I WAS invited by the Venezuelan Embassy in Abuja, along with some diplomats, civil society activists and journalists on Thursday,  April 14, 2022, to watch a documentary on the aborted military coup 20 years ago. The documentary centred on the bloody coup and how the populace in their millions marched on the coup plotters holed up in the Miraflores Presidential Palace.

By Owei Lakemfa Tunde Bakare, a 67-year-old pastor would have been Nigeria’s Vice President had President Muhammadu Buhari won the 2011 election in which the former was his running mate. Even now, Bakare claims God had revealed to him that he would succeed Buhari as president. Perhaps because the assurance is so certain, he is […]

By Owei Lakemfa WE were young, eager youths, mostly teenagers, crossing from secondary schools into the tertiary institutions. In fact some, like me, were leaving home for the first time. It was the tail end of 1978. We were not just the first set of students to be admitted through the Joint Admission Matriculation Board, […]

SOMETIMES the difference between a coup and a democratic process can be so narrow as to be interchangeable. The move to oust Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan had been in the offing for some time, but there were questions of methodology, and how the populace may react.

By Owei Lakemfa It was a symbolism. As the ruling  All Progressives Congress, APC, led by contented men and women in rich flowing robes, with siren blasting, gathered to disturb the peace of a troubled Abuja, bandits were staging a raid at the Kaduna Airport, a two-hour drive away. The APC chieftains were gathered for […]

By Owei Lakemfa Musa-Lawal Ozigi was a bearded, ebullient but serious minded Nigerian patriot who exuded confidence in a better society and had a positive effect on his compatriots and those around him. He was a lawyer and my comrade in the Labour Movement. On Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2022, he wrote me a letter. […]

I HAVE been engaged in countless conversations with my European friends across continents, groups and social media about current world events and whether their leaders are right in pursuing a solitary military solution.

By Owei Lakemfa I had the privilege of being invited by the Nigerian Guild of Editors led by Mustapha Isa to be a panellist in their March 3, 2022 Town Hall Meeting in Abuja. Their focus was ‘Agenda Setting For Sustainable Democratic Culture’.    My argument is that democracy is a system of government by popular […]

By Owei Lakemfa ONE morning in September, 1973, I donned my white shorts and shirt, blue, gold and maroon-coloured tie, white jacket, brown stockings and sandals. It was my first day at the prestigious Methodist Boys High School, MBHS, Lagos, founded in 1878. It was a school of champions that had produced the country’s first […]

THE siamese twins, India and Pakistan, have virtually been at each other’s throats since the 1947 surgical operation by quack British doctors that separated them.