Category: Opinion - Page 6 - African News Today

Opinion: 2023, Bola Tinubu and the Cost of Political Miscalculation by Sanusi Muhammad

31Dec

By adminNo Comments

News, Nigeria

Opinion: 2023, Bola Tinubu and the Cost of Political Miscalculation by Sanusi Muhammad

The godfather of Lagos politics, Ashiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu in 2015, led the Southwest into an alliance with the north to birth the All Progressive Alliance (APC). His decision, evidently, was informed by the expectation that the two geopolitical regions will share power, invariably to the exclusion of the Eastern bloc. And ultimately that he, or the Southwest will take power by the time the north completes two terms in 2023. But it has proved to be a miscalculation. Certainly, power play is about conspiracies and alliances. Tinubu is well within his right to do what he thought would best advance his political interest and that of his region. However, in backing President Muhammadu Buhari, he cut his nose to spite his face. It may not have seemed obvious to many, but once Buhari took...

Kwanzaa – Our Tool to Push Away the Looming Darkness

24Dec

By Ndidi UwechueNo Comments

Africa, Celebration, Lifestyle, News, Nigeria, Religion

Kwanzaa – Our Tool to Push Away the Looming Darkness

24th December 2019 When explorers, missionaries and historians described Africa as the “Dark Continent” we condemned them as being antinubianists (Antinubianism is racism specifically against Black people). However, now in the 21st century many concerned voices, from Africa, from Europe and from Asia are talking about the looming threat of darkness hanging over Sub-Saharan Africa. Some say we have already entered the darkness. Others say we are on the very verge of it. What seems to be agreed upon is that this darkness WILL BE PERMANENT IF INTERVENTIONS ARE NOT TAKEN UP. Let us first define this darkness. Reports, analyses and statistics abound pointing to a resources-rich Continent yet with an inability to govern its people well, or feed its people well, or generally cater for even ...

Opinion: Endless Borrowing Will Lead to Endless Sorrowing by Atiku Abubakar

19Dec

By adminNo Comments

Economy, News, Nigeria

Opinion: Endless Borrowing Will Lead to Endless Sorrowing by Atiku Abubakar

John Quincy Adams once said “there are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.” He may have very well been referring to Nigeria of the last three years. Barely two weeks ago, I warned during my Founder’s Day lecture at the American University of Nigeria, Yola, that Nigeria had taken almost as much foreign debt in the last three years, as she had taken in the thirty years before 2015 combined. Now that is frightening. And very true. Frightening, not just because of the amount, but because after such unprecedented borrowing, we have emerged as the world headquarters for extreme poverty and the global capital for out of school children. It begs the question: what were the funds used for? I have said it time and again. The business of governm...

Opinion: Punch Newspapers, Kperogi and their Hypocritical Lamentations by Ikechukwu Eluigwe

14Dec

By adminNo Comments

Biafra, Human Rights, Justice, News, Nigeria, Religion

Opinion: Punch Newspapers, Kperogi and their Hypocritical Lamentations by Ikechukwu Eluigwe

How sincere is he who, having an elephant before him, uses a dog to give an example of a very large animal? How sincere is he, who having a dolphin before him, uses a frog to give an example of an aquatic animal? How sincere is he, who having a lion before him, uses a pussy cat as an example of a fierce predator? There are examples we use to buttress a point that will actually reveal more to a wise audience than just what the example was meant to buttress. Punch Newspapers have been in the news because of their lamentation over Buhari's draconian rule; before then, Farooq Kperogi had rendered his own lamentations over the same thing. In their lamentations, they both sought to validate their positions by giving examples of Buhari's despotism. And something strange happens: the no-mention...

Opinion: The White Man’s Ice Cream Is Better than the Black Man’s – A Preference for All Things Foreign

3Oct

By Ndidi UwechueNo Comments

Africa, News, Nigeria

Opinion: The White Man’s Ice Cream Is Better than the Black Man’s – A Preference for All Things Foreign

26th September 2019 This is a worldwide phenomenon. Black people seem happiest when we give over our money to someone who is not from our own community. I will give an illustration from an article by an African American that I came across about ten years ago but which I can no longer find, so as to give the originator due credit. It is, The White Man's Ice Cream Is Better than The Black Man's Ice Cream, and the tale goes like this: A White man and A Black man bought the very same vanilla ice cream from the very same factory and both men set up separate shops in the Black community. Now, Black people KNOW that anything from a non-Black person is always better, so automatically Black people bought ice cream from the White man. But very very few Black people bought ice cream from the Bl...

