Clay Richie

Just when we thought the deadly attacks of herdsmen around Nigeria are already being effectively checkmated by our country’s security agencies, the news of another tragic hit in Enugu last week again brings to the fore the dangers the terror of these herdsmen pose to Nigeria’s peace and well-being and the error President Buhari has been making on this very serious matter.

As a novelist, I frequently experience the sensation that I could never invent imaginative events that, in their tragic or absurd extraordinariness, can stand beside the strangeness of life as it is lived in Nigeria. Indeed, I follow public events in Nigeria with a certain sense that some grand master of fiction, versed in absurd tragedy, stands just out of sight to shape and orchestrate these events. For me, to read the pages of Nigerian newspapers is often akin to reading the most wrought fabulist fiction. Except that the events one encounters in news reports, bizarre as they may appear, are deeply rooted in and describe the shattering realities of Nigerians’ lives. These are often events that trigger the declaration, “Only in Nigeria…”

Sonala Olumhense as usual aptly captured the Nigerian situation over the last 15 months under the Buhari administration in his latest article published on the 28th of August, 2016 in major Nigerian media outlets.

The condition of Nigerians in the internally displaced persons camps is a grave irony. They managed to escape the sword of Boko Haram. Now, they are dying avoidably in their secure refuges. They are starving to death in the caring bosom of Nigeria!

One is saddened that there is no end in sight for Nigerians being ruled partly by politicians who are absolute criminals.

One is not sure which of the two gaffes witnessed last week in our country was the worse in our diplomatic affairs history. First was the visit of the United States chief diplomat, John Kerry, and the meeting our ministry of foreign affairs had with ambassadors and heads of mission in Abuja on Friday. For an envoy of a lame duck government to be allowed to ride roughshod over us, a supposedly independent nation, like Mr. Kerry did on his parachute mission few days ago, shows that we have diplomats who are not versed in diplomatic protocols or who have simply forgotten what their duties are regarding foreign relations.

Some recent decisions and pronouncements of the Central Bank of Nigeria (‘CBN’) affecting international money remittances to Nigeria and the operators of related businesses have raised eyebrows within and beyond Nigeria. In particular, they have been a source of concern for foreign (non-Nigerian) providers of international remittance services to Nigeria, causing some of them to suspend their remittance operations to Nigeria.

In the aftermath of the loss of Goodluck Jonathan, my pain as one who had supported him stemmed not from the feeling of a personal loss but anger that he had seemed to assume that his mandate was a personal one that nobody had a right to feel more angered by than himself.

One of the lowest points of the Jonathan presidency was his boast to the international community that the measure of Nigeria’s well-being under his shepherding was to be seen in the ability of the emergency billionaires he created to overcrowd any foreign airport with private jets. He had hit Nairobi with a harem of such emergency billionaires to intimidate our Kenyan kinsmen with the number of Nigerian private jets on display.

I hereby sign the register of those who object to President Muhammadu Buhari's proposed emergency economic powers bill. It should be declared dead on arrival.  

Over the years, it has been identified in countless studies that one of the core reasons Nigeria has failed to develop to its full potential is pervasive corruption.

Why is Nigeria like this — I mean grossly underdeveloped? I’ve been asking this question all my life. And until Nigeria exits the underdevelopment club, it is one question that will remain relevant. I believe that it is in asking this central question, and in attempting to provide well-reasoned answers, that we can begin to focus the development debate more productively. Unfortunately, the way we are in Nigeria, issues are always jumbled up and insults are traded with such ease that it is practically impossible to have a decent conversation on national development. Sure, we do not need to reason alike, but at least we should be able to reason together. This I believe.

Nigeria is not a racist country. But we have bigger problem than racism here.  It is called tribal war. We’ve lost more of our countrymen to tit-for-tat ethnic clashes than auto-accident—an avoidable major killer of Nigerians.

On Monday, a peaceful and orderly group of Nigerians, comprising Bring Back Our Girls advocates and some parents of the 200 Chibok girls, assembled at the Unity Fountain, Abuja. They set out for Aso Rock thereafter.  Their aim was to reach the Nigerian presidency with their presence and to prick the conscience of the Nigerian state with the frustration, anguish and pain of their two years old campaign. They fell short of that destination and dream.

