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Tag: IKEDDY ISIGUZO

  • Sultan of Sokoto on rising cost of injustice – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    Sultan of Sokoto on rising cost of injustice – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    JUSTICE in Nigeria comes with cost, curse, and cause, otherwise consequence. When we discuss justice Nigeriana, we are ultimately talking about the rising cost of injustice.

    It is well before us. Whether we do anything about it or not will not change a thing about the fact that there is so much injustice in our system that mentions of justice for Nigerians challenge our unfairness to injustice which rules and ruins Nigeria.

    Where is the justice when governments and individuals threaten opponents knowing that injustice would be served? Not even the military was as brutal in dispensing injustice as we see today with civilian governments that are neither democratic nor civil.

    Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, dragged justice to the Nigeria Bar Association, NBA, annual conference in Enugu, lamenting the cost of assessing justice. There was the more damning matter of justice being on sale, available to people of means and influence.

    Injustice has become controversial because we define it in ways that suit our purposes. We justify injustice in line with the needs of the times and the interests of who is in power. Injustice has become dynamic, bendable, and vendable.

    Enugu was doused in copious controversy well before the the conference started. The matter remains unresolved. The re-location of the conference from Port Harcourt to Enugu was a bold NBA decision that is worth commendations. NBA was protesting the “military” rule in Rivers State which would seem to have NBA’s endorsement if its annual conference held in Port Harcourt as earlier planned.

    Also worthy of condemnation is NBA’s refusal to refund the N300 million from Rivers State Government, which according to NBA, was a “gift”. NBA cannot deny that the “gift” was linked to hosting the conference in Port Harcourt.

    There is no point keeping a “gift” from a relationship that NBA breached on moral grounds. The same morality would demand that NBA returns the “gift” with the same loudness with which it cancelled Port Harcourt as venue of its 2025 conference.

    If resources had stopped NBA from acting in this direction earlier, the estimate of over N500 million it made from registration fees and “gift” from the new host, would pay off Rivers State and leave a lot in the purse.

    Anything short of this would be injustice against the people of Rivers State even if it is not the type of injustice Sultan of Sokoto spoke about.

    Poverty is not the major issue that result in injustice. Determined government officials – elected, appointed, self-imposed – have appropriated justice long ago, defining it, deciding it, and dividing it, with extensive interests as beneficiaries.

    Injustice starts with the systems, or lack of them, that get people into public office (the injustice in the private sector will be a matter for another day). Injustice is almost a legitimate way of getting government positions whether through elections or appointments. In both cases, exclusions, consistent subversion of the law, deliberately unclear criteria, and confounding judicial pronouncements are common. Some of these court judgements are so ridiculous that they give new meaning to injustice as justice.

    Judges, most of them, are a main obstacle to justice. A major voice has accused them of corruption.

    “The great fear of most well-meaning Nigerians and good friends of Nigeria is that where ‘justice’ is only available to the highest bidder, despair, anarchy, and violence would substitute justice, order, and hope,” read excerpts of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s new book, Nigeria: Past and Future. Note, the title avoided the present.

    Obasanjo released the excerpts on the eve of the NBA conference.

    “I went to a State in the North about ten years after I left public office. Next to the government guest house was a line of six duplex buildings. The Governor pointed to the buildings and stated that they belonged to a judge who put them up from the money he made from being the chairman of election tribunals.”

    What did Obasanjo and the Governor do with the information? Was the judge ever punished?
    Obasanjo went on this long tirade, again all in the past, including a dead Muhammadu Buhari:

    “No wonder politicians do not put much confidence in an election which the INEC of Professor Mahmood Yakubu polluted and grossly undermined to make a charade. Most politicians believe in the will of the tribunal judges, court of appeal judges and supreme court judges.

    “No matter what the will of the people may be, the Chairman of INEC since after the 2015 election had made his will greater and more important than the will of the people.

    “And worse still is the will of the judges – two out of three, three out of five corruptly overriding the will of millions of voters.”

    “Buhari threw caution to the wind, no matter what had transpired between him and the judges who did his bidding. In his election cases, financially, he topped it up with appointments for them no matter their age and their ranks.”

    “After a false declaration of results, making losers winners and winners losers, the victim of the cheating is advised to go to court, which is a court of corruption rather than a court of justice.”

    Obasanjo is truthful but he could have done more whether in or out of office and while those involved could have benefitted from his worries. His view of injustice is blind to the injustices the poor, the common man suffer.

    Their last piece of land – the mainstay of their survival, the economy they know – would be taken from them, no compensation or replacement offered. The laws do not speak for them. They have no confidence in a system that hardly recognises their existence. They are not amused with preachments about all men being equal before the law. Which law?

    These Nigerians are hopeless, helpless and are resorting to “leaving” all matters to the Almighty. Those who can take laws into their hands with the attendant consequences of choas and lawlessness in a society that churns out laws frequently.

    The National Assembly, Sultan, Obasanjo, and their class should impress on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu the imperative  to run a government of law and order, “Where no man is oppressed”.

    We may lament the cost of justice. We should not forget the cost of injustice, a rising curse on what used to be a land of peace and plenty.

    Finally…

    WHY do we have to hear great news about Nigeria from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu only when he is abroad? Corruption has ceased, been abolished in Nigeria and we don’t know, we have not heard? We have to be told from Brazil?

    Which stakeholders did the President consult before this great decision? Are there new definitions of corruption different from ones we know? When the President abolished corruption, with what did he replace it? Corruption is a huge slice of the economy. Can we live with the vacuum the President has created? The international community will suddenly have new challenges understanding us.

    THE most profound thing Bashir Bayo Ojulari, Group Chief Executive Officer, GCEO, of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, has said since his appointment in April 2025, is that he is “a Northerner”.

    Whatever that meant, some thought it was an unfortunate political slip that had no value for the competences Ojulari required for the job. Did his being “a Northerner” mean he was not Yoruba? Since Thursday Ojulari has been raising alarms about some powerful forces trying to remove him from NNPCL because he was implementing the President’s reforms. Who are these forces who are more powerful than the President? Is the President unable to protect his appointee?

    “The President has not put pressure on me to do the wrong thing. The mandate is to ensure sustainability. There is no negative political pressure for NNPCL to continue running at a loss,” Ojulari told Festus Osifo, President of PENGASSAN, who on a visit to NNPCL raised concerns about the productivity of the refineries.

    Anyone privy to the terms of Ojulari’s appointment can advise him. As an outsider, I think he should resign for suggesting that there were forces more powerful than the President, Federal Republic of Nigeria, who is also the Minister of Petroluem Resources, and sole administrator of Ojulari’s tenure at NNPCL.

    Isiguzo is a major commentator on minor issues

  • Justice to Kwam1 or injustice to Emmanson? – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    Justice to Kwam1 or injustice to Emmanson? – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

    NOT even someone sentenced to death undergoes the crudities and indignities that attended the evacuation of Ms Comfort Emmanson, a passenger, from Ibom Air on Sunday. Even when someone is sentenced to death, the judge would state clearly how the convict would be killed.

    A convict has rights. Ms Emmanson’s were so wantonly abused that she was unclad for the entertainment of audiences, part of whose pleasure has been to maintain a strident criticism of her dressing as if she left Uyo so dressed. Her state of unclad was evidence of the treatment meted to her by the assemblage of aircraft crew and supposed security officials. Their crudeness was their most visible quality.

    What were the rights of manhandled Ms Emmanson over just allegations her opponents made?

    The allegations against Ms Emmanson?

    a. She refused to comply with directives from a crew member to switch off her phone.

    b. She engaged the crew and airport security personal in heated exchanges that escalated to slaps, kicks and dovetailed to her dignity being vastly compromised.

    Excessive force was deployed to get her off the aircraft. At least five people engaged in pushing her around, and more hands joined in dragging her down the stairs.

