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Alhaji Baba Ahmed, a Mauritanian cow seller, plied his trade from his country to the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and to Dahomey (now Benin Republic). Business was very good but at a point, his customers in Dahomey, with impunity, refused to pay for his cows. Is it not the law that every seller must collect […]
Continue ReadingThe National Assembly last Tuesday received a presidential request for yet fresh foreign loans. This time, it is $4billion and €710million (N2trillion) to finance ‘critical projects’ in the 2021 budget. Our lawmakers will approve the loan request without asking any question. It is not the first loan request this year and it won’t be the […]
Continue ReadingPresident Muhammadu Buhari, last week in Imo State, acknowledged the resourcefulness and enterprising spirit of Igbo people. He said: “The fundamental thing about the Igbo people is that there is no town you visit in Nigeria without seeing the Igbo being in charge of either infrastructure or the pharmaceutical industry. Therefore, it is unthinkable for […]
Continue ReadingSomehow, we’ve all, individually, managed to get by and get better but the country gets progressively worse every new day. I thought of how much I paid to get university education – my first degree. The first year, I paid N20 caution fee; I also paid N90 for accommodation. The second year, there was no […]
Continue ReadingScary! One spring night, the pilot of a small plane experienced a complete engine failure. On top of that, he lost his electrical system, and with it, the use of his radio and navigation instruments. Mist filled the sky. The moon had not yet risen. The plane went down helplessly and blindly in the darkness….. I did […]
Continue ReadingSome years ago, an editor-friend told me that he was slapped from behind by someone during his first pilgrimage to Mecca. His offence was that he pointed at ‘something’ with his shoes in his hands. The person who slapped him was not an Arab. The man who slapped him was a Nigerian pilgrim from our […]
Continue ReadingTwenty-four hours after paying an inter-infirmary visit to his co-Londoner, co-APC founder, comrade and power-sharer, President Muhammadu Buhari came back last week to meet his Nigeria as dying as he left it. Nigeria’s definition under him has remained sorrow, tears and blood. In his absence, unremitting mass murders continued casting very long shadows here and […]
Continue ReadingGrand ancestor of Nollywood, Ayinla Olumegbon’s ‘Wole Wole Arufin’ (The Lawless Sanitary Inspector) was very popular in the 1970s. The story was about a sanitary inspector who was consistent in searching soup and water pots for infractions. His method and diligence regularly paid off – he made arrests which also fetched him fat bribes. But […]
Continue ReadingAye ti ba je! (the world has gone bad). A US dollar exchanged for N504 at the weekend. What this means is that your one million naira cannot buy two thousand dollars worth of anything. It will get worse going forward. On April 13, 2018, UNICEF released a statement in which it lamented that “since […]
Continue ReadingIt was in Hubert Ogunde’s ‘Jayesinmi’ that we last saw witches transforming into cats – black cat, red cat. I never knew witchery and witchcraft have found their way into the curricula of our security academies until the recent Igboho night experience. Media reports said Sunday Igboho had cats as pets and those were victims […]
Continue ReadingOur Minister of Agriculture is Alhaji Muhammad Nanono from Kano State. The Minister of State for that ministry is Alhaji Mustapha Baba Shehuri from Borno State. You are wondering why the two of them come from the far north? Where else do you have farmers in Nigeria except in the North East and the North West? […]
Continue Reading“Whatever the party holds to be the truth is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the party.” – George Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four. We are entering the era of enforced silence. When you firmly fold your lips, you are not likely to hop into trouble. That is […]
Continue ReadingThe president tweeted a promise of war. Twitter deleted the promise. The government banned Twitter. It has also promised to jail anyone found in bed with Twitter. The Buhari government’s role models on this road to infamy are North Korea, Iran and China. The list is that short. I laugh at Nigerians who say they […]
Continue ReadingThere is an undeclared war going on in the South East. The headlines, in frightening details, painted the lurid portrait yesterday: “Gunmen kill 7 military men, raze police stations;” “Gunmen raze courts in Imo, Abia CID building burnt down;” “IPOB’s stay-at-home order: Tension in Ebonyi, Imo, others.” Then the big one: “Ahmed Gulak shot dead […]
Continue ReadingThe way we mourn tells something about our humanity. I read the Nigerian Army’s three-paragraph, late-night statement announcing the crash of an air force plane on Friday. It said the Chief of Army staff, Lt. General Ibrahim Attahiru “and ten other officers” died in the crash. There was another follow-up three-paragraph statement from the Defence […]
Continue ReadingHave you asked why every saviour always ends up worse than his bad predecessor? King Dionysius (430 BC—367 BC) was famously called the tyrant of Syracuse. He conquered Sicily and southern Italy and made Syracuse the most powerful Greek city west of mainland Greece. But Dionysius was a very cruel king. Almost every citizen of […]
Continue Reading“In an upcoming foreign policy piece, Dr Robert Rotberg and I will argue that Nigeria is a failed state.” That is a 6 May, 2021 tweet from John Campbell, a former United States Ambassador to Nigeria. It should worry all who know that this came from Campbell, author of ‘Nigeria: Dancing on the Brink’ published […]
Continue ReadingVulture means Igún in Yoruba. At the very beginning of time, he was the priest of the earth. The priest was also earth’s doctor. It happened that Olófin, the king in Ile-Ife that time, had his life in total disarray – a life broken like calabash and rent like cloth (ayé e rè fó bí […]
Continue ReadingA normal southern Nigerian citizen would be shocked to hear cries of ‘Jihad now’ or ‘give us sharia or death’ or ‘it is sharia or bloodshed.’ In the fundamentalist north, what will shock the street will be if the rabble refuses to lick blood from the plate of those cries. The huge support which Isa […]
Continue ReadingThere was an open rally against the entity called Nigeria on the streets of Ibadan on Saturday. The organisers wanted a Yoruba country. That it happened where it happened should worry everyone. The Yoruba believed so much in Nigeria and sacrificed so much to make it live and work. Now, the medicine man no longer […]
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