Gowon & Babangida: Nigeria’s Drug Culture 2
I reject the claim the article titled Gowon and Babangida Created Nigeria’s Drug Culture, which I wrote is guilty of appropriating unnecessary blame to Gowon and Babangida as wrongful. And misleading readers about creating the drug culture in Nigeria. In the first paragraph, I clarified that some will disagree with the content. (more…)
Blood Will Flow In the Streets
“Empowerment” has a strange meaning in the Nigerian context. It is “the sharing of money” by politicians to clients, supporters, the undecided and antagonists”. Empowerment is thus the use of state money to buy political support within the polity. It uses means such as rent offerings, sinecures, “pacifiers” and prebendalism. Empowerment can wear a ‘something-for-nothing’ shirt since it is often unearned or undeserved. But it also means jobs for ordinary folks. We argue, empowerment is a national habit. (more…)
The Niger Delta has been exclusively the undisputed source of Nigeria’s vast but plundered national wealth for five decades. When President Muhammadu Buhari came to power in 2015, his first “tough actions” were exacted on the Niger Delta with the bombings of illegal refineries and bunkering assets. It was an utterly senseless strategy that created only more pollution and all promises by the President to “clean up” the Niger Delta have proven to be empty. Now that the price of oil has fallen dramatically and Nigeria is catching economic perplexity, it is as if the Niger Delta and its incidence of ecocide have vanished from the government’s list of priorities and even the collective consciousness of Nigeria, yes, the “One Nigeria“.
The GON is getting very tough at the “tail end” of the oil sector by punishing retailers of petroleum fuel for “hoarding” like they have “weak oil bunkerers”. Meanwhile, the executive cabinet of GON is staffed by hoarders of billions of dollars’ (in cash and assets) of “oil wealth”. This is the latest showing of “no-nonsense anticorruption” at its most trifling in Nigeria. Yes, the landlord chasing rats in the living room while his house is fully on fire? This ‘catching the serpent by the tail’ solution is a dangerous staple approach adopted by the current GON. (more…)