Azu Ishiekwene

pictures of Buhari and Atiku on both sides of Donald Trump (in the middle)

Why Trump’s Trial Doesn’t Make America Special

International Affairs, politics /

It would have taken extraordinary nerve for the government under Buhari to formally bring charges against Abubakar, his main rival and leading opposition candidate on the eve of the elections. And even if Buhari’s government succeeded in doing so, it would have been interesting to hear what the US and other Western countries would have said…It is difficult to imagine that the prosecution would come up with this raft of charges against Trump – and press them in court now – if he was not interested in running again in the 2024 elections

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photos of King Charles sandwiched by Rishi Sunak and Sadiq Khan on his right; Leo Varadkar (Ireland Prime Minister); and Humza Yousaf, leader of the SNP, on his left

A British Example in Our Rascally Times

International Affairs, politics /

The presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, for example, campaigned in the South East that he deserved their vote because he has an Igbo wife. And then, to the embarrassment of his Igbo wife, he went to the North to say, “only a Northern president can best serve the interest of Northerners.” Others are on their own.

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photo merge of burna boy and the INEC ballot box

A British Example in Our Rascally Times

politics /

I took particular interest in four anglophone countries with a fairly vibrant and robust tradition of press freedom and randomly browsed coverage, just before, during and after the polls, to see if I would be disappointed. I wasn’t. Not by Ghana, Nigeria’s western neighbour, which has its own district and local elections later this year…The Editor of a major Ghanaian newspaper, The Chronicle , Emmanuel Akli, explained why: ‘The Ghanaian economy is in a very bad shape,’ he said. ‘The press is struggling. Readership is very low. Advertising is even worse. We are all struggling, and that includes Daily Graphic the biggest daily. We can’t even cover internal issues well, never mind sending reporters to cover elections in Nigeria!

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image merge of former presidents of United States of America and Nigeria, Donald Trump and Olusegun Obasanjo

What Really Matters to Obasanjo

politics /

I’m bereft that the irony of Obasanjo’s demand was lost on him. How the man whose government committed one of the worst electoral heists in Nigeria in 2007 has the audacity to demand stoppage of election results, mid-count, on the grounds of a suspicion, defies belief. But Obasanjo is apparently too fortified and absorbed in a public life of hypocrisy to care much about irony, that quality of existence without which tragedy becomes blatant

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logos of the election pollsters NOI, ANAP, Stears and Bloomberg

Nigeria’s election and the pollster’s albatross

politics /

In three of the six states where Stears said it obtained its booster samples — Lagos, Kwara, Rivers, Benue, Plateau and Kano, for example — only three Lagos, Plateau and Benue have a historically likely chance of fetching Obi more than 25 percent of the the votes cast. He will be lucky to get an average of 10 percent in the remaining three, where APC and PDP run a tight ship

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photo collage of president Goodluck Jonathan, president Muhammadu Buhari and the CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele

Looking back, facing forward as Nigeria decides

politics /

New problems have replaced old ones. The most debilitating being the calamitous absence of Buhari. Never a man to interfere with his subordinates once he has appointed them, in his last days in office, things have gotten worse. He is present only in name, going from delegation of authority to spectatorship and from spectatorship to surrender. Abdication next? The cat is away and the mice party was never so boisterous

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