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Twenty-four hours after paying an inter-infirmary visit to his co-Londoner, co-APC founder, comrade and power-sharer, President Muhammadu Buhari came back last week to meet his Nigeria as dying as he left it. Nigeria’s definition under him has remained sorrow, tears and blood. In his absence, unremitting mass murders continued casting very long shadows here and […]
Continue ReadingNews is that Mr Muhammadu Buhari returned to Nigeria on Thursday from the UK where he has spent two weeks attending an “education summit” and attending to his private medical concerns. Right before he became President, in the heat of the campaigns in 2015, Muhammadu Buhari, then APC presidential candidate, was taken on a round-robin […]
Continue ReadingIf you think this is a satire, then you are taking life too seriously. It is time to start thinking about unusual solutions to Nigeria’s unusual problems. There is no use following the regular route to address our irregular situation. For instance, conventional wisdom says Nigeria needs higher oil prices to address its cyclical budgetary […]
Continue ReadingFellow Nigerians, I’m happy to be back again with my political analysis but I must instantly warn that I have yet another negative prediction to make and it is very simple; Nigeria is not likely to select and elect a brilliant and competent President in 2023, if the country remains intact. I am no longer […]
Continue ReadingSatire is a literary device often employed when there is foolishness, wickedness and evil to be censured in an indirect way. Hurtful and fatal most of the time, like one who hurls his spear at an opponent, satirists weaponize words, so much that early Irish literature was renowned to be the turf of extraordinary poets […]
Continue ReadingMuhammadu Buhari is a magnet for both extravagantly flattering myths and stubborn falsehoods. Here are the top five: 1. Muhammadu Buhari’s very name is wrapped in a curious omission. In most parts of the world, people’s last names are usually either their family name or their father’s first name. Not for Buhari. Muhammadu (which his teachers […]
Continue ReadingMoney makes the world go round. The strength of a country — its prosperity and flourishing — is best measured by the standing of its currency. The American business magnate and politician, Ross Perot, observed that, “a weak currency is the sign of a weak economy, and a weak economy leads to a weak nation”. […]
Continue ReadingIt is doubtful if there is any country that had more of its nationals competing for other countries than Nigeria at the just concluded Olympic Games tagged Tokyo 2020, which held in 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. From European countries to North American countries and to Asian countries and Oceania, Nigerians were busy helping […]
Continue ReadingSometime last week, I was in a conversation with a group of older friends, people who grew up during some of Nigeria’s most glorious days. The gist mainly was around the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.)’s legacy when he hands over in about 21 months. For many people, 21 months looks like a very […]
Continue ReadingIt is not for nothing that I call Dr Okey Ikechukwu ‘Ijele’. The former University of Lagos philosophy lecturer has a way with words. Asked on ARISE Channels early in June for his impression of the acrimony resulting from the gubernatorial primaries of leading political parties in Anambra, Ikechukwu dismissed the situation as the usual […]
Continue ReadingWole Soyinka, Anthony Enahoro, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and a number of opponents of the Abacha despotism, voted with their feet, while others like Gani Fawehinmi, Femi Falana, Olisa Agbakoba, sustained pressure on that regime from within. According to Rogers, the instruction to him and his colleagues from their bosses, was that those on the hit […]
Continue ReadingI’ve become more circumspect, lately, in my choice of labels for our leaders, past and present. I was going to begin this piece by referring to the regime of Nigeria’s last but one uniformed leader, General Sani Abacha as one of untold tyranny, unequalled dictatorship, unrivalled despotism. Abacha, however, has been succeeded by some of […]
Continue ReadingJustice for the ‘Queen’s College 3’ Before I go into the word for today, I would like to make a brief observation – we have definitely not forgotten – it’s been about four years since my fellow QC (Queen’s College, Yaba, Lagos) Girls, Praise Sodipo, Vivian Osuniyi and Bithia Itulua, lost their lives as a […]
Continue ReadingThe sociology of death and funerals is an important aspect of the African cosmogony. Parents pray that their children should outlive them in order to give them a befitting burial. They liken this to the same manner when fire dies out in the hearth, it is replaced by ashes, and when a banana tree withers, […]
Continue ReadingA typical day and a typical news bulletin in northern Nigeria: “Bandits kill 21, burn houses in Katsina communities invasion;” “Bandits hold 348 students, UNESCO sounds warning;” “83 FGC students held;” “Bandits: we are holding 121 Kaduna school pupils.” In its issue of July 7, The Punch reported that “the total number of students being […]
Continue ReadingThe rate of poverty in the Northern region of Nigeria is quite unfortunate despite the abundant resources and human power in the region. The political and leadership failure represent the fundamental menace that continue to trouble Northerners whose only joy is that one of their own is in charge. The instability of the Nigerian government […]
Continue ReadingSeventy-six years after his death on April 11, 1945 and cremation at the Woking Crematorium, Woking Borough in Surrey, England, poor Frederick John Dealtry Lugard has been killed many times thereafter by Nigerians. Though he died peacefully at the age of 87, having been born on January 22, 1858, this soldier, administrator and author, born […]
Continue ReadingGrand ancestor of Nollywood, Ayinla Olumegbon’s ‘Wole Wole Arufin’ (The Lawless Sanitary Inspector) was very popular in the 1970s. The story was about a sanitary inspector who was consistent in searching soup and water pots for infractions. His method and diligence regularly paid off – he made arrests which also fetched him fat bribes. But […]
Continue ReadingOpposition governors are being lured, or intimidated – according to Taraba state governor, Darius Ishaku – to decamp, APC chieftains are making a hash of trying to ‘turn’ a once despised former President; the legislature is looking, more and more, like the Executive’s Siamese twins, eagerly working towards achieving a national Press for which the […]
Continue ReadingOn 19th May, 2021, Mr. Abu Mohammed Abubakar bin Mohammad al-Sheikawi (Abubakar Shekau), life ‘president’ of Boko Haram, finally died on his own terms under the supervision of his fellow ISWAP terrorists. The Nigerian presidency was silent. I am not aware that there has so far been any official presidential statement on the death of […]
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