So with the ministerial slot off limits, it appears the only logical positions will be the Chairmanship of Boards and Parastatals, and it remains unclear whether Buhari will take such steer from.
- After a long wait, President Muhammadu Buhari finally sent a 43-man ministerial list to the Senate on Tuesday. The list, which was read by Senate President Ahmed Lawan, has few surprises, some new entrants and old-timers. Here is a quick look at the profile of the ministerial nominees: Okechuckwu Ogah: The Abia-born Ogah is.
- They'll have to raid and pillage the national treasury to recoup their 'investment.' My sources said Buhari knows that Abba Kyari and his boss, Mamman Daura, auctioned off ministerial slots to the highest bidders, and he is at peace with it. This didn't surprise me because Buhari is himself an unmitigated but carefully managed fraud.
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JoinPlateau Ministerial Slot Machine
Britannica's Publishing Partner Program and our community of experts to gain a global audience for your work!Plateau, extensive area of flat upland usually bounded by an escarpment (i.e., steep slope) on all sides but sometimes enclosed by mountains. The essential criteria for plateaus are low relative relief and some altitude.
Although plateaus stand at higher elevation than surrounding terrain, they differ from mountain ranges in that they are remarkably flat. David oppenheim poker after dark. Some plateaus, like the Altiplano in southern Peru and western Bolivia, are integral parts of mountain belts. Others, such as the Colorado Plateau (across which the Colorado River has cut the Grand Canyon), were produced by processes very different from those that built neighbouring mountain ranges. Some plateaus—for example, the Deccan plateau of central India—occur far from mountain ranges. The differences among plateaus can be ascribed to the different geologic processes that have created them.
Geomorphic characteristics
The high flat surface that defines a plateau can continue for hundreds or even thousands of kilometres, as in the case of the Plateau of Tibet. In spite of the paucity of roads, one can drive over most of that plateau, where elevations exceed 4,500 metres (about 14,760 feet), and encounter less relief than in some major cities of the world (e.g., San Francisco or Rio de Janeiro). Although ranges of hills and mountains rise above the rest of the plateau, their topography too is rather gentle.
Plateaus dissected (eroded) by rivers have remarkably uniform maximum elevations, but their surfaces can be interrupted by deep canyons. In the case of some regions described as plateaus, the surface is so dissected that one does not see any flat terrain. Instead, such a plateau is defined by a uniform elevation of the highest ridges and mountains. The eastern part of the Plateau of Tibet, which constitutes the headwaters of many of the great rivers of Asia (e.g., Huang He, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween, and Irrawaddy), is dissected into deep canyons separated by narrow, steep ridges; the high uniform elevation that characterizes plateaus is only barely discernible in that area.
Formative processes
The formation of a plateau requires one of the same three types of tectonic processes that create mountain ranges—volcanism, crustal shortening (by the thrusting of one block or slice of crust over another or by the folding of layers of rock), and thermal expansion. The simplest of these is thermal expansion of the lithosphere (or the replacement of cold mantle lithosphere by hot asthenosphere).
When the lithosphere underlying a broad area is heated rapidly—e.g., by an upwelling of hot material in the underlying asthenosphere—the consequent warming and thermal expansion of the uppermost mantle causes an uplift of the overlying surface. If the uplifted surface had originally been low and without prominent relief, it is likely to remain relatively flat when uplifted to a relatively uniform elevation. The high plateaus of East Africa and Ethiopia were formed that way. As in parts of Africa, plateaus of that sort can be associated with volcanism and with rift valleys, but those features are not universal. Most of the high plateau in East Africa that holds Lake Victoria does not contain volcanic rock and is cut only by small, minor rift valleys.
Where the uplifted surface lay at a low elevation for a very long time and was covered by resistant sedimentary rock, the flatness of the plateau can be particularly marked. The rock underlying the Colorado Plateau has undergone only very mild deformation since about 1.7 billion years ago during Precambrian time (4.6 billion to 541 million years ago), and layers of very resistant limestone and sandstone deposited during the Paleozoic Era (541 million to 252 million years ago) form its top surface in many areas. The warming of the underlying lithosphere in late Cenozoic time (66 million years ago to the present) caused that area to rise to its present elevation, and those erosion-resistant formations dating to Paleozoic time define the surfaces that make the remarkably flat horizons at the Grand Canyon.