    The crudeness was evident. Her opponents wore it as a badge of honour whose value could only be elevated by exhibiting their abilities to unleash more brutality if her persistence continued.

    She was tossed down the stairs like a sack of thrash that needed to be removed in quick pace for society’s survival. Some watched with askance as if her presence was an imminent threat to their humanity.

    Sunday, 10 August 2025, should be noted as a day professionalism, whatever it means at Nigeria’s prime airport, was on vacation. Could it be how the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, operates?

    A horde of security people raced up the airstair, like an army of conquest, to subdue an unruly passenger, yet none bore an equipment to contain the situation.

    As a lady was the centre of the commotion, at least a lady security personnel should have been involved in getting Ms Emmanson off the aircraft. That would have voided the male hands that could not find where to hold without violating her.

    There was no handcuff to restrain her. A tranquiliser could have performed the same role. Were they locked up with those to authorise their use absent?

    Perhaps, being a Sunday the operations were lax. The thinking required to manage the issues was absent. An assessment of the resources available in our airports for “such emergencies” is urgently required.

    Ibom Air in its entire engagement with Ms Emmanson carried on as if it was a business on a hurry to shut itself down. The six-year-old Ibom Air which passengers admire for its record with timely operations, in addition to humiliating its passenger, without waiting for a court decision, had slammed a life ban on her from flying. Other airlines, some with records that should keep them grounded for eternity, joined in issuing the life ban on Ms Emmanson.

    What mindlessness would permit an airline to group think that mal-treatment of a passenger, glaringly, apparently to “teach” the passenger a lesson, would not affect patronage of its business?

    How far was Ibom Air ready to go? Did it want the passenger dead? Nobody who participated in that crude operation thought about the passengers safety? In the airline’s operations manual, was the treatment of Ms Emmanson the standard for deboarding an unruly passenger?

    There were grand efforts at ensuring Ms Emmanson was left with permanent disabilities if not with life-threatening injuries. Millions of people who have watched the video clips easily come to that conclusion.

    The interventions of the Nigeria Association, the interjection of the Minister of Aviation and Aerospace Development, Festus Keyamo, ensured her release from a two-day detention, which included a day in Kirikiri Prison, on the orders of a magistrate court.

    Ms Emmanson posted after her release, “Thank you so much for all the prayers, love, and support, I’ve been released from the prison, but I’m still in pains due to how I was treated. I just need some rest and medical treatment before I give out my own version of the event. Thank you so much my Lovely friends and supporters. I really appreciate y’all from the button of my heart. God bless y’all. THANK YOU MY GREAT GOD!!!”

    Troubling matters around managing the  incident that intercept safety and lawlessness at our airports include the askance with which individuals weilding assumed powers become prosecutors, and judge in their own cases without a chance for the other party to be heard marked Ms Emmanson’s ordeal.

    Ibom Air in its engagement with Ms Emmanson carried on as if it was a business on a hurry to shut down. The six-year-old Ibom Air which passengers admire for its record with timely operations, in addition to humiliating its passenger, without waiting for a court decision, had slammed a life ban on her from flying. Other airlines, some with records that should keep them grounded for eternity, joined in issuing the life ban on Ms Emmanson.

    What mindlessness would permit an airline to group think that mal-treatment of a passenger, glaringly, apparently to “teach” the passenger a lesson, would not affect patronage of its business?

    How far was Ibom Air ready to go? Did it want the passenger dead? Nobody who participated in that crude operation thought about the passengers safety? In the airline operations manual, was the treatment of Ms Emmanson the standard for deboarding an unruly passenger?

    There were grand efforts at ensuring Ms Emmanson was left with permanent disabilities if not with life-threatening injuries. Millions of people who have watched the video clips easily come to that conclusion.

    When did dragging a human being down an iron airstair become part of enforcing a law? And for which offence? She could have had a head or brain damage was possible. It is a wonder her spinal cord is intact. Nobody cared. It was obvious.

    Keyamo’s decision in the case involving Fuji megastar King Wasiu Ayinde Marshal, KWAM I, De Ultimate, played a huge part in providing balance on the scale of justice, in this instance. KWAM I had obstructed the departure of a ValueJet flight when he was stopped from boarding for having a flask that had an unknown substance.

    The pilot’s licence was suspended for commencing departure without ground clearance. KWAM I could have been injured.

    He was allowed to leave the airport. Keyamo said KWAM I should also be sanctioned. A  six-month “no fly” ban was finally placed on the musician.

    The public thought it was inadequate. His influence and known association with the President were seen as reasons for the pat on the back that he got.

    When injustices started raining on the very unknown Ms Emmanson, the KWAM I case that was only five days old was a quick exemplifier of the quantum of the unfairness. She had to be set free.

    The point remains that the punishment for not switching off a phone in an aircraft does not including humiliating the passenger as Ibom Air did. The public would benefit from these incidents if they lead to improvements in customer care.

    Finally…

    SUPER Falcons captain Rasheedat Ajibade has informed Nigerians that the team has received none of the promises the President made to it on Nigeria’s winning of her 10th WAFCON title. Also on the queue is D’Tigress.

    WHERE is the President? Dubai? Brazil? Japan? He could be in any of the places depending on when you read this. Since he does not listen to our complaints, what should we do? We have 2027 to decide.

    SENATE President, His Excellency, Obong Dr Godswill Akpabio is sound and safe as members of his “medical team”, Senator Gbenga Daniel and Senator Orji Uzor Kalu, both former Governors, like Akpabio, have testified. If you doubt them, provide proof.

    Isiguzo is a major commentator on minor issues

  • Our world-class NNPCL reflects strategies of Petroleum Minister, Tinubu – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    Our world-class NNPCL reflects strategies of Petroleum Minister, Tinubu – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

    WHEN we demand that President Bola Tinubu should do better, what do we really mean? Are we asking him to continue excelling in his decision to personalise, and determine standards – for doing government business -which should be the people’s business?

    Do standards matter to Tinubu if they are not his “global standards” that flow from his experience working for global businesses across two continents?

    Tinubu, the strategist thinks nothing of managing the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation Plc, NNPCL, with monumental unimportance. He has reflected it in his appointments.

    More importantly, he is the Minister of Petroleum. The NNPCL which is still the focus, has no board. Everything is reported to Tinubu.

    The current setting is immensely dangerous. The President has immunity that cannot see him being investigated over his decisions and indecision.

    It is not an entirely new practice. Outside Presidents Umaru Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan, other presidents since 1999, have been their Ministers of Petroleum. The unimaginable abuses entailed are the foundation of today’s abuses that have grown to values in the company.

    NNPCL addresses itself as a global energy business that aspires to be the global energy company of choice. Then it throws in the usual fillers that unclad excellence, integrity, reliability, resilience, and the like.

    If we discount the size and scope of its business activities, the smallest filling station may be run better than NNPCL. The difference between the filling station and NNPCL extends to the fact that ownership of a small filing station has interests in its profitability and sustenance. Both words mean nothing to how NNPCL is run.

    Events of the past week portray NNPCL as a family business with conflicting orders from family heads, guards, and outsiders of indecernible powers.

    We gloat over NNPCL as our national oil company, first line custodian of our oil and gas assets on which the national economy and the resources that whet the greed of the high and mighty run.

    How can such an important organisation be gutted by news of forced resignation of the Group Chief Executive Officer, GCEO, and the appointing authority is satisfied with tepid statements that imply that things are worse than we imagine?

    Does the news of the GCEO of this global company being removed and restated over allegations that have not be investigated have no meaning in how it conducts its business?

    Why is the government carrying on as if the return of the GCEO is an achievement? Does the President/Minister of Petroleum Resources believe that NNPCL is his company to be run the way that pleases him?

    Should Nigerians not know what happened beyond the limp defence that contracts from NNPCL were being farmed out to an associate of the President’s political opponent? So, being related to an opposition politician disqualifies people from being awarded contracts, even if they otherwise qualify?

    Does that not smell abuse of office?

    The President has many questions to answer. There are too many cloudy activities, still called allegations, in NNPCL. If the Minister of Petroleum, also the President, is uninterested in dealing with them, as part of his own understanding of accountability and integrity, he should at least not add to them.

    Whatever happened in NNPCL, in the past week, has roots in the consequences of operating a global company like a one man business. Anyone can stroll into NNPCL peddle some influence and disrupt the operations of the company.

    Strategists can take us to parts we never knew. There is reluctance to say anything public about how billions of Dollars had been wasted on the refineries, fuel subsidies and the state of NNPCL with its vacuous accounting systems that exclude trillions of Naira.

    Will answering some of these questions, going after the suspects, open new flanks that can hit the President’s chances in 2027, with devastating blows?

    How does the Minister of Petroleum intend to manage NNPCL in the coming months? Can we at least know details of the saga at NNPCL? Who deployed the forces that staged the play at NNPCL?

    If the President cannot punish them, he can publicly praise them for doing a great job. The Minister of Petroleum and President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria cannot be unaware of how a major leg of his office works.

    It would be completely unbelievable that he is also disinterested in the leadership of NNPCL and how it operates.

    Finally…

    JUST imagine in the ValueJet and others versus Alhaji Ayinde Marshal, more popularly known as, K1 De Ultimate, matter, if the owner of the airline and pilot were of different origin, and maybe if the airport was not Abuja. It would have been a clear case of attempted assassination, linked to a well-known presidential candidate, on whose behalf the airline acted, knowing fully well that K1 is an ardent support of the President. May the Almighty keep protecting Nigeria, and Nigerians from chaos in any form it tries to present itself.

    CONGRATULATIONS D’Tigress for your fifth straight win of the African women’s basketball title. I am more included to call you Super D’Tigress. The President did not fall into the temptation of not rewarding you as he did with the football team. Let us see who will tell the President not to reward other teams in the same terms as the Super Falcons. Our money will not “finish” – we can always borrow.

    IF you are in any political coalition these days, the standard code is to be in at least three different groups. The different factions – or fractions – are fusing and diffusing at a pace that primes confusion, especially as many keep talking about 2027 as if they have abolished next year, 2026.

    MOTHER of the nation, as many now call the President’s wife, Mrs Remi Tinubu, is growing by the day in her welfare and philanthropic activities. Does anyone know Mrs Tinubu’s net worth? What is the source of the billions of Naira she donates? How much tax does she pay annually? We should not stand by while all manners of insinuations are made about her wealth. Or shouldn’t she speak up for herself?

    PETER Obi got some roasting on X for speaking out against the arrest of another presidential candidate, Omoyele Sowore, whose supporters said Obi was chasing relevance. “Did he twit about the plane crash in Ghana (he did) or the tarmac incident involving K1 De Ultimate?,” they asked. They advised Obi to learn how to bear grudges because he would need it heading to 2027.

    DR. Mumini Alao, a long-term sports journalist, launches his biography, MUMINI ALAO, today 10 August at the University of Lagos. Mr. Babatunde Fashola, former Governor of Lagos, former Minister of Works, has confirmed that he will deliver the keynote address.

    A COALITION of Nigeria’s aviation unions has declared an indefinite strike from Monday, 11 August. The unions blame the Federal Government’s failure to implement a long-promised salary structure for airspace management personnel of the Nigerian Airspace Management Agency, NAMA, for the strike that is expected to disrupt flight operations nationwide.

    WEST African Examination Council, WAEC has joined in mangling the future of the youth. The matter will as usual be treated as of it does not matter. When JAMB released its results earlier in the year, protests attended it. Parents and their wards complained. JAMB finally admitted something was wrong. WAEC has followed the same steps in the 2025 examinations. Will there be any consequences for those toying with our future? Not when neither the present nor the past had counted in how the authorities manage Nigeria.

    ISIGUZO is a major commentator on minor issues

  • Tinubu’s mindless reward, bigotry, endanger Super Falcons’ future – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    Tinubu’s mindless reward, bigotry, endanger Super Falcons’ future – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

    THE only thing wrong with Hope Uzodinma, Imo State Governor, holding a reception for seven members of the Super Falcons after the team’s victory in Morocco was that Uzodinma was from the wrong side of Nigeria – a part that is marked out for vilification no matter what it does or how it does it.

    Uzodinma did what other Governors do and are praised. His meeting with the Imo 7 exposed that those players rightly hailed as Nigerians throughout WAFCON 2024 were not so Nigerian.

    Super Falcons’ victory has been smeared by a mindless reward system that President Ahmed Tinubu pulled from nowhere. The players got $100,000, a house, national honour each exactly for doing what? When they win the Olympics or the World Cup, how would Nigeria reward them? Is this the benchmark for rewarding sports performance at the African level?

    Nigerians are almost adding the team to their problems.

    The rewards are seen as excessive against the background of the penury that the APC government has visited on Nigerians.

    What lessons do the victory present? None. It has provided more opportunities for the ventilation of the same matters that have kept ruining sports – lack of depth, planning replaced by populism. The same team being showered with shocking rewards will soon be crying out for resources to play their World Cup and Olympic Games qualifiers.

    Just like in 1980 when there were concerns that the winning team was not a “national team” – only one player from the North – hopefully Nigerians would not destroy the Super Falcons through similar sentiments.

    Super Falcons could be finished by the mighty and powerful insisting on inclusion of their people in the team with expectations that they would benefit from the next round of rewards.

    People have fixed their gazes on the rewards rather than the toils that led to them. I still maintain the rewards are over-board. The future should have been in the picture.

    Uzodinma did not know he was exposing the fact that Imo State alone took seven spots in the national team.

    Elsewhere, some of these resources would have been availed the National Institute for Sports to investigate if female football players’ prowess benefits from their origins. We can still do that. It is not too late.

    What happens to coach Justin Madugu who in victory out-smarted Jorge Vilda, Spain’s winning coach at the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup and coached Morocco at WAFCON? Apostles of a foreign coach are still in the wings making a case for one.

    As celebrations continue, would this team be in any state to play football in the next couple of months. Fatigue and concentration aside, can they manage their fortune and football? Do we still have a team?

    Governor of Adamawa State, Ahmadu Fintiri, has handed Madugu, a three-bedroom bungalow and N50 million for making the State proud.

    While Super Falcons were making Nigeria proud, back home ethnic hatred filled the social media landscape, centred on the 2023 electoral contest between Peter Obi and Tinubu, an election that witnessed new lows in hate speech, ethnic profiling, and the Igbo being openly stopped from voting.

    The exchanges were so charged that if Esther Okoronkwo had missed that decisive penalty in the final, she could have been accused of acting on behalf of Peter Obi who online hate merchants held responsible for Super Eagles losing the AFCON final in Abidjan. They claimed that Obi’s luckless presence caused the loss.

    Obi’s supporters were replying in equal measures in a week that other ethnic issues were on the front burner in Lagos and nationally.

    Nigerians have never been more divided than under Tinubu who has taken nepotism, clannishness, and hatred for the Igbo to unimaginable heights.

    He has large followers in this. There are no more pretences about it.

    Loud proclamations, threats, and public policies against the Igbo have become great values and qualifications for appointments to high offices.

    Where else will a Bayo Onanuga after threatening the Igbo during the 2023 elections and offered more threats when asked to apologise, be speaking for the President of Nigeria whose speeches are littered with calls for unity?

    “I owe no one apology for ethnic slur against the Igbos – they are threats to Yorubas,” Onanuga said in March 2023 while warning the Igbo to stop meddling in the politics of Lagos. Onanuga threatens the Igbo conveniently forgetting he is not from any part of Lagos.

