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Opinion

Monday, 30 May 2016 01:48

Buhari, change and challenge of history

Chido Nwangwu Citizens of Africa’s most influential country of 183 million will agree with me that Nigeria’s problems are compounded by the extraordinary scale of outright theft of oil and gas money by government officials, corporations, and small mercenary/militant groups. Remarkably, mainly colorful and inflated accounting books were kept by these conniving gangs; full of financial shenanigans and misleading numbers but very small money and whole scale environmental destruction of the Niger Delta and parts of the south-east. To understand some of the factors which impacted the first year and will affect this second year of Nigeria's democratically-elected President (2015),…

Saturday, 28 May 2016 02:27

Ask for your balance, not change!

Olusegun Adeniyi A man had just concluded his transaction at a market in Abuja, paid for the consumables he bought at scandalously high prices and was expecting his change. Sensing that the seller who collected his money was not paying attention, he repeated: I said you should give me my change. At that point, the man looked at him and replied: I heard you the first time but let me offer you one piece of advice: In this market, you ask for the balance of your money, not change. We dont want to hear that word again in this market.…

Friday, 27 May 2016 02:02

Tomato scarcity as metaphor

Reuben Abati One of the major news items in circulation has been the scarcity of tomato. Incidentally, Nigeria is (was) the 14th largest producer of tomato in the world and the second largest producer in Africa, after Egypt, but our country hardly produces enough to meet the local demand of about 2.3 million tonnes, and lacks the capacity to ensure an effective storage or value chain processing of what is produced. Out of the 1.8 million tonnes that the country produces annually, 900, 000 tonnes are left to rot and waste. Meanwhile, tomato-processing companies in the country operate below capacity…

Thursday, 26 May 2016 01:09

Expecting the unexpected in America

Christopher R. Hill When the United States’ new president gets down to work in January 2017, some obvious foreign-policy issues will already be waiting – some more patiently than others. Some of these will be perennial problems in need of no introduction: North Korea and its nuclear ambitions, China and its global ambitions, Russia and its spiteful ambitions, and of course, the Middle East and its dysfunctional ambitions. Often, however, the crises that greet a new president are not the ones anyone expects. When George W. Bush took office in 2001, he expected to increase defense spending, deploy an anti-missile…

Wednesday, 25 May 2016 01:27

Unraveling of the monumental fraud in Petrol price hike

Farooq Kperogi When I wrote an impassioned article last week about the eye-watering executive extortion of the masses that the recent unwelcome surge in petrol prices represented, I wasn't under the illusion that my article would inflame the same kind of passions that my 2012 article titled 'Fuel Subsidy Removal: Time to Occupy Nigeria' did. The 2012 article provoked and galvanised the popular mass insurrection that forced the Goodluck Jonathan administration to lower petrol prices. I knew it would be different this year. As I pointed out, "[I] doubt that my appeal will resonate with many people this time around;…

Tuesday, 24 May 2016 00:40

The curious case of the Nigerian Labour Movement

Simbo Olorunfemi Issues of corporate governance and accountability should apply to not only the institutions of government but the non-governmental sector. What could be wrong with the Labour being the standard bearer, setting the pace when it comes to the question of accountability? Perhaps, the maxim – Ex turpi causa non oritur action applies here. Is it not fair that he who comes to equity should, at least, come with clean hands? Can the NLC start by publishing its annual Report and Accounts, so we can better understand how it functions? Often, we find ourselves bemoaning the collapse of our…

Monday, 23 May 2016 01:28

No matter how long you’ve been travelling in the wrong direction...

Jideofor Adibe There is a saying that no matter how long you have been travelling in the wrong direction, the best solution remains to turn back. This was what came to my mind when I read the story that the government had eventually decided to ‘remove’ subsidies on premium motor spirits otherwise known as petrol or fuel. By the time Buhari was sworn in as President on May 29 2015, there had been more or less a consensus that the subsidy regime was a cesspool of corruption and deserved to be done away with. The Farouk Lawan, Aig-Imoukhede and Nuhu…

Sunday, 22 May 2016 04:49

The Niger Delta Avengers

Reuben Abati Niger Delta Avengers is the name of a new group of militants in the Niger Delta who claim to be different from the former agitators and militants who operated between 2006 and 2009, largely under the umbrella of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). The title of this group may well serve as the thematic and definitive umbrella for the resurgence of low-level insurgency in the Niger Delta, for in the last month alone, more groups have joined the NDA to wage war against oil installations, the Buhari government, and the Nigerian state. These…

Saturday, 21 May 2016 01:25

Can Boko Haram be defeated?

