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Opinion

Monday, 11 March 2019 04:56

Abiola Ajimobi: Mistake or mystique? - Festus Adedayo

The last two weeks must have been very challenging for the governor of Oyo State, Abiola Ajimobi. Assailed on all fronts due to the loss of his bid for the Oyo South senatorial district in the February election, the electoral loss became an opportunity for Ajimobi to be pummeled on all fronts by those who had nursed boundless grouses against him, especially in the last eight years of his administration of the state. The social media became the most fertile ground for his pummeling; real and concocted permutations of his political fate were traded on the go like they do…

Wednesday, 06 March 2019 04:12

How 2019 presidential election was massively rigged - Femi Aribisala

“You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32). In the 2015 presidential election, Mr Muhammadu Buhari of APC was awarded 15,424,921 votes by Attahiru Jega’s INEC; while Mr Goodluck Jonathan of PDP was awarded 12,853,162 votes. In that election, Buhari presided like a colossus over the North, which was stoked up to insist on a Northern presidency. Mr Bola Tinubu presided over the South-west, in coalition with Buhari; while President Goodluck Jonathan prevailed in the South-south as its native-son. Suppression of South-eastern votes However, South-eastern states were regarded as orphans, they had no real…

Saturday, 02 March 2019 05:05

Buhari, the Principalities and Powers - Femi Adesina

Twice on Wednesday, President Muhammadu Buhari displayed an uncommon generosity of spirit. We had set forth at dawn, shortly before 5 a.m, to visit the presidential campaign office in Central Area of Abuja. The purpose was for the President to read his victory speech, having been pronounced winner of the February 23 election by Mr Mahmood Yakubu, Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). This portion resonated loudly in the speech, and was widely applauded by All Progressives Congress (APC) stalwarts in attendance: “I will like to make a special appeal to my supporters not to gloat or humiliate the opposition.…

Saturday, 02 March 2019 05:04

Buhari, Obasanjo and the day after - Dare Babarinsa

It is bitter irony of the winner-take-all American system we have imported hook, line and sinker that the man who secured more than 11 million votes may have no role in the new government that would take effect from May 29, 2019. Unlike what we had in 2015, Mr Atiku Abubakar, loser of the last presidential race, has indicated that he would challenge in court the victory of President Muhammadu Buhari. In 2015, President Goodluck Jonathan of the once mighty Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, had conceded victory to his challenger, Mr Buhari. Mr Atiku says he would prefer to fight…

Thursday, 28 February 2019 03:46

On Yoruba’s voting pattern in the presidential election - Reno Omokri

The Yoruba proved again that they are the most sophisticated voters in Nigeria. This election was fraught with massive rigging, but there is redemption. Notice how Yoruba voters gave their votes to PDP even though APC has a Yoruba VP. I doff my hat to the Yoruba nation. They are not a tribalistic people. By voting for an Igbo PDP VP even when APC had a Yoruba VP, they showed political maturity. And it is unfair to them to say it was Igbos in the SW that gave the PDP this 50%. PDP won in Oyo and Ondo, solid monolithic…

Wednesday, 27 February 2019 04:05

Walter Rodney was way ahead of his time - Leo Zeilig

Between April and June of 1978, Walter Rodney, then already an important intellectual for his book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, was invited to teach a course, “One Hundred Years of Development in Africa,” at the University of Hamburg. His hosts Rainer Tetzlaff and Peter Lock, two radical lecturers at the university, recorded the lectures and full transcripts were made in 1984, including the question and answer sessions with the students. The transcripts and recordings of the lectures are kept in the archive in Atlanta. Reading them now gives one the impression of an activist and thinker in astonishing form—engaging with…

Sunday, 24 February 2019 04:35

Buhari, Atiku and consequences of our votes - Festus Adedayo

Now that we have cast our votes in the presidential and National Assembly elections, results trickling in in droves and we patiently await their final outcome, what next? This is a question that should agitate the mind of every Nigerian this hour. This particular election has come and gone but it leaves in its trail indelible imprints that have very consequential implications for us as a people. In terms of the setback it has given Nigeria and Nigerians, the negative cost cannot be imagined. Yes, in a couple of days from now, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will announce…

