Buhari Research Articles

Onnoghen’s cjn conundrum, exercise of the executive powers of the president and the practice of separation of powers in Nigeria

This paper examines the exercise of the executive powers of president Buhari in suspending Onnoghen chief justice of Nigeria (CJN) from office. It questions whether the power was rightly exercised by taking a look at applicable provisions of the constitution of the federal republic of Nigeria 1999 as amended pertaining to the appointment and removal of judicial officers. It also examines the doctrine of separation of power in tandem with the rightful exercise of the executive powers of the President. The paper re-echoed a similar situation in Pakistan. It concludes that the executive powers of the president was wrongly exercised.

Inter-Ethnic Dynamics in the Wake of Terrorist Attacks: Evidence from the 2015 Baga Massacre

AbstractThis paper investigates the consequences for inter-group conflicts of terrorist attacks. I study the 2015 Baga massacre, a large scale attack conducted by Boko Haram at the far North-East state of Borno, Nigeria, as a quasi-natural experiment and examine a set of attitudes in the aftermath of the event of Christians and Muslims throughout the country. Comparing individuals, outside the region of Borno, interviewed by Afrobarometer immediately after the massacre and those interviewed the days before within same regions and holding fixed a number of individual characteristics, I document that the informational exposure to the event rendered Christians less amiable to neighboring Muslims and Muslims less likely to recognize the legitimacy of the state. Nonetheless, Muslims increased their view of the elections as a device to remove leaders in office, event that took place 2 months later with the election of the challenger, Muhammadu Buhari. My findings indicate that terrorist attacks may generate a relevant and heterogeneous backlash across ethnic groups.

The Nigerian Tax Outlook; A Critical Analysis of the Finance Act, 2020.

The Finance Bill was passed into law in January 2019 as a fiscal support measure for the 2020 budget. The Bill is supposed to effect measures that would radically revamp the Nigerian economy as well as provide a fiscal means for offsetting the deficit in the 2020 budget as presented by the H.E President Muhammadu Buhari to the Senate. The Finance Act brought several developments to the Nigerian tax regime with the amendment of the various tax legislation in Nigeria. The Act amended the Companies Income Tax Act, Personal Income Tax Act, Value Added Tax Act, Capital Gains Tax Act and the Stamp Duties Act. One of the most populous innovations brought by the Act is the increase in the Value Added Tax rate from 5% to 7.5%. The Act provides for incentives especially for SMEs and companies in real estate investment, especially for CIS. The Act is a step in the right direction towards the decentralisation of the Nigerian economy which over the years has been tied to oil. In this paper, the author seeks to explore the innovations made by the Act and their precursors. The author thus wishes to enlighten his readers on what exactly the Finance Act is all about and how they can benefit from the goodies that came with it.

The State, Farmers/Herders’ Clashes and Voter Mobilization in the 2019 General Elections in Nigeria: Interrogating Electioneering Campaign Rhetoric in Benue State

The internecine farmers/herders’ clashes that became pervasive in Nigeria in recent times took the centre stage in electioneering campaign in the 2019 general elections in the country. The opposition parties used the bloody clashes that aggravated inter-ethnic disharmony, undermined the country’s security and unleashed socio-economic losses as a main campaign issue. Hence, campaign slogans, jingles and songs that harped on the farmers/herders’ clashes were used during electioneering campaigns to mobilize votes. This study, therefore, examines the campaign slogans, songs and messages by the main opposition party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) candidates and its supporters at political rallies in the 2019 elections in Benue State that dwell on the armed herdsmen attacks to dissuade voters from voting the ruling party, the All Progressive Congress (APC) headed by Muhammadu Buhari a Fulani. The study adopts Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony as its theoretical frame of analysis. The study which made use of content analysis and is analytically revealed that political language has become an instrument of hegemonic control meant to divert peoples’ attention from socio-economic realities. In as much as party songs, slogans and jingles tend to convey symbolic aspects of genuine concern for the people’s plight, they fail to offer alternative solutions to prevailing socio-economic realities in Benue State. Amongst other recommendations, it suggests that political debates should be institutionalized in the country’s electoral process.

