When will Nigerians be rid of politicians without ideology, who simply go from appointment to appointment, or from party to party, producing nothing, leaving no impact yet expecting to survive at all cost? Beyond our obsession over the “low voter turnout,” these are the questions we should be asking ourselves.
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Tip of a New Dawn
What role should our senators play in enabling a better economy?
A NUMBER of analysts and gender activists bemoan the low number of female political representatives in Nigeria (only six women won or retained their Senate seats in the just concluded 2019 general elections). However, beyond this appalling statistic, I am more concerned by the policies senators champion, no matter their gender.
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An election based on class lines: The beginning of something new?
THE outcome of this election has revealed a division of public opinion on class lines: Looking at the electoral map, it seems President Muhammadu Buhari lost in many areas with a high concentration of affluent Nigerians and won in zones with a higher number of underprivileged people.
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Does the West mean well for Nigeria?
OUR contemporary national life and politics is a continuation of a disastrous trend etched out during colonisation. Why was Africa colonised? The short answer: competition between European nations in the late nineteenth century, juxtaposed with economic depression in Europe. Europe needed both natural resources and markets for its products. For the avoidance of doubt, Africa wasn’t colonised because it was “inferior” or needed to become “civilised” through the “kind” efforts of its colonial masters.
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Whose interests should government serve: The many or The few?
THIS question should be of particular interest to Nigerians as we prepare to vote in yet another election. Nigerian governments have traditionally taken a very conservative stance on social issues, choosing to support private businesses belonging to their associates over ordinary people: rather than attempt to fix the structural conditions enabling poverty, the choice has often been to pretend, for example, that foreign direct investment, FDI, alone can lift Nigerians out of poverty.
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‘Atikulated’ slips and questions unanswered
LAST week Kadaria Ahmed, host of “The candidates” interviewed PDP Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi with interesting results. Atiku said corruption is “the use of your privileged position to enrich yourself, your relatives or friends”. Interestingly, during a business summit in Lagos recently, he said, on live television: “I am not going to enrich members of my family but my friends.”
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Political amnesia in defence of corruption and the status quo
IT has often been said that Nigerians, the political elite in particular, suffer from acute amnesia and a tendency to re-write history to suit the political exigencies of the day. It’s important to note the real reason behind this penchant for “repackaging” the past which is the defence of the status quo.
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Does belonging to particular ethnic group make allowances for corruption?
IF “stealing isn’t corruption” perhaps this is why a section of the country is intent on ignoring allegations of wrongdoing and insisting their kinsmen can’t be investigated or tried, otherwise there’ll be “trouble.” Many people don’t hate corruption, they simply despise being left out of it and it is now commonplace to hear excuses replace important questions such as: are the allegations true?
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Electioneering and partisanship in the age of fake news
NIGERIA is one of those countries where, every time you think you’ve seen it all, something or someone intervenes to prove to you the sky is truly the limit in terms of the bizarre and extreme lengths politicians are ready to go to score a point.
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Nigeria’s absent middle class: A threat to democracy
THE significant disparities between rich and poor in Nigeria no longer invite much comment or analysis: poverty, despite political rhetoric, is more or less accepted as the capitalist norm and many have been content to watch the middle class gradually disappear, squeezed into in-existence by systemic corruption and economic inefficiency. Interestingly, in other West African countries which haven’t had the Nigerian experience of military rule (Senegal and Ivory Coast, for example), the middle class lives a life that only few could dream of in Nigeria. It isn’t strange in such countries to find individuals buying yoghuts, meats and hams which in Nigeria are reserved for a small elite.
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