This really is the hardest question that all the people of goodwill in Nigeria must ask and answer candidly. Anyone who attempts to evade asking and confronting the inevitable tough answer to this question merely lives in delusion.

There is Time for everything. Figuratively speaking, a person or country can be asked, “What Time is it?” with an intention to trigger a deep rumination from those who should know or care. The start of the New Year after a bloodied end of 2023 with yet another mass brutal killings of over 150 children, youth, women, and men during the Christmas week, in several villages of Plateau State did provide the context for one to ask. So, I ask first, those among my fellow citizens who have only always hoped against hope that our country will ultimately Become, “What Time is it for Nigeria?” I next ask all those who have held and the ones currently holding political and public leadership positions in the country, “What Time is it for Nigeria?”

The blood of Fidelis Solomon and over one hundred and fifty other victims gruesomely massacred in the latest Plateau State carnage, and the blood of the hundreds of thousands of innocent Nigerians cumulatively killed in the North Central, Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, Southsouth and Southwest regions of our country are crying, “What Time is it for Nigeria?” What is your answer, fellow citizens?

This really is the hardest question that all the people of goodwill in Nigeria must ask and answer candidly. Anyone who attempts to evade asking and confronting the inevitable tough answer to this question merely lives in delusion.

For me, it is the critical time to confront the hard conversations on how to create a viable Nigeria that transits from mere country to a nation of people who though diverse have collectively negotiated to unite themselves around a shared sense of nationalism to build a just, equitable, peaceful, orderly, prosperous, stable, resilient, and ethical society based on shared values, national vision and common identity. It is the most feasible way to avoid Nigeria becoming a truly bankrupt country with all her people.

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Bankruptcy, an extremely scary word was recently used by Nigeria’s National Security Adviser (NSA), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu to describe the financial situation of the country. In his words: “We are facing very serious budgetary constraints. It is okay for me to tell you. It is fine for you to know. We have a very serious situation… We have inherited a very difficult country, a bankrupt country to the extent that we are paying back what was taken. It is serious”.

Bankruptcy in corporate use, means the death of an entity because it stops all operations and goes completely out of business. Death is the loss of soul. Like humans, a country also has a soul, and it contains the values and boundaries of what is acceptable or abhorrent behavior. For example, in Nigeria, there was a time when a certain modicum of values served as filters of what behaviors were rewarded and punished. The soul of our country began to die when public leaders became bad examples, disdaining values and rewarding vices. As the people either helplessly watched on or simply did not care and many chose to join the leaders in sliding the scale of values, the soul of Nigeria started to erode. The soul of the country has eroded to a degree where today, the value and respect for human life is closer to zero than to one.

The bankruptcy of a country and people which relegates the dignity of life is much more damaging than empty public coffers. Public leaders who do not value the life of their fellow human being bankrupt the soul of their country. The cyclical pattern of empty coffers in a country vastly endowed with the natural, human, and other resources to have emerged as a globally productive and competitive economy is a factor of Nigeria’s values bankruptcy. The Nigerian-State run by governments which area inured to the debasement of human lives is bankrupt of soul.

We shockingly arrived a time in our country when regardless of the number of mass abductions, maiming and killings of fellow humans being in our country, the Nigerian-State moves on without an iota of accountability and consequence for especially murderous criminals. We are in a time when Nigerians have normalized and accepted that their governments and leaders can conduct, enable, or ignore acts of impunity. A time in which the lines between reward and punishment are so blurred that the country exists without any form of deterring consequence for the most atrocious behaviors.

So, even though evidence abound in our public finance data to support Ribadu’s assessment of the current state of the country’s finance, Nigeria’s reality is worse than mere financial bankruptcy. An empty treasury is the least of insolvencies that stymie Nigeria and Nigerians. The substantial and existential danger is that Nigeria as a country is totally bankrupt of values, void of soul and headed into a cataclysmic collapse of the kind that more money cannot change. What can more money do to reverse the callous acceptance of a brutish, short, and nasty existence into which majority Nigerians have now acculturated their minds?

