Point One

 When a virulent hurricane slams into an unyielding rock like the Gibraltar, the turf of encounter gets severely weather beaten though neither the rock nor the wild storm become overawed, but neither could as well claim to emerge better off from the tangle. That is what has happened in Kaduna State following last week’s showdown between the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) led by Ayuba Wabba and the administration of Governor Nasir el-Rufai. Many sane hours now after that face-off, both sides must be wondering whether what’s been gained was worth the economic and human loss to the bullish rage, more so that they’ve only gone as far as where they should have started out if common sense had prevailed. Later in the week, the state government and labour congress were herded back to the negotiation table where they had postured on not stooping to – thanks to mediation by Labour Minister Chris Ngige. The pie seems more humble on the part of the el-Rufai administration that had carried on in...

 Some blokes get stunningly foolhardy and irreverent in adventure. And they rub it into an entire nation’s face. They broke into the presidential complex known as Aso Rock, Nigeria’s seat of power and presumably its most secured geographical space, in repeated burglary attempts and even got within a daring distance of the villa where the President – the symbol of our sovereignty – and his family are quartered. What impudence! What impious temerity!  One suspect made the first assault penultimate Thursday on the residence of Administration Officer Maikano Abdullahi, on a street next to the presidential villa. He apparently wasn’t caught, as we have the privilege of presidential communication to know that the police are hunting the daredevil. And as if to reinforce the impunity, burglars returned some four days later for another assault on the same street near the villa, this time at the residence of Chief of Staff to the President, Professor Ibrahim Gambari. They came in the we...

If he were to suddenly pull off his cassock and take to stomping on the soap box, Catholic priest and Spiritual Director of Adoration Ministry, Enugu Nigeria (AMEN), Reverend Father Ejike Mbaka, has enough cult following to make a successful career switch. He went momentarily out of circulation last week and his ‘disappearance’ triggered a mob reaction that dislocated the calm in Enugu where he is based and reverberated across the country. He is only a parish priest in the Catholic church, but he has a big profile on national canvass. Mbaka fights battles on many fronts. Call him a political priest and you’re bang on point. Against the run of stiff reservedness and shyness from murky politics that characterises the clergy, he swims in the murk and openly pitches camp with political actors as negates conventional priestly neutrality. He usually makes his alignment known through prophetic projections that he has been quite lucky with fulfilment rate. But his fiery political activism tips...

 When microblogging and social networking giant, Twitter, announced mid-April that it would site its African base in Ghana, Nigerian media players came under the cudgel for making their country lose out. Information and Culture Minister Lai Mohammed said they were to blame for de-marketing Nigeria.  The minister rightly observed that the natural expectation was for Nigeria with 25.4million Twitter users to be the hub of the big-tech’s African operations, especially in this part of the continent as opposed to Ghana with 8million Twitter users. He held that the decision was not commercial or business-informed, granting however that the company reserved the right to choose where to site it head office. Then, he called out journalists for censure, saying that was what you get when you de-market your own country and lessons should be learnt on how to better manage the nation’s image. “The media is more to blame for this, which most times exaggerate the challenges in the country. At...

He bestrode spiked but cloistered terraces of power for all of three decades and was on sure course for longer tenancy, having won an election where he was only nominally challenged by feeble political opposition. But he put aside all of that for a while and took on military opposition from rebel fighters on the harsh turf of battle frontlines, where he sustained injuries that he never recovered from. That was the life of Idriss Déby Itno, the ruler of Chad who died last week, a day after he was declared winner of a presidential poll. Sixty-eight-year-old Déby got the ticket for a sixth term in power by a landslide of 79.3 percent of votes in provisional results announced by his country’s electoral body on Monday, last week. But he postponed his victory speech to supporters and rather headed off to join Chadian troops battling rebels who had launched a major offensive on election day in the restive north of the country. Those supporters were still in celebration when, on Tuesday, he wa...

Former President Goodluck Jonathan is in perfect stead to take a broad overview of the Nigerian electoral process and make suggestions that could make the system work better. Amidst pervasive sit-tight syndrome in Africa, he was the first and perhaps only leader yet on the continent to concede defeat in an election he contested as an incumbent even before the poll was formally called by the umpire. Since he lost re-election as Nigeria’s leader in 2015, he has postured as a statesman and has been enlisted by multilateral agencies to lead observer missions to elections in African countries and beyond. Thus, he is perceived as having learnt by personal practice and by observing practices in other milieu what it takes to have elections that come high on the integrity scale. The ex-president early last week shared perspectives on what ails our elections in this country and remedial steps that could be taken towards meeting up with global best practice. Speaking during a media visit in Abuja...

 When he set about his official tasks on Tuesday, last week, former Inspector-General of Police (IGP) Mohammed Adamu couldn’t have guessed he was headed for status duality within the span of the day. He began the day as Nigeria’s police supremo and travelled from the Force Headquarters in Abuja to Owerri, the Imo State capital, to assess the damage done by gunmen and arsonists who had stormed the Imo police command headquarters and the Owerri facility of the National Correctional Service early on Monday and set those places on fire. Also at the correctional facility, 1,844 prisoners were sprung free by the assailants who got away after the savage attacks without been apprehended. Expectedly, Adamu felt rudely affronted by the attacks as then chief internal security minder of this country and must have thought it helped the narrative to name culprits, even though no suspect had been arrested by security operatives. Upon his arrival in the Imo capital, he fingered members of the outl...