A time like this when the country is enmeshed in a myriad of economic and political challenges can transform leaders from mere mortals into extraordinary human beings in the hearts and minds of the people. Their exploits in the service of their people become idolised in nation-building folklore. But leaders who when faced with challenges like we have resort to lamentations day and night and consistently blame others even when they are at fault never rise to the level of great  men or statesmen. Instead, they earn derision, scorn and the wrath of the people.

These past weeks, I've had reason to reflect more on the place of the Nigerian youth in politics and public service. The inspiration for this was the hypocrisy I witnessed all the times our gerontocratic political establishment opened its door for the young join to them. The strangest dilemma is this: the youth advocate inclusion in governance and participation in politics yet any time a young person is offered an appointment, the first argument is over his or her "lack of experience". Further, how an “experienced” person ought to occupy such an office. “Experience” has always been a code for age, it is gotten by years and not competence or experience. Just be old enough, ergo, you are garlanded with “experience” as well.

In private and in public, and for more than a decade now, former President Goodluck Jonathan has been obsessed with the Okah Brothers. He’s been fixated on Charles and Henry Okah.  And especially since 2007, when there was an attempt to compromise his safety and security, he’s been under the illusion that the brothers are gunning for him; that they want him dead. But really, nothing can be farther from the truth. Neither Charles nor Henry wants him dead.

Chukwuma Soludo, former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), says the Muhammadu Buhari administration is only fighting the symptoms of corruption.

Dear Mr President, ranka de de Sir! It would have been better meeting with you on this matter but the difficulty of protocols has made the option of writing you an easier access.

The one absolutely unselfish friend that a man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him and the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous is his dog – George Graham Vest (1870)

Recently at the Annual Conference of the African Public Relations Associations (APRA) held at the magnificent Tinapa Resort, Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria, the reputation of Nigeria came variously under the spotlight, and the overwhelming opinion – sad it was – was that the image of the country could do with serious attention.

 Mr. John Kerry, the American Secretary of State, President Barack Obama's confidante and Mrs. Hilary Clinton's successor in office, came to Nigeria the other day.

In reaction to my recent piece titled: “We kill militants but in vain,” a reader, Oris Obelikpeyah, wrote in as follows: “…In addition to all you wrote about, there’s the problem of an alarming rate of increase in child birth that tilts in favour of the poor, the destitute and unemployed Nigerians, as well as refugees who sojourn in our cities…Those who hawk are homeless and jobless in our urban areas and are easily impregnated. They give birth to another generation of poor, homeless, ignorant and jobless children. It is an endless circle of poverty, which stirs us in the face…”

As the story goes, a lavish society wedding had just taken place and after all the legal and social rites, the couple retired to their house. At night time, as the man joined his wife on bed and attempted to consummate the relationship, the wife withdrew from under the pillow, a court paper, an injunction perpetually restraining the husband from claiming “his entitlements”. Well, what actually made the story believable is that the said injunction, according to the man who told me, was obtained at an Abuja Court!

It is the responsibility of the police to maintain law and order and prevent all possible events/actions capable of causing public unrest.

It is painfully humiliating when flagrant budget padding and stealing not known as corruption were also displayed to the external world. When salary was not paid, one resorted to stealing to feed family. Hijacking money was not only in the Rio Olympics; our foreign embassies suffer the same indignities. Unpaid rents are forcing landlords to kick out foreign officers, our teachers and workers locally. This is how university students started going into nefarious activities. Who is next, our professors?

In his publixation titled 'Is This The Change We Voted For? Yes It Is!' Garba Shehu asked a crucial question which should have been left for the citizens to answer, but in a desperate bid to pass his Principal off as a man of the people, he elected to be the provider of the answer to his own question.

