The group named ‘Journalists for United Nigeria (JUN)’, according to Nwabufo, is strictly non-partisan; not a pressure or lobby group, but a think-factory to connect minds in the media who are committed to a united Nigeria.
Browsing: Fredrick Nwabufo
When a decision which affects a distinct group is taken by political leaders without consultation and without the exhaustion of the process of dialogue and conciliation that resolution is subject to be interpreted as prejudiced. And most importantly, when the decision involves the dislocation of a people from an age-long livelihood, statesmanship is imperative.
In political science, coups are often governed by the zeitgeist – the prevailing mood of the time. In the 70s, 80s and 90s, coups were fashionable in Africa, and particularly in West Africa. But with the turning of the 21 century, democracy stabilised in the region. However in 2019, there was a divergence from the assumed norm. The military struck in Sudan, deposing President Omar al-Bashir after weeks of popular protests.
There is a “SARS” in some Nigerians; reservoirs of cynicism, misanthropy and bigotry. These ones see other people through the bifocals of their own vile existence. Just like SARS, the notorious but disbanded police unit, profiles young Nigerians with tattoo branding and dreadlocks, this category of Nigerians reduces every individual to an offender. You are guilty without charges, convicted and summarily sentenced – by the self-appointed rogue jury!
It is delusive to assume any of the regions solely underpins the Nigeria infrastructure. The North feeds the nation, and the south contributes in commerce and revenue generation. We are one concentric circle, holding each other at delicate arcs. Nigeria has a unified entity can stand as an island because its component parts are already flourishing archipelagos.
Really, there was a method to the madness of the Niger Delta militants. They were fighting for a just cause – a region so endowed, yet so impoverished. But the genuineness of their cause does not obviate the criminality of their exertions.
Splintering the entity has often been exalted as the remedy to Nigeria’s problems. But this is a defective reasoning because in this instance, Nigeria is defined by its geography and not its people.
No doubt, Nigeria is tottering on the precipice. This is perhaps one of the most precarious times in our democratic evolution since 1999. It is as if the emissaries of Hades are encamped in the country.
Security agencies – all with headquarters in Abuja – get away with non-performance as regards the FCT largely because of this false sense of security by residents. No one calls them out. Kidnappings happen and everyone carries on in the invalid hope that banditry cannot get much worse in the FCT.
In fact, President Buhari never cloaked his prejudice and oblique aspect. After the 2015 election, he infamously said those who gave him five per cent vote were not deserving of the same treatment as those who gave him 97 per cent vote.
A few days ago, bandits invaded the home of Prof. Aliyu Mohammed at Wusasa in Zaira, Kaduna State. They kidnapped him, killed his young son and shot his brother, not minding his religion or ethnicity. There have been countless cases of attacks on commuters on Abuja-Kaduna Expressway. The victims of these attacks have been Nigerians of all shades and contours.
I believe even if the best police or security agencies in the world were transposed to Nigeria, in no time, they will become afflicted by the general societal malaise – corruption, brutality, bribery and indiscipline. Every society gets the kind of police it deserves.
Ethnic considerations brought President Muhammadu Buhari to power. And I am sure most Nigerians have witnessed the calamity that this current administration is. When leadership is robbed of progressive competition, competence is impaired
Leah refused to succumb to the vile power of her holders. She refused to deny her faith in return for her freedom. She feared God, not man or weapons of death. She held on to her God and refused to kneel before Baal. Boko Haram held her for refusing to convert.
Over the years Nigeria has been on the US watch-list for religious intolerance. I must say, this problem has always been with us, but perhaps it became accentuated with the divisive propensity of the Buhari administration. The blacklisting of Nigeria by the US for violations of religious freedom cannot be argued otherwise. The reasons given by America for its decision are germane – if considered dispassionately.
I recall the Ndudi Elumelu corruption probe of the power sector in 2009, where, as Chairman of the House Committee on Power, “the prober” was accused of receiving bribes and allegedly annexing N5.2 billion from the rural electrification budget alongside other officials on the panel. I would like to ask, what came out of this all-important and well-noised probe? Nothing!
The Department of State Services cannot be accused of being fair-handed and unprejudiced. It has always been the political police of the existing regime. I recall in 2014 when agents of the service invaded the offices of the All Progressives Congress in search of incriminating materials, hounded the staff of the party and made a spectacle of them for droll offences, the agency was serving the Peoples Democratic Party government at the time. Now it is serving another regime. The same pattern, the same objective, the same repression, the same pursuit.
There is nothing as fatal as a blow from a “consanguineal fist”. A cut from a “sibling” hurts deeper than that from a stranger. I have been inflicted severe cuts – caustic verbal attacks – by some Igbo persons for advocating a president of Igbo extraction in 2023. While some of them are irritated by the attention that I have been able to generate for the cause, a few others see the “advocacy” as a means of cutting deals for filthy lucre.
A man, with bloodied “babariga” and with head cocked down, perched emotionlessly in the driver’s seat of a Land Cruiser jeep at Kurmin Kare village along Kaduna-Abuja Expressway in the searing afternoon of April 29.
That the Igbo are in a political freeze is largely due to their own “sleight of hand”; that they are in disarray is because they never agree. And that they have not had any success in politics since 1999 is because they still think Nigeria is Egypt where they are slaves.