Point One

History has a way of repeating itself. When you think it’s curtains effectively on a particular trend, it shows up again, although in a different context and, perhaps, the strangest of circumstances. That was what happened recently with the rogue declaration of a winner in the Adamawa State governorship poll by suspended Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) Hudu Yunusa-Ari. Barrister Ari made his way into the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) collation centre in Yola early on 16th April to declare All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate Senator Aishatu Dahiru Ahmed, popularly known as Binani, as winner of the governorship supplementary election held on 15th April. The electoral commission had conducted the supplementary poll to determine the winner after the main election held on 18th March ended inconclusive owing to cancellation of results in polling units where there was over-voting. Prior to the election being declared inconclusive, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ...

There’s an age-old maxim that whether a cup is seen as half full or half empty depends on the worldview of the person making the judgment. And that worldview is informed obviously by the individual’s mindset: an optimistic mindset would see the cup in the progressive dimension of being half full, whereas a pessimistic mindset would view it in the regressive mould of being half empty. To be clear, it’s the same cup with the same volume of content, difference is only in the viewer’s perspective  When you consider efforts being plied to salvage Nigeria’s healthcare system from collapse, you can’t help seeing similar dynamics at work. A bill was lately initiated in the House of Representatives to curb the emigration of medics from this country towards ensuring better healthcare for the average Nigerian. The bill seeks to bond graduates in medical and dental fields to practising in Nigeria for a minimum of five years before being granted full licence by the Medical and Dental Council of...

It began like a rash partisan claim. But it has since gained traction as a genuine threat, having been formally corroborated by Nigeria’s secret police, the Department of State Services (DSS). Some people allegedly were plotting to foist an interim government on this country despite successful conduct of the 2023 general election by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), the commission’s return of winners elected at the polls and imminent transition to new dispensations at the national and state levels. If it were some silly joke, the joke had become like a handshake taken beyond the elbow. Masterminds of the alleged plot are ‘crazy baldheads’ that legendary Bob Marley would say should be chased out of town. When the alarm was first raised, it was pertaining to the fuel scarcity and currency crunch suffered by Nigerians in the build-up to the national elections on 25th February and state polls on 18th March. Those crises were alleged to have been orchestrated to hinder t...

 Former President Donald Trump is a master of political manoeuvring. He’s made history yet again by being the first ex-American leader to be criminally indicted and dragged to court for trial. But he deftly leveraged his tangle with the law to press his re-bid for political power by casting himself as a victim of relentless witch-hunt aimed at keeping him out of the White House in 2024. Nobody does it like Trump! The former president was last Tuesday arraigned in a Lower Manhattan courthouse in New York on 34 felony charges involving falsifying business records, to which he pleaded “not guilty.” The case being made against him by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is that before the United States 2016 election, then-candidate Trump hatched a scheme to buy up salacious information about his personal life to prevent voters finding out about it, and then falsified business records to conceal the true nature of the deal. Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, allegedly pai...

 Nigeria’s 2023 general election has come and gone, bequeathing interesting insights into how far the country has come in electoral democracy. National elections into the presidency and national assembly chambers held on 25th February, and polls into governorship offices in 28 states and houses of assembly in all 36 states of the federation on 18th March. Governorship election did not take place in Anambra, Bayelsa, Edo, Ekiti, Imo, Kogi, Osun and Ondo states because those states are off the general election cycle. By now, races in most electoral constituencies have been called except in Adamawa and Kebbi states where the governorship contests were ruled inconclusive by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) pending re-run polls in some micro-constituencies, and legislative races in about 13 states where supplementary polls are impending. INEC has announced Saturday, 15th April, as the date for the outstanding re-run and supplementary polls. Perspectives differ on how...

 It’s nearly two weeks since the Supreme Court overruled the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on its naira swap policy, but Nigerians yet struggle with scarcity of cash and gridlock in digital banking for daily transactions. The regulatory bank is playing dumb on the apex court’s verdict, and so is the Federal Government despite that President Muhammadu Buhari took frontal ownership of the policy through a broadcast on 16th February approving the use of old N200 notes till 10th April, out of the currency denominations declared to have ceased to be legal tender since 10th February. In other words, the authorities appear to have found a convenient turf in a brutalised citizenry to test the limits of obduracy against judicial supremacy.   CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele had on 26th October, last year, announced the policy by which he said the N200, N500 and N1,000 denominations were being redesigned and the old notes withdrawn from circulation. The regulatory banker cited as a maj...

Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chieftain, Senator Dino Melaye, has never been someone constrained by civility in public comportment. He expresses himself impulsively, and at times with grotesque exertions bordering on the comical. One image of him that endures in memory was from way back in 2007, at the early stages of his National Assembly (NASS) career. There on the rostrum in the House of Representatives was torn-vested Honourable Melaye who, as a member of the green chamber, dug in at the side of then House Speaker Patricia Etteh and waved his shirt that he had pulled off as he fiercely defended Etteh against internal rebellion by a so-called Integrity Group. Not that he succeeded with that pitch, because the first and till date only ‘Madam Speaker’ in Nigeria’s history was displaced by the insurrection after barely five months in the saddle. Later when he  moved to the Senate chamber and crisscrossed between PDP and the All Progressives Congress (APC), and even in the last few...