On August 27, 1985, he was taken out of Dodan Barracks, the then seat of government, in Ikoyi, Lagos, by those who had overthrown him in what was popularly called a palace coup. President Muhammadu Buhari was not to return to a place that was his abode for 20 months, and from where he administered Read More…
Following the rather ‘impromptu’ manner of their hero’s declaration of interest in the presidency shortly after informing President Buhari of his intention, Bola Tinubu’s supporters resorted to the old game of stealing the identities, voices and integrity of well regarded men of honour, purporting them to have endorsed Tinubu’s aspiration. The ‘Jankara’ ambush started when Read More…
A wagging tail is usually found at the rear end of an excited dog, but a wagging dog in front of a static tail? Only in Nigeria, where the barrack mentality of military dictatorship has been smuggled into the unitary constitution to reduce the people to subjects and their elected local leaders to paper tigers. Read More…
Every end leads to a new beginning which itself contains the seeds of another end. The continuum of life is riddled with ends and beginnings. Depending on where our paths cross or where our sensibilities are rattled or some momentous occurrence jolts us out of our accustomed lethargy, a beginning or end or anywhere in-between Read More…
Every state in Nigeria should have its own ‘Amotekun’. That ought to be clear now to anyone desirous of ending the carnage by an assortment of violent gangs in the northern states. Before the creation of Amotekun, bandits and kidnappers were running riot in the Southwest, killing people at will and collecting ransom from the Read More…
Mohammed Inuwa Wushishi was the first Nigerian army general to make a lasting positive impression on me. Taciturn, sensitive and perhaps too considerate in interpersonal relations, Wushishi struck me as a man thrust into prominence by fate but who was more comfortable operating under the radar, away from klieg lights. I was part of a Read More…
As Obafemi Awolowo University (Great Ife) marks its 60th birthday, I cast a wistful look at those best years of our lives when greying men were boys and grandmas were delectable maidens. I look back with fondness. “To look backward for a while”, says Margaret Barber, “is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and Read More…
BOLA AHMED TINUBU is a redoubtable politician and one of the most dexterous political acrobats in the circus called Nigerian politics. Like him or loathe him, you deceive yourself if you say he is not consequential in determining who becomes Nigeria’s next president in 2023. Right now, Tinubu is one of the issues in Nigerian Read More…
WHEN BASHORUN JK RANDLE (scion of the illustrious Randle family of Lagos) handed over the property of his late aunt, Alhaja Munirat Muhammed, at 14A Bashorun Street, Ikoyi, to the Muslim community through the Lagos Central Mosque, many people who did not understand the symbiotic relationship between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria’s southwest, were confounded. Read More…
Yesterday, I cried. Today, the stream of tears continues to run down from my eyes and wet my shirt. Between the tears and cries, I cynically smiled as I gazed into this life, staring at nothing, but running through the beautiful memories we shared in my early American years. In 1989 was a six-month-old young Read More…