Exxon Mobil, in a press statement confirmed it has signed its Production Sharing Contract, with Equitorial Guniea for Oil acreage E.G.-11, hereby heading the list of acreage winners in Equatorial Guinea’s latest licensing bidding round. All winners were revealed by Equatorial Guinea’s Minister of Mines and Hydrocarbons Gabriel Obiag-Lima on Monday in Capetown at a press conference.
UK based Ophir Energy won the block EG 24, whilst Taleveras picked the highly potential EG-07 Oil block and Clonterf Energy landed Block EG-18.
The West African nation’s Ronda 2016 open and competitive bidding round was declared a success by Industry analyst and watchers. [myad]
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has continued with its determination to achieve a convergence of rates in the interbank and Bureau de Change segments of the foreign exchange market by pumping another $190 million into the inter-bank market.
At Monday’s trading, the Bank offered the sum of $100,000,000 as wholesale interventions and allocated the sum of $50,000,000 to the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) forex window. Customers requiring forex for Business/Personal Travel Allowances, tuition and medical fees, among others, got $40 million.
The Acting Director of the apex bank Isaac Okorafor, confirmed the development, saying that the Bank is pleased at the performance of the naira, which has made tremendous gain against the dollar in recent times.
He said that the forex rates at both the inter-bank and BDC segments had almost converged, prompting even greater optimism that the value of the naira will continue to spike.
Okorafor observed that by ensuring transparency in the market as well as fairness to end-users, the CBN had further exposed speculators and checkmated them. He therefore urged all dealers, particularly licensed BDCs, to continue to play by the rule, adding that the CBN would not hesitate to wield the big stick against any erring bank or dealer.
The naira continued to maintain its strong stand against major currencies around the globe, exchanging for $364/$1 in the BDC segment of the market on Monday, June 5, 2017.
Meanwhile, the CBN, also today, Monday, issued a circular aimed at further developing the foreign exchange market and improving its structure.
According to Okorafor, the new circular, among other provisions, allows authorized dealers to sell their excess foreign currency to other authorized dealers without seeking prior approval from the CBN. [myad]
Good leadership is not elusive. It isn’t exactly rocket science. Centuries ago, William Penn established an unusual colony dedicated to the principles of religious tolerance, participatory government, and brotherly love. He believed that “no people can be truly happy if abridged of the freedom of their consciences.”
“Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them. And as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined, too,” said Penn, a philosopher and beneficent colonizer, in his First Frame of Government, written in 1682.
He, thus, further posited, in his rare fecundity: “Let men be good and the government cannot be bad. If government becomes ill, good men will cure it.” This positive view of human nature formed the structure of Penn’s government in Pennsylvania in the United States of America. Penn governed in a seventeenth-century world inured by violence, religious persecution, and arbitrary authority.
Penn’s exemplary model of leadership is what Nigeria needs at this historical intersection to engineer a rapid process of ethical rebirth, religious tolerance and logical authority as against arbitrary authority that feeds on impunity and whimsical breach of due process of law through the raw exercise of executive power, the kind that has assailed our national psyche since attainment of independence.
In his very robust 2015 presidential electioneering that was sated with all manner of juicy promises, Muhammadu Buhari rekindled hope in a people that had, for long, become forlorn. His promise of change was much more electrifying than Goodluck Jonathan’s renewed promise of a hackneyed transformation agenda that had lost its attractions in the haze of media propaganda and shenanigans that were strategically unleashed on the polity to effectively de-market and weaken his incumbency factor.
Jonathan’s administration was portrayed as massively corrupt. Therefore, Nigerians voted for Buhari on the basis of his perceived capacity to fight corruption to the finish. They believed that under his presidency, the nation would witness a glorious epoch of transparency, accountability and better leadership. The nation was somewhat headed in that direction but the bodily frame of Buhari could not withstand the pains and strains of his worsening health condition, which is much of a distraction to a leadership that could have been focused.