The New Regime for Mergers and Acquisitions Under the Companies and Allied Matters Act 2020

Mergers and Acquisitions (“M&A”) are a veritable source of business combinations in any thriving economy. They are arguably the most famous external corporate restructuring tools employed by companies globally to achieve growth and maximize profitability. Naturally, therefore, with a new corporate law practice regime in place with the signing into law of the Companies and Allied Matters Act (“CAMA”) 2020 by President Muhammadu Buhari on 7th August 2020, it is not farfetched that companies and corporate restructuring (M&A) practitioners alike are looking on interestedly to see where and how the new Act affects the M&A landscape in Nigeria and consequently their business plans. In that regard, this article explores the provisions of the new Act as they affect or change the existing M&A landscape in Nigeria.

Practs in First Official Speeches of Presidents Muhammadu Buhari and Nana Akufo-Addo on Coronavirus Pandemic

This paper examined first official speeches of presidents of Nigeria and Ghana on coronavirus pandemic. The study adopted content analytical method which involves qualitative and quantitative method of data analysis and presentation. Applying concepts from Pragmatics act, the study revealed different practs through which both presidents made their intentions known towards combating the virus. It was discovered that President Muhammadu Buhari deployed 95 practs in order to achieve five pragmatic functions namely: to reveal achievements and further action (53.69%), to instruct and direct (28.41%), to commend (4.21%), to pacify/encourage (10.53%), and to persuade (3.16%). President Nana Akufo-Addo deployed 39 practs to achieve six pragmatic functions: to reveal achievements and further action (56.41%), to instruct and direct (25.64%), to pacify (7.69%), to commendation (5.13%), persuasion (2.56%), and to warn (2.56%). It was discovered that shared situational knowledge, reference and inference enable the citizens of both countries to understand what both presidents wish to communicate especially where both presidents used words and phrases to refer to coronavirus. The paper concluded that through the analysis of different practs in speeches, thematic focus of a speech can be discerned.

Pragmeme of Political Humour in Selected Nigerian Political Cartoons

Political humour is a recurring element in print media and other genres, touching various areas of Nigerian political discourse. A number of research studies have investigated political humour in contemporary Nigerian political discourse. The political humour deployed in responding to some prominent political events in 2016, however, is relatively unexplored. This current endeavour, therefore, attempts to examine the pragmeme of humour in selected 2016 political events that are remediated in political cartoons. These include political matters such as Nigeria’s 56th Independence Anniversary, the crusade against corruption, which Muhammadu Buhari commenced when he became the President of Nigeria, and the alleged 2016 budget padding scandal that rocked the House of Representatives. The frameworks for the study comprise Flamson and Barrett’s Encryption Theory of Humour and Mey’s Pragmeme Theory. The six political cartoons that were subjected to discourse interpretations were culled from Aprokotoons Media, Nigeria’s foremost internet-based cartoon journal with a large collection of relevant cartoon resources for print and electronic media. The results revealed that audiences who were well informed on these political activities were able to decrypt the cartoons because they shared the same key political knowledge as the cartoonist. Thus, honest laughter is produced, but on the other hand, the cartoons’ essential features are subordinated to the pragmeme of humour of idle campaign promises and Nigeria’s hopeless condition at 56; self-centred leadership, lawmakers who are lawbreakers, and that the worst form of corruption is selective justice. Hence, these findings enhance the public perception of the country’s political actors, and underscore the need for rethinking the sensibility of political acts, promises, and decisions.

Pragmatics of musical rhetoric in the post-2015 elections in Nigeria

In linguistics, most studies on rhetoric are approached from the perspective of persuasive ideologies of social actors such as community, religious, and political leaders with a concentration on their speeches and the impacts of the speeches on their followers and society at large. As a result, music as a form of persuasion and political strategy has been under-researched. This paper investigates the rhetoric embedded in politically-motivated musical renditions in the post-2015 elections in Nigeria and identifies ideologies of persuasion, pragmatic choice(s), and implications of the narratives on the Nigerian political landscape. Mey’s pragmatic acts serve as the theoretical base. Two popular and viral musical renditions in (Nigerian pidgin) English from social media were selected for the study. Analysis of the selected songs which critiqued the leadership style of President Muhammadu Buhari from two opposing angles was carried out. Both songs exhibited the Pragmemic activity of (in)direct speech acts as well as conversational and psychological acts through their rhythm and lyrics adapted from Harry Song’s popular ‘Reggae Blues’ and re-titled as ‘The (Change/Truth) Blues’. Musical political rhetoric relies on co-texts conveyed through verifiable information, (satiric) visuals, history, antecedents, and socio-political realities and sentiments as strategies of persuasion. The pragmatic acts employed include narrating, condemning, accusing and counter-accusing, blaming, justifying, (partial) veiling, threatening, hoping, and praying. The study reveals the political consciousness and conflicting perceptions of some Nigeria citizens in governance and makes a case for ‘truth awareness’ among the governed. Citizens’ active participation and better access to information about the political leadership of the day is, therefore, advocated. All these are invaluable for the reposing of trust in the government and also engender citizens’ active participation.

