If you lived through the Military Era, you would not even ask this question. Democracy might not be great, but at least it allows AriseNews the right to openly criticize the govt without consequences. I see people beating police and soldiers...dem no born your parents and the entire family to do that under the Military Govt. You will just go missing...even NUJ will remain mute. Who born who? So yes, lets celebrate our Democracy...ROME was not built in a day.

Efuaye:
Twenty Five years of unbroken democracy, how has Nigerians fared?

I remember all the events that preceded May 29, 1999. There was excitement everywhere that at last the military was exiting the political stage in the annals of our history but today a lot of people will tell you that things are not in any way better, especially in these last few years!

The question is, Where were you and how old were you in 1999?

Is this the democracy you hoped for?

Are we there yet?

Gov Alex Otti operates Abia state affairs from his private residence in Ngwa, not from Abia government house.
Gov Otti spends N9m daily on feeding from Abia state tax payers money.
He has borrowed more than Orji Kalu, Theo Orji, Okezie Ikpeazu combined in less than 1yr in office.
He’s building substandard roads but the Pharisees aka obidient movement sees nothing wrong in it.

i dey house

JSS 2
Obasanjo stopped our free food in secondary sch dat year.
In the North dey gv us free food both Day and Boarding students.

Was in ss3

Primary 6

easzypeaszy:
JSS 2
Obasanjo stopped our free food in secondary sch dat year.
In the North dey gv us free food both Day and Boarding students.

Was in same class then too JSS2.

Beremx:
I was in 100level in the university.

Nigeria hasn't gotten better though. From frying pan to fire, to hell fire to abyss of hell and it keeps going....

You are a liar ! A big one at that .

You want to compare the Nigeria of today to the 90’s or 80’s.

Common stop that !

Still schooling though, I attended OBJ's inauguration at Eagle square in Abuja then

Life got better then after OBJ took over

Is the national anthem the top priority among our problems in Nigeria today?

JSS1

sss

Just finished secondary school that Year and still living with my parents.

baba freshly regained freedom from Abacha gulag.If Abacha nor ate freshly 🍎 🍏 🍎 be it those girls succulent own ,handshake from Gaddafi, whatever,there won't be any OBJ,Abdusalam,yar Adua,GEJ ,Emilokan

StOla:


Must you always be partisan?

What is unprogressive about a government that has allowed anyone, including yourself, to vent their frustration without any reprisal or consequences?

Does progressive mean government policies will favour everyone?

That your preferred candidate was defeated by a political superior is not the end of progressive politics?

Are you OK?

So venting and speaking out is the hardstick for good governance?

No wonder the economy is like this. See supporters of a government abeg!

tuuueeehhh

What happened that year?

I was in JSS3

StOla:
I was in secondary school and thought the military was gone for good.

They only left power, they did not leave control.

how did the military leave power but did not leave control?

StOla:


What is unprogressive about a government that has allowed anyone, including yourself, to vent their frustration without any reprisal or consequences?

This is not true. There has been a spike in people being arrested for their comments online and also a worrisome trend of journalists being picked up for their articles.

I was thinking about food

MasterTeeUSA:
If you lived through the Military Era, you would not even ask this question. Democracy might not be great, but at least it allows AriseNews the right to openly criticize the govt without consequences. I see people beating police and soldiers...dem no born your parents and the entire family to do that under the Military Govt. You will just go missing...even NUJ will remain mute. Who born who? So yes, lets celebrate our Democracy...ROME was not built in a day.

You are Talking about Diehard, Semi-Illiterates Head of states like Buhari, Babangida and Sani Abacha.

In Yakubu Gowon's Military Regime, Human Rights abuse was minimal.

Primary 4

Racoon:
Just exiting secondary school. Having participated in the June 12 political uprisings to ensure MKO Abiola reclaim his mandate, it is sad to see the present disaster on seat who claimed to be a progressive today bastardizing this nation in manner reminiscent of the inglorious Buhari’s military govt of 1984-85.

You said your father was a military administrator. Yet, after using stolen money to educate you, you are calling this administration repressive.

