By Raphael Christopher a Senior Lawyer and member of EnuguBar

In this article, let me state very clearly, I have not set out to prove the superiority of men or equality of men. I simply wish to present known historical facts and leave you to reach your own conclusions.

History clearly teaches us that women are capable of leadership. Are we listening to History our teacher and learning her lessons?

What does history teach us?

For a start, Queen Candace, recognised in the book of Acts in the Christian Holy Bible as the queen of the African empire of the Ethiopians shows that women are equally effective and capable ruler as men and indeed the Holy Qur’an in (Surah al-Naml 27:20-44) portrayed the Queen of Sheeba, Bilquis, as a wise, influential and real leader who ruled her people in a democratic way by making every decision after consulting with her ministers and advisors. We learn that Prophet Soloman (Sulaiman) was told about her power, kingdom and magnificent throne and invited her and she came as an equal to King Soloman!

Further, we have Queen Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom and Ireland and Empress of India from 20th June 1837 and ruled these male dominated societies for over 63 years! The present Queen of The United Kingdom of England, Wales and Ireland and some commonwealth countries, Queen Elizabeth II ascended the throne on 6th February 1952 and has been ruling for these past 68 years and is the oldest longest reigning monarch.

There are other ladies who have served their various countries as leaders, Presidents, Prime Minister such as Yevgenia Bosch of Ukraine who served Ukraine as its leader from December 1917 to early march 1918; Golda Meir of Israel who served her country for 5 years, Margaret Thatcher who served as The Prime Minister of The United Kingdom for 11 years; Indira Ghandi of India who served as Prime Minister of India for 11 years. We also have Isabel Martinez de Peron of Argentina who served her country as President for 1 year. There is also Dame Eugenia Charles who served as Prime Minister of Dominica for 14 years. We have not forgotten Vigdís Finnbogadóttir who served as President of Norway for 16 years. There is also Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan who served as Prime Minister of her country Pakistan for a year. Khaleda Zia who served as Prime Minister of Bangladesh for 5 years. What about Sylivie King who served as Prime Minister and acting President of Burundi for nearly a year and even Mame Madior Boye who served as Prime Minister of Senegal for a year.

Currently, we have many women Presidents, Prime Ministers still in office. Such include, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany; President Ellen Johnson -Sirleaf of Liberia; President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina; President Catherine Samba-Panza of Central African Republic; President Park Guen-hye of South Korea and President Aminatu Toure of Senegal. The list goes on.

You can see from world history from the biblical ages right down to today, women have proven beyond doubt their ability to run for the highest office in the land and even more remarkable the longest reign record is held by a woman – Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom!

In this context, are we depriving ourselves of the great leadership abilities God has deposited in women? Are we open to respect and nurture this great ability that women have? If our daughters, sisters, relatives express their dreams and desire to serve our country at the highest level, should we not, seeing the overwhelming evidence of great female leaders depicted above, be able to support them financially and otherwise to achieve their dreams which will result in the betterment of our country and society?

Coming closer home, we have very well qualified and able woman able to run for the highest post in our land. Let us take just the one example in Mrs Ngozi Okonkwo-Iweala the former minister of finance in our beloved country Nigeria, who has being nominated by over a hundred countries for the position of the head of the World Trade Organisation. This singular feat once again unequivocally demonstrates that women are equally talented and able to lead and may this singular achievement continue to spur our ladies and indeed our daughters, sisters, and relatives to dream big because as we have seen in the case of Mrs Okonjo-Iweala that dreams can, with hard work, will come to pass. Therefore it is proper to offer our congratulations to Mrs Okonjo-Iweala on her achievement and to all Nigerians including President Buhari for nominating her and mobilising support for her all through the exhaustive process and stay hopeful of a favourable outcome for her and for Nigeria.

If, over a hundred countries including very well developed countries to whose standards, we as a nation are striving to emulate, support a Nigerian woman for one of the highest positions in the world, could someone explain why we are not recognising the old adage, charity begins at home and start to treat woman equally and enable them to be comfortable to use their god-given talents, brilliance and intelligence to self actualise and benefit our dear country and society?

Our constitution is also very clear in requiring men and women be treated equally. Against this backdrop, you can now understand with this achievement of a Nigerian woman, Mrs Okomjo-Iweala, why some Nigerians are now posing the question why shouldn’t Mrs Okonjo-Iweala, in view of her clear abilities to lead and discharge her roles meritoriously, be put forward as a potential future first woman president of Nigeria?

What do you say?