Curbing Hatred: The Ethnic Diehards' Agitations and 2015 Presidential Election Campaign in Nigeria

Nigeria witnessed bouts of hate speeches during the buildup to the March 28, 2015 Presidential election. Politicians and their allies made use of acerbic words, half-truths and outright lies during their electioneering campaigns. The election was regarded as a ‘do-or-die’ affair by the politicians. Their activities were alarming and apprehensions were rife about the success of the election and peaceful transition of power. Hence, the two major contestants, Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadu Buhari along with nine party leaders signed the ‘Abuja Accord’ on January 14, 2015.Furthermore, the country experienced a season of acerbic comments, issuance of quit notices and calls for secessions by ethnic jingoists. These activities heated up the polity and caused panic among the citizens of the country. On June 6, 2017, the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum comprising of 19 Northern states of Nigeria issued a 90-day ultimatum to South-Eastern residents in the North to vacate the region before October 1, 2017.This article explores the use of hate speech in electioneering campaign drawing from secondary data i.e. newspaper excerpts; and through the lens of ethics using relevant Communication Practice Codes, Nigerian Press Council Code, Nigerian Broadcasting Code, 2012 and relevant sections of Electoral Act 2010. It also examines the issue of the ethnic diehards’ agitations and quit notice and its implications for national peace, security and justice. The argument and submission of this paper highlights ways of curbing hatred, advancing of peace, acceptance, tolerance and justice.

Effects of Social Investment Programme (N-Power) on Standard of Living of Business Education Graduates in Kano State

This paper focuses on the effects of Social Investment Programme (NPower) on standard of living of business education graduates in Kano State, Nigeria. Social Investment aims at granting youths the power to perform their duties and create change. It has to do with teaching them about their ability to control their lives and change society to inculcate a sense of value. N-Power is one of the five Social Investment Programmes of the Federal Government of Nigeria under President Muhammadu Buhari led administration. Two research questions guided the study with one corresponding hypothesis tested at 0.05 level of significance. The descriptive survey research design was adopted in the study. The population was made up of 26 and 30 volunteers from Nassarawa and Fagge LGAs respectively, and 28 supervisors. A structured questionnaire titled N-power Questionnaire (NPQ) was developed by the researcher and was structured into 4 rating scale. Percentages, mean, and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions and one null hypothesis. The findings revealed that N-power SIP had significant effects in improving the standard of living of business education graduates in Kano State. Based on the findings, a major recommendation highlighted was that States government should commit funds to social investment programmes since it helps to improve the standard of living of volunteers.

Nigeria: the results of Muhammadu Buhari’s first presidential term and the 2019 general election

Nigeria: the results of Muhammadu Buhari’s first presidential term and the 2019 general election

Islamic Leadership Model and the Burden of Terrorism and Leadership in Nigeria

Despite the efforts of the Nigerian government at tackling the problems of terrorism and corruption, the terrorist activities of the Boko Ḥarām added to those of herdsmen, cattle rustlers, farmers, cultists, and militias who kill, vandalize, rob, rape, and kidnap with impunity all over the country have virtually destroyed the country, especially Northeast Nigeria. Its tourism industry has virtually gone into extinction in addition to the challenges of human, arms, and drugs trafficking; money laundering; child soldiers; and internally displaced persons in the region. All these take place while the country is also confronting the challenges of corruption. In what ways has Muhammadu Buhari administration tried to free Nigeria from terrorism and corruption? How are the challenges of terrorism and corruption tied to the development of the country? What role can Islamic leadership model play in bringing an end to these multifarious challenges ravaging the country? These are some of the questions that this papers answers using the leadership model of the Sharī‘ah.

