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How can a peaceful protest end up with killing and maiming, burning and looting in a matter of days? For those of us who have seen plenty “peaceful” protests in our lives, it is not too hard to explain. The moment you hit the streets and fail to read the road signs — so that […]
Continue ReadingThe youth uprising against police brutality in Nigeria has taken many by surprise. Conventional wisdom is that the youth are more likely to dance at a concert than sing a protest song. Events of the last couple of weeks have altered this narrative as youthful Nigerians have taken to the streets in a vigorous campaign […]
Continue ReadingIf you don’t know Ndubuisi (“Dele”) Udo, it is not your fault. The Nigerian police did not allow him to be great. As a teenage athlete in the 1970s, Udo was a collegiate champion at the University of Missouri in the United States. He was a three-time member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) […]
Continue ReadingIn my previous article, ahead of Nigeria’s 60th Independence Day celebrations, I tried to examine the root of Nigeria’s divisive politicking. In what many saw as a sacrilegious criticism of our venerated “founding fathers”, I argued that their politics was founded on ethnic and regional sentiments and quite destructive. Most colonial-era political parties were formed […]
Continue ReadingWe often tell ourselves a lot of beautiful lies in Nigeria. One of my favourite is the saying: “This is not the dream of our founding fathers.” By that, we often try to claim our founding fathers had a dream for Nigeria from which we have deviated — the dream of oneness, of national unity. […]
Continue ReadingAmidst the series of tough decisions rolled out by President Muhammadu Buhari as the Nigerian economy gasps for breath under the weight of low oil prices and the coronavirus pandemic, a mini-war broke out between the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) last week. In a statement with the […]
Continue ReadingYou campaign in poetry. You govern in prose. Former governor of New York, Mario Matthew Cuomo, now of blessed memory, said those immortal words 35 years ago. Poetry is relatively short and flowery; prose is much longer and less flowery. Yoruba would render the same thing Cuomo said as “enu dun r’ofo” i.e. “it always […]
Continue ReadingTwo can play the game. That should sum up the politicking surrounding the disinvitation of Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, governor of Kaduna state, for the 2020 annual general conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) where he was to be a guest speaker. If he was “cancelled” simply because of the allegations that he does not […]
Continue ReadingIn Nigeria, oil is definitely the apple of our eyes — we don’t need to argue over that. But this piece of news should set us thinking once again: Apple, the American tech company, is now worth over $2 trillion. By contrast, the GDP of Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, is estimated at $448 billion. […]
Continue ReadingDr Obadiah Mailafia, a former deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), shook the airwaves recently when he told a radio station that a northern governor is the commander of Boko Haram. He also said the terrorists were flying freely during the coronavirus lockdown. “We have met with some of their high commanders, […]
Continue ReadingWhen Shoprite owners announced that they were selling their stake in the Nigerian market, many of us were baffled. Initially misunderstood to mean the South African food retailer was going to close its stores in the country, the development was clarified as a case of investors opting to sell the business to Nigerians in a […]
Continue ReadingMallam Mamman Daura, President Muhammadu Buhari’s confidant, is someone who speaks just once in a blue moon. He hardly grants media interviews or appears at public events. Only a few Nigerians can point him out in a crowd. A Google image search will return less than a dozen pictures of him. For a man who […]
Continue ReadingWhy is Nigeria like this? Don’t look too far: the answers are well articulated in the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) saga. I would say NDDC is a microcosm of Nigeria. If you understand the genesis of NDDC, as well as the latest revelations, you do not need to stretch too much to understand why […]
Continue ReadingDear President Muhammadu Buhari, I come to you in peace. Nevertheless, I do not have a nicer way of putting this to you: your government is falling apart. I do not know how to make it sound less brutal. That is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth — at least judging […]
Continue ReadingOn Friday, President Muhammadu Buhari discharged the ritual of signing the revised budget into law. That, we know, is the easiest part of the job. The projected expenditure for 2020 is now N10.8 trillion — curiously more than the N10.5 trillion that Buhari originally signed in December 2019 when the world was still a better […]
Continue ReadingWhether we like it or not, the issue of electricity tariff is a touchy one. In the power sector reform, we are always talking about power generation, transmission and distribution. We are always talking about how many megawatts we are producing or want to produce. We have also regularly discussed the cost of gas and […]
Continue ReadingIn 2006, President Olusegun Obasanjo came up with Vision 20:2020 — an audacious dream to make Nigeria one of the 20 biggest economies in the world by 2020. There were plenty projections that were supposed to combine to make Nigeria attain the goal, but the one that always catches my fancy was that we would […]
Continue ReadingThe National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), the federal agency that regulates — and strangulates — the broadcast industry in Nigeria, always gets away with murder. If you ask me its major contribution to the development of broadcasting in the 21 years of our democracy, I can only remember the frequent imposition of sanctions on broadcast stations […]
Continue ReadingOur paths crossed in 2014. I was about to set up TheCable online newspaper. The biggest challenge was getting a good editor to take charge. Having practised journalism for over two decades, I wanted to take the back seat and concentrate my energies on other businesses. But unable to get a suitable candidate, I began […]
Continue ReadingHow time flies. When Major Abubakar Umar was appointed military governor of Kaduna state by Gen Ibrahim Babangida in 1985, he was just approaching his 36th birthday. He was fresh-faced and handsome, with the trademark well-arranged moustache — the trend at the time. Beyond his looks, Umar came across as a progressive, one who cared […]
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