Raphael Christopher is a Lawyer and member of EnuguBar and can be reached at [email protected]

By Frank Tietie

…. And to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord_ “
– Abraham Lincoln

A Proclamation For a Day of National Humiliation Fasting and Prayer, 13th March,1863. (Quoted in Shaping History Through Prayer and Fasting by Derek Prince)

Adeboye’s call to National prayer and fasting may appear to be a weak response to Nigeria’s present sociopolitical crises which have defied any hopeful solution.

The man of God was under fire recently as he was attacked by the presidency for pontificating ‘restructuring’ as an immediate solution to the state of socipolitical and economic quagmire facing Nigeria at the moment.

Adeboye, a strong proponent of the verities of the script contained in Chapter 13 and verses 1-3 of the Apostle Paul’s letter to Romans, has always urged all to respect and pray for those in political authority.

The highly revered and powerful man of God chose not to exercise his right to reply to the presidency but has chosen to call for a national prayer with fasting for 30 days beginning for Nov. 1 to Nov. 30

If anyone thought Pastor Adeboye’s call to prayer is a weak response then such a person is invited to take another look at history where even some of the most powerful peoples on earth had to, at the most critical times of national crises turned to the divine for help and political denouement from seemly hard and impossible situations.

Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States exercised his executive powers and signed a proclamation of a national day of prayer in 1863. Faced with a gruesome civil war as President, Lincoln knew only God Almighty could help him win against those who wanted slavery to remain. Therefore, Lincoln’s defeat of the Confederate seccessionists marked the beginning of the process of the liberation of the black man from slavery, to this day.

Seemingly impossible things like freedom and justice for oppressed and deprived peoples which happened in history could only later find explanations in some sets of coincidences which, not only resembled divine interventions but have been staunchly claimed by self-styled prayer warriors on a global plane, to be the actual hand of God shaping history.

What war and agitations could not achieve in many years, the faux pas of men often hastened to resolutions. Call it the force of history repeating itself but Christians refer to it as the Almighty God reigning in the affairs of men.

The cold war posed one of the biggest challenges to the United States of America (USA) in its modern history. Americans once lived everyday during that era in perpetual fear of a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 indeed, brought the world to a brink of another nuclear war after the bombing of Hiroshima.

The USA and Soviet Union went ahead with an arms race that got both countries to a point of mutual assured destruction (MAD). And the world was torn into two between the iron curtain of the Soviet led Eastern bloc and the American led Western bloc.

I grew up in that era where Ronald Reagan and Yuri Andropov, later Mikhail Gorbachev dominated foreign news reports in No and, it was much about nuclear weapons and the possibility of World War 3.

But suddenly! Like a deux ex machina, the Berlin Wall came down, Lech Walesa emerged as President in a free Poland and the biggest one that hit the world- the Soviet Union collapsed. Russia was again born and a new figure Boris Yeltsin finally buried the USSR while George Bush, the American President was dazed. No one imagined all of these could happen without a nuclear war between the Soviets and the USA. But it happened without a war and the Christians said it was an answer to painstaking prayer of missionaries and churches. Consider it laughable but it happened just like they said they had prayed!

Derek Prince, as a British soldier fighting in the Middle East in the 2nd World War took interest in the future of a Jewish state and chronicled in his book, Shaping History Through Prayer and Fasting: How the modern state of Israel was born. It was against all odds and plainly impossible to establish an Israeli state and to go on to maintain it against Arab invasion. But it happened and was attributed to prayer. The subsequent conflicts involving Israel, including the six day war and the 1976 deliverance at Entebbe were all attributed to prayer.

Considering the history of the attributes and influence of prayer in political affairs, when therefore, a cleric of Pastor Adeboye’s repute now resorts to prayer to find solutions to Nigeria’s problems, anything can happen!

As a born Anglican who once practised Pentecostalism and has resigned from attending church on account of excessive church politics and established hypocrisy and, I have suffered for it, I know with the tinge of God’s grace when a Christian leader means business. It will therefore be foolish not to take seriously Pastor Adeboye’s call to prayer and fasting.

Whereas Adeboye’s call may appear to be made only to members of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, I urge all everyone in Nigeria to try and understand the claim of the divine in influencing political affairs for the good of all. I therefore urge all of us to heed the call to prayer and fasting as made by the man of God.

▪︎Tietie, Human Rights Lawyer, writes from Abuja, and sent this via WhatsApp

By Yushau A. Shuaib

What we have learnt from history, including World Wars, civil wars and communal conflicts are what others are failing to learn from, as newer cycles of history unfold before our eyes. It is, no doubt, easier to tell lies about incidents than to go the inconvenient way of seeking the truth about situations and happenings.

