By Azu Ishiekwene IF  you haven’t had a good laugh, you have not been with him. And anyone who knows him knows I’m not joking. The Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, Matthew Hassan Kukah, has the rare gift of humour. Not the run-of-the-mill kind that forces a courteous half-smile. It’s the kind that extracts the prey […]

By Azu Ishiekwene ONE of the ironies of politics is how easily fiction becomes reality, and reality, precedent. Before our eyes, the president-elect of Kenya, William Ruto, who has played all sides of Kenya’s politics for at least three decades, has just won an election by claiming to be an outsider. Ruto’s electoral epic of […]

By Azu Ishiekwene I’m going to waste my vote,” a friend told me recently. “And don’t argue with me,” he added. “It’s my right to do so.” I defied him. Regrettably, even though I also recruited help nearby to press home my point, my unsolicited advice fell on deaf ears. My friend’s mind was made […]

AFTER BBC Africa Service promoted a story on Friday of an interview with the bandit warlords of Zamfara State, a senior Nigerian journalist, Kadaria Ahmed, called out the broadcaster in a tweet. Kadaria, an ex-Beeb, said the interview would give the terrorists oxygen, stoke hysteria and bring nothing but pain and misery to hundreds of […]

NIGERIA is awash with arms – guns, bullets, charms, drugs and local stuff. Not just Nigeria.The entire Sahelian and sub-Saharan African region is drowning in deadly small arms and light weapons – so-called because of their portability and ease of use and adaptation.

THAT the All Progressives Congress, APC, flag bearer, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is exactly where the party’s last presidential candidate, President Muhammadu Buhari, was when he got the ticket eight years ago, shows just how our politics has stagnated, if not regressed.

After the feisty, if not bitter, presidential primary of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) ended on Wednesday with Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu emerging the party’s candidate for the next election, the overriding instinct is to throw the losers under the bus. You can hardly blame Tinubu’s camp. The man had a raw deal right up to the last minute. For seven years, […]

TO frame the epic coronation at the Eagle Square Tuesday night casually as Jagaban’s triumph is to omit one significant detail: a major detour in the movement of the forces of Nigeria’s history.

Southern hypocrisy will help Atiku to succeed Buhari

NIGERIA’s spectacular crises in almost every facet of its national life are inescapable. They cling like your skin. And for your sanity, you must detox from time to time. I hope this trip to Grenada, through Afghanistan, helps. Instead of writing about killings of the most bestial variety up and down the country, an economy […]

Conversation With Azu AFTER emerging as the consensus Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Abdullahi Adamu was faced with a major crisis. Healing the deep divisions in the party was urgent but it was not even the most serious concern of the 75-year-old senator, former governor and former member of the opposition party. Nor […]

THE statement by the leader of the Yoruba Cultural Group, Afenifere, Ayo Adebanjo, that the South-East should get the next turn at the presidency has ruffled quite some feathers. This comes at a time when nearly half a dozen of his kinsmen have shown interest and almost nothing seems certain anymore because the two major […]

I THINK the most frequently asked question today is: who will succeed President Muhammadu Buhari? With over 35 aspirants openly declaring their interest as of today, a few still in the closet and more coming out, the field has never looked more crowded. And last week, the decision by former President Goodluck Jonathan to put […]

MOST parents like to think that their generation’s burden was the heaviest. And that today’s children are too soft and spoilt by the easy life to be up to any good. Well, I disagree. Or let me put that a bit differently: I don’t agree completely. The debate about just how far astray today’s children […]

Women die in troubled marriages because we slay singles