By Political Animal.

If SAMBISA FOREST is six hundred and eighty six

(686)square kilometers as said , which means6.8 million hectares or sixty-eight (68) million plots of land at hundred (100) feet by hundred (100) feet,having five (5) cows per plot,it can take three hundred and forty (340) million cows

Three hundred and forty (340)million cows is eighteen (18) times the current number of cows in Nigeria.

Based on the above we don’t need the presence of cows in major streets and cities ,let alone communities. “HERDSMEN” may not be flooding the villages and clashing with villagers.

The problem is leadership.This has been on for years.It did not start today.

Because of lack of visionary leadership,both herdsmen and the villagers are perishing.

Each side is employing self– defence ,to solve a problem that the Government should solve.Since waiting for government to solve the problem means till eternity ,no party wants to know how the other feels.
Unfortunately,we all need cow meat.
We know how cheap the meat has become for sometime now.You can ask our mothers and wives who are almost spending hours negotiating prices with meat sellers or butchers.

Even if we have a leader whose credentials include the ” lover of cows” there is nothing wrong with his passion.

That he is the president does not mean that he should quit his passion.

Remember that before this time he was the spokesman for the cattle owners when there was a dispute between them and certain people in particular zone in the country.

For him to raise or own one hundred and fifty (150) cows is not a small achievement.

Afterall ,how many do you have? .Maybe we should give honour to whom honour is due.Abii?

Since we all eat cow meat,since the prices went up how many cows have you reared yourself,at least on subsistence basis, to enjoy with your family during seasons.

At least that should save our wives the saliva they keep pouring on meat sellers.

Sometime in 2018 twenty-cows were executed on the street of Tehma in Ghana.

They were butchered for a street feast because the cattle rearer flouted the order of the government.The cattle rearer ran away very fast to avoid being converted to a human barbecue.

Since that time , you can hardly see cows on the streets of Accra Ghana.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?
It looks like the quickest way to get cows off our streets and the villages.

By Political Animal.

We just need objective journalists, who should be promoting nationalistic and patriotic ideas , challenging politicians on their platforms ,not those who are fuelling partisan ideas on platforms owned by political juggernauts , either in the electronic or print media.

What do you expect when journalists during prime time, are only inviting two political party agents to discuss “yes or know”
“for or against”on serious policy issues, wasting people’s time.

How can journalists allow politicians to play politics with people’s lives and security in the hope of avoiding a collusion cause with the presidency without putting them on the spot during their interviews.

How can journalists be justifying non- performance based on the mandate given to politicians by the people and they are securing second terms without raising up issues of incompetence on national television for us to hear their responses.?

They are not even free to air their own views or personal visions to make the system better as Nigerians.Only echoing their masters voices.

The Supreme court should stop over ruling people’s choices.They should learn from the US Supreme court during the Trump era.

The same thing with the umpire ,the Independent National Electoral Commission ( INEC),they should stop aborting people’s choices but accepting the choices of hoodlums ,who are expert riggers through inconclusive elections.

We should enlighten the people the more .
We should be the appendage of the National Orientation Agency ( NOA).

If they are not doing their work ,we should help them.If INEC and NOA have refused to add due diligence to voters education and awareness,we should not fold our hands.
Folding our hands means folding our future.

We all should be tired of our hunger,penury and destitution as a result of bad leadership.

We must not continue to get it wrong because of our defective leadership choices .
Leaders who are driven by personal interest.

Leaders who sprinkle their political campaign messsages,with sentiments on nepotism, tribalism and so on and so forth.

We all need to participate in one way or the other in the task of nation building through sound electoral process.

By Political Animal.

How can a President sign an executive order , only to disobey the order a few days later Or forget that he even signed such an order.

It is the height of irresponsibility for some Governors to abandon governance, just for them to witness the President signing their party register in his ward or local Govt or his home state,as if they are commissioning projects.?

I don’t think I will ever rest or take it easy with my present discussions on the our political landscape.