What will more money do for a people who no longer expect their leaders to take responsibility for basic duties including accountability for failure to produce results? What can more money do for a country that kidnapping of citizens grew into an industry nationwide? The Nigeria we all lament today is a sad example of what failure to agree and uphold a national integrity and values system can do to any people. Nigerians chose to be lethargic to how our country is governed, so our public leaders willfully distorted incentives and sanctions in our society.

Yes, the public coffers are empty, but the time now is to tackle the cause and not one of the symptoms of our national bankruptcy as a country and people. Nigeria must first overcome the existential sustainability question as our top priority agenda at this time. Is it not staggeringly alarming that Nigeria’s contemporary peer-countries are contending to lead the 21st Century by shifting global economic dominance while we in contrast are steadily regressing farther away from being a country? Nigeria’s multiple existential threats to retaining the status of country are fiercer than ever before. We now barely tick the boxes for the full status of a country, properly so called.

A Nigeria that is fast losing most of the basic criteria that qualified us to be included in the United Nations list of recognized countries should alarm all patriots into action to save and avoid the tendentious pattern of our political class tunnelling our focus to addressing symptoms instead of their underlying causes.

Our evident state of affairs is that Nigeria now more than ever before ticks closest to the box of a failed state on the criteria of renowned Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine. The index annually uses Economic, Political and Social factors to evaluate fragility and resilience of countries. Nigeria has every year over the last ten years remained within the group of 15 countries out of 170 that rank closest to fragile-failed country status. For example, on the economic front, Nigeria is entangled with endemic issues of systemic and widespread grand as well as petty corruption, “high economic inequality, economic development along group line, low growth, severe economic decline and rising extreme poverty”.

In the context of the Fragility Index on the political front, Nigeria experiences “breakdown of capacity of government to function usually characterized by delegitimization of the state, deterioration of public services, suspension, or arbitrary application of law; widespread human rights abuses, security forces operating as a “state within a state” often with impunity, rise of factionalized elites, and rise of external political agents and foreign states”.

On the social metrics, the index evaluates Nigeria’s “depleting social capital, loss of social cohesion, a squandering and poor management of its diversity, demographic pressures and tribal, ethnic and/or religious conflicts, massive internal and external displacement of refugees, creating severe humanitarian emergencies, widespread vengeance-seeking group grievances and sustained human flight” and such like.

It will amount to a historical missed opportunity if Nigerians do not in 2024 collectively resist the syndrome of tunneling our focus to the lowest common denominator of our problems. The Federal Government in its current narrative about public financial distress is leading everyone down that path because even though it is true that Nigeria and Nigerians are faced with the severest fiscal distress ever experienced in recent history, our single-minded focus must be the battle for the Soul of Nigeria. No amount of money from higher oil prices, tax collections and more domestic and external debts can win this battle for us.

More money cannot save a country and people that have lost their soul. Even then, the fact is that from all evidence available in the public domain, additional money earned by Nigeria now merely and mostly feed the avarice and voracious greed of Nigeria’s politicians anyway as the budget process has often revealed. The question that should therefore seize the minds of citizens of Nigeria and move all in the direction of the right actions is found in the timeless words of scripture; “Behold, what does it profit a man, nay, a woman and people of a country, to gain the whole world but lose their soul?”

There is a raging battle for the Soul of Nigeria, a country which has turned into a massive killing field and mass graves overrunning with the blood of innocent children, youth, women, and men brutally murdered, battered or abducted without any consequence to the criminals.

Every Nigerian of goodwill – regardless of ethnicity, religion, economic status, and political persuasion – knows that the Nigeria we once knew is gone. The collective momentum must now swiftly gather to the tipping point for Nigerians to compel a legally mandated National Conversation that will fundamentally negotiate and determine the value we place on our lives and the values that will uphold, preserve, and dignify a New Nigeria and Nigerians. Throughout history, dead countries commenced their dying when human life ceased to have worth. This is the kind of time Nigeria find itself, but we can by a collective will confront the demons that have dwarfed the realization of our country’s giant potentials and change the course of our checkered history.

