This is the third straight week this column will be commenting on the arrest (properly speaking, abduction) and detention of Omoyele Sowore, the presidential candidate of the African Action Congress, AAC, in the February 2019 election, publisher of Sahara Reporters and convener of the #Revolution Now protest.

AGENTS of the Department of State Services, DSS, arrested Omoyele Sowore, presidential candidate of the African Action Congress, AAC, in the February 2019 elections and founder of Sahara Reporters, in Lagos. Sowore neither was in a bush hideout or camp training to invade Abuja or any of our cities nor was he found with arms or an invading army that could suggest he was indeed getting ready for a bloody revolution, as state prosecutors have described his call for accountability.

By Rotimi Fasan IT has been several weeks since Omoyele Sowore, a leader of the #RevolutionNow Campaign and presidential candidate of the African Action Congress was taken into detention. As matters stand, Sowore is a prisoner of conscience and is being held for nothing more than the idea he espouses. We must continue to call […]

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.