Jonathan, Don’t Just Run… Please Flee!, By Chidi Amuta

A self -anointed select pack of northern political hounds has found a favourite seasonal mascot for each election cycle. Former president Goodluck Jonathan has managed to find repetitive mention in each election cycle. Hardly any presidential election cycle passes without a loud speculation of Jonathan as a possible candidate. In each election season since after […]

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Whose President is Tinubu, Anyway?, By Chidi Amuta

Midway into a rather routine and very tepid presidency, President Bola Tinubu is caught in strange identity crisis. Politicians from across the nation are asking the president to define whose leader he really is. The general public is equally embarrassed by what many see as an “anyhow “ government: no focus, no commitment, no clarity […]

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Absent from Abuja, Present in Paris, By Chidi Amuta

The Nigerian political opposition is scoring desired attention from the Tinubu’s disappearing  antics. In apparent response to the growing outcry of opposition voices and the enlightened citizenry about the president’s prolonged absence in a bad time, the Presidency has just issued a second statement explaining and justifying Tinubu’s mysterious vacation in Europe.  The new statement […]

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Our Democracy and Its Vagrant Elite, By Chidi Amuta

In recent weeks, we seem to have been wrestling with the very idea of democracy. After all, our political system has passed through the Westminster parliamentary system and over three decades of the Washington type presidential system.  There is a prolonged assumption that we are indeed a thriving democracy and ought by now to have come […]

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Call Me Emperor, Not Just President, By Chidi Amuta

President Bola Tinubu has dealt a fatal punch on Nigeria’s democratic prospects. As the head of the executive branch, he has injured the judiciary and subverted the legislature in what promises to be a dangerous drift towards authoritarianism.  On the Rivers crisis, the Supreme Court ruled on the side of deploying democratic methods to resolve outstanding […]

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Stampede Among the Opposition, By Chidi Amuta

A lmost mid way into the Tinubu presidency, the face of the 2027  opposition to his perpetuation is on display. An untidy opposition is nearly on full display but in a perpetual stampede. Key opposition figures are lashing out at surrogates of the ruling party from different  angles in a most uncoordinated matter. In the process, they […]

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Limits of the American King, By Chidi Amuta

Barely one week into his refurbished presidential tenure, America’s Donald Trump seems poised to set new precedents in the model of the Presidency as the pinnacle of America’s democracy. An elected president of a republic is strutting and pronouncing like an emperor. Ordinarily, an American king would be a freak oddity. But here comes Donald […]

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Democracy as Minority Rule, By Chidi Amuta

There is a shrinking feeling about it all. With each off -season election that is conducted and results announced, we feel smaller and more unfree as a polity. Our elections bring about more insecurity; unpopular electoral outcomes require goons and thugs to protect illicit incumbents.  And of course a larger number of  election related court cases spring […]

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‘Renewed Hope’, Failing Expectations, By Chidi Amuta

Politics is in many ways like religion. It thrives on a foolish expectation of paradise perennially approaching but forever elusive.  Take away the promise and prospect of eventual heaven and paradise and all religion falls flat. You dare not tell a devotee that heaven may not come or that the promised virgins may not be delivered […]

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Where are the APC’s Progressives?, By Chidi Amuta

The quantum of reservations and growing public disapproval of the Tinubu government has little or nothing to do with ideology. I am pretty sure that if anyone ever accuses Mr. Tinubu of being anything resembling ideological, he could draw a pistol. Yet his unrelenting dismal job approval rating and increasing popularity deficit is the result […]

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