Given the complexity of governance and the dialectics of ingrained conservatism that manifests in corrupt and compromised officialdom, Buhari, from the outset, knew he had an uphill task ahead of him. Even if he were hale and hearty, the single fight against corruption, which is an aspect of his administration’s agenda, would have broken him down, especially in a situation where he and, perhaps, his vice president, Proessor Yemi Osinbajo, appear to be only members of the administration who are, to a reasonable extent, committed to the anti-corruption fight.
It is unfortunate that Buhari, the motivational anti-corruption crusader, is sick. This is a major setback in the prosecution of the anti-corruption war. Those appointed to drive the administrative infrastructure of the anti-corruption war are just helping hands whose minds are battlefields of temptations to compromise when it is safe to do so. The commitment and vigour could have been different under a fit president.
But as much as we can acknowledge the commitment of Buhari and Osinbajo to this anti-corruption cause, we cannot also, in any way, excuse them from some blames. The rot in the system is so endemic that it becomes pretty difficult for them to escape vicarious liability in some omissions and commissions by the administration. For instance, can Buhari be free from the charge of nepotism on account of lopsided appointments into public offices?
Can Buhari, a Fulani man, be free from the charge of ethnic/tribal bigotry in the way and manner Fulani herdsmen are being treated with kid gloves despite wrecking havocs to lives and items of property in parts of the country under the guise of cattle grazing? Can Buhari be free of the charge of incitement and/or hate speech when he threatened that the baboon and the dog would all be soaked in blood if what happened in 2011 presidential election was repeated in 2015?
What of the perennial religious intolerance that has seen Christians in some northern states killed, maimed and displaced from their homes? Has Buhari been able to change the narrative? Or what has he done to sensitise Islamic fundamentalists in the north on the need for religious tolerance? When Nigerians expected steps to be taken along that line, that expectation evaporated with the predetermined attack in Zaria, on December 14, 2015, on Sheik Ibrahim El-Zakzaky-led Shiite Muslim group in what was interpreted as an attempt by the majority Suni Muslim group to decimate it and halt its growing influence.
It is remarkable that Buhari has tried to fight corruption, even if the method that has been, so far, adopted has been described as selective and targeting opposition figures. Conversely, the president has not acquitted himself from the charges of nepotism, favouritism, tribalism and/or ethnicity, religious bigotry, et al, which are various dimensions of corruption. These and other variants of corruption are symptomatic of a bad government and any encumbered leader whose heart, rather than being a cathedral of righteousness, has become an arena of debauchery and ungodly compromises.
And these are symptoms that are wont to challenge conscionable and conscientious global leaders, who crave the institutionalisation of enduring legacies in government, to take action. Leaders like Penn, John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lee Kuan Yu, Nelson Mandela, etc., have had their names etched positively in the sands of time. They stepped in the saddle and helped to ensure positive leadership narratives in their domains.
In the absence of visionary leaders who are patriotically committed to the well-being of the nation and its people, there is no way government will not be the way it is in Nigeria today – bad. A disoriented nation has inextricably crystallised. Our nation is, indeed, in the throes of confusion. How can the vast majority of Nigerians be wallowing in the pool of abject poverty with the stupendous natural resources, apart from crude oil, that are buried underneath her soil?
Why will Nigeria not be disoriented when successive administrations have failed abysmally woefully to galvanise savings and investments from the billions of petro-dollars earned over the years? Why will Nigeria not be disoriented when its leaders, acting in concert with their prefects, embark on mindless looting of the public treasury, turning the nation into a criminal enterprise? What do we expect to see in situations where those elected as presidents, governors and local government chairmen collaborate with contractors to divert the nation’s commonwealth into private pockets?
