Eight unions, apart from the central body, had collectively declared war on Kaduna State Governor, Malam Nasir el-Rufai. The die was cast.
Author: Azu Ishiekwene
The former president had discarded election results and written a version that tightened his grip on power. How he thought he could reinvent the Mansa Musa legend in a country riven by violence and poverty only he can tell.
The sentiments, ranging from the probable to the bizarre, with a sprinkling of fictional tales in between, have defied the couple’s request for privacy. Misery loves company. Some accounts even make you wonder if the composers might have had a bedside view of the 27-year-old marriage.
Back in the day, I would not dare have dinner without first taking my bath. My mother said it was “unclean” to eat before brushing your teeth in the morning and taking your bath; or to have dinner before taking your bath, as if you had just been rescued from the pits or planned to eat with all parts of your body.
Last week, Mohammed, furious at Twitter’s decision to start its first Africa office in Ghana, decided it was time to level the ragged edges and crush the journalistic snakes and con artists in Nigeria by heaping on them the blame for Twitter’s decision. It was hard for him to swallow.
I thought that was obvious and required no special gift to see. The tension sucks. There is tension between those in government and those who are not. Even among those in government, there is tension between the cabal and the fringe players. Tension between those who think policies ought not to be governed by fear and those who think government by fear modelling is the only way.
It’s sad that anyone should take the law into their own hands, and sadder still that even one innocent person should suffer injury or die from such senseless attacks. One of the law enforcement officers interviewed, Ade Adelekan, obviously with Nigerian roots, described the south London incidents as “shocking” and went on to say that the “absolutely horrific news would devastate our community.”
Like what to do about failing refineries. This hot-button topic returned to the front burner after the Nigerian government recently announced plans to repair the Port Harcourt Refinery.
Stopping short of naming names, Monguno pointed a finger at the last service chiefs who after overstaying their tenure as insecurity worsened, still earned promotion as ambassadors. They now join the ranks of ambassadors still waiting to be posted, most of them, one year after their appointments were announced.
His largely unconventional approach has its benefits, especially with the rapid – sometimes unforeseen – changes in the global financial system and the beggar thy neighbour policies of rich, industrialised countries. But the recent announcement by the bank of a two-month sales promotion to boost the inflow of dollars also shows that the road to hell can be paved by good intentions.
What started as a sitcom starring Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom and his Bauchi State counterpart Bala Mohammed in a bizarre farmer-herdsmen exchange, later zig-zagged, morphed, and swept across the country in an expanded theatre of the absurd. At least four other governors have now been engulfed in the flame.
At least, three Swiss newspapers – Luzerner Zeitung, Aarguaer Zeitung and St. Galler Tagblatt – fetched their headlines from the gutter, making slight changes only after they were called out for racism.
State response has also been as bewildering as it has been absurd. It has ranged from denial to extra-judicial killings and from regional joint task forces to the use of prayer warriors and mercenaries.
Museveni’s tailor makes his suits in complete disregard of tailoring measurements. It would appear that either the president doesn’t care anymore or he has given up on the person who dresses him.
Rotimi Akeredolu, the Governor of Ondo, one of the six South Western States, had issued an ultimatum to herders, mostly of the Fulani tribe, to vacate the state’s forest reserves within one week. The folks are not rangers and have no business in forest reserves, much less turning them into grazing fields.
Not that it matters to Trump one way or the other. We can only hope that after four years of spite, insults and hostilities, he might yet, in a fleeting moment of sanity, ask himself whether going out of his way to annoy or denigrate the continent was worth all the trouble.
In the first two years or more of his presidency, I remember a number of videos shared with me on the Akufo-Addo promise. On a tour of the US, he met with the conference of US governors and awed with his presentation. On another occasion, he wowed French President Emmanuel Macron with his speech on: “Ghana Beyond Aid.”
“Azu,” he pulled a seat, “you people are not being fair to Buhari at all, haba!” He went on and on the substance of which was that he thought there was a deliberate editorial decision to antagonise his principal.
The previous government had done poorly on security and Buhari said the only way to take the country back from the terrorists and military authorities who deployed troops to fight with bare hands while diverting money and weapons, was to send the new military chiefs to the frontline. They were supposed to report, effective immediately, and stay there until the battle is won.
But my interest grew from knowing to fascination and from fascination to respect when Mohammed became the National Publicity Secretary of the Action Congress of Nigeria, a legacy party of the ruling All Progressives Congress.