Clay Richie

The kitchen is getting more populated and the heat is gradually coming on. Omoyele Sowore, founder of Sahara Reporters; Fela Durotoye, consulting guru and leadership coach; Donald Duke, former governor of Cross Rivers; Kingsley Moghalu, former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

The story of the current state of the Nigeria economy is not news. After over a decade of relatively strong economy growth, the economy hit headwinds, triggered by the collapse in the price of crude oil. The result of the crash was a recession, the first in two decades, combined with deterioration in the macroeconomic environment. The consequences were there for all to see.

One major issue that makes me suppurate continually is our people’s inability to ask intelligent questions on some obvious issues in our nation. This makes it look as if they have been turned to mere puppets and are being controlled by some puppeteers—who are daily living and sleeping far away from all the problems wrestling the poor as Hulk Hogan. But instead of our people to hold accountable, those they continually vote into power, they are on a daily basis fighting themselves over inanities. It is ridiculous that till now, tribalism and religion are being used to divide the voice-less citizens of Nigeria. Sad!

Last week, the war ongoing among politicians in Kaduna State went a notch higher when officials of the state government demolished a house belonging to Suleiman Hunkuyi, a serving senator also elected on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

It makes millions of jobless, hungry, and hurting Nigerian youths sick when Joe Igbokwe deliberately set out to mislead the public in an effort to sell expired presidency of President Muhammadu Buhari. Joe Igbokwe's article Do They Know PMB Is Working For Them? Published in SaharaReporters February 13, 2018, could easily pass for Satanic Verses at a time when President Muhammadu Buhari presides over a misery-laden country where Nigerian masses groan under the weight of abject poverty, chaos, and crisis, insecurity, fear, and uncertainties.

Karma is a bitch. Poetic justice is a bastard. Both have combined to wrong-foot the incumbent Buhari administration to make it look like a big mistake and an act of misjudgment by the Nigerian electorate.  If Buhari had been disallowed from taking power in 2015, and those who advised President Goodluck Jonathan not to give a damn had their way, and Jonathan had remained in power and all the current problems had surfaced, it would have been said by Nigerians that GoodluckJonathan truncated Nigeria’s destiny.

Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello’s announcement last Thursday that President Muhammadu Buhari wants more Nigerians to advise him before he makes up his mind on whether or not to seek a second term in office reminded me of a cartoon published by one Nigerian newspaper in the 1980s.

Everywhere you turn to in online Nigeria these days, there are folks arguing for ignorance as the most strategic pathway to 2019 and beyond. Niyi Osundare once published a sarcastic essay on the uses of ignorance. It may be time for Prof to dust up that essay again.

“For what Ricardo foresaw was the end of a theory of society in which everyone moved together up the escalator of progress. Unlike Smith, Ricardo saw that the escalator worked with different effects on different classes, that some rode triumphantly on the top, while others were carried up a few steps and then were kicked back down to the bottom. Worse yet, those who kept the escalator moving were not those who rose with its motion, and those who got the full benefit of the ride did nothing to earn their reward. And to carry the metaphor one step further, if you looked carefully at those who were ascending to the top, you could see that all was not well here either; there was a furious struggle going on for a secure place on the stairs.”—The worldly philosophers: the lives, times and ideas of the great economic thinkers by Robert L. Heilbroner.

Herdsmen-farmers’ crisis in Nigeria has left deep wounds in the heart of many. The thought of the hundreds of lives that have been wiped off the face of the earth or the several viable communities deserted in the middle-belt region of the country is black and unbearable. Furthermore, the crushing experience has thrown the entire country into a quandary about the cause(s) and finding a lasting solution to the ‘genocide’ or ‘crisis’, as various schools of thought have tagged it.

I ordinarily do not take Third World, especially Nigerian, politicians seriously. Their analyses and predictions, I take with a pint of salt. They seem to have a genetic dysfunction which manifests in acute love of self and self alone. A Nigerian politician will kill his father and rope his mother for the murder so far it guarantees the next election and sustenance in office. The Nigerian political space is an uncharted path that is strewn with charlatans and never-do-wells who import all the vices of everyday life into the delicate art of politics. You would think illiteracy is the blight that whittles Nigerian politics. No. Education even worsens the take. Lured in by the refrain that nation-building shouldn’t be left to loafers, educated politicians soon begin to lend knowledge to rot, like one who takes daily baths in the sewers. And a metastasis begins.

