Ns-Opinion

Opinion

Tuesday, 14 January 2020 05:17

Everyone knows memory fails as you age. But everyone is wrong - Daniel J. Levitin

I’m 62 years old as I write this. Like many of my friends, I forget names that I used to be able to conjure up effortlessly. When packing my suitcase for a trip, I walk to the hall closet and by the time I get there, I don’t remember what I came for. And yet my long-term memories are fully intact. I remember the names of my third-grade classmates, the first record album I bought, my wedding day. This is widely understood to be a classic problem of aging. But as a neuroscientist, I know that the problem is not…

Monday, 13 January 2020 05:40

Isn’t a wealth tax common sense? - Svetlana Alexievich

The wealth-tax proposals being advanced by Democratic US presidential primary contenders clearly meets the public-finance standard for an ideal form of revenue generation. So why have these plans drawn such vehement criticism from so many who should be supporting them? I was not surprised when leading Democratic primary contenders began endorsing a “wealth tax” along the lines of what has been proposed by my University of California, Berkeley, colleagues Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez. What has surprised me is the level of pushback these candidates have received, particularly from those who should be in favor of anything that moves the…

Sunday, 12 January 2020 05:28

The electricity tariff tango - Simon Kolawole

Which came first — the chicken or the egg? This is one of the most fascinating debates around. All chickens hatch from eggs and all the chicken eggs are laid by chickens. How then do you determine the cause and the effect? That is the “causality dilemma” we always have to deal with in certain discourses, especially on public policy. If you believe in creationism — as I do — you are more likely to argue that God created the chicken and it started to lay eggs. However, if you are an evolutionist, the Darwinian principle is that species evolve…

Sunday, 12 January 2020 05:27

Nigeria and the American Matsuyama mirror - Festus Adedayo

There is this Japanese tale of the Matsuyama mirror. Matsuyama, according to the folktale, was located in the Province of Echigo, somewhere in Japan. It is centered round a couple who lived in a village where there was no trace of civilization. The husband thus planned to travel to “the great city, the capital of Japan,” to embark upon some business. Many people, including the husband, had told the wife of her stunning physique and sultry look. However, she took the commendations with a pinch of salt, believing that since she lived in a society where wry jokes and plastic…

Saturday, 11 January 2020 04:56

Tell Dajuma to speak up! - Bola Bolawole

Recently, Mr TY Dajuma, retired army general, was quoted as saying “Nigerians won’t sleep if I reveal things happening in our country.” Grandma taught me there is nothing falling from the sky that the ground cannot receive. TY merely exaggerated his own importance! What is it that will shock this country again? Thanks, King Sunny Ade: “Eran ki la o j’eri?” What information is hid again from our eyes, including the identity of the butchers and murderers of Ibadan? There is no new happenings under the sky. Thanks, Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey: Ko s'oun titun l'abe orun mo. Let’s quote…

Thursday, 09 January 2020 20:30

Harry and Meghan: Why the Queen must FIRE Their Royal Hustlers - Piers Morgan

I've seen some disgraceful royal antics in my time, but for pure arrogance, entitlement, greed, and wilful disrespect, nothing has ever quite matched the behaviour of the ' and .' I put inverted commas around those titles because I sincerely hope they won't exist much longer. Indeed, if I were Her Majesty , I would unceremoniously strip Harry and Meghan of all their titles with immediate effect and despatch them back into civilian life. These two deluded clowns announced yesterday they were quitting life as senior royals. In a series of staggeringly pompous statements on their gleaming new Hollywood-style website,…

Thursday, 09 January 2020 06:11

Imagining a world without capitalism - Yanis Varoufakis

On September 24, 1599, not far from where Shakespeare was struggling to finish Hamlet, the first corporation with tradable shares was born. Liberalism’s fatal hypocrisy was to celebrate the virtuous neighborhood butchers, bakers, and brewers in order to defend all the East India Companies that have since made a mockery of freedom. Anti-capitalists had a miserable year. But so did capitalism. While the defeat of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party in the United Kingdom this month threatened the radical left’s momentum, particularly in the United States, where the presidential primaries loom, capitalism found itself under fire from some unexpected quarters. Billionaires,…