Nigeria went to Rio, Brazil and, as the world looked on, gave a thoroughly embarrassing account of itself. Don’t get me wrong: this swipe is not targeted at the heroic men and women who represented us in a variety of events. They, above all, were the primary victims of their country’s show of shame. No right thinking person would knock the competitors who represented the rest of us in Rio. In fact, for agreeing at all to wear Nigeria’s colors and hoist the country’s flag, these athletes deserve our collective gratitude.

Nigeria, and particularly our state, Sokoto, will this week host the Secretary of State of the USA, John Kerry, on a two day working visit. Our August visitor is an important guest whose contributions to his country’s diplomatic engagement have received praise from many quarters. His commitment, and by extension that of President Barack Obama, to international cooperation and preservation of democracy, have fostered friendship and bolstered standards across the globe.

The handwriting on the wall says mene, mene, tekel, parsin According to The Book of Daniel 5:26-28 the interpretation was: Mene[e]: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.

Global cities ranking and many other comparative analysis of development from the eyes of Europeans and Americans are sometimes very subjective. When they came plundering our natural and human resources many centuries ago, it was also on the subjective premise of bringing to us “civilization” even with historical reality that the black man is more organized and better at peace with his environment.

I woke up yesterday to read a fictitious report credited to me by Sunday Tribune that I claimed President Muhammadu Buhari does not deserve to be president. And on the basis of the fiction weaved together by a reporter, he let loose one of those now-very-common indecorous and rumor- inspired verbal assault from a presidential spokesman, Mallam Garba Shehu.

If the facts are contrary to any predictions, then the hypothesis is wrong no matter how appealing.

It is trite saying that our outing at the Rio Olympics was a shambles, a total failure from whichever angle we view the event. With a contingent of 74 athletes, we managed only a bronze, courtesy of the football team, which many cheeky Nigerians have dubbed, ‘golden bronze’. Well, considering what those lads went through before the competition, it was indeed a golden moment and a testament to what Nigerians could achieve without the government. But for those footballers, it would have been another show of shame and a medal-less Olympics just like four years ago in London.

IN THE LIGHT OF ALMOST TWO DECADES OF HORRENDOUS GOVERNANCE UNDER THE PDP ADMINISTRATION, THE CALL FOR CHANGE BY A LARGE SECTION OF NIGERIANS WAS EXPECTEDLY OVERWHELMINGLY LOUD. THUS, THIS PIECE IS A RESPONSE TO GARBA SHEHU, SENIOR SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT ON MEDIA AND PUBLICITY, WHO INDEED HOLDS THE COPYRIGHT TO THE FIRST LEG OF THE TITLE OF THIS PIECE WHICH I HAVE SLIGHTLY MODIFIED – AS CAN BE SEEN IN HIS LATEST DEFENCE OF PRESIDENT MUHAMMADU BUHARI’S APC ADMINISTRATION.

Remi Oyeyemi's piece, 2019: the 'conspiracy of inconclusive elections' is a product of abusive scholarship directed at Professor Mahmood Yakubu, Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). There is something troubling about the way learned commentariats turn our public discourses into disquieting conversations one can only find in the motor parks of our country.

My friends that have been tagged “wailers” – because they didn’t vote for “change” in 2015 – remind me in the social media that their membership register is full. I hereby ask for permission to explain myself first, before I ask to join the “wailers”: I’ve been disappointed like almost everyone else that voted for “change” last year. I had faith in Muhammadu Buhari because I was an adult in 1984 when the military government he led launched the successful “War Against Indiscipline” (WAI).

Anytime I hear Nigerian presidents, ministers, governors, economists, analysts and commentators declare that agriculture is the alternative to oil, and that the solution to Nigeria’s economic woes is to return to the farm, I am tempted to jump up and ask at full volume: “Who agriculture alone don epp?”Some states have hilariously declared work-free days for civil servants to go to the farm. It would be nice to see those farms and how well the emergency farmers are doing. We’ve been told again and again that agriculture, as Nigeria’s biggest employer of labour, is the magic solution to unemployment, that we will export agricultural produce and earn plenty forex. Well done.

