Contrary to any popular belief, I do not believe that birth control has anything to do with the poverty that plagues northern Nigeria. The northern part of Nigeria is the country’s most populous region, with about 60 million people. Furthermore, the region boasts the highest number of political leaders wealthiest people on the continent of Africa.

I’m continually asking myself: “Why does northern Nigeria have the largest number of school dropouts?” And why is begging more rampant in this region?” Despite the fact that the region boasts the richest person in Africa and constitutes a majority of Nigerian leaders.

By making some critical and in-depth observations of the problem, I don’t believe the Nigerian government has failed on this subject, because when it comes to growth, the region has outperformed the other regions in terms of infrastructure and humanitarian agencies.

Observing the northern region, I discovered that it is divided into three parts: North Central (which includes seven states: Plateau, Nasarawa, Kogi, Niger, and Kwara), North East (which includes six states: Bauchi, Gombe, Adamawa, Yobe, Borno, and Taraba), and North West (which includes seven states: Kebbi, Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Jigawa, Kano, and Kaduna).

I conducted a study of the people who live in this region and found out that some states are less impoverished than others. For instance, when we look at the North Central, we rarely find a street beggar in these areas.

But due to the population of the region, its inhabitants are the most impoverished people in the country. I learned from my observation that the North West has the highest number of poor people in the entire country.

I keep asking myself how birth control has not been embraced by the people of this region in spite of the big consequence of poverty. In countries like Japan, where birth control pill was outlawed until 1999, 46-1 percent of couples used male condoms. Japan is not poor because of this practice. Because it has been able to control birth rate.

Finally, I received a response to my question about how absence of self-reliance has become a key factor why poverty has gripped Nigeria’s northern region.

In terms of business or government/private jobs, it’s rare to see a woman who relies solely on herself, because it is a taboo for a female to engage in either a government or private job. In that area, it is preferable for them to rely on their husbands or parents.

That is why, when their husbands die and they are left with children, she will become a street beggar with her children. She will be unable to cater for them because she has never tried relying on herself when she has the opportunity.

If the northern women will rely on themselves, I am sure poverty in that region will be eradicated, because females are the only ones who can care for your children when you are no longer alive. As a result, I don’t see the reason of preventing females or wives from relying on themselves.

Muhammad can be reached via lilfancy806@gmail.com

Nigeria’s political party dominance has often revolved around a two-pod and a tripod. Since the 1960s it has been so. In the First Republic, under a parliamentary system, there were Nnamdi Azikiwe’s National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC); Obafemi Awolowo’s Action Group (AG) and Ahmadu Bello’s Northern Peoples Congress (NPC) as the leading political groupings. There were a few other viable political entities like Aminu Kano’s Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU), but none had the puissance of the big three.

In the Second Republic (1979), under a presidential system, there were the National Party of Nigeria (NPN); the Nigerian Peoples Party (NPP), and the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) as the three leading political structures. The People’s Redemption Party (PRP), an ideological rebirth of Aminu Kano’s NEPU – was also reckonable — but only for its ideological leanings which appealed to the educated elite. But it did not have the stature and spread of the famous three.

In the still-birthed 1993 presidential election, there were the National Republican Convention (NRC) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) as the two contending political blocs. The Babangida regime which midwifed the election principally ensured that only two political parties subsist. But the Third Republic suffered a miscarriage under the impingement of the military.

In 1999, it was an all-comers affair initially but eventually natural selection happened. Only two political parties stood out at the centre – the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Alliance for Democracy which transmogrified into the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN).

Today, there are only two leading political camps – the PDP and the APC. Darwin’s theory of evolution is manifestly evident in Nigeria’s political progression. The parties that have the resources, capacity and structure to adapt, merge, and re-merge have been able to survive the tempestuous political milieu. In 2021, INEC deregistered 22 political parties – those unable to achieve advantageous mutations. And more will die out after the 2023 elections.

