News, Events, Entertainment, Lifestyle, Fashion, Beauty, Inspiration and yes… Gossip! The Only Place It Happens!
Fellow Nigerians, I had a most unusual interview with a man I had always described in the last three decades as the ultimate Crown Prince, Abdul-Lateef Kolawole Abiola, the son of Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola. We’ve been friends ever since and I had written countless stories about him but this is our longest and […]
Continue ReadingI was one of seven professors who facilitated a leadership training in my university here in Georgia for local government chairmen from a major Nigerian southwestern state. In the course of the training, I adverted to a January 13, 2018 column I wrote about how power literally damages the brains of people who wield it […]
Continue Reading“In recent years, many thousands of civilians have been killed in attacks led by Islamist Boko Haram and Fulani militias in northern and central-belt states. The underlying drivers of conflict are complex, yet targeted violence and the perpetration of atrocities against predominantly Christian communities suggest that religion and ideology play a key part” – The […]
Continue ReadingLagos is not just the place of the “indecency, lies and immoral acts of a typically rustic, countryside lady who went to Lagos and became sophisticated” as chronicled in Niyi Oniororo’s novel, Lagos Is A Wicked Place, the stuff of Onitsha Market Literature that Chinua Achebe described as “chronicles of social problems of a somewhat mixed-up, but […]
Continue ReadingOne of the more interesting short stories in the Bible can be found in 2 Samuel chapter 23. Bethlehem had fallen into the hands of Israel’s mortal enemies, the Philistines. King David had fled the city when he said in the presence of his loyal aides, “Oh that someone would give me water to drink […]
Continue ReadingWhatever angle you are sitting at, Lagos is without argument Nigeria’s most important state. Abuja may be the nation’s capital, politically, but Lagos, the economic capital, is the most vibrant measure of Nigeria’s political health. If the health of the political sector is poor, Lagos is often the first to know, or to express it. It […]
Continue ReadingGoliath and Chief of Defence Staff, General Lucky Irabor, is the highest-ranking military officer in the Nigerian Armed Forces. His duties include formulating operational policies and programmes for the Army, Navy and Air Force with a view to attaining national security. The Defender of the Nigerian Universe, General Irabor, has able lieutenants in the Chief […]
Continue ReadingI a recent interview with Arise TV, the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, SAN had indicated that the Federal Government of Nigeria may consider a political solution to the matters involving Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the proscribed Indigenous Peoples Organisation of Biafra (IPOB) and Sunday Igboho, the self-determination, Yoruba Nation activist, currently […]
Continue ReadingThere was a time in this country when one single person was acting prime minister, acting minister of finance and substantive minister of defence. How would a man perform the functions of those offices simultaneously without having an accident? It happened that during that interesting period, the question of purchasing a new office for the ministry of […]
Continue ReadingIf the authorities in Lagos and Abuja continue to listen to their lawyers who would not teach us the significance of the spirit of the law on the Lagos #EndSARS panel report, they should reflect on what another significant lawyer and member of the panel Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa (SAN) too has disclosed: ‘There are documents to […]
Continue ReadingAs I was saying, an unliberated mind is instinctively sold to prejudice. It is a form of imprisonment. I had barely shut down my laptop after writing on ‘Yoruba Muslims and the Fifth Columnists’ last week when I received a WhatsApp broadcast that helped make my case even better. It was a post by Saminu […]
Continue ReadingFellow Nigerians, I was honored to have been invited to participate at this year’s BIG TENT FOUNDATION LEADERS’ SUMMIT AND THE RADIX ANNUAL CONFERENCE with the theme and focus on Regeneration, Renewal , Levelling-up – the buzzwords of the moment, which held in London two days ago. Here’s a fully developed version of my submission […]
Continue ReadingMore than a year after the #EndSARS protest culminated in the infamous Black Tuesday, a Lagos panel of inquiry has officially confirmed what we knew all along. On Monday, the Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry on Restitution for Victims of SARS Related Abuses and Other Matters (Lagos #EndSARS Panel) reported that what took place at the Lekki tollgate […]
Continue Reading“When the army announced last week that beginning Tuesday it would commence ‘Operation Crocodile Smile’—not against Boko Haram insurgents in the North-east but rather across the country “to identify, track, and counter negative propaganda in the social media and across cyberspace”—it was obvious to discerning Nigerians that EndSARS protesters were their target. It was also […]
Continue ReadingIn a very recent interview with The New Yorker, an American news magazine, Professor Wole Soyinka was asked to name his favourite song of Fela. He had no problem quickly declaring that “My favorite is ‘Zombie.’” And what was his reason? He answered: “That song, ‘Zombie,’ applies not merely to the military in terms of […]
Continue ReadingAt No 9, Rumuibekwe Road in Port Harcourt on November 10, 1995, the devil sat in a corner, having a saturnalia. No one could see him. He wore dark goggles, donning the uniform of a five-star Army General, wrapped up in a huge celebratory mood. His arch-enemy, Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists […]
Continue ReadingI was at a reception for our brother and colleague, Dele Momodu, a life-long reporter, author, publisher, media-preneur, community chief, politician, public intellectual, Chairman/CEO of Ovation Magazine, Ovation Carol and Boss Magazine on Sunday, November 14, 2021 at the Reds Chinese Restaurant of Eko Hotels in Lagos. It was meant to be a drink up, […]
Continue ReadingFellow Nigerians, I don’t know if you saw the interesting picture I received and posted about two days ago. It was a photograph of our dear President Muhammadu Buhari standing in front of the Vice President of the United States of America, Kamala Harris and seemingly having a discussion with her. No one is sure […]
Continue ReadingTheoretically, the prospects of the emergence of an Igbo as the President of Nigeria is challenged by the theory of social reproduction and the inertia of power. The theory propounds the argument that the ruling class tends to reproduce itself given its inherent strategic advantages of wealth, patronage, power of coercion and the propagation of […]
Continue ReadingWhether or not in agreement with the contents of Prof. Farooq Kperogi’s recent article on how Christians in Yorubaland routinely discriminate against their Muslim counterparts, the debate has been, at least, useful. I have always thought that the way Yoruba religious culture is typically framed in almost utopic terms is problematic. Rather than present it […]
Continue Reading