Ns-Opinion

Opinion

Monday, 07 February 2022 06:00

Cowardly Nnamdi Kanu and the rise of Yahooism - Hassan Gimba

I once had cause to quote Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s 1980 hit song, “Authority Stealing”, where the Afrobeat maestro sang “You be thief” while the chorus chanted “I no be thief”, “You be rogue”, “I no be rogue”, etc, The song readily comes to mind because Nnamdi Kanu denied being an Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) member. Like Judas Iscariot, who gave Jesus Christ “the kiss of death” and betrayed him, two weeks ago in the court, Nnamdi Kanu, who Igbo separatists see as their infallible and courageous leader, denied them vehemently. The “lion” of Isiama Afara, who calls on his…

Sunday, 06 February 2022 06:12

Ekiti: APC, PDP primaries of controversies (1) - Bola Bolawole

The All progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship party primaries have come and gone but the reverberations may not abate any time soon. Call them primaries of controversies and you will be right. Neither of the two leading political parties can lay claim to the bragging rights over the conduct and outcome of their primaries. And this is a shame! Credible elections are not just about casting and counting of votes and declaring the results on Election Day, the process actually begins with the delineation of constituencies, where the election umpire can apply what is called…

Sunday, 06 February 2022 06:11

Atiku Abubakar and the sexual history of the Nigerian presidency - Festus Adedayo

In early 2014, the Zimbabwean public sphere literally caught fire. Rumours that the country’s former Prime Minister and the presidential candidate of the Movement for Democratic Change, (MDC) Morgan Tsvangirai, had suffered “a nasty blow from below,” euphemism for zero virility, spread like bushfire. At about the same time, the virility-restoring prowess of Emmanuel Makandiwa, a ‘miracle-working’ Pentecostal prophet, froze the stratosphere like snowflakes in winter. Estranged wife of Tsvangirai, Elizabeth Macheka, had lit the fire. In an interview she granted The Herald, which was entitled, Why I ditched Tsvangirai: WifeMacheka had been quoted to have said that she had…

Sunday, 06 February 2022 06:07

Divine guidance In the manifestation of glorious destinies - Taiwo Akinola

He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye ~ Deuteronomy 32:10. Introduction: The plans of God for the new creation man is awesome and quite amazing. It is actually beyond the scope of the understanding of the natural mind. However, we live in a world that is glaringly hostile in many ways against the people of God (Ephesians 6:10-13). Hence, the reason for so many forms of spiritual warfare and struggles we see in the believers’ world today. The…

Sunday, 06 February 2022 06:05

Article of faith: Confessing Christ before men - Femi Aribisala

Jesus says: “Everyone who confesses me before men, him I will also confess before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men, him I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 10:32-33). How exactly do we confess Christ? Confessing and denying Many Christians take this to mean answering an altar call and declaring that Jesus is your Lord and Saviour. This is based on Paul’s assertion that: “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be…

Friday, 04 February 2022 06:29

Police recruitment: Behind the figures - Azu Ishiekwene

A small news item from a police statement tucked inside the print edition of PUNCH on Wednesday stirred more interest than usual. In the statement, the police had asked those who applied for the position of constables to resume at the state commands between February 1 and 20. But that’s not the story. While the police needed only 10,000 constables, about 130,000 candidates applied; that is, for every single successful applicant, 12 will not be considered, all things being equal. It evoked sad memories of the 2014 tragedy, when six million applied for 4,000 vacancies at the Nigeria Immigration Service,…

Friday, 04 February 2022 06:28

Parental failure: Impetus for crimes, societal problems - Michael West

Our society is in moral and spiritual quagmire largely due to the negligence and compromised disposition of parents towards the training of their children. From the cradle, parents are the moral compass, role models and counsellors-in-chief of their children. The abdication of these noble responsibilities is the reason we are contending with festering criminal issues. Parents, to a large extent, are guilty as charged on the waywardness of their children. Parents or guardians that fail to provide proper upbringing based on discipline, integrity, cultural mores and societal values are complicit in the moral decadence plaguing our land these days. The…