The great heights of some plateaus, such as the Plateau of Tibet or the Altiplano, are due to crustal shortening. The geologic structure of plateaus of that kind is entirely different from that of the Colorado Plateau, for instance. Crustal shortening, which thickens the crust as described above, has created high mountains along what are now the margins of such plateaus. In most mountain ranges, streams and rivers transport eroded material from the mountains to the neighbouring plains. When drainage is internal and streams and rivers deposit their debris in the valleys between mountains, however, a plateau can form. The surface of this sort of plateau is defined by very flat, broad valleys surrounded by eroded hills and mountains. The rocks that make up the mountains and the basement of the valleys are often strongly deformed, but the young sediment deposited in the valleys usually lies flat. Those plateaus generally survive erosion only in dry climates where erosion is slow. In many cases, the valleys, or basins, are occupied by flat dry lake beds (playas). Thus, plateaus built by crustal shortening are really mountain ranges buried in their own debris.
A third type of plateau can form where extensive lava flows (called flood basalts or traps) and volcanic ash bury preexisting terrain, as exemplified by the Columbia Plateau in the northwestern United States. The volcanism involved in such situations is commonly associated with hot spots. The lavas and ash are generally carried long distances from their sources, so that the topography is not dominated by volcanoes or volcanic centres. The thickness of the volcanic rock can be tens to even hundreds of metres, and the top surface of flood basalts is typically very flat but often with sharply incised canyons and valleys.
The separation of plateaus into the above three types is not always easy, because two or even all three of the processes involved frequently operate simultaneously. For instance, where the uppermost mantle is particularly hot, volcanism is common. The Ethiopian Plateau, on which Precambrian rocks crop out, stands high because the underlying lithosphere has been heated, but Cenozoic volcanic rocks cover much of the plateau, especially those areas that are the flattest. Although the scale is different, there are active volcanoes and young lavas covering some broad basins on the northern part of the Plateau of Tibet. All three processes—thermal expansion, crustal shortening, and volcanism—may have contributed to the high, flat elevation of at least part of that plateau.
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I declined to comment on the ministerial list Buhari sent to the Senate for two reasons: I was deeply distraught by what I heard about the process that produced it and I wanted to confirm the info from trustworthy people who should know.
Four different, dependable, and independent sources who don't know each other but who're close to the corridors of power were eerily united in telling me that except for a few ministerial nominations (notably those of Adamu Adamu, Ali Isa Pantami, Mohammed Musa Bello, Raji Fashola whom Buhari himself personally pencilled— and those that were conceded to Tinubu) every other post was literally auctioned off to the highest bidder.
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I declined to comment on the ministerial list Buhari sent to the Senate for two reasons: I was deeply distraught by what I heard about the process that produced it and I wanted to confirm the info from trustworthy people who should know.
Four different, dependable, and independent sources who don't know each other but who're close to the corridors of power were eerily united in telling me that except for a few ministerial nominations (notably those of Adamu Adamu, Ali Isa Pantami, Mohammed Musa Bello, Raji Fashola whom Buhari himself personally pencilled— and those that were conceded to Tinubu) every other post was literally auctioned off to the highest bidder.
Plateau Ministerial Slots
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One Jeddy Agba from Cross River State, a Diezani protégé who defected to APC to avoid EFCC scrutiny, was said to have given Abba Kyari up to N2.5 billion for his nomination.
I was told that, at a point, the incredibly rapacious Abba Kyari, in fact, removed Musa Bello's name from the list and sold the spot to someone else. Buhari somehow found out and recalled the list. Bello is the son of Buhari's very close friend. That was what inspired his saying that he'd only appoint people he 'personally' knew. Of course, as usual, he lied.
If people are required to pay hundreds of millions of naira as a precondition to be appointed ministers, it means they're being invited to a corruption bazaar.
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They'll have to raid and pillage the national treasury to recoup their 'investment.' My sources said Buhari knows that Abba Kyari and his boss, Mamman Daura, auctioned off ministerial slots to the highest bidders, and he is at peace with it. This didn't surprise me because Buhari is himself an unmitigated but carefully managed fraud.
Nevertheless, Nigeria had never descended to this low watermark of shamelessly undisguised fraud. One of my sources said, 'The rottenness is unprecedented and no society or country can survive this level of fraud, crime, and sleaze.' This confirms what I've always said: that Nigeria can't survive a Buhari second term.
There's no way it can.
Apart from intractable insecurity and mass deaths, Buhari's second term is also shaping up to be an unprecedentedly raucous celebration of corruption, injustice, depravity, and debauchery. It's going to get ugly, really ugly. Get ready!
*Kperogi is a US-based Nigerian academic and socio-political commentator
- The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the writer.
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