The drama of political bad manners in Rivers State is about to enter the ‘last corner’. Incumbent governor Mr. Siminalayi Fubara has dealt a survival kick after being pushed to the wall for most of his one year tenure. In quick succession, he has turned the table...
CHIDI AMUTA On Sunday
Putin is nearby. Precisely, Russia’s ambitious global influencer of illiberal order has docked next door. In Niger Republic to be exact. At the end of April, the military junta in Niger kicked out the American military advisers and tiny troop contingent from their country. Earlier, they had forced...
On many fronts, America is showcasing the many burdens and benefits of democracy. Most Washington politicians are united in their support for Israel. But out on the streets, many Americans are opposed to Israel’s raging genocidal onslaught on Gaza and other Palestinian enclaves. While Congress had little trouble...
Money is perhaps a homeless vagrant. It has no nationality or permanent homestead in real terms. It goes and stays only where its masters are wise, prudent and far sighted. But in a world dominated by nations and their interests, real money is first a national...
On the technical matters of electricity supply and consumption rates, I am just a layman. I fare even worse when it comes to engaging professional technocrats and technicians on the arithmetic of pricing public goods and services. On goods that ought to be available to all...
Within the diverse pantheon of African rulership, something curious is emerging. In many ways, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda is fast emerging as a model of the transformation of democracy into authoritarianism in Africa. While Museveni has retained his nationalist streak in the fight against the global...
Nigeria’s endemic insecurity took a different turn last week. Sixteen active duty soldiers were ambushed and killed by presumed youth militants in the Okuama area of Delta State. Not only were the soldiers killed, their remains were reportedly treated with barbaric disrespect and indignity. The most significant...
Nigeria’s now perennial insecurity has been damaged by political laziness. Every two- penny politician has developed a habit of weaponizing insecurity as political language. In the process, very little effort or rigour is devoted to the reality of what we are dealing with. Even those who are paid...
Among the pantheon of today’s political godlings, perhaps Senate President Mr. Godswill Akpabio is the epitome of the spirit of the times. An embodiment of power and delusion, Akpabio’s pronouncements on the state of the nation resonate with echoes of emptiness and grand hallucinations. The impression is...
In more sensible places, President Tinubu’s job approval rating is so woeful that he should have been job hunting by now. In the United Kingdom, the opposition would have called for snap elections to test his popularity and probably throw him out of 10 Downing. In the...
It is time to pay homage to the place of my beginnings. I was born and grew up mostly in Aba. Something in me still looks nostalgically back to and draws inspiration from those beginnings. It is the beauty of every yard as a shop in front...
Nigeria’s litany of troubles has finally anchored on two basic existential matters. Insecurity and hunger. We are all very unsafe and now the vast majority of our people are very hungry and angry. Of the two urgencies, the rise of mass hunger is indeed a novel addition to...
The United States presidential election in November is looking more like a referendum. Though intended as a democratic ritual, it could end up as a choice between democracy and authoritarianism. That at least is what the rhetoric and track record of the two most likely...
President Bola Tinubu has just jetted out to France on a ‘private visit’. He is not back in the country till sometime in the first week of February. We are not told when precisely to expect him back in the country. That is the much information that...
Two weeks ago, this column in a piece entitled “Neither at War Nor in Peace” lamented that Nigeria has entered a new normal. We are neither a nation at peace or in a declared war. Instead, we are perennially in a state of psychological and physical siege. Even in...
In the new world, we differ decisively from our children. We read and reflect; they see instant images and decide or judge based on appearances and move on. We are coming from the age of ideas nurtured by the culture of print. We are conditioned by a habit...
Nigeria has hit another milestone. It has graduated into a hybrid state, a distinction it shares with very few other nations. Simultaneously, Nigeria is at war and in peace. The United Nations has observed that literally the entire northern half of the country is a virtual war...
The raging war between Israel and Hamas will not end before tomorrow’s Christmas is over. The unfortunate war has instead yielded two principal casualties: the first is the nativity festivals of Christmas which have made Bethlehem a favourite destination for Christian pilgrims. Home to the historic shrines...
In my adopted home state of Rivers, they do not “play” politics. They wage bitter “fights” over politics. Political outcomes are more of spoils of murky wars than victories of democratic rituals. While the contest for power and supremacy rages, instruments of violence are fair. People are killed routinely....
The size of President Tinubu’s delegation to the COP28 Climate Summit in Dubai has raised a bit of dust. On closer examination, I think it was unnecessary noise based on incomplete understanding of the president’s sense of mission. In these matters, context is everything. There is a sense in...