faulker002

By   Paul Onomuakpokpo It is an uncommon case that negates the Kafkaesque leitmotif that the law is beholden to the privileged, especially in a third world country like Nigeria – a former state governor, Joshua Dariye, was jailed for corruption. Reflective of his preoccupation with the bizarre conundra of the human condition, Franz Kafka’s “Before the law” confronts us with the huge impediments in the path of the less privileged to get the law on their side. In the rare cases where the law grants access to the poor, it is because its defences have been broken down by bribery or the real fury of the oppressed. *Joshua Dariye But in the case of Dariye, the law is not really out to assert its equality before the rich and the poor. As a member of the privileged class, Dariye has found a way to make the law serve him even though he is in prison. Before Dariye went to jail, he was a serving senator. Dariye was Plateau State governor from 1999 to 2007. The Economic and Financial Crimes Co...

By   Paul Onomuakpokpo With a pedigree of an incurable self-advertisement behind it, the Muhammadu Buhari government is not known for half-measures. Alas, this propensity has not found its profoundest expression in the prosecution of an agenda for engendering good governance.  *Lai Mohammed  The upshot is that the emergence of the Buhari government has burdened the citizens with a miserable existence that harks back to a Hobbesian state of nature where life is nasty, brutish and short on account of the half-hearted measures for governance that has been deployed.  For the political party of Buhari, the All Progressives Congress (APC), there is the tragedy that this predilection has also become the petard on which it is being hoisted. Or why are the party’s leaders unrestrained as they fight themselves over who has the power to determine those to take over the reins of leadership in different states? Yet, we cannot ignore the fact that this tendency has redounded to sh...