Politics is like Jujitsu, the Japanese martial art that employs holds, throws, and paralysing blows to subdue an opponent. If your opponent is big and throws his weight around, you skilfully allow him to make a move and use his weight to trip him; his strength thus becomes his weakness. All that is on display Read More…
My heart bleeds each time I encounter long petrol queues which have become a permanent fixture of city landscapes in Nigeria. Petrol scarcity has become so endemic that we are no longer embarrassed by the scandalous petrol queues. All over the country, lives have been lost, millions of man-hours wasted and citizens’ health negatively impacted Read More…
“There is always enough light for one who wishes to see.” -Hazrat Imam Ali (AS) The forthcoming presidential elections will be determined, to a large extent, by the votes of the youth. There has been so much talk about how each succeeding generation in the last 62 years has betrayed the Nigerian project and bequeathed Read More…
“What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived; it is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead”. — Nelson Mandela When Cardinal Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger was elected the 265th Pope on 19 April 2005, he was the Read More…
The rumour mill was abuzz recently with news that Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike and his four other colleagues who constitute the G5 group of dissenting governors in the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP), had concluded negotiations with the candidate of the rival All Progressives Congress (APC) with a view to campaigning for the APC in Read More…
As Qatar 2022 kicked off, Arabophobiacs went on overdrive with unsavoury stories about the host country. The stories ranged from deaths recorded during the construction of the various facilities to ‘human rights’ (read: gay rights) concerns. Those who thought nothing good could come out of that region were roundly disappointed in the end. Qatar gave Read More…
There are many ways to skin a cat. No one is more aware of this than the Nigerian politician. If power seekers devote 10 per cent of the time they spend meticulously planning how to grab power — if they devote just a tiny slice of that time to governance when they are eventually declared Read More…
When strange things happen repeatedly and the abnormal begins to wear the toga of normalcy, it is time to raise the alarm. Aside from informing, educating, and entertaining us, the media also help society set its agenda and fulfil a much-needed surveillance function to keep society inviolate. In our politics, the lines between fiction and Read More…
For some inexplicable reason, the first thought that came to my mind when I saw the title of Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi’s memoirs, “The Road Never Forgets”, was a quick throwback to Wole Soyinka’s world-acclaimed play,“The Road”. The word, road, has had a loaded meaning for me on various metaphorical levels since I acted in a Read More…
Away from the grandiose promises of politicians in these testy times of electoral campaigns in the midst of insecurity, let’s just pause for a moment and consider how parts of our country came to look like Libya where warlords determine life expectancy. I am not aware that any of the leading presidential candidates has shown Read More…
