Month: May 2018

Posted in corruption, hope, disappointment,, Politics, Uncategorized

Same PMB APC Administration – Two verdicts!

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

Social media often presents us in very succinct terms divergent views on the same phenomenon. Take the APC administration, for example. Since the 29th May, 2018, media has been swamped with claims and confutations of its successes and of its failures. This morning on Twitter, I came across two very diametrically opposed appraisals of its performance in the last three years – two views, two verdicts of its performance using broadly identical criteria and indicators! Certainly, the two views cannot be right at the same time. So, which is the correct view? Which is the more balanced appraisal?

I present both appraisals with apologies for any unintended violations of copyright to their authors!

Is it this ?

or this?

Choose your choice and state your reasons

 

 

 

Posted in corruption, Politics, Prose, Uncategorized

Chidi Odinkalu’s verdict on Buhari’s Anti-corruption War

Posted on by Noel Ihebuzor

Truth is often bitter but it is the perfect antidote to self-deception. Truth also helps protect the public from undue manipulation and mind control by governments and their licensed agents and spinners anxious to sell smoke, hype and inaccuracies to a population seduced by adulation and trapped by credulity. We need social critics and activists who are willing to speak evidence-based truths to rulers and the ruled. Chidi Odikanlu’s take on this government’s anti-corruption campaign is important because it is precisely such an exercise. It is an exercise in fact-checking and evidence-based evaluation where hard reality is used to confront government’s posturings and verbalizations on corruption. His verdict? “Buhari’s Anti-corruption war (is) Partisan (and) Lacks Credibility”.

I would even add that the “anti-corruption war” is the child of political posturing which was used, along with two other sound bytes – Security and Employment, to appeal to a populace that had felt politically excluded by PDP misgovernance.

The entire contribution by Prof Chidi Odinkalu is worth reading. Clicking the link line takes you to it. It needs a lot of courage to speak up and out as Professor Odinkalu has done.  Yet such voices of courage are needed since as more voices rise to speak truth to power and to chastise with love and civility those we have entrusted with ruling us for observed mismatches between their rhetoric and action, the more and firmer will grow the tree of accountability and responsible governance.