    The daily spewing of hatred on the social media is led by the same people who warn against Nigerians going the way of the 1994 ethnic cleansing in Rwanda which Onanuga told Nigerians about on a 2 September 2018 post?

    Onanuga wrote, “I visited the Genocide Memoriam in Kigali, Rwanda, and left deeply sober after 90 minutes of tour. I recommend it as a must-go place for ethnic champions, Pastors and Imams harbouring hatred about their fellow human beings and non-adherents of their faith. I hope they will take away as I did, that human beings do not in most cases have a choice about who they are in this world. Our ethnic identity is determined for us by our maker. So, why do we hate a person because he is not a member of our ethnic group? Why should a Christian hate a Muslim, vice versa? Let all humanity live in love”.

    He stamped a picture of himself with the Genocide Memorial on the background as proof of the visit. Today, that post is evidence of Onanuga’s hypocrisy and further proof that his present boss approves setting one group of Nigerians against the other.

    What changed Onanuga between 2018 and 2023? Let me speculate that it could the change in his bosses.

    During the 2018 visit to Rwanda, his boss was President Muhammadu Buhari who would never allow nobody to compete with him in dispensing hatred to the Igbo.

    Buhari called us a dot. He singled out Igbo NYSC members from a group that paid him a courtesy visit in Daura to advise them on not “being like Nnamdi Kanu”.

    By 2018, Onanuga was in the second year of his appointment as Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN. He wanted to present an image of one who cared about which direction Nigeria went.

    When his tenure was not renewed in 2022 he became more open with his ethnic tendencies. He used speaking for Tinubu to water the growth of ethnic champions to whom Rwanda, in Nigeria, means nothing.

    These incidents are still on record. Nobody has been arrested. Emboldened, Onanuga warned the Igbo to keep off Lagos in 2027. He gets rewarded for his divisive utterances.

    Suggestions have been made that Tinubu should make a national broadcast to lower the tension in Lagos. Would he heed the calls? Would he sacrifice a major plank of his strategy for the 2027 election for the peace of the nation?

    Nigeria is in too much trouble in too many areas that the President should provide leadership in pulling the country back from the dangerous promotion of ethnic sentiments at a time Nigerians are too hungry and angry to celebrate a major sports dominance to the full.

    Sports victories are not solutions to empty stomachs, insecurity, and a future that looks bleak and promises more darkness if it remains mismanaged.

    Isiguzo is a major commentator on minor issues

  • Peter Obi: A judgement on Nigerians’ love for hypocrisy – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

    TIME to throw all the pretences away. What to do with Peter Obi is still among major challenges Nigerians face as the presidential race revs on reckless gears heading for 2027. He was in 2023. He will continue to raise questions on what Nigerians want. And what we intend to do about it.

    Obi is daring, deft, and deaf to the din of traditional political practices. His bravery troubles opponents endlessly.

    What do we do with Obi? What do we do without him? Are we ready for Obi and his proposals?

    The answers are cures to the hyped hypocrisies masquerading as competence to manage Nigeria. The most intriguing of these nagging issues is the displacement of competence with entitlement.

    Obi does not preach. He simply shares in crisp citations evidential proof of what he did in Anambra State as Governor. He intends to replicate them as President of Nigeria when elected. We applaud. Will the matter end there?

    Nigerians claim their country is at the brinks. The same Nigerians want someone to pull the country back from the proclivity to accelerating demise. Obi has offered himself. His proposals are clear.

    No Governor in his era left the hefty sums, and investments he bequeathed his successor. None of his mates compiled his handover note, revealing cheques that had been left to pay teachers, pensioners, contractors, other obligations. His records in other areas are indisputable.

    He then swore an affidavit to authenticate the details of his tenure at a High Court.

    The savings he made in local and foreign bonds were worth $156m in March 2014. Nobody has done a fraction of that. He never borrowed; he left no debts.

    Obi lifted Anambra State out of the chaos it was. He ignored the fat cats that dubbed themselves godfathers. He rescued a State that had adopted rambunctiousness as its alias.

    He is not earning any pension from Anambra State, at a time Governors across Nigeria approved hefty pensions for themselves – there are few exceptions.

    Alas, other things impress Nigerians, chiefly, how much someone is willing to give them to get into office. The season of harvests for political merchants is already near.

    Many aspirants have lined up seemingly for the same mission. Many words are being tossed about in line with the season. What stands Obi out is the clarity of his thoughts, exampled by his works as Governor, and his understandable positions on every issue.

    Obi has built on his competence to court a nationwide following that is not procured through a heavy pocket. There are more differences.

    He is frugal. He lives it. People mock him for his simplicity that abhors the pomp of office. He reminds Nigerians that the country is in dire straits and needed to be cured of its wastefulness.

    Parts of the wastes are repeated with dedicated choice of leaders that take us to booming doom.

    President Muhammadu Buhari remains a sterling example. Those who chose him to feed their selfishness spent the years defending his bumblings. They blame everyone except the man and themselves for his serial failures. They continue praising him to feed their future.

    Nigeria is bound for further doldrums if measures that can redeem it are mixed up with choices that eat our tomorrow, today.

    Obi is ready to offer innovative service that would strip Nigeria of the huge baggage she lugs around as it tries to make progress. Obi is that opportunity.

    He is not a saint. If he were, he probably would not be in the race. His demonstrated abilities to turn around situations should count for something beyond annoying opponents as his charity does.

    Do the heights he expects Nigeria to attain matter? What are others offering? What did they do with past opportunities? How are they managing Nigeria’s resources?

    If we ignore Obi, we would have chosen to continue with the next level of nothingness. We can change for better when we join Obi to make a difference in our lives as a people, and a country.

    The choice remains the same as in 2023 when Nigerians decided. Were we not aware then? What has changed?

    Nigeria has worsened. The divisions have widened. We can no longer agree on what a crime is though laws define it. Hardly anything makes meaning any more.

    Obi stands distinct from the distractions that are thrown at Nigeria’s flimsy chances of making any meaningful progress under the guises of party squabbles, insecurity, hunger and a poverty that tempts even saints to be perfidious.

    Obi is a judgement on who majority of Nigerians are – lovers of hypocrisy.

    Finally…

    IF we are what we eat, what are those who have nothing to eat? Food prices are still soaring. The determination of our leaders to nurture poverty is disturbing.

    WHO will be the next President? Political profiteers, prophets, plain thieves, who live on the gullible, are whispering names, making millions in the process. Some claim the Almighty has told them!

    SENATE President Obong Godswill Akpabio has assured Plateau State that the killings would end soon. “As the President of the 10th Senate, I hear you loud and clear, and be rest assured that your travails will be given the needed attention and response from the relevant agencies,” Akpabio said at a funeral in Jos. Can we start a countdown to peace in Plateau? Only Plateau?

    ISIGUZO is a major commentator on minor issues

  • Buhari: Can we speak evil of the living legend? – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    Buhari: Can we speak evil of the living legend? – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    MUHAMMADU Buhari, former President of Nigeria, has no spartan expectations when he is praised. Forget his dithers. Buhari glows in the glories of the gamut of his failures. He still only cares for himself.

    When he turned up for the public presentation of Walking with Buhari, Femi Adesina’s reflections on being his Special Adviser, Media and Publicity, Buhari was stiff, smug, distant, and bore the same askance that saw Nigeria dither for eight years under him.

    “Without documentation, revisionism wins. Human beings often have short memories, and unless events are recorded in cold print, some people would come and attempt to either distort or even obliterate recent history,” Buhari said in praise of his achievements which another five-volume publication also recorded.

    The rule used to be not to speak evil of the dead. For Buhari, every rule is broken, standards dumped, history distorted to make something of him. Buhari’s failures are never stated. Is it plausible that Buhari is unaware that his failures strip words of meaning? How does one assess a President whose favourite response to critical national issues was, “I am not aware”? At least he is aware of history, that is a good start, though belated.