Max Siollun Last December, Muhammadu Buhari, the president of Nigeria, declared that “technically we have won the war” against Boko Haram, the insurgent group that has been terrorizing the country for seven years. Mr. Buhari’s comments came after the military dislodged Boko Haram from territory it had seized in 2014 and 2015. But five months later, it’s clear that the president’s pronouncement of victory was premature. Today, Boko Haram is no longer occupying large parts of Nigeria. Instead, it has morphed into a group of well-organized bandits. The military’s successes changed Boko Haram’s threat, but didn’t eliminate it. In fact,…

Friday, 20 May 2016 01:55

Deregulation and the politics of public policy

Reuben Abati This thing called democracy, particularly the Nigerian brand, never ceases to throw up new and intriguing lessons about the relationship between government and the people, and the larger, complex socio-political environment. I had gone to Lagos on an assignment in the last two days of the year 2011, when around midnight I received a phone call from someone close to the corridors of power, informing me that a meeting had just been concluded in Abuja where a decision had been taken to deregulate the downstream petroleum sector, and thus, in effect remove the subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit…

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Thursday, 19 May 2016 01:58

Niger Delta Avengers, defuse your dynamites

Bob MajiriOghene Etemiku I visited the website of the new agitators in town, the Niger Delta Avengers, NDA. I had to try to understand something of the body, mind and soul of the group, and why they are blowing up pipelines. Old school militants and terrorists have no time to engage you on that level. Rather they express their resentment by a deliberate shedding of human blood, kidnapping and rape as instruments of coercion and propaganda. I recall the earliest instances when Boko Haram began to fight the rest of Nigeria. All their demands were usually from the rumour mill…

Wednesday, 18 May 2016 01:45

Buhari's inconsistent management of fuel subsidies leaves loyalists confused

Frisky Larr An unnecessary own-goal indeed. Who doesn’t remember Muhammadu Buhari’s infamous interview before he became President? He talked elaborately about fuel subsidies, stressing very clearly that the measure was a fraud and that he hardly understood what it was all about. So far, so good. He went further to express his dismay, how we got to where we are, asking repeatedly who was subsidizing who. He emphasized clearly, how shortfalls in domestic supply were managed during his days as Minister of Petroleum Resources when the refineries were dysfunctional in the wake of Turn Around Maintenance. Muhammadu Buhari, the private…

Tuesday, 17 May 2016 11:20

Troubled ghosts in the soul of promise

Pat Utomi These times are times of a patriot’s nightmare in Nigeria. Conduct is zero-sum. From extreme ends, the pressure is high to smother intelligent public conversation and typecast those who dare to raise their voices. As citizenship behaviour retreats, you see threats to the promise of Nigeria. At the security level, it goes from gruesome murders by herdsmen, pipelines being blown up by militants, to the Boko Haram savaging of the North-East and kidnappings and armed robberies elsewhere. At the economic policy level, we see a worsening of the misery index as people cannot find fuel or jobs. And…

Tuesday, 17 May 2016 04:52

Nigeria: We have been fantastically deceived

Tunde Asaju A morally corrupt David Cameron goes to visit Mama Charlie and in the frontal view of television cameras, describes Naija and Afghanistan as two 'fantastically corrupt countries' he has invited to a London anti-corruption summit. Our elders say that when you want to send a message to a deaf person, you send it through her children. Some said the outburst was a gaffe but I believe it's Britain's diplomatic way of passing an insult. Mama Charlie herself has been caught on camera describing Chinese officials as very rude. Unlike hailers who descended on Cameron for adding a new,…

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