Public Affairs Analyst

  Since Tuesday, November 9, 2021, when the National Assembly passed the Electoral Amendment Bill after the report of the conference committee that harmonised the different versions of the bill passed in July 2021, there has been a raging controversy over the adoption of only the direct primary as the mode of candidate nomination process. In case you do not know, party primaries are internal elections of registered political parties aimed at choosing parties’ standard-bearers that will participate in general elections. Other internal elections conducted by political parties are elective congresses and conventions organised to elect party members into party executive positions. It is part of the leadership recruitment process. In the extant law, which is the Electoral Act 2010, as amended, the mode of party primaries is enunciated in section 87. It has 10 subsections. Provision was made for two types of primaries viz direct and indirect primaries. Direct primaries involve all elig...

  “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” – George Santayana I am currently attending a capacity building workshop for selected Nigerian journalists on “Reporting corruption in Nigeria”. The workshop, which is organised by Transparency International, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, has in attendance journalists from both print and electronic media across the country. It started on Monday and ends today. 12 papers were scheduled for presentation at the training but only four had so far been presented as of the time of writing this article. It is one of the papers that I am x-raying today. I singled out this paper titled, “History of Corruption and its Effects on National Development” by an erudite scholar, a senior lecturer at Obafemi Awolowo University, Dr. Adetunji Ogunyemi, due to its historicity. Did you know that Nigeria’s Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Act, both of which prohibit and seek to punish c...

  I was not in Anambra State to observe the November 6 governorship election but I was there in spirit. Apart from having physically observed the 2010 election that brought former Governor Peter Obi back to office for his second and final term, I observed the 2021 election won by former Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Prof. Charles Soludo, remotely and virtually. Before, during and after the election, I was on several radio and television stations to analyse the preparations and the conduct of the poll. On D-Day, I crisscrossed three media houses, Love 104.5 FM, Police Radio 99.1 FM and Nigeria Television Authority, all in Abuja. In fact, the following day, I was on NTA for 10 hours analysing the results of the election. Anambra State is very unique in many respects. It is called the Light of the Nation. It is one of the five Igbo states located in South-East Nigeria. It is a centre of trade and commerce boasting of two international commercial centres namely: Nnewi and Onitsha...

  It’s another victory for the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission as the anti-corruption agency was able to successfully prosecute the former chairman of the Pension Reform Task Team, Abdulrasheed Maina, for corruption. Last Monday, November 8, 2021, the Federal High Court in Abuja sentenced Maina to eight years’ imprisonment for money laundering offences involving N2 billion in pension funds. The judge, Okon Abang, jailed Maina after convicting him and his company, Common Input Property and Investment Ltd, on all the 12 counts filed against them by the EFCC. According to the News Agency of Nigeria, the judge sentenced Maina to various jail terms ranging from three to eight years, which are to run concurrently beginning from October 25, 2019, the date he was arraigned. This implies Maina will spend only five years in prison. As for the Common Input Property and Investment Ltd’s punishment, the judge ordered that it should be wound up and its assets forfeited to the Federal ...

  This country has gone to tatters, I dare say. The recent revelations about the mindboggling cases of corruption by some of Nigeria’s civil servants and political leaders show that it will take divine interventions to rescue Nigeria from the shackles of corruption. Today, I want to examine the recent revelation by the Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, Professor Bolaji Owasanoye, as well as the planned auction of some of the stolen property of former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Dieziani Alison-Madueke. Starting with the ICPC story, the commission’s chairman last Thursday, October 28, 2021 said the agency recovered 301 houses from two public officers in the Federal Capital Territory. The revelation was made at the inauguration of the House of Representatives ad-hoc Committee on Investigation of the Operations of Real Estate Developers. The ICPC chairman said while 241 buildings were recovered from one of the suspects at diffe...