Because I believe we are all doing the right thing by adding our voices for an overdue change not the ” fake ” change” we are being fed with.

What I am doing may not be rewardable now,but who cares .My concern is that it should reward future generations,reward future society.So I’ll continue doing what I am doing.

Choosing to be apolitical has itsconsequences. Not necessarily belonging to a political party by keeping mum,many of our riff-raff lords may think they have already colonised us politically.

In a society where the opinions of those that are being led barely counts ,we must keep talking in order to awake or drive away the slumbering spirit, and plant ,and increase awareness, and political consciousness in our people.

We have had enough manipulation of the political process and system by many office holders over the years.

Europeans are presently getting more of their electricity from renewable sources than fossil fuels from recent annual report.

When are we going to wake up.Shall we continue to live in darkness and load shedding, because of leadership challenges ?

Criticism is part of what any good Government should expect.

If any Government opposes criticism or is not criticized for any reason,then that government is dead.Period.

By Political Animal.

Restructuring,true federalism, may be good, but if we fail to choose leaders ,who don’t have the capacity and talent to govern,we shall still keep running round the circle.

Definitely, having more control over the levers of State by the State Governors do, may help.But it depends on the quality of leadership in the States.

Selfless leadership never seeks personal benefits.It simply gives his or her best knowing that the rewards are eternal.

Such a leadership can be judged as real, selfless and focussed on development.

How I wish that the so called choices we have been making are even real, independent and consensus choices made by the people.

Unfortunately,the tragedy of our political and electoral system,is that the so-called electoral choices are only a “cocktail of poisons” forced down the throat of the hapless people!

Making the right electoral choices remains a major challenge for the majority of the electorates for many obvious reasons like hardship.

As long as poverty is used as a tool for gaining political power,we have our hands full, in order to let the people know that they are selling themselves into political slavery.
They cannot continue to choose between present survival and future survival for generations.We must make all citizens to understand that they are mortgaging the future of generations unborn even their great, great and great grandchildren.

We must let our people know that based on the pecuniary gains by our politicians, that they are not in a hurry to provide electoral reforms that shall determine one man one vote.

As Nigerians we should get to the point where our votes should count so that we can make leadership changes when we are misruled, whether at the local government level,state level and national level.

I just pray & hope that 🇳🇬’s without ethnic biases should learn from our present suffering as a result of leadership failures,get over past errors in leadership choices and join hands together to get the needed leaders whose consciences are not dead in 2023.

We have been dealt a bad hand by our politicians.So many decades may have been lost.Nigeria can still work.

We have seen Nations that were in worse shape than we are right now but have recovered totally.We just need great and forward looking leaders.

By Political Animal.

A former Commissioner of police ,who was elected a Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria said sometime ago that he was ashamed of being in the same chamber as a lawmaker with drug Barons he had arrested and detained during his active service before retirement .

Are you still asking why we have the kind of lawmakers ,who are only interested in being in power and in the limelight,not necessarily for lawmaking or for good governance.

If they are in the majority , definitely they will never allow bills from some decent lawmakers among them who genuinely want to solve the problem of the nation to see the light of the day.

Our youths ,men and women are watching and following these bad examples.They want to make money at all cost in order to get into politics since it has become a cash and carry matter.

You understimate the power of example at your own peril.

On the 27th of January 2021, at about 1320hours,during the inward clearance of Ethiopian Airline passengers at the E- arrival hall of Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Ikeja, Lagos, a female passenger, 33 years, old arrived Nigeria from Sao Paulo, Brazil via Addis Ababa, and was intercepted by NDLEA operative

It happened that the suspect was targeted. Consequently,she was taken to the NDLEA office at the airport,where her bags were searched thoroughly & in the process, whitish powdery substances were found concealed inside 16 pieces of duvet contained in her two travel bags.

Field test was conducted on the recovered substances and proved positive to cocaine and weighed 26.850kilograms.