Could this be the ironic time a lethally flawed government of President Bola Tinubu which continues struggling with crisis of legitimacy, makes the urgent and historic choice to facilitate and enable a New Constitutional Process credibly co-led by citizens? Will the Tinubu administration surprise us and choose the good of Nigeria and Nigerians this Time?

Will he take up the gauntlet at this Time and ask himself the question, “What Time is it for Nigeria?” Can Tinubu’s candid answer be that it is “The Time for me to do right by the Citizens of Nigeria?”.

There is indeed Time for everything, and Nigerians are anxiously waiting. It is Time.

Obiageli “Oby” Ezekwesili, a former Minister of Education and Solid Minerals, is Founder and Chairperson of the Board of the School of Politics, Policy and Governance (SPPG)

Governor Caleb Manasseh Mutfwang of Plateau state yesterday said the Court of Appeal was unfair to him in nullifying his election.

Mutfwang, who stated this while presenting to the Supreme Court the eight points he presented to the Court of Appeal to prove the validity of his election, of which only one was determined, also said he was not given fair hearing by the Appellate Court

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He said the dismissal of the seven issues he raised by the Court of Appeal was against the directive of the Supreme Court that intermediate courts should pronounce on all issues placed before it

He pleaded with the Supreme Court to declare him as the validly elected governor of Plateau State.

Mutfwang, who made the submission in his brief at the Supreme Court by eight-man team of Senior Advocates of Nigeria, led by Kanu Agabi, said “the law is settled that wherever there is a wrong, there must be a remedy.”

The hearing of his brief by the Supreme Court comes up on Tuesday.

He said: “Eight issues were distilled and placed before the court below for determination. Unfortunately, only one issue (of jurisdiction) was determined by the court below leaving untouched seven issues.

“This court has stated in quite a number of cases that intermediate courts should pronounce on all issues placed before it. It should not restrict it to one or more issues which its opinion may dispose of the matter.

“This is to give the apex court the benefit of their views in the matter should there be need to consider other issues not determined by the intermediate court.

Mutfwang insisted that since he was not given fair hearing the Supreme Court should dismiss the judgment of the Court of Appeal which invalidated his election.

He added: “It is our further submission that having denied fair hearing to the Appellant, with respect to the Notice of Preliminary Objection as well as a Motion to strike out the incompetent Grounds of Appeal, the decision of the lower Court to dismiss same is, with all due respect manifestly flawed.”

Retired Justice Muhammad Dattijo’s official quarters at the Supreme Court were reportedly burgled during the Christmas holidays in December 2023.

The quarters for Supreme Court justices are in Maitama in Abuja.

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Sources said the home was stripped bare as the burglars “took everything from the house”.

“The burglary took place at the quarters for Supreme Court justices in Maitama. It occurred over the Christmas holidays and Dattijo was travelling out of the country at the time,” one of the sources said.

Dattijo, who retired from the Supreme Court on October 27, 2023, knocked his colleagues on his way out.

He described the apex court as rotten and characterised by filth.

He lamented that the apex court had been pervaded by bribery and perversion of justice, adding that it was dangerous for two out of the six geopolitical zones of the country to be excluded from the bench of the Supreme Court hearing appeals on the presidential election.

Lamenting that the appointments of judicial officers have been political, selfish and sectional interests, he said, “It is asserted that the process of appointment to judicial positions is deliberately conducted to give undue advantage to the children, spouses and mistresses of serving and retired judges and managers of judicial offices.

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“At the Court of Appeal, it is asserted, presiding justices are now being appointed out of turn. And there is the further issue of the unpredictable nature of recent decisions of the courts as well.

“A number of respected senior members of the bar inter alia, citing Ahmed Lawan, the former President of the Senate and Imo governorship appeals, claim that decisions of even the apex court have become unpredictable.