Sunday, 24 February 2019 04:32

The morning after - Simon Kolawole

If you ask me, I would say there are three critical stages of elections in Nigeria — and each is potentially explosive. The first is pre-election, where campaign rhetoric is usually a major trigger for tension. There could be episodes of violence, although they are not usually widespread. The second is the election day. It could be peaceful in the main, but we hardly avoid the skirmishes, voter intimidation and ballot-snatching. And there is the third stage: the post-election. That is usually where all hell is let loose by the losers. We have now navigated the first two stages and…

Thursday, 21 February 2019 03:59

Re-building confidence in the electoral system - Jideofor Adibe

The title of this article is a little bit misleading because it suggests, rather wrongly, that Nigerians ever had confidence in the electoral system. Truth be told, they never did - which is why most elections in the country since independence have been contentious and marred with allegations and counter allegations of rigging. I am therefore using the word ‘re-building’ cautiously to refer to whatever shaky confidence people had on the electoral systems and processes before the unfortunate postponement of the election by one week on February 16 2019. Despite the anger and disappointment that followed the postponement of the…

Wednesday, 20 February 2019 03:45

Here’s the right lesson liberals should learn from Scandinavian ‘socialism’ - Max Boot

Red-baiting appears to be a crucial part of President Trump’s reelection campaign. He regularly accuses Democrats of wanting to turn America into another Venezuela. In the State of the Union address, he went straight from denouncing the Maduro regime to proclaiming, “Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country.” On the present trajectory, it won’t be long before Trump, like a latter-day Richard Nixon, will be accusing Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D.-Calif.) of being “pink right down to her underwear.” Having emigrated to the United States as a small boy from…

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Tuesday, 19 February 2019 04:16

How the Left embraced elitism - David Brooks

Over the past generation, global capitalism has produced the greatest reduction in human poverty in history. Over the past 10 years, American capitalism has produced 20 million new jobs. The productive dynamism of capitalism is truly a wonder to behold. But economic growth alone is not enough. Growth alone does not translate into economic security for the middle class and the less skilled. Growth alone does nothing to reverse the social decay afflicting communities across America. This reality is transforming the political debate — and shifting everything leftward. Among conservatives there are now a bevy of thinkers who are trying…

Tuesday, 19 February 2019 04:15

Tinpot emperor - Sam Omatseye

His cap fits him, especially as a measure of his ego. It points up like an airport tower as though intending to graze the sky. Ibikunle Amosun’s head gear suffers from what Sigmund Freud and his followers would call phallic anxiety. From base to top, the cap occupies a real estate bigger than his face from fore-head to chin. To his credit, few politicians have so mastered what I would call the “political look.” Some showcase their shirts, others their shoes, many their caps. But few set themselves apart like the Ogun State governor as a fop of the head.…

Monday, 18 February 2019 04:10

Google, fake news, and the crisis of truth - Bernard-Henri Lévy

Invited by Google Europe to attend a brainstorming session in Paris on the decline of truth, the rise of fake news, and ways to counter both, I began my presentation by placing the problem in historical context. I cited George Orwell’s Looking back on the Spanish War, in which the author explains that, for him, “history stopped in 1936,” because it was there, in Spain, that he discovered for the first time “newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts.” It was there that he sensed that “the very concept of objective truth,” ruined by fascism in…

Sunday, 17 February 2019 05:46

Drum beating, dancers ready: Why did Yakubu stop the beat? - Festus Adedayo

It is no news that Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has postponed the presidential and National Assembly elections that were to hold yesterday. It is also no news that angers, frustration and condemnation of this decision have jammed the Nigerian electoral space. A number of contesting theories have sprung up across divides against the propriety of this decision. While those who propounded the hand of God theory claim that the cancellation was probably an unseen providential hand to redeem Nigeria through her electoral wrongs, some have offered a conspiracy theory, both with strikingly graphic defence of their claims. The…

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