All it has taken to expose the porous underbelly of American democracy is one bad debate night by an 81 year old incumbent president. President Joe Biden fared poorly in his first CNN debate for this election season. A combination of cold, jet lag and old age...
Chidi Amuta
In 1989, the call of duty and pull of family necessitated that I travel from my London partial base to New York. I was checked in on a British Airways flight from London to New York. We were set to leave Heathrow shortly after the usual...
Nigerian politicians have perfected the art of reducing almost everything to situational comedy. They just put us through a fortnight of celebrations on the altar of democracy. That is about the only word that unites them in their diversity of costumes and intentions. It was a...
The quantum of reservations and growing public disapproval of the Tinubu government has little or nothing to do with ideology. I am pretty sure that if anyone ever accuses Mr. Tinubu of being anything resembling ideological, he could draw a pistol. Yet his unrelenting dismal job approval...
A carefully choreographed political diversion has just carried the day. In the absence of any tangible results for his first year in office, Mr. Tinubu’s fertile political imagination came up with a potent diversion. A quick ruse of reverting to the old national anthem was the hit...
Putin is nearby. Precisely, Russia’s ambitious global influencer of illiberal order has docked next door. In Niger Republic to be exact. At the end of April, the military junta in Niger kicked out the American military advisers and tiny troop contingent from their country. Earlier, they had forced...
On many fronts, America is showcasing the many burdens and benefits of democracy. Most Washington politicians are united in their support for Israel. But out on the streets, many Americans are opposed to Israel’s raging genocidal onslaught on Gaza and other Palestinian enclaves. While Congress had little trouble...
Money is perhaps a homeless vagrant. It has no nationality or permanent homestead in real terms. It goes and stays only where its masters are wise, prudent and far sighted. But in a world dominated by nations and their interests, real money is first a national...
On the technical matters of electricity supply and consumption rates, I am just a layman. I fare even worse when it comes to engaging professional technocrats and technicians on the arithmetic of pricing public goods and services. On goods that ought to be available to all...
Nigeria’s endemic insecurity took a different turn last week. Sixteen active duty soldiers were ambushed and killed by presumed youth militants in the Okuama area of Delta State. Not only were the soldiers killed, their remains were reportedly treated with barbaric disrespect and indignity. The most significant...
Nigeria’s now perennial insecurity has been damaged by political laziness. Every two- penny politician has developed a habit of weaponizing insecurity as political language. In the process, very little effort or rigour is devoted to the reality of what we are dealing with. Even those who are paid...
Among the pantheon of today’s political godlings, perhaps Senate President Mr. Godswill Akpabio is the epitome of the spirit of the times. An embodiment of power and delusion, Akpabio’s pronouncements on the state of the nation resonate with echoes of emptiness and grand hallucinations. The impression is...
In more sensible places, President Tinubu’s job approval rating is so woeful that he should have been job hunting by now. In the United Kingdom, the opposition would have called for snap elections to test his popularity and probably throw him out of 10 Downing. In the...
It is time to pay homage to the place of my beginnings. I was born and grew up mostly in Aba. Something in me still looks nostalgically back to and draws inspiration from those beginnings. It is the beauty of every yard as a shop in front...
Nigeria’s litany of troubles has finally anchored on two basic existential matters. Insecurity and hunger. We are all very unsafe and now the vast majority of our people are very hungry and angry. Of the two urgencies, the rise of mass hunger is indeed a novel addition to...
The United States presidential election in November is looking more like a referendum. Though intended as a democratic ritual, it could end up as a choice between democracy and authoritarianism. That at least is what the rhetoric and track record of the two most likely...
President Bola Tinubu has just jetted out to France on a ‘private visit’. He is not back in the country till sometime in the first week of February. We are not told when precisely to expect him back in the country. That is the much information that...
Two weeks ago, this column in a piece entitled “Neither at War Nor in Peace” lamented that Nigeria has entered a new normal. We are neither a nation at peace or in a declared war. Instead, we are perennially in a state of psychological and physical siege. Even in...
In the new world, we differ decisively from our children. We read and reflect; they see instant images and decide or judge based on appearances and move on. We are coming from the age of ideas nurtured by the culture of print. We are conditioned by a habit...
In my adopted home state of Rivers, they do not “play” politics. They wage bitter “fights” over politics. Political outcomes are more of spoils of murky wars than victories of democratic rituals. While the contest for power and supremacy rages, instruments of violence are fair. People are killed routinely....