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Opinion

Monday, 06 June 2016 02:52

Anomie, rage and redemptive suffering

Jideofor Adibe It was Emile Durkheim, the French sociologist and philosopher who coined the term ‘anomie’ to refer to a situation where the conditions for happiness are absent. Our own Wole Soyinka was to further popularize the word in his second (and last novel), A Season of Anomie (1973). News streaming from various media outlets suggest that we may be indeed facing a season of anomie as things continue to get from bad to worse on the things we all value or are generally believed to be indicators of well-being: electricity generation dropped to 1400 megawatts from 5000 megawatts in…

Sunday, 05 June 2016 01:22

Muhammad Ali, the greatest (1942-2016)

Reuben Abati Muhammad Ali, who died late Friday evening aged 74, was one of the greatest icons of the 20th century, one of the world’s greatest boxers of all time, and certainly in his time, and during the era that he dominated the ring, the greatest among his contemporaries, the inimitable master of his game. The polyvalent nature of his talent: athlete, poet, civil rights campaigner, radical, gadfly, celebrity, philosopher, motivator and role model has ensured that there can never be anyone else like him. Muhammad Ali was special in his art, in his grace, and in his combination of…

Saturday, 04 June 2016 02:23

After the first quarter of the game, Team Buhari is behind

Benjamin Obiajulu Aduba President Muhammadu Buhari completed his first year in office a few days ago. In sports parlance this would be the end of the first quarter of a 4-quarter game. At this juncture he is behind. Before we explore how and why he is behind we need to express some inalienable truths: Nigeria is a country of over 100 million fractious people who fight over bread and butter issues, over religion, and over tribe and culture. She is a factitious nation nearly impossible to govern. Nigeria cannot be turned around on a pin. In this context a year…

Friday, 03 June 2016 08:04

Restructure Nigeria, to save it

Reuben Abati No one should be surprised by the loud and widespread support that has attended the latest call by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar that Nigeria needs to be restructured. In his words, “our current structure and the practices it has encouraged have been a major impediment to the economic and political development of our country. In short, it has not served Nigeria well, and at the risk of reproach it has not served my part of the country, the North, well. The call for restructuring is even more relevant today in the light of the governance and economic…

Friday, 03 June 2016 02:32

Buhari’s speech: A nut bereft of kernel

Chuks Iloegbunam Two things leap disagreeably out of President Muhammadu Buhari’s first-year-in-office anniversary speech of May 29, 2016. In the broadcast’s 2624 words, not once did he mention the words Fulani herdsmen, let alone address the real and present danger they constitute to Nigeria’s continued existence as one political entity. Was this unfortunate omission because he is himself of the Fulani ethnic group? Or was it because he considers a final stop to have been put to the herdsmen’s murderous rampaging throughout the country? Or is it because the destructive army is a law unto itself, above censure and sanction?…

Thursday, 02 June 2016 01:26

Far from the madding cows

Lekan Alabi On Thursday, May 19, 2016, it was 20 years when my article (satire) of the above title was published in major Nigerian newspapers – for ease of reference, the Sunday Times issue of May 19, 1996. I wrote the satire in the heady days of Nigeria’s military dictator, the late General Sani Abacha, whose regime tortured Nigerians most, and the motivation for the article was the ravaging Mad Cow Disease Bovine Spongriform Encephalopathy (BSE) of that time. In the article, I wrote, inter alia, “Oftentimes, during the long treks in search of food, our cows act as ‘mediators’…

Wednesday, 01 June 2016 01:40

The worst government in the history of Nigeria

Femi Aribisala It is amusing, if not very disturbing, to see the number of people the Buhari administration has brought out of the woodwork to sing its praises on this its one-year anniversary. Having arrested key spokespersons of the opposition, intimidated the press into silence, threatened the judiciary, and even arrested its non-politician critics, such as Olu Adegboruwa, on trumped up charges, the government has become confident that it has a free pass to feed Nigerians with lies about its woeful performance in office. Having won a “famous” election by telling Nigerians a tissue of lies which it then repudiated…