    Pa Edwin Clark, Convener of Pan Niger Delta Forum, PANDEF, reacting to the Buhari books was nearer the mark about non-existent Buhari amplitudes. “To most of us as Nigerians, Muhammadu Buhari failed abysmally as President. His administration was full of insecurity, economic collapse, injustice, religious bigotry and lack of direction. The eight years of his administration plunged Nigeria and Nigerians, five decades backwards. Even his successor, the current President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, noted as much in his speech at the time of the occasion where Buhari was eulogising himself,” Pa Clark’s statement read.

    Adeshina said his book was meant to correct wrong narratives about Buhari. He is right. Wrong or right could be directed by our biases.
    How many millions of jobs did Buhari create in eight years? Where are the economic plans to sustain annual yearly growth of 10 percent?
    The unending shame about our torpid accommodation of listless leadership is that a Buhari can make a public appearance to discuss history and his entitlement to be vindicated for his dedication to momentary wakefulness and sloppy speeches that confirm unimagined concerns over Buhari.
    – Buhari: Can we speak evil of the living legend?, Businessday, 21 January 2024

    IN 2018 when 74 Benue people were killed in Guma, and other parts of Benue, the President’s reaction was, “I appeal to Governor Ortom to restrain his people. I ask you in the name of God to accommodate your country men. You can also be assured that I am just as worried, and concerned with the situation,” the President said.

    One would think that the Fulani herdsmen were the victims.

    The killings continued, in April, eliciting this standard, trite retort to new killings, “Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those murdered. The entire nation stands united in the fight against the forces of terror and evil. I urge aggrieved parties to embrace efforts to end this extreme violence”.

    -Buhari counts lives indifferently, Benue is only a sample, Businessday, 23 April 2023

    SOMETHING outstanding about President Muhammadu Buhari is his consistency. Nobody can fault it.

    He has a knack for making choices that stun his fellow Nigerians. The more objectionable his decisions, the better Buhari thinks that they fit Nigerians.

    Does anything we say affect him? Are we sure he listens to us or anyone? His frequent absences at critical moments of our national lives have become legendary.

    Those who ask the President to address Nigerians have forgotten that every Buhari broadcast leaves the country more forlorn.

    “I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody,” Buhari told us during his inauguration on 29 May 2015. He was upfront with his determination to act differently, whatever that meant.

    Buhari’s key appointments are skewed, especially as they affect the security agencies. The appointments shock believers in the Federal Character Commission, a creation of the Constitution, which they constantly ignore. The explanation is that the appointments were about professionalism, not politics.

    When Lt-Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru, Chief of Army Staff died in a plane last week, many thought Buhari had the chance to prove critics of his appointments wrong. He dashed their wishes again.

    Chief of Army Staff – In praise of PMB’s consistency, Businessday, 29 May 2021

    NIGERIA is an embarrassment to those who hold the country dearly. Mistakes have been made. The worst of the mistakes was thinking – even for a fleeting moment – that Buhari was the solution to whatever disagreement there was among power mongers in 2015. He was not. He has consistently proven he is not about to be.

    Choices Buhari has made since 2015 hammer at his determination to create the divisiveness Obasanjo complains about.
    – Why Obasanjo’s Failed Third Term Haunts Him, Hurts Failing Nigeria, Businessday, 15 September 2020

    THE matter of the day was the padding of the 2023 budget, the last budget of the administration since 2015. It was no longer discussed in hushed tunes. Three Ministers – Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management, and Social Development, Defence, and Health – had publicly accused the Minister of Finance Mrs. Zainab Ahmed of inflating their budgets. Can anywhere be more public than the National Assembly where the allegations were made?

    – Like Buhari, Tinubu starts strong with budget padding, Businessday, 17 March 2024PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari must be the happiest man on earth with the news that Mazi Nnamdi Kanu had been re-arrested almost four years after he fled Nigeria. Those who executed this perfect operation deserve applause for re-affirming that Nigeria has the capacities to deal with her security issues.

    In addition to the 11 charges against him, Minister of Information Alhaji Lai recited some alleged behaviours of Kanu as if they were offences in Nigeria.

    He was living “a five-star life across several countries. He was travelling on chartered private jets, living in luxury apartments and turning out in designing clothes and shoes.

    “Of course, as we all saw, he was wearing an attire made by Fendi, a luxury Italian fashion brand, when he was arrested,’’ Mohammed said, sounding triumphant at the biggest achievement of Buhari’s administration in six years.

    If his security operatives can cross seas and valleys to get Kanu, wherever he was arrested, there is no reason for them not acting similarly in arresting insecurity in Nigeria.

    While Kanu is under-going trial Sheikh Mohammed Gumi is long overdue to be appointed National Security Adviser (North). He knows the bandits, kidnappers, terrorists. He speaks for them. He negotiates for them.

    Gumi has repeatedly stated that without governments meeting the bandits’ gaseous terms there will be no peace. The indecision on Gumi has firmed as decision.

    -Kanu: Buhari’s most notable achievement in six years, Businessday, 3 July 2021

    Finally…
    I said everything I wanted to say about Buhari while he was alive. Nobody can accuse me of speaking ill of the dead, unless Buhari was not alive when he made the various decisions that threw Nigeria into a spin from which a recovery will be long.

    Suddenly, a new Buhari is being invented for us – the man of integrity, incorruptible, a nationalist, a patriot – by those who aim at inheriting his supporters pegged at 12m voters.

    For my other positions on Buhari, please Google Buhari/Ikeddy ISIGUZO.
    May the Almighty rest Buhari.

  • ADC messiahs owe Nigerians apologies for 2014 lies – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    ADC messiahs owe Nigerians apologies for 2014 lies – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

    NIGERIAN politics thrives on a moral deficit. Do you agree? So, why do you still agree that there are lines that must never be crossed? Why are you pained by the lies politicians heap on you on their way to power? They are at it again.

    With nearly two years to the next elections, they have started unleashing their lies about their love for Nigeria. They are latest patriots to rescue Nigerians from the hardship that the same fellows imposed on the country with uncaring policies that saw all sides of Nigerian life decline to unimaged depths.

    Is there any name they did not call Goodluck Jonathan? What story did they not tell about Nigeria collapsing unless they were allowed to assume control?

    They are back to seek rehabilitation as they have lost their hold on power. They cannot live outside power.

    Truth is not permitted here, is a line that fits with most politicians. In rare cases of momentary forgetfulness, semblance of truth seeps out to the annoyance of those who believe they have all tracks covered.

    Ask today’s messiahs who have found shed in the African Democratic Congress, ADC, what suddenly made the All Progressives Congress, APC, unfit for their membership. Almost all those in ADC are haunted by the lies they told Nigerians in 2014. They need bigger lies to cover them. They told lies, they knew they were lies. They deceived gullible Nigerians into handing our country to power mongers.

    Which of them is willing to admit his role in getting Nigeria to where we do not know? They join us in complaining about insecurity, hunger, hardship, poverty, that are roaming all over the land. Could that be their apology? Like in 2014 when they spewed lies everywhere for the 2015 elections, they have started much earlier this time.

    Alhaji Abubakar Atiku propelled APC to prominence in 2015. He was leading to the podium for the party’s ticket when Muhammadu Buhari beat him to it. Atiku relocated to Dubai to count his losses, unavailable to provide critical leadership until he returned to contest in 2019 as presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP,  the same party he abandoned because Jonathan, a sitting president would not be cast aside for Atiku.

    Has Atiku apologised to Nigerians for his part in Nigeria’s precipitous descent to harm? His obsession with being president leaves no room for Atiku to consider how his ambition has affected Nigeria since his on-and-off affiliations with PDP since 2007.

