Point One

Verbal fisticuffs are flying between President Muhammadu Buhari and former President Olusegun Obasanjo, and you couldn’t ask to be more enthralled if you had the ringside at legendary Muhammad Ali’s 1974 epic fight with George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire. By the time the two leaders are done with their face-off, one of them would be conclusively demystified. It is to be seen, on one hand, whether the factor of Obasanjo’s antagonism that famously hallmarked the unraveling of past administrations in Nigeria’s recent history remains potent enough to upset Buhari’s chances of re-election to a second tenure of office in the impending 2019 poll; or, on the other hand, whether the former leader has outlived his touted relevance in king-making and public mood conditioning. Either way, one of them will come out finally worsted. Buhari and Obasanjo were celebrated allies until the former leader issued a press statement last January in which he tore into the incumbent’s perfor...

With the 2019 general election only some echo distance away, it is evident that the prevalent culture in the Nigerian political class yet leaves much to be desired. At the last count, the quest for electoral votes at whatever level seems equated to an all-out war. And whereas there is relentless public demand on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to upscale the overall integrity of balloting in this country, which the electoral umpire obviously is making necessary efforts to meet up, political actors appear unwilling or simply unable to break lose from tendencies of desperation and impunity that have historically hobbled our electoral democracy. And so, electoral politics in our country remains a matter of – as they say in backwater lingo – confusion break bone . Famous Irish-British playwright and polemicist, George Bernard Shaw, wrote that: “An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul conce...