This is the problematic narrative that the Buhari/Osinbajo presidency was voted into power to rewrite. Nigerians are tired of excuses even though Buhari is understandably weighed down and unable to do the little that he was expected to contribute in the area of anti-corruption war. Osinbajo is holding the forte and doing his limited best in the shadow of his boss. Nevertheless, the administration needs the clear-headedness and single-mindedness of these two men to cure our nation and bring about her re-orientation. Time will tell whether or not they will be able to do this.
Mr Ojeifo contributed this piece from Abuja via ojwonderngr@yahoo.com[MYAD]
The Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo has described the weekend London terror attack as a sickening atrocity even as he expressed solidarity with the United Kingdom on the attack which he said further reinforced the need for global action against terrorists.
A statement by Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande, quoted the Acting President as saying that those behind the attack are misguided and cowardly group of terrorists.
The Acting President Yemi Osinbajo condemned “the sickening atrocity perpetrated by a misguided and cowardly group of terrorists who attacked innocent persons in the London Bridge area on Saturday night.”
He assured Britain that Nigeria stands with the government and people of the United Kingdom and extend our condolences to the families of the victims.
The Acting President said that the latest attack in the U.K. reinforces the need for the global community to act with greater vigour to overcome the extremist ideologies which underpin terrorism. [myad]
The Ajaokuta Steel Company Limited, built at a cost $4.6 billion is at the risk of collapse unless the federal government quickly commits only $400 million to get it off the ground and similarly confronts foreign and local interests working against its completion.
The Sole Administrator of the company, Joseph Onobere said that the $400 million will be enough to complete the project which the country has already spent $4.6bn.
Onobere, who spoke to newsmen who visited the company’s complex, said that should the project collapse finally, Nigeria might never be in a position to build another one.
“Successive governments have been paying lip service to the project and, painfully, leave it the way they met it.”
The Sole Administrator said that the project had remained at the stage where it was abandoned by the Russians in 1994.
“The project is 98 per cent completed and the problem is not within Ajaokuta itself but external infrastructure. Since 1994 when the plant was abandoned, nothing has been done.”
Onobere explained that 40 units out of the 43 units of the integrated steel plant were 100 per cent completed.
“The main reason why the plant could not be inaugurated in 1994 was just the logistics that would be involved in the supply of imported raw materials, especially, the coking coal.
“The rail bridge for the company was completed in 1983 by the Shehu Shagari-led administration, this ought to have been the costliest aspect of the plant.
“Between 1983 and today, not one metre has been added. After getting to that percentage of completion, the plant could not be inaugurated then because there was no way to bring the coking coal.
“That has been the main factor for 24 years and nothing has been done in that respect,” he said.
However, he said that the present administration had been taken steps to do something about the steel plant.
According to him, the gang up against the project has been so enormous but the luck Nigeria has is the type of dedicated and patriotic staff working in the company.
“Otherwise, there would have been no place like Ajaokuta Steel Company anymore. All the steel plants are built on top of water because their water requirements are very much,” he said.
He also described the equipment and other facilities at the plant as very durable but can deteriorate over time.
“So, in essence, for us to inaugurate this plant to produce liquid steel, the rail line must be inaugurated to service the plant.
“This has been the situation and up till now, the way forward has not been finalized,” he explained.
The Sole Administrator commended the journalists for seizing the initiative to visit the company, describing the action as patriotic.
He, however, appealed to them to be part of efforts to resuscitate the company, saying that journalists should be vigilant and guide against being used to kill the company.
The visiting Journalists were led to the Steel Company by the President of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Alhaji Waheed Odusile and the President of the Nigeria Guild of Editors (NGE), Mrs. Funke Egbemode
They were on tour of the steel complex as part of activities marking 2017 Democracy Day lecture organized by the Kogi State’s Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists.
The President of the NUJ, Mr. Waheed Odusile, who responded on behalf of the team, described the state of things at the company as an embarrassment and an indictment of previous administrations.
He urged the present administration to write its name in gold by revamping the company which he said was critical to Nigeria’s quest for economic growth and self-reliance.
