Acronymed “FIRS”, the Federal Inland Revenue Service has stood out since its rebirth in 2019 under the leadership of its Executive Chairman, Muhammad Mamman Nami as one more agency of government working hard for the benefit of all Nigerians. Indeed FIRS broke the jinx and did wonders for the country by raising the revenue collection bar every year since his coming on board.
Author: Editor
Tomorrow is the big day when for the seventh election since the return to democracy, more than 93 million Nigerians are registered to vote. It is likely to be a closely contested race with four candidates – Ahmed Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Peter Obi of the Labour Party and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) being the front runners.
It has taken me more than six months to finally write this article on Peter Obi, a former governor of Anambra State and the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the oncoming 2023 general elections, for some personal reasons.
Without doubt, the impending general elections for variegated positions in our political space can easily be ranked as the most discussed, most strategized and most anticipated political battle in our national life in the recent past.
The above quote by Sheikh Usman Ɗan Fodio, a Fulani philosopher, Islamic religious teacher, revolutionary, and leader who founded the Sokoto Caliphate and ruled as its first Caliph, is quite true. This is so because an unfit leader can cause the death of millions and plunge a nation into chaos, anarchy and civil war.
The Centre for Democracy and Development has just published a major study on social media and the 2023 election campaigns, which I summarise here (click here for the full report). Currently, the number of active social media users in Nigeria has risen from 27 million in 2019 to 36 million ahead of the 2023 elections. Given the challenge of prevailing misinformation and disinformation on social media platforms, and the way such disinformation can permeate into the media more generally, greater access to online information does not necessarily create more informed citizens. In fact, in Nigeria, it has confused the citizenry while entrenching pre-existing divides based on ethnicity and religion, especially as malinformation, the deliberate sharing of genuine information with an intent to cause harm, thrives in this election season.
Nigerians will be heading to the polls on February 25 and March 11, 2023 to elect a new president, members of national and state assemblies and governors. It will be another seamless transition from one democratically elected government to another since 1999 when Nigerians shed off the cankerworm of military dictatorship.
I read with utter consternation, your press statement issued on your behalf by your Director of Press and Information, Festus Akande, wherein you took the unprecedented step to gag the public in criticizing the apex court.
When I opened my WhatsApp on Saturday, I saw a higher than usual volume of messages and forwards from friends. The first one I opened was a riotously uneducated, side-splittingly error-ridden, indefensibly malapropistic press statement attacking me for calling out the Supreme Court’s bizarre perversion of justice in recognizing Senate President Ahmed Lawan as Yobe North’s APC senatorial candidate when he didn’t participate in a primary election.
I just stumbled on an article purportedly written by a certain Comrade Mashema claiming to speak for one Haruna Ibrahim who the writer said is a Bauchi state civil servant in the Ministry of Environment and Forestry with registration number PSN821312.