Wednesday, 08 January 2020 05:48

For Jeyifo (BJ) and Komolafe (KK)- Edwin Madunagu

This is not a tribute in the usual sense the word is used and as suggested by the title of this piece. Rather, it is an aspect of a story that has not been told in full, but which - I have now been persuaded - should, at least, be elaborated in some areas – for the benefit of the younger generations of the Nigerian Left. The opportunity I have now seized to do this partial elaboration, January 2020, is the start of the 75th year of existence, on earth, of one of the preeminent characters in that story and…

Monday, 06 January 2020 06:07

A president’s un-Presidential letter - Bolanle Bolawole

Let’s start by thanking Gen. Muhammadu Buhari who chose to address a letter to Nigerians on New Year day. I will refrain from calling Buhari “our” president because in the five years that he has been in the saddle, he has not behaved like one. Rather, he has behaved like the president of a section of the country. Nothing in his New Year letter suggested a change. His visa-on-arrival statement made in Egypt, which Nigerians, including even some in the rubber stamp National Assembly, have condemned and rejected, featured as a policy in the New Year letter, although surreptitiously cloaked…

Monday, 06 January 2020 06:05

A low, dishonest decade - Kaushik Basu

Eighty years ago, the poet W.H. Auden wrote that “Waves of anger and fear / Circulate over the bright / And darkened lands of the earth.” Like Auden in 1939, we must accept the possibility that things could become far worse than they already are. I write this not as a professional economist, nor as a policymaker, but as a citizen of a tiny planet that is spinning through a vast universe that we barely understand. I write this “As the clever hopes expire / Of a low dishonest decade,” and as “Waves of anger and fear / Circulate over…

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Sunday, 05 January 2020 05:54

How killing Qassem Soleimani fits in with the Trump doctrine

Philip Klein On the surface, President Trump's decision to order the killing of Iranian terrorist leader Qassim Soleimani would seem to conflict with his rhetoric about ending "endless wars." But in practice, it may be the best example to date of the Trump Doctrine in practice. With a single strike, Trump delivered a major blow to a leading enemy of America. But he did so without launching large scale attacks or committing to any sort of major invasion. Trump’s foreign policy approach is often misunderstood. Despite at times sounding like Ron Paul in attacking costly foreign entanglements, Trump has never…

Sunday, 05 January 2020 05:52

Why did Gov Abdulrahman eat Arugbo’s cocoyam? - Festus Adedayo

After watching the viral video of several Ilorin, Kwara State old women, referred to as arugbo in Yorubaland, pleading with the Kwara State governor, Mr Abdulrazaq Abdulrahman, not to demolish the Ile Arugbo (Old people’s home) built for them by the old Kwara political warhorse, late Mr Olusola Saraki, and his eventual demolition of the property last Thursday, what leapt into my subconscious was the old folklore, Ti nba je koko arugbo (if I ate the old woman’s cocoyam) notoriously told at moonlight in Yoruba-speaking homes of the pre-colonial, up to the 1970s era. A three-member travelling young boys, en-route…

Sunday, 05 January 2020 05:51

Pabambari prophecies - Tatalo Alamu

In Yoruba local parlance, pabambari is something that is so outlandish that it strains credulity and common sense all at once. As the New Year gets underway, Nigeria’s ever growing tribe of pabambari prophets have been busy at their game. One of them quite oblivious of the fact that a former top politician quietly expired at the last polls has predicted his imminent return to power. Not to be left out of the engaging nonsense, Baba Lekki had approached Okon for his New Year prophecy about the fortunes of the nation. “Ah baba, I been dey see dem cashless society…

Thursday, 02 January 2020 05:49

Seyi Makinde: My Man of the Year 2019 - Bola Bolawole

If I were to choose my “Man of the Year 2019” from abroad, it would unmistakeably have been US President Donald Trump. His many advertised shenanigans notwithstanding, Trump’s advocacy for the rights of Christians in an age where Christians, surprisingly and ironically, have become endangered species even in a world where many of the world power-nations profess Christianity, stands him tall and he has been the guardian angel and saving grace for Christians in many parts of the world, Nigeria inclusive. The American president might have been the nightmare of minority groups in the United States – with the Latinos…

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