Ideally, Malam Umaru Musa Yar’adua should have turned down former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s invitation to contest the 2007 presidential election.. Umaru knew, more than even his doctors that he was too sick to take up the most challenging job in the country. The decent thing to have done was for him to have locked himself up in a room with OBJ and confessed his infirmity, and then offer a suggestion or two on who he thought would be the next best thing. Ideally. Read the rest of this entry »
Why is Nigeria and most of the world so unusually shocked and outraged that Faruk is a Nigerian citizen, from Katsina state in the North Western part of the country? The obvious answer, I suppose, is because the unusual always excites. But the deeper meaning of why the world reacts with such disbelief has greater significance for Nigeria and Nigerians. In essence, the world’s and our own reaction strongly suggest that in its ability to contain its contradiction within its borders, Nigeria is rated very highly by the world. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s been four weeks since this column last appeared on these pages. Four weeks of unprecedented political drama that oscillates between horror and tragedy, with occasional comic relief. The country pretty much shut down, and remains so even now, more or less.
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We are in a very deep s…t and we know it; everybody knows it. That is the good news. The bad news is as follows: Thursday before last (5/11/2009) I watched a debate on the NTA on the state of the Nigerian nation. The Minority Leader of the House of Representatives Sani Sale Minjibir (ANPP, Kano) presented a motion which was also the first order of the day. The background to Rep. Sale’s motion was a report carried by a Lagos-based weekly news magazine, The News. The title of the magazine story was: The making of a failed state. The magazine had echoed popular sentiments and concluded that Nigeria is indeed a failed state, and that the prediction by a US-based Non-Governmental organization to the effect that Nigeria would disintegrate in 15 years from 2005 is coming to pass. Read the rest of this entry »
Another very intriguing rumour is again circulating among Abuja civil servants; that come next week, the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HOCS) Mr Steve Oronsaye would bring out another explosive circular that would deal another merciless blow on civil servants. This time Mr Oronsaye is said to be contemplating reducing the retirement age of civil servants to 55, down from 60 years or the attainment of 30 years in service. Read the rest of this entry »
At the weekly Federal Executive Council meeting chaired by President Umar Musa Yar’adua last Wednesday, seven new private universities were approved. This brings to 41 the number of private universities in the country. Forty of them are sited in the southern part of the country. Read the rest of this entry »
Two weeks ago, one of those politically charged but substantially hollow events recurred again in Kaduna. We woke up to read that the odd pair of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, vice president from 1999-2007; and Alhaji Attahiru Dalhatu Bafarawa, Sokoto state governor from 1999-2007 went to Kaduna where they held a closed-door meeting with Nigeria’s knottiest political oddity, General Muhammadu Buhari (rtd.), who was also the Presidential candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) in 2003 and 2007. After about three hours, they came out of the meeting and Mr. Sule Hamma, the administrative head of a very people-unfriendly outfit called The Buhari Organization (TBO) who was obviously part of the meeting told expectant newsmen what they already knew: that the three had met for three hours and no earth-shaking revelations.
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And so Hajiya Zainab Mahmoud Kawu finally passed away on the 15th of September, 2009. I received a text message from her son, Ishaq Modibbo Kawu, at about 10.30 in the morning. It was a simple statement full of gloom and resignation. Instantly my own tragic memories came back to me. Losing your mom defines death more precisely than any number of words in any language. I had spoken to Modibbo about three days before his mother’s death and of course one of the topics we discussed was his mother’s illness. She had been in a coma for some time, and he told me that they were becoming increasingly resigned to the grim conclusion that she may never regain consciousness. A few days later he sent me a text message that said “My mother died this morning”. Read the rest of this entry »
Last week’s BarkByte entitled “ITS DICTATORS WORLD…” generated a number of reactions (some of which shall be published here in due course). The tone and target of the responses varied; but they all converged on one view: there was something fundamentally wrong with the way the settlement of Darul Islam was invaded, its inhabitants uprooted and subsequently deported to various places both within and outside the country. Read the rest of this entry »
His insatiable quest for cheap publicity must have compelled Governor Babangida Aliyu of Niger State to commit his biggest, ugliest and most tragic blunder yet. While the nation was still reeling from the clumsy and brutal handling of the Boko Haram violence which occurred in Bauchi, Yobe and Borno States, trying to decide who was more dangerous between a weird religious sect that opposes a dysfunctional system, and the system which allows the summary execution of dissenters, Governor Aliyu rushed into a decision that makes nonsense of his intellect and years of experience as a public servant. Read the rest of this entry »