In the last one decade of my life as a humanitarian worker and crisis communicator, working closely with the media, the security and response agencies, I have found out that many crises situations are triggered by reckless statements, irresponsible behaviours and unnecessary confrontations.

I was directly involved in managing the plights of internally displaced persons (IDPs) during the peak of Niger Delta militancy in 2009 (https://cutt.ly/lekkidelta); that of the victims of post-election violence in the North in 2011 (https://cutt.ly/lekkielection); and situations attendant upon the rampant Boko Haram suicide bombings across the Northern states and Abuja between 2011 and 2013 (https://cutt.ly/lekkiboko). I was also a member of a special team assigned to evacuate stranded Nigerians from Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, during the turmoil of the Arab Spring (https://cutt.ly/lekkilibya).

My engagement as a consultant on crisis management by the former National Security Adviser, Colonel Sambo Dasuki (rtd.), also further exposed me to the reality of the conditions of service and sacrifices of personnel of the Nigerian military, paramilitary and intelligence services, who are working tirelessly to keep us safe (https://cutt.ly/lekkisambo). Although my official engagements in those regards terminated with the tenure of President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015, however since emergency management is everyone’s business, I have continued to provide advisory services at NO COST to the same security agencies.

This mutual relationship has afforded me unfettered access to security sector spokespersons, as I volunteer my time in cementing the rapport between these agencies and the media, and by extension civil society groups.

When the protest against police brutality broke out a few weeks back, I ensured that as an independent forum, our news platform monitored and reported on the activities of the EndSARS protesters, as well as those of the ProSARS agitators. I also received regular updates from the spokespersons of the Police, the Department of State Services (DSS), the Customs, and the federal Correctional Service, among others that were in the frontline of response to the protests.
Surprisingly, while the Federal Government approved the disbanding of the Special Anti-Robber Squad (SARS), which was the original instance for the demonstrations, and acceded to other requests of the protesters, the situations rather grew worse.

Self-acclaimed freedom fighters, social media influencers and activists, aggravated the already tense situation, through the uttering of reckless and unsubstantiated statements.
In an audio broadcast, a highly divisive Igbo agitator, Nnamdi Kalu, incited the followers of his group, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), against security operatives, leaders of other ethnic groups and their structures, as located in different host communities.

Thereafter, Mujahideen Asari Dokubo, a former Niger Delta militant, responded by threatening Kalu and his followers with dire consequences if they dared to carry out any attack, or even assault on Muslims.

From Abuja, the nation’s capital, to other states, peaceful protests were turning violent. A prompt statement by Igbo leaders, denouncing Kalu’s provocative broadcast, averted what would have been a major ethnic clash in Nigeria’s most populous state of Kano.

Meanwhile, on the evening of Tuesday, October 20, the social media was suddenly driven into a frenzy as news came online that troops of the Nigerian Army were shooting at and massacring scores of innocent protesters.

Almost immediately and citing eyewitness accounts, the media and international community condemned what rapidly gained momentum as #LekkiMassacre. While these parties had genuine reasons to be concerned about the safety of citizens, it was a bit worrying to realise that the same level of attention, outrage and condemnation had not been paid by the global community to the atrocities regularly meted out to security personnel, who are also Nigerians, in the line of their duties. These included beheadings, arsonist attacks, assaults on security infrastructures, the looting of armouries, and also jailbreaks involving fatalities.

When our news platform reported on the subsequent disclosure of Governor Sanwo-olu of Lagos State that there had been no massacre at the Lekki Toll Gate on that Tuesday, except for an isolated case of a person who died from brute force to the head, we were accused of a one-sided report (https://cutt.ly/lekki).

Rather than have our objective reportage discredited, we asked for contrary evidence that showed true information about the purported deaths from the protesters and eyewitnesses of that evening. All we received as evidence were pieces of mostly unrelated footages to the incident, including doctored images and manipulated videos.

Concerned about the integrity of the media in relation to responsible and credible reporting, I personally reached out to friendly media to insist on concrete evidence from eyewitnesses, so as not deteriorate the security situation in the country at that particularly very tense moment. I spoke to the Editor of Daily Trust, Hamza Idris; the Editor-in-Chief of Premium Times, Musikilu Mojeed, the Publisher of DailyNigerian, Jaafar Jaafar; and the Aljazeera Chief Correspondent in Nigeria, Ahmed Idris. I also contacted respected columnist, Fredrick Nwabufo of The Cable newspaper; a prominent social media influencer, Gimba Kakanda; as well as a civil society activist, Auwalu Musa Rafsanjani of CISLAC. In addition, I engaged spokespersons of the Amnesty International and Emmanuel Onwubiko of HURIWA to help in facilitating the gathering of evidence on the alleged massacre.

