Author: Jibrin Ibrahim

On Tuesday, Governor Nasir El-Rufai addressed a high-powered meeting on the violent crisis in parts of southern Kaduna. He expressed his sadness at the needless pain several communities have been enduring in the cycle of violence that has been recurring in the state. He outlined the government’s engagement in seeking to improve the security situation in the State. A forward operating base of the Nigerian Army has been established in Kafanchan, where a permanent mobile police squadron has been set up as well. Kaduna State has also established the Kaduna State Peace Commission to engage communities and nudge them towards…

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The Ibrahim Magu story is one that many Nigerians heard, sighed and muttered, it’s normal, we have heard it before. The story is that the apparently incorruptible, fearless over-achieving head of the EFCC has been caught with his hands in the till. The story is spicy, Ibrahim Magu who had been locking up the corrupt criminals for five years had himself been looting the looted property he had recovered from the looters. The anti-crime czar was accused of living above his means, fraternising with corrupt persons and diverting recovered funds. As if that was not bad enough, he is also…

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Herd immunity is an epidemiological concept that describes the state where a population, in this case a community, is sufficiently immune to a disease, either because a majority has been infected by and survived it or have been vaccinated against the disease. The idea of allowing a large percentage of the people to be infected by COVID-19 is that, since only about 1 per cent of infected people die (maybe, as it depends on so many factors that are not all known), when that happens, the remaining 99 per cent would survive from the disease and continue with their lives, while hopefully…

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The appointment of Professor Ibrahim Agboola Gambari, a scholar-diplomat, as chief of staff to the president has been widely hailed as one of the best appointments made by President Buhari. He has had an illustrious career in the academy, where he was a leading professor of international relations for decades. He then went into international diplomacy, where he rose to the position of the first United Nations under-secretary-general and special adviser to the secretary-general on Africa (1999-2005). He was the chairman of the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid (1990-1994) and on Peace-Keeping Operations (1990—1999). He was head of the…

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The most important universal shock that has flowed from the COVID-19 pandemic is that most governments in the world were unable and often unwilling to address the crisis in a manner that protected peoples’ health, welfare and lives. They have shown very poor governance abilities but demonstrated great skills in lying to the people. Their concerns have been at best self-serving and in most cases cynical if not outright wicked. In most advanced countries, the most vulnerable segment of society, the elderly, whether in old people’s homes or their own homes were denied testing for COVID-19 because there was a…

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Abba Kyari died last week Friday, 17th April from COVID-19 and his passage was followed with so much expression of hate and venom, clearly indicating that this society is so messed up in its African culture that it has lost its traditional respect that kept people away from speaking evil of the dead. But then, didn’t Mark Anthony say that: “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones”. It is, however, gratifying to note that a number of people who knew Abba Kyari well have written beautiful testimonies about his devotion to…

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Following the president’s remarks that he is surprised at the growing insecurity in the country, what Nigerians are asking is: What have the security agencies been telling him? Are they telling him the reality that all ordinary Nigerians know that no part of this country is safe today and the situation is worsening? This is a critical week for Nigerians, as we all ask who the captain on the ship that is directing the struggle against the rising insecurity affecting our lives is. On Tuesday, while addressing a delegation from Niger State, President Buhari expressed surprise at the growing insecurity…

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Last Saturday, France, through the instrumentality of their most faithful poodle in West Africa, Alasane Ouattara kidnapped the West African currency that was to be launched next year for the 15 countries in the region. In a press conference in Abidjan, Presidents Macron and Ouattara announced that the 8 West African countries using the CFA Franc currency would adopt the Eco as their new currency next year. The announcement was done the day ECOWAS was meeting for a final adoption of Eco, also decided for 2020. The French move breaks up the 30-year struggle by ECOWAS to establish a regional…

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Your Excellency President Buhari, I am one of the 200 million citizens in our country and I write to appeal to you to intervene in the political crisis that has engulfed Kano over the past six months related to the attempt by Governor Abdullahi Ganduje to dismantle the Emirate system and remove the Emir. I am a student of politics and I know that you have no direct powers over the Governor but I am writing you in your capacity as an elder and maybe one of the few Nigerians the Governor would listen to. Virtually all the elders in…

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Nigeria is undergoing a crisis of constitutionalism as our ‘grand norm’ is violated regularly by law enforcement agencies. The law is clear that suspects cannot be held beyond 48 hours, except on the basis of a court order, but this is not being respected. Investigations are often conducted using techniques of torture. The result is that the rule of law has lost its meaning… In its commemoration of this year’s Human Rights Day, the PUNCH newspapers published an editorial in which it announced a new policy to combat what it called growing autocracy and military-style repression in Nigeria. It said that it…

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Are all current and former Nigerian governors mad? After years of siphoning state funds without accountability, why do so many of them stampede state houses of assembly to pass laws providing them pensions for life at rates that are clearly unsustainable for the states, who are forced to stop paying workers and pensioners so that the money could be used to pay them? The letter from former Governor Yari to the current governor of his state complaining that he had only been paid his pension twice since leaving office five months ago and requesting immediate payment of this made Nigerians…

