By Owei Lakemfa A country wracked with corruption and impunity, cannot but be confronted by examination malpractices and admission rackets even by institutions. This was the conclusion I reached at the end of the January 8, 2023 Stakeholders Meeting between the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, and media executives. Another conclusion was that no […]

By Owei Lakemfa ANA Belen Montes returned. Captured spies are usually killed, imprisoned for life without the possibility of parole, or used in prisoner exchanges. But the 65-year- old American super spy who, based on her principles, worked for free in Cuba, has returned to resettle within American society. But this was not owing to […]

By Owei Lakemfa A lot of hope has been placed on the February 25, 2023 general elections in the country. It actually seems that the country’s continued existence depends on them. Already, some foreign observers have dispatched advanced teams. However, in the midst of all these, a 93-year-old statesman, scanning the horizon, advises that the […]

By Owei Lakemfa THE  youthful Father Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, later, Pope Benedict XVI, was a brilliant theologian and academic who, at age 31 in 1958, was already a full professor at Bonn University. But before turning to the priesthood, he had been a POW in the Second World War. It was a war in which humanity […]

By Owei Lakemfa PRESIDENT Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was in Washington, where, in a speech to the American Congress on December 21, 2022, he rehearsed some of his daily speeches back home. One thread I picked were his claims that the war with Russia is about democracy and that its outcome will determine whether humanity […]

By Owei Lakemfa THE United States invited or summoned 49 African presidents to Washington, DC, for a summit from December 13–15, 2022. There was 100 per cent attendance. However, it unilaterally excluded six African countries, and none of the invited countries protested this exclusion. The body language from the African presidents was that everybody was […]

By Owei Lakemfa IT was in 1979. Words went round the University in Ife that students of Ijaw nationality should  gather at the  Post Graduate Hall to listen to an emissary. Then walked in a tall, slim man. He talked about the neglect of the Niger Delta, its exploitation and the need for us to […]

By Owei Lakemfa THE United States, had during the Banana War, occupied Nicaragua in 1912. This gave rise to the Somoza political family, which ruled the country from that period until its overthrow by Nicaraguan youths under the banner of the Sandinista Movement in 1979. The popular Nicaraguan Revolution threw many youths across the world into […]

By Owei Lakemfa STELLA Erhuvwuoghene Okotete was 33 when appointed the Executive Director (Business Development) of the Nigerian Export-Import Bank, NEXIM, in 2017. Her five-year tenure expired this year and was renewed in April for another half a decade ostensibly on account of her good performance. Then in the past fortnight, seemingly coordinated petitions sprouted […]

By Owei Lakemfa THE European Union, EU, and the Group of Seven, G7, comprising Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, the United States, US, the United Kingdom and Australia made a deceitful announcement to the world on Friday, December 2, 2022. They claimed that in solidarity with Ukraine, they have decided to cap the price of […]

By Owei Lakemfa IT is against the run of play for the powerful in office to be convicted for misdeeds, especially in a reign of virtual lawlessness and impunity. But it happened thrice in the past five weeks with the courts convicting for contempt of the Chairman of the powerful Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, […]

By Owei Lakemfa Ethiopia, which along with Liberia were the only two African countries Europe was unable to colonise, has been bathed in blood many times in the last six decades until a bloody peace was written on November 2, 2022. A civil war with Eritrea which was then part of Ethiopia, exacerbated the 1983-85 […]

By Owei Lakemfa NIGERIA was partly built by journalists who fought the British colonialists so ferociously that Frederick John Lugard, their colonial poster boy who amalgamated the country in 1914, was forced out as Governor General within five years. The media campaigns for the soul of the country went on through the colonial period and […]

By Owei Lakemfa NANNY, a young Akan woman from present day Ghana, born about 1686 was captured with her four brothers and sold into slavery. They were taken on ‘The Journey of No Return’ across the Atlantic Ocean, becoming part of the 12.5 million Africans forced on this journey by Europeans and Americans who wanted free […]

By Owei Lakemfa INTRIGUING. I mean the topic leaders of the Food, Beverage and Tobacco Senior Staff Association, FOBTOB asked me speak on. ‘Trade Union Leadership: Lessons to be learnt from or Taught to the Political Class.’ I know a lot of lessons politicians can teach labour leaders, but scratch my head what the latter […]