By Owei Lakemfa THE House of Representatives is sulking that President Muhammadu Buhari did not honour the invitation to address it on Thursday over serious insecurity in the country. It had earlier been humoured with a promise. But in circumventing the invitation, so-called advice by the Attorney General of the Federation, AGF, Abubakar Malami, claiming […]

By Owei Lakemfa ETHIOPIA is today, bleeding. It bled yesterday. The day before, it bled. The challenge is how to stop its bleeding, stabilise, and hopefully, stop her from bleeding tomorrow. In the last four decades, it has been engaged in five quite bloody wars; two with Eritrea, one with Somalia over the Ogaden region […]

By Owei Lakemfa It is not clear why the police does not want the country to know what happened under its rogue SARS outfit or what it wants covered up in protests in which so many policemen were allegedly killed and police stations burnt I FIND it difficult to believe that Governor Babagana Umara Zulum of […]

By Owei Lakemfa CHINA and all but two of the 55 African countries were enslaved by European colonialists who looted them and carried out unspeakable atrocities, including the massacre of millions. Even after independence, they were subjected to control by their former slave masters who taught them that they could develop only based on a […]

By Owei Lakemfa THