Obasanjo Quietens as Buhari's Sword Dangles.

Ex head of state, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has suddenly gone quiet in his public spats with President Muhammadu Buhari. And for good reason. He knows Buhari is a no-nonsense army general and will not hesitate to move against him if only to show the whole world and his critics he does not believe in sacred cows and is not afraid of anybody. The sword of Damocles, read

Buhari

Obasanjo

Buhari, hangs low, ominously over him. Obasanjo was thrown off his strides by the sudden bringing up of the power projects quagmire by Buhari when the Buhari Support Organization paid him a courtesy call. The whole project and the sleaze that came to accompany it was the major black spot of his administration and there was no way he was going to wash his hands clean of it if it comes to judicial scrutiny. And the penalty could be severe. Two long-running cases of graft have of late ended in disaster for Rev Jolly Nyame, ex-governor of the north-eastern state of Taraba, who was sentenced by an Abuja court to 14 years in prison and Joshua Dariye, ex-governor of the nearby state of Plateau, who also bagged the same prison term. All to the glee of Nigerians, who want more big fishes nabbed by the hook of anti-corruption. Obasanjo is 80 and a single day in prison for him is going to be more than a disaster.  And recent history is not on his side. Lula, Brazil's former president has just been sent to prison to corruption and the sky has not split into two. Close aides have been advising him to pipe low as Buhari will just send him to prison for nothing and cronies now loud will not hesitate to abandon him and let him stew in his own juice.
Yet Buhari does not even need to arrest him or send him to jail. He only needs to set up a probe panel and that would be enough to finish Obasanjo. His enemies, who are legion will only be too glad to come to such a panel with sacks of indictments genuine or ludicrous. Many Nigerians will not be able to tell the difference, besides, having suffered terribly at the hands of corruption, they will not care to put accusations to much scrutiny. A probe will be a public, kangaroo trial for Obasanjo and he will hardly get any justice. $16b was wasted on the power projects, perhaps the largest single case of corruption ever in Africa, without a single wink of electricity to show for it and there is no way he is going to escape censure, even though no single instance of graft has been traced to him directly. The whole mess happened under his long watch of 8 years and the buck stopped on his table. It will be very difficult for him to handle the noise, the mayhem, the opprobrium such a probe will spew into the political space.
SAUDI ARABIA GETS A BLOODY NOSE.
The opening match of the current edition of the World Cup going on in Russia has seen Saudi Arabia ship in 5 goals against the host country, making an average Russian team play spectacularly. That is why the tournament is a World Cup and not a cup for the best gladiators. Otherwise a lot of folks will start querying the injustice of Italy staying behind at home and Saudi Arabia attending the tournament. In world football, Saudi Arabia is a midget and Russia is not itself oversized but the Saudis turned them into giants overnight.
Luis 'the snake' Suarez misbites.
The World Cup match between Uruguay and Egypt has just ended. The first half was cagey but the two teams came out in the 2nd half more adventurous and that section was more noteworthy for Luis Suarez's two glaring misses. He might have been more restrained in biting with his teeth but his biting feet seems to have been in remission with that disinclination. That is the stuff of which genius is made of at any rate and we expect him to be sharper in coming matches. In tight matches like this, a half chance might be all that is needed and Uruguay was grateful to seize it via a header by Athletico Madrid's Gimenez. Egypt will have to improve in the final third in subsequent matches.

Luis 'the snake' Suarez.

World Cup of Scrutiny.

Another soccer World Cup starts today in Russia. Congratulations everyone! We really look forward to a real football fest. Which is what the World Cup should be all about: grand displays of the world most popular sport that one is ever unlikely to find on another platform. We are constrained to dwell a bit on global expectations of this fiesta because the last two editions have not been, generally speaking, all that edifying. The 2010 edition in South Africa was more notable for the hideous noises vuvuzelas were making, the poor pitches and the mayhem in the French national team than for any footballing spectacle. The last edition in Brazil did produce a footballing spectacle, the 7-1 drubbing of the host nation by Germany in the semi-finals. The Horizonte Massacre, as this incredible defeat became known, after the city in which the match was played, has been dubbed Brazil's darkest hour. And rightly so. No national distress in the country is ever going to replicate people weeping openly in the streets as the match wore on and in the aftermath. But before that, in one of the group matches, obstreperous headlines had been made by Luis 'the Snake' Suarez,  the talented but flawed Uruguayan player who had little restraint in reprising his notorious biting inclinations on the Italian player, Giorgio Chellini.
We rather want to see spectacular scissors and scorpion kicks in this edition. We don't want to see Maradona's infamous Hand of God but his famous half field dribbling that eventually nailed England in the 1986 World Cup, we simply want to see what we saw in 1970, 1982, 19...
Yet we cannot help bringing up two things to scrutiny. The first is the rather curious theory that football can be separated from politics or political behavior. This bunkum used to be promoted by the erstwhile FIFA Secretary-General, Sepp Blatter, and his predecessor, Jao Havelange.. Blatter has since been disgraced in a corruption scandal and falling into disrepute too is his theory. The host country, Russia, have been behaving very badly in the international arena. In 2014, it annexed Crimea, a region that geographically belongs to its weaker neighbor, Ukraine, against strident international opposition and that would have been a hefty outrage on its own but Putin has compounded mayhem by sowing seeds of subversion in the eastern parts of the country. Ukraine is now practically partitioned into two and the Donetsk region seems in all respects, a buffer zone to Russia. It is difficult telling what would have happened if Ukraine had qualified for the tournament but clashes in the streets of Russia between fans of the two countries would not have been out of place and the police would have had a hectic time separating them, just as it is now separating politics from football. Or the fake murder of the journalist, Babchenko, a Kremlin critic, in Kiev from the distressing comedy the relationship between the two countries has become.
Still Russia had enough mischief left to attempt to kill ex-double spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury, southern England with a particularly poisonous nerve agent, Novichok. Although Russia has strenuously denied culpability, few people are convinced and the idiotic, amateurish assassination attempt has visited on Russia a fresh round of international sanctions. England matches in Russia will surely be focus of international attention in this tournament and that will hardly be because of footballing reasons. 
Under close scrutiny too will be the the fate of the two biggest superstars in world football: Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal and the Argentine, Lionel Messi. If any of these two countries fail to win this tournament, then the chance might as well be gone that they will ever be regarded as real greats. Check out all the illustrious names in world football: Pele, Maradona, Beckenbauer, perhaps the only thing that separates t

hem into the exalted realm they belong is that they all won the World Cup. If Messi or Ronaldo fails to win it, they will be superstars, for a period or era, but never all time greats. We hope they will strive to reach above themselves, have a magical tournament and catapult themselves into that realm that the likes of Pele belong.