Category: OPINION

By Moses Oludele Idowu Let me begin by way of clarification: I am not a card- carrying member of any party and have no loyalty to anyone. My loyalty is to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Of late I have been inundated with several calls, posts and solicitations imploring me to support the re-election of Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the All Progressive Congress (APC) gubernatorial candidate in Lagos State. The way these calls and posts and bombardments through various formats and platforms are staged it is like…

Read More

By Lasisi Olagunju The 2023 presidential election in Nigeria is not the worst in human history. That dubious reputation belongs in Liberia where, in 1927, the then President Charles D.B. King scored 234,000 votes out of a total of 15,000 registered voters. The victor was also kind enough to give his opponent 9,000 votes as a mark of fairness and justice. That uncommon feat is naturally in the Guinness Book of World Records. We in Nigeria have not reached that enviable height. We will get there one day, soon. But…

Read More

By Kazeem Akintunde The 2023 presidential election has come and gone. It is now time to do a postscript and examine issues that define the poll. One of those issues is the dismal number of voters that turned out to cast their ballots. On February 25, 2023, a little above 24 million Nigerians went to the poll to elect a new president. This dismal number is far less than the 93.4 million Nigerians that registered to vote. Many Nigerians are shocked by the low turnout of voters on election day…

Read More

By NewsBits Opposition parties in Nigeria’s fiercely contested polls will attempt to do what has been described as the impossible – getting a court to overturn the outcome of a presidential election in Africa’s most populous nation. Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar, the second and third-placed candidates in the tightest presidential election since the end of military rule in 1999, are heading to court to challenge the result that saw Bola Tinubu, of the ruling party declared the winner with 37% of the votes. While Mr. Abubakar of the main…

Read More

By Oluwaseyi Bangudu It was one of the fierce riots in Lagos. A certain candidate had won (though not declared) one of the ‘adjudged freest and fairest elections’ in the country with a land slide victory as they say but was denied his mandate. The election would later be annulled. but he had gone ahead to declare himself and was subsequently arrested and died under controversial circumstances. This was a trail of events, and I wouldn’t be able to say at what point of these events this particular riot was.…

Read More

President Muhammadu Buhari (left) and Chairman Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Prof. Yakubu Mahmood would go down Nigeria’s history as two men that manipulated the will of the people of Nigeria on February 25, 2023 presidential election By Olu Fasan President Muhammadu Buhari said, ad infinitum, that he would leave a legacy of credible elections. Last year, at the 77th session of United Nations General Assembly, UNGA, Buhari told world leaders: “I would leave an enduring legacy of free, fair, transparent and credible elections.” Yet, last week, he delivered the…

Read More

By Uche Nworah, Ph.D Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declares a President -Elect and there is no euphoria or excitement. What you get is a sense of doom and gloom enveloping the nation. Even those whose party won the election are not overly excited, their sense of joy and victory seems measured and subdued. It’s like they are afraid that if they attempt to celebrate, they will be ostracized by their Ụmụnna (kinsmen). The ‘victors’ stick out like sore thumbs, like lone rangers. It feels like they are even…

Read More

By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Imagine standing patiently in line, waiting to vote, and suddenly men with guns arrive on motorcycles and start shooting. Imagine men dashing into your polling unit, violently seizing ballot boxes and taking them away. Imagine other ballot boxes being destroyed. Imagine being beaten to keep you from voting for a particular candidate. Imagine a crowd of people chanting “We must vote! We must vote!” when polling workers failed to arrive as expected. Imagine the police doing very little. All these things happened during the Nigerian presidential…

Read More

By Dirisu Yakubu What started as a joke a few months ago has morphed into a national movement labelled by many as the third force expected to produce a new government in the next few years. Not many gave him a chance when on May 24, 2022, he communicated to the leadership of Nigeria’s largest opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party,  his intent to resign his membership in pursuit of a presidential ambition on the platform of another party. For Peter Obi, the enigmatic political figure loved by the young…

Read More