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 A justification for an inevitable return of President Muhammadu Buhari to Aso Rock in 2019 has not unexpectedly accompanied the frenetic campaigns in some quarters. The president’s political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the leaders of his government reel off the epochal achievements that have validated an end to the citizens’ serial negation of his quest to occupy the presidential office. *Aisha Buhari  For them, these achievements redound to the bid for his return as a means of completing the good governance he has espoused and enthroned. And more importantly, they want the citizens to appropriate a campaign for his return as serving a purgatorial purpose – a way of discharging their obligation of gratitude to him for bringing uncommon integrity to bear on governance. Yet, these people lack the right credentials to proselytise the suitability of Buhari for re-election. Their fold lacks that authentic voice to signal the readiness of Bu...

By   Paul Onomuakpokpo Aside from the occasional death of soldiers in their battle against Boko Haram, the nation is now confronted in Metele with a seeming culmination of the military’s losses to the insurgents in the north-east.  The government has often fumed at the obduracy of its traducers who instead of trumpeting the wonders of its military in Sambisa Forest have rather warned that more still needed to be done to defeat the insurgents in the light of the occasional suicide attacks on civilians and losses of two or four soldiers to the insurgents. But the recent killing of about 100 soldiers in Metele, Borno State, so shattered the charade of triumph over the insurgents that President Muhammadu Buhari had to dispatch his defence minister to Chad for more collaboration in defeating them.  Clearly, the dead soldiers deserve all the garlands for their bravery and patriotism for which they have paid the supreme price. Yet, we should not ignore the important fact that th...

By   Paul Onomuakpokpo After former President Goodluck Jonathan launched his memoir My Transition Hours on Tuesday, he might have heaved a sigh of relief. It might not be because the ordeal of writing and preparing to present the book to the public was now off his shoulders. Nor because he was now luxuriating in the cathartic effect of dislodging the single narrative that de-privileges his role in nation-building and the 2015 elections. Rather, it could be because of the sweet contemplation of the fresh horizon of possibilities that had opened before him. Now, he realised that it was not all gloom – he might not have been denigrated as an irredeemable villain after all. *Former President Jonathan  For over three years, Jonathan might have been shocked by how his legendary good luck has mutated into a source of personal tragedy as he was weighed down by the thought of his now being eternally identified with a dark role in the crisis of development of the nation. He might have f...

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...

By  Paul Onomuakpokpo Until humanity blurs the power distinction that privileges the leaders and afflicts the led with misery, the magic for banishing strike would remain eternally elusive. Like in most post-colonial states, the power relations in Nigeria have rendered the majority of the citizens nugatory. The citizens’ input is not sought into how the resources of the nation are shared. Even if it is sought, it is not reckoned with when decisions are made. This is why while the leaders have security, the citizens are left at the mercy of marauders, kidnappers and armed robbers. Again, the leaders can live in plenitude, thanks to the resources of the society, while the other citizens go to bed on empty stomachs. Yet, when the citizens say they are fed up, they are told not to complain. They are told that their complaining would ignite a crisis that could be hijacked by some political foes and that the path they must learn to maintain is that of acquiescence in their miserable st...

By   Paul Onomuakpokpo Even in its twilight, President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration remains impenetrable to the simple logic that democracy is leavened by the disparateness of opinions.  It is in epochs of heightened divergence of opinions that sometimes spawn crises and tend to unspool the state that the genius of a great leader is given stellar expression. *President Buhari  The man or woman who comes into leadership fully prepared for such near-fatal periods know how to parlay them into opportunities for national development.   Thus, the best leaders are not brewed in epochs when the people luxuriate in ease but when they are confronted with life-threatening crises. Was the genius of Winston Churchill not unfurled, and thus he became a touchstone of good leadership, because he had Adolf Hitler to prevent from adding Britain to his definitive list of conquered territories? Did Franklin D. Roosevelt not etch his name in the memory of Americans because he ...