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Opinion

Friday, 23 August 2024 04:48

Gathering storm clouds: Towards a totalitarian state? (1) - Jideofor Adibe

The #EndBadGovernance protest, which started on August 1, 2024 and formally ended on August 20, 2024 has continued to raise discussions across the country and beyond, especially within civil society groups. More than 1,400 people who took part in the protest have reportedly been arrested and detained by security agencies with indications that the government is still trying to hunt-down suspected sponsors of the protest. One of the important lessons from the protest is that the storm clouds seem to be really gathering towards a totalitarian state – a system characterized by a strong central rule that attempts to control…

Thursday, 22 August 2024 04:33

The Chinese can have Amosun too - Abimbola Adelakun

Following the seizure of the country’s assets based on the ruling of a French court, former Ogun governor Ibikunle Amosun, put out successive press releases clarifying his role in the embarrassing situation. The first, explaining his responsibility in the matter between Ogun State and two Chinese companies (which culminated in the seizure of three presidential aircraft), was just as self-indicting as the second, a rejoinder to economist Pat Utomi. Both succinctly summarise everything wrong with leadership in this part of the world and why we just never seem to move forward. It is no longer news that we have bad…

Wednesday, 21 August 2024 04:20

The madness in the National Assembly - Jibrin Ibrahim

The proof that madness is running wild in the National Assembly is that the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Abbas Tajudeen could dare to propose the contentious Counter Subversion Bill 2024. The proposed law sought, among other things, to impose a 10-year prison sentence or a fine of N5 million — or both— on Nigerians who refuse to recite the National Anthem. The bill was introduced following the May decision by President Bola Tinubu to revert to Nigeria’s old National Anthem, “Nigeria, We Hail Thee,” which was written by Lillian Jean Williams in 1959 and composed by Frances Berda.…

Tuesday, 20 August 2024 04:38

Tinubu/Ruto: End of 40-year anti-Awoist, neo-liberal economic globalist era - Justice Faloye

The global significance of the July 4th, 2024 election, in which the British Conservative Party suffered its greatest loss in its 190-year history, marks the symbolic death of the neo-liberal economic policies that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. President Ronald Reagan globalized over 40 years ago. Initially termed Neoconservative or neoclassical economics, these policies essentially negated the social contract between governments and the governed, shifting social responsibilities to free-market principles. This shift resulted in widespread poverty, sociopolitical destabilization, and the rise of money politics devoid of ideology worldwide. In response to the 1929 Great Depression, economists like John…

Monday, 19 August 2024 04:39

Olukayode Ariwoola: The baleful legacy of a lamentable tenure - Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

At the beginning of March 2020, Nigeria’s Supreme Court dismissed an application for the review of its seven-week old decision to judicially install Hope Uzodinma as the Governor of Imo State, citing as its main reason the need to preserve the authority and finality of decisions of the apex court. The court issued what appeared to be a principled defence of the finality of its judgments, declaring somewhat ostentatiously that once it had issued a decision, “it shall remain forever.” Olukayode Ariwoola, who delivered the judgment of the majority in the review was also a member of the original panel…

Sunday, 18 August 2024 04:34

Tinubu’s economic policies: Nightmarish cases from other countries - Farooq A. Kperogi

The President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration likes to psychologically anesthetize Nigerians who are grieving from the hurt of its economic policies (petrol price spike, electricity tariff hike, devaluation of the naira, etc.) by saying Nigerians are only undergoing transitory pains in the service of a forthcoming permanent prosperity. I have repeatedly called this an intentional lie. I have done so from the benefit of my knowledge of the outcomes of such policies in other countries, including in Nigeria from 1986 to 1993 when Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida implemented a Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) as dictated by the World Bank and the…

Sunday, 18 August 2024 04:30

Nigeria as shock-horror skits - Festus Adedayo

Skits literally crack ribs with laughter. The line separating fact from fiction or faction (fact and fiction) in skits is paper-thin. An instance was a skit cobbled together in Addis Ababa on January 11, 1976 at an OAU Extraordinary Session on Angola. This high-octane skit was documented by General Joe Nanven Garba in his Diplomatic Soldiering (1987). Garba was a Langtang-born Federal Commissioner for External Affairs under Murtala Muhammed and Olusegun Obasanjo. Self-titled ‘Field Marshal’ Idi Amin Dada, the notorious Ugandan despot, was then the OAU chairman. It was at that conference that General Muhammed delivered his famous and powerful…