“It is difficult to understand how and where, by these decisions, the judicial pendulum swings. It was not so before, they contended.

“In some quarters, the view is strongly held that filth and intrigues characterise the institution these days. Judges are said to be comfortable in companies they never would have kept in the past. It is being insinuated that some judicial officers even campaign for politicians. It cannot be more damnifying.”

According to him, some years ago, “appointment to the bench was strictly on merit. Sound knowledge of the law, integrity, honour and hard work distinguished those who were elevated”.

He continued, “Lobbying was unheard of. I never lobbied, not at any stage of my career, to secure any appointment or elevation. As much as possible, the most qualified men and women were appointed. That can no longer be said about appointments to the bench

“The judiciary must be uniquely above board. Appointments should not be polluted by political, selfish and sectional interests. The place of merit, it must be urged, cannot be overemphasised.

“Public perceptions of the judiciary have over the years become witheringly scornful and monstrously critical,” he lamented and called for urgent reform in the judiciary to correct the alleged anomalies.”

“As we enter into the New Year, many do the usual: “thank God for keeping me alive, for my healthy children, for the house I built”.

Personally, I have a lot to be grateful for this year. I survived a ghastly motor accident on the 14th of April 2023, after being rigged out of the Senatorial elections I overwhelmingly won. Gratefully the courts bided me justice on the 31st of October 2023.

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Indeed, 2023 was quite a remarkable year but we can’t help but think about the suffering lot and those who died only to assume that God loves them less.

Two recent unfortunate incidents come to mind, the Tudun Biri Kaduna drone strike of the 3rd December 2023 where 88 innocent people were killed by an erroneous military air attack. Shouldn’t have happened at all. Then the Black Christmas for residents of Bokkos and Barkin communities in Plateau where over 150 people were killed by terrorists. The image of the crying baby strapped on her dead mother’s back still haunts!!!

Today, millions of Nigerians live in the despair of poverty and joblessness amidst the high cost of living. Quality basic education is a luxury and our women are still held hostage for want of settling maternity bills in poorly fit healthcare facilities. The roads… oh the roads are death traps and playgrounds for bandits and kidnappers.

“You are a Senator, fix these problems” I sense many say.

Yes, I can… and so can you… as well as the President. We can fix the problems ourselves and rebuild the Nigeria of our dreams.

How about starting off 2024 by making a resolution for accountability?

On grounds of negligence, we can call for the sack and prosecution of the Army commandant who ordered the Tudun Biri air strike.

We can call for the sack of the Plateau State Director of DSS and Commissioner of Police for gross incompetence over the killings in Plateau.

Fellow Nigerians, you are mostly young, smart, and intuitive; there lies your power… let 2024 be a time you show yourself changing narratives in well-defined civil spaces. I, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan will walk with you!

Let 2024 be a year you unleash your potential.

Nigeria’s music industry wasn’t established by the government but by ordinary citizens webbing an ecosystem responsive enough to own their space in the world. Afrobeats thrives!!!

Who says you can’t do same with Science and Technology what you did to the music industry? Who says you can’t revolutionise alternative medicine in the wake of the pharmaceutical giant’s departure from Nigeria? In the past two weeks, I watched the NAFDAC DG and Sen. Aminu Abbas, Chairman Committee on Science and Technology make strong cases to support startups and clinic research in furtherance of alternative medicine.

The next big pharma could be Nigerian!!!

Let our specialised TechHubs be your playground. Station F of France, STING of Stockholm,Botswana Innovation Hub… brace up innovators!!!

Nigerian youths, let 2024 be a year you take charge of your government.

Question the numerous MoUs and contracts entered by foreign investors and the Federal/State governments. That’s how unqualified Shell companies are uncovered and we can avoid another SolGas, GINL Ajaokuta steel & Delta steel mishap.

Critique our bilateral agreements and treaties. Some are meaningless, obsolete, and sovereign traps. Help Nigeria escape from neocolonialism!!!

