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President Muhammadu Buhari’s romance with Niger Republic has become an affront to the national interest of Nigeria. When he was sworn-in as an elected president in 2015 he went to Mamadou Issoufou’s presidential palace in Niamey, Niger Republic, to celebrate.

 They gave him the reception of a conquering Fulani warlord: a white horse and sword.
I found that curious. How can a Nigerian leader celebrate his electoral victory in a foreign country and not Daura, his supposed hometown in Nigeria?
Answer has since been provided through Buhari’s policy actions in the past 5+ years. We have since learnt that Buhari is a first-generation Nigerian whose father, Ardo Adamu Buhari, a duck seller, had migrated from Niger, settled in Nigeria and married a Nigerian woman, Zulaihat.
The borders defined by the European colonial masters mean nothing to typical Northerners. When you hear that Nigerian borders are porous, what it really means is that there is no intention in the minds of Northern Nigerians and their elite to create an effective barrier between..
them and their kith and kin in the neighbouring countries of Niger, Chad and Northern Cameroun. Meanwhile, the Southern borders are strictly monitored (within the limits permitted by the selfish interests of corrupt Customs and Immigration officials).
When Buhari’s government in August 2019, “closed the borders” it was the Southern borders that were actually closed. Fatuhu Mohammed, a nephew of President Buhari’s, who represents Daura/Mai’adua/Sandamu Federal Constituency in the House of Reps alerted during a plenary session..
that smuggling was still freely thriving at the Daura border, 13 kilometres from Buhari’s country residence.
It is no secret that Niger Republic nationals are regularly smuggled in to vote in Nigerian elections.
It was in this dispensation that the political leaders of that country threw caution to the wind and attended Buhari’s rallies in Kano with large contingents led by governors of Maradi and Zinder provinces! If you thought these were inconsequential and harmless cultural...
exchanges, Buhari has proved you wrong. He has taken several concrete policy steps that showed his engagement with Niger is longer a joke. Early in 2018, the Federal Ministry of Transportation revealed plans by the president to build a railway line from Kano through Daura & Jibia
to Maradi in Niger Republic.
I wrote an article condemning the project, but of course, they pressed ahead with it. The Federal Executive Council in September this year, announced an award of $1.9bn contract for the project.
The money is part of the numerous loans Buhari’s government has been freeloading from China. Also in June this year, the Federal Government announced the award of contract for the construction of 614-km gas pipeline from Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano with eventual termination in Morocco..
through Niger Republic worth $2.8bn.
The latest story in town is that on November 20, Nigeria signed an MOU to import petroleum products from Niger. The shipments will be coming from Soraz Refinery in Niger’s Zinder oilfields. The refinery, which is jointly owned by China...
(60 per cent) and Niger (40 per cent) has a daily output capacity of 20,000 barrels. Niger’s domestic consumption requires only 5,000 barrels per day. The surplus 15,000bpd will be taken up by Nigeria to service our adjoining Northern fringes.
Ordinarily, there is nothing wrong about buying refined products from neighbouring countries if our countrymen in the Northern fringes will find that cheaper and more easily available. However, there is a shameful, or is it personal impunity factor at play here.
Buhari who as Petroleum Minister in the late 1970s oversaw the construction of the second (150,000bpd capacity) Port Harcourt Refinery, Warri and Kaduna Refineries; has been his own self-appointed Petroleum Minister since 2015.
He had promised to fix our refineries during the...
campaigns. When he took up the Petroleum portfolio, his supporters said he was bringing his “wealth of experience” to reform the sector. Almost six years down the line, the industry remains comatose. Even the reforms proposed by the PriceWaterhouse and Coopers, PWC, audit...
exercise in 2014 has been altogether abandoned. Meanwhile, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, continues to import fuel while Nigerians are forced to swallow the bitter pill of the full deregulation of the downstream sector.
The first question is: What exactly has Buhari achieved with his position as oil minister? The first audit report of the NNPC in 43 years revealed that the Kaduna Refinery gulped N63.4bn without generating a kobo in 2018.
Also in September 2020, another NNPC report disclosed that three refineries reportedly swallowed N140bn to produce less than 40 metric tonnes of crude oil. There is no clear picture about anything being done to bring back our refineries.
Rather, we await for Dangote and other private refineries.
What “magic” is Niger employing to refine petroleum that Nigeria’s President and Oil Minister, Buhari, cannot deploy in Nigeria? Why aren’t Nigerians complaining about Buhari’s incompetence as Oil Minister and the use of
Nigeria’s largely borrowed funds to develop his father’s country when our own infrastructural deficits are among the world’s worst? The $1.9bn railway line to Maradi was never taken to the National Assembly for approval; it was an act of naked impunity.
It is an impeachable offence, but who will bell the cat?
Buhari is using our scarce, borrowed resources to service his cross-border selfish interests with resources mined mainly from the Niger Delta and the Lagos business districts.
He is going beyond developing Northern Nigeria; he is working for Niger Republic too. Is this regime all about Buhari’s interests? And why are Nigerians who will repay the loans letting him get away with these?
These are issues that should concern Southern political leaders, elected representatives and statesmen. Rather, they struggle to be selected as leg men to serve the interests of a foreign country. It is a shame and a pity.

