SMART Europeans. After building their wealth from resources taken from the colonies, including gold, diamond, rubber, cocoa, cotton and human beings, they decreed that the only way to prosperity is through ‘market forces’. They taught gullible Africans that only the perfect market delivers, while state intervention stagnates. They are never in short supply of maladjusted African Read More…
Owei Lakemfa
Ruto and Falana: Brother for enslavement and brother for liberation
His Excellency William Ruto, Kenya’s newly minted President, prides himself as the Hustler-in-Chief of the country. He says he is from the “Hustler Nation” – the informal economy where he used to sell chickens for survival. However, having a dog-eat-dog street ideology as he claims, does not preclude a sense of basic human decency. It is Read More…
The National Industrial Court should not be for hire
Once the Muhammadu Buhari government had failed to get striking lecturers in our public universities back to class, I knew it would head for the National Industrial Court, NIC, shopping for an injunction. Tragically that is what governments in the country and rich employers have turned the NIC into: a fishing pond for injunctions against Read More…
Funerals of royalty and disloyalty, songs of defeat and victory
Funerals, official and unofficial, were held in parts of the world this Monday, September 19 to eternally send off Queen Elizabeth II. The pre-funeral ceremonies had included the Queen’s coffin which some mischievous people claimed was empty, lying in state in Scotland and London with some mourners spending a whole day queuing to view it. Read More…
Bagauda Kaltho was not a terrorist
Mahdi Shehu, one of the supporters of the bloodthirsty Abacha military regime, runs around today in the outfit of a ‘human rights activist’. I don’t have any problem with that; anybody can call himself anything he wants. He trashes the Buhari presidency when he has the opportunity. As a Nigerian citizen, he has a right Read More…
Elizabeth II to Charles III: The sun continues setting on England
As a child growing up on Lagos Island, I frequently walked through the Race Course to school. The premises of the old House of Representatives building was in that complex. Sitting outside in a regal flowing gown was the huge bronze statue of Queen Elizabeth II. Sculptured by Nigerian artist, Ben Chukwukadibia Enwonwu, it was Read More…
Broken truths and broken ribs: Kukah’s forensic examination of Nigeria
The year 2018 was one of self-examination for Nigeria. President Muhammadu Buhari who flew in on the wings of change had been in power for three years and the situation had simply become far worse. The inflation rate when he came in was 9.01 per cent, shooting up to 15.68 per cent the following year, Read More…
Small but mighty Trinidad and Tobago freed after 464 years
IT was like a seamless gathering. Diplomats and academics. Practitioners of two assertive professions: lawyers and journalists. Cultural ambassadors and traditional chiefs. It was evening in Abuja on Monday, August 22, 2022. We were gathered for the pre-independence 60th anniversary of Trinidad and Tobago, T&T which comes up on August 31. The representative of the Read More…
When a government runs out of ideas
THE news went around. The Federal Government and striking lecturers in the country’s public universities organised under the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, were meeting on Tuesday, August 16, 2022. Not a few hoped that the six-month strike by the lecturers would be resolved. But the outcome was as disappointing as the cavalier way Read More…
Having Amnesty International as lunch in Ukraine
Amnesty International, which is 61 years, having been established in 1961, is up for lunch in angry Ukraine. If you must know, its ‘sins’ are very grave. Those who run the West assume they have Amnesty eating out of their hands. On the other hand, those outside the Western ruling class circles like India, China Read More…