Source: Vanguard newspapers
Splattered on the several mainstream media outlets are the reports on bombing attacks on electoral office and polling station in central and northwestern Nigeria. From the Oyinbo-land I live in Upper Midwestern U.S, one could easily be made to believe that the election in Nigeria on Saturday April 9 may not be any different from previous ones marred with widespread violence and electoral fraud. This may not be the case this year. It does appear the violence is limited to just few areas, and the election has been relatively free and fair. Continue reading…
Can any good come out from the information contained in the United States secret cables on Nigeria released and published by Wikileaks? Beyond ‘filling-in-the-gaps’ on some topical issues and confirming what many have suspected all along, does the Wikileaks revelation offer any thing more than the fact that Nigeria is hopelessly trapped in the quagmire of corruption? Continue reading…
Nigeria National Assembly complex, Abuja
Nothing seems to be making sense in Nigeria any more (has anything ever, really?). As the uproar continues over Sanusi’s revelation, the enormous burden of keeping the 469 legislators becomes even more apparent: annual salary (plus benefits) for those in the House of Representatives and Senate are in the range of 204 million and 240 million naira, respectively. In US-dollar translation, Nigeria pays each of its 469 lawmakers more than one million dollars each year! Continue reading…
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, is going to take some flak from federal legislators over his statement that the national assembly consumes 25 percent of federal spending.
“We need power, we need infrastructure, so we need to start looking at the structure of expenditure and make it more consistent with the development initiative of the country”, he stated. “It not good enough that a quarter of the federal spending was being consumed by the National Assembly instead of using it to bring real development to the country”
Continue reading…
An editorial from NEXT newspaper provides some impetus to comment of the recent event in Delta state, excerpt:
On 9th November 2010, Mr. Uduaghan was booted out of office by the Benin Court of Appeal ruling which nullified his election. The court in effect upheld the submission of Great Ogboru, the candidate of the Democratic People’s Party (DPP) who said elections did not take place. In other words, the courts agreed that for three and a half years, Mr. Uduaghan illegally occupied the office of governor of Delta State based on elections that were nonexistent. The implication of this judgement is clear; Mr. Uduaghan ‘rigged’ his way into office, and this is the man that our President is happily endorsing for public office. Mr. Jonathan’s decision raises questions not only about the president’s judgement but also the sincerity of his avowed commitment to not just the rule of law and order but the entrenchment of democracy in our society.
The meaning of this ‘presidential’ endorsement is simple:
Uduaghan did nothing wrong, even if he had been occupying for 3+ years an elective position acquired by fraud. The definition of electoral fraud is not applicable in this instance; therefore there is no ground—morally or legally, for sanctions. This is a grotesque distortion of democratic values.
Is Nigeria full of problems or opportunity rich? Until one start seeing the opportunities embedded in the national problems, any attempt to problem-solve is most likely to fail. Failure leads to stagnation and regression; exactly what we have in our hands in Nigeria at the moment. Continue reading…
Looking through the pictures below, I wonder what governance (the activity of governing) is if indicators such as simple and vital infrastructure like motorable roads are not available. Continue reading…