What is the common denominator between the attempted electoral coup in Adamawa State and the recent lynching of a final year student of Obafemi Awolowo University? Impunity! We have, over the years, got so used to getting away with bad behaviour that we now strive to outdo whatever malfeasance is considered the current champion in Read More…
I have always been fascinated by the worldview and insights of old people— fellow mortals who have trodden these ever changing paths for so long that the story of their lives is the story of an era. I am doubly enthralled when such old people have impacted their societies and LIVED FOR SOMETHING. In a Read More…
AS an aspirant in 2022, the President of the Nigeria Bar Association, NBA, Yakubu Chonoko Maikyau, made a pilgrimage to Keffi, Nasarawa State. He needed the blessings of one of the most consummate and influential law professors the country has ever produced: Onje Gye-Wado. The latter from 1999, was for four years, Deputy Governor of Read More…
Our values as a people have broken down. There is no better place to witness the madness than social media where apparent cowards hide behind digital anonymity to cast aspersions on the integrity of their betters. It was sad seeing the kind of insults some misguided elements were flinging at Prof Wole Soyinka over his Read More…
Part 1 of Keith Hart’s Self in the World is entitled Ancestors. It is divided into three chapters – Writing the Self: A Genealogy, Anthropology’s Forgotten Founders and The Anti-Colonial Intellectuals: Thinking New Worlds. The men he profiles here are his heroes (where are the women?). In their various fields, these personalities are world-renowned for Read More…
In the rascally days of the military, when generals were wedded to coups, a military officer arose in their ranks called Oladipo Donaldson Oyeyinka Diya. He was unknown to the public until January 1984 when the coup plotters led by General Muhammadu Buhari, who had overthrown the Shagari administration, announced him as the Military Governor Read More…
When I ask if Nigerians are countable, I am by no means suggesting that the citizens of Nigeria have suddenly become too many to be counted, nor am I treating the word, Nigerians, as an uncountable noun such as water or sand. Rather, my question is focussed on whether, given the history of headcount exercises Read More…
Tribalism is to Africa what racism is to the West. It is the African version of black-on-black violence, except that ours is unmatched in the crudity of the implements of violence and the tenacity with which we insist on handing over the chalice of hate to the coming generation. Some people are not content with Read More…
THE International Criminal Court, ICC, on March 17, 2023 added a comic dimension to the tragic war in Ukraine by issuing warrants of arrest for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova. The ICC, a body notorious for the persecution of people in the bad books of the European Union, EU, Read More…
Nigerians have the next 70 days to survive a regime that has chastised them with whips and is promising to further chastise them with scorpions. Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, last week not only renewed the Buhari regime’s threat to increase Nigerians heavy burden by piling far higher fuel prices, Read More…