Essential elements of intelligence and the intelligence cycle in overseas relations include what is better described as “the cover story”. It is an old conundrum referring to the story that is put out to the public and sustained as a narrative to mask far more strategic interests in government-to- government relations.  It is based on that established thin line between the right to know and the need to know and indeed in diplomatic relations, if ordinary people are allowed to know everything, there will be utter chaos on the streets around the world. I make this point in the light of the excitement that US Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit appears to be generating. He will visit Nigeria, August 23-24, after Kenya, 22-23, and from here, he will jet off to Saudi Arabia, 24-25.

I have just finished reading the statements of the Chairman of Independent National Electoral Commission, Professor Mahmood Yakubu in the PUNCH newspaper of August 20, 2016 that he and his Commision would not be able to “guarantee conclusive elections in 2019.” He engaged in some noxious inanities and obnoxious platitudes to justify the possibility of this ridiculous position. He, without any shame insisted in the statement that any attempt to give “such an assurance at this time would be to second guess the outcome of the election.”

Before this time President Muhammadu Buhari had been adjudged Nigeria’s de facto foreign affairs official. He got that unofficial appellation after having singlehandedly performed the roles of the minister of foreign affairs, permanent secretary of the ministry, and the ambassadors of Nigeria to foreign missions collectively in the early days of his administration.

That Nigeria is in a recession is no longer news, perhaps the only mystery is the degree to which the economy shrunk in second quarter (Q2) 2016 as we await the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS) confirmation. How Nigeria fell into a recession has been discussed in a previous article, see here. Naturally the focus is now on what needs to be done to reverse the situation and get the economy back into growth mode. In this regard a lot of focus and expectation is being placed on the Federal Government (FGN, and quite rightly), such that it seems the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is being given a free pass.

Fellow Nigerians, you must be wondering what this title is all about. Please, calm down, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, one of Nigeria’s iconic politicians, is not about to dump his party, APC, for PDP, the party he fought hard with others to sack from power just last year.

Some good news could make you feel pain and anger. And this doesn’t necessarily make you a hater. Here’s one example. Let’s say your name is Obiano. And your friend, let’s also call him Ambode, gets a pay raise, and you don’t. Now, Ambode does the kind of job you do, but your organization says it is not sure if you really do your work yourself.

Of all those who have had the privilege to govern this country, only two have met, to a large extent, the threshold of being deliberately elected by a plurality of Nigerians. Prime Minister Tafawa Balewa was only elected to represent his Bauchi federal constituency at the House of Representatives on the platform of the Northern Peoples’ Congress (NPC), the parliamentary majority party. His appointment as prime minister follows

Life is all about memories. It is the only thing we are left with when flesh and spirit depart the earthly plane, and we can do no more than remember the life of the departed, through memories of times and moments shared, and their deeds in their lifetime. I received a phone call and a whatsapp message announcing the death of Justin Abuah, popularly known to all and sundry as O.J. Abuah, and the world seemed as if it had stood still for a few minutes.

The coordinated attack on the integrity and credibility of former President Goodluck Jonathan is unfortunate. That the same hastily cooked up lies were reported simultaneously and almost word for word by the known client media of the powers that be is evidence of the fact that someone powerful is out to get the former President.

I wish I knew the exact words Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka spoke to President Muhammadu Buhari when they met privately last week. My hunch, however, is that the writer looked the president straight in the eye and described for him the near-unprecedented scale of Nigeria’s crises.

Five years ago today, I wrote a birthday tribute on these pages to Nigeria’s one and only self-styled Military President, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. At 75 today, he is the youngest living former military head of state, bar General Abdulsalami Alhaji Abubakar, his childhood friend, class mate and neighbour on the Niger State capital, Minna’s, exclusive hilltop neighbourhood; General Abubakar was 74 on June 13.

Few weeks ago, I alerted Nigerians to the inescapable reality of a collapsed Nigerian economy. On that occasion, a lot of people attacked me suggesting that I was a prophet of doom. Despite the hard facts I presented, die-hard Buhari apologists insisted that Buhari method of managing the economy was on course, but I had warned that the president lacks the capacity-both intellectually and physically to tale the Nigerian state out of the woods.