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The weaponisation of electoral geography has become very scientific. They derail the opposition by frightening them into staying at home during elections. Those brave enough to come out are attacked by thugs, thus suppressing their votes. Meanwhile, security and electoral officials are compromised with a combination of threats and bribes. Having witnessed the elections last weekend in Kogi, I am extremely worried about the impact of the abuse of powers of incumbency and thuggery in undermining electoral democracy in Nigeria. State governors, in particular, have been abusing their excessive powers to determine electoral outcomes, irrespective of who the majority of…

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My good friend, mentor and teacher, Bjorn Beckman died peacefully in his home on 6th November. He was surrounded by his lovely wife, Gunilla, son Petter and daughter Malin as he departed. Professor Beckman was one of the most influential Marxist scholars that worked in Nigeria where he was a lecturer in Ahmadu Bello University from 1978 to 1987. His engagement with Nigeria and Nigerians however lasted to the end. I had the privilege of visiting him in April this year to wish him the best in the great beyond as well as discuss what to do about his Nigerian…

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Yes, let’s close down the torture chambers, we have no need for them. What we need urgently is to open humane correctional centres. Even more important is the need to seek serious solutions to the drug addiction and social crisis in our society. Nigeria and indeed the international community have been in shock since the discovery of numerous so-called correctional centres that have turned out to be torture houses for young persons between the ages of five and fifty. It all started in September when the police raided Ahmad bin Hambul Centre for Islamic Learning in Kaduna and freed over…

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After almost sixty years of open borders with our neighbours, Nigeria has decided to start policing the borders and attempting the “impossible” – stop smuggling in and out of the country. We have a vast border span of 4,047 kilometres – 773 with Benin, 1,497 with Niger, 87 with Chad and 1,690 with Cameroon. In August, Nigeria decided to essentially mount a huge security operation on its borders and mount a regime of close filtration of goods coming into or leaving the country. It has been a huge shock to our neighbours who for long have enjoyed our laissez faire attitude…

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Not only has it abdicated its responsibility for social provisioning, the state has also largely withdrawn its commitment to promoting equitable social and economic development in the country. Given that nature abhors a vacuum, religious organisations were quick to seize the opportunity of occupying the terrain and using their nexus for social provisioning as an instrument for the control of the social and theological spaces. (1) High Level of Religiosity Nigeria has one of the highest levels of religiosity in the contemporary world. This means that the religious arena is characterised by high levels of activism, including the multiplication of…

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Thanks to the Kaduna Book and Arts Festival for reminding us that the African story is being told by our writers, poets, musicians and artists. It’s a vast story with multiple and diverse narratives. These stories have also been and are being told by different generations of African writers and we are happy that the new generation is bold and audacious. This week I’m at the Kabafest2019 in Kaduna for the simple reason that I enjoyed last year’s edition and I have come for more. Kabafest has become important because it has been able to seek out young talents and…

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#TrackNigeria This week, Agnes Callamard, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions published her end of visit report on Nigeria in which she raised a number of important issues. She first raised her key concern which is that the Nigerian Government is presiding over an injustice-pressure cooker that could burst at any moment. Her consultations with stakeholders were focused on examining violations of the right to life by State and non-State actors; the Government’s security strategy and the responses at Federal and State level to allegations of arbitrary deprivation of life in all parts of the…

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…CDD called for a concerted effort by INEC and other election stakeholders to work resolutely towards improving the quality of collation, especially at the ward level. They also called on INEC to work towards publishing result details at all levels, so as to create more trust and confidence in election outcomes. The consensus among election observers and scholars is that the weakest link in the integrity of Nigerian elections is the collation process. Since 2011, much of the concern over electoral fraud has centred around the interrogation of the collation process, especially at the most basic level. Nigeria had a…

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…what is the value of calling on security agencies to save us when they are sometimes the problem? This week, the famous kidnapper of Taraba, nicknamed Wadume, was caught in Kano… Reports from the investigation show that he had been in telephone contact with police and army officers hundreds of times during the period that the police were trying to arrest him. We should all be concerned that bandits and terrorists have rogue officers in our security agencies that work for and with them. Each week, I go through my newsfeed to pick an issue that I would address in…

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Nigerians are increasingly conscious that they urgently need to be governed. The general feeling in the country is that we have not been governed for an extremely long time and the consequences are the spread on insecurity, growing poverty and misery and significant decline in social provisioning as education and health in particular are only available to Nigerians who can pay for them privately. For a long time, municipal services such as potable water and electricity have also been available only through self-help efforts by citizens.  The clearest evidence of non-governance has been the rapid growth of ungoverned spaces where…

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On Wednesday, President Buhari had his inauguration for the second term in office. The period leading to the 2019 elections and thereafter have been marked by an incredible spike of insecurity and Nigerians were eagerly waiting for his inaugural speech to get an insight on how he would tackle the crisis. There was no speech and it has been suggested he would speak to us on June 12th, the newly designated “Democracy Day”. This is unfortunate as there is a symbolism around the commitments leaders make on the day they are inaugurated into office and the President has lost the…

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