“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…
Tag: Wole Olaoye
Soccer’s Greatest? It’s Pele!
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…
How To Out-Rig Your Opponents
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…
Favoured by benevolent gods…
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…
When Death Stalks…
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…
Enter the Bulldogs
As political campaigns for the 2023 presidential elections gather steam, the various parties have started unveiling their programmes. They are promising to take Nigerians to the moon and back. You have to give it to the Nigerian politicians: They know how to re-say the same thing others have said in the past and still appear Read More…
Thieving Frenzy and Debt Slavery
At the rate Nigeria’s patrimony is being pillaged by known and unknown but well connected rats, the Guinness Book of Records will have to be updated to recognise our frog leap to primacy in thievery. Imagine, the Antwerp diamond heist used to be considered one of the largest robberies in history in which loose diamonds, Read More…
Not A Poisoned Chalice
Some people think that the next president of Nigeria will inherit a poisoned chalice because he (yes, he) will find out that what he thought was a throne was but a marble-coated trap programmed to de-ball. If the economic situation is as bad as many experts see it, why are so many people hell-bent on Read More…
Borrowing to live a lie
If you are not aware that one ‘mudu’ of yellow Garri which used to sell for N140 in Abuja is now N500, you would at least know that one litre of diesel has jumped from N240 per litre to N820. That was why my barber disagreed with the headline of the newspaper I was reading: Read More…
Fire on the Mountain
“There’s fire on the mountainand nobody seems to be on the runThere’s fire on the mountain top and no one is a-running… One day the river will overflowAnd there’ll be nowhere for us to goAnd we will run, runWishing we had put out the fire In this season of university closure and youth rudderlessness, the lyrics Read More…