An end and a new beginning
JUST a few minutes past eleven in the morning last Wednesday, I received a telephone call from Nigeria’s Information Minister, Lai Mohammed. He congratulated me and told me that President Muhammadu Buhari had approved my appointment as the Director General of the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC).
PDP: Turmoil inside the basket of Scorpions
IT was the much-lamented Chief Sunday Awoniyi, a founding member of the party that once described the PDP as “a basket of scorpions stinging themselves to death”. Judging by all that happened in recent weeks, there can be no better description of the behemoth which holds Nigeria in a stifling bear-hug since 1999!
Presidential posters, presidential denial
THE beginning of a New Year has become very instructive in understanding the Jonathan presidency. Last year as Nigerians were coming to terms with expenses incurred during the Christmas/New Year festivities, President Goodluck Jonathan imposed a punishing increase of prices of petroleum products on the country.
Resolutions and a peek into the life process
IT is a New Year. We all renew hope and make resolutions. I have never been particularly conformist about many things in life. From childhood, I have asked uncomfortable questions and thrown pebbles at orthodoxies. The conventional wisdom has never satisfied my search for answers about our often mysterious but lovely world, either the natural world that conditions us and which we are very much part of or the social canons of existence. So resolutions at the beginning of a new year often resembled for me, an admission of human weakness. If there is a thing to change, why wait till the beginning of a new year? But just for once, I fell into line and made a resolution which I have never betrayed.
Goodluck Jonathan and the potency of symbolism
THE most iconic image last week might have been lost to most of our compatriots; what with the tragic chopper accident which claimed the lives of leading politico-security officials of the Nigerian state, in Bayelsa state. As we commiserate with the families of the deceased, the accident underlined further, the sorry pass that we arrived at as a nation.
Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa: Exit of a decent gentleman
THERE has been a solemnity about the city of Kaduna since the story broke of the tragic death of Governor Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa at the weekend. In death, Nigerians have been united in appreciation of the human decency of the late governor. I never had the privilege to meet the man, but when I broke the story to Kabir Mato, he paused for a while and then said: “we have lost a gentleman; a decent gentleman”!
