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Opinion

Sunday, 03 December 2023 04:42

Article of faith: Destroying evil foundations - Femi Aribisala

We all know God is love and loving. His love for the redeemed is everlasting. Nevertheless, it is also imperative to know that God can be terrible. God does things that are terrible and awesome. That is why Moses says He is “fearful in praises.” (Exodus 15:11). The writer of Hebrews warns: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Hebrews 10:31). Paul says: “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.” (2 Corinthians 5:11). Most Christians see God in one-dimension. We see Him as a goody-goody God. But God Himself warns…

Friday, 01 December 2023 04:46

Putin seems to be winning the war in Ukraine—for now - The Economist

For the first time since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24th 2022, he looks as if he could win. Russia’s president has put his country on a war footing and strengthened his grip on power. He has procured military supplies abroad and is helping turn the global south against America. Crucially, he is undermining the conviction in the West that Ukraine can—and must—emerge from the war as a thriving European democracy. The West could do a lot more to frustrate Putin. If it chose, it could deploy industrial and financial resources that dwarf Russia’s. However, fatalism, complacency and a…

Friday, 01 December 2023 04:43

Weah’s new jersey for a troubled continent - Azu Ishiekwene

Liberia and Sierra Leone have a common historical legacy and often tend to imitate each other in war and peace. But events in the last two weeks suggest that while Liberia may be turning a new, refreshing page, Sierra Leone remains trapped in its troubled past. First, the good news from Liberia, whose capital, Monrovia, was named in honour of America’s fifth president, James Monroe. After one six-year term, President George Weah announced that he was done, even before Liberia’s electoral commission finished counting the votes in the November 17 run-off elections. The football legend didn’t wait for the referee’s…

Tuesday, 28 November 2023 04:41

Inflation destroys rotten governments - Harold James

The recent worldwide surge of inflation is forcing political change, reminding us how efficiently this old economic problem can topple governments. In democracies, election outcomes often hinge on price developments. But the effect on autocracies is no less pronounced, because inflation erodes the implicit social compact on which they base their authority. In Argentina, the election of a radical self-styled anarcho-capitalist, Javier Milei, as president can be understood as the immediate consequence of the incumbent Peronist regime’s inability to deal with inflation, which has hit an annualized rate of 143%. Milei’s most important campaign promise was to restore price stability…

Monday, 27 November 2023 04:39

What happens when the super rich are this selfish? - Guido Alfani

Throughout much of the Western world’s history, the wealthiest have been viewed in their communities as a potentially unfavorable presence, and they have attempted to allay this sentiment by using their riches to support their societies in times of crises like plagues, famines or wars. This symbiotic relationship no longer exists. Today’s rich, their wealth largely preserved through the Great Recession and the Covid-19 pandemic, have opposed reforms aimed at tapping their resources to fund mitigation policies of all kinds. This is a historically exceptional development. Helping foot the bill of major crises has long been the main social function…

Sunday, 26 November 2023 04:48

Dangote, BUA’s destructive trade war - Festus Adedayo

Yes, it is a season of claims and counter-claims. Yet, cost of living is hitting the roof. Hunger is pelting the bellies of both the righteous and the infidel. Living life is almost becoming a rocket science. Charles Soludo, luxuriating in public acclamation of “one of the most cerebral Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governors,” is in his season of pontificating. Last week, he offered an escapist defence of the Nigerian establishment which citizens’ hunger could not penetrate. Soludo’s latest proffer for the people’s hunger is that the current government met a dead economy; a dead horse was his exact…

Sunday, 26 November 2023 04:46

Walking and working in the ability of the Holy Spirit - Taiwo Akinola

For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance; as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your sake ~ 1 Thessalonians 1:5. Introduction The Holy Spirit is the very presence of God actively working in His people today. Nothing moves except as He directs; nothing happens except as He permits; and nothing will be except as He allows. Indeed, every day can be exciting for the Christian who intimately knows the reality of being filled with the Holy Spirit, lives constantly…

