THE barrage of xenophobic attacks against Nigerians and other African immigrants in South Africa came to a head last week with the murderous destruction of Nigerian lives and businesses by South Africans. These were coming only weeks after Nigerians became targets in series of isolated but sustained attacks launched against them and their businesses under the watchful gaze of the South African Police. Only recently, a Nigerian business woman died under suspicious circumstances while another well-known socialite was brutally assaulted and beaten by South African security agents. The situation last week was remarkably different as the attacks were evidently coordinated, fierce and as was the case in the past, appeared to enjoy some measure of official support.

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari was by profession a soldier. Like many retired military men, he is a farmer by vocation. Given his electoral promises, the situation of the country since he became president and his inclination to be seen as doing something rather than merely marking time by holding a ministerial portfolio, one would have expected him to be either the Minister of Defence or Agriculture.

IT has been 20 years since Nigeria returned to civilian as opposed to democratic governance. In the last two decades of our peculiar “democracy”, four Nigerians have served as president. Two of these, Olusegun Obasanjo and Muhammadu Buhari, are former Generals of the Nigerian Army and heads of the Nigerian state.

THE chaotic threat to life and property under the presidency of Muhammadu Buhari continues to trouble Nigerians in different parts of the country. Apart from the much-lamented climate of insecurity that has been generated by scattered cells of terrorists masquerading as cattle herders, emboldened and in fact enabled by the indolence or a do-nothing presidency, the very laidback indifference of the president, poses existential threat to Nigeria as a country.

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari has not only embraced his Baba Go-slow moniker with the evident pleasure of an old man in retirement and now enjoying his evening years, he insists on wearing it on his sleeves like a badge of honour. That image of Baba Go-slow gives the impression of a grandfatherly character who does nothing but wait for the regular visits of his children and grandchildren during family vacations and reunions.

THE trouble with Nigeria, Chinua Achebe once famously said, is squarely one of leadership. Most Nigerians and others who have taken more than a fleeting interest in those issues of development that coalesce under the rubric of national question have repeatedly identified with this prognosis of our national malaise.

IT would appear that the Fulani are the least admired ethnic group in Nigeria today. That is stating it very mildly. Nigerians of all ethnicities are apparently united in their disenchantment with their Fulani compatriots.

THIS week makes it the sixth since President Muhammadu Buhari was inaugurated for his second term of four years in office. It is fast approaching the sixth month since the disputed election that returned him to office held. President Buhari and his deputy, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, have been the face of the administration and operated a two-man government since their inauguration on May 29, 2019. The other known faces of this government have been the President’s spokespersons, Garba Shehu and Femi Adesina.

GOVERNMENT spokespersons in Abuja have denied reports that the Muhammadu Buhari administration plans to establish ruga, so-called cattle colonies, in the 36 states of our peculiar federation. The colonies are Abuja’s cure-all response to herdsmen-farmers clash.

IT is becoming too difficult if not impossible to know how the Muhammadu Buhari administration intend to address the question of insecurity across the country.

THE cat and mouse game between the Nigerian military and Boko Haram is not about to end. While there were reports last week that the murderous insurgents had once again overrun a military base and the group provided images of its onslaught against the military, the Nigerian Army downplayed the insurgents’ claim, saying it was mere propaganda. Propaganda is a potent weapon of war employed by different sides to give them advantage over their opponents. It is clear that the extremist Boko Haram has been resorting to propaganda in its war against the Nigerian state. But so has the Nigerian military as a whole to say nothing of the Army.

PERHAPS by the time you are reading this, President Muhammadu Buhari would have made key appointments, especially of ministers, into his administration.

TODAY’s inauguration of President Muhammadu Buhari for a second four-year term in office offers Nigerians an opportunity to take stock of the administration’s performance since 2015. It looks like yesterday but it is actually four years ago today that Buhari took the oath of office in Eagle’s Square in Abuja. It was on that occasion that he uttered those (in)famous words: “I belong to nobody. I belong to everybody.”

AFTER weeks of anxious waiting by young Nigerians who participated in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, the Professor Ishaq Oloyede-led Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, has finally released results of the 2019 edition of the examination. The examination held from April 11 through 17. Since JAMB raised the bar in its use of computer-age technology in its conduct of matriculation examinations, the release of the latest results must be one of the most anticipated because of the unusual delay.

WOLE Soyinka was in the news last week for a comment he made to Zainab Badawi on Hardtalk, an interview programme on the British Broadcasting Service, BBC. Badawi started by asking if Soyinka thought his generation of older Nigerians have failed the people and he responded in the affirmative. The hope that led many in his generation who studied abroad to rush back home to join in the transformation of Nigeria, he said, has not materialised.