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Opinion

Friday, 07 April 2017 03:10

Why it is in India’s interest to fight Afrophobia - Jideofor Adibe

The recent racist attack against some Nigerians in India has once again opened up important conversations about xenophobia and racism in Ghandi’s country as the country strives to play more important roles in global affairs with its increasing economic prosperity. Economic affluence, like an osmotic process, attracts people from weaker areas who come in search of all forms of self-improvement. The trigger for the recent wave of Afrophobia in the country is that a boy died of suspected drug overdose in Greater Noida, a satellite town off the Indian capital. Police detained five Nigerians after the boy’s parents accused them…

Wednesday, 05 April 2017 14:22

Old truth and the Bamaiyi tales - Dare Babarinsa

General Ishaya Bamaiyi, one of the closest collaborators to the late dictator, General Sani Abacha, has often benefitted from profitable mendacity. I remember him now on the night of June 9, 1996 when he came as the head of the Federal Military Government delegation to console the family of Kudirat, the brave wife of Chief Moshood Abiola. In the morning of that day, Kudirat was driving to Lagos when her car was accosted in front of the 7up Bottling Company factory in Ikeja. She was gunned down in broad daylight. The leader of the assassination team was later to allege…

Tuesday, 04 April 2017 09:02

Dino Melaye: The making of a brand - Reuben Abati

It is a sign of the times, and a tragedy that the most popular Senator in the Nigerian National Assembly at this moment is not the person who has moved the most impactful motion, not a lawmaker who has proposed a thought-provoking bill, and certainly not any Senator who has given any impressive speech debating a matter of national importance. What we get, most of the time, in place of legislative responsibility, prudence, accountability and distinction is burlesque, farce, Japanese-styled Bungaku-Bunraku enactments, a dose of medieval commedia d’ell arte and an enormous supply of Yoruba Alarinjo with a bit of…

Monday, 03 April 2017 15:35

Melaye and the mafia dons - Lasisi Olagunju

The two are very obviously street boys. One was asked to suggest solutions to the problems of the country. His answer was that “all our leaders should be given mass burial.” Another sat on a bus and wished the whole world perished that moment so that his own suffering would end. The one who wanted mass burial for the leaders was sure that they were the sole problem of Nigeria. He did not tell how he would bury, in a mass grave, leaders who are not dead and who are not ready to die soon. The two boys are in…

Sunday, 02 April 2017 17:25

Instead of corruption, let’s fight stupidity - Abraham Ogbodo

I signed off rudely for two weeks without any prior notice. I am sorry. I was protesting the imperviousness of the Nigerian State and its people. The protest was triggered off by a query by one lousy fellow who accused journalists, including me, of not writing adequately about the ills of society. When I asked him to state just one societal ill that had not been adequately reported in the media, he said: “why haven’t the media reported how much that was spent on keeping President Muhammadu Buhari in a London hospital for 50 days?” This was before Alhaji Lai…

Sunday, 02 April 2017 02:51

Buhari’s govt, worst in Nigeria - Asari Dokubo

In this interview with Ovie Okpare, leader of Niger Delta Peoples Volunteer Force, Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, speaks on the Niger Delta crisis and other national issuesQ. Many Nigerians have criticised you for investing in other countries when you could have done that in the Niger Delta.Ans: I don’t believe in Nigeria. In December 2013, I was arrested based on the allegation that I was the leader of Boko Haram. How is Nigeria faring now under the All Progressives Congress. The fact that the President holds the people in so much disdain and cannot speak with the people who are supposed to…

Saturday, 01 April 2017 17:50

The false binary between Saraki and Buhari - Farooq Kperogi

What’s all these annoyingly false Manichean binaries people are erecting between an “evil” National Assembly and a “benign” Aso Rock! Both Aso Rock and the National Assembly are equally evil, corrupt, obtuse, and inept. Saraki is a cold, calculating, corrupt conman who destroys everything that comes in his way and Buhari is a self-centered, insensitive, naïve, and clueless man who has no business being president. The politics and choices of both men conspire to drag the nation to the pit.Saraki’s astonishingly gargantuan corruption is matched by Buhari’s unparalleled profligacy. We have a supposedly “frugal” president whose first priority upon being…