Transitivity Processes in President Buhari’s ‘My Covenant With Nigerians’

Politics and politicking in Nigeria has assumed a considerably new dimension. Actors articulate their ideology and programmes, and construct their subjects and experiences in diverse linguistic processes with a view to achieving political victory. This paper examines clause structures of President Buhari’s My Covenant with Nigerians to reveal the transitivity processes employed by the President in this famous campaign speech in 2015 presidential election. This study utilized Transitivity Processes, which is rooted in Halliday’s (1985) Systemic Functional Grammar, in order to uncover different process types and main participants in the speech, and to explain the functions which these processes perform in the speech in helping the speaker to convey his ideology to Nigerians and convince them to rally support for him. Specifically, objective of this study is the uncover transitivity process types in the speech, their frequency, function and ideological underpinnings. The study reveals that President Muhammadu Buhari utilized mental and verbal processes perception, affection, cognition and volition, and verbal process of saying to appeal to the masses, and to commit himself to serve Nigerians. He equally used material and relational processes to encode his ideology, persuade the people and achieve political victory.

Introduction: Nigeria – Twenty years of civil rule

Ebenezer Obadare (obadare@ku.edu) is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Kansas and Research Fellow at the Research Institute for Theology and Religion, University of South Africa. His latest book is Pentecostal republic: Religion and the struggle for state power in Nigeria (Zed Books, London, 2018). December is typically a month of fevered agitation in Nigeria. It is, for one thing, a month motorists have come to associate with fuel shortages, owing to industrial action by the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), bottlenecks integral to the structure of oil distribution in the country, or sometimes a combination of both. December 2018 was different. Absent the usual petro-agony, the public was held in thrall by the allegation levelled by Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), a group claiming to champion self-determination for the Igbo, that the man Nigerians have been ‘looking at on the television’ is not President Muhammadu Buhari, but his genetically modified doppelganger, one ‘Jubril al Sudaniya from Sudan’.1 Mr Kanu, who has been a thorn in the Buhari administration’s flesh since its inauguration in May 2015, first made this bizarre claim in September 2017, and the fact that it did not gain traction until a year later – and even so only following multiple reaffirmations – may be attributed in part to its sheer outlandishness. Be that as it may, such was the speed at which the rumour had gained ground that President Buhari, addressing a gathering of Nigerians in Poland, had to categorically affirm that he was not dead and had not been replaced by a Sudanese look-alike. The statement later released by his aides titled: ‘It’s the real me, President Buhari responds to cloning allegation’ merely added a touch of farce to a bizarre episode.2

Cherry-Picking of Constitutional Provisions and Its Debacle of the Nigerian Economy

Activities in the political arena directly and indirectly affect economic policies and outcomes. The foundation of political, economic and social structures is often anchored on a constitutional order. In a democratic society like Nigeria with a written constitution, the supremacy of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended is sacrosanct! The bane of the Nigerian society is that often times in governance, there is no alignment between the provisions of the Constitution and the politics of power in Nigeria. Thus uncritical critics of the Constitution are denigrating it and presenting it as seemingly ineffective to tackle legal-economic-socio challenges that the country faces. This article examines the recent events that involved the third arm of the Federal Government of Nigeria, particularly as it relates to the attempt to arraign the Chief Justice of Nigeria (‘CJN’) Walter Samuel Onnoghen before the Code of Conduct Tribunal (‘CCT’), his subsequent suspension by President Muhammadu Buhari and the President’s appointment of an Acting-Chief Justice of Nigeria (“Acting-CJN’) Tanko Muhammed. Emphasis is placed on the evaluation of the constitutionality of these events and the potential effect they may have on the Nigerian Economy considering that we are in the eve of general elections.

