₦airaland Forum

Totilopussylick:
Tinubu, you see wetin "sleeping carelessly" have caused

Okoroawusa:
So no one defected to Labour Party?

Thesaint141:
SATANICALY666 nor see dis one

APCnaPDP:
Expect more bad news and upper cut for APC in the coming weeks and months. Their noses will be badly bloodied.

The Zamfara State Government has expressed worry over the rampant cases of attacks on northern youths by operatives of the Western Nigeria Security Network (WNSN) codenamed Amotekun in the southwestern states.

According to a press statement signed by the State’s commissioner of Information, Hon. Ibrahim Magaji Dosara, they are being exposed to unlawful tortures, and Governor Bello Mohammed Matawalle has demanded that his colleagues in the region checkmate the excesses of the operatives for peace and unity of the country.

“The unlawful detention, molestation and torture of the young Nigerians who are mostly on business mission with their counterparts in the southwest region is uncalled for as it may result into crisis between the two regions,” the statement said.

“Nigerians should avoid any ethnoreligious conflicts to allow peace and tranquility to reign to foster economic and political development of this country.

“At this material time when almost all the geo-political regions are facing one crisis or another, people should learn to respect one another and think on how to develop Nigeria rather than unnecessary hatred.”

“The Governor who was baffled by the actions of the operatives who intercepted truck conveying northern youths, flogged them thoroughly In Ondo State as reported by the SaharaReporters on Sep 16, 2022, expressed concern over possible backlash from the northern part of the country.

“Some operatives of the Ondo State Security Network (popularly known as Amotekun) on Friday afternoon allegedly beat up some Northern youths who were passing through the state.

“SaharaReporters gathered that the youths who were passing through the state were intercepted around Gbeleaje Estate, Ilesha/Owo expressway.

“They were, however thoroughly searched by the operatives who found nothing incriminating on them.

“A witness told SaharaReporters that after the stop -and-search operation that the Amotekun officials descended on the youths and flogged them thoroughly.

“Their motorcycles were also seized by the operatives who later asked them to continue their journey.

“We initially thought they were bandits but they were not. The Amotekun people asked them to come down which they did, they searched all of them and found nothing on them.

“But to our surprise, they started beating them. They seized phones of those recording this act and deleted the pictures and videos. Someone asked why they were beating them when they didn’t see anything on them but they claimed the driver initially refused to stop, making them to waste their time,” the statement added.

Governor Matawalle said this was the fourth time the excesses of these operatives were meted to the northern youths without any incriminating materials found on them.

According to him, since the southern youths are coming to the north to carry out their business without harassment or intimidation from the region, there should be no reason to unleash such atrocities on the northern youths.

PHOTOS: Crowd troop out for Kwankwaso rally in Delta

A massive crowd came out to support the presidential candidate for the New National Political Party (NNPP) Dr Rabiu Kwankwaso in Delta on Saturday.

garfield1:
Mynd44
Lalasticlala
Nplfmod
Mukina2
Dominique
Agboriotejoye
Kahal
Kyase
Oghenaogie
Ejimatic
Vixlot
Nnewinjobs
Parachoko
Caseless
Omenka
Helinues
Metaphysical
Satanically
Trinitycian
Jrusky
Esseite
Legendhero
Penguin2
Vicdom
Silver tongue
Asobo1

“Daddy doesn’t sleep until like 4am in the morning”pic.twitter.com/JjfIDRSXaI https://t.co/yQAw3FHaH4

— FRANCIS (@FrancisAdeboye) September 17, 2022

ZACHIE:
We are here, Son of a nameless fada

Truthisunique2:
I can see why tinubu admitted in Gombe that the apc there need to do more

Honestly tinubu sef knows the reality, him sef don vex they need to do more without waiting for his disbursement everytime

ggood:
Atiku will not win

A vote for Atiku is a vote
To squander Nigeria money

TheNiceGuy:
Southern Kaduna?

I thought it's lock down for Obituary

Why PDP and not Labourer

Totilopussylick:
He is widely known by his agbadorians urchins

He can never be like unknown gunmen

I have never physically met APC Vice Presidential candidate Kashim Shettima, but I have communicated with him for extended periods over the past seven years. I’ve found him to be a man of vast and versatile erudition and a bibliophile who is enamored of his own rhetorical and expressive flourishes. It’s precisely this characteristic that may be his undoing in national politics.


Nowhere has this become more apparent than in his widely panned September 15 speech during the 96th anniversary celebration of the Yoruba Tennis Club in Ikoyi, Lagos, where he attributed to Bola Ahmed Tinubu praiseworthy qualities he isolated in past Nigerian presidents and heads of state.

The News Agency of Nigeria quoted Shettima as saying Nigeria needs a leader who has the “humility and generosity of spirit” of Yakubu Gowon, the “work ethic and broadmindedness” of Olusegun Obasanjo, the “situational pragmatism and…Maradonic skill” of Ibrahim Babangida, “the hospitality” of Sani Abacha, “the vision and sense of responsibility” of Abdulsalami Abubakar, and the “abnegation and commitment” of Muhammadu Buhari.

Shettima clarified in a September 16 tweet that he “never attributed hospitality to Abacha” in his speech. “I did a rundown of our past Presidents and played up ‘the taciturnity and a dose of ruthlessness of a Sani Abacha’ to show we need strongmen to deal with the nonstate actors who’ve turned Nigeria into a vast killing-field,” he tweeted.

Shettima’s speech was clearly a case of the sacrifice of substance on the altar of stylistic convenience. In other words, Shettima appeared to be more concerned with lyrical bravado than with meaning, more in love with verbal exuberance than with the correctness or appropriateness of the claims of his words.

