Tag: sahara reporters

Former Aviation Minister and chieftain of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Chief Femi Fani-Kayode has yesterday defected to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). For a vocal critic of the Buhari administration, it came as a shock to many that FFK took that decision. Expectedly, the social media space went agog over what felt like a betrayal or abuse of ‘trust’.  Not so long after, Senator Shehu Sani, who represented Kaduna Central between 2015 and 2019 under the platform of APC, has defected to opposition PDP; indicating interest to join…

“Fellow countrymen and women…You are all living witnesses to the great economic predicament and uncertainty, which an inept and corrupt leadership has imposed on our beloved nation for the past four years. I am referring to the harsh, intolerable conditions under which we are now living. Our economy has been hopelessly mismanaged. We have become a debtor and beggar nation.”   Fellow Nigerians, the above quotation is culled from the coup speech which Major-General Muhammadu Buhari and his military colleagues used to overthrow a democratically elected government in 1984.   TODAY, the…

The guns of Nigeria’s three-year civil war were silenced 51 years ago, but in the battle for a truly federal state, the echoes of warfare have never been more resonant.   On August 10, Rivers State, which at an average monthly federal receipt of N12b, is the third richest by dole amongst Nigeria’s poor 36 states, started a war with the Federal Government over the collection of Value Added Taxes (VAT).  The state governor, Nyesom Wike, a lawyer by training and leading member of the opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP), found a…

The peace-loving United States, US, President Joe Biden on Wednesday September 15, 2021 announced the birth of a  new trilateral military alliance  of Australia,  UK, and U.S with the acronym,  AUKUS.  The alliance he said is to take on the threats of the 21st Century. Biden argued that  the way to achieve this  is for the three countries to maintain and expand their  “edge in military capabilities and critical technologies, such as cyber, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and undersea domains.” China which appears to be the primary target of this…

Femi Gbajabiamila, the headless Speaker House of Representatives, on Wednesday turned on the loudspeakers of his mouth blaring above 55 decibels in public space. He likened IPOB and Yoruba agitators for self-determination to Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa (ISWAP) terrorist groups. He said: “These people, in their inclination for  devastating violence against fellow citizens… are no different from Boko Haram and ISWAP. Given space and time, they will take our nation down the same path of destruction.” Gbajabiamila is the most despicable person ever elected as speaker of…

Political hoodlums in Nigeria share same  ideology with reference to bad precedent laid by their political godfathers. Nigerians have never experienced the dividends of democracy since independence. This has made the struggle for the emancipation of our democracy to be more intense than during the military regimes of our recent past.  Politics in Nigeria has turned into a business of mediocrity where people with zero integrity and no value are being celebrated for joining a failed system. The former Aviation Minister Femi Fani-Kayode who recently decamped to the All Progressive…

Corrective leadership. Nigeria needs corrective leadership in 2023. No government has it all figured out. While a government may perform superlatively on infrastructure development, it could be a spectacular wreck on security and managing diversity. Progressive leadership is corrective leadership. It is expected that every succeeding administration should surgically address the malignant afflictions and infecundity of the preceding government.  Insecurity and corruption were staples under the former administration. The Buhari administration rode on a messianic chariot to revise these malefactions. But these problems are still much alive today. In fact,…

Aminu Bello Masari, 71, is the incumbent Governor of Katsina State. Katsina happens to be the home state of President Muhammadu Buhari who is from Daura while Masari is from Masari village of Kafur Local Government Area. A former Speaker of the Federal House of Assembly between 2003 and 2007 during ‘Babacracy’ Masari could be described as a veteran politician — dour, austere and frugal much like Buhari. He speaks his mind independently on current national issues of importance. Sometimes he throws diplomacy overboard as he seeks to make his…

It must be the fruits of a turbulent spirit. Nigeria’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo described him more as a man ruled by the cravings of his stomach rather than the demands of mental exegesis.  But when you hear him speak, it makes you wonder. His eloquence and the structure of his verbal articulations mesmerise you into having greater respect for the English language. When he writes, you are carried away by the poetry of his prose, the elegance of his style, and the depth and spread of his knowledge. You…

Sometimes fear grips me that these fragile moments of life will fade away. It seems that I write against erasure. We are at the moment in this country struggling against uncertainty. The cost of food now in the open market is gradually becoming an existential threat to the middle class, sub-middle class and the proletariats.  This is largely so because food production in Nigeria is from subsistence farming, where crops are cultivated manually and sold across the country.  The agricultural sector, however overstretched in Nigeria, had covered a void in…