THE assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on July 13 at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania has sucked the oxygen from the debate on President Joe Biden’s fitness for a second term. The discussion will resurface, but Democrats should forget it. The party is stuck with Biden. The odds are daunting. It must feel like […]

BRITISH Prime Minister Rishi Sunak came to the job as an afterthought, yet his days in Number 10 were numbered before he received the ceremonial blessings of King Charles III. For a long time after Brexit, the Tories and sections of the British public, still in post-Brexit ecstasy, were madly in love with Boris Johnson. He […]

IT was different 16 years ago. Very different. At that time, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, was relatively new and walking where angels feared to tread. That was unusual for a government institution, especially a law enforcement agency.  So unusual that one of Nigeria’s most courageous social crusaders, Gani Fawehinmi, a thorn in government’s […]

By MAX AMUCHIE LAST December, on my last day of work before Christmas, I sat alone in my office in Abuja, reflecting on my life’s journey. I thought about my years in the media, especially the few years since I ventured into entrepreneurship. I remembered my post on Facebook in June 2015 announcing my resignation as […]

IT’S been 31 years since a seismic event triggered by the June 12, 1993 election nearly brought Nigeria to its knees. The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, M.K.O Abiola, was on the cusp of a resounding victory when the military government of General Ibrahim Babangida interrupted and later annulled the election.  That action […]

I’m opposed to minimum wage. And I know I’m saying this at the risk of losing readers.  The minimum wage hurts the poor and vulnerable in whose name and interest Labour claims to strike.  Sounds foolish, right? How can more naira in the pocket of the Nigerian worker currently on a minimum wage of N30,000 be […]

FOR the deposed Kano Emir, Aminu Bayero, it was not a matter of if but when. The moment the Supreme Court upheld Governor Abba Yusuf’s election in January, Bayero knew the governor would need the throne to pay his debt. During the campaign, the governor promised that if he were elected, he would revoke the sharing […]

IT wasn’t five months after President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took office when folks started asking, how far? In middle class and elite social circles in Nigeria, that question, or its variant – how market? – is often reserved for people whose sympathy for a cause or person is imperiled. I often pushed back by saying that […]

I WAS chatting with a friend last week, who, mid-speech, redirected our conversation to the situation in the Middle East. She wanted to know what the mood in the US was. Over 6,000 miles away in Nigeria from where she was calling, she didn’t quite trust the media accounts. Since I was visiting the US, she […]

THERE are probably more books on how to sell everything than there is sand by the seashore. I have read a few myself and might say that when it comes to selling, even though what you have read might help, nothing teaches like what you learn by doing it. For some, selling feels natural. I cannot […]

EARLIER this week, I teased on my social handle about my encounter with a deity. Of course, not in the sense that one might meet a deity in the groove of a village forest. Yet, those who have met this man – who know him – might agree that Sam Amuka, fondly called Uncle Sam, is […]

NIGERIA’S three main political parties – the All Progressives Congress, APC, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and the Labour Party, LP – are in turmoil. They have been infested by little foxes that threaten to damage and, potentially, destroy them. I know that discipline is not a virtue of political parties in a presidential system. In […]

THIS was the question a friend of mine in his late 20s asked me when we woke up on April 14 to the news that Iran had launched over 300 drones and missiles towards Israel. Apart from video war games, the young man has not seen any wars. Nigeria’s civil war ended nearly two and a […]

THE words of President Bassirou Diomaye Faye were honey to taste. Following the bitter ending of the 12-year rule of Macky Sall, highlighted by the widespread belief that France is at the heart of Senegal’s misery, a forlorn country enthusiastically lapped up Faye’s promise of a future untainted by French shenanigans. At a stage, it was […]

Before The Human Flow was published, Jonathan, one of Europe’s most accomplished foreign affairs columnists and journalists, had talked with excitement about the book. It was his first novel. Like a woman who became pregnant when she thought she was past child-bearing, Jonathan, 82, couldn’t wait to make Mary Wesley look like a child prodigy. Sam […]