When a society is on the inexorable path to Sodom and Gomorrah, something unbelievably bestial and savagely subhuman usually happens to shock the populace back to the path of rectitude. We have been having so many killings all over the country that we were getting used to them. We were becoming unshockable. Then Hanifa happened. Read More…
The 2023 election will be like no other. Its outcome will either make or mar Nigeria. Should an unprepared president emerge, winner, he will be inheriting a poisoned chalice in the form of the many social, fiscal, religious and security problems the current government will hand over. But should a ready-made leader be entrusted with Read More…
To whom do you owe your loyalty, sir? Is it to the people, to a kingmaker, or to a cabal? Are you even loyal to the federal republic whose passport gives you cover to roam the world? Let your loyalty be tested again and again to see if you’ll side with the people or remain 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…
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…