SAM OHUABUNWA'S PARADIGM

 However these elections go, Nigeria is a winner. Big time. I am prepared to bet with my entire pension savings that Nigeria will come out of these elections much much better than it started. In my reckoning, if this Country needed a tonic to 'explode' for good, it got plenty and I am thoroughly excited in my spirit.   First is the sharp rise in Citizen awareness. For a very long time, we seemed to have docile Citizens who acted as onlookers or disinterested observers of the affairs of our Nation. At best, we whimpered and complained in our closets and resigned to fate. But the 2015 elections seem to have changed all that. In these elections, we heard more of the voices of the citizens across several media, perhaps more than those of the Politicians. It was amazing reading the chats and commentaries of citizens on the social media and on the print and electronic media. So many bloggers came alive and many columnists were born. Though a lot of misinformation and propaganda we...

  In a couple of days, Nigerians will be heading for the polling booths to exercise their franchise in an effort to elect political leaders, first at the National level and then at the sub-National level. This has been one of the longest campaign periods in Nigeria's political history. For some, the campaigns started in 2012, barely one year after the last elections and the recent six weeks extension should have enabled everyone to exhaust themselves. The stakes have been heightened this electoral season by the emergence of a virile opposition represented by the All Progressives Congress( APC) which is determined to vigorously challenge the apparent monopoly of Power at the Federal level by the Peoples Democratic Party( PDP) in the last 16 years of the 4th Republic. There is therefore palpable tension in the air. Many People( Nigerians and foreigners ) are worried about the outcomes and consequences of the Elections. There have been all kinds of predictions and projections. But for...

 In 2014 Nigeria overtook South Africa on the list of the 50 Wealthiest People in Africa. That was exciting to me and I believe it should be to many lovers of Nigeria. On that list, there were 13 Nigerians against 11 South Africans, the rest being people from other African Countries, mainly Egypt, Morocco, Kenya and Tanzania. 2014 was the same year that Nigeria's GDP was REBASED, bringing it to be the biggest Economy in Africa. Some People challenged this rebasing and said it was stage managed. Perhaps they suspected that the Government in power did it to boost its performance. But Forbes is an internationally recognized and independent rating organization. In the same 2014, they found that Nigeria had the highest number of Wealthy People on their list. And this had nothing to do with rebasing the economy. The criteria for calculating the net worth of these rich Nigerians did not include the size of the economy. It was a measure of the wealth created by these individuals through ap...

I have become completely exasperated by how the Presidential campaign organizations of the two major political parties have turned the 2015 electioneering campaigns into a harvest of fabricated lies, rumour peddling,and daily accusations and counter accusations. From the way things are going, it seems that these organizations believe that the elections will be won by which ever party that is able to fabricate more lies or peddle more rumours or raise more accusations. The whole thing is becoming so deamining and nasty that many decent Nigerians are getting worried. Each day one wakes up, he will regaled with a new tale.   For several weeks now, there has been this wild rumour that the President wants to remove Jega from office prematurely. This rumour has been propelled by the APC campaign team. For what reason? Because he plans to conduct a free and fair elections. How can that be an act of misdeamenour that will attract summary dismissal. The President had to deny this rumour at...

 I am one of those who had repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction with the performance of our Security forces in the fight against the Boko haram insurgents. I had been bewildered by how an apparently untrained or poorly trained and ill-equipped rag tag army could take parts of Nigeria’s territory with apparent ease. How could a military establishment that has produced many generals (active and inactive) just collapse in the front of a few disgruntled miscreants. That was how I felt until I realized that my assumptions were mistaken. Over time, it became clear that these were not just a few disgruntled miscreants, that they were sizeable, actively recruiting and indoctrinating and radicalizing intakes from Nigeria and her Neighbours. I soon discovered that they had access to large stock and variety of arms and were being reinforced and re supplied regularly both from Nigeria and from abroad. I soon realized that we were not just dealing with local insurgents as was the case in ...