Ochereome Nanna
Vanguard Newspapers
#Nigeria
#Buhari

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1995 ‘coup’: How Obasanjo, Yar’Adua, Gwadabe were maltreated — Ex-EFCC chairman.
A former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mrs. Farida Waziri has given a fresh insight into the 1995 alleged coup during the Gen. Sani Abacha regime.

Ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, the late General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, Col. Lawan Gwadabe and Senator Chris Anyanwu were all tried and ended up in jail on the strength of the allegations against them.
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The book is about her life as a spy, detective and anti-graft czar. She said when she complained to a former Inspector-General of Police, the

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Later today, I'll be tweeting on the origins and history of the Ika people of Anioma. Please turn on notifications if you're interested.

The Origins And History Of Ika People of Anioma.

Ika communities mostly comprise the following: Agbor, Owa, Umunede, Mbiri, Abavo, Orogodo, Otolokpo, Igbodo, Ute-Okpu, Ute-Ugbeje, Idumuesah, Akumazi, Ekpon (Edo State), Igbanke (Edo State), Inyelen Edo State).

The Ika people are specifically located in the North-West of Delta State but some like Igbanke, Inyelen and Ekpon are presently located in Edo State.
Other Ika communities found in Edo State are Owanikeke, Owa-Riuzo Idu and Igbogili.

Specifically, Ika people occupy Ika North East and Ika South Local Government Areas of Delta State and a land area of about 117.45 square kilometres. Since the 2006 population census did not stipulate the official figure for ethnic groups, the total population figure of the Ika..

people remains officially unknown.
The dialect of Ika people is Igboid group (Williamson, 1968). This according to him is because it has no noticeable difference from the general Igbo language spoken within the Anioma area only weak phonological and lexical difference separates..
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Terrible things happen in Nigeria. We've lost the present and we want to lose the future.
I just left Transcorp Hotel Abuja, after my news analysis at Arise News TV. As I stepped to the lobby of the hotel, I saw a bevy of pretty young girls in their early 20s crowded in a corner.

There were all skimpily dressed as if there were commercial sex workers. The time was 10.30pm.
One of them rushed to greet me. “Good evening sir”. She was one of my students. I recognized her clearly because she had a slight disability and I paid attention to make sure she...

followed the coursework. I was shocked. I recognized three of those hotly dressed pretty young girls as fresh graduates of my department.
What are they all coming to do at this kind of Hotel at this hour and dressed in this manner? Of course, I think I know what it is.

A Nigerian politician or man of means may have arranged them for his pleasure, and those of his friends and acquaintances. Everyday, our girls are disoriented by these politicians who have neither shame nor conscience, because they have access to power and money.

We pride ourselves that we have a large youth population and that is a huge asset. But the truth is that we have a large hardware. The software is highly corrupted. Why do we intend to organize these adolescents into the life of immorality?
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The Amazons of Dahomey.

It is noon on a humid Saturday in the fall of 1861, and a missionary by the name of Francesco Borghero has been summoned to a parade ground in Abomey, the capital of the small West African state of Dahomey.

He is seated on one side of a huge, open square right in the center of the town–Dahomey is renowned as a “Black Sparta,” a fiercely militaristic society bent on conquest, whose soldiers strike fear into their enemies all along what is still known as the Slave Coast.

The maneuvers begin in the face of a looming downpour, but King Glele is eager to show off the finest unit in his army to his European guest.
As Father Borghero fans himself, 3,000 heavily armed soldiers march into the square and begin a mock assault on a series of defenses...

designed to represent an enemy capital. The Dahomean troops are a fearsome sight, barefoot and bristling with clubs and knives. A few, known as Reapers, are armed with gleaming three-foot-long straight razors, each wielded two-handed and capable, the priest is told, of slicing...

a man clean in two.
The soldiers advance in silence, reconnoitering. Their first obstacle is a wall—huge piles of acacia branches bristling with needle-sharp thorns, forming a barricade that stretches nearly 440 yards.
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The story of Aare Ona Kakanfo Afonja, and the fall of the great Oyo Empire is absorbing. If you're interested in this beautiful history of pre-colonial south western Nigeria, keep a date with me later tonight. 🙏🏾

The Kakanfo and fall of Oyo Empire.
Thread.
Of the 14 Kakanfos so far, the tenures of three of them who were military commanders considerably impacted the history of, first, the Old Oyo Empire, and by extension, the rest of Yorubaland.

