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Exasperated at a slew of successive military take over of governance in the African coup belt states of Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Niger and Gabon, President Olusegun Obasanjo came to the conclusion that liberal democracy has failed post colonial African states. Reinforcing this Afro pessimism was the recently concluded sham general elections that has produced […]
Continue ReadingThe argument that democracy is not working for Africa due to our historical and cultural factors is not new. Critics after critics have posited that Africans must evolve indigenous methods of democracy suitable for their temperament. The latest advocate to recuperate this old debate is ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo. At a forum last Monday, he shared […]
Continue ReadingCiting widespread irregularities, Malawi’s Constitutional Court in February 2020 annulled the result of the May 2019 presidential election which returned then incumbent President Peter Mutharika to power. In the court-ordered re-run election held four months later, the main opposition candidate who previously came second, Lazarus Chakwera, was declared elected in what remains unprecedented on the continent. While Kenya’s Supreme Court in 2017 became […]
Continue Reading“Every government is run by liars; and nothing they say should be believed” – I F Stone, US journalist, 1907-1989. Stone was one of about a dozen columnists I read religiously when I was in the USA. He cured me of the virulent disease of columnists sending their CVs to governments in search of jobs. […]
Continue ReadingJoyce Banda, Malawi’s fourth (and first female) president, was in Nigeria earlier this month as guest of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Awka, Anambra State in South-East Nigeria, where she spoke at the 12th annual lecture in memory of the man after whom the university is named. It was also the 119th birthday of Nnamdi Benjamin Azikiwe, Nigeria’s founding […]
Continue ReadingThe idea that the “judiciary is the last hope of the common man” is a banal, flyblown cliché that is habitually huckstered in Nigerian judicial circles and uncritically repeated in the Nigerian commentariat. But that’s mere hype. There has never been any moment, at least in my lifetime, when the judiciary was the unalterable guardian […]
Continue ReadingIn July 1977, the Organisation of African Unity adopted a Convention for the Elimination of Mercenarism in Africa. It offered a definition of a mercenary to include someone who “is motivated to take part in hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and in fact is promised by or on behalf of a party to the […]
Continue ReadingI’m not a big fan of reality TV programmes: the original concept of showcasing the lives of ordinary people has been lost in a maelstrom of faceless (- and often talentless) wannabes acting out badly written scripts in an effort to boost ratings and get their fifteen minutes of fame. ‘Big Brother’ started out as […]
Continue ReadingA commercial flight landed in Asaba on Sunday but its cabin crew welcomed passengers to Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja. A certified true copy of an Appeal Court judgment last week gave victory to both the respondents and the appellants. Nigeria of today is the textbook definition of confusion. I seek to describe what the Court […]
Continue ReadingBetween 2022 and 2023, general elections were conducted by electoral bodies in some African countries, including Angola, Kenya, and Nigeria. The petitions filed against the results of the presidential elections declared by the election management bodies in Angola and Kenya were determined within 14 days by the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court respectively. Even […]
Continue ReadingLet me say I took former President Olusegun Obasanjo lightly when he told me that “liberal democracy is not working in Africa” in an interview a while ago. I did not read much into it. I even thought he was still recovering from what hit him in the presidential election (won by his old enemy) […]
Continue ReadingSexual desire is a complicated phenomenon and so many things can affect desire individually and between two people. Every couple will experience a “desire discrepancy” because no two people want exactly the same amount of sex, though sometimes, one person’s desire seems to fall off completely. Society sets us up to believe that this only […]
Continue ReadingI experienced something close to communication breakdown when I visited a newly opened restaurant a few days ago. While ordering food, the server asked if it was ‘eating or takeout’ I wanted. I answered, ‘Takeaway,’ but she quickly reiterated ‘takeout’ in a manner that showed she was correcting me, while struggling to hide her disbelief […]
Continue ReadingI would like to begin by congratulating His Ex-Excellency, General Olusegun Obasanjo (retired), on the convening of that fabulous group of sages, doctors, alhajis, other Ex-Excellencies, alhajas, and other notables, not to talk of the usual coterie of a-gbọ́-a-wá, “we need to rub shoulders with stars”, compatriots, ladies and gentlemen, on the absolutely fundamental theme […]
Continue ReadingThe various reports of the profligacy of some states in the country accentuate a crucial defect in our system of governance: the absence of autonomous entities that can hold leaders accountable. In several recent reports, the leadership of Lagos, Ogun, and Abia states was called out for the untenable expenses listed in their respective budgets. […]
Continue ReadingPolitics ordinarily should be a call to serve. So do politicians tell us during campaigns. They claim they want to serve us. However, the opposite is the case. The main attraction to politics in Nigeria is for personal aggrandisement and primitive accumulation of wealth. That is why our elections are very fierce and war-like. It […]
Continue ReadingAs a child growing up in Nnewi, Anambra State, in the 1970s and 80s, it is shocking to remember that we had some facilities that are not available in Nigeria of today. In the 1970s, Nnewi was a semi-urban town. It was not reckoned with as a town of significance. In fact, maps produced in […]
Continue ReadingNuhu Ribadu, former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) now Nigeria’s National Security Adviser has been very vocal lately and there may well be many out there who may be wondering why the NSA, effectively the country’s official “father of secrets” should be so loud in the public arena. The NSA in […]
Continue ReadingIf I were a politician, my devotion hours would be to the courts instead of pouring oil on INEC and voters, deities of limited powers. If the gods complain, I would ask them where they were when ugly death was killing sinners and saints. The buck – our electoral buck – stops at the courts. […]
Continue ReadingBy the Rivers of Babylon, there I sat down; yeah, I wept, when I remember N-i-g-e-r-i-a. Verily, verily I say unto you, these words that I write, are words of redemption and wisdom. Therefore, I beseech you, brethren, to keep these words in your hearts, inscribe them in stones and scribble them on scrolls. I […]
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