2027: Atiku’s kitchen-sink strategy betrays crude populism, by Olu Fasan
Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), is adopting a kitchen-sink approach to next year’s presidential race. A “kitchen-sink approach” involves throwing everything at a problem regardless of what works or doesn’t. That’s precisely what Atiku is doing by promising to tackle every conceivable vexed issue if he becomes president next […]
Killing discos; commiting national suicide
Like most Nigerians, I consume electricity and receive all those bills, about which everybody complains, and the services are not satisfactory. But, unlike most Nigerians, five DISCOs, two in the North and three in the south, provide me services. With one pre-paid metre, four estimated bills, popularly called crazy bills, are received and paid monthly. I don’t have shares in any DISCO and I tried my best to discourage friends wanting to invest in DISCOs when the last administration slated them for privatization.
Niger Delta people, flow into a common river
THE people of the Niger Delta are “one people from the same tree.” This is a basic fact, but it assumes far greater significance when this open secret is revealed by HRH Omoba Godfrey Ikenwoli Emiko, the Olu of Warri, leader and symbol of the Itsekiri Nation.
Agenda for Buhari rescue confab
THIS morning, I am surprised but hopeful. I am surprised at the speed and expedition with which President Muhammadu Buhari accepted the rescue lifeline thrown to him by his newfound friend and sympathiser of his All Progressives Congress (APC) Federal Government, Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka.
Jonathan Presidency was a disaster foretold (2)
Sam Rayburn, whose protégé was the late President Lyndon Johnson, 1908-1973, who was Senator, Vice-President and President in 1963 when late President John Kennedy, 1917-1963, was assassinated in Texas, Johnson’s own state, was perhaps the most powerful Speaker ever in America’s history. He was also a Texan. If a President of Nigeria is ever killed in the home state of his Vice-President, a civil war would follow. Some of us who remember that episode in 1963 which brought Johnson to power, were praying extra-hard that nothing would happen to Buhari on his visit to Ogun State, early in the month. A civil war would have followed if something similar happened. I hope Buhari stays away from Ogun State; or the South West for that matter until his tenure expires.
Ascendancy of the Monarchists
The spate of new monarchical regimes and celebrations in the last decade or so does reflect the deep contradictions of the Nigerian state and the ambiguity of Nigeria’s national character as a modern republic. A great roll of drums was just heard all over the conservative press on the recent installation of an Ooni in Ife, Ooni Ogunwusi. The drama did not stop there. The new Ooni declared that his new “regime” was “a new era for the Yoruba” and was intended on “unifying the Yoruba.”