Sunday, 18 August 2024 04:29

When the Lord outstretches His arm - Taiwo Akinola

The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them. Israel then shall dwell in safety alone: the fountain of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine; also his heavens shall drop down dew~ Deuteronomy 33:27-28. Introduction: It’s true to life that the enemy occasionally comes to our life-spaces to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10). But the good-news is that God has an alternative plan of greatness for His children. He called us out to be showpieces of His…

Sunday, 18 August 2024 04:28

Article of Faith: The coronation of Jesus - Femi Aribisala

They were expecting a visiting Head of State from another kingdom. The streets were lined with people. Schoolchildren were everywhere, holding and waving flags. The roads were completely cleared of all vehicles. Then suddenly there appeared a raggedy-looking man, riding a bicycle. “Get off the road,” they jeered. “Clear off. Stupid idiot, what are you doing there?” Little did they know the man they were abusing was the visiting Head of State. “Tell the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your King is coming to you, lowly, and sitting on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.’” (Matthew 21:5). Shepherd-King…

Tuesday, 13 August 2024 04:49

Nigeria is in the hole and Tinubu is still digging - Majeed Dahiru

Following the twin policy decisions to remove subsidy on petrol and the floatation of the naira against major world currencies by President Bola Tinubu upon assumption of office a little over a year ago, the predictable consequences of these IMF/World Bank induced neoliberal economic experimentations have exploded in the faces of its promoters. Tinubu’s widely advised but ill-informed policy decision to remove petrol subsidy and float the naira has seen the price of Nigeria’s most utilised energy product quadruple from less than N200 a litre to between N700 and N800 a litre, thereby setting off the worst inflation in the…

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Monday, 12 August 2024 04:41

In the matter of the yam eating division of the FCT High Court - Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

Two years after his inauguration in October 2021 as Chief Judge of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT High Court), Husseini Baba Yusuf, decided in November 2023 that it was time to indulge in a sport of institutional mating games with the newly installed Minister of the Federal Capital, Ezenwo Nyesom Wike. By a stroke of coincidence, both men are members of the Body of Benchers, which describes itself as “the legal body of practitioners of the highest distinction in the legal profession.” To initiate the mating, the Chief Judge relocated to the office of the Minister…

Sunday, 11 August 2024 04:45

Celebrating Oba Frederick Adegunle Aroloye, the departed Owa of Idanreland - Folu Olamiti

There were no signs that something ominous would happen that day. No foreboding of any sort. For me, Thursday, August 1, 2024, began like any other day. I woke up feeling healthy and sound, grateful to my Maker for allowing me to see the dawn of another day. However, to my shock, in the eerie hours of that Thursday, news filtered in that the highly revered paramount ruler of my town, Idanre in Ondo State, Oba Fredrick Adegunle Aroloye, Arubiefin IV, the Owa of Idanreland, had gone to join his ancestors. For 30 minutes, I was dumbstruck, bewildered, and speechless.…

Sunday, 11 August 2024 04:42

Zanga-Zanga and Tinubu’s crumbling Northern alliance - Farooq A. Kperogi

The10-day nationwide #EndBadGovernance protests that ended yesterday, known by the reduplicative compound “Zanga-Zanga” in Hausaphone northern Nigeria, have ruptured the coalition that President Bola Tinubu managed to build with a portion of the northern Nigerian Muslim political establishment since 2014, which put Muhammadu Buhari in power in 2015 and 2019 and him in 2023. But this Zanga-Zanga-inspired rupture also reveals the initial precarity and fragility of the strange-bedfellows coalition. Buhari and Tinubu were previously fierce political adversaries who distrusted each other’s motives and undermined each other. Their alliance was more accurately a political scaffold that papered over their contradictions for…

Sunday, 11 August 2024 04:41

The python and Tinubu-North’s matrimony - Festus Adedayo

Undoubtedly, the political matrimony between President Bola Tinubu and Northern Nigeria is at Talaq stage. Talaq is the Islamic unilateral repudiation of a marital union. There are no sobs, no wails. No dabbing of the face with a handkerchief. But, the dusts provoked by the matrimonial dislocation hang notoriously in the sky. Even bystanders miles away can see them. The marriage is only 15 months old but the couple’s patience for each other is rope-thin. As our elders say, right in the presence of the kolanut seller, irreverent worms slide inside his pods. A matrimony celebrated with pomp and ceremony…

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