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Kingsley Moghalu

4 May, 13 tweets, 4 min read

@UN

I believe that the @UN Security Council and the @_AfricanUnion should quickly consider the appointment of a joint Special Envoy on the one hand, or a combined one of the US, UK, and @EU_Commission on the other, on Nigeria's political/ security crisis.

@Mbuhari

This approach has become necessary because President @Mbuhari 's @NigeriaGov appears unwilling or unable to address the real issues facing Nigeria. For this reason, the legitimate agitation of numerous ethnic nationalities for a fundamental constitutional restructuring of Nigeria

(the best way out of our nationhood, security and economic crisis) is met essentially with disdain by the federal government. The reality on the ground, however, is that Nigeria’s sovereignty is now a "shared sovereignty" in which we have vast ungoverned spaces, and the very

legitimacy of the Nigerian state is now contested by many of its citizens. This mistrust is fed by incompetent governance and injustice on several levels. The terrorist threat is not being effectively met. The Nigerian government today is incapable of a military solution to the

security crisis because the state itself lacks coercive capacity, evidenced by undermanned, untrained military and police forces. More fundamentally, the problem is one of the absence of effective political leadership: the military ability to subdue terrorists has been subverted

by a combination of corruption and divided loyalties to ethno-religious identities and the formal Nigerian state to which some important actors simply pay lip service. This is why President Buhari’s reported request to US Secretary of

@ABlinken

state @ABlinken that the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) relocate from Europe to Africa does not address the real issues, at least as far as Nigeria is concerned. It may also be why @JamesDuddridge , the UK Minister for Africa recently said that no partnership could solve Nigeria's

complex security problems. It is for Nigerians to solve our own problems but, since our leadership seems to think it's beneath it to meet with dissatisfied stakeholders in Nigeria's nationhood project, and yet lacks the military capacity to deal decisively with terrorists,

external diplomatic help may provide a way to bring all the parties to the table. Such an intervention also enables a focus on the real issues for resolution, rather than "partnerships" that listen only to incomplete government narratives.

@UN

I make these suggestions from the standpoint of my experience in conflict stabilization and resolution as a Political Affairs Officer @UN in the mid-1990s handling Angola, Rwanda and Somalia. It's painful to see my country teetering on the edge of the abyss in this manner.

If we survive, somehow, we must do something really serious about leadership selection in Nigeria going forward. For it is only real leadership that can face and address our challenges, including the need to #restructure back to real federalism with a new constitution.

The security, welfare and prosperity of 200 million people is too important to toy with in such a short-sighted manner. As the immortal poet W.B. Yeats wrote:
Turning and turning in the widening gate
The falcon cannot hear the falconer....

..the widening *gyre*...

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More from @MoghaluKingsley

Kingsley Moghalu

@MoghaluKingsley

30 Apr

@WSoyinkaLecture

Social media has had impact in Nigeria but with only 33% of us on SM in a population of 200 million, it's still a low ratio. There are still issues of weak broadband infrastructure and access, and high poverty rates affect ability of millions to buy data, I told @WSoyinkaLecture

Then we need to look at quality relative to the goal of driving national reform. SM has democratized opinion, without the same level of truly informed discussion. So there is often more heat than light. Our literacy rate is 62%. Weak.Our political and economic literacy rate, even

lower. There is a massive "digital age divide", with most SM users aged between 17 and 40. This creates an opportunity for strong youth influence on national reform if they can engage effectively. But this opportunity is still limited because SM in Nigeria reflects Nigeria's

Read 4 tweets

Kingsley Moghalu

@MoghaluKingsley

23 Apr

I have refrained so far from commenting on the #Pantami controversy. From information available: anyone can a mistake, and has the right to recant from it. But when the evidence shows that a serving minister of Nigeria has expressed open support for global terrorist groups,

he should never have scaled the vetting process and been approved for that office. The implication of the timing of Pantami's recanting of his views now is that he has been serving as a minister while presumably still harboring those views. His disagreement with Boko Haram

@NGRPresident

does not absolve him of, at tje very least moral culpability for supporting Al Qaeda and the Taliban. For this reason, Pantami should not continue to serve as a Minister. For him to remain in his position, and for @NGRPresident to support this, is to tell Nigerians that we have

Read 6 tweets

Kingsley Moghalu

@MoghaluKingsley

16 Mar

@nassnigeria

I'm OUTRAGED at @nassnigeria House of Representatives Dep. Speaker @HonAhmedWase saying Nigerians living abroad have no right to submit petitions to parliament. Remittances from our countrymen and women at $20 billion a year keep alive families impoverished by our politicians!

@cenbank

This is why we must be careful who we elect into high office. We need #electoralreform NOW, and diaspora Nigerians must have the ability to vote from abroad as is the case in Ghana and many other countries. If @cenbank can woo their remittances, we need their votes too!

Nigerians living and earning their living abroad is not a crime. It is their right. Their citizenship shouldn't be denigrated because of where they live. What opportunities exist for them at home if they did not move out Nigeria?

Read 4 tweets

Kingsley Moghalu

@MoghaluKingsley

15 Feb

@MBuhari

1. The failure of President @MBuhari ‘s administration to end the menace of criminal herdsmen and bandits throughout Nigeria (in both northern and southern states) has led to the stigmatization of the Fulani and other ethnic groups for the crimes of a few.

2. The failure of our authorities to deploy effective security and law enforcement action against these criminals has also created a dangerous vacuum that is increasingly filled, unsurprisingly, by self-defense measures by several communities across the country.

3. This could lead to reprisals based on ethnic profiling. In this context, I deplore the recent killings of innocent Nigerians of northern extraction in Oyo State.

Read 7 tweets

Kingsley Moghalu

@MoghaluKingsley

14 Jan

I told the Mike Omotosho Annual Lecture as it’s 2021 Keynote Speaker that if Nigeria’s new Vision2050 is to succeed and we are to lift 100 million out of poverty, we must first understand why Vision2010, Vision2020, Transformation Agenda, Economic Growth and Recovery Plan failed.

There are two main reasons, and they offer important lessons. First, a national vision is a joke if it is conceived and executed as if it is separate from the broader governance of a country in every aspect. This is what we have been doing. But EVERYTHING must work together

in order to achieve any Vision whatever year. The plan can’t exist in isolation from the everyday reality which, if not a positive one, will surely defeat the economic development plan. Second, the art and science of strategy must guide the development and execution of the plan.

Read 10 tweets

Kingsley Moghalu

@MoghaluKingsley

25 Dec 20

Arriving Genesis House, my country home in Akaboezem Community in Uruagu, Nnewi North LGA, yesterday. Since I built it in 2004 while a #UN official in Geneva, it’s been an oasis that connects me to my roots in my local community.

It stands on the site of my late father Isaac Moghalu’s bungalow (Washington House) that he built in 1966 while he was a Nigerian Foreign Service Officer. We spent most of the Nigeria-Biafra civil war in this compound, which was different then- it also had an air raid bunker!

As is traditional with the Igbos, the grave of my late father is here also. It pained me to have to break down his house to build Genesis House because we did not have a large expanse of land. Many fond memories, including getting lost (and later found!) when,

Read 8 tweets

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