Are Buhari’s Fears a Signal of the End of Nigeria?

In December 1984 my late father made a remark that I could not understand at the time, he said, “the leaders of Nigeria will know no fear till the [oil] money runs out”. It was not until July 2000 that my father told me that the idea was proposed by his friend, the late Claude Ake. Since the oil boom of the early 1970s, no Nigerian head of state has been “afraid” of his watch or patch despite the coup d’états and the instances of serious political instability encountered. Now that the abundance of petrodollars earned from oil has suddenly become seriously scarce President Muhammadu Buhari has become in a pioneering approach, frank, open and expansive about his “fears” in power as presented in a recent missive. (more…)

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Political Ambitions in Diaspora

Political Ambitions in Diaspora: ‘Obasanjo Say Make I Come’

Between 1999 and 2007 there was an acute frenzy of political aspirations occurring among Nigerians in the diaspora. It was quite an evident wave. The frenzy was about Nigerians seeking to return home to go successfully into politics. Or hold office or get lucrative contracts from the government. Pre-1999, many if not the majority of Nigerian males in the diaspora were quite content to live indefinitely overseas. But after the 1999 return to democracy, it was rare to find a Nigerian male who was ‘away’ that did not want to return to Nigeria to make it big. That was the birth of the “X say make I come home” era. (more…)

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