Have you forgotten how your father and his fellow elements treated journalists and opposition

I was in primary 6 going to jss1

I resat for both WAEC and Jamb after WAEC withheld my Physics result which caused me to lose my 1998 QS admission to ATBU.

Finally went to ABU Civil Engineering and still got ATBU Electrical Electronics Engineering.

After years of struggle characterised by wanton arrests, imprisonment, and assassinations of pro-democracy activists, Nigeria finally returned to the path of democratic governance on May 29, 1999.


This gesture, which drove the military back to the barracks and ushered in a new dispensation, is most often referred to as Nigeria’s fourth republic. This has so far been the longest civilian rule without inference from the military since Nigeria’s independence in 1960. The journey has, however, not been smooth. The trajectory has witnessed some controversies that were weathered by the sheer will of Nigerians to strengthen their nascent democracy. Below are some of the major scandals that have rocked the democratic journey since 1999.

SALISU BUHARI AND HIS TORONTO CERTIFICATE

With barely two months into the inauguration of the 1999 set of House of Representatives members, the Green Chamber was rocked by a scandal that is arguably still one of the most daring and barefaced incidents involving a political officeholder in Nigeria.

Ibrahim Salisu Buhari, the young lawmaker from Kano State who had emerged as the Speaker of the House, was exposed to have not only falsified his age, but also presented bogus academic credentials.


According to The News Magazine, which unearthed the scandal, Buhari had claimed that he obtained a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Toronto, Canada, in 1990; a diploma in accountancy from Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, in 1988; and that he served under the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in 1991. Again, Buhari was said to have been born on January 3, 1963.

But it later emerged that Salisu Buhari was actually born on January 3, 1970, making him 29 years old at the time he contested and won election to the House, whereas the constitution pegs the age limit for a member of the House at 30. It was also revealed that he actually got admission into ABU, but he was withdrawn because he falsified his credentials.

Again, available records at the time showed that he never went to the University of Toronto in Canada and did not take part in NYSC, according to The News Magazine.

Though he initially denied the allegations, the revelation that the federal government had concluded plans to prosecute him forced his hand as he tendered his resignation as speaker and member representing Nasarawa federal constituency on July 22, 1999, exactly 49 days after his election.

OBASANJO’S THIRD-TERM POLITICAL AMBITION

During the twilight of the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s second term in office, Nigeria’s political scene was thrown into pandemonium when the National Assembly was considering a move to change the constitution to allow the president to contest for a third time.

While the former president denied he ever nursed the ambition of ruling the country for another four years, the event showed the readiness of Nigerians to safeguard the democracy attained through blood and sweat.

Ken Nnamani, the Senate President at the time (2006), said at the public presentation of his book, “Standing Strong: Legislative Reforms, Third Term, and Other Issues of the 5th Senate,” that by adjourning the senate in the course of the constitutional amendment process, some senators in support of the bill had a change of mind after interacting with their constituents.

He added that the live transmission of the plenary on May 16, 2006, when an alteration of the constitution to allow three terms for Nigeria’s presidents was being considered, forced some senators to abandon support for the bill.

Years later, the report of some lawmakers being given cash in ‘Ghana-must-go’ bags to vote in favour of the bill remained a major taint on the National Assembly.

2007 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

With the third-term presidential attempt of Obasanjo defeated, the elections that brought his predecessor, the late Umaru Musa Ya’ardua, into power were considered the worst in Nigeria’s history.

The conduct of the election made the European Union observers label it as “the worst they had ever seen anywhere in the world, with rampant vote rigging, violence, theft of ballot boxes, and intimidation.”

Apart from this submission, the inability of the INEC to adequately plan for the election threw the process into chaos, with voting commencing in some parts of the country around 5 p.m. on election day due to the late arrival of materials.

Before the election, the INEC did not include the name of Obasanjo’s embattled Vice President, Atiku Abubakar, among the presidential candidates, but the Supreme Court ruled against it a week before the election.

After the election, Ya’ardua proclaimed the election flawed and promised to enact new laws that would strengthen the electoral process.

