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Recently, faced with escalating violence across Nigeria, the president, Bola Tinubu, reportedly agreed with state governors to establish state police. The news excited those calling for state police in Nigeria. But the agitation for state police is misguided; it is based on shallow reasoning, not on a rational, hard-nosed analysis of the potential consequences. To […]
Continue ReadingOn Monday, military authorities in Guinea dissolved the interim government it had put in place since June 2022. They pledged to appoint a new administration. We recall that Colonel Mamady Doumbouya toppled President Alpha Conde in September 2021, in a coup hailed by many Guineans. Conde invited it upon himself by forcing through a controversial […]
Continue ReadingGodswill Akpabio (then Akwa Ibom State Governor) once stated that only the re-election of President Goodluck Jonathan could guarantee peace in Nigeria. At an interdenominational church service beamed live on the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) network on 2 January 2015, he declared: “As a PDP (Peoples Democratic Party) chieftain, I have found the solution to the peace we […]
Continue Reading“Bros, how body? Have you seen what I have seen?” “No. How do you expect me to see what you have seen, when my eyes are different from yours? I use my own eyes. The evidence of my own ocular facility, not what other people see in a country where most people are either depressed, […]
Continue ReadingFor close to 14 years, I have served Saturday Breakfast every Saturday morning without fail. I have written about my good times and my not so good times. I have celebrated love and happiness and have shared with you my moments of pain and sadness and even the deaths of colleagues, close friends and family […]
Continue ReadingAn Ibadan man accompanied his wife and daughter to the market in search of salt to add to their tasteless pot of soup. That was in March 1881, when the city was besieged by hunger and war. It was a season of famine. The man who accompanied his wife and daughter to the market lost […]
Continue ReadingA colleague yesterday shared a 1992 campaign video of Chief M.K.O. Abiola promising to demystify governance in Nigeria and stop “people’s heads” from being “shaved in their absence.” A professor friend (political scientist) commented that “that’s partly why he never became president.” Becoming president or king comes with a price. When ‘The Price of Kings’, […]
Continue ReadingThe relationship between Nigeria and Ghana or Nigeria and South Africa can be embarrassingly petty. Forget the usual rivalry that exists among nations when it comes to sports, as exemplified in the recently concluded Africa Cup of Nations, which was hosted and won by Ivory Coast. Nigeria does not share borders with Ghana or South […]
Continue ReadingOn May 29, 2019, President Muhammadu Buhari and his wife, Aisha, arrived at the Abuja venue of his second term inauguration in luxury and style: a customised 2019 Mercedes-Maybach S-Class S 560. Value: over N61m. President Buhari, in his decades-long self-advertisement, was not a corrupt man. Which was probably why a car, which inflicted such an egregious […]
Continue ReadingNigeria’s litany of troubles has finally anchored on two basic existential matters. Insecurity and hunger. We are all very unsafe and now the vast majority of our people are very hungry and angry. Of the two urgencies, the rise of mass hunger is indeed a novel addition to our familiar tale of serial calamities. Mass […]
Continue ReadingAníkúlápó is the man who bears death in a pouch, not Jimi Solanke. Solanke knew a braggadocious name couldn’t stop death. So, when death came calling, Solanke followed it without fear. But Solanke wasn’t afraid of death, he was afraid of life – this he told me many years ago at the backstage of the […]
Continue Reading“I remember a friend of mine in the oil industry, who during a meeting of an economic think tank. He called the then president aside and said, ‘Mr President please stop this subsidy, we are tired of making money…We’re bringing in this fuel at an elevated cost and half of it is exported out of […]
Continue ReadingAt a recent public event where he represented his principal, Chief of Staff to the president, Femi Gbajabiamila, used the opportunity to retrieve the hackneyed topic of social media regulations. While he noted the bid failed while he was the Speaker of the House of Representatives, he did not indicate that any new development had since […]
Continue ReadingI have met many wealthy men in the course of my work. Just the other day, I was regaling a few close friends of how my interview with American billionaire David Rockefeller in Nigeria got me my first US visa. This happened in – of all places- far-away Trinidad where I went to cover the carnival and […]
Continue ReadingBig, loud and hearty congratulations to the people and government of the Republic of Ivory Coast for hosting and organizing what has been considered one of the best editions of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) tournaments. The last time the African Cup of Nations was hosted in West Africa was in 2022, delayed from […]
Continue ReadingA lady told me her story, recently. Hers is one of those sad realities of life, I must say. Read her: “My mum has been living with mental health challenges for as long as I can remember. My parents separated when I was less than 10 years old. My mum is a schoolteacher. Despite her […]
Continue ReadingThis is what Kurumi’s Ijaye looked like after it was attacked and defeated by Ibadan forces in 1860/61: “Old people, men and women and young children were being carried to the river Ose to die,” wrote John Iliffe in his Poverty in Nineteenth-Century Yorubaland. He continued: “Whilst many others were left to perish in the streets. […]
Continue ReadingThe last premier of the Western Region, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, asked his guest what the town was saying. The guest told him the town was solidly behind him. The guest backed his claim with a cassette which he said contained the adulation with which the people of Ibadan welcomed every step so far taken by Chief […]
Continue ReadingOn Wednesday, Justice Ambrose Lewis-Allagoa of the federal high court, Lagos, ordered federal government to fix the prices of milk, flour, salt, sugar, bicycles, motorcycles, motor vehicles, and their spare parts. This looks like a judicial attempt to address the biting inflation and the harsh economic climate caused in the main by naira devaluation. My […]
Continue ReadingToday, Nigeria is in a place where everyone – government, opposition, and the people – should work together. It is not a time for divisive or self-servicing conversations and engagement. There is fire on the mountain in Nigeria, even though many who should know do not seem to realise it. This is why I find […]
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