Demand monthly question-and-answer sessions with your president. Share your developmental ideas and public opinions. He is your president till 2027 so you might as well begin to make the best use of him for you!!!

Remember Nigeria is ours to fix.

Remember the dead of yesterday could be us tomorrow.

Remember politicians’ promises are only as real as you make them by demanding accountability and recalling the unperforming amongst us.

In 2024, intentionally critique the budget … follow the money… monitor the contracts.

Know that every single kobo borrowed to fund the budget is a debt on all of us including the unborn children. So treat governance seriously. Your democratic rights don’t end at the polls… it starts there. Be involved, we shall work with you!!!

So as we thank God for making us see this New Year, let the lives of those who died not be in vain.

As we give thanks for the health of our children, remember the children in the kidnappers’ dens.

While we thank God for the new houses we moved into or built, remember those rendered homeless by the flood and insurgencies.

Be concerned and emphatic about the situations in other states and regions because as we are all bound in poverty and insurgencies ; we shall also be bound in the successes of our innovators and industrialists.

Finally, please learn to apply the Law of Attraction internationally to your daily life because you are your own self programmer. I did this from childhood long before I knew the philosophy existed and it worked. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho are good books to read free on the net.

Unambiguous determination sets in motion series of events that would work in your favor. I’d love to practice this with you all.

So let’s leave the fears and tears of 2023 and intentionally seek a prosperous 2024.

Happy New Year resilient Nigerians
Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan
Kogi Central

Senator Orji Uzor Kalu of Abia state has appealed to Nigerians to give President Bola Tinubu’s administration more time to fix the economy.

Uzor-Kalu, a former chief whip of the Senate, acknowledged that Nigerians were going economic hardship.

The senator spoke on Tuesday in Koli-Edda in Afikpo South Local Government Area of Ebonyi State when he visited the chairperson of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ebonyi State, Stanley Okoro-Emegha.

Mr Kalu, a former Abia State governor, said Mr Tinubu was working hard to reposition the country’s economy and restore its lost glory, adding that Nigerians should give the president time.

“The APC government is cutting the cloth into pieces. Before you sew a cloth you will first cut it into pieces; so, Tinubu is busy cutting the cloth into pieces.

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“So, give us another three years or two years; people are suffering. We understand that, give us more two years for the cloth we want to sew to be sewn very well,” Mr Kalu said.

The senator spoke on why the National Assembly added billions of naira to the 2024 budget.

“We said that we are going to do a census and Nigeria has put several billions of naira in planning for the national census in 2023, and if we did not vote money for the conduct of the exercise, Nigeria will be losing about N289 billion,” he said.

The senator urged Nigerian youths to be agents of positive change, by shunning social vices and any act that is capable of breaching the peace and security of the country.
(NAN)

A pro Peoples Democratic Party group, PDP Forever Initiative, has asked President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to allow thorough investigation of the minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Betta Edu over the controversial missing funds.

The call became necessary following the suspension of the National Co-ordinator /Chief Executive Officer of the National Social Investment Agency (NSIPA), Ms Halima Shehu, by President Tinubu.

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The group also faulted the suspension of Ms Halima Shehu without any investigation into the matter, urging the President to reverse the suspension.

The NSIPA National Coordinator was reportedly suspended on Tuesday over alleged missing funds.

Addressing a press conference Wednesday in Abuja, President of the PDP group, Comrade Obande Gideon Obande, called on “President Tinubu to quickly intervene and address Nigerians if truly there is a missing funds and how the funds got missing. Investigation will reveal the real culprits who is stealing or trying to steal public funds.”

According to Obande, It is wrong for Mr President to approve the suspension of Ms Hailma Shehu and immediately replaced her with a yoruba man instead of the most senior civil servant in her agency which is from the North.

“It is also very undeserving that Mr President would approve a suspension of his appointee without investigation or setting up investigative panel to unravel the allegations that must have led to the suspension.

