Reporting News and opinions
There is an old saying that if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. In Nigeria, if wishes were horses, the beggars would still be waiting for the federal allocation to buy the saddle, the state governor would claim ownership of the horse, and the local government chairman would invent three new wards so his cousins could ride too.
As Nigeria prepares to mark another Independence Day on 1 October, I have been reading a speech delivered on 31 December 1983 by a young Brigadier, Sani Abacha, announcing the overthrow of the democratically elected government of President Shehu Shagari.
If you are an African policymaker/technocrat/leader who has been following the World Bank’s development advice for the last say 30 years, this finding would shock you.
At the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the British government imposed restrictions on the direct broadcast of the voices of leading members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and associated organisations. Most notably, the BBC and other broadcasters were prohibited from airing the voices of figures such as Gerry Adams, then president of Sinn Féin, which was widely regarded as the political wing of the IRA. Television stations resorted to using actors’ voices to relay statements instead.
The BBC reviewed results from more than 6,000 polling stations in Rivers State. Its investigation found that the polling-unit figures it could obtain suggested that Obi had won the state by a substantial margin. The BBC also reported that Tinubu’s official declared total was more than 106,000 votes higher than its polling-station tally, while Obi’s official figure was more than 50,000 lower.