The suspect who is a hairstylist and based in Brazil was interviewed and she confessed to having agreed to smuggle the hard drug for the N2m only.

“Although she refused to disclose the names of her associates, she mentioned that she was asked to hand over the drugs to another person. The street value of this singular seizure is put at over N21billion.

Who may possibly be her powerful associates? Your guess is as good as mine.

By Political Animal.

I am imagining a 2023, when the citizens should confront these politicians when they come campaigning, instead of clapping and hailing them,we, as citizens begin to ask them serious questions.

Can you just imagine what shall be the outcome of such interactions in serious town hall meetings and not the usual jamborees in a stadium?.

Where the citizens are taking them up on serious issues of governance.

Not buying slogans that have not “changed anybody to any level” or “power to the people” that takes power away from the people.

Why is it that whenever we are looking for football coaches, for our national team,
Nigerians are clamoring for the best.

We are always looking for the most competent coach that can help us win the African Cup of Nations and possibly the world cup.

But when we are looking for an Executive President,the issue of competence is forgotten.

Tribe , Religion,Zone,North or South is all we hear.This is a picture of who we are.

I wonder how Nigerians should be expecting miracles from leaders who are very empty and out-of-date in what is going on in the world of technological advancement.

Leaders who hardly read national dailies.Leaders who depend on what their Senior or Junior Special Advisers read and pass the information to them.Leaders who have no mind of their own.

Leaders who will tell you after months of ASSU strike,that they are unaware that the children have been at home.If we lose the schools ,we lose the future.

If care is not taken,one political season,
Nigerians may elect a person with “NEPA BILL CERTIFICATE” as their President. (Anything’s goes in this country , mind blowing though)

We should stop electing those whose qualifications are based on the knowledge of how “Guns work”.

Politics is the art of problem “solving” in particular ways by different political grouping called “Political parties” .Just like in business .

If our leaders are not ready to solve national problems,then they have no business being in that business.

We must tell this truth constantly daily, early with passion,as if we are on Twitter ,like former President of the US,Donald Trump.

Many of our leaders are like people who get involved in a business ,but don’t have the emotional capacity to run such shops.The end result is always “shop close”

Being in business as it is in politics is problem solving.

We must search for problem solvers and elect them as leaders ,as it is in other nations.

By Political Animal.

Every human being has a great deal of potential to help himself, his family, his society, and his country and the world .All we need is an enabling environment.

But can that be created where civil defense officers should be intimidating & molesting women & sometimes beating them publicly and openly in front of police officers who feel unconcerned.

Where law enforcers are lawbreakers.
Where law enforcement officers are looking the other way & allowing people to cross state boundaries by lining their pockets with cash,blood money),during curfews)lockdown) & allowing people to spread the virus from state to state.

Where the youths are watching videos of fathers,uncles and grand fathers,who are shamefully throwing punches and bloodying each other in state assemblies & sometimes national assembly for selfish reasons.Where lawmakers are lawbreakers.Then who will make the enabling laws?

If we have to lift majority of our poor citizens from their present squalor in various slums.

Where 120,000 Nigerian children die from pneumonia annually.

Where those living with leprosy are mistakingly kidnapped, released & abandoned by the roadside.

We ,as citizens must create the enabling environment by demanding certain basics in leadership.

There should be a collective demand for Good Governance without ethnic colouration.

For ,as long as we keep sitting on the fence and expecting that things will change without collectively chosing specific individuals to lead ,not necessarily within the present party structure, nothing will change.

That was one of the failures of Endsars protest.

There was no longer term strategy for the protest.As if it was about being on the streets knowing the normal reactions to our governments to protests and protesters.

There was no strategic plan to make it or evolve it as a movement.

As if the organizers strategically wanted it to start on Twitter and end on Twitter if they were harrassed.

Nobody wanted to identify himself or herself as the leader.Even among the youth population.What a national challenge because of ethnicity or tribal sentiments.