“However, information at our disposal revealed that the Honourable Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation may have question to answer as Ms Halima had worked with her for three years when she was the APC National Woman Leader and possibly influenced her appointment at NSIPA. What must have gone wrong?”

The group also accused the the Humanitarian minister of allegedly “attempting to cover up some misdoings in government.

“As opposition coalition, we raised alarm toward the end of 2023 that the Honourable Minister Betta Edu may have connived with some highly placed persons to undermine the Tinubu’s administration of Renewed Hope Agenda which was evident in the manner ficticious names were been enrolled in the National social register and sub-change Nigerians who are to be the direct Beneficiary of the social investment program.

“Today, the Honourable Minister is enjoying her holiday while the National Co-ordinator and CEO of NSIPA is being sacrificed. If the government is sincere, the Honourable Minister should have been suspended alongside the National Co-ordinator and CEO of NSIPA to pave way for effective investigation.

“Because we are aware that there have been direct dealings of the Minister with the coordinators instead of reporting to the National Coordinator/Chief Executive Officer of NSIPA, they report directly to the Minister, thereby neglecting the people of Nigeria.

“Let it be on record, that once government is formed, it is the responsibility of all Nigerians irrespective of political affiliations, it is of our interest as Nigerians to set the record straight especially now that the federal government is derailing.

“We are aware that the Federal Government is not ready to address some critical issues raised by Nigerians like the ongoing debate on the Bogus 28. trillion Naira 2024 budget and it’s realization, the expansion of the National Social Register which the Minister of Humanitarian is handling unilaterally without due process and the availability of the unapplication form to deserving Nigerians.”

New Chief of staff to Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State, Edison Ehie has withdrawn his contempt proceedings suit against 25 of the 27 defected lawmakers.

Last December, Ehie, a close ally of the governor, declared the seats of 27 lawmakers vacant over their defection from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC).

However, two of the lawmakers later returned to the PDP. Ehie led the group of five lawmakers loyal to the governor.

Fubara on the other hand has been engaged in a fierce political battle with his predecessor, Nyesom Wike, the FCT minister.

Earlier, Ehie filed contempt proceedings at the Rivers state high court in Port Harcourt against 25 of them in which he challenged their sittings and legislative activities.

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In an interesting turn of events, Ehie resigned his position in the House of Assembly following the peace deal reached between Governor Fubara and Wike.

Now Mr Ehie is discontinuing and withdrawing his suit against the 25 lawmakers.

When the matter came up for hearing of applications pending before the court today, counsel to the Claimant, Mac-Barango Esq informed the court about a Notice of Discontinuance filed by his clients. He applied that the court should give effect to the said Notice.

This request wasn’t challenged by the defendant’s counsel and as such was struck out by the judge.

The Department of State Services, DSS, on Thursday released Mr. Ebubechukwu Patrick Okafor, a serving corps member who was arrested by the Service alongside his father, Mr. Ugulu O. Ugulu, PDP LG chairmanship aspirant in Enugu State.

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Enugu popular lawyer, Chief AOU Onyema had in a lettter dated January 2, 2024, addressed to the Enugu state director of DSS, prayed the Service to release the detained father and son pending the outcome of their investigation.

In a telephone interview with Daily Gazette, the clients’ lawyer, Chief AOU Onyema said Mr. Ebubechukwu Patrick Okafor has been released.

Barr. Onyema said Mr. Ugulu received a phone call on December 20, 2023 from the DSS inviting him to their office the following day, which he honoured.

As at the time of filing this report, reason for the arrest is not yet known.

However, Barr. Onyema raised concerns about the potential political motivation behind the arrest, given Mr. Ugulu’s involvement in the upcoming Enugu State LGA Chairmanship Election.

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He further called for a timely review of the application he submitted, hoping for a swift resolution of whatever issues that may have warranted the arrest and detention.

“Latest update is that the son has been released this evening, remaining his father” Onyema concluded.