Tuesday, 31 May 2016 00:18

President Buhari's Federal Excuses Council

Reno Omokri On January 22, 2016, I tweeted a joke which went viral. I had said that at meetings of the Federal Executive Council, the minister of information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, would address members and say 'turn to your neighbour and say, neighbour have you blamed Jonathan today'! Yes, it was a joke, but like most good jokes, it had and still has a basis in reality! The President and his ministers appear ill prepared for office and the evidence of this is their inability to take responsibility for the situation of things in Nigeria. Was it not John Burroughs…

Monday, 30 May 2016 01:48

Buhari, change and challenge of history

Chido Nwangwu Citizens of Africa’s most influential country of 183 million will agree with me that Nigeria’s problems are compounded by the extraordinary scale of outright theft of oil and gas money by government officials, corporations, and small mercenary/militant groups. Remarkably, mainly colorful and inflated accounting books were kept by these conniving gangs; full of financial shenanigans and misleading numbers but very small money and whole scale environmental destruction of the Niger Delta and parts of the south-east. To understand some of the factors which impacted the first year and will affect this second year of Nigeria's democratically-elected President (2015),…

Saturday, 28 May 2016 02:27

Ask for your balance, not change!

Olusegun Adeniyi A man had just concluded his transaction at a market in Abuja, paid for the consumables he bought at scandalously high prices and was expecting his change. Sensing that the seller who collected his money was not paying attention, he repeated: I said you should give me my change. At that point, the man looked at him and replied: I heard you the first time but let me offer you one piece of advice: In this market, you ask for the balance of your money, not change. We dont want to hear that word again in this market.…

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Friday, 27 May 2016 02:02

Tomato scarcity as metaphor

Reuben Abati One of the major news items in circulation has been the scarcity of tomato. Incidentally, Nigeria is (was) the 14th largest producer of tomato in the world and the second largest producer in Africa, after Egypt, but our country hardly produces enough to meet the local demand of about 2.3 million tonnes, and lacks the capacity to ensure an effective storage or value chain processing of what is produced. Out of the 1.8 million tonnes that the country produces annually, 900, 000 tonnes are left to rot and waste. Meanwhile, tomato-processing companies in the country operate below capacity…

Thursday, 26 May 2016 01:09

Expecting the unexpected in America

Christopher R. Hill When the United States’ new president gets down to work in January 2017, some obvious foreign-policy issues will already be waiting – some more patiently than others. Some of these will be perennial problems in need of no introduction: North Korea and its nuclear ambitions, China and its global ambitions, Russia and its spiteful ambitions, and of course, the Middle East and its dysfunctional ambitions. Often, however, the crises that greet a new president are not the ones anyone expects. When George W. Bush took office in 2001, he expected to increase defense spending, deploy an anti-missile…

Wednesday, 25 May 2016 01:27

Unraveling of the monumental fraud in Petrol price hike

Farooq Kperogi When I wrote an impassioned article last week about the eye-watering executive extortion of the masses that the recent unwelcome surge in petrol prices represented, I wasn't under the illusion that my article would inflame the same kind of passions that my 2012 article titled 'Fuel Subsidy Removal: Time to Occupy Nigeria' did. The 2012 article provoked and galvanised the popular mass insurrection that forced the Goodluck Jonathan administration to lower petrol prices. I knew it would be different this year. As I pointed out, "[I] doubt that my appeal will resonate with many people this time around;…

Tuesday, 24 May 2016 00:40

The curious case of the Nigerian Labour Movement

Simbo Olorunfemi Issues of corporate governance and accountability should apply to not only the institutions of government but the non-governmental sector. What could be wrong with the Labour being the standard bearer, setting the pace when it comes to the question of accountability? Perhaps, the maxim – Ex turpi causa non oritur action applies here. Is it not fair that he who comes to equity should, at least, come with clean hands? Can the NLC start by publishing its annual Report and Accounts, so we can better understand how it functions? Often, we find ourselves bemoaning the collapse of our…

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