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Going into reelection campaigns, incumbents are commonly burdened with propaganda deficit. Primarily, it has to do with the fact that opponents are the aspirational candidates running on the promises of meeting all public expectations. Whereas incumbents run on their records in office which are invariably a mixed bag of good and bad deeds, the effective […]
Continue ReadingOn June 12, 1994, Chief M. K.O. Abiola declared himself President on the basis of the June 12, 1993 presidential election, which he won fair and square. General Sani Abacha’s military junta arrested him and charged him with treasonable felony at the Fed-eral High Court. While he was held incommunicado in a military custody for […]
Continue ReadingI was sixteen when I left secondary school. My father believed that education should be followed immediately by responsibility. A young man, in his view, had to begin to work, earn something and learn to fend for himself. He therefore found me a job in the old Ondo State Civil Service, and I was posted […]
Continue ReadingA musical genre rarely dies on the day its last great musician dies. It dies more quietly, when generations stop hearing themselves in the music. This, most probably, may be the real trouble with Jùjú. Bathwater cascades from the head to the feet, says an ancient proverb from southwestern Nigeria. For decades, Jùjú was not […]
Continue ReadingAPC leaders are falling over one another to own Ademola Adeleke’s victory — the same people who, barely 24 hours earlier, fired missiles to bring down his plane. They now say he had all along been their preferred candidate. Since when did the hawk and the chicken become playmates? Ẹyẹ ń bá ẹyẹ ṣeré, ẹyẹ […]
Continue ReadingAcross the world’s seven continents and among its eight billion inhabitants, every creation story bears the same themes of void, force, and formation. The ancestries differ, the myths diverge, but the trilogy is forged on the same anvil of chaos-creation-calm. At the dusk of creation, even before the creative heat simmered, cackling, chirping, meowing, and […]
Continue ReadingFor all the condemnations that followed the words of Islamic cleric Sani Jingir, who recently asked Muslims to support the Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket in 2027, the man did not say what many are not already thinking. The justification he provided was no different from what we heard in 2023 when we were told that the […]
Continue ReadingIn October 2002, when it became obvious that then Vice President Atiku Abubakar was moving towards running against his principal, President Olusegun Obasanjo for the People Democratic Party (PDP) ticket, I wrote a column titled, ‘Before Atiku Takes a Dangerous Gamble’. It was both a warning and a counsel that has turned out to be prescient. For […]
Continue ReadingRecording Telephone Conversations and Illegal Wiretapping Gone are those days when the recording of telephone conversations, illegal wiretapping and bugging of physical environments such as bedrooms and offices, were mostly the exclusive preserve of State secret security agencies and government. I remember as a child, being fascinated by the ‘Watergate’ illegal wiretapping scandal, in which five men […]
Continue ReadingStarting a week with the joke of a joke can be very distressing. The ‘architect of modern Ekiti State’, Mr Ayodele Fayose, started his job as chairman of the Rural Electrification Agency board with a farce. And he is trending. At his farcical best, he reduced rural electrification to nights, nightlife and baby-making. Give the […]
Continue ReadingBy now, you must have noticed how the APC hound dogs’ attack quickly turns into an echo chamber. For instance, one of them uses derogatory language, and others take up the refrain to resound it across multiple channels. In their case against Archbishop Emeritus of Abuja, John Cardinal Onaiyekan, the accusation they settled for is […]
Continue ReadingThree weeks ago, I argued that the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission was not really investigating the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council; it was investigating itself. The question I wrote was whether Nigeria’s anti-corruption agencies could apply to the highest offices in the land the same rigour they routinely apply to clerks, contractors […]
Continue ReadingIn the build-up to 2003 when the then incumbent Governor Olusegun Osoba was seeking re-election on the platform of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and then incumbent President Olusegun Obasanjo was also seeking re-election on the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) platform, the political slogan in Ogun State was ‘Segun L’oke, Segun Ni’sale’. The idea was for voters in […]
Continue ReadingMr. Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Party (NDC), was a guest of Seun Okinbaloye on Channels TV last week. He spoke on a wide range of topics as the race for Aso Rock in 2027 gathers energy and momentum. The aspect that jumped at me was the power crisis. While vowing to […]
Continue ReadingA grandson of Uganda’s former military ruler, Idi Amin Dada, is Aziz Abdul, better known as “Ringo.” Like his grandfather, the young Ugandan is a super-heavyweight boxer who competed at the Commonwealth Games, which ended yesterday, August 2. He left the ring at the weekend convinced that he had been denied victory by a biased […]
Continue ReadingThe Ambassador of Sweden to Nigeria, Her Excellency Anna Westerholm, was the special guest of honour at the graduation ceremony (Kindergarten 2 and Primary 5 pupils) of my wife’s Not Forgotten Initiative (NFI) School last Thursday in Abuja. “When I visited this school (last December), what stayed with me was not just the privilege of […]
Continue ReadingWho would have imagined that nearly three decades after the demise of Sani Abacha, we would still be arguing about how he died? The revival of the inglorious way he died is thanks to Dennis Amachree, a former assistant director of the Department of State Services who recently shared his account of Abacha’s final moments […]
Continue ReadingSomewhere in present-day Osun State, about a hundred years ago, an oba ordered a manhunt for a troublesome strongman in his domain. The man, Kátákatà, was captured one night, killed and beheaded. His severed head was placed in a pot and brought to the oba. The palace erupted in celebration. At last, the nuisance was […]
Continue ReadingFirst, let me rejoice with the Orire local government school abductees for living up to the full meaning of Orire-which means good fortune. As the Yoruba would say, E kú Oríre (I salute you on your good fortune). May good fortune continue to guide your path. Ogbomoso has tended to play a significant role in […]
Continue ReadingThe press statement announcing that the President’s Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, had appeared before the ICPC as part of the investigation into the activities of the purportedly fake PFIPC included a bemusing sentence stating he “…returned to his duty post” afterwards. Ideally, conducting a serious investigation on accusations against a high-ranking public officer like […]
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