revolutionary socialist

The Blood Flood in Jos and the role of the Working class (This article was written in March 2010 in the wake of the horrible killing in Jos’ Dogo-Nahawa, where over 500 lives were reportedly wasted.) Again, hundreds of innocent lives, mostly of women and children have been wasted away in Jos villages by ethnic bigots, who are banking on the failure of Nigerian government to secure citizens’ lives and properties. The over-a-decade of civil rule has meant loss of over twenty thousand lives more to one form of communal, ethnic, religious and political strife or the other, according to international agencies. All these have again raised a big question about the viability of Nigeria as a country. In fact, the continuous debate about nationality question, a decade after civil rule shows that there are more to the survival of nation than the ritual of elections. Many commentators have identified the failure of government to bring those behind the massacre to book as a catalyst for con...

Still On Niger Delta By Kola Ibrahim ( ibrolenin@yahoo.com ), written in 2005, culled from www.gamji.com in February 2012. The Niger Delta crisis has regained a new energy since the activities of the MEND (Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta). There are mixed feelings for the activity of MEND by the public. Some who feel the impact of the degradation of the oil cartels in the oil producing areas in the country, support the activities of MEND in teaching Nigerian government and the oil cartels lessons (while also drawing local and international attention to the problem of the area). Others feel that the Nigerian government must deal with the “trouble makers” in order to protect the “continuous existence of the country”. Another dimension to the issue is the clearness vis-à-vis immediate resolution of the environmental crisis, quit notice to oil cartels, demand for oil wealth of the region, etc, which these (MEND) guys put to the issue, which is stronger than that of ...

Reforming Nigeria’s “Electoral Reform” One of the issues generated by the so-called liberalization of party formation in the recent is the proliferation of portfolio political parties on the one hand, and centralization of political posts and governance around handful political parties on the other. As a result of this, the nation’s electoral body, INEC recently, banking on a clearly undemocratic electoral law provision planned to deregister some political parties, which it considered unviable. This has received a mute response from many so-called civil society practitioners and entrepreneurs, and self-acclaimed opposition (or is it progressive) political parties, many of whom were quick to shout on top of their voices of the need for electoral reform, especially when their interests are in jeopardy. Indeed, before the undemocratic attempt at curtailing electoral rights, the much-trumpeted electoral reform committee set up by Yar’Adua/Jonathan government had made some funny recomme...