skills to the new reality. He wanted the world to wait for him.

  ‘Why always Buhari?’ As it was in 1984 under General Buhari, so it is in 2016 and 2020 under President Buhari? Is it by the unfortunate hands of kismet, that recession hits Nigeria every time Buhari takes charge of the country’s affairs? If the recession of the 80s under Buhari was a conspiracy by economic and political factors, to what do we attribute that of his first coming as a civilian president — and now in his second coming? Why does pestilence scourge the land, hunger ravage the population and lives lost malevolently when Buhari presides over the country? Why always Buhari?

  When the year 2020 comes to an end it won’t be missed. The year began calmly enough, but by March the world realised that the coronavirus was the worst public health emergency it had faced in over a century. The virus has so far killed over 1.36 million people and devasted the world economy at a speed faster than thought possible even a year ago. Coronavirus and lockdown became the unlikely words of the year. China, the source of the virus, was one of the few countries that grew their economies in a year that saw the developed world on its knees.

  Fellow Nigerians, please, let me confess that no one hates war more than me. One of my dreams in life is to win the Nobel Peace prize, even if it is a tall order, and possibly sheer fantasy, but my obsession with peace makes me strive to preach non-violence whenever I have the chance. However, sadly, I believe some Nigerians think war is a tea party. They revel in it and relish it, endlessly, without considering the repercussions. They glorify violence as if it serves any real useful purpose beyond the maiming and killing of people, fortunes and nations. I have read about wars, I have visited war fronts and watched horrific scenes from war films, and I know no one should ever wish for war. Most wars are unnecessary, and many wars end senselessly because they often terminate at the negotiating table where they should have started in the first place. So why fight, destroy and perish in wars? Pointless!

  The notion of what constitutes the strength of government is often misconstrued with adverse consequences. As posited by Oseloka H. Obaze in his new book, Waning Strength of Government, “the strength of government is not about military capacity or use of force; but about the rule of law, consolidating democratic institutions and entrenching the social contract between the government and the governed.” Governments, regardless of their stripes – democratic, authoritarian, military or totalitarian –are expected to fulfill the social contract towards their citizens by delivering on the core functions of state, particularly securing life and property of citizens, maintaining law and order, and providing basic social services. It is a government’s ability to effectively fulfill these tasks that confer performance legitimacy on that government. In democracies like Nigeria, other core responsibilities include upholding ordered liberties, passing the test of electoral legitimacy, promotin...

  Nigeria vs CNN, who will win? Of course, we know who will. All the conspiracy theory by Nigerian authorities is hogwash. CNN will win, I am certain about that. They have the professionalism; they have the technology to deploy when digging into events to bang out their stories.

  The Ostrich appears to have been inadvertently overlooked or cheated of its deserved place as one of the emblems of Nigeria’s official symbol. This is because there is a striking similarity between the Ostrich and the Nigerian rulership clan – the habit of living in denial.

  A wide range of emotions is provoked in a democracy. They range from fear, hatred, envy, contempt, absurdity, awe, anger, hope, promise, inclusiveness, tolerance, freedom and much more. Of these, we have witnessed more of the bad and the ugly under the current dispensation.

  Four days ago, Manuel Merino, Peru’s Interim President, resigned a day after two people were killed during protests against his government. The two died as a result of a police crackdown on protesters.  Merino’s resignation came a few days after taking over from President Martín Vizcarra.

  The saying that a prophet is not appreciated at home may well be referring to former Ghanaian president, Jerry Rawlings, who died last Thursday from COVID-19 related complications, three weeks after his mother was buried.

  In July last year, the federal government established a task force comprised of the EFCC, ICPC, NFIU and the Federal Ministry of Justice to recover N5.7 trillion owed to the Assets Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON). The government also proposed an amendment to the AMCON Act with a view to strengthening its institutional capacity. Although conceived as a stabilizing tool for financial institutions, AMCON has become an enormous burden to the economy. More than N3 trillion of its debt was owed by just 20 debtors, according to AMCON Chairman, Muiz Banire. For the uninitiated, that is public money used to defray bank loans taken by private citizens who refuse to pay back. And the commission has at different times advertised the names of some of these fat cats.

  Professor Bolaji Akinyemi once said that in certain circumstances “a tree can make a forest.” The former foreign minister upended the usual saying that “a tree does not make a forest” in a remarkable tribute to the exceptional courage and consistency of radical lawyer Gani Fawehinmi as a historical figure.

  Probe. This is another word for political manoeuvring, horse-trading, chicanery and blackmail – in the Nigerian milieu. Probes are launched here not for righteous ends but for some predetermined recidivist motives. In particular, the so-called ‘’corruption probes’’ are themselves felonious panels set up to exact vengeance, broker deals or cause distraction from national discontent. Beelzebub cannot cast out demons.

  On 18 November 2010, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened a preliminary examination into the situation in Nigeria.

  The past month has been revealing to the government and people of Nigeria. As the dust of the epochal youth protest tagged #EndSARS settles and the billows die down, everybody is taking note of the costs, what was done, what shouldn’t have been done and the possibilities ahead. For once, the young people have said it loud and clear to the people in government that they are watching and can change the course of history. 

