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The difference between the United Kingdom and Nigeria is not primarily in the letter of the law. It is in the general application and consistent enforcement of that law. This divergence reveals a deeper reality about how the Nigerian state relates to its citizens.
The Tragedy of Victory is a book written by Brigadier General Alabi Isama, providing the inside knowledge and information about the separatist war in Nigeria from 1967- 1970
Central to the indictment was the breathless lamentation over the demolition of the old Benin Central Hospital. Listening to the rhetoric, one would assume the facility was a pristine sanctuary of modern medicine arbitrarily flattened to make way for art.
At the recent television and press send-off for the immediate past Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, this ritual reached a high art. The man who spent a decade at the helm was rightly credited with making JAMB more technology-driven, more orderly, and less of a cash-and-carry bazaar than the one he inherited. Fair enough. Reforms happened. Remittances improved. The board stopped resembling a particularly leaky colander. One can acknowledge progress without descending into hagiography.
We are told this is the silver bullet for our security paralysis. But as Nigeria stands on the precipice of altering Section 9 and dismantling Item 45 of the Exclusive Legislative List, we must ask: Are we solving a modern security crisis, or are we reawakening old ghosts that once broke the back of our democracy?