Thursday, 03 February 2022 06:07

JAMB: Oloyede’s unending tango with exams crooks - Bola Bolawole

When Ishaq Oloyede ended his first five-year tenure as the Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) on July 30, 2021, many were apprehensive he might not receive the nod of the appointing authorities for a second term in office. And the reason is not far to fetch. Oloyede is not your mill-of-the-run Nigerian public officer who will lobby and fight to sit-tight in office. He finished his first term and returned home, allowing the authorities to decide one way or another. But the general public, especially the mass media that have worked closely with Oloyede, scrutinising and…

Thursday, 03 February 2022 06:04

Back to the Victorian future - Iwan Rhys Morus

Tech titans like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos present themselves as men who could single-handedly shape the future. For their supporters, their ruthless drive toward success is their key virtue. And their showmanship — Musk sending a Tesla Roadster into space on a Falcon Heavy rocket, or Bezos sending Captain Kirk into orbit with Blue Origin — is a way of demonstrating that virtue and asserting they are in control. We owe to the Victorians the idea that there is a firm link between virtue and technological agency. They established a powerful paradigm that continues to haunt us: that the…

Tuesday, 01 February 2022 06:04

What is Nigeria’s government for? - David Pilling

On the British Airways flight between London and Nigeria’s administrative capital of Abuja, one of the airline’s most profitable routes, nearly all the space is taken up with flatbeds. The unfortunate few making their way to a crunched economy section at the back must trudge through row after row of business class. Evidently, there is plenty of money to be made in Abuja’s corridors of power. Nigeria’s economy may be flat on its back, but the political elite flying to and from London will spend the flight flat on theirs, too. Next year, many of the members of government will…

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Tuesday, 01 February 2022 06:03

Now is the time for mass resignations from within the ruling class - Jeffrey A. Tucker

If there is a historical precedent for the truckers’ revolt in Canada, and the populist protests in so many other parts of the world, I would like to know what it is. It surely sets the record for convoy size, and it is historic for Canada. But there is much more going on here, something more fundamental. The two-year imposition of bio-fascist rule by diktat seems ever less tenable – the consent of the governed is being withdrawn – but what comes next seems unclear. We now have two of the most restrictive “leaders” in the developed world (Justin Trudeau…

Monday, 31 January 2022 06:23

Kidnap for ransom, ritual killings and the complete cycle of dehumanisation in Nigeria - Seun Kolade

A few weeks ago a good friend of mine sent me a disturbing message: his four children had just had a lucky escape from a kidnapper somewhere in Southwest Nigerian town. His wife was driving the family car one afternoon, with their four children in the car. She got stuck in a pothole in the middle of the road. She tried to wriggle the car out, but could not. As she was struggling with the car, one “Good Samaritan” driving behind stopped and got out to help. He offered to help madam get the car out. In he went, and…

Monday, 31 January 2022 06:21

A quick return to UNILAG... - Bola Bolawole

I read my brother and friend’s treatise on the 52nd Convocation Ceremony of the University of Lagos – A Quick Return to UNILAG - and was enthralled. Babafemi Badejo of Chrisland University, Abeokuta, is no stranger to readers of my columns in national newspapers. A Great Akokite himself, Badejo went back memory lane and returned asking probing, yet germane, questions deserving of answers from the powers-that-be. Sweeping critical issues under the carpet; like the adoption of a fire brigade approach to issues deserving timely intervention, has become the hallmark of administrations in Nigeria. Will the tide ever turn? Read on:…

Sunday, 30 January 2022 06:02

Gen Abubakar, was MKO Abiola’s death really natural? - Festus Adedayo

Trinidad and Tobago-born British writer of works of fiction and nonfiction in English, Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, commonly known as V. S. Naipaul, would seem to have Nigeria and the facts of Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (MKO) Abiola’s death in military detention in mind when he wrote his famous novel, Half of Life. Renowned for and indeed underscored by the Swedish Academy which awarded him the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories,” summarized, Naipaul’s Half of Life is a life of lie lionized to be true.…

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