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A thought-provoking piece is going round on WhatsApp. Credited to Professor Hamman Tukur Sa’ad, it concerns the current Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike and the tertiary education crisis in Nigeria. The author not only accuses ASUU leadership and those who manage education in Nigeria of lacking critical thinking, but also indicts them for […]
Continue ReadingTwo certainties have underpinned voting behavior in Nigeria, which APC’s Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Labour Party’s Mr. Peter Obi will either uphold or explode in next year’s presidential election. While one of the certainties is time-honored, the other is more contemporary and enabled by social media. The most time-honored fixity in Nigerian electoral politics […]
Continue Reading“Ko ko Ko. Pon Pon, Pon. . Helloo oh” “Who be dat?” “Na me oh?” “Who be na me? You don’t know your own name? I say who dey there? ” “Na me, FEDECO” “FEDECO? Which FEDECO? Where you from come?” “Open door my friend…Or I break down this door now. You drink, you no […]
Continue ReadingYoruba have a way of provoking extreme reactions. It is a simple expression of “o to be” (I dare you). If they want the situation to be one of “yam pepper scatter, scatter (total chaos), the aggravated version; “won o bi e da” (you are a bastard), would be employed. In street parlance, it is […]
Continue ReadingOlúségun Obásanjó’s mother told him at the very beginning that if pounded yam is not much, it must be made hard and tough (iyán tí kò pò, ó gbodò yi). Read his biographies. Ashabi Obasanjo Bankole had only him and his sister, Adunni. Her hearth had enough embers, her mortar and pestle had diligence but […]
Continue Reading(In line with what has become my annual tradition every August, I devote this column as a tribute to my friend and compatriot, General Ibrahim Babangida, as he marks his 81st birthday this week) General Ibrahim Babangida, the former military president, has never told anyone that he is a politician nor has he seen or […]
Continue ReadingOn Wednesday, May 21, 2003, Dr Olu Agunloye, then minister of power and steel, presented a memo to the federal executive council (FEC). He sought its approval to award a build, operate and transfer (BOT) contract for the Mambilla Hydropower Project to Sunrise Power and Transmission Ltd, a company promoted by Chief Leno Adesanya. The […]
Continue ReadingIn the effort to decipher and formulate the chances of All Progressives Congress, APC candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s presidential aspiration, narratives and speculations have resurfaced on the political behaviour of the Yoruba. Employing the precedents of Obafemi Awolowo, Moshood Abiola and Olusegun Obasanjo; Mr Farouk Kperogi of Saturday Tribune, for instance, came to the conclusion […]
Continue ReadingThe slap on the wrist given a notorious kidnap kingpin has exposed the underbelly of the criminal justice administration in Nigeria. It also underscores the seeming hopelessness of the national security situation. Justice Binta Nyako of the Federal High Court, according to reports, last month sentenced Hamisu Bala, popularly known as Wadume, to seven years imprisonment for unlawfully dealing in prohibited firearms and […]
Continue ReadingLast Friday, author Sir Salman Rushdie was stabbed at a literary event in New York. The attack culminated the many years of harassment by religious fundamentalists over his 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses. When the book was published, Muslims took umbrage over its contents and demonstrated their feelings through public protests and book burnings. Several […]
Continue ReadingToday, I’m inspired to celebrate the resilience, strength, and unifying potential of the Nigerian youth through the musical messages of Kush, the celebrated gospel group of the early noughties. Kush’s 2002 smash hit, “Let’s Live Together”, was perhaps for me the most important Nigerian song of that crucial era of innocence, on the cusp of […]
Continue ReadingDemocratic politics is by far the most brutal competitive sport invented. Unlike other sports where the combination of individual skill, perspiration, inspiration, and experience or team ethic can be dispositive, outcomes in politics can hinge on externalities unrelated to these, such as the security services, voters, the media, electoral management bodies or all of the […]
Continue ReadingMen have always been obsessed with the size of their penises. Here in Africa many tribes evolved various measures for enlarging their male organs before the Europeans arrived. We get inundated everyday with adverts on penis enlargement drugs. There is so much misinformation. Younger people need to be properly guided before they go into depression […]
Continue Reading“We are here this evening to witness this momentous occasion as the people of Kenya restate what is in article one of the constitution of Kenya that all sovereign power belongs to the people of Kenya…I want to thank God for getting us to this point. I want to thank God that today we have […]
Continue ReadingLet’s call it a tale of two WhatsApp broadcasts. On June 5, 2022, I received this chat from an older friend whom I call “uncle” because of the age difference: “Today in Owo at St Francis Catholic Church Owaluwa street Owo, Fulani herdsmen on rampage.” It was accompanied with videos of the terror act in […]
Continue ReadingLike graceful, snowy egrets basking in the afternoon light, the Pyrates Confraternity sailed out last week on the streets of Lagos. In white and scarlet, they did it with much noise and got lots of shrieks from owls and bats of the night. It was their outing; the beauty of their song triggered the chat […]
Continue ReadingI watched Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo’s two recent television interviews with absolute bewilderment. And if the situation in Nigeria was not so grim currently, one would laugh at the minister’s posturing during these conversations. For starters, his appointment as a spokesperson for the Asiwaju Bola Tinubu/Kashim Shettima campaign council is […]
Continue ReadingThe reign of terrorists is not without its own sardonic humour. Soon after storming Kuje prison in Abuja to free their comrades in arms, ISWAP terrorists indicated an interest in two pricey trophies: President Muhammadu Buhari and, my friend and brother, Nasir El Rufai, Governor of Kaduna State. While their interest in the president as […]
Continue ReadingWhen you live in a glass house, as they say on the street, you don’t walk naked. But that conventional wisdom must have been lost on the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) National Chairman, Iyorchia Ayu, despite his considerable experience in politics spanning decades. In a viral video a day after the party’s primaries that nominated former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar as the PDP presidential candidate […]
Continue ReadingThe viral video of the members of the National Association of Seadogs (Pyrates Confraternity) gyrating to a song about a presidential candidate’s health condition is a prelude to the satirisation that will still come as the 2023 elections draw closer. The song is about how a man who, despite his visible hand and leg tremors, […]
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