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Opinion

Thursday, 20 February 2020 04:18

The Qualcommunist manifesto: American state capitalism will not beat the Chinese at 5G

If imitation is the best form of flattery, one can only imagine the mandarins in Beijing blushing bashfully on February 6th as they eavesdropped on William Barr, America’s attorney-general, firing the latest shots in the tech cold war. One of America’s main concerns, he told a think-tank in Washington, dc, was Chinese dominance of fifth-generation (5g) wireless technology by Huawei. It had achieved this with totalitarian central planning. “As a dictatorship”, he said, “China can marshal an all-nation approach—the government, its companies, its academia, acting together as one.” Mr Barr’s response to this threat? Central planning, also involving the state,…

Monday, 17 February 2020 05:14

Who are the terrorists? - Bolanle Bolawole

Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. – John Donne. Retired Gen. Muhammadu Buhari was at it again recently with his nebulous arithmetic of 97% and 5%! He said recently 90% of those killed by Boko Haram are Muslims and, immediately, he stirred the hornet’s nest. Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) jumped in his throat and told him point blank that he lied. The days of diplomatic words are over! Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), however, came to Buhari’s rescue…

Sunday, 16 February 2020 05:27

Bayelsa’s identity theft, Douye Diri and our gene of fraud - Festus Adedayo

The Bayelsa governorship election voided by the Nigerian Supreme Court on Thursday last week has provoked a conversation on the metastasis of the cancer of identity theft in Nigeria and the country’s place in this malaise in the world. The most instructive of the several historical narratives of identity theft was one that happened in the 1540s. It was the story of one Martin Guerre, a 16th-century French Basque peasant, who lived in the village of Artigat in the French Pyrenees. Born in a village called Hendaye in 1525, Guerre inherited his father’s wealth but faced several challenges, in spite…

Sunday, 16 February 2020 05:26

Mama Igosun rides on the Amotekun wave - Tatalo Alamu

To the modish and trendsetting Sasangele Television Station in Shangisha where Mama Igosun is fielding questions on Yoruba cuisine and ancient culinary culture to wild approval and approbation from the excited audience. Nativism is in the air in the old West. The entire region is swamped by what can only be described as Amotekun nationalism. Amotekun has become the omnibus vessel for distilling ancient and contemporary grievances against the Nigerian post-colonial state. There are now Amotekun caps, Amotekun vests, Amotekun undies, Amotekun charms and Amotekun soothsayers. Amotekun has taken a life of its own carrying everything before it. Mama Igosun…

Sunday, 16 February 2020 05:25

Too much of a good thing: How excessive democracy can lead to poor decisions

Garett Jones, an economics professor at George Mason University in Virginia, knew he was on to a good thing when he got a call from the campus police. A student journalist had written a report on a lecture that he had given suggesting that rich countries would be better off if they were less, rather than more, democratic. The hostile reaction, which spread beyond the university, included a call threatening enough to trouble the university’s private security force. Mr Jones concluded that he had an idea powerful and contentious enough to make into a book. The result is “10% Less…

Saturday, 15 February 2020 05:15

Bayelsa: Beware of Jonah! - Bola Bolawole

You will not enter the same boat with Jonah. Biblical Jonah is the proverbial bad market that the Yoruba call "alakoba". He enters the boat of winners and immediately and automatically makes them losers. He turns the innocent to the guilty. The Bayelsa APC deputy governorship candidate is an "alakoba" par excellence. He it was who kobalized the APC governorship candidate. May you never team up with those whose head have refused prayer and rejected promotion. Such people make anyone who is predestined to be king to turn into "Soroye"; see the crown, feel it but never wear it. They…

Saturday, 15 February 2020 05:14

Google and a long-distance runner - Dare Babarinsa

The idea of a university germinated from the concept that knowledge can be domesticated and nurtured. Nigerian leaders from the time of independence have placed hope in the ability of our universities to change our land and lead us to join the rest of humanity in competitive advancement. If you want to know what the men and women of the Ivory Towers are thinking, you get more during their seasonal outings at convocations or inaugurals. It is usually during these two ceremonies that our universities try to re-assure us that they are still in the business of knowledge and that…