In fairness to the media and civil society groups, they all spoke about relying on eyewitness accounts mostly from celebrities and social media influencers, without subjecting the information received to rigorous verification. There was also the admission that there was no authenticated footage of the said ‘massacre’ at Lekki Toll gate so far.
Equally disturbing was the fact that despite the increasingly widespread usage of the term “massacre” – which literally means an “indiscriminate killing of a large number of human beings” – to describe the Lekki incident, no single-family had stepped forward (even till date) to report the loss of a relative during the Lekki shooting.

In the aftermath of this confusion, the largest social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, have continued to flag several contents containing the alleged images of the Lekki Massacre as false information, after these were subjected to scrutiny by independent fact-checkers.
Similarly, credible fact-checking sites have debunked footages purported to be from the alleged Lekki Massacre. Leading the pack in debunking fake images from the EndSARS protests is the world’s oldest news agency, Agence France-Presse (AFP) which describes ‘bodies recovered from Lekki Toll Shooting in Nigeria as FALSE (https://cutt.ly/lekkiafp). It is followed by Dubawa, Nigeria’s first indigenous independent verification and fact-checking project (https://cutt.ly/lekkidubawa) AllNews.ng (https://cutt.ly/lekkinews), Aledeh (https://cutt.ly/lekkialede) and a very recent fact-checking site on the alleged Lagos Black Tuesday (https://lagosblacktuesday.org/).

Regrettably, many people share stories before they even read them, at a period when the social media landscape is bedevilled by the antics of dangerous and anonymous sources who, for ulterior motives, manipulate contents for the consumption of publics whose gullibility are exploited.

The promoters of such deliberate disinformation spread false and misleading contents that confuse, fool and deceive their targets, with the sole aims of reinforcing sentiments, influencing bad judgement, aggravating anger, inducing mob attacks and plunging society into monumental crises and conflict.

While I personally support the objectives of EndSARS and similar protests towards good governance, the media and civil society groups should be wary of fake news on the social media by subjecting eye-witness accounts and other contents to critical verification and authentication before authorising their dissemination. Human society, as we know it to be, might one day depend on that crucial necessity of caution.

▪︎ Shuaib, Editor-inChief, PRNigeria.com,,[email protected]
yashuaib@yahoo com, lives in Abuja

If Donald J. Trump were president of Wakanda on the eve of an election, that country would have received several warnings from the US State Department on the need for free and fair polls, and the necessity for all parties to play by the rules.

But what is playing by the rules if parties will not accept an orderly transfer of power?

During two recent off-cycle state elections in the south of Nigeria, for example, the US Embassy threatened to invoke visa restrictions on candidates, agents or security officials who impede the electoral process. It was not an empty threat and the junket-obsessed political elite knew it.

Yet, as this welcome US fore-finger was wagging at Nigerian politicians, four other fingers of the same hand were pointing back at the US, where its own President, Trump, has threatened that he would not accept the result of the November 3 election, if he loses.

He made the same threat in 2016, saying he would not accept the outcome in the race against Hilary Clinton because the system was “rigged”. We may never know what would have happened since he won.

As of the time of writing, Facebook was planning to implement stringent standards to prevent the shambles of 2016 or the likelihood of a repeat of Cambodia 2018 where the prime minister was accused of buying fake fans to boost his electoral chances – a clear indication of how low the US that prides itself on sterling democratic values has fallen.

By this time next week, the US presidential election would be over. But there are a number of reasons why even days after the election, voters may still not be able to say for sure whether Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden won.

One reason why is because aspects of the labyrinthine voting and counting process in US elections which gives states and counties considerable latitude in the conduct of elections are being challenged in court. While some states may still be counting mail-in ballots (and they would be significantly more in this COVID-19 year), others, especially Republican states, want mail-in ballot counting to end before or on voting day.

The main reason why this election is fraught, however, is because Trump has hinted darkly that he would not accept the result, if he loses. He said he could not guarantee an orderly transfer of power, if the outcome does not favour him. Trump’s base is listening and the violent elements among them are waiting. The US faces a dark winter of post-election chaos.

Trump’s threat not to accept defeat is the main fuel stoking the flames. Yet, what he is doing and what is being done in his name are much worse. In a number of states across the US, especially in the battleground states, Republican governors are still desperately trying to use the courts to block counting of mail-in votes beyond election day, even where the law allows it.