  If there is anything that the COVID-19 pandemic has proven beyond doubt, it is how humanity depends on science for its survival. Every confounding development that has been thrown up by nature or biology since the days of the pre-historic man has been resolved, and humanity has advanced on the back of scientific discoveries, from the argument by Galileo, who paid dearly for it, that the Earth travels around the Sun and not the other way round, to the equally transformative discoveries and innovations from Pythagoras to Copernicus to the present.

  Some people have been asking me whether I will be running – again – for the post of Nigeria’s president in 2023. In fact, the moment the results of our 2019 elections were called, young Nigerians on Twitter started asking when I and other young-ish candidates will start coming together. Some sounded very arrogant or quarrelsome, like one owed them something, telling me not to start disturbing them by 2022. It’s all very interesting. First, where will one find money to burn every four years on politics, even as service to Nigeria? And what will be one’s ultimate aim? I ran in 2019 to learn; about Nigeria, about politics, about life. I also ran because I needed to mainstream some of my ideas about how this country could start moving forward. I knew that whether I was in or out of politics, those ideas will continue to matter and my voice will be enhanced. I ran because of the debates, some of which were deliberate muzzled and truncated by the powers-that-be and their enablers. I ra...

  Re: Femi Adesina's 'We Have Not Many Fathers' And so, Femi Adesina, presidential spokesman, says that we were lucky that the other side of the president that is frightening, fearful, and vicious was not manifested, otherwise ears would have tingled and tongues wagged about the calamities that would have befallen us lesser mortals following the #EndSARS episode. In his words, "If President Buhari hadn’t exercised the restraint and tolerance of a father;' "...we would have been talking of something else in the country."

  In the aftermath of the frightening ENDSARS protests, government seems confronted with a choice of two untidy pathways. Either pursue reprisals against the suspected leaders of the protests or address the pervasive inequality that inspired the spin off anger, rampage, looting and criminal lawlessness.

  On Saturday November 7, 2020, I had the privilege of presenting a keynote address at Umuahia, Abia State on the occasion of the 2020 Diocesan Youth Day Celebration, organised by the Catholic Youth Organisation Of Nigeria. I crave your indulgence to share the speech with you today. I can only add that given the situation the Nigerian society finds itself today, there is a compelling reason to pay greater attention to the youth and the challenges of engaging them to greater relevance and development. This must start with a single minded focus on education. If we fail in this endeavour, it will be a very grave and regrettable outcome for us and our future.

  And, if the truth be told, even the dead by now must have known that our dreams of 2015 have turned into a nightmare. Our collective aspiration for a paradigm shift from the mess of the past have been crushed by the feets of these new slave masters. Dark clouds have envelloped the land and the blood of innocent citizens is crying to heaven for vengeance. Death. Mourning. Weeping. Is this what we bargained for? Now, that the chicken have come home to roost, we have realised, rather too late, that the ‘Changi’ sheriff have not changed from his evil ways nor was it his intention to change our misfortunes into fortunes. No. The broom was not meant to sweep away the rots of yesterday. It was a talisman used to deceive and hoodwink countrymen into believing in a false political messiah.

  Any hopes that we are going to quickly move on from the tragic #EndSARS protests and enter into the phase of reconstruction and rehabilitation are disappearing by the day as the federal government closes in on the promoters and supporters of the mass action. A lawyer who actively supported the protests was barred from travelling abroad; bank accounts of many protest promoters have been frozen; a company the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) mistakenly thought was involved in the protest has been deregistered for “deviation” from its objectives; and a lawyer has filed a lawsuit against everybody and anybody who tweeted in support of the protests.

    This Tuesday, Engr. Dave Nweze Umahi, the PDP governor of Ebonyi State, told his party leadership that paid him a courtesy visit that he was heading to the ruling party, the All Progressives Congress, APC. That ended the speculation that the Chairman of the South East Governors Forum was defecting from his party to another. Governor Umahi told the PDP leadership his reason… “I am heading to the APC where the South East 2023 interest would be (better) served.”

  With the #EndSARS protests and the ensuing unfortunate destruction, the looting and the raiding of warehouses housing Covid-19 palliatives and other food items, it has become obvious that the second of a cluster of ticking time bombs had detonated. That time bomb is youth unemployment and poverty resulting from the failure of successive governments at all levels to invest heavily in infrastructures such as power, roads that would have accelerated the growth of agro-allied and other industries. The first time bomb – extreme poverty, low level of education resulted in terrorism and violent insurgency in the North East, and banditry and kidnapping in the North West as a result of the failure of successive State governments in those zones to invest in education and in poverty alleviation. These failures had come back to haunt us as a result of which according to the World Bank, we have the highest number of extremely poor people (87million) in the world, more than India with a popula...

  Initial election returns seemed to be going Donald Trump’s way until absentee ballots were being counted. And nobody was sure how he would respond to the change of fortune that put his vote tally behind that of former Vice President Joe Biden in key battleground states. So, when the president scheduled a press conference for prime time last Thursday evening, Americans were glued to their television sets. A few seconds into his rant, the anchor of MSNBC interrupted the broadcast. Other major networks except CNN and Fox News did the same. Nicole Carrol, USA TODAY editor-in-chief would later explain: “President Trump, without evidence, claimed the presidential election was corrupt and fraudulent. We stopped the live stream of his remarks early and have removed the video from all our platforms. Our job is to spread truth—not unfounded conspiracies.”