Lexicon-based Bot-aware Public Emotion Mining and Sentiment Analysis of the Nigerian 2019 Presidential Election on Twitter

Online social networks have been widely engaged as rich potential platforms to predict election outcomes’ in several countries of the world. The vast amount of readily-available data on such platforms, coupled with the emerging power of natural language processing algorithms and tools, have made it possible to mine and generate foresight into the possible directions of elections’ outcome. In this paper, lexicon-based public emotion mining and sentiment analysis were conducted to predict win in the 2019 presidential election in Nigeria. 224,500 tweets, associated with the two most prominent political parties in Nigeria, People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and All Progressive Congress (APC), and the two most prominent presidential candidates that represented these parties in the 2019 elections, Atiku Abubakar and Muhammadu Buhari, were collected between 9th October 2018 and 17th December 2018 via the Twitter’s streaming API. tm and NRC libraries, defined in the ‘R’ integrated development environment, were used for data cleaning and preprocessing purposes. Botometer was introduced to detect the presence of automated bots in the preprocessed data while NRC Word Emotion Association Lexicon (EmoLex) was used to generate distributions of subjective public sentiments and emotions that surround the Nigerian 2019 presidential election. Emotions were grouped into eight categories (sadness, trust, anger, fear, joy, anticipation, disgust, surprise) while sentiments were grouped into two (negative and positive) based on Plutchik’s emotion wheel. Results obtained indicate a higher positive and a lower negative sentiment for APC than was observed with PDP. Similarly, for the presidential aspirants, Atiku has a slightly higher positive and a slightly lower negative sentiment than was observed with Buhari. These results show that APC is the predicted winning party and Atiku as the most preferred winner of the 2019 presidential election. These predictions were corroborated by the actual election results as APC emerged as the winning party while Buhari and Atiku shared very close vote margin in the election. Hence, this research is an indication that twitter data can be appropriately used to predict election outcomes and other offline future events. Future research could investigate spatiotemporal dimensions of the prediction.

The Psycho-Political Underpinnings of Presidential Speeches: President Buhari’s Three Selected Speeches to Countrymen

The Psycho-Political Underpinnings of Presidential Speeches: President Buhari’s Three Selected Speeches to Countrymen

The Military and Nation-Building in Nigeria: The General Ibrahim Babangida Regime, 1985-1993

On August 27, 1985, Major-General Ibrahim Babangida carried-out a coup d’etat against the then military ruler of Nigeria, General Muhammadu Buhari. The main reason for the putsch was the believe that the Buhari regime had no plan to return Nigeria to civilian rule. Apart from this, the country was beset with various nation-building challenges that the junta had no clear-cut answers to. Such challenges include that of corruption, ethnicity, governance and religion. Babangida carried-out his coup ostensibly to return the country to civilian rule, tackle these nation-building challenges and turn Nigeria into a cohesive, functional and viable polity. To achieve these important aims and objectives, Babangida established a transition programme to return Nigeria to civilian rule and used institutional, praetorian and constitutional mechanisms to tackle the country’s nationhood challenges. This work is an analysis of the programmes, measures and initiatives that the Babangida regime used to tackle Nigeria’s nation-building challenges and prepare the country for eventual return to civilian rule.

Nigeria General Election 2019: Background to the Re-election of President Buhari and His Challenges for a Second Term

Nigeria General Election 2019: Background to the Re-election of President Buhari and His Challenges for a Second Term

Self-Profiling and Agenda Marketing in Buhari’s May 29, 2018 Broadcast and Adjoining Pronouncements

Considering that the discursive structures in political discourse often manifest the ideological properties of language and the choices that speakers make from a number of alternative words are self-serving, this paper evaluates the Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari’s linguistic strategies of self-profiling and political agenda marketing. Data were excerpted from Buhari’s May 29, 2018 Democracy Day broadcast, “The-Not-Too-Young-to-Run-Bill” and his Press Statement announcing a posthumous Award to the winner of June 12, 1993 Presidential Election and the declaration of June 12 as Democracy Day in Nigeria. The study, based on Critical Discourse Analysis, revealed that self-profiling and agenda marketing in these texts manifested language ideologies which were instantiated through the co-option of critical stakeholders, performance profiling and agenda-setting which were aimed at halting the low performance rating of the president but to earn him re-election in 2019. Buhari’s pronouncements and, by extension, his ideology, were political gimmicks aimed at enlisting the support of Nigerians and hoodwink them into giving him a fresh mandate. The study’s interrogation of Buhari’s pre-election pronouncements could guide the public in their reaction to the ideologies of politicians.