The Supreme Court weighed in with a precarious 4-4 ruling but the matter is not settled yet. The inauguration on Monday of the conservative-leaning Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court could tip over the final decision on mail-in votes – a consequential matter in a COVID-19 year and beyond.

In other states, various voter suppression methods, including stringent voter ID requirements and last-minute gerrymandering have become a part of the kitchen sink.

It doesn’t end there. Concerns about Trump’s race baiting, suspicion that he may yet again deploy the National Guard as he did after George Floyd’s murder, and the rush to confirm Judge Barrett on the eve of election, all look like ingredients from a dictator’s cookbook.

But he does not care. Trump has said over and over again that “the system is rigged”, that he suspects serious fraud with mail-in ballots, that China is helping the Democratic Party compromise the system, that he is a victim of an Obama spy ring, all with barely a shred of proof. Yet, he seems determined to use self-help, if the results don’t go his way.

At first, it was like a joke. But since he makes no distinction between opinions and facts, Trump has taught the world to take him by his jokes. He indulges in fiction, which he invents with a single-minded talent that beggars belief.

Insisting – up till last week – that he would not accept an orderly transfer of power if he loses the election, is frightening. He makes Guinea where President Alpha Conde has just foisted a third term on the country look like a beacon of democracy.

Conde can, at least, argue that the Guinean parliament extended his mandate, even though he obtained the extension by fraud. But for a sitting US president to repudiate the prospects of an orderly transfer of power if he loses, is not just a dangerous precedent for that country, it increases the chances of more Condes rising in Africa and elsewhere. Has anyone noticed that the AU has been resoundingly silent about Conde’s travesty?

If Trump does not believe senior government officials across party lines and even independent thinktanks that have insisted that his claim of mail-in fraud or a “rigged system” is false, why should incumbents in Africa or elsewhere not undermine the electoral system in their own countries on the excuse that every ballot must match their testosterone specimen?

In the last two decades, a significant number of African countries have come under representative governments largely because of external pressure from the West, led by the European Union and the US. Even though more money has poured in from China – often with few questions or scruples – pressure from the west and improvements in technology have put more governments on the continent on the spot.

Politicians may not have been altogether pleased with the outcome of the elections, but because they have seen the consequences of chaos elsewhere, because they have seen the US live up to its pledge to punish persons responsible for deadly election violence whether in Kenya, Liberia or Cote d’Ivoire, they have yielded to orderly transfer of power.

Nigeria provided a spectacular example of orderly transition five years ago, when former President Goodluck Jonathan called Muhammadu Buhari and conceded defeat even before the final results were announced in an election that could have descended into chaos.

Despite deep misgivings in the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) at the time that Jonathan was being wangled out of office by a conspiracy of the Northern elite, the former president endured his misery and walked away.

Kenya and Zimbabwe followed suit.When Yahya Jammeh of The Gambia refused to accept the outcome of elections in that country the regional body, ECOWAS, shooed the yam-head out of office. Until recent events in Mali, Cote d’Ivoire and Guinea threatened to spoil the broth, Africa has been looking like the fireside where the world could at last light its candle.

A US president threatening to impede an orderly transition of power, is a danger not just to his own country but also to politicians elsewhere who might copy his bad example. This year, out of five African countries holding major elections, the presidents of two of them – Alassane Quattara of Cote d’Ivoire and Conde of Guinea – have maneuvered themselves into positions for a controversial third term.

Which Trump would stand up to Quattara, Conde or any other political outlaw on the continent? The Trump begging China to help him win election at home or the one hiding his tax records in plain sight? The Trump crying wolf over a “rigged system” even before the first ballot was cast or the one that unleashed the National Guard on unarmed protesters? The Trump who bullies women and indulges in race-baiting or the one who pledged not to accept an orderly transfer of power, if he loses at the poll?

Which Trump is the world modelling on the eve of November 3?

After four years of “America First”, the world is learning to find its own path even in matters where the US used to provide leadership and direction. Yet, if this is the new face of American exceptionalism – a US presidential candidate who undermines the electoral system for the heck of it and refuses to accept an orderly transfer of power if he loses, then we must brace up for a bitter winter in global politics.

Not even in shit-hole countries is it fashionable anymore to insist on victory as precondition for elections. Who needs elections if they must win before the contest, anyway?

But that is what Trump insists on. It’s apparent that America’s problems are worse than shambolic race relations and COVID-19. Trump-mylitis or the new epidemic of electoral-victory-at-all-costs is also a new contagion the world must guard against.

Ishiekwene is MD/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview