I should have come with the second and, most likely, concluding part of the article, “Of banditry and shared sovereignty”, but Nigeria nowadays is a country where incidents, foreseen and unforeseen, are tumbling over each other by the minute, competing for attention in the public space. One of the burning issues has been the cost of party nomination forms. I can vividly recall President Muhammadu Buhari complaining about their exorbitance in 2015 when the presidential nomination form was N27.5 million, confessing that he had to take a bank loan to purchase it. We need to look at this trend because…
Author: Editor
His name is Muhammad. And all of us, now One and a Half Billion Souls and counting, love him beyond compare. In fact, we so love him that others just can’t understand or comprehend. They don’t get it, and they can’t get it, for they know not this kind of love. We love him more than we love our parents; indeed we love him more than we love ourselves! The moment we hear his name invoked, we immediately add: “May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him.” O we so love him, Muhammad! He left us more than…
By Sanusi Lafiagi “My name is Sanusi Lafiagi and I’m a Muslim. I bear witness that none has the right to be worshipped but Allāh and that Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is His Messenger. I affirm the absolute dignity and honour of our leader, Muhammad ﷺ and condemn in totality any disrespect or insult to his person. Having said that, I’ve listened a dozen times to the viral audio of late Miss Deborah Samuel, a 200L student of Sheu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto, who was murdered in cold blood and set alight by fellow students on allegations of blaspheming the…
Our love for Islam, the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) or any other of Allah’s prophets and messengers – peace be upon them all – should not allow us to take the law into our own hands, and contravene the Shari’ah that was brought to guide us. Just as our anger should not make us deviate from the justice of the law, nor should we let our love make us deviate from justice. What the punishment should be for any offense in Islamic law is decided by a judge based on knowledge of the law, the nature of the offence and evidence.…
As the Buhari Administration approaches the finish line, all the governance deficiencies of the regime are being amplified. Some years ago, I wrote a column about what happens to governance when the President is not governing. My conclusion was that every member of the Government becomes their own governor and do whatever pleases them. Governance at cross purposes becomes the order of the day and there is no coherence in governmental action and inaction. As there is no sheriff in town, public officials become emboldened and more brazen in their action. Accountability disappears completely and there are no rules in…
The rising insecurity and criminality in Nigeria have continued to leave a sour taste in the mouth of Nigerians across the board, ethnic and religious divide notwithstanding. In the midst of these near-crippling challenges, the nation’s security agencies and apparatus have expectedly not been spared scathing criticisms for their actions or inactions in addressing the worrying situation of terrorism, banditry, insurgency, and kidnapping among other forms of criminality. Besides the Nigerian military and the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), the State Security Services (SSS), also referred to as the Department of State Services (DSS) seems to be the most criticised and…
The year; 2023 is an election and a special year for the country, and the whole of Africa. Nigerians will have another democratic opportunity to elect leaders who will govern the nation at the states and federal levels for another period of four years. Democratically, Nigeria has spent two decades plus operating the presidential system of government in which people are ideally free to elect their leaders under a free, fair, and equitable environment. The system provides checks and balances with electorates having the last saying; elect, reelect, reject, or even recall the elected officers when they fail to meet…
“The security situation in the country may affect voter mobilisation, deployment of personnel and materials to different parts of the country.” – INEC Mr Festus Okoye, a National Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in charge of Information and Voter Education, made the above remark in a paper he presented at a brainstorming session between the Department of State Services and the civil society/non-governmental organisations held at the DSS Headquarters in Abuja on April 6, 2022. Participants at the meeting were drawn from various CSOs/NGOs, the diplomatic corps, INEC, the media, and other relevant security agencies. The programme…
In the book The Impact of Banditry on Nigeria’s Security in the Fourth Republic: An Evaluation of Nigeria’s Northwest by Rosenje, Musharafa Olapeju (PhD) and Adeniyi, Oluwatobi Peter, both of the Department of Political Science, Tai Solarin University of Education, first published on 30/04/2021, the authors posited that “Banditry is fast becoming alarming in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic to the extent that it poses a serious security threat not only to the Northwest region but to Nigeria as a whole. The level at which bandits operate within the landscape of Nigeria’s northwest has led to a spree of kidnapping, maiming of…
All thanks be to Allah for sparing us to this time. It has been exactly five (5) years since our appointment during which I have worked with four (4) Hon. Commissioners, two (2) Permanent Secretaries and two (2) sets of Council. Today, we are here to handover to my successor as third Vice-Chancellor who happens to be a former Secretary to the State Government and immediate past Hon. Commissioner for Higher Education Professor Bashir Garba, MFR please join me in welcoming him. I wish to summarize few of the achievements recorded. Infrastructure The University has been getting interventions from the…