When on May 18, 2021, the VULTe digital banking application vaulted from the purple hues of Polaris Bank, most watchers of developments in the Nigerian banking landscape would be forgiven if they concluded it was a “VULTe from the blues.”
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But the Senate has tried to disguise it otherwise. In response to growing criticisms that the National Assembly has become Buhari’s rubber stamp, the Senate has framed the rejection as a violation of the Federal Character principle, and more important, as proof of its legislative independence.
I deliberately teased her out on Nigeria and like a thunderbolt she prized open a closed chapter on her mind with ferocious interest.
Show me a general and I will show you a man with scars and near-death experiences from battles.
The Lagos-Kano rail project is part of the 25-year vision approved by the Federal Government for the rail transportation in 2002. The contract for it was signed on 30th October, 2002 and assigned to a Chinese Company, China Civil Engineering Construction Company, CCECC.
However, the first time I heard and saw Udom move a crowd to frenzy, he spoke extempore. That was five years ago when he addressed Obong Attah at an event organised by Senator Effiong Bob to mark his wife’s 50th birthday; in Abuja.
The dark side of social media is its addictive nature. As social media is becoming more popular, users all over the world, irrespective of age, sex, status, profession or nationality spend a large amount of their time on social media, chatting, updating status, exchanging pictures, sharing trending news and videos etc.
Anywhere, a cow never frolics in a china shop, except in a great-little country like ours, Nigeria, where it lounges in a china shop; lolling its big horns, swaying its brisk tail and clattering its rugged hooves to the noise of crashing china while the President of the shop watches in sadistic silence.
I however, have some concerns about certain provisions of the bill as it affects the downstream. While the bill removed price controls on petroleum products in section 205, the senate version of the bill has a clause that constrains market competition by restricting importation of products to only players with local refining capacity. This clearly counters the provision of 205(1).
In a recent piece, calling for the removal of the president from office, I had alerted the world that, “Anyone thinking that Muhammadu Buhari will hand over power at the end of his tenure is daydreaming. The incorrigible dictator cannot and must not be trusted. This is a man who assumed power, preaching integrity, virtue, and righteousness, only to gain the power to embrace the worst form of corruption, utter disregard for the rule of law, and gross abuse of office as a way of governance. There is no way Buhari can be entertaining the thoughts of a peaceful transition of power, while at the same time waging war against some sections of the country.”
Set in a town called Otolu at the outset of colonial incursion into Nigeria, Oba Bankarere, the Otolu king, in concert with his sons, inflicted huge terror on his subjects through excessive wielding of power.
Restructuring is a smoldering topic that has continued to gain ascendancy in public discourses as the search for a magic formula to cure Nigeria of its multiple incapacitating ailments, continues to gain momentum.
But nothing changed after the European raiders left Africa. Only the skin colour and facial features of the oppressors varied. Colonialism by aliens gave way for colonialism by natives; black-on-black oppression.
Elijah himself was not better off. Like the rest of the Israelites, he was not happy with the godlessness, paganism, demonism, etc, in the nation.
It’s not funny. Apart from Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo who bucked the trend one year ago when he moved from APC to PDP on the eve of an off-season election, the drift has been the other way.
What is unravelling within the interior working of this administration is the spirit of dictatorship.
Kaunda was the last of the titans, the African nationalists that fought for independence from colonial rule, which included the likes of Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello, Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Nelson Mandela and others.
The task of laundering Ortom’s permanently stained reputation garments now falls on one Nathaniel Ikyur who once functioned as a reporter in Abuja for a few national dailies but is now domiciled in Makurdi as Ortom’s “principal” Special Assistant on media.
This is not just for the saying! Perhaps this is what President Muhammadu Buhari would be saying today when he turns around to see the giant strides of his administration within the short period he has had Sylva as the “alternate Minister” in the petroleum ministry.
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