Sunday, 26 November 2023 04:45

Article of faith: Forgiving God (1) - Femi Aribisala

Forgiveness is a cardinal principle of the Christian faith. I dare say, one of the ways we can tell that we are children of God is if we readily forgive those who offend us. Inevitably, people will often offend us in this world of sin, even as we often offend others. But Jesus makes our readiness to forgive offenders a veritable passport into the kingdom of God. He says: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” (Matthew 5:7). “If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men…

Saturday, 25 November 2023 04:48

Fear of revolution is here — Uzor Maxim Uzoatu

The people who used to shout most about the need for a revolution to happen in Nigeria are now the blokes making many arguments against revolution. The former activists and campaigners for radical change are now singing a new song on the need to give democracy a chance. As almost everybody knows all over the planet, things always change only to remain the same in good old Nigeria. These are arguably the hardest times for ordinary hardworking Nigerians throughout the history of the benighted country. People can hardly make ends meet, and stories are being bandied about how the former…

Friday, 24 November 2023 04:44

Letter to rich Nigerians: Why the poor are mad - Azu Ishiekwene

It’s not only the poor that are mad, if you get my drift. Even folks who once thought of themselves as middle class, that is, neither wealthy nor poor, are in maddening distress. They can hardly believe how life has come to be what it is today. Perhaps the most frequently asked question is: how did we get here? My mother used to pray that things should never be difficult for her and for those who could help in a time of need. Now, both the needy and the helper are in distress. When you have to think twice to…

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Wednesday, 22 November 2023 04:44

Why mainstream Economics got inflation wrong - James K. Galbraith

In his November 7, 2023 New York Times newsletter, the economist Paul Krugman asks a good, albeit belated, question: Why did so many economists get the inflation outlook wrong? After all, the near-consensus among mainstream economists in recent years was that inflation would persist – and even accelerate – and that this justified substantial interest-rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve. Yet the quasi-inflation of 2021-22 proved transitory. Krugman poses his question with impeccable diplomacy, professing “respect” for three authors of a September 2022 paper published by the Brookings Institution (which was then promoted by Harvard University’s Jason Furman) projecting…

Tuesday, 21 November 2023 04:31

Judicial mercenarism - Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

In July 1977, the Organisation of African Unity adopted a Convention for the Elimination of Mercenarism in Africa. It offered a definition of a mercenary to include someone who “is motivated to take part in hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and in fact is promised by or on behalf of a party to the conflict material compensation.” The drafters of the Convention for the Elimination of Mercenarism in Africa probably did not foresee that it would encompass the conduct of judges. Yet, at the beginning of this month, the immediate past president of the Nigerian Bar Association…

Monday, 20 November 2023 04:33

The decadent West has come face to face with the future - and the end of its dominance - Daniel Hannan

We in the West like to imagine that liberal democracy spread because others were attracted by its intrinsic merits. It didn’t. It spread through military victories – a fact that the rest of the world has not forgotten. Only now, perhaps, are we learning how limited its appeal is. Several countries which we thought were in our camp turned out to be pro-Western only contingently and transactionally. The moment they saw our power waning, they began to look elsewhere. We see the shift in the reluctance of states beyond Europe, the Anglosphere and a handful of East Asian democracies to…

Sunday, 19 November 2023 04:56

Lamentations of Nuhu Ribadu - Festus Adedayo

National Security Adviser, (NSA) Nuhu Ribadu, always wears a permanent visor of one who needs to be pitied. Last Monday, however, he advertised far more pity with his pithy speech. The venue was the Chief of Defence Intelligence 2023 Annual Conference in Abuja. His white babanriga fluffing angelically and struggling to cling to his lean frame, Ribadu suddenly skidded off the runway of his prepared speech and went ad-lib. At the juncture where he needed to talk about the “serious budgetary constraints” which he said the present government was facing, Ribadu could not contain what he had stomached before now.…

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