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....
Chidi Amuta
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...
When Henry Alfred Kissinger turned 100 on 27th May this year, I wrote this tribute in salute to a man who is undisputedly the greatest statesman and diplomatic centurion of the 20th and perhaps even the 21st century. I reproduce here a slightly amended version of that tribute as the world salutes...
After the first six months in office, the Bola Tinubu presidency has spent enough time to acquire a definable footprint and an evolving identity. It now has a character, style and flavor. There is no point rehashing what names people of the street have started calling the new...
The subdued public anxiety over the final outcome of the 2023 presidential election petitions has ended. Predictably, the Supreme Court has acted faithful to what has become its extant tradition. It has done the obvious and predictable. It simply just turned its back on the minutiae of evidence and...
President Bola Tinubu is confronted with two identity fights united by politics. His political opponents have kept him busy with matters of personal identity and paper qualifications. Everything from his parentage, educational background, university records, work and career trajectory to his National Youth Service record is up for hostile...
President Bola Tinubu’s success or failure in office may not be the result of his own making. It would be the weight of a political burden he is so far carrying apparently quite willingly. Every policy pronouncement he has so far made and measures he has hinted at taking...
On a number of occasions, I have felt the irresistible pull of homeland. Maybe it is the subliminal summons of my ancestors or the pull of my birth chord long buried beneath that immortal kola nut tree at the backyard of what used to be my mother’s hut. When...
The Presidential Election Petitions Tribunal has since reaffirmed the declaration of Mr. Bola Tinubu as our duly elected president. In response, the two major contenders Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar of the Labour Party and Peoples Democratic Party respectively have scaled up their legal objections to the Supreme Court....
My brother and friend, Kayode Komolafe (the man we all call KK) is an uncommon patriot. With an unassuming depth as a public intellectual, KK is equally disarming in his witty humour, a matter to which I shall return some day in the future. But he is unfailingly felicitous...
Ordinarily, it would be hazardous to judge the judgment of five eminent Federal judges over an issue as life threatening as the results of a Nigerian presidential election. Apex power is involved. Big money is at stake. Livelihoods are up on the hoist. The instruments of state and...
The immediate past president of Gabon, Mr. Ali Bongo Ondimbo, has joined the new crop of video -posting toppled rulers. The luxurious expanse of his gold plated presidential mansion in Libreville has shrunk into a tiny sitting space surrounded by book shelves and inconsequential furniture. From here, he has...
The APC was birthed out of Mr. Buhari’s resilient appetite for presidential power. Its victory in the 2015 presidential election satisfied that hunger and lavishly fed it for eight years. His victory then was a product of both his northern regional cultic followership and a nationwide rejection of...
Today, former military president, General Ibrahim Babangida, turns 82. It has become my annual personal tradition to use the opportunity of his birthday each year to highlight the perennial relevance of the policies, ideas and practices that he emplaced over three decades ago to our preset circumstances. Each time...
On President Tinubu’s ministerial nomination list, I am surprised at our surprise. I am even more disappointed by our collective sense of disappointment. The note of public consternation is palpable and almost universal among Nigerians across all divides. Not only was the list late in submission, it was incomplete...
Very few presidents get the unhappy privilege of previewing the full gamut of worries that will torment their presidency all within their first 100 days. President Bola Tinubu is lucky to belong in this rare collection. In less than a hundred days in office, he has faced challenges in...
Nigeria’s immediate past president, Muhammadu Buhari, has a tragic sense of humour. His unrelenting indifference to the condition of the humanity of his compatriots often came out in the things he decided to make important or ignore. One of them is his kinship attachment to Niger Republic. In the...
President Bola Tinubu has displayed a commendable preparedness to be president. He has, in just one month, shown a keen familiarity with the current state of the nation. In line, he has made bold policy pronouncements indicating an unmistakable eagerness to be different from his tepid and clueless predecessor. Whether...
This is political appointments season. It is also a season of migrations to Abuja and the various state capitals where there are new governors and overlords. It is the season of intense shoving and jostling for choice government positions. Predictably, there is a virtual stampede at the entrance door...
Between an inaugural speech full of quotable nuggets and his reflex actions in just one week of presidential power, Mr. Bola Tinubu may have sketched the footprints of his presidency. A casual off script remark on the removal of fuel subsidy (‘Fuel subsidy is gone!’) has set off a...