I want to say that Nigerians who are outside the confines (members) of present party structures are in the majority,based on the number of voters who have been electing or helping to rig these looters into power.

We only have to collectively agree, especially the youths .Their population can make all the difference .If they can think through.

So, let us act now, all eligible voters, who still believe in the future of the Nigerian nation, for such a day to come .

We need new brand of leadership who will lead our public spaces who embody values , competence and capacity.

Let us liberate ourselves from the crowd of politicians,whose political, and economic modus operandi are based on mediocrity.

By Political Animal.

We know that civil agitations and strife escalate at some point and actual conflicts may result.

We must not allow the agitators to get to the point where they are no longer afraid of Government.

Especially when Nigeria’s revenue are never utilised for tangible results but are lodged in personal accounts, and some in private projects and pockets.

If you ask practicing lawyers who are close to you,who are regularly visiting the security establishments(EFCC,ICPC,or police) for one case or the other.

If you discuss with them on how Nigeria is faring , fighting corruption,they will just laugh at you. They will tell you that they are not ready to discuss their experiences.

When you look around, you see massive infrastructural under-developments,do you blame those who have decided to challenge the status quo, in whichever way they can?.
I see them as pressure groups and not secessionists.

You may brand Nnamdi Kalu and Igboho with whatever names that suits your fancy.

They may not be as educated, but their braving of all odds to bring the plights of their people to limelight can’t be dismissed.

You may say their antecedents are not too enviable,but they may have succeeded in emerging as champions of the oppressed within their ethnic groups.

In a feat of braveness,one of the Chibok girls ,Halima Ali,this 2021, having waited for the government to rescue her to know avail for almost 7 years, successfully escaped recently, even though she was married off to a terrorist commander in 2014.Do you blame her,if she refuses to be patriotic?

Take the case of Covid19 and the plight of Nigerians as example.

I was listening to Dr.Sanjay Gupta of CNN say that “Not all masks are created equal”.

That the KN 95 mask made in China is a superior mask, and it is recommended for places where you may likely be in company of a lot of people.

My answer to that is that we shall still survive without the sophisticated mask from China.We have always been surviving.

Since mask now have level, especially with the rampaging and more infectious and lethal new variant of COVID19,we shall still survive.

A new variant from S.Africa dectected in US for the first time.No respite for UK hospitals,while Dubai is blamed for virus cases abroad.

You also know that Dubai is like a second home for Nigerians.But we shall still survive.

Our leaders may have decided to choose what makes them happy today.There are a lot of things that may have been making our politicians happy now,but in the long run,they may not end up happy.

You can see it in the faces of those who were dictating, and calling the shots years back who are nowhere near the corridors of power again.

You may not even recognize them unless someone whispers into your ear “this is so-so-and-so,do you remember”?

May God help our politicians to chose what will make them happy on the long term than short term.

By Political Animal.

How ridiculous it is that citizens who are survivors of armed robbery, kidnappings , armed banditry are the ones standing up to these criminals. They are the ones trying to end them in their own way.

Why do we have elected officials if that’s the case? Why can’t they do their jobs?”

The political parties are busy with party registration and revalidation of their membership exercises,
for another round of looting,why some nations are opening drone airports for “first flying taxis”
Are we cursed?.
I know we are not.

Many nations are witnessesing ecological improvements.Where previously uninhabited deserts are turning into villages,desert Oasis, that are currently home to hundreds of people

Our own deserts are known for banditry.
A safe heaven for terrorists and graveyards for our soldiers.

We keep relocating and clustering and compressing our citizens into Internally Displayed Camps (IDP) for years .
Almost in starvation and lack of medical attention.Where 13 year–olds are fast becoming mothers.

Many of our leaders are trying to lose the weight they gained through sumptuous meals, while the common man is searching the dustbins at night for soured leftovers.

They are busy chosing stylish clothes to fit their current shapes and sizes, while the majority are struggling to pick up something for their children to cover nakedness in “Bendown Boutiques”

It is really frustrating.