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National Security Adviser (NSA) Nuhu Ribadu, always wears a permanent visor of one who needs to be pitied. Last Monday, however, he advertised far more pity with his pithy speech. The venue was the Chief of Defence Intelligence 2023 Annual Conference in Abuja. His white babanriga fluffing angelically and struggling to cling to his lean […]
Continue ReadingAs I was saying, the 2023 presidential election was won and lost fundamentally because of the fractured opposition, even though you are free to add one million other reasons to that. Confronting a monster like the All Progressives Congress (APC) was already an uphill battle for a united Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the biggest opposition […]
Continue ReadingA story that trended last weekend showed a man weeping profusely after DNA test results revealed that none of his four children was his biological child. When asked ‘why’ he carried out the DNA tests, he claimed that he had been suspecting the wife of “impure ways” and decided to carry out a DNA test […]
Continue ReadingI could have bet my last shekels that then aspirant Bola Ahmed Tinubu was never going to emerge the presidential candidate of the All Peoples Congress, APC. I was this certain on account of the logic that no aspirant could emerge the candidate without the buy-in of the cultic and all powerful President Muhammadu Buhari. […]
Continue ReadingThe narrative from certain quarters is that President Bola Tinubu is laying the foundation for a new Nigeria which will only manifest in years to come – probably when his presidency has ended. The same narrative pervaded the presidency of Muhammadu Buhari for eight years. But anybody who looks rationally and logically at the indices […]
Continue ReadingAt the height of the Naira Redesign policy of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) which eventually unravelled as a ‘Naira Confiscation’ exercise in April this year, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) released a ‘Trade and Development Report’ on the situation across Africa, with special reference to Nigeria. “A shortage of […]
Continue ReadingIn 1968, Stanislav Andrzejewski, the former Polish soldier and prisoner-of-war, who later founded the Sociology Department at the University of Reading in England, coined the word ‘kleptocracy”, which he defined as “a system of government [that] consists precisely of the practice of selling what the law forbids to sell.” He saw in the system of Nigeria’s First […]
Continue ReadingOff-cycle elections in Nigeria are elections that are held outside the usual timetable for general elections. When Nigeria returned to democratic, civilian rule in 1999, the expectation was that elections would be held regularly across the federation in a four-year-cycle, but after the 1999 elections, many candidates went to court to protest the outcome of […]
Continue ReadingLong ago, I read the story of a young boy whose mum gave two 10 kobo coins on a Sunday morning. “This 10 kobo is for offering. The other one is for sweets after service,” the mum instructed him. The boy kept the coins in his breast pocket. On his way to church, one of […]
Continue ReadingLast week, we discussed how to maintain a moderate weight amongst middle-aged people. This week, we are exploring the spectre of sudden ill health appearing without warning in people aged 50 years and above. Some of these ailments can announce their presence painfully. One of the most common of these ailments is stroke. We have […]
Continue Reading“When you go home, tell them of us and sayFor your tomorrow, we gave you our today” This evocative epithet is enshrined on the Kohima World Memorial in Nagaland, built to commemorate Soldiers, who laid down their lives to repel Japanese assault in 1944 during World War II. Yet successive Indian Governments since 1947 haven’t […]
Continue ReadingFor the past several years, the joke in Abuja is that whenever Nigeria encounters dire financial straits, the late General Sani Abacha looks down on us from beyond and drops a hefty sum into the national coffers. While I disagree with a friend who insists that Nigeria may have used Abacha for money rituals, more […]
Continue ReadingThe news report that about 15 airports that gulped no less than N301bn altogether failed to meet an annual threshold of passenger traffic exemplifies Nigeria’s white elephant peculiarity that I call “concrete democracy.” It is a phenomenon where the supposed dividends of democracy are expressed through concrete infrastructure or facility divorced from perceptible ideological agenda […]
Continue ReadingI have read series of comments about this young professional trying to do his job, Mr Rufai Oseni. I have the following advise to give: When you offer yourself to be interviewed, you must be prepared. Don’t expect to be respected beyond the scope of the role you are there to play – to answer […]
Continue ReadingPresident Bola Ahmed Tinubu recently proposed to the National Assembly a N2. 18 trillion supplementary budget – the details of which have generated much interest in the public domain, especially those aspects of the supplementary budget relating to expenditures not considered of urgent importance but now reintroduced into the existing framework. During the campaigns for […]
Continue ReadingWe sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it.” I do not know under what condition Bob Dylan wrote that song line. All I know is that it serves my purpose as I sit here at the bank of Nigeria searching for the right metaphor for what the country has become. […]
Continue ReadingThe most painful aspect of the behaviour of contemporary Nigerian political and bureaucratic elite (as represented by the national assembly and the judiciary) is its confirmation of the worst biases and prejudice of imperialist and colonialist writers on African politics and governance. The one such article, I find particularly galling is “Democracy and Prebendal politics […]
Continue ReadingThe stories that dominated the news cycle in varying degrees the past week have something in common: they reported on the true nature of our politics as an infinite cycle of warfare among combatants who do not know alternative states of existence. They cannot figure out other ways to live, move, and have their being […]
Continue ReadingIn her sermon to single ladies, a female pastor admonished them to start investing in wigs. According to her, putting on natural hair will not “market” (marriage wise) a lady to men. Then, she went further to opine that any lady who doesn’t like wearing wigs can do away with them as soon as she […]
Continue ReadingFollowing the death in December 2019 of Senator Benjamin Uwajumogu, then representing Imo North, a by-election had to be conducted to replace him. The fractious primaries of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) that followed produced many ‘winners’, each of whom went to court claiming to be the party’s candidate. With a multiplicity of court injunctions, it was […]
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