Friday, 31 March 2017 02:46

The Buhari-Senate face-off - Ibrahim Sanyi-Sanyi

I use to wonder why the Executive-Legislature relationship that was relatively cordial when Professor Yemi Osinbajo was Acting President suddenly turned belligerent immediately President Muhammadu Buhari came back. I still can't pin this dysfunctional relation to anything or anyone. However, my instinct is telling me there are loads of shadows lurking around the nucleus of power that is responsible for the destructive conflicts for selfish and unpatriotic ends. That aside, the Senate probe on grass cutting contracts in IDP camps provided the goldmine this current regime failed to seize and climb the stellar moral grounds relating to zero tolerance on…

Thursday, 30 March 2017 14:25

Between Nigeria and Amnesty International - Jideofor Adibe

A group of protesters recently barricaded Abuja office of Amnesty International (AI) and asked the international organisation to quit Nigeria within 24 hours. One Melvin Ejeh, said to be Executive Director of Global Peace and Rescue Initiative, (GOPRI) and who spoke on behalf of the protesters reportedly warned that the group would lead other Nigerians on a five-day Occupy Amnesty International protest if the organisation failed to quit Nigeria “within 24 hours”. He was quoted as saying: “Let us warn at this point that there will be no interval of respite if AI failed to leave Nigeria at the end…

Thursday, 30 March 2017 02:30

Buhari owns the heart, Saraki and others own the valves - Ademola Bamidele Olateju

I slept early and woke up 2:34 am ET. I decided to call two sources to know what was happening on ground in Nigeria. With each sentence we exchanged, I grew more despondent. I saw all these happening over a year ago when I wrote; "Buhari Always Needs An Idiagbon." I think intensely about Nigeria, it probably is the reason why everything I predict happens. Saraki is effectively an Iroko. An Iroko that takes daily sacrifice. Did I not say he is Buhari's first mistake? Now we know, given the sheer ennui of the Nigerian state. Saraki knows the game.…

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Wednesday, 29 March 2017 02:11

To Dino's people: This is not Amodi - Pius Adesanmi

Thanks to Bamidele Ademola-Olateju for letting me in on Dino’s latest video. It is obvious he crossed the market on his way to the office to record the video. We can only appeal to his people to take care of their son. What they see is amodi, what outsiders see is totally different. To those Kogi West folks grumbling and squirming, stop agonizing and organize. No Senator has ever been recalled in Nigeria since 1,999 because the procedure is cumbersome and a Senator has enough stolen money to scuttle the process. In the case of Kogi West, Saraki will also…

Tuesday, 28 March 2017 13:09

Bola Tinubu and the Fulani Oligarchs - Charles Ogbu

The Fulani don't share power. They never did. They never will. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a political illiterate. When it comes to political power, the Fulani keep neither friends nor Allies. They only use you once they believe you can serve a particular purpose for them and once they achieve that purpose, they waste no time making sure you will never be in a position to help any other person or group achieve the same purpose you just helped them achieve. We may think them uneducated but trust me when I say they are sophisticated in the ways of…

Tuesday, 28 March 2017 02:30

Nigeria’s angry children of suicide - Reuben Abati

I once wrote about Nigeria’s “children of anger”, but the country seems to have progressed from anger to clinical depression, resulting in a rise not merely in social aggressiveness, but a determination by certain individuals to escape from it all. The percentage of Nigerians seeking escape through suicide nonetheless remains small relative to the size of the population, but the sharp increase in the number and frequency of reported suicides in the last two years alone speaks to a certain dysfunctionality requiring closer inquiry. Suicide is an act of self-destruction, an escape from the self, an act of self-defeat. Whether…

Monday, 27 March 2017 17:16

Memories of midnight: Sad, so sad! - Simon Kolawole

It was midnight, not so long ago, when I woke up, used the toilet and returned to my bed to continue from where I stopped. For almost an hour, I closed my eyes in vain. I could neither induce nor seduce sleep. I was rolling from one end of the bed to the other, like a footballer faking injury. I decided to go into my study, to prove to sleep that I could use the time for something else. My study is a junkyard. I tip-toed through the wreckage of books, old newspapers and all sort, and aimed for a…

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