    If ADC is to retrieve whatever is left of Nigeria, should Atiku be waiting to be asked to step down in 2027? He is already campaigning that delegates should decide ADC’s presidential candidate.

    One of the arguments in 2015 was that the North needed to complete its eight years that Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s death abbreviated. Does Atiku remember that? Is he the one to complete the 2027-31 four-year stretch for the South?

    There is Nasir el-Rufai who cannot stand discussions that do not recognise the primacy of cattle over human beings or any security plans that include getting Fulani herders out of the forests and farmers. He supported and campaigned for Tinubu’s victory, our current plight. If Tinubu had appointed him a Minister, would he be in ADC?

    Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi shredded the Governors Forum, he once led, to mark the exodus of PDP Governors to APC, some of those who remained in PDP were dangerous insiders. His expectation was that Buhari would have rewarded his loyalty in 2023 with the APC presidential ticket. He wants to save Nigerians from Tinubu?

    And have you ever wondered what Peter Obi is doing in that crowd? Is he not seeing the signs that ADC is not the coalition to rescue Nigerian? Obi ran with Atiku in 2019 but Obi’s politics should be more elevated than this type of coalition.

    There are others, but these are the most prominent figures in ADC. If you watch, they are consumed with who will be President. They have no document to bring our country back to relevance, save our people from rampaging terrorists in our forests, farms. Tinubu, in rare moments, gives every excuse for not tackling the criminals frontally.

    When we think of voting Tinubu out in 2027, it is not to replace him with those whose selfishness sees them flinging the interest of Nigerians around for them to access power as they have done since 2015.

    In 2019, like now, Tinubu’s government is insensitive, inattentive, uncaring, unprepared to attends to the daily challenges before Nigerians. Nigerians still voted APC because of the weight of the lies they were told by many of the APC messiahs.

    Tinubu, his government, his officials are lethargic. They are short of blaming Nigerians for the state of the country. They could be right.

    After eight years of Buhari blighted Nigeria in ways that left the country beyond recognition, Nigerians gleefully voted for a worse version of Buhari.

    Tinubu is jittery, desperate and will do all he can to cling to power. His admirers say he is a strategist. His strategies leave Nigerians poorer, hungrier, more insecure, driving thousands abroad – abroad now means any country but Nigeria – at the slightest imagined opportunity.

    A coalition of Nigerians who are passionate about the health of our country is required to lead Nigerians out of the current miasma. The present pretenders to that role would have to explain to Nigerians why the lies, hatred, bigotry, and propaganda that they procured in 2015 to sink a government that was by far better than anything that they have supported in the past 10 years.

    Not apologising to Nigerians before assuming they are the new ideal is the sort of arrogance that should have no place in post-Tinubu Nigeria.

    Finally…

    WE heard what Vice President Kashim Shettima said about the fact, constitutional too, that the President cannot remove an elected Councillor not to talk of a Governor. We also understood what he meant.

    Those who understood that to mean that Bola Ahmed Tinubu was wrong to remove Governor Sim Fubara are also right. I have seen a rejoinder from State House which laboured to get people to re-learn, and un-learn how President Goodluck Jonathan did not remove Shettima, as Governor of Borno State in 2014 through state of emergency.

    Why is State House ever scared of history? Shettima’s remarks were at the presenation of “OPL 245: The Inside Story of the $1.3 Billion Oil Block” by Mohammed Bello Adoke, SAN, which held at the Yar’Adua Centre, Abuja, on Thursday, 10 July 2025.

    DONALD Trump, US President, is unaware of very basic things, among them, that Liberia, which was established as a colony for ex-slaves from the US, is an English-speaking country, hence his remark that the President of Liberia speaks “good English”. Obviously, Trump reached his decision too quickly. He should have waited to hear Tinubu’s Chicagoan accent.

    JAMB has spent years praising the efficiency of its systems. The fidelity of the systems is coming under another scrutiny in a matter of months. The highest scorer in JAMB’s just chaotically concluded exam is reportedly a Nigerian university undergraduate. How did he sit for JAMB which claims “nobody can matriculate twice”? The best answer from JAMB is a speculation that he could be a mercenary who wrote the exam for another candidate.

    Isiguzo is a major commentator on minor issues

  • ADC: Memories of a past we never passed – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    ADC: Memories of a past we never passed – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

    THE buzz about a coalition that would breathe life into Nigeria, no matter how small, has collapsed into the African Democratic Party, ADC, a testimony to how mired we are in the past.

    We are in a present worse than our past, even if we decide to count from as recently as 2015 when the All Progressives Congress, APC, lied its way to power with credentials and non-credentials that have thrown Nigeria into circumstances that appear irredeemable.

    APC denuded Nigeria, deluded Nigerians, and left the country in a state where law and order no longer have meaning, rather where justice is brazenly ignored, yet it is still delivered with sardonic elegance, to mock us in line with their shouts of “go to court” after their illegalities.

    See how complicated APC has made Nigeria. We have a President who everything about him is cloudy – name, education, age, parentage, what he did or didn’t do in Chicago. His supporters are digging in, promoting these infamies, and reminding Nigerians that there is no opposition to Tinubu in 2027.

    Mere mortals speak like the Almighty. They speak as if they control the next moment. They are cocksure about their chances. This time they may not bother with the voters.

    It did not start with Tinubu though Tinubu and company laid the foundations that brought Muhammadu Buhari to power telling all types of stories including the one about an ordinary secondary school certificate that Katsina State Ministry of Education, issued a modern result with Buhari’s modern picture. Please note that Katsina State which was created 26 years after Buhari left secondary school issued that result. West African Examinations Council, WAEC, after hesitations over Buhari’s candidacy its examinations, brought a certificate to him. The celebration at the presidential villa that day was as if all Nigeria’s problems had been solved

    Even when Buhari removed Justice Walter Samuel Nkanu Onnoghen as Chief Justice of Nigeria without following constitutional routes, his supporters applauded him. The Supreme Court belatedly confirmed that Onnoghen’s removal was illegal.

    Buhari was the law. Tinubu stepped in with similar attitude of conquering the country, treating the law as he pleases.

    Nigerians abused, lied to, held spell-bound by promises that if a fraction was fulfilled, would have changed the country, have sought help, in the past 15 years to retrieve the country but the wrong champions often stepped up whether as politicians, judges, journalists to change Nigeria.

    Where there are changes, they have been in intentional re-directing of the flow of the nation’s resources to private pockets and purposes.

    The media falls from one incredible mis-step to the other. It is now most notorious for missing moments or messing them up entirely. In keeping with the new role of making the horrendous times more miserable, the leadership Nigeria Union Journalism, NUJ, rolled its 70th into an ignoble affair with the Lifetime Achievement Award on Media Empowerment to former Kogi State Governor Yahaya Bello whose regime was known for maltreating journalists. What did Bello do for NUJ? It has emerged that he impacted journalism, according to NUJ, by prioritising the welfare of journalists in Kogi State and organising training for them. These were the most profound things anyone did for NUJ in 70 years.

    Bello, a suspect in alleged corruption cases, has a running legal battle with EFCC. He is  just a suspect, another explanation for Tinubu congratulating Bello on his 50th birthday.

    Terrorism continues. The attacks and killings in different parts of the country have abated or the reported cases have decreased.

    Prices of food, medical services, education, keep soaring. Those who benefit from the mess parade rosy statistics that stand taller than the poverty in the land. The people’s patience is running out, and the people are availably exploitable.

    ADC lands in the midst of the confused directions. The promoters wear garbs of the new saviours.

    They are well-known to us. Their propaganda, outright lies, and threats to make Nigeria ungovernable in 2015 are still loud and clear, years after running campaigns to grab power. They had no qualms.

    What did they do for Nigerians in the last 10 years except to worsen situations? What are they still talking about except power, never the people

    Their eyes are on who becomes President in 2027. Nothing more. It is the same parochial programme that purposes power over people. They, like APC, place grabbing power over everything.

