Azu Ishiekwene

a crystal ball with the cityscape of Nigeria, and 2024 written in the crystal.

What You Might Expect in 2024

Economy, International Affairs, politics, Sports /

In 2023, we had four years’ worth of politics in one year. Apart from a number of senior lawyers in particular who also made four years’ worth of money in one year, swathes of the political elite are broke, exhausted, and stranded. In 2024, they would be desperate for rehabilitation. Otherwise, their teeming supporters will dissipate, and their misery will be complete. Before June, some top politicians who had been discreetly reaching out to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for favours, would be obliged to take their fate in their own hands and pursue their ambition more openly and less shamelessly. By the end of the year, the scramble for presidential favours would leave an already fragmented opposition in a shambles

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a photo of nyesom wike with arrows projecting towards him

The Trials of Nyesom Wike

politics /

Happening on Wike’s 56th birthday, it was the most unlikely birthday present from the government of Siminalayi Fubara…If Wike was good enough to carry the governor through the dark, difficult days of their trials together when some of the governor’s ardent supporters today didn’t know him from Adam, the governor should be the last person to hang his benefactor out to dry so quickly

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An image of outgoing Liberian President George Weah pointing stands out from a backdrop of african leaders

Weah’s New Jersey for A Troubled Continent

Africa /

Weah was determined to launch an earlier presidential bid that may have disrupted Johnson’s presidency. Regional leaders fearing Liberia’s fragile state prevailed on him to wait. After watching bands of mostly jobless and potentially vulnerable rural youths fall under the spell of Weah’s star power, Nigeria’s president at the time, Olusegun Obasanjo, advised the former World Footballer of the Year to suspend his ambition and return to school

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a picture of atiku, tinubu and obi seated in front of a backdrop of the supreme court and Themis, the Greek goddess, who represents law, order, and justice

Atiku, Obi and the Road to Kilimanjaro

politics /

On a good day, it’s improbable that any of Abubakar’s or Obi’s lawyers would say, with a straight face, that they believe that the constitution created Abuja as an enclave of super voters. Even for a constitution widely criticised for its clutter, it would be taking a malicious lack of clarity too far to suggest that the writers meant that Abuja voters were greater than the rest of us. Not even in the US, famous for its ‘federational’ oddities, does the capital, Washington DC, hold an electoral veto vote over the other states. In fact, the whole point of the Electoral College is to equalise the states. Nigerian courts have also made this point repeatedly. But obviously, the election petition industry will stop at nothing to reinvent its growth, expansion, and prosperity

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An image of fct minister, nyesom wike, imposed on an image of gumi sitting with bandits

Gumi’s Extremism Shames Decency

politics /

His most deadly venom was not for Wike. It was for Tinubu, the enabler of the “Satan” called Wike, and the hundreds of smaller Southern devils of all faiths roaming the woods of the country in a murderous rampage since 1966 but who have resurged with Tinubu’s election, holding the trigger. Their poor, dispossessed Northern compatriots are left to occupy empty shells as offices. This translation is a mild version of what Gumi said

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