The reality is that only the APC and the PDP are viable political vehicles. It is easy to theorise and sermonise about the deficiencies of these parties but the peculiarities of our political cosmos give them the oxygen and nourishment to survive. Both parties have functional advantage over other parties in elections. In the recently concluded area council election in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the winnings were split between the APC and the PDP – three each out of six councils.

It is intellectual torment to keep debating the ideological grounding and morality of these parties. Sheer self-purgatory. As I said earlier, these parties subsist because that is what our present political evolutionary curve guarantees. But the outcome of the 2023 elections may cause a seismic jolt in the political terra firma.

Atiku Abubakar, PDP presidential hopeful, had said the party would pass into oblivion if it did not win the 2023 presidential election. This is likely for both the APC and the PDP after 2023 – whichever group that loses the election. Natural selection will happen, and there could be alliances, mergers and re-alliances.

The 2023 presidential election is an open ticket. The incumbency element is absent. So, candidates of the APC and the PDP will be going into the election as underdogs.

Time has shown influencing elections is not President Muhammadu Buhari’s interest. He has told APC leaders again and again that he is not interested in who succeeds him and that he is not prepared to influence elections for any candidate.

When asked if he has a preferred candidate for the 2023 presidential election in a Channels Television interview in January, he said: “I’m not interested. It is not my problem. It is not my interest. I cannot say who succeeds me.’’

In fact, in 2019, Buhari warned that no candidate should campaign with his name for the 2023 elections. His words: “Well, what I want to promise Nigerians is that I will work very hard on ensuring free and fair elections. All those that are going to succeed the National Assembly and the presidency, they better work very hard because I will make sure I use the law enforcement agents to ensure that elections are free and fair (and that) nobody uses his office or his resources to force himself on his constituency.’’

The pattern and outcome of elections in Edo, Anambra and elsewhere have shown that Buhari is principled about allowing fair-play in elections. So, any candidate banking on incumbency influence or interference may be seeking the holy grail.

Essentially, Nigerians will be voting for the candidates these two political parties present. This is the clincher. The popularity of the candidates will determine where the votes swing.

The APC and the PDP will be the vehicles for the elections, but the candidates will be the drivers. The APC has the potential of winning as much as the PDP. Nothing is discounted. Any of the parties can win. The 2023 presidential election is a contest for survival.

Nwabufo aka Mr OneNigeria is a writer and journalist.

“An Ode To Death”

Your ode to death is in the lifting of a single eyebrow. Lift it and see. (Conrad Aiken)

Death is more than certain, says e.e Cummings,

But the clocks go on ticking as before

And in every particle of carbon dust

There lives a diamond dream

How many galaxies yet to be explored-

How many seeds in the pomegranate of time?

The pine tree blasted by last year’s Thunderbolt

And the burn out match stick in my ashtray

Look so terribly alike

I have sat by your bedside and felt

Your sinking pulse. Are the hair and bones

Really indestructible and how long

Does it take for the eyes

To dissolve in the grave?

Two streams mingle in a forgotten river.

Between the eye and the tear

There is the archipelago of naked rocks

Only sleep and silence there-

No anchorage for grief.

I, too, have wandered in a forest of symbols

And clutched at the harlots of memory.

I have seen the “stars plummet to their dark addresses”

I have felt your absence around my neck

But let bygones be bygones

Who was the deceiver and who the deceived

Was I on a floating island

And were you on the shore?

Which one of us moved away?

(Daud Kamal)

Do you know about Nigeria’s train number x? The train of death, that train that has seen countless innocent lives cut short by avoidable deaths. That train that has been on the Kaduna—Abuja expressway killing many as a result of bad roads, that train plies roads in Lokoja, Zaria, Ibadan/Lagos, Benin/Ore, Bauchi/Gombe and countless patches of the Jos/Kaduna and many other roads.

