Azu Ishiekwene

silhouette image of a judge giving judgement in a court room

From the Mouth of His Lordship

politics /

Akintan was assigned 52 petitions in Port Harcourt alone. On top of that, the President of the Court of Appeal told him he had to go to Jos for eight pending governorship election petitions, which the president of the court obviously needed a trustworthy judge to handle. To avoid contact with litigants and their lawyers, never mind the felicity of some determined folks even thinking of sending him Sallah ram directly or by proxy as we heard in a recent case in Kano, he moved his base from Port Harcourt to his home town, Idanre, Ondo State

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picture of godwin obaseki and philip shaibu in a fighting ring

Obaseki and Shaibu Deserve Each Other

politics /

Obaseki, the other significant party in this pathetic drama playing out in Edo, is a man of infinite contradictions, whose chameleonic gifts are matched only by his ruthless deployment of power. Against the run of fair play, Oshiomhole imposed him as his successor in 2016, in a self-aggrandising bid to copy the Tinubu-Fashola model in Lagos; he being the Tinubu of Edo, and Obaseki, the former stockbroker from Afrivest, Edo’s Fashola.
The experiment turned out to be a catastrophic fiasco. Barely two years after take-off, the falcon began to defy the falconer, and the monster created in the process now threatens not only the creator but also the supplicant who has dared to challenge it

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image of mele kyari in the backdrop of a gas filling station with cars queued up, and the inscription 'no gas'

Gas Car Rigmarole, Questions Tinubu Can’t Ignore

Economy /

As surely as big money never fails to follow big talk in conspiracies that often end in heart-breaking scandals, the Central Bank offered N250 billion to “support” the NNPC’s gas car value chain. All of this was nearly three years ago. As you read this piece, no one is sure how many of the estimated 12million registered cars in Nigeria are gas-powered or how many of the estimated 6.7million of registered commercial vehicles out of the 12m are on gas…Was the CBN’s N250 billion gas value chain support fund disbursed? If so, how much and what is left of it? Who were the beneficiaries, and what have they done with the money? I tried in vain to get the answers. Perhaps the bank or the Ministry of Petroleum Resources can help

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a picture collage of festus keyamo, femi gbajabiamila, and maryam shetty, with a blurred out photo of tinubu in the background

Tinubu’s List, Gbaja-nisation and Nigeria’s Politics

politics /

I’m not sure any Chief of Staff since 1999 has assumed and executed with a comparable degree of passion the task of dispatching nominees’ lists the way Gbajabiamila has done so far. Those who know him well, famously called Gbaja-philes in Villa-pedia, however insist that his performance is out of the goodness of his heart; and so, I won’t let anyone put words into my mouth or ideas in my head about his sterling qualities

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Image of Africa's map showing countries where there have been coup, edited from an infographic by Daily Trust

Again, A Bizarre Joke in Niger Speaks French

Africa, politics /

The other important part was Tanja’s confrontation with French state-owned atomic energy group, Areva, which had enjoyed a de facto monopoly of the country’s rich uranium, a strategic resource for France’s nuclear power. Areva’s profit from uranium is twice Niger’s GDP. In a multi-million-dollar deal with China in which Tanja did not mind cutting Niger’s nose to spite the face of France, he pulled the plug on Francophone Africa’s most significant player, making the French play second fiddle to the new Chinese bride. When the tables turned following Tanja’s ouster, Paris was more than happy to dance on his political grave. But the story did not end there. According to Tom Burgis in his no-holds-barred book, _The Looting Machine_ , Niger spent $47 million from the proceeds of the uranium deal on arms to suppress the Tuareg rebels; and when a further $300 million came later from signature payment by China National Petroleum Corporation, to develop an oil block, the question was no longer whether Tanja could afford to make trouble, but how much

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an image merge of Omoniyi Ibietan and his new book, Cyber Politics – Social Media, Social Demography and Voting Behaviour in Nigeria

Does Social Media Affect Your Voting?

politics /

Is it true that social media influencers are ‘motivated to undertake organised campaigns during the election using their platforms, largely due to the need to bring about a better social order?’ It does appear to me (and perhaps this was unique to the 2023 elections) that social media influencers were just a force for good as they were a force for mayhem. The sludge of fake news sometimes unleashed by so-called influencers, not to mention toxicity of the avatars in that space who often insisted it was either their way or the highway, left people like me bereft and alienated

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An aircraft descending on the tarmac with the control tower telling it to return to base

Why Museveni Video Shames Africa

Africa, politics /

Museveni told a meeting of the Pan-African parliament in Midrand, South Africa, that a plane conveying six African heads of state to Tripoli, including his own minister who represented him, was asked not to proceed by NATO as the aircraft approached the Libyan airspace on its mission. “How can African leaders nominated by an African continental body, on African soil, be stopped by NATO from doing their duty,” he asked the parliament, pointing out that even the Mauritanian President, Mohammed Abdul Aziz, who was chair of that session of the parliament, was also on the trip.

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