The three Kakanfos were Afonja of Ilorin, Kurunmi of Ijaye, and Obadoke Latoosa of Ibadan. The last two of the 14, who were civilians and honorary holders of the title nevertheless impacted the history of Yorubaland, and also the entire Nigerian nation.

Aare-Ona-Kakanfo Afonja:
In the mid-1700s, around 1750 and thereabouts, a powerful Oyo warrior was growing in stature; a man called Afonja. His father was Laderin. Laderin himself was the son of Alugbin, who himself was the son of Pasin.

Alaafin Majeogbe ruled Oyo from 1754 to 1770, and was succeeded by Alaafin Abiodun same year. Abiodun was on the throne for about 19 years, until 1789 when he was murdered by his own son, Aole.
Aole became Alaafin, and ruled from 1789 to 1796.
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When the medics were done & we were notified that the C-130 would depart for Abuja, N made a signal & all the girls sat up, crossed their legs & bend their heads. N led them in prayers. I would later learn that this was their routine when there was danger or the bombs dropped.
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There is a recent new word in Chinese that I think deserves introducing into the Western neoreactionary canon.

The word is 内卷 (nei-juan) which has been translated as "involution". Originally a Chinese phenomenon it increasingly applies anywhere there is modernity.

To capture the essence of what "involution" means it helps to picture a spiral in your mind. Our modern narrative says that as we progress technologically we should progress OUT of the spiral and have more free time to be capable of ever more amazing things...


But what if the progression of technology and society actually sends us WITHIN the spiral in an infinite number of ever-decreasing circles? What if we are walking DOWN the spiral staircase of progress rather than UP?


"Involution" in its original meaning has been used to describe agrarian societies and how their development actually leads to self-perpetuating processes that prevent change and progress rather than encourage it.

Increased food production has limited many civilisations and sent them into stagnancy rather than allowed them to grow. This stagnancy can continue for millennia in safe environments till threatened, other times it drives the civilisation into extinction from external threats.
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1 So, today we turn to early Islamic Beirut. what do we know of the earliest times of #Beirut under early Islamic rule, starting with the #conquest. How and when did Beirut enter the emerging Muslim empire? -rm


2 Let’s start with traditional sources for the early Islamic period. Of those, only al-Balādhurī (d. ca. 892), the Abbasid scholar, is informative. Other Muslim and non-Muslim sources including al-Ṭabarī's Tārīkh are silent on the matter.-rm


3 In his small tome, Futūḥ al-Buldān, al-Balādhurī tells his readers: “After the conquest of Damascus, Yazīd came to Sidon, ʿArqa, Byblos, and Beirut which lie on the sea coast with his brother Muʿāwiya leading the van of the army.”-rm

4 Hence, the men who conquered Beirut were Yazīd b. Abī Sufyān (d. 639) and his half-brother and future caliph Mu‘āwiya (r. 661-680). The date of the conquest of the coast falls between 636 and 639 at the latest, the date of the death of Yazīd in the plague of Emmaus. -rm


5 Yazīd and the Muslim army likely took the coastal road to Beirut, a path taken by numerous armies before. They would have either swung from Damascus to Baalbek through the Hims gap to ‘Arqa, then Byblos, crossed the Dog River, and arrived at the eastern side of Beirut.
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All the leftists in the comments like oh no prageru made a good point lol


Polls consistently show conservative support for nuclear energy. It also has high support among elites. The myth that it is unpopular in general isn’t true—although it is unpopular in almost every specific case where they need to site it

Article is old but yeah

This study finds that risk & benefit predict individual opinion the most, followed by the share of nuclear energy already extant, followed by ideology (conservatives support more)

This one finds that journalists attitude affect public perceptions, but that energy consultants, nuclear engineers, bureaucrats, and the military show the highest support for nuclear energy
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If the communist party of China succeeds in their quest to take over America, and vanquish liberty from the earth, those American citizens who vote for the Democrat establishment, will deeply regret having done so, when the Chinese communists openly ridicule and disclose how
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I really, *really* like SoJ's "would not use again" question, which lets people who've abandoned a tech self-identify. This is noticeable in the graph above with Flow users -- 41% of people who've used Flow say they wouldn't use it again.

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Economists are calling millennial men a lost generation.

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2. In previous threads I have looked at 🇮🇪 key players in the Trilateral Commission as well as 🇮🇪 people who have attended the Bilderberger meetings. I also looked at the 🇮🇪 in the Young Global Leaders which is a site run by the WEF. You will see a lot of crossover between them.

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4. Ireland’s WEF members are drawn from all walks of life but can be split into 2 separate areas. The WEF calls the first category “people” and the 2nd one “agenda contributors”. In total Ireland has a minimum of 61 members. Some of the names will be familiar and others will not

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