Train number x brought down an Airforce fighter jet down, and we saw tapes of the killings of men whose only sin was to protect Nigeria’s territorial integrity, after several denials, including tales by moonlight how the vegetation in the Boko made video did not fit sambisa. Eleven months later plane wreckage was found, indeed a nation.

Life is cheap, an ode to death, death in my beloved Nigeria is even cheaper, as unknown numbers are dead from the bombing of a train, flags do not fly at half, quarter or any mast, countless missing or rather abducted after official accounts stated all had been saved unharmed in a week a minister declared the country was safer; in a nation that governing party compares death toll with opposition politicians.

Conrad Aiken says that “Your ode to death is in the lifting of a single eyebrow. Lift it and see”, just as Dr. Chinelo on that train and many more painfully closed their eyebrows.

An ode to death is a short poem about the universal approach of death. Death is the central focus of the poet. In one breath we are born, in another we die, it is supposedly a mystery, but, in my motherland, death isn’t a mystery, you travel by road you die, you go by train you die, and then you fly—ask those in the plane when the Kaduna airport was attacked whether they are alive as airlines suspends flights there.

Hours after train number x attack, station x was attacked, airport x had been attacked, and the Zuma x barracks lost several soldiers while in faraway Kebbi policemen guiding a factory were killed. In our ode to death, we whine, blame, curse and hate, while truth is we cannot get by the train when leadership is seemingly rudderless, when non-state actors’ inch by inch have taken up spaces from the government.

I have a friend who has been under the weight of loan sharks, his two relatives (including a pregnant sister-in/law) has been in the custody of gunmen, bandits and terrorists (shamelessly we are afraid of how to categorize them) for five months and counting. The family has been using an Abuja based negotiator as state power has completely failed! The relatives are held in two different locations in Kaduna and Niger states.

Yet, the horse trading, sickening political hullabaloo and carroting, travel peppersouping and frolicking continues by-would-be-2023-leaders. While today death laughs at a nation. The Trade Union Council, the Nigerian Bar Association, the Medical Corp lost members, and are still losing their members, orphans, widows and widowers are the result of these deaths, as more and more souls spit bitter and black blood on the Nigerian construct that many of us believe in.

In this poem “An Ode to Death” the theme of decay and decline is given. Not only human beings are subject to death but each and every thing in this world e.g., materialistic things are subject to decay. By using reference of ‘clock’ Daud Kamal is giving the uncertainty of time and behind this he has the view that with time everything will be finished. Similarly, the time to be born and time to die is defined by our creator. For example, if we buy something from a salesman, he makes sure the customer gives a guarantee of this thing for one, two, three or four years. It means that after this defined guarantee time, the thing will start to depreciate, it will expire. Similar is the case with human beings’ life and death.

Our leaders do not understand the fragility of time, they do not spare a thought to the irrevocable reality of the temporality of power, position and clout. That they will render account…they assure us, they condemn the terrorists but in reality, we continue to bear the grunt, we suffer from train number x.

In local parlance we ask who-do-us… who-we-offend? Does it need a rocket science intelligence to know that all these don’t add up? After all the NIN-SIM drama, our forces are on one hand overwhelmed and on the other part of the problem. Sadly, the drivers of the dark forces of train number x forget that life is temporary and death is marked as permanent. Nothing in this world is permanent but death is permanent. After meeting with death there is no chance of life anymore. Life is fragile and humans are weak as well. Weak things cannot survive for a long period of time.

Death is something through which materialistic aspects of life are destroyed by spiritual consciousness. By reading this poem one can analyse that Death is not concerned with particular human beings or ethnic groups or a religion. Everyone has to taste the flavor of death. All the current dramatis personae will face a creator, a destiny and so will you and me.

Innocent blood shed by train number x; train number x wreaks havoc on our education, our health systems (even as hospitals beg for blood in emergencies), this is an ode to death in security, in sports, in family values, in politics, and the very fabric of our society torn by bumcum materialism, ethnic jingoism, parochial parapoism, mundane mediocrity, godless religiosity and humanity dead leaders in various spaces.

