The first world is ruled by ideas, by knowledge. Africa is ruled by religion. Nigeria, the giant of the continent, is the biggest exponent of the African predilection. The majority of Africans are almost evenly divided between Christianity and Islam. Many of them combine the practice of their traditional belief with the practice of Abrahamic Read More…
If the amalgam of violent criminals — kidnappers, bandits, armed robbers, hostage takers, terrorists, or whatever other name you call them — had their way, Governor Nasir el Rufai would have become history by now. It was Nasir who made national headlines after he confessed to realising that payment of ransom to abductors was futile. Read More…
This house is falling, so say many people about the Nigerian project. They point at many indices which signal the psychological dismemberment of the notion of nationhood from every direction of the Nigerian compass. Strife here, discord there, killings everywhere. Such situations propel men and women of goodwill to put heads together in an attempt Read More…
He who thinks he is leading and has no one following him is only taking a walk, say the elders. That is because he who walks alone is both in front and behind. In Nigeria, we used to have leaders worthy of the name, not because they were perfect beings but because their strengths outshone Read More…
Mohammed Babagana Monguno, Nigeria’s National Security Adviser, usually doesn’t hug the klieg lights. In the face of the unprecedented spate of kidnappings, armed banditry and other threats to society, however, the retired army general recently spoke in unmistakable terms which many analysts have interpreted as signalling the much desired no-nonsense phase of the war against Read More…
It is impossible to ignore Sheik Ahmad Gumi’s attempt to divide the Nigerian armed forces on religious lines. There are already so many discordant tunes at play on the national stage, but this undisguised ploy to destroy the only institution believed to still have a modicum of national cohesion is frightening. Gumi, a medical doctor, Read More…
I begin by clearing some cobwebs. The Fulani that many southern Nigerians knew and affectionately interacted with for decades are different from the variant of the tribe committing sundry violent crimes today. When the AK47-wielding herders came on the scene and motley ethnic groups were falling over each other to support them and lampoon their Read More…
If government decides to negotiate with bandits and pay them off with the hope that such an ill-advised move will stem the scourge of hostage-taking, rape, cold-blooded murders and wanton spread of terror and destruction of property, then we should probably, in penitence, visit the graves of executed armed robbers — including ‘Dr’ Ishola Oyenusi, Monday Read More…
“Girls are pearls, ladies are rubies, mothers are moulders, and women are wonderful”, says Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha of the female gender. Angela Dorothea Merkel (Nee Kasner) is all these and more. The most powerful woman in Europe who takes a glorious bow out of office soon has taught the world that you don’t have to Read More…
Democracy is good. Insecurity is bad. Democratisation of insecurity is totally undesirable. Those are the truths on which I stand today as I ruminate over the gradual transmogrification of the southwestern part of Nigeria from a peaceful centre of commerce and culture to a killing field where untold savagery has become a handmaiden of daily Read More…