    Has it occurred to ADC that the most urgent assignment today is to retrieve whatever is left of our country? What are these principalities doing in their various parts of the country to ensure that there would be a country left in 2027?

    Are they interested in measures that will stopping the attacks and killings in different parts of Nigeria? Are they still looking at challenges of Nigeria in terms of the North and South?

    One look at the promoters as they line up for photos, with their smiles, show prominent individuals who led Nigerians through the torments of the last 10 years. They are no apologetic. There are no hints that they understand how badly their self ambitions hurt Nigerians.

    They are on the march again to be President, Vice-President and the like while other Nigerians keep suffering. If they were steadfast, if they had conviction that power was for the benefit of Nigerians, we would not have ended up with a devious past that remains our present.

    The damage of 2015 was too deep. There has been no successful rescue mission. The people we need in 2027 are believers in a new Nigeria where “no man is oppressed”, a Nigeria founded on “justice”‘ which implicates “the security and welfare of the people”‘ as “the primary purpose of government”.

    Neither APC nor ADC fits that frame today. Let the searches continue.

    Finally…

    NYESOM Wike, Minister of Federal Capital Territory, FCT, will easily fill the dance step gaps that the departure of Rotimi Amaechi and Nasir el-Nasir from the All Progressives Congress, APC, will cause. A dancing trio that included Adam Oshiomhole was the biggest promise an APC rally held.

    The more sight part of that programme is when el-Rufai and Oshiomhole, tall as they are, bending so low that only their brooms are visible. Wike has been adding new steps to his repository. An advisory for APC – Wike only dances to beats from his personal band once Port Harcourt-based but now resident in Abuja to match the demanding schedules of Wike’s office.

    ABUJA needs Tinubu’s attention when he returns from his very successful cultural trip to St. Lucia. You will hear more about St. Lucia whose students Tinubu has promised scholarships in Nigeria, though Abuja’s primary school students have been sitting at home since February 2025 when their teachers started a strike over unpaid wage.

    Gilbert Chagoury, the one you know, has a huge influence on St. Lucia. He is the island’s Ambassador to the Holy See (Vatican) and UNESCO where Chagoury led the campaign that won St. Lucia the presidency of the UNESCO Executive Board from 2023-2025.

    Isiguzo is a major commentator on minor issues

  • Benue: Nigerians don’t need peace without justice – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    Benue: Nigerians don’t need peace without justice – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

    Everyone is crying out for peace, yes, None is crying out for justice. I don’t want no peace, I need equal rights and justice. Got to get it! Equal rights and justice.

    I’m fighting for it! Equal rights and justice. – Lyrics from the 1977 album title song, Equal Rights, of Jamaican reggae legend Peter Tosh (1944-87).

    WHAT informs the tardy, ticky-tacky, trite policies of governments when Nigerians are attacked, hundreds killed and their farms are devastated?

    Are there policies, in these instances, what instruct that the President must ignore the attacks, drag his feet until people start shouting at him, and he makes the trip with obvious reluctance?

    Does Nigeria have a play book from where Presidents, notably elected on the All Progressives Congress platform copy this distressing behaviour?

    President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had no business being around Benue State if all he had to tell the people with, all the sorrow, depression and uncertainties around them, was nothing.

    Tinubu was exception for haranguing President Goodluck Jonathan with social media tweets after tweets blaming him for doing nothing about insecurity. Has Tinubu forgotten?

    Here is the summary of Tinubu addressing a people who have lost so many lives, and know that the show in Makurdi was not a guarantee that another attack was not looming:

    a. I had to cancel my scheduled visited to Kaduna State, to commission projects by the state government, to be here.

    He possibly expected a round of applause. Such great sacrifice that the President made. Coming really inconvenienced him. He must have trekked from Abuja to Makurdi, where school children lined the streets, under the rain, waiting for his arrival. Some of those children could be sick now.

    Why did it take the President five days after the killings to visit? He was busy in Abuja commissioning water and road projects – Benue could wait, someone reasoned, justifying it with the fact that the President had no powers to raise the dead. Why the hurry?

    b. Live in peace and harmony with each other. Reconcile with each other.

    Tinubu could have copied those lines from Buhari who in 2018 visited Benue 12 weeks after New Year killings that that lasted 11 days and claimed more lives, according to villagers, than the 73 buried in Makurdi.

    “Your Excellency, the Governor, and all the leaders here, I am appealing to you to try to restrain your people. I assure you that the Police, the Department of State Security and other security agencies had been directed to ensure that all those behind the mayhem get punished. I ask you in the name of God to accommodate your country men. You can also be assured that I am just as worried, and concerned with the situation,’ Buhari told Benue leaders in Abuja, two weeks after the killings.

    Note that the duty of restraint was imposed on those who were mourning their dead.

    Something worse happened. Buhari’s spokesman Femi Adeshina schooled Benue people on another occasion, “Ancestral attachment? You can only have ancestral attachment when you are alive. If you are dead , how does the attachment matter? The National Economic Council that recommended ranching didn’t just legislate it; there were recommendations.

    “So, if your State does not have land for ranching, it is understandable. Not every State will have land for ranches. But, where you have land and you can do something, please do for peace. What will the land be used for if those who own it are dead at the end of the day?”

    The same Benue is still the issue today.

    In 2025, Tinubu compares our lives with cattle and came to the sound judgement that Nigerian lives were more important than cattle.

    The event on Wednesday was a show once an official announcement by Benue State Government asked support groups to turn up in their colours to give the President a colourful and rousing reception. It was a political party rally. Was it a surprise that the condolence visit was bereft of the sobriety of mourning more than 200 people?

    “The value of human life is greater than that of a cow. We are here to govern, not to bury,” Tinubu told the stakeholders meeting. To Governor Hyacinth Alia, “Your political enemies don’t want you to succeed. Are you just realising that?”. Politics, always politics

    Great as Tinubu’s sudden wisdom seems in realising the importance of human life, he may be re-starting the human life-cow debate.

    June last year, a ranking Senator debated on the floor of the Senate that cattle were citizens of Nigeria and have constitutional rights. He was pained at the denial of citizenship rights to cattle. The debate was on a bill for ranching.

    Look at his pedigree, my assumption is that pedigree still has meaning. He was Governor of Kebbi State for eight years, was elected a Senator in 2007, a position he left to be President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s Minister of Federal Capital Territory for two years. He has had an uninterrupted tenure in the Senate since 2015.

    His name? Adamu Aliero.

    Aliero is well-educated. The 1980 graduate of political science knows Nigeria well enough and the damage that open grazing of cows has done around the country.

    His service in the Nigeria Immigration and in the Customs and Excise Service took him to different parts of Nigeria. He wasted the experience in preference for a parochial, dim debate on shared citizenship with cows.

    “Cows are not citizens of Nigeria, Senator Aliero, are you arguing with me? The Section you are referring to is talking about citizens of Nigeria. And cows are not citizens of Nigeria. Cows can come from Niger, Chad or anywhere,” Senate President Obong Godswill Akpabio, shouted.

    Tinubu has the likes of Aliero to contend with as ranching is proposed again as a solution to the wasting of lives that is hinged on open grazing.

    In the light of these staged confusions, Nigerians are not asking for equal rights, as Peter Tosh sang 48 years ago. equal rights with cows?

    What we want is justice. The emptiness of peace and harmony stares us daily in the face. How do the living reconcile with those they killed?

    The face of the woman tending her child in the hospital, a child who will grow up with one hand chopped off by those who kill and maim without hinderance, speaks of disdain and anger at the Tinubu crowd that flooded the hospital in the false sympathy that cannot provide solutions to the killings. She simply turned her face away from the visitors, attired as if they were celebrating the event.

    Nigerians, everywhere, want justice. The killings are very wild spread. Words will not bring about justice.

