Point One

Unless an appellate court upturns the verdict down the road, activist-entertainer and self-styled ‘Area Father,’ Charles Oputa better known as Charly Boy, will be N50million richer, courtesy of a liability fee due to him from the Nigeria Police. A Federal High Court in Abuja, last Monday, ordered the force along with two top brass – the Police Inspector-General and Federal Capital Territory Commissioner – to pay Charly Boy the N50million as compensation, in addition to rendering him public apology in two national newspapers. These orders resulted from the court having found them in violation of the entertainer’s fundamental rights during a public rally held August 2017 in Abuja. Oputa had spearheaded the protest march last year to ask President Muhammadu Buhari, who was then on a protracted medical vacation in London, to either resume at once or resign from office. Not that the protest was universally applauded, as many viewed it to be in affront of Nigerian cultural sensibility o...

Flowery use of language and grand sloganeering are staples of electioneering almost everywhere. As such, oratory and poetic skills have always been assets that are helpful for a typical politician on the hustings – even the average or outrightly incompetent one. With words and slogans, he could build fanciful bubble castles that would be a mirage to actualise when he may really need to. Again, let’s be clear that this tendency is nearly universal and by no means peculiar to our country. Most politicians swashbuckle with lofty promises to the electorate during electioneering, but eventually have to deal with ugly brass tacks if and when they get the power they seek. The ultimate test of every elected politician is how well he had prepared for the crude reality that governance inevitably involves. One-time New York Governor Mario Cuomo fancifully articulated this fact in his famous saying that you campaign in poetry, but govern in prose. Nigeria is in the thick of ...