Saturday, 15 February 2020 05:13

Could it really happen? Why the unification of Ireland is becoming likelier - Leader, The Economist

For most of the century since Ireland gained independence from Britain, control of the country has alternated between two parties. On February 8th that duopoly was smashed apart, when Sinn Fein got the largest share of first-preference votes in the republic’s general election. The party, with links to the Irish Republican Army (ira), which bombed and shot its way through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, won with a left-wing platform that included promises to spend more on health and housing. Yet it did not hide its desire for something a lot more ambitious. “Our core political objective”, its manifesto read,…

Friday, 14 February 2020 06:27

Notes on engaging Nigeria’s ruling class - Edwin Madunagu

Nigeria’s ruling class has presented the nation with a number of issues around which the Nigerian Left can build an agenda of political engagement for the year 2020, or which, to use an old journalistic expression, the Left can use as “pegs” to construct an agenda of close and integrated engagement with the rulers for the year 2020 and beyond. The rulers of Nigeria regularly “oblige” us in this way. This time around the issues on the table and on display include: the movement of Nigeria’s presidency in 2023; the politics generated by the Western Nigeria Security Network codenamed “Operation…

Thursday, 13 February 2020 05:30

Bitter truth the North must hear... - Bola Bolawole

One Northern leader after another has, in recent times, decried the so-called poverty of the North, as it were. They have attempted to state why this is so as well as proffer solutions. World Bank says 87% of Nigeria’s poor are in the North; and since Nigeria is the capital of the world’s poor, it stands to reason that the capital of poverty in Nigeria and in the whole wide world should be somewhere in the North. Many Nigerians, especially those from the South, will dispute that the North is poor. Many will query the statistics and describe it as…

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Monday, 10 February 2020 05:49

Unkind things US diplomatic cables reported Tinubu to have said about Buhari - Farooq Kperogi

On Friday, February 7, Bola Tinubu’s media adviser by the name of Tunde Rahman made a statement that attempted to impeach the credibility of a viral, reputationally injurious, pre-2015, anti-Buhari quote attributed to Bola Tinubu. The quote, which has been making the social media rounds in the past few weeks, goes thus: “Muhammadu Buhari is an agent of destabilisation, [an] ethnic bigot, and [a] religious fanatic who if given the chance would ensure the disintegration of the country. His ethnocentrism would jeopardise Nigeria’s national unity.” I have seen slightly different lexical variations of this quote, but the essential sentiment is…

Sunday, 09 February 2020 05:10

After BREXIT, enter YEXIT! - Bola Bolawole

"Few individuals want to willingly invite their death. Yet many will be found who are prepared to fight fearlessly for their rights even if their life is threatened. The human spirit has a remarkable capacity to rise above oppression and only the fools who misrule Guyana can imagine that our population alone lacks such capacity" "... For the only great men among the unfree and the oppressed are those who struggle to destroy the oppressor" - Walter Rodney, author of "Drink from my Calabash" and the seminal "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" The “National question” has been a vexed issue from…

Sunday, 09 February 2020 05:09

Prune Northern Nigerian mistletoe, cure Nigeria - Festus Adedayo

All right, you do not know what mistletoe is? It is, according to a dictionary definition of it, a “leathery-leaved parasitic plant which grows on apple, oak, and other broadleaf trees.” Yoruba call mistletoe afomo. What this weed does is stick to trees, either cocoa or kolanut tree. Farmers are always watching out for an afomo on their crash crops because, the moment a tree gets infested with it, it is on its way to barrenness. While the mistletoe has no root of its own, it bores roots inside the trunk of its host and starves the tree of nutrients.…

Sunday, 09 February 2020 05:08

Are you a member of the ‘pepper dem’ gang? – Tara Aisida

I once escorted a friend to our children’s school Accounts office to help plead for more time to pay her children’s school fees. My friend was a single parent, her ex-husband would not pay school fees but would buy the children expensive stuff like phones, gadgets etc so he could be seen as a good daddy whilst shirking his responsibilities. Anyways, back to my story, The Accountant was apologetic and told us that he couldn’t do much as the school was servicing a huge loan and many parents were owing. In confidence, he told us that the graduating set of…

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