IMBROGILO OVER JONATHAN’S STATUS IN YAR’ADUA’S ABSENCE

Perhaps one of the most challenging periods in Nigeria’s democratic journey was when then President Umaru Musa Ya’ardua took ill and was flown to Saudi Arabia for treatment without formally handing over to his deputy as envisaged by the constitution.

His absence in the country for 10 weeks stalled governance, which prompted the National Assembly to make his vice president, Goodluck Jonathan, the acting president, a move that was opposed by members of Yar’adua’s cabinet.

The act was termed by the then Senate President, David Mark, as the “doctrine of necessity due to a lack of constitutional precedent.”

Before the solution by the National Assembly, the polity had been heated up along both religious and ethnic lines, with many from the southern part of the country where Jonathan comes, interpreting the power play as a strategic agenda to deny the South-South the opportunity to govern the country.

PATRICIA ETTEH

On June 6, 2007, Patricia Etteh became Nigeria’s first female Speaker of the House of Representatives. But the trained hairdresser and beauty therapist, who later became a lawyer, had one of the shortest tenures as the number four citizen of Nigeria.

Two months after her emergence, accusations of corruption were raised against her. She was made to face an ad hoc committee over accusations that she had authorised the spending of N628 million on renovations of her official residence and that of her deputy, and the purchase of 12 official cars meant for the House of Representatives.

During one of the committee’s sittings where she had appeared to defend herself, chants of ‘Thief!’ ‘Thief!” in Yoruba were directed at her, with the session degenerating into a commotion with the lawmakers descending into a free for all. She was eventually escorted out by the security men, and on October 30, 2007, after weeks of pressure, she resigned. Her deputy, Babangida Nguroje, also resigned.

FUEL SUBSIDY AND FAROUK LAWAN’S JOURNEY TO JAIL

Farouk Lawan
In 2012, the House of Representatives’ ad hoc committee set up to probe petroleum product subsidies came up with the finding that the government overpaid some markers to the tune of N229.7 billion between 2010 and 2011.

The chairman of the committee, Faruk Lawan, the soft-spoken Kano-born lawmaker who had made a name for himself as “Mr. Integrity,” submitted the report, which contained a list of companies that had ‘defrauded’ the government, on the floor of the House. But a few days later, he became enmeshed in a bribery scandal that would later make him an inmate at Kuje Custodial Centre. A video of him receiving and stuffing wands of dollar notes into his cap, ostensibly as a bribe from one of the marketers, emerged.

Almost 10 years later, Justice Angela Otaluka of the FCT High Court convicted him and sentenced him to seven years’ imprisonment for receiving a $500,000 bribe while serving as the chairman of the House’s ad hoc committee.

The court held that Lawan demanded $3 million and received $500,000 as a bribe from Femi Otedola, a Nigerian billionaire oil mogul, in 2012. The judge held that he took the bribe to remove Otedola’s oil company, Zenon Oil and Gas, from the list of firms indicted for fraud in the fuel subsidy regime. His sentence was later reduced to five years by the Supreme Court.

OCCUPY NIGERIA PROTEST

The Occupy Nigeria protest emanated from the decision of the government to remove the fuel subsidy, thereby increasing its cost from N65 per litre to N141.

The protest, which started on January 2, 2012, was a massive movement of Nigerians that nearly crippled the country’s economy as government workers and those in the private sector declared strikes to join the protest.

While the protest took on a political undertone as opposition parties took advantage of it, it served as an avenue for Nigerians to vent their anger over the continued rise in the cost of living and corruption in the country. The continued protest forced the government to lower the cost to N97.

RIOT AT THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY

Following the defection of the then Speaker of the House of Representative, Aminu Tambuwal, to the main opposition party, security personnel blocked his access to the national assembly.

This led to chaos in the legislative arm of the country, resulting in a face-off between lawmakers and the police. The latter used tear gas to stop the lawmakers from gaining access to the complex.