Also on the tour are the Director -General, Kogi State Bureau of Information and Grassroots Development, the Chairman of the state council of the NUJ, Alhaji Adeiza Momoh Jimoh among others.
President Muhammadu Buhari and His Wife, Ayisha Buhari
“My husband is recovering very fast. And very soon, he will return to the country to resume his official duties.”
Aisha, wife of President Muhammadu Buhari, who gave this assurance in a message to the 23rd Annual Ramadan Lecture of Ansar-ud-deen Society of Nigeria (ADS) held in Abuja, thanked Nigerians for their prayers for the President.
The President’s wife, who is currently in London with the President, was represented at the occasion by her Senior Special Assistant to the President on Administration, Dr. Hajo Sani.
“I thank Nigerians for their prayers for my husband. Please, do not relent in your prayers. The President will be back very soon.”
The message attracted the shouts of Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!! Allahu Akbar!!!(God is great) by the Muslim faithful.
Aisha hoped that before the Eid-el-Fitri, she would be back in the country, to observing th festival at the ADS Mosque in Maitama where she had been observing such event long before she got into office.
In a sermon, the Chairman of ADS Northern States Council of Missioners, Sheikh Muhydeen Ajani Bello called on those who have been wishing death for President Buhar to desist.
“There is a governor going about wishing Buhari dead. Let us ask him: If Buhari dies, is he going to replace him?
“We need not wish our leaders dead. If we keep talking like this, it is not good. By the grace of God, the President will return very soon.” [myad]
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has vowed that it will not succumb to pressure from some quarters in Nigeria to reduce interest rate as such move would worsen inflation.
A top official at the Apex Bank who spoke on condition of anonymity at the weekend, insisted that reducing the interest rate would further erode the incomes of the poor people.
Nigeria’s inflation rate, according to the last report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), is 17.26 percent.
The official explained that bringing down interest rate will encourage massive borrowing by the privileged few who may turn to the foreign exchange market and put further pressure on the Naira.
“We decided that we will be people-focused Central Bank. We voted in favour of controlling inflation than bringing down interest rate because inflation is the worst enemy of the poor masses.
“In order to ameliorate the impact of high interest rate we have created different programmes like the Micro, small and medium enterprises development fund (MSMEDF) and the anchor borrowers programme which offer loans at only 9 per cent to low income earners.
“Interest rates will come down but not until we have improved our business space and provided infrastructure, especially power.”
The source said that the battle to stabilize the Naira is far from being over as forex speculators are still pushing hard.
“The battle is not yet over because the speculators are still pushing, but by the grace of God and the efforts of CBN we are winning.
“And, we are happy with the results so far, all indices are very positive and the masses of Nigerians are better for it.” [myad]
The Minister of Defence, retired Brigadier Genenral Mansur Dan-Ali has warned that the government of Muhammadu Buhari will not tolerate disloyal, disobedience and insubordination from any soldier.
The minister, who spoke today, Saturday, at the passing out parade of officers’ cadet of Direct Short Service course at the Nigerian Army School of Infantry, Jaji, Kaduna, warned that any person caught with disloyalty and similar offences would be decisively dealt with.
“I wish to make it clear that the armed forces of Nigeria are also undergoing a period of self appraisal; there is zero tolerance for indiscipline and unprofessional conduct.”
Dan-Ali said that the passing out of another set of officers of the Nigerian Army came at a period the country is consolidating on the gains of counter -insurgency operation.
“The Nigerian Armed Forces, as you are aware, have been involved in an extensive combat against insurgency and terrorist groups. It is the responsibility of every one to play in the consolidation of on-going success and post -conflict situation.”
The minister appreciated the success of the armed forces in various operations, especially in the North Eastern part of the country, where the Boko Haram insurgency had largely been decimated.
He commended President Buhari for his political will and strong support for the war against Boko Haram insurgency.
No fewer than 200 officers graduated from the six-month training. [myad]
Former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crime Commission, Malam Nuhu Ribadu has challenged Nigerian journalists to first purge themselves of corruption before joining in the national great war against the malady.
According to him, for the media to effectively fight corruption, there must be self-purgation.
“Media should purge itself of corruption and stand up firm on the path of integrity to discharge its function effectively.
“As I always say; corruption cannot fight corruption. He who is morally challenged has no moral right to sermonize on morality. And when the morally deformed person attempts to rise against immorality, hardly would he ever succeed and often he ends up ridiculing such moral responsibility.”
Ribadu spoke today at Ramadan lecture organized by the Muslim Media Practitioners Association of Nigeria at the National Mosque, Abuja.
He said that the cardinal objectives of journalism, which include upholding honesty, probity, fight against injustice and patriotism are in tandem with the teachings of Islam.
His speech goes thus:
I am happy to be in the midst of a gathering of journalists and media practitioners, today. I am especially glad that you chose to have us reflect on a very important and ever-relevant topic of the fight against the malice of corruption in Nigeria, and the roles a powerful tool like the media can play in combating corruption in our country.
Having this discussion in the month of Ramadan, a time of spiritual odyssey, underscores the fact that we should not only pray but compliment the needed supplications with practical solutions to our challenges of nationhood.
There is a consensus about the position of corruption as our major impediment to greatness. It is a malady that has unfortunately gone deep into our national fabric. Corruption is the major reason why we are where we are today as a country.
It is also the reason why we are unable to address a lot of our problems and challenges. Years of mindless stealing and waste of public resources has brought bad name to Nigeria and reversed the hope and aspirations we had as a country at the time of Independence.
The haemorrhage of corruption has dragged this country to a brink in spite of efforts at different times, including what we are witnessing presently, to get the country away from the monster. Fighting corruption, therefore, is key to the survival and progress of our country.
In this fight to emancipate Nigeria from corruption and the corrupt, you as journalists have a great role to play. Your role in this crusade is conferred by the potent of the weapon that is in your hands as pressmen and women.
Journalism, you would agree with me, is a frontline profession when it comes to nation building and search for development. Throughout history, media has played momentous roles in different societies to tackle a number of malfeasances, including corruption.
Such turning point interventions by the media have also occurred at different points in Nigeria. In the case of fight against corruption, the Nigerian media should continuously rise up and resist continuous desecration of our country.
Corruption desecrates our national ethos and values, and inhibits our well-being as a people. As the acclaimed voice of the voiceless, the media should be up against corruption in all forms. However, for the media to effectively fight corruption, there must be self-purgation.
Media should purge itself of corruption and stand up firm on the path of integrity to discharge its function effectively. As I always say; corruption cannot fight corruption. He who is morally challenged has no moral right to sermonize on morality. And when the morally deformed person attempts to rise against immorality, hardly would he ever succeed and often he ends up ridiculing such moral responsibility.
Cardinal objectives of journalism; that of upholding honesty, probity, fight against injustice and patriotism, sit very well with the teachings of Islam. In fact, fighting for the oppressed and telling the truth are some of Islamic injunctions that are repeated a number of times in the Qur’an and for which Allah promises abundant rewards. Therefore, as Muslim media practitioners, you should first see your positive role in the fight against corruption as an act of worship.
Allah enjoins Muslims against injustice, and there is no injustice greater than cornering what is unto people into one’s own. The media is therefore needed to champion the anti corruption message and always stand for what is right.
As journalists, you should make it a point of principle to never join forces with people you ought to help the public to fight. Above all, fear of God should be the guiding principle always. At points of temptation always prick your conscience; ask yourself what is in the public interest.
Ask yourself; what or who is on the side of the truth before making news judgments or lending yourself to any cause.
Distinguished audience, what I try to do is to scratch the surfaces before we immerse into the lecture proper. I believe the paper presenter, eminent professor Is-haq Oloyode and the discussants lined up will take us through the full course of the theme of this lecture and expectations on you are media practitioners in helping the fight against corruption and, ultimately, the development of this country.
