2023 election isn’t the most pressing and urgent need Nigeria has today. Saving the country through a consensual restructuring of the polity, is the most urgent need. For the next several months, struggle for political power, relevance and dominance of the political space, will rule the airwaves, media space, our souls and spirit and even our sociocultural world. Party congresses, primaries, candidates, and election of friends, allies and relatives will occupy our every breath, world and activities. Political power at the state and federal level certainly ensures patronage flow our way. Our dreams are taken care of. We are…
Author: Elliot Uko
48 hours to the Anambra gubernatorial election, it may be necessary to remind our people, especially Anambrarians, that Anambra, as the leading light in this country, must endeavour to get her acts together in order to inspire a new social and political order. Everything should be done to, manage properly, the quite avoidable and unfortunate untidy sociopolitical environment, created unconsciously by political hubris and leadership errors. This unpleasant political climate of uncertainty, buck passing, name calling, finger pointing and muddled up cocktail of meaningless recriminations, cannot actually be divorced from the poor handling of agitation closely tied to the painful…
EFCC visits hotels and homes picking up suspected fraudsters a.k.a. Yahoo boys. They are paraded, their Laptops and other telecommunication devices seized and displayed. They are detained, investigated and arraigned for trial. Aside the complaints that sometimes Innocent folks are picked up and their school projects delayed as their Laptops are seized, the nation has actually seen several convictions and even confessions and refunds. Why we wonder how come, same EFCC finds it difficult to investigate failed road projects. We hope it’s not just a situation of finding it very convenient to raid hotels in search of youngsters, but…
Still on Ohanaeze, Igbo elders, leaders, elite and the political class, and how they managed to create a wedge between them and the aggrieved youths. This hardly-discussed lack of trust between Igbo leaders and Igbo youths, exists, grows and deepens because the people who should work on resolving it, think it is convenient and rewarding for them to continue their age long game the way they have been playing it. Moreover, they never imagined in their wildest dreams, that the oppressed Igbo younger generation, could muster critical mass, running into millions, resolute on their agenda, completely independent from manipulations and…
A quarter of a century ago, the Igbo nation was torn between two choices. The larger group believed the Igbos should stay away from General Abacha’s fight with the Yoruba leadership, who after discreetly extracting assurances from M.K. O. Abiola, that he would remain resolute in the demand for the full restoration of his stolen mandate, activated a total war against the Abacha regime through NADECO, as they saw both the annulment of the June 12 1993 election and the emergence of Abacha as an affront to their honour and dignity as a people and bad omen to the future…
In January 1970, fifty one years ago, open hostilities ceased, when General Philip Effieong signed the instrument of surrender at Dodan barracks Lagos. Africa’s bloodiest internecine and grand-scale fatricide came to an end, or so it seemed. But events have since shown that in the hearts of some people, the war is still raging. In Rwanda, the Tutsi and the Hutus have put behind the carnage of two decades ago. Here the story is clearly different. The Igbos are yet to be accepted. They are still reeling under the burden of suspicion of an imaginary Igbo resurgence. By 1965, twenty…
A lot of people believe we all need to remember what happened exactly four years ago. Four years ago, I was approached by the South East Governors Forum to arrange a meeting between Nnamdi and the South East Governors. I pleaded with them to grant me the concession to involve an Igbo elder, they agreed. I invited Prof Ben Nwabueze and he accepted to lead us to the meeting. At the meeting, Nnamdi agreed that his demands for secession and election boycott were not absolute, in other words, that he and his group were amenable to negotiations, as the dialogue…