Confirmed: nothing ever changes in Nigeria. The more things change, the more they stay the same. This immortal epigram of Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, the 19th century French critic, journalist and novelist, captures the fortune of the Federal Republic of Drama aka Nigeria. That is why when anything happens these days, I’m like:haven’t I seen this before? I’m seeing repetition all over again. As we say in Nigerian Latin, “Soja go, soja come, barracks remain the same.” I’m no longer as excited or as agitated as I used to be. An Igbo proverb says what a dog saw and is barking ferociously is the same thing a goat saw and barely bleated. It’s a depressing feeling of “I’ve seen it all”.

A major function of any government is to guarantee safety, protection of its entire citizenry. Any government which fails to do this may lack moral claim to sound good governance. If the citizen can trust a democratically elected government with their mandate, the government must be agile in its duty by ensuring strategic channelling of national resources at its disposal towards making sure fundamental rights of the citizens, especially the most vulnerable are guaranteed.

“Power is like fire; it can keep you warm and it can burn you. It can cook you a meal or raze your house. It can purify gold or calcify a human being. Ensconced deep within its core are elements of good and evil. It all depends on the choices you make when you handle it.” – NEWTON C. JIBUNOH

The All Progressives Congress is like a pot on a pressure cooker. It is in an uneasy state. It is clear to see why. These days, the party has been on the defensive in terms of its governance—not a good omen for its future.

The restructuring of Nigeria’s institutions has been the staple of conversations across the country for quite some time now, in the light of the glaring inability of the extant political, economic and legal structures of the country to support the actualisation of the Nigeria of our dreams. It has gotten a cross-section of Nigerians talking fervently – from bloggers to newspaper columnists, and from casual observers to political bigwigs like the Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, and the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar.

Since the return to democratic rule in 1999, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has conducted the general elections on a two-tier or three-tier basis. Even though the national assembly had attempted in the past to use the Electoral Act to alter the sequence of elections fixed by the INEC it did not succeed. In spite of the ongoing controversy surrounding the sequence of elections our recent experience as a nation has shown that there is nothing sacrosanct about it. In 1999 and 2007 the presidential election came up last while it came up first in 2015. In influencing the order of elections in 2015 the ruling party had thought that holding the presidential election first would have bandwagon effect on the outcome of the other elections. But the result was a disaster for the ruling party.

In my capacity as the spokesperson of the Coalition of Nigeria Movement, CNM, I have found myself returning to a familiar theme and cause-championing the cause of generational transfer of political power to the younger generation. In political science lexicon, it is captured as leadership succession and recruitment. As a cause celebre, it first came to national notice with what the abortive Ibrahim Babangida military government transition to civil rule programme conceptualized as the ‘Newbreed’ political class-as a preferred category to the class of recycled Nigerian political actors. Ever since, it has become a recurring problematic, seeking a resolution, an idea whose time has come.

Asiwaju Adekunle Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s wife did say that the poor still trusts and supports PMB. The question is: who precisely are the poor citizens of Nigeria? One, they are the ones who are hard-up, underprivileged and poor in knowledge, poor in money, poor in coherent decision-making, poor in wisdom…, so in other words, those who still trust and support PMB are poor in those areas and more. Those who are in power have deliberately kept them poor, so they can forever support them sheepishly.

In the famous words of George W. Bush: “There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again.”

From the Gayawa Fulani settlement in Birnin Kebbi local government where I encountered more than 200 children of school age whose parents are desirous that they be educated but seem helpless; to Ruggar-Era, another Fulani town in Argungu local government—where more than a hundred women gathered to receive me along with their young children who also have no school to attend—I came face to face with the contradictions of the Nigerian condition on Monday in Kebbi State. The visit also opened my eyes to the danger that confronts our nation if we continue to ignore what has become the class dimension to the ‘Fulani crisis’ as well as the endless possibilities of what can be gained if we do the right thing.

