It’s incredible how eight years have ended as a two-word parable: constituted authority. That’s what Governor Abiola Isiaka Ajimobi would be mostly remembered for – the epigram from his encounter with students of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology. That episode was perhaps one of the most catastrophic PR disasters of Ajimobi’s eight-year tenure.
Author: Azu Ishiekwene
I woke up several times peeping for the first sign of dawn before my phone finally rang at 6:10am. A family friend who suspected we would be voting at the same place wanted to know if I was already at the booth because she couldn’t find it.
Last week, when I described the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Mahmood Yakubu, as one of the most frequently executed men on social media, I had no idea what was coming.
If you walk by sight you cannot help approaching Saturday’s presidential election with a heavy heart. The candidates of the two major parties, Muhammadu Buhari of the All Progressives Congress and Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party, have been presented in the worst light possible
These days Nigeria is treated as either the continent’s worst joke or the world’s laggard for democracy. From Nairobi to Brussels and from London to Washington, we’re getting lengthy lectures on how not to run a country. And we’re laughing them off and forwarding the messages.
The first sign of chaos is the number of senior advocates of Nigeria who offered to take up the matter free of charge. Often, when you find that many senior lawyers falling over themselves to represent a client – usually a high-profile client – you can be sure that more than anything else, they’re in it for spite, drama and self-interest. Any claim of public interest must be taken with a healthy pinch of salt.
Get this straight: Atiku Abubakar will lose the presidential election on February 16. I’m not Rev. Father Ejike Mbaka or one of the tongue-in-cheek seers whose predictions you’ll be struggling to figure out after dropping your offering in the bag at midnight of December 31. I’ll say it the way it is, walking where angels fear to tread.
The general election in 51 days will be different from previous ones in nearly two decades in many ways. Money is one way. At this time in a “normal” election cycle, politicians would be in a rat race to outspend one another.
At the belated signing of the Peace Accord, for example, PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, was quite vocal on his fear that the election would be rigged.
Exaggeration is the most common strain of fever at election period. Politicians make voters – and the general public – believe that the world might end on ballot day, when in fact what they are playing for is their own survival.
Oyedepo does not have to like Buhari – and it’s obvious that he doesn’t. Which is fine. But a man of his stature and learning ought to know better than to inflict on church members and propagate publicly a piece of monstrous fiction which, frankly, discredits him
I didn’t want to write this week. It wasn’t writer’s block or the occasional frustration from sounding like a broken record. It was not the feeling of speaking to the Nigeria wall, either.
His appointment had been barely announced when some folks with very long memory of their unpleasant encounter with him in their earlier life stuck the knife in his back; they’ve been twisting it since.
When he made the last Independence Day speech of his first term, President Muhammadu Buhari might have been speaking only to his prep team and the recording crew. Not that Nigerians were not happy to mark another national holiday.
If the Peoples Democratic Party had its way, its candidate in Saturday’s governorship election in Osun State, Ademola Adeleke, would have been declared governor that day.
It seems MTN is never too far from the speed dial to trouble. Three years ago, the telco, which has the dominant share of the mobile telecoms market in Nigeria, was slammed with a $5.2 billion fine for failing to disconnect 5.1 million subscribers after the registration deadline.
Governments, especially the executive arm, tend to forget that it is the rule of law that makes it possible, in the first place, to define what national security is. They think national security is what the man or woman in power says it is – and quite often, meaning personal loyalty, convenience and security
Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State is increasingly becoming the Rochas Okorocha of the South West. With very little effort, he might surpass the latter, the self-acclaimed exponent of iberiberism (an Igbo slang which roughly translates as “the act or state of foolishness”).
What is it about us, Nigerians, that make others think they can take us for granted and get away with it? Two different recent news items got me thinking about how long we would be prepared to put up with the shenanigans of folks who think that we live to walk their dog.
The Minister of State for Aviation, Hadi Sirika, thinks he has found the medicine for public opinion: listen with blocked ears.