Opinion: The Bogus Case against Omoyele Sowore by Femi Aribisala

25Sep

By admin1 Comment

Human Rights, Judiciary, News, Nigeria

Opinion: The Bogus Case against Omoyele Sowore by Femi Aribisala

What we now have is a government overtaken by paranoia. Omoyele Sowore planned a nationwide demonstration against the government of President Muhammadu Buhari. He captioned it “RevolutionNow.” Every right-thinking Nigerian knows Nigeria needs a revolution of sorts. Things cannot just continue the way they have been over the years. However, Omoyele’s so-called revolution was not designed to overthrow the government. It certainly could not have done that. You don’t overthrow a government by gathering a few thousand people in Lagos, Abuja and a handful other cities where you make speeches about what is wrong with Nigeria and the government. At best, his “revolution” was designed to embarrass the government. It was intended to show that the presidential election result, where ...

Opinion: Like Osinbajo, like Gbajabiamila by Lasisi Olagunju

23Sep

By admin1 Comment

News, Nigeria

Opinion: Like Osinbajo, like Gbajabiamila by Lasisi Olagunju

A Yoruba officer walked up to Mr Oladipo Diya at the height of his 1997 crisis with his boss, Mr Sani Abacha. “Sir, what is happening?” The very senior officer looked away from the colonel and told him there was nothing. “Sir, did you say there is nothing?” The officer asked with a tone of rhetorics and switched to deep structure Yoruba. “Sir, ti owo ko ba se san mo, a a ka l’eri ni” (if you can no longer swing your arms, fold them on your head). The General looked away; the colonel left. That was on December 13, 1997. Nine days later, Diya fell from everything called power. He also lost his freedom – and almost his life. It was like a journalist who reportedly asked Mr Abubakar Tafawa Balewa at the Lagos airport what he would do with the political fire raging in the West. The prime ...

Opinion: Judicial Coup D’etat in Nigeria by Femi Aribisala

17Sep

By admin1 Comment

News, Nigeria

Opinion: Judicial Coup D’etat in Nigeria by Femi Aribisala

The upshot of all this is that it is a waste of time casting votes in any future presidential election. We just went through the worst presidential election in Nigeria’s history. To add insult to injury, we have now been assaulted with the worst judicial verdict in the history of Nigeria. The presidential election petitions tribunal (PEPT) delivered a judgment on Atiku’s petition against INEC’s declaration of President Muhammadu Buhari as the winner of the February 2019 presidential election, and it was one of the most outrageous judicial verdicts I have ever heard. One of my late mother’s favourite expressions was a Yoruba proverb which talks of asking someone to buy a monkey. The understanding is that nobody would ever agree to such a transaction. The verdict of the PEPT is a...

13Sep

By Ndidi UwechueNo Comments

Nigeria

Opinion: Can’t we Just be Normal?

I regularly hear words such as, "Our great country" or "We can be great again" in reference to Nigeria. Such words make me wonder what the speaker means by "great". Plus, for us to be "great again", it implies that Nigeria was once great, and if so, when in our history of 105 years was Nigeria ever great? From amalgamation to form Nigeria in 1914, and up to 1960, Nigeria was colonised by Britain but is it not strange for a people to say that when their land was occupied by a foreign power, their country was "great"? Today, "great" countries are those with enviable engineering technologies and they are able to manufacture all sorts of high precision and technically complex objects such as airplanes, ships, space rockets, trains and high speed railway systems, factory machinery, medical e...

Opinion: The Courts Must Nullify President Buhari’s Election on Grounds of Perjury by Femi Aribisala.

10Sep

By admin1 Comment

News, Nigeria

Opinion: The Courts Must Nullify President Buhari’s Election on Grounds of Perjury by Femi Aribisala.

In filing his INEC papers for the 2019 presidential election, President Buhari lied under oath. He committed outright perjury. There can be no doubt that we are living today in Nigeria in proverbially “interesting times.” We have just gone through the worst presidential election in the history of Nigeria, marred by massive fraud, vote inflation and deflation, ballot-snatching, riots and voter intimidation and suppression. Atiku Abubakar, one of the main contestants in the election, has painstakingly presented a water-tight case before the presidential elections petition tribunal; indicating that the declaration of President Buhari as the winner of the February 2019 presidential election was a great travesty of justice. The future of the country hangs on a precipice, while we await...