Nigerians and the global community are unsettled with the compromising silence of President Muhammasu Buhari and the Nigerian traditional media over the repatriation of $73.3, which forms part of the Malabu oil deal. This is mainly one of the reasons President Buhari's circuit show of anti-graft gambit has been overwhelmingly submerged in total commendation.

I have on occasion chastised the Nigerian media, especially Premium Times and Channels TV, for offering prestigious platforms to EFCC graduates and assorted political recidivists to wade in on national affairs, interviewing and seeking their opinion on national issues, thereby normalizing and legitimizing them.

On the Valentine night a major shift took place. President Zuma, who had boasted that he would not bow down to the ANC’s request that he resigns from office, suddenly bowed out. President Zuma in a televised speech argued that although his party was wrong to demand his resignation but for the good of the party he would bow out immediately. President Zuma, the archetypical African big man, lost the battle. But the party won. And South Africa gained.

Nigerians’ political consciousness has been on a steady growth since 2010, following the constitutional crises that embroiled the presidency. President Yar’Adua was bed ridden, unconscious in a hospital somewhere in Saudi Arabia and his handlers thought he needn’t handover to his deputy to be Acting President. So, for about three months, Nigeria was just floating directionless; no president, no Acting president, no leadership, no authority. In fact, the 2010 budget bill could not be signed because the president was unconscious and incommunicado in Arabia; the vice president had no constitutional powers to sign the Bill.

To expand the democratic space in Nigeria and to ensure the legitimacy and stability of our democratic process, the rule of law, perhaps the supremacy of the law, anchored on constitutionalism and a progressive, liberal and developmental construction of the law, may be our best bargain, the latter in particular in the face of a seeming conversion of the democratic dispensation to a military regime. The judiciary, I mean the judex, is at the centre of this proposition.

Essence of great leadership is service. Outstanding leader holds the collective mandate of the entire society in trust. Effective leaders strive to balance the needs of everyone as fast as time permits. Great leaders know they are racing against time and time waits for no one. The faster they can go and the larger the imprint of their footprints on the sand of time within their allotted space, the better for them and their legacy.

Since last week, Daura has become the ‘new’ Aso Rock as our president is on a five-day visit to Katsina, his home state. Nothing extraordinary as presidents worldwide spend time away from their regular bases since that’s where they would return after their term.

I have been looking at Ogbeni Ayo Fayose and his fellow PDP Governors with the corner of one eye. I think I know what they are doing. I think I admire what they are doing. Really, I am starting to be intrigued by Fayose and his colleague PDP Governors. They have been uncharacteristically quiet and invisible lately.

President Buhari’s condition is very typical to one suffering from amnesia. Or the absolute fault of his handlers who forgot so quickly how he eventually got so lucky to becoming president in 2015. It’s unbelievable how quickly it has been forgotten that Buhari tried his luck in 2003, 2007, and 2011 and did so failing woefully.

It is no longer news that the police high command had in the aftermath of the General Ibrahim Babangida bombshell, declared wanted, Kassim Afegbua, spokesman to former military president Ibrahim Babangida. When I first saw the news trending online, I ignored it thinking it was a joke. But alas, it was not after all. There was an actual statement issued by the Force Public Relations Officer, Jimoh Moshood, wherein the IG Ibrahim Idris declared Afegbua wanted. His offence? “For making false statements, injurious falsehood, defamation of character and for acts capable of inciting public disturbance throughout the country,” said the statement.

