Opinion

At this rate, President Muhammadu Buhari may beat former military President General Ibrahim Babangida to the record of collecting the most abusive letters from a former president.

How could anyone, regardless of their political leaning, justify the slip up of presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party and former Vice President, Abubakar Atiku, on Saturday?

One of the most worrying developments in Nigeria today is the ugly phenomenon of cash-for-votes by political parties and candidates. Desperate politicians are not leaving any stone unturned in order to ensure their victory at the coming 2019 general elections.

“Buhari is sick in the spirit, body and soul. Let’s beg him to go and rest…Let’s give chance to another person” – Olusegun Obasanjo, January 21, 2019.

Democracy becomes a sham if elections are carried out by people who should be impartial and neutral umpires, but who show no integrity, acting with blatant partiality, duplicity and imbecility. For all democrats and those carrying out the process of elections, there must be the redline that must not be crossed in tactics and practices of democracy.

If you are a lover of competitive democracy, you must have been worried by the pronouncements and demeanour of Alhaji Lai Mohammed, minister of information, on Friday. Lai, speaking in a very bitter tone, told State House correspondents that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), could spend as much time as he wanted in the US but he would be quizzed on his return over his role in the collapse of Bank PHB

I am sure you have noticed that “money is not flowing” this season as it did in 2015 when there was a blizzard of dollars.

I once had a taste of political violence during the 2015 Presidential campaigns. In Bauchi, our convoy was stoned. In Katsina, restless youths wielding stones and long sticks threatened to attack us. It didn’t matter that it was a Presidential convoy. But nothing in those two places is comparable to what I experienced in Sagamu, Ogun State on Sunday, January 13.

Get this straight: Atiku Abubakar will lose the presidential election on February 16. I’m not Rev. Father Ejike Mbaka or one of the tongue-in-cheek seers whose predictions you’ll be struggling to figure out after dropping your offering in the bag at midnight of December 31.

“Bandits” have emerged as the new bogeyman for insecurity in Nigeria, joining a long (and still growing list) that includes Boko Haram, cultists, herdsmen, kidnappers and militants.

“That’s him, that’s him,” the two old women, wrinkled and bent with age, exclaimed. You could see wonderment and fulfillment in their eyes. And as if on cue, they both began to cry.

I have always believed that returning to a parliamentary system would offer us an opportunity to practise a more robust form of democracy. I like presidentialism, which we currently practise, but I love the parliamentary system.

On Monday December 17, 2018, President Muhammadu Buhari who is seeking re-election for a second term of office will be marking his 76th birthday and, in his own words, “still going strong.”

These valid statements, in my mind, summarize the true state of the Nigerian situation, from which all our leaders should pick some valuable lessons.

Exaggeration is the most common strain of fever at election period. Politicians make voters – and the general public – believe that the world might end on ballot day, when in fact what they are playing for is their own survival.

The INEC boss noted further that “vote-buying is illegal, undemocratic and morally poignant and a threat to the sanctity of the ballot.

Though the tell-tale signs are there, considering the unusual electoral malpractices in Ekiti, Osun, Kwara and other places where voters have allegedly been brazenly intimidated, disenfranchised and disillusioned.

That withering creative madness was the tipping point. Over 500,000 people have now viewed the body double video and perhaps the 500,001thviewer was Bishop David Oyedepo, leader of one of the largest Christian evangelical denominations in Nigeria.