But the general population isn’t as kind to him in their interpretive rendition of his speech as I am. And for good reason. Using the resources of basic logic and contemporary history, many—perhaps most— Nigerians understood his speech as a threat of existential annihilation to them should he and Tinubu get elected as vice president and president. Here’s why.

Yes, relative to other past presidents and heads of state, Obasanjo has an admirable work ethic and is broadminded. And, yes, Gowon is indisputably humble and generous in spirit. But it stretches credulity to the elastic limit to even remotely suggest that Tinubu embodies or shares these qualities. Like every human being Tinubu has his good qualities, but he is anything but humble and generous in spirit. And, in his current state, he is anything but a workaholic.

More crucially, though, the other qualities Shettima associated with other past presidents and heads of state are either demonstrably inaccurate or unworthy of celebration. Take, for example, the notion of Buhari’s “abnegation and commitment.” No claim can be more dishonest than that.

Abnegation means “renunciation of your own interests in favor of the interests of others.” There has been no more self-loving, self-interested, self-centered leader in the entire history of Nigeria than Muhammadu Buhari. He is a classic, unashamed, sadistic narcissist.

The first major project Buhari executed upon becoming president in 2015 was to build a multi-million-naira vanity helipad for his exclusive use in his hometown of Daura, which would be useless from May 2023. Not even Goodluck Jonathan who got a lot of hell from civil society groups for corruption built a helipad for himself in his hometown of Otueke.

Additionally, Buhari’s penchant for going to London to treat even his littlest illnesses (including an ear infection that had already been treated in Nigeria), his high-priced sartorial excesses, and his fondness for extortionately elaborate red-carpet ceremonies each time he leaves the country and returns to it do not square with the profile of a person who embodies “abnegation.”

Let’s not even talk of the presidential air fleet that needlessly and avoidably drains Nigeria’s national resources, which Buhari had promised to get rid of but on which he spends billions on maintenance.

And Buhari’s “commitment”? Seriously? What commitment? I have argued in several previous columns that Buhari’s inexplicably frenzied globetrotting even after his government proclaimed a new policy that reduced the frequency and duration of foreign travels by government officials reputedly as a “cost-saving measure” shows that his wanderlust is actuated by his resentment of Nigeria. A man who is committed to Nigeria won’t have an obsessive-compulsive impulse to desert the country at the slightest opportunity.

To suggest that Tinubu personifies Buhari’s “abnegation and commitment” is to unintentionally demarket Tinubu and threaten Nigerians.

But it gets worse. The quality of “situational pragmatism and…Maradonic skill” that Shettima associated with Babangida— and implied Tinubu possesses— is a negative trait. Situational pragmatism is no more than a sophisticated euphemism for opportunism, and when people called Babangida “Maradona” or “Maradonic” in the Lagos press in the 1990s, they did so with an unmistakable tone of disapproval.

Maradona was notorious for his intricate dribbling and for his occasional, dishonest, sleight-of-hand goals such as his infamous 1986 FIFA World Cup “the-hand-of-God” goal against England where he illegally used his hand to score but evaded the sanction of the referee because he wasn’t caught—or his illegal interception of a shot from the former USSR during the 1990 World Cup with "the hand of God" without the referee seeing him.

So, Maradona and “Maradonic” symbolize elaborate deception and Machiavellianism. Babangida dribbled the nation, like Maradona, through his dizzyingly never-ending transition to nowhere, his interminable banning and unbanning of politicians, his “settlement” of critics, and ultimately scored a sleight-of-hand goal against politicians—and Nigeria—when he invalidated the results of the June 12, 1993, election that MKO Abiola was poised to win.

People are entitled to be alarmed if this is the quality Shettima admires in Babangida and says Tinubu exemplifies.

Perhaps even more worrying is that Shettima thinks Sani Abacha’s “taciturnity” and “ruthlessness” are virtues to be cherished, celebrated, and expected in a president in 2023. Being communicative is a central attribute of successful democratic leaders. Taciturnity, that is, being uncommunicative is an abhorrent vice in a democracy, and we see it in Buhari who habitually ignores Nigerians.

Given that Tinubu has started to avoid the media limelight that he had once jealously hugged—apparently to conceal his all-too-obvious mental and physical infirmities—Shettima’s embrace of taciturnity as a quality we should expect in a president sounds to me like a threat to continue with the lusterlessness that has defined Buhari’s leadership in the past seven years.

And “ruthlessness” in a democracy? What was Shettima thinking? I get that the outlaws that have made life in Nigeria precarious and brutish deserve to be crushed with ruthless force. But you don’t need to embody the ruthlessness of Abacha to do that. You only need to be a decisive leader who cares for the people—unlike Buhari—to tackle and tame the insecurity that plagues Nigeria. Ruthlessness isn’t a quality a democratic leader should possess.

Given what I know of Shettima, I am certain that he didn’t intend to unsell or undersell his boss. He appears to just love the show of erudition and bibliophilia that comes from his exhibitionistic verbal swagger. It may excite his admirers and may even be cherished by Nigerian rhetorical scholars, but it’s a treacherous political minefield.

Troublemaker111:
I think kagd10 is already banned but Garfield being active still baffles me

iSense247:
Kagd10 may be alternate moniker of one of the mods. I suspect the m*nd guy.

garfield1:
It is not.this week,she abi you posted this same video

garfield1:
It happened since last year

garfield1:
This is the 4th time the mischievous op will repeat this stale news.pdp lowest votes has always been from borno.

Troublemaker111:
We do tell them here , Osun state is a state that might go for Atiku in the coming election . It's time to reward AA for his full support for Adeleke candidacy. I'm voting pdp all through

Kagd10:
The truth that is burning your soul.