Professor Oloyode has had a long term engagements with activism around this issues. I know his commitment to anti corruption crusade having helped us at the EFCC for a number of initiatives, including developing a faith-based training manual on the war against corruption, in his capacity as the Secretary General of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs.
We thank you Prof. The three discussants on the agenda are all eminently qualified to address us on the topic and I believe if we listen carefully we will have a lot of take-away points that will benefit us, especially in your work as journalists. [myad]
The Senate of the Federal University, Dutsin-Ma, Katsina state has directed that the institution should be shut down after an emergency meeting by its members.
This followed the sudden appearance of the Institution’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Haruna Abdu Kaita, who was on suspension, on the campus on Friday with a high court ruling quashing the suspension.
His appearance reportedly led to a mild protest by some groups of allegedly Christian students.
The development took another dimension when the Vice-chancellor went to perform the Muslems Friday Jum’at prayers after which some Muslim students and workers of the institution urged him on to go and resume in his office.
Sensing breakdown of law and order, the institution’s Senate hurriedly held the emergency meeting where the decision to close down the institution was taken.
A circular signed by Bichi, who is also the institution’s acting Vice Chancellor, however, attributed the closure to security reasons.
The circular read: “the Senate of Federal University of Dutsin-Ma at its 10th emergency meeting held on Friday 2nd June 2017 reviewed the security situation in the university and decided to close down the school indefinitely.”
The circular also directed that students of the institution vacate the school immediately.
The situation was tensed on the campus as at Saturday with many workers seen around anticipating another round of crisis on Monday when the Vice-chancellor allegedly vowed to resume fully. [myad]
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Encumbered Leadership Of A Disoriented Nation, By Sufuyan Ojeifo
Good leadership is not elusive. It isn’t exactly rocket science. Centuries ago, William Penn established an unusual colony dedicated to the principles of religious tolerance, participatory government, and brotherly love. He believed that “no people can be truly happy if abridged of the freedom of their consciences.”
“Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them. And as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined, too,” said Penn, a philosopher and beneficent colonizer, in his First Frame of Government, written in 1682.
He, thus, further posited, in his rare fecundity: “Let men be good and the government cannot be bad. If government becomes ill, good men will cure it.” This positive view of human nature formed the structure of Penn’s government in Pennsylvania in the United States of America. Penn governed in a seventeenth-century world inured by violence, religious persecution, and arbitrary authority.
Penn’s exemplary model of leadership is what Nigeria needs at this historical intersection to engineer a rapid process of ethical rebirth, religious tolerance and logical authority as against arbitrary authority that feeds on impunity and whimsical breach of due process of law through the raw exercise of executive power, the kind that has assailed our national psyche since attainment of independence.
In his very robust 2015 presidential electioneering that was sated with all manner of juicy promises, Muhammadu Buhari rekindled hope in a people that had, for long, become forlorn. His promise of change was much more electrifying than Goodluck Jonathan’s renewed promise of a hackneyed transformation agenda that had lost its attractions in the haze of media propaganda and shenanigans that were strategically unleashed on the polity to effectively de-market and weaken his incumbency factor.
Jonathan’s administration was portrayed as massively corrupt. Therefore, Nigerians voted for Buhari on the basis of his perceived capacity to fight corruption to the finish. They believed that under his presidency, the nation would witness a glorious epoch of transparency, accountability and better leadership. The nation was somewhat headed in that direction but the bodily frame of Buhari could not withstand the pains and strains of his worsening health condition, which is much of a distraction to a leadership that could have been focused.
Given the complexity of governance and the dialectics of ingrained conservatism that manifests in corrupt and compromised officialdom, Buhari, from the outset, knew he had an uphill task ahead of him. Even if he were hale and hearty, the single fight against corruption, which is an aspect of his administration’s agenda, would have broken him down, especially in a situation where he and, perhaps, his vice president, Proessor Yemi Osinbajo, appear to be only members of the administration who are, to a reasonable extent, committed to the anti-corruption fight.