Fellow Nigerians, I finally found my way to Kigali, Rwanda, two weeks ago. I had procrastinated and postponed that journey for too long, for no justifiable reason. I visit Nairobi quite regularly and could easily have travelled to Rwanda, as part of my trip, but it never happened because for once, I simply did not put my mind to it. My interest in Rwanda had been stirred by recent news and events in that country for some years now. I had heard and read so much about the amazing transformation going on in a country that witnessed one of the deadliest civil wars in 1994, just about the time Nigeria was going through the June 12, 1993 Presidential election crisis. Today, Rwanda has virtually recovered physically, even if not psychologically, from the scourge of that tragic, destructive and devastating war but our dear beloved country Nigeria is yet to come out of the after-effect of the political imbroglio which culminated in the death of the two prime actors in the June 12 1993 after

In addition to his many controversial engagements, governor Rochas Okorocha of Imo State recently led some South East politicians to Aso Rock. Their mission was quite simple: To assure President Muhammadu Buhari that he could bank on their support in his rumored desire to have a second shot at the Presidency in 2019. Some commentators have been at pains to explain that it was “Igbo APC” and not Ndigbo, that went on the much-maligned trip. The governor is however unperturbed. He is a man of great energy, self-preserving populist gestures and (sometimes reprehensible) creativity. Whether you like him or not is, therefore, a matter of complete indifference to him. But it is time he looked around him a little more closely ….. just in case.

One of the leading authorities in public commentaries and no doubt objective analyst and columnist, Mallam Mahmud Jega, presented what could be regarded as the summation of public opinion regarding the reconciliation task given to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu by President Muhammadu Buhari in the back page of Daily Trust of Monday, February 12, 2018. Titled Tinubu might do a Goldwater, the summary is that everybody in APC is aggrieved with Mr. President, Tinubu inclusive and given that Tinubu’s grievances owes its origin to Mr. President’s inability to grant his demands, the fact of such grievances will negate Tinubu’s capacity to discharge the weighty responsibility of reconciling everybody.

No doubt, Bukola Saraki is “armed and dangerous”. It also is an open secret that under his leadership, corruption is entrenched in the Nigerian National Assembly. The question is who among the vociferous but empty rebels in the Green Chambers has the balls to confront him?  Ben Bruce? Shehu Sani? The capitulation of a respected activist Shehu Sani to the corrupt antics of BukolaSaraki and his cohort makes a delinquent National Assembly feel even hopeless.

It was Vincent Ogbulafor, former PDP national chairman, who betrayed a fatal flaw and said the party would rule Nigeria for 60 years. Rochas Okoroacha, Imo state governor, also, once succumbed to the flattery of hubris in declaring that the APC would rule the country for 24 years.

We’re back where we used to be many moons ago. Shortages and long petrol queues have resurfaced and there’s no sign that things would get better any time soon. If, however, promises could fill the supply gap, we would be drowning in petrol. The first clear sign of shortage started in December 2017, nearly three months ago.

Following the former President, Olusegun Obasanjo's bombshell of a missive sent publicly to President Muhammadu Buhari few weeks ago General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, former military President cum dictator, had issued out his own scathing statement last Sunday by his long-serving Spokesman, Kassim Afegbua. The press release was tailored, as it were, towards passing a vote of no confidence in the incumbent President's administration. Obasanjo's bomb of a letter was hard-hitting and unsparing enough but that of Babangida was more profound, more undiplomatic, more uncharitable and more disdainful of Buharism. It was brimming with historical events and mindful of the past and present. And the future above all.

I am a very enthusiastic observer of political happenings across the planet earth and I do know it like I do know my fingers that the sort of politics we are playing in Nigeria cannot deliver a true prosperous nation. It is the breed of politics that puts shelter on the big-head of mediocrity, greed and nepotism.

For a man who came to power without contesting an election in the real sense of the word, one can forgive Governor Alhaji Yahaya Bello if he does not understand how democracy works. The Catholic Bishops who criticised President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration, according to the governor, did so because they are corrupt and tithe-obsessed. And should Buhari decide to seek re-election next year, Bello would conjure in Kogi State (where there are only 1,350,883 registered voters) ballots that “will dwarf that of Katsina State” with a total registered voters figure of 2,827,943—more than double that of his state!

I am not a fan of sequels. More often than not, they underperform, they fail to meet the expectations created by the first part. Sequel to novels, a sequel to movies, the sequel even to a political term of office. Hit the ground at best in the first term, and find your way out of office.

