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It was almost impossible not to be infected by the joy writ large on the face of the One-party state Villa-fawning group this past week. It was akin to winning a tombola. The Mauritanian-Nigerian ex-spokesperson for the Arewa Elders Forum and until of recent, Special Adviser on Political Matters to the President, Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, would […]
Continue Reading“I am a defector, my dictionary defines the act of defecting as ‘abandoning a person or a cause, apostacy, revolt, backsliding.’ Not to put too fine an edge on it, I am a traitor…” (Joseph Frolik in ‘The Frolik Defection: The Memoirs of an Intelligence Agent’). If in 2003 Senator Bola Ahmed Tinubu did what […]
Continue ReadingIf economic health, social vitality, and the raw pulse of public opinion were the only indicators relied upon to prognosticate the chances of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s reelection in 2027, I would say with cocksure certitude that he is condemned to be a one-term president. Not even the most hopelessly unthinking defenders of the Tinubu […]
Continue ReadingGovernor Sheriff Oborevwori of Delta state has ended weeks of speculation by defecting to the All Progressives Congress (APC). It is significant: this is the first time Delta state would not be governed by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) since the dawn of the fourth republic in 1999. He has relocated to the APC with […]
Continue ReadingLong before the late Sergei Mavrodi arrived on the Nigerian financial scene in November 2015 with his MMM pyramid scheme, his reputation as an international fraudster preceded him. As far back as 2007, Mavrodi had been convicted in Russia for defrauding 10,000 investors. But somehow, he survived brushes with the law over sharp practices to go global with […]
Continue ReadingChina and Nigeria, two continental giants that entered the late 1970s with similar per capita incomes, have since taken opposite economic trajectories. In China, the decisive moment was Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 decision to “open the windows” and let the world’s capital know-how to blow in. In Nigeria, the same decade ushered in the oil boom […]
Continue ReadingAdelabu Adegoke was one of the most flamboyant and charismatic politicians in pre-independence Nigeria. When one day, the press asked him about deliberations in the Western Region House of Assembly, he replied that it was a “peculiar mess”. He pronounced the words with a Yoruba intonation making the two words sound like “Penkelemesi”. So, his […]
Continue Reading“Traditional democracies will end up on the garbage heap of history” – Alberto Fujimori, 1938-2024, Peruvian President, 1998, VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ, p 37. I started the VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS in 1965 and got it published in 2007 – 42 years after. The first quote which caught my attention was by Dr Samuel […]
Continue ReadingAbimbola’s eyes had seen 999 battles; so, one more battle would not make him go blind. Having survived a milestone of battles, it was natural for Abimbola to deploy his greatest weapon, Ifa, to prosecute the students’ battle that raged during his tenure as vice-chancellor of the University of Ife. The Babalawo’s eyes had seen […]
Continue ReadingPope Francis who died yesterday morning, April 21, at the age of 88 was a trailblazer in more than one respect and definitely one of the most influential figures of the 21st century: the first priest of the Jesuit Order (Society of Jesus) to occupy the Throne of St. Peter as sovereign of the Vatican […]
Continue ReadingIn July 2005, I was aboard an Egypt Air flight from Cairo to Lagos on my way from Saudi Arabia. As we approached the Nigerian air space, the pilot announced that we would be landing in Kano because the Lagos airport had been closed. An airplane had crash-landed and blocked the only runway at the […]
Continue ReadingOn Page 28 of his very provocative book, The Present Darkness: A history of Nigerian organized crime, (2016) Stephen Ellis, British historian and Africanist, compared Nigerian politics to con artistry. Their practices, he said, were not different from acts of fabulists and fraudsters. Ellis’ take on Nigerian leaders synchronizes with a Henry Louis Gate’s The […]
Continue ReadingI found myself inventing that verse as today’s headline. The verse came sounding like “The Lord is my shepherd/ I Shall not want…” The twenty-third Psalm. Yesterday was Easter Sunday; today is Easter Monday. All Judases are shamed. Life here is bitter as brine. The green pastures are withered. The still waters are poisoned. More […]
Continue ReadingThe Nigerian political opposition is scoring desired attention from the Tinubu’s disappearing antics. In apparent response to the growing outcry of opposition voices and the enlightened citizenry about the president’s prolonged absence in a bad time, the Presidency has just issued a second statement explaining and justifying Tinubu’s mysterious vacation in Europe. The new statement […]
Continue ReadingLast week, in response to mounting, difficult-to-controvert, empirically impregnable accusations that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu disproportionately favors his Yoruba ethnic group in consequential federal appointments, the presidency circulated a list of Tinubu’s appointments to countermine the firmly fixed national narrative of Tinubu’s unexampled ethnocentrism but was compelled to withdraw it because it was embarrassingly error-ridden and […]
Continue ReadingIt is a privilege to have been asked by the University of the Free State to give a Keynote Address on Thursday, April 10, 2025. This major event was part of the Faculty of Law Recognition of Achievement Ceremony, preceding the Convocation ceremony. Our first conceptual analysis of the rule of Law’ is driven by […]
Continue ReadingThere are two perspectives from which the apparent lopsidedness of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s appointments can be understood.There is the power politics perspective and there is the federalism compliant dimension. The emergent casus belli between the President and the custodians of the Northern Muslim electorate devolves on this lapse. It is amenable to being cited […]
Continue ReadingThe superstitious belief that instant wealth can be conjured by herbalists or ‘native doctors’ has sent an inordinate number of innocent people to their untimely death in Nigeria. But how desperate or gullible must someone be not to understand that if these ‘native doctors’ could create money by performing rituals, they themselves would not be so poor? That precisely […]
Continue ReadingSickle cell conditions are genetic blood disorders that affect haemoglobin, the molecule in red blood cells responsible for carrying oxygen throughout the body. While both sickle cell trait and sickle cell disease involve mutations in the haemoglobin gene, they are fundamentally different in terms of symptoms, severity, and impact on daily life. Understanding these differences […]
Continue ReadingThe first head of government that declared a state of emergency in Nigeria was the then Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (December 1912 – 15 January 1966) and that was in May 1962. I was a student then at Olofin Anglican Grammar School in Idanre in Ondo state, along with Folu Olamiti, Prince Wale […]
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