Perspectives

Ballot prophets. Merchants of violence, By Jiti Ogunye

Forty-four years ago, in the run-up to the 1979 Presidential Election, a Professor Godspower Oyewole, then a renowned psychic, predicted that the name of the destined winner of the election was in the Bible. Many supporters of the Unity Party of Nigeria ( UPN ) and of the Nigerian Peoples Party ( NPP ) were happy and expectant. Awo was…

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A message to my President-to-be, By Abubakar Suleiman

It’s Monday 27th February, 2023. The results are in, the concessions received. You are now Mr President-in-waiting. Congratulations, you have done it. Now the real work starts, there’s no break for nation builders. A reminder:- The FGN is not a big government, not really. We can’t solve our problems by shrinking, we need to do more for more people. Growth…

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Finally, tomorrow comes, By Bolaji Adebiyi

Without a doubt, this is the longest electioneering in the electoral history of Nigeria. The politicians entered the fray in early 2022, with Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, for instance, announcing his aspiration on 10 January after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari.  But it was between May and early June of that year that…

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I saw the old NNPC die

I was witness to history on Friday last week. I’d been invited to attend what was called NNPC Cutover Ceremony at the corporate head office of the burgeoning National Energy Company in Abuja, Federal Capital Territory. What did the event mean, in simple English. NNPC was completing its transmutation from a Corporation to a Limited Company, as required by the…

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Presidential election: We will vote APC, we will win, By Is’haq Moddibo Kawu

I arrived in Ilorin on Monday evening because of a most tragic family death, that’s shocked our entire community. My original plan was to arrive a few days before we go to the polls; but the passing of Her Worship Mariam Kawu-Said hastened my return to Ilorin. This tragedy enveloped us all but the community was also bursting at the…

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Nigeria’s election and the pollster’s albatross, By Azu Ishiekwene

With all the predictions of Armageddon and doubt about whether Saturday’s presidential and national assembly polls would hold it does sound a bit silly to contemplate life after. Even those who grudgingly concede a life after fear it might be worse. Optimism is like playing the Ostrich. Nigeria’s history of electoral violence in the sixties and even in the mid-nineties…

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Tinubu and the North: Always as friends, By Abdulaziz Abdulaziz

At the palace of the Shehu of Borno on Saturday, the Borno State governor, Professor Babagana Zulum said something brief but profound. He was introducing the APC presidential candidate, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to the revered monarch. Tinubu, Zulum said, had been there for Borno and its people at the most difficult times of its 1,200-year history. When many people…

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On the tone of campaigns, By Kayode Komolafe

As the presidential campaigns end tomorrow midnight, a lot of what has happened on the hustings and the public sphere in the last five months ought to be scrutinised. This is irrespective of what would be the result of balloting on Saturday. Although this may appear to be a theoretical luxury given the ferment in the land towards the elections,…

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