    Too many reasons are given for the attacks that started as farmers-herders clashes to genocidal attacks, and are also by terrorists. No reasons are enough to allow their persistence and the patience of the government.

    Having known the reasons for the attacks, what is the government doing? Waiting for the same attacks to repeat the same message with the same sentiments?

    For starts, Tinubu can punish those who refuse his orders to arrest the killers. There are too many excuses that are being turned to reasons.

    The criminals perpetuating these mayhems no matter who they are, or where they issue from, should be arrested, and punished for their crimes? Or do we now have laws that refuse to punish criminals because they are foreigners or herders?

    Nigerians are tired of these tragedies being turned to comedies with upscaled expertise. Now that Tinubu has spoken of the importance of human beings, we want to see his deeds reflect it.

    ISIGUZ0 is a major commentator on minor issues

  • Happy 90th birthday, our Uncle Sam – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    Happy 90th birthday, our Uncle Sam – By Ikeddy Isiguzo

    By Ikeddy ISIGUZO

    Media in person… The Best Newspaper Man… A human being extraordinaire… Teacher… Mentor… Father… Immeasurably kind in words, deeds and indeed… Humour in motion

    Uncle Sam, as we popularly call Sam Amuka, no titles, no frills, all thrills, is all things to all peoples and more. Every moment spent with him inspires, encourages and leaves one more educated. I am a beneficiary of his well of wisdom and goodness.

    He does not celebrate his birthday and makes sure he is away from where you can reach him easily on 13 June. I wish him every good health as he circles the years. May the Almighty’s mercies be with him, always. Happy birthday Sir!

    EVERYBODY calls him Uncle Sam. Well, almost everybody. Some call him Sad Sam after a column he wrote in the previous century.

    Ironically, there was hardly anything sad about the column which was his own introspective offerings on matters that he elevated to importance through style, substance, and situations.

    His real name is Samson Oruru Amuka-Pemu of Sapele, Delta State. He likes things to be kept simple. He started with a surgery on his own name.

    Uncle Sam one day declared that “double-names” were forbidden as byline. He said he was Sam Amuka. Until that day, he was Sam Amuka-Pemu.

    Tope Awe, one of many former staff of The Punch, who joined Vanguard and flourished with his pioneer works in reporting Tourism, could have caused the name policy. His byline had burgeoned to Ogbeni Temitope Awelewa. He had to revert to Tope Awe, though whenever Uncle Sam was within earshot, one of us would shout Ogbeni Temitope Awelewa. The owner of the name didn’t need to be around.

    The Vanguard Publisher and Chairman told me he was no longer the only Chairman in Vanguard. He makes light of things.

    A Chairman of the Printers Union entered his office to discuss a looming strike. Without waiting to be offered a seat, he pulled out one and got comfortable in it. Uncle Sam mustered all his anger to thunder, “Did I offer you a seat?”.

    His answer hit the Chairman. “Uncle Sam let’s sit down and discuss this issue (the strike) as Chairman to Chairman.” The Publisher just burst into laughter, and the discussion held, Chairman to Chairman.

    Uncle Sam is man of immense character, humane beyond words, and very knowledgeable about things. He is witty. He neither presumes nor assumes. He is always upfront in asking for clarification if he was unsure of an uttered word, such humility.

    He is kind. He spreads the kindness to the generous compliments he pays when a script excites him. The sparkles could be seen in his eyes, the same eyes that would not miss a word or punctuation that dimmed the fidelity of the script.

    Uncle Sam had a way with those who brought words to life, and translated events to cartoons and pictures. His relationship with Bisi Lawrence, Uncle BizLaw to all of us, except Uncle Sam who called him Bisi, was personal, had longevity, but I think it was deeply rooted in respect for Uncle BizLaw’s immense fecundity with words, written, spoken and the high quality of his scripts.

    I can only imagine what Uncle BizLaw would have written about Uncle Sam at 90. There were no birthday celebrations in the 47 years I have known him.

    When Uncle Sam was 88, two years ago, he called me. “Why did you tell people it is my birthday?” “At least I didn’t tell them you were in Abuja,” I retorted. “Go away.” In the previous years, he would leave town a few days to his birthday.

    BizLaw passed in November 2020, I paid my tribute, “Uncle BizLaw had impactful presence at Vanguard and beyond, in words, indeed and in deeds. His wordsmithery was inimitable. His columns milked moments without being momentary. We have lost one of the best raconteurs, with delivery doused in sobering timbres. May the Almighty rest him.’’

    One sunny afternoon in September 1978, aggressive steps were hitting the wooden decking of the one-storey building that accommodated the editorial offices of The Punch at Mangoro, Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway. “Uncle Sam is coming,” someone whispered.

    He got into the Newsroom, asked a few questions and he was gone. I later learnt he was the Managing Director. His French suit was impressive. His bushy hair appeared to have combed itself. Moments after he was gone, his perfume hung in the Newsroom. He had style, and steeze as we say these days.

    When next I met him, at Vanguard, five years later, Chris Okojie presented me to him as a staff for the Sports Desk. He nodded his approval. I spent 27 years of almost daily contacts with Uncle Sam in Vanguard, years of learning and re-learning.

    Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe’s “death” of November 1989 was an unmeasurable embarrassment to the entire Nigerian media. Days after we knew Zik was alive, the early editions of the paper, and the weekend copies that were produced days in advance, still had Zik dead.

    “When next this Zik dies,” Uncle Sam said, “we would only announce the first-year remembrance”. His wits were handy.

    Uncle Sam placed the independence of Vanguard over money, important as it was to get things done. Mr. Adeoye Roluga, our first Advert Vanguard Manager was justifiably angry when a piece I wrote in 1985 so peeved a confectionery company that it pulled out its year’s run of advertisements worth N45,000, enough money to pay my salaries for six years! Uncle Sam’s decision was final: they can take their money. He agreed with what I wrote. The company never advertised with Vanguard until three years later.

    In a recent conversation Uncle Sam said I had broken his records. “Which records? Uncle Sam,” I retorted. “You were so good, Sir, that nobody could keep pace with recording your expansive milestones, not to talk of breaking your records”. He laughed. He taught us well, especially that silences, subtleties, and substance were better measures of power than loudness. He actually has a tiny voice.

    Vanguard was established to propagate a better society. Some staff ended up brutalised in detentions, others were threatened, but we never wavered.

    Uncle Sam cared. I returned from work one day, in the heat of the June 12 agitations, to find the ceiling of the living room broken. Nothing was stolen. It seemed that the mark was to tell me, “We know where you live”. Uncle Sam asked if I wanted the house swept for bugs. I told him I would cherish living with their listening devices, if any.

    Uncle Sam’s records of generosity, kind spirits, forbearance (who else lends newsprint, often not returned, to the competition?) are too challenging. The records on journalism are simply unattainable.

    Congratulations, Uncle Sam, and thanks very much for the memories and moments you gifted us, and the global village, in these 90 years.

    Finally…

    DEMOCRACY Day, June 12, came with its highs and lows, most disappointingly, the undemocratic bills that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu sent to the Senate to deepen the undemocratic rule in Rivers State which many had expected the President to stop. A muddled honours list with the living added to the dead, awarding the same honours to people who have had them for years or repeating the honour, reflected chaotic democracy in practice. In a flowery speech that was alien to the realities of Nigeria’s democracy, Rivers State and its undemocratic government was not mentioned in Tinubu’s Democracy Day speech.

    SENATOR Henry Seriake Dickson’s rejections of undemocratic tendencies in Nigeria’s democracy – recorded after the joint session at the National Assembly – in a video that went viral, garnering millions of views on social media platforms, within hours of its release, confronted the contentions with truth. Nigerians are agreeing that a lot could have done, differently, better.

     

    Isiguzo is a major commentator on minor issues