Category: Change

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Change

2021: A New Beginning?

Jilomes

Without any concrete data, I am inclined to think that 2020 was a year most persons on earth desperately wanted to end as quickly as possible. Its 366 days seemed so intensely packed with events and a decimation of whatever was thought “normal”, totally upending life as many persons knew it, and forcing us to accept things that in “saner” years would have been deemed unacceptable. However, while we are likely to eye the world’s famous billionaires whose wealth increased in leaps, not everyone had a bad year. Just like any other arbitrary time periods defined by humanity, 2020 had a mix of the good, bad, and ugly.

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Change, Politics

INEC and a Chance for Real Elections

Jilomes

Debbi Stabenow, an American politician, is quoted to have stated that “Democracy is about voting and it’s about a majority vote. And it’s time that we started exercising the Democratic process.” If we accept that democracy is a governance system that is truly reflective of the will of the citizenry, then we must begin to wonder why it seems that many elections in Nigeria reflect the will of a certain subset of society rather than the majority of the populace. Today, we discuss a potential approach for the electoral umpire to remedy this malady. However, we would begin with a discussion of some reasons driving low participation of Nigerians in the democratic process.

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Lekki Toll Gate Massacre
Change, Politics

#EndSARS: A Nation in Need of Healing

Jilomes

“It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone”

Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy

On 1 October 2020, Nigeria marked 60 years of independence from British colonial rule. Unknown to merry makers and observers, barely a week later, a sequence of events would lead to young Nigerians demanding independence from a faux democratic elite symbolised by the infamous police unit, the Special Anti- Robbery Squad (SARS). Within two weeks, events have evolved from peaceful protests led by an educated base to unmatched rioting and looting led by the uneducated thugs we love to fear.

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Change, Politics

Nigeria at 60: A Thousand Words in a Graph

Jilomes

On 1 October 1960, the landmass internationally known as Nigeria was granted independence by its erstwhile “colonial masters”, setting the stage for a journey that has now spanned sixty years. There are already a tonne of viewpoints and articles evaluating the sexagenarian with in-depth analysis, but I have chosen a different route. Instead of making a judgement call, I would present data and let you decide how Nigeria fared over six decades. After all, they say “a [graph] is worth a thousand words”.

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Change

Continental Builders Called the African Youth

Jilomes

When I was contacted by an advocacy group, The Reformers, to join an online panel session on International Youth Day 2020 (12 August), I wondered why anyone would want to hear me talk about “The Role of African Youths in Building the Africa We Want”. Accepting their request laid the foundation for today’s article, which draws from my research and thoughts about the issues, blended with insights from other panellists and participants.

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Change

“Not for Sale”: The Dysfunctional Normal

Jilomes

We begin this article with two quotes that should set the stage, and may even be adequate as a concise summary for the day.

“Man [Nigeria] is not suffering by external forces as much as his [its] own dysfunctional mind and self inflicted negative stimulus.”

Aditya Ajmera

“When a big vision meets a dysfunctional system, the dysfunctional system wins every time. Fix the system and success will flourish!”

Daren Martin
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Change

COVIDIOTS, COVID-19 and a Question of Trust

Jilomes

Let me set the stage for this article by juxtaposing quotes from two American politicians.

“The real cost of corruption in government, whether it is local, state, or federal, is a loss of the public trust”

Mike Quigley

“We can only have true public safety with public trust”

Betsy Hodges
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Change, Politics

Of A General, His Colonel, and Justice

Jilomes

The famed novelist, Salman Rushdie once opined that “Two things form the bedrock of any open society – freedom of expression and rule of law. If you don’t have those things, you don’t have a free country.” If these two are essential ingredients, then it may be debatable whether Nigeria, “Africa’s largest democracy”, is a “free country”; “free” in the sense that citizens are assured of the government and society’s commitment to the rule of law. Talking about commitment to the rule of law, Colonel Sambo Dasuki (Retd.) was just released after four years of confinement, with serious questions about the place of the rule of law in Nigeria.

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Change, Politics

Nigeria’s War Against Holistic Planning

Jilomes

The iconic painter, Pablo Picasso, is acclaimed to have said that “Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.” If there is any validity to Picasso’s claim that a properly implemented plan is the only route to success, what then do we say to individuals and institutions that act like planning is anathema to success. Maybe such persons know something the rest of the world is ignorant of, or maybe the ignorance, wilful or accidental, is in the other direction.

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