For everything, there is a time and season, if we started well and we will end well—only time will tell

Prince Charles Dickson PhD, is the Team Lead, The Tattaaunawa Roundtable Initiative (TRICentre). He can be reached via +234 (0) 803 331 1301

The unimaginable magnitude of insecurity crisis seizing Nigeria today is indicative of the fact that the wheels of the nation is gradually grinding to a halt. Religious Hypocrisy, intolerance and extremism has further compounded our tales of woes as a nation.

It has gotten to a point where there is little or no difference between a war zone and the current Nigerian situation; kidnappings, insurgency killings, banditry and now hijacking passengers and bombing of train is the latest. Some years ago, the spotlight was on violent conflict between farmers and herders. Before that, it was Boko Haram. Even earlier, it was the tensions in the Niger Delta, and so on

In the run-on to the 2015 general election, as the candidate of the major opposition party, Muhammadu Buhari freely criticized the then president, Goodluck Jonathan using vile languages. His criticism incited his Muslim supporters to bury the former president and his party, PDP in a mock coffin. Additionally, Buhari spearheaded various protests against the administration of Goodluck Jonathan just to unseat him. However, the tables has turned to his favour, and he is always quick to stifle criticisms and freedom of expression, hiding under the cloak of religion.

As a nation, we are, on daily basis, confronted with issues ranging from killings, banditry, kidnappings, insurgency, hunger, among others. Without mincing words, Nigeria has become like an hamster on wheels, it looks like it’s running but it is still on one spot, repeating the circles. The entire system has become completely overwhelmed. The more things appear to change, the more it remains the same; even worse.

Disappointedly, the main opposition party, PDP has remained silent on addressing these pertinent issues. Given the failure of the PDP as an opposition party, individuals, and some vocal clerics have continually stepped in to bring the failures of the Buhari administration to light, so as to take cognizance of the failure of the opposition elements.

The most recent being Chief Imam of Apo Legislative Quarters Mosque, Shiekh Nuru Khalid, who, unfortunately, was suspended over his Friday sermon.

The Digital Imam, had, in the sermon, criticised the government for its failure to stop insecurity in the country. He specifically told the electorate not to vote for any politician who cannot guarantee them the safety of lives and properties.

In his words, “Nigerian masses should resort to only one term which is – protect our lives, we will come out to vote; let us be killed, we will not come out to vote, since it’s only elections that you people know.”

However, the message was interpreted to be “anti-government” and as “inciting public outrage”, and he was suspended. At the risk of sounding like a broken record or an alarmist, recent events in the country is indicative of the fact that the current spate of insecurity has a religious undertone.  The dethronement of Sanusi Lamido II as the Emir of Kano over a letter similar to Khalid’s message proves this.

At this juncture, one wonders why the Nigerian government led by President Muhammadu Buhari, unbothered to show he cares about the mass cull of fellow humans and citizens, is quick to clamp down on anyone, particularly citizens who criticizes his government. Unfortunately, this explains why the same elements hiding behind region easily acquiesce to bad leadership.

The Nigerian government has proven time and time again that it abhors criticisms, even genuine concerns, by the citizens who seek better accountability and improvement on the country’s state of affairs.

In one of his works, Turkish writer, Mehmet İldan, writes that “the ugliest government is the one which is spreading fear to its own people” while “the finest government is the one which encourages its own people to criticise it harshly.”

İldan notes that in a country where people are afraid of criticising the government, many things must be going horrible! Hence, rather than stifling criticisms with terms like “hate speech” to avoid being held accountable, government should see such as avenues for formulating better policies, inclusive societies, as well as paving ways for economic and social progress.

We cannot continue like this.

ARISE ‘O COMPATRIOTS

ROdusanya is a Social Reform Crusader and the convener of AFRICA COVENANT RESCUE INITIATIVE ACRI.

