El-Rufai: Limits of Dubious Demagoguery, By Akin Osuntokun

“I am writing as a concerned citizen to seek clarification and reassurance regarding information available to the political opposition leadership about a procurement of approximately 10 kilograms of Thallium Sulphate by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), reportedly from a supplier in Poland.. Given that thallium salts are highly toxic and tightly controlled […]

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The Fourth Republic: Twists and Turns, By Akin Osuntokun

Nigeria’s Fourth Republic approaches the 2027 elections under familiar stresses and some new strains. Central to the country’s instability is the persistent overcentralisation of power in Abuja, which distorts federalism and undermines prospects for a stable political equilibrium. The immediate background to the inauguration of the Fourth Republic was the precipitate death of the two […]

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Ex-Labour Party campaign director Akin Osuntokun defects to ADC

A former Director-General of the Labour Party Presidential Campaign Council, Akin Osuntokun, has dumped the Labour Party for the African Democratic Congress. Osuntokun, a former News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) Managing Director, confirmed this to a correspondent of the agency on Monday in Lagos. “Yes, it is correct. I am now in ADC,” he told […]

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Bala Mohammed, Abubakar Malami, Unmasked, By Akin Osuntokun

**”Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his greatness to his country’s ruin?”  —Joseph Addison** For years, a thick fog shrouded Nigeria’s efforts to identify and prosecute those enabling banditry and terrorism. That haze finally began to lift […]

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All Hail Farouk Ahmed, the Patriot, By Akin Osuntokun

“In a broken society where anyone able to be within the circle of power brokers loot the treasury and take the funds out without investing in the country, Dangote is a welcome relief. Many Nigerians have had the opportunity and advantage to be pioneer investors in many sectors of our economic activities, particularly crude oil […]

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Between Badenoch, Trump and Buhari, By Akin Osuntokun

Unlike Professor Wole Soyinka’s Idi Amin caricature, my image of President Donald Trump is very much like Robert Holt’s portrayal of Henry V111, “who started with everything and squandered it all, who had the physical and mental fortitude to endure a lifetime of gratified greed. We recognise in him an archetype, one of the champions […]

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Datti Baba-Ahmed tackles Kashim Shettima, By Akin Osuntokun

“I Don’t Blame BAT, Whoever Knows What Shettima Did Won’t Keep Him Long, Airwaves Can’t Carry It”—Datti Baba-Ahmed The pithy and cryptic line from Datti Baba Ahmed — veteran educator, businessman and former vice principal on the Labour Party presidential ticket — captures the kind of blunt, insinuating commentary that has become his trademark. The […]

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Beyond Oyo Empire, By Akin Osuntokun

Next to Oduduwa, the eponymous ancestor of the Yoruba, the most significant monarch in Yoruba antiquity is Oranmiyan (purportedly Oduduwa’s son? grandson?). He was as elusive as he was ubiquitous. He holds the record, perhaps, in human history, of being a monarch, three times over, in three different world historic locations during his elastic lifetime, […]

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Afenifere: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (In Memory of Chief Ayo Adebanjo), By Akin Osuntokun

Yesterday In the understanding of ‘ethnicity as the expression of solidarity and common loyalty of peoples who share among themselves a country and a culture’- Chief Obafemi Awolowo was right to commit himself to the notion and evolution of ethnic solidarity among the Yoruba. To put it in his precise phrase “I would see to it […]

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Beyond The President, By Akin Osuntokun

There 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 […]

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In Memory of Ayo Adebanjo, By Akin Osuntokun

The Obafemi Awolowo ‘papal bull’ issued against President Olusegun Obasanjo designating him as number one enemy of the Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, was more than enough cue for Awoists to regard bellicosity towards the former President as virtue. You remember the Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, party convention in Yola in 1982 dubbed the […]

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My Path to Afenifere (1), By Akin Osuntokun

The journey started with being born to Chief Oduola Osuntokun, cabinet minister, Western regional government from 1955 to 1966 straddling the government of Chiefs Obafemi Awolowo  and Ladoke Akintola. This biological fact was reinforced with being portentously named Akintola. There was absolutely nothing wrong with this name until the Action Group, AG, crisis broke out […]

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The Alaafin (Know your history), By Akin Osuntokun

By a consensus of research opinions, Oduduwa arrived and founded the Ife monarchy not later than the 11th century. Afolayan (2004:33) said that ‘Oduduwa might have arrived in Yorubaland sometime around 1100 AD, and Oyebade (2004:53) said sometime around the 7th, 10th or 11th century AD) and Oranmiyan founded the Oyo monarchy in the 14th […]

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Yoruba are Indeed a Race, By Akin Osuntokun

“Two thirds of people in Scotland identify only as Scottish, not British, according to new findings from the census” “1.8 million people identify as Welsh only (58% of the population) and 218,000 identify their national identity as Welsh-British (7% of the population”) I was reintroduced to the controversy over the origins, wherewithal and proprietary rights […]

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Kemi Badenoch: The Daughter of her Father, By Akin Osuntokun

“I find it interesting that everybody defines me as being Nigerian. I identify less with the country than with the specific ethnicity [Yoruba]. That’s what I really am. I have nothing in common with the people from the north of the country, Boko Haram, where Islamism is. Those were our ethnic enemies and yet you […]

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