With all access to the complex blocked, some of the lawmakers resorted to scaling the fence, while others forced the pedestrian gate open before Tambuwal gained access to the complex.



INVASION OF SENATE PRESIDENT, HIS DEPUTY’S RESIDENCES
dss
In 2018, security operatives were used to intimidate the legislative body, especially the senate, which had been termed by the government as its main opposition.

The first was that of operatives of the DSS storming the residence of Senate President Bukola Saraki to effect his arrest. The arrest warrant was issued by the Inspector General of Police on the basis that he had some questions to answer due to his alleged connection to the perpetrators of the Offa robbery that claimed the lives of residents.

On the same day, the house of his deputy, Ike Ekweremadu, was barricaded by officials of the EFCC on the guise that he had some questions to answer on the case of money laundering.

While Saraki slipped through the arrest, his deputy was not so lucky.

The actions were believed to be a result of the planned defection of the Senate president with some other lawmakers.

Also, a siege was laid on the National Assembly complex by the DSS to prevent lawmakers from gaining access to their chambers in August. This followed the defection of the Senate president to the opposition party.

The aftermath led to the sack of the then-Director General of the DSS.



MACE THEFT

mace theft
mace theft
Still in 2018, the Senate was engulfed in drama when its mace was stolen by thugs who stormed the red chambers. While fingers were pointed at Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, who appeared in the chamber in the midst of his suspension, the Delta Central senator denied leading the thugs to the chamber to steal the mace.

According to the police, the mace was eventually found at the City Gate a day after it was stolen, and Omo-Agege was arrested for the theft. He was later released and would end up as the Deputy Senate President in the 9th Assembly.



ORUBEBE’S DISRUPTION OF 2015 ELECTION

The 2015 election that brought popular opposition figure Muhammadu Buhari to power remains one of the most intriguing in Nigeria’s history, especially at the anti-climax that was witnessed at the collation centre.

While the election was adjudged one of the best and the incumbent conceded defeat even before the official declaration of Buhari as the winner, a former minister of Niger Delta Affairs and representative of President Goodluck Jonathan, Godsday Orubebe, disrupted the collation while making some allegations against the then INEC chairman, Prof. Attahiru Jega, when the former realised his principal would lose the election.

While Jega kept his cool during the drama, the antics of Orubebe, expected to stop the final declaration, will forever be etched in the minds of Nigerians.

MasterTeeUSA:
If you lived through the Military Era, you would not even ask this question. Democracy might not be great, but at least it allows AriseNews the right to openly criticize the govt without consequences. I see people beating police and soldiers...dem no born your parents and the entire family to do that under the Military Govt. You will just go missing...even NUJ will remain mute. Who born who? So yes, lets celebrate our Democracy...ROME was not built in a day.

how many years was Rome built?

is 25years and a day the same thing?

pls how many days is 25years that you feel people should not complain and desire for a better life as Nigerians?

if Nigeria was so good, what are you doing in the US?

CheapHomes1:


how did the military leave power but did not leave control?

What do you expect from a Tinibu DingBat?

AbdulSalam left power for Olusegun Obasanjo and Obasanjo had full Executive powers as a Civilian president.

How did the Military not leave control?

Themanleshey:



You are a liar ! A big one at that .

You want to compare the Nigeria of today to the 90’s or 80’s.

Common stop that !

Seriously, how has it improved. I suspect you may be being deceived by the natural developments that occur globally (the advent of the internet, mobile phones, social media, improved electronic devices etc).

Beyond these which are global developments how has Nigeria as a country improved please.

The only other improvement rests in the inherent fact of living in a democracy and the freedoms and rights that come with that.

But do you have better electricity?
Water?
Roads?
Security?
Education?
Health Care?

I wasn’t alive sef

VinnyBaba:


I was in Primary School.

Then When I returned back from School, I used to Buy N10 beans, N10 rice and N10 Kpomor to eat as Afternoon food.

Now eating N1000 meal looks like eating Biscuits and Pure water.

Are you sure it's 10 naira rice you were consuming then?, Cos what I use to buy then was rice of 2naira 50kobo