“Where the state is too weak to be dangerous, non-state actors might become too strong.” – Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the 21st Century, p. 18 (2003)

Supporters of Nigeria’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) are fond of telling their critics they “can’t stop a moving train.” In Kaduna on March 28, the moving train of the APC derailed, both as a fact and a metaphor. The following day, on March 29, the second leg of the Nigeria-Ghana World Cup qualifier was to occur. The four days between the two legs of the Nigeria-Ghana encounter provided a snapshot on how this happened. Many people believe they know the story, but it is still worth telling.

When Nigeria’s Super Eagles encountered Ghana’s Black Stars in Kumasi, Ghana, on March 25, in the first leg of the World Cup qualification rubber between both countries, the mood in Nigeria was effusively supportive. By the time the return leg took place four days later, the mood had soured on the team and on Nigeria’s chances of qualification.

In a country whose leaders make it their vocation to amplify and recklessly multiply its divisions, football is the only pursuit guaranteed to persuade all of the country’s disparate discontents to temporarily call a truce on their unbelief in the incredibly romantic notion of Nigeria. For that first leg, across the geographical space of Nigeria and its various diversities, they all seemed to wish the Super Eagles well in Kumasi.

In one of those wicked coincidences that only Providence has the capacity of crafting, on the day after the Kumasi match, Nigeria’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) convened in Abuja, the Federal Capital, for its elective convention. It was a gathering of nearly everyone who is anyone in political Nigeria, including the president, his vice, their cabinet, 22 governors and the leadership of the legislature at state and federal levels, not to mention captains of business and industry. When he addressed the convention, the president remarkably did not cite one area in which the country has made progress under his watch.

As the APC Convention unfolded in Abuja on that Saturday, however, the international airport in the neighbouring state of Kaduna, in Nigeria’s North-West was under attack from a band of terrorist bandits, who killed at least one staffer and succeeded in shutting down the airport. The APC Convention took no notice. Far from acknowledgement, the party characteristically tried to bury it in subterfuge.

In Abuja, the government shut down offices shortly after noon, declared an open stadium and bussed in anyone who cared to watch the match. President Buhari, not your natural football fan, mind you, joined in. To avoid upsetting his delicate sensibilities, the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF), precluded the team from commemorating the victims of the tragedy with a symbolic black arm band. There were no flags at half mast nor any symbolism to acknowledge the lives lost.

Instead, wherever you looked in Abuja that week-end, money sloshed and got shared in ways and quantities few of Nigeria’s poor and excluded will ever know or understand. That Convention endured into the early hours of the following day, a Sunday. On Monday, March 28, an expansive minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, claimed in a media briefing that, “the country is becoming safer every day with the string of successes being recorded in the fight against Boko Haram, ISWAP, bandits and other criminal elements.” Lai Mohammed, much of whose life has been spent in the manufacture and enjoyment of an alternative universe to reality, felt no need to provide any evidence for this claim. He had none.

Moments after he uttered this claim, the folly of it all became evident. In Suleja, a mere 15 minutes from Abuja, terrorist bandits killed at least six soldiers.

Contemporaneously, news began to filter through of an attack on the Abuja-Kaduna rail link, arguably the major claim of the Buhari government to achievement. At 21:43 hours, a twitter handle identifying itself as @nelo_x sent out a tweet, which would turn out to be its last. It read: “I’m in the train. I have been shot please pray for me.” The pre-Neanderthal savagery of the APC Troll Farms, led by leading handles identified with the Buhari Media Centre (BMC), was beyond comprehension. I will not dignify them nor prolong the agony of traumatised families with a rehash of what they said.

As it turned out, Chinelo Megafu, the young dentist who sent out that dying declaration, was one of a vanishing breed of believers in the notion of Nigeria. Her father, an alumnus of Federal Government College Enugu, did his compulsory national service in Kaduna, the State in which his beautiful daughter would tragically spend her last moments, three decades later. By all accounts, far removed from her origins in Onitsha, Anambra State in South-East Nigeria, Dr Chinelo was a brilliant advertisement for all that is excellent about her vocation.