More than one year into the 2019 general elections, the political maneuvering has earnestly commenced. In fact, in Nigeria today, everybody both online and offline are already stricken with political fever and the frenzy of the 2019 elections. Unlike other parts of the world, where the demand for democracy seems low, Nigeria’s case is different. There’s renewed demand for democracy and a heightened quest for good governance and better leadership. The yearning for better leadership after 18 years of democracy is predicated on the failure of the two dominant parties that have steered the affairs since 1999. The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) ruled Nigeria for 16 years yet development eluded the country. The ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) will be 3 years in office in a couple of months and Nigerians are yet to experience the promised ‘‘change’’. It is this failure of government to deliver democratic gains to the people that led to the new quest for quality leadership couched i

I have been following the conversations of some young Nigerians,  I have been following the body languages, I have been following their thoughts, I have been following the interactions, their desires and aspirations, as well as their frustrations and I, am running away with the thinking that they do not know President Buhari is fighting for them. While these young Nigerians do not know this, I am happy that I have met and had interactions with some forward-looking young Nigerians who understand very well the real games playing out in Nigeria and they know the future belongs to them.

When I intended but discarded the idea of writing an open letter to Senator Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso few days before his botched visit to Kano, little did I know that I was few days away from meeting him for the first time. One of the reasons why I didn’t write that open letter was because many of my very good friends and associates who happen to be his followers mostly consider whatever I write on him as animosity towards him irrespective of my justifications. I don’t know of any political figure that has many followers among my friends, relatives and associates like the Kano Central Senator.

I was stung by the news of Mr. John Shagaya’s death in a fatal road accident. Shagaya belongs in a generation of colorful military men who defined my generation in the 1980s in ways in which we – and Nigeria – have never really recovered. The manner of Mr. Shagaya’s death is an occasion for yet another examination of the Nigerian condition.

Dear Editor, NatGeo: I am a great fan of your magazine, National Geographic, and your sister platform, National Geo Wild, and your coverage of natural history, particularly the behaviour of animals in the wild.  I must commend you and your organization for the high level of commitment, attentiveness to details and professionalism consistently and habitually displayed in your various reports both in print and the broadcast form.  As a journalist of many years standing myself, I will like to suggest to you and your various channels, a story idea that you may probably find interesting, for professional reasons and for reasons of corporate social responsibility. Kindly pardon my presumptuousness in this regard, but I crave your understanding. Knowing how busy your schedule is likely to be, I will try to be quick and as specific as possible.

It was George Jean Nathan (1882-1958) who said that “bad leaders are elected by good people who do not vote”. Born on Valentine’s Day in 1882, Nathan was an American drama critic and magazine editor. He was concerned about the degree of voter apathy in the 19th and 20th century America. Being confronted with (otherwise good) citizens who thumped their chests and celebrated the fact that they didn’t participate in voting a failed leader, he argued that not participating in an election was actually a vote for the wrong candidate.

The idea of Nigeria becoming a killing field of Fulani terrorists would have seemed unthinkable, absurd, and impossible to most Nigerians that voted massively for candidate Muhammadu Buhari to bring a vanishing country back from extinction.

The title of this piece was inspired by the Jesus Christ Church of Latter-day Saints. Some name condensation has occurred here — strictly for the purpose of equation with the ‘latter-day saints’ currently unrestrainedly straddling Nigerian politics. Otherwise, the full name of the church in question is: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the LDS Church or, informally, the Mormon Church).

The streets have become an epistemic community where the mood of the country and the direction of thoughts are expressed, moulded, patterned and structured. When one interacts with the streets, one is able to know who is popular and unpopular, which person governs well and which does not; the streets’ engagement is important in sampling the dynamics of thoughts of the ordinary Nigerian who bears the brunt of present mis-governance. Unfortunately, the leadership of the country is surrounded by sycophants who create the impression that without President Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria cannot get to the Promised Land. To this set of people, who thought there is no alternative to Buhari, they must be living in fools’ paradise as the President has never been the best for the country but a candidate of circumstance and protest vote in 2015. The same reasons of ethnic sentiments, religious favouritism and nepotism which made Nigerians reject Buhari in the serial election losses of 2003, 2007