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…
Tag: notes
They Don’t Make Them Like That Anymore!
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…
The No-Nonsense Phase
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…
Glamorisation of banditry
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…
When Ministry Leaders Fail
When one of your favourite pastors or leaders turns out to not be all you thought s/he was, it reminds you that God will expose us all in the end. Our secret lives matter. One of my favourite preachers, teachers and apologists, Ravi Zacharias was posthumously exposed last week as someone who took sexual advantage Read More…
Fixing the Fulani brand
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…
America and a Lost Africa
America lost Africa for four years under Donald Trump. The Joe Biden Administration can regain it. Essentially, the United States should resist the temptation to compartmentalise the world into neatly convenient areas of descending strategic interest to it. The Trump Administration was a past master at that game. Its ideological war with China privileged the Read More…
The God of the Impossible
TEXT: Luke 1:26-38; Matthew 12 :18-25 Six months after Elizabeth got pregnant, Mary, a young virgin from Nazareth was visited by Gabriel, the same angel that visited Zechariah. He gave her the news that she was going to be impregnated by the Holy Spirit. It was time for the Messiah to come – and God Read More…
Black Mamba Banditry
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…
Iron Woman of Berlin
“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…