David Eseosa

The British head of state is an unelected hereditary monarch called Charles Windsor, and he Britiah upper house of parliament (House of Lords) is made up of 800 unelected life members drawn from the UK elite who have the power to introduce legislation and delay bills from the (elected) House of Commons. The more you step out of the mental cage that colonisers created for you, the more you realise that "democracy" is just a story they have told very successfully - the power structure at the core of their society is NOT democratic, and the core processes that define their societies are guided by elite consensus and NOT 1-man-1-vote. If African countries have competent leadership that understands and aspires to sovereignty, Africans should learn to completely ignore these white people when they start using their loaded terms like "junta" and "regime" to narratively attack their legitimacy. Ibrahim Traore has been in power in Burkina Faso since 2022. The House of Windsor has been in power in the UK since 1826, when it was still known by its original German name "House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha." Before having anything to say about Ibrahim Traore and Burkina Faso, the BBC should first explain to British people why they have spent 199 years under the control of one family and its 800 elite associates from finance, industry, arts & culture, and academia. They should fix their "junta" at home in Westminster before rubbernecking their long oyibo necks 6,000 km across the Atlantic at a country on another continent. Nobody is buying this nonsense.

I knew I wasn't wrong about you. My spirit never fails to let me know when I'm dealing with a useless piece of human waste. Thank you for clearing my doubts.

My sophomore book 'Breaking Point' is out today in Nigeria, Ghana and India. If you're in Nigeria, kindly call either of these numbers to order it: +2347035698227, +2348062284808 If you're in Ghana, please call +233243127820 If you're in India, please call +918639996912 Breaking Point tells the first-person story of an intrepid Nigerian investigative journalist who is forced to flee his home country and seek political asylum in Ghana, after which he declares war on the establishment at home. The fury with which he is despised and hunted by this establishment is only matched by his penchant for expanding his ever-increasing list of powerful Nigerian enemies with his uncompromising work. As he later finds out to his detriment 5,000 miles away from West Africa in the university town of Oxford, Nigerian kleptocrats have much longer arms than he would ever have given them credit for. Over the course of 3 incident-packed years between 2021 and 2023, his 1-man war on the corrupt underbelly of Africa's largest country sees him juggle multiple high-risk investigations, clandestine border crossings, family drama, death threats, detentions, deportations, safe houses and a close brush with illegal rendition by Nigerian foreign intelligence. Amidst of all this, he also has to navigate the terrifying personal situation of a whirlwind romance and marriage that rapidly turns into a violent nightmare which comes much closer to ending his life than any number of powerful enemies ever managed.

When you see certain people constantly vituperating about the Obidient movement with this inexplicable fury and anger, as if Obidients robbed their grandma or Peter Obi killed their dog, just know that it comes from a place of deep frustration. Prior to 2023, there was an entire cottage industry within the Nigerian political space that was built around information asymmetry and exploiting the perceived credulity of the Nigerian public. People were buying hundreds of thousands of bot followers here and anointing themselves overnight as "Reputation Managment Consultant" kinikan and "Strategic Communications Expert" that one - and politicians between 2012 and 2020, were paying REAL money to these scammers. Then, one man from Anambra with his scratchy voice came out and told young Nigerians to "Go and verify," and all of a sudden, these people found themselves out of a job. They had been PREPARING for the feast that 2023 was supposed to be - I remember at least one of those social media yakkity yak "proposals" by one short man went viral here- then all of a sudden, here came this tsunami of motivated young people that destroyed the entire business model in a few weeks. People had made japa plans based on expected money from Atiku et al - money that didn't end up coming because the entire internet space became heavily dominated by the supporters of a man who literally didn't spend N10,000 to make it happen. These people had planned to use their 2023 social media windfall to marry and do other things - 'Obidients' literally took food out of their mouths. That's where all this bile and anger about Peter Obi - particularly from the PDP boys who did absolutely nothing during the campaign - actually comes from. It has nothing to do with Atiku’s candidacy itself. Obidients poured sand into a lot of garri bowls! This is also why I am always singled out for special hatred by these guys. Nothing was more injurious to their cause than free, high-quality information from a loud voice that rendered their usual crap impotent. And that's why the more they chew my name in their mouths, the more endorphins it gives me. It means I did something right. I am eternally proud of what I did and what millions of young Nigerians like me did during the 2023 election cycle. If the only thing it achieved was to destroy the financial windfall hopes that the class of "2 million followers but typically gets fewer than 85 retweets" scammers had for 2023, it was a job very well done.

The continent has NOT failed at doing that. The vast majority of urban Africa has reliable 24/7 electricity. Stop projecting Nigeria's abject failure into an entire continent. Africa is much bigger than one big-for-nothing loudmouth on its Western coast.