Overnight, from several contemporaneous accounts shared by witnesses, survivors, and their families, the scale of the horror that killed Dr Chinelo began to emerge. In what is likely to become the metaphor for the tenure of the regime, a horde of terrorists, who for long operated under the tolerance of the regime had successfully stopped the moving train, made a killing field of its coaches, and abducted an uncertified number of passengers for ransom.

As heroic citizens scrambled to rescue survivors and converge on hospitals around Kaduna to donate blood, much needed for the work of the medical personnel who were frantically saving lives, the politicians averted their baleful gaze. In Lagos, a colloquium to celebrate the 70th birthday of the self-acclaimed leader of the APC, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the man who has proclaimed the prize of Nigeria’s presidency as his “lifelong ambition”, was scheduled to get underway. It was the same day that Nigeria was to host Ghana. Several leading politicians, including the governor of Kano State, had traveled to be there.

Characteristically for a Nigerian politician, presidential aspirant Rotimi Amaechi managed to find in the moment of this tragedy, benefits worthy to be privatised and, contemporaneously, costs that had to be socialised. If these are the people who will rule Nigeria, we must ask, do they work for the terrorist bandits or do the terrorist bandits work for them?

Despite their knowledge of the horror that had taken place overnight, they were initially not deterred from carrying on. President Buhari, who was to be the highlight reel guest at the occasion, was absent. On learning of the scale of the Kaduna train atrocity, Buhari’s vice-president, Yemi Osinbajo, a law professor who had served Tinubu, himself a former governor of Lagos State, as Attorney-General, headed to Kaduna to visit the survivors, instead of going to Lagos. On learning that neither the president nor his vice would be there, it appeared that Tinubu, who had arrived the venue for the event, decided too to join in this version of Cancel Culture. It was clearly an afterthought: he did not have to arrive at the venue in order to cancel the merriment.

In Abuja, the government shut down offices shortly after noon, declared an open stadium and bussed in anyone who cared to watch the match. President Buhari, not your natural football fan, mind you, joined in. To avoid upsetting his delicate sensibilities, the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF), precluded the team from commemorating the victims of the tragedy with a symbolic black arm band. There were no flags at half mast nor any symbolism to acknowledge the lives lost.

As the match got underway in Abuja, the support that the Nigerian team had enjoyed in Kumasi had disintegrated. Nigerians, usually indulgent of the tendency of their rulers to treat as expendable citizens who are not members of their families, mistresses, or collaborators, appeared to have had enough. All it took was four days, which advertised the worst of the cynicism, hubris, and irresponsibility of the regime. When Ghana successfully booked its ticket to the World Cup at the expense of President Buhari and his Super Eagles, many in the country were grateful to the Black Stars for denying him and his party what would have been a convenient burial of the Kaduna train atrocity in the halcyon of fantasy football.

While the blood of the victims was still to cake from the massacre, Transport minister, Rotimi Amaechi, himself also rumoured to be interested in the presidency, used the site of the tragedy as prop to reportedly ask Nigerians to “contribute to the cost of treating” the survivors of the attack. Simultaneously, he touted a contract that he claimed to have sought, supposedly for securing the train track, complaining that un-named federal officials had ostensibly blocked it. How on earth the minister thinks that a train can be secured in an environment in which the people are not, he alone can answer.

Characteristically for a Nigerian politician, presidential aspirant Rotimi Amaechi managed to find in the moment of this tragedy, benefits worthy to be privatised and, contemporaneously, costs that had to be socialised. If these are the people who will rule Nigeria, we must ask, do they work for the terrorist bandits or do the terrorist bandits work for them?

Odinkalu, a lawyer and teacher, can be reached at chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu.