Atiku says the federal cabinet is an assembly of serial forgers, money launderers, election bandits and identity thieves. While it can’t be described as a total rogues’ gallery, it harbours far too many shady figures, granting too many reprobates access to the pulpits of power. Tinubu, the acclaimed talent hunter, wanted a minister of innovation, science and […]

In 2023, after Obi defeated Tinubu in Lagos, MC Oluomo addressed the state. He warned the Igbo to sit at home on election day if they wouldn’t vote the APC. He wasn’t subtle. In that live broadcast, he framed  non-APC votes as a punishable betrayal. The police invited him for questioning, but the “chat” was more photo-op […]

Lagos is a bustling coastal city, so its vulnerability to floods is natural. But with a culture of indiscriminate refuse disposal, haphazard building developments, and lousy town planning enforcement, Lagos is the cause of much of its own flooding woes. Often, governments come like pirates or parasites — ravenous and impatient, looking for what and where […]

Good building materials are gone.  Everything is now fake—almost everything. The chronic decline took an acute turn after the COVID epidemic.  A  post-COVID nosedive. The naira started to plummet, prices soared. Surging costs of basic food began to drown the poor. People could no longer make it, so  manufacturers started to fake it. Perhaps to stay […]

A few days ago, things fell apart in Nepal. The country had seen political instability and grinding poverty in recent times, but this week it saw  the gates of hell open. The parliament was burnt. The presidential palace was ransacked. The government fled. Ministers were dragged through the streets and chased into rivers. The youths said they […]

Nigeria has a profound leadership crisis.  It isn’t just recycling indolent,  corrupt and manipulative leaders, it’s incubating a defective citizenship.  The necessary sceptical edge to watchdog democracy has been blunted. The citizenry is aggressively normalising political mediocrity.  Failure is excused. Mundanity is celebrated. Stagnation feels peaceful  For the poor, hunger and joblessness have acquired inevitability. […]

One fateful evening, the people of Malumfashi, Katsina, sensed trouble. Vultures circled their community, a grim portent. Alarmed, villagers alerted the military, who came, saw nothing, and left. At dawn, as the people trooped to the mosque to beseech God, bandits struck. They roared in on motorcycles and fired at everything. The mosque took the brunt. By […]

Moshood Adisa Olabisi Ajala, aka Ajala the Traveller, was a Nigerian journalist, actor and travel writer. He was so famous for his travels across the world that he became synonymous with wanderlust. In 1952, aged 18, in a racially segregated America, he cycled 3670 kilometres from Chicago to Los Angeles in 28 days. But he did a […]

When I was growing up, The Madness of Didi was my favorite book title. I carelessly applied it to both the sane and the insane. Every outburst of irrationality was the madness of Didi. In Obi Egbuna’s The Madness of Didi, Didi spends 30 years in England, enduring racism and oppression. After killing six policemen, […]

After the 2023 presidential election, Nigeria’s main opposition leaders wept and kicked over INEC’s brazen duplicity. While Obi and Atiku sustained their fight, Kwankwaso…

Tinubu’s government has become a propaganda factory. A government obsessed with spectacle over substance and relentlessly pursuing self-congratulation

Tinubu’s government has become a propaganda factory.  A government obsessed with spectacle over substance and relentlessly pursuing self-congratulation. A governance style that prioritises the trivial over the transformative. Tinubu’s government is devoted to celebrating small, often inconsequential achievements while the nation is racked by hunger, insecurity, and economic stagnation.  From commissioning incomplete roads to extracting political capital […]

The Yoruba say a lie can hide for eight years, but one day, truth will expose it. The evil that men do lives after them, yet the harm President Tinubu has inflicted on Nigeria’s democracy may not wait for his departure to unravel. Tinubu suspended Fubara like he owns the country. But Shettima’s calculated revelation has now left […]

The National Assembly had stooped to singing  ‘On Your Mandate’ instead of the national anthem. They did it with glee, without a single lawmaker finding the revulsion to boo. That apparent dubious unanimity was ominous: to survive, we must stop a behemoth, our homegrown  Paul Biya, perhaps a Mobutu. Yet prominent opposition politicians were ducking for cover, […]

Father Alia is at his wits’ end.  Under his watch, Benue has become a human abattoir, a slaughter field where hope bleeds out. As the sore he inherited festers and turns gangrenous under his nose, he dithers and waffles, unruffled. Alia’s phlegmatic calm mocks the screams of his people. While Benue, slashed and fractured, writhes in […]