Public Affairs Analyst

The time for lamentation is over. This is the era of transformation – President Goodluck Jonathan at inauguration on May 29, 2011   Hearty congratulations to all the elected and appointed political office holders as they mark one year in office. In the past couple of weeks, Nigerian ministers have been giving account of their stewardship in office. Many state governors and their commissioners have been doing same. Public lectures, advertisements, town hall meetings and other sundry strategies have been explored by our political office holders to educate and inform the public on what their respective governments have been up to in the last one year. In this article, I have decided to review what President Jonathan told his compatriots and indeed the world he would do during his four year administration. Indeed a thorough analysis of President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration should start from May 6, 2010 when he was first sworn in as the president of Nigeria after the unfortun...

It is a year now since the 2011 General Elections took place. By May 29, the beneficiaries of those elections into the presidency, Senate, House of Representatives, governorship and State Houses of Assembly will be rolling out the drums in celebration of their one year in office. Amidst this euphoria, it is important to do a soul searching and asked a pertinent question: What has happened to the perpetrators of electoral violence who embarked on wanton destruction of lives and property before, during and after the April 9 – May 6, 2011 nationwide polls? It is important to note that much as the 2011 General Elections ranked best in Nigeria’s chequred history of electoral democracy, paradoxically, it has also been rated as about the bloodiest in terms of human casualties and other mindless destructions. Human Rights Watch in a May 17, 2011 press release alleged that about 800 persons were killed and over 65,000 displaced across 12 Northern states in the post April 16, 2011 presidential...

Death is by no means a democrat. It takes lives whenever it feels like doing so without consulting anyone. There’s nothing to do about it. You start to die the moment you are born. The whole of life is cutting through the pack with death – James Bond (Ian Flaming) in Live and Let Die. “Jide, meet Sheriff Folarin, a student of History at the University of Ibadan” That was how Mr. Nosakhare Osaigbovo, then Features Editor with the defunct Daily Sketch in Ibadan introduced me to my best gift in my over 20 years of freelance journalism, sometime in 1993. I have met Mr. Nosa as I fondly called him sometime in 1990 at the beginning of my commentary writing in Nigerian dailies. I must have been introduced to him by one Mrs. Durojaiye, then a staff of Daily Sketch in Ibadan, Oyo State. He took a liking to me immediately, assisting with the typing and publication of my letters to editor and later full blown opinion articles. Nosa Osaigbovo was very articulate, frank, knowledgeable, con...

April 2012 can conveniently be tagged Nigeria’s Month of Corruption Revelations.  On April 17, a former governor of Delta State, James Ibori, was jailed for 13 years by Southwark Crown Court, London, having pleaded guilty on 10 counts of money laundering and other fraudulent activities with total monetary value of £50m ($77m), about N12.17bn. The fraud sum excludes another 720,000 pounds (N183.6m) the ex-governor expended on exotic automobiles. He goes to join his wife, mistress, sister and lawyer in prison. Guinness Book of Record must note that uncommon feat. It was also the month that sordid details of how some civil servants in the Federal Pension Office perpetrated multi-billion naira frauds in cahoots with some unscrupulous bank officials. Same month, Bayelsa State claimed to have uncovered N6bn payroll scam. The state’s Treasury and the Universal Basic Education Board officials were alleged to be significantly involved in the scam. Also in April, some foreign airlines were...

On April 1, 2012, Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission officially published the 2010 audit report on political parties in three national newspapers in accordance with the constitutional and electoral act provisions. A press release by the Commission’s Director of Public Affairs, Mr. Emmanuel Umenger states: “The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has published for public consumption, the executive summary of the External Auditors’ Report on the accounts of the 63 registered political parties in the April 1st, 2012 editions of three national newspapers. They are: Sunday Punch , pages 56-59; Sunday Sun , pages 65-68 and Sunday Trust , pages 41-44. The publication has been done in strict conformity with Section 15(c) of the Third Schedule to the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended). Specifically, the section stipulates that the Commission shall “arrange for the annual examination and auditing of the funds and accounts of politica...