When the voice of humanity reverberated in a man, by Owei Lakemfa
Across the world, countries, movements and groups on Thursday August 13, 2026 marked the centenary of Fidel Castro Ruz, the iconic Cuban revolutionary. That was yesterday. But Fidel is not yesterday’s man. Although he marched into the full embrace of history on November 25, 2016, he is a man of today as […]
Championing rule of law at home and criminality abroad
By Owei Lakemfa Only a quarter of the eight million Palestinian people live in the Palestine; one million in Gaza, 750,000 in the occupied West Bank and 250,000 inside Israel. The rest, or over six million, are forced to live outside with at least three million of them classified as stateless persons with no legal […]
Academics, politicians and rogue elements
By Owei Lakemfa The country heaved a sigh of relief on Thursday, October 13, 2022 as the eight-month strike by academics which shutdown the public universities was suspended. Days before the suspension, many Nigerians were in a jubilant mood as all indications were that the agreement midwifed by the House of Representatives was acceptable to government […]
Smart Europeans, daft Africans
By Owei Lakemfa SMART Europeans. After building their wealth from resources taken from the colonies, including gold, diamond, rubber, cocoa, cotton and human beings, they decreed that the only way to prosperity is through ‘market forces’. They taught gullible Africans that only the perfect market delivers, while state intervention stagnates. They are never in short supply […]
Umahi: Impunity, falsehood and denials as governance
By Owei Lakemfa GOVERNOR David ‘Dave’ Nweze Umahi of Ebonyi State reminds me of the colonial District Officer who was a law unto himself. I know Abakaliki, the state capital, was a major centre for slave trade four centuries ago, but Umahi governs the state as if it were still a slave colony where people have […]
Floods anywhere is a challenge to humanity everywhere
By Owei Lakemfa THE Confluence Hotel in Ganaja, Lokoja used to be my favourite spot whenever I visited Kogi State. Its main attraction to me was sitting down to watch the Rivers Niger and Benue warmly embrace in an eternal wedlock as their waters flow down south to the Niger Delta before emptying themselves into the […]
This is the face of poverty in Nigeria
By Owei Lakemfa Poverty is often presented as statistics. But what the Yusufu Bala Usman Institute did on September 21, 2022 was to produce a book, The Face of Poverty in Nigeria, which focused on the faces behind the statistics. As one of the reviewers, I summarised the Nigerian situation thus: If you are poor in […]
Ruto and Falana: Brother for enslavement and brother for liberation
By Owei Lakemfa His Excellency William Ruto, Kenya’s newly minted President, prides himself as the Hustler-in-Chief of the country. He says he is from the “Hustler Nation” – the informal economy where he used to sell chickens for survival. However, having a dog-eat-dog street ideology as he claims, does not preclude a sense of basic human […]
The National Industrial Court, NIC, should not be for hire
By Owei Lakemfa Once the Muhammadu Buhari government had failed to get striking lecturers in our public universities back to class, I knew it would head for the National Industrial Court, NIC, shopping for an injunction. Tragically that is what governments in the country and rich employers have turned the NIC into: a fishing pond […]
Gorbachev as an agent provocateur, fifth columnist or undertaker
By Owei Lakemfa The world evolved at various stages of development but conflict and conquest were not usually very far. Great empires rose, but habitually at the expense of the conquered. They also fell, usually due to internal contradictions. But when two nations, Portugal and Spain, rose with the backing of the Catholic Church, it […]
Broken truths and broken ribs: Kukah’s forensic examination of Nigeria
By Owei Lakemfa The year 2018 was one of self-examination for Nigeria. President Muhammadu Buhari who flew in on the wings of change had been in power for three years and the situation had simply become far worse. The inflation rate when he came in was 9.01 per cent, shooting up to 15.68 per cent […]
Small but mighty Trinidad and Tobago freed after 464 years
By Owei Lakemfa IT was like a seamless gathering. Diplomats and academics. Practioners of two assertive professions: lawyers and journalists. Cultural ambassadors and traditional chiefs. It was evening in Abuja on Monday August 22, 2022. We were gathered for the pre-independence 60th anniversary of Trinidad and Tobago, T&T which comes up on August 31. The […]
When a government runs out of ideas
By Owei Lakemfa THE news went round. The Federal Government and striking lecturers in the country’s public universities organised under the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, were meeting on Tuesday, August 16, 2022. Not a few hoped that the six-month strike by the lecturers would be resolved. But the outcome was as disappointing as […]
Having Amnesty International as lunch in Ukraine
By Owei Lakemfa THE Amnesty International which is 61 years having been established in 1961 is up for lunch in angry Ukraine. If you must know, its ‘sins’ are very grave. Those who run the West assume they have Amnesty eating out of their hands. On the other hand, those outside the Western ruling class […]
The Buharian contributions to industrial relations praxis
LECTURERS in our public universities are so absorbed in their national strike which is in the sixth month that they have not observed the unique contributions of President Muhammadu Buhari to industrial relations practice. Ironically, it has been serving or retired generals that have made the most fundamental contributions to the practice of relations between employees and employers.
How Ghana surrendered its independence to the US
GHANA, the shining Black Star which in 1957 lit the way to independence for all of Africa, is today, a slave colony of the United States, US. The declaration 65 years ago by its leader, Kwame Nkrumah that: “The independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of Africa”, gave momentum to the independence movements across the continent.
