News, Events, Entertainment, Lifestyle, Fashion, Beauty, Inspiration and yes… Gossip! The Only Place It Happens!
I saw two bearded, bitter members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on Channels TV late last week lamenting. They said ex-PDP leaders were taking over the house they built. They fretted and lamented what was about to happen to their tendency at the party’s national convention. I pitied them. It is not everyone who […]
Continue ReadingWith women, there is never an end to a war – any war in which their husband’s interest is involved. When they win, they go for choice wines and propose toasts with the skull of the enemy. When they lose, they, in bitterness, weep, withdraw and go underground to continue the fight by other means. […]
Continue ReadingThieves of a feather’ is the title of a piece written by American journalist, Emily Sohn, in the December 19, 2007 edition of ScienceNewsforStudents. Great writings advertise themselves first with great titles. You were probably suckled in a clichéd world where birds of a feather always flocked together. And in that world, your teacher warned […]
Continue ReadingKabiyesi means ‘we dare not question him.’ The nearest to its meaning is what my Hausa friend does with effusive ‘Ranka dede’ at the feet of his lord. The above headline should actually be ‘Nigeria’s Kabiyesi politics.’ That is what the Nigerian president plays. He is big and powerful and he is beyond query whatever […]
Continue ReadingThere was a man in London 300 years ago called Jonathan Wild. He lived at a time robbery and violent crimes were rampant in the city, day and night. The people were helpless and the police were largely absent. And because nature abhors a vacuum, this man, a civilian, filled that void. He started hiring […]
Continue ReadingLast Tuesday at the public presentation of my book, ‘Cowries of Blood’, a reporter asked me to crack the title. I smiled the question off. I hope my quizzer reads this and connects the silhouetted dots. It is not only about cows and forest boys grazing in farms and killing grumbling farmers. It is about […]
Continue ReadingI experienced him for the first time as he was introduced as Imam Orímádégún. He was asked to preach at a Muslim burial service last Saturday in Osogbo, Osun State. He picked the microphone and announced that he was not going to preach about the dead. He said his sermon would be for the living. […]
Continue ReadingHow do you address a people who create a situation and then turn round to play the victim? The National President of Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore, Alhaji Bello Abdullahi Bodejo, talked tough in a Sun newspaper interview at the weekend. He said any southerner hoping to replace President Muhammadu Buhari next year must seek out […]
Continue ReadingSome people sold their father’s land to purchase guns; now that war is in their home, they are begging for where to stand on to use the weapons. I got that sense from an elder some days ago as we agonised over the destruction of the country’s peace by its unhinged children. In horrific details, […]
Continue ReadingThe aged died, we replaced him with the chronically ill; who does not know that there will be wailing once more soon in the palace?. (Arugbo ku a fi olokunrun j’oye; taa ni ko mo wipe ariwo k’eekan l’aafin?). This Yoruba proverb covers the field of fears of those worried about the age and health […]
Continue ReadingOnce upon a time, I got a book gift from Charly Boy. Like many in my generation, I love books, especially unusual ones. And that precisely was what I got from the son of Justice Chukwudifu Oputa. The title of the book? ‘My Private Part.’ Curiosity won’t kill me. I grabbed the book and flipped […]
Continue ReadingWe’ve all walked gingerly into the uncharted dawn of 2022 hoping to make some sense of its covetous threats. Jonathan Swift, 18th century satirist and author, wrote of ‘The Day of Judgement’ when “the graves give up their dead” and “thunder roars and lightning flies” and “the world’s mad business now is o’er.” This new […]
Continue ReadingProverbs are not just the palm oil with which yam of words is eaten; they are the yam. Where I come from, there are a million proverbs for every experience of life. Some people are contagiously sick but they hate being told so. They suffer self-deception, the refusal to believe what is true about themselves. […]
Continue ReadingThe Man who looks history in the face’ is the title Professor Wole Soyinka put on the Foreword. Of course, “the man” here is Bisi Akande, the author of ‘My Participations’, an autobiography that is roiling calm across Nigeria. Soyinka endorses the book and the content in an eleven-page Foreword. The Nobel Laureate says Akande, […]
Continue ReadingThere is a huge noise over Chief Bisi Akande’s autobiography released on Thursday, December 4, 2021 in Lagos. I have not read the book. But I have read what the media says the book contains. I have also read the book review by a brilliant professor of English at the University of Ibadan who spiced […]
Continue ReadingOn Thursday, October 13, 2017, there was an uproar when the then World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, innocently announced that President Muhammadu Buhari asked his bank to focus its developmental programmes on northern Nigeria. “In my very first meeting with President Buhari, he said specifically that he would like us to shift our focus to the northern region […]
Continue ReadingA month from now, it will be over for the year 2021, and a new year will be born. The Bantu people say the road does not tell the traveller what lies ahead. Is that also true here? I do not think so. We have trodden this crooked road long enough to know its offerings. […]
Continue ReadingThere was a time in this country when one single person was acting prime minister, acting minister of finance and substantive minister of defence. How would a man perform the functions of those offices simultaneously without having an accident? It happened that during that interesting period, the question of purchasing a new office for the ministry of […]
Continue ReadingIn a very recent interview with The New Yorker, an American news magazine, Professor Wole Soyinka was asked to name his favourite song of Fela. He had no problem quickly declaring that “My favorite is ‘Zombie.’” And what was his reason? He answered: “That song, ‘Zombie,’ applies not merely to the military in terms of […]
Continue ReadingThe Ikoyi skyscraper tragedy has more than its 21 fatal floors. It is like wood falling on wood; and more wood falling on wood; a tangled narrative woven by fate and circumstances. The building came down in style: a very huge structure collapsing on itself in a matter of seconds. It wasn’t an implosion and […]
Continue Reading