It is unfortunate that Buhari, the motivational anti-corruption crusader, is sick. This is a major setback in the prosecution of the anti-corruption war. Those appointed to drive the administrative infrastructure of the anti-corruption war are just helping hands whose minds are battlefields of temptations to compromise when it is safe to do so. The commitment and vigour could have been different under a fit president.
But as much as we can acknowledge the commitment of Buhari and Osinbajo to this anti-corruption cause, we cannot also, in any way, excuse them from some blames. The rot in the system is so endemic that it becomes pretty difficult for them to escape vicarious liability in some omissions and commissions by the administration. For instance, can Buhari be free from the charge of nepotism on account of lopsided appointments into public offices?
Can Buhari, a Fulani man, be free from the charge of ethnic/tribal bigotry in the way and manner Fulani herdsmen are being treated with kid gloves despite wrecking havocs to lives and items of property in parts of the country under the guise of cattle grazing? Can Buhari be free of the charge of incitement and/or hate speech when he threatened that the baboon and the dog would all be soaked in blood if what happened in 2011 presidential election was repeated in 2015?
What of the perennial religious intolerance that has seen Christians in some northern states killed, maimed and displaced from their homes? Has Buhari been able to change the narrative? Or what has he done to sensitise Islamic fundamentalists in the north on the need for religious tolerance? When Nigerians expected steps to be taken along that line, that expectation evaporated with the predetermined attack in Zaria, on December 14, 2015, on Sheik Ibrahim El-Zakzaky-led Shiite Muslim group in what was interpreted as an attempt by the majority Suni Muslim group to decimate it and halt its growing influence.
It is remarkable that Buhari has tried to fight corruption, even if the method that has been, so far, adopted has been described as selective and targeting opposition figures. Conversely, the president has not acquitted himself from the charges of nepotism, favouritism, tribalism and/or ethnicity, religious bigotry, et al, which are various dimensions of corruption. These and other variants of corruption are symptomatic of a bad government and any encumbered leader whose heart, rather than being a cathedral of righteousness, has become an arena of debauchery and ungodly compromises.
And these are symptoms that are wont to challenge conscionable and conscientious global leaders, who crave the institutionalisation of enduring legacies in government, to take action. Leaders like Penn, John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lee Kuan Yu, Nelson Mandela, etc., have had their names etched positively in the sands of time. They stepped in the saddle and helped to ensure positive leadership narratives in their domains.
In the absence of visionary leaders who are patriotically committed to the well-being of the nation and its people, there is no way government will not be the way it is in Nigeria today – bad. A disoriented nation has inextricably crystallised. Our nation is, indeed, in the throes of confusion. How can the vast majority of Nigerians be wallowing in the pool of abject poverty with the stupendous natural resources, apart from crude oil, that are buried underneath her soil?
Why will Nigeria not be disoriented when successive administrations have failed abysmally woefully to galvanise savings and investments from the billions of petro-dollars earned over the years? Why will Nigeria not be disoriented when its leaders, acting in concert with their prefects, embark on mindless looting of the public treasury, turning the nation into a criminal enterprise? What do we expect to see in situations where those elected as presidents, governors and local government chairmen collaborate with contractors to divert the nation’s commonwealth into private pockets?
This is the problematic narrative that the Buhari/Osinbajo presidency was voted into power to rewrite. Nigerians are tired of excuses even though Buhari is understandably weighed down and unable to do the little that he was expected to contribute in the area of anti-corruption war. Osinbajo is holding the forte and doing his limited best in the shadow of his boss. Nevertheless, the administration needs the clear-headedness and single-mindedness of these two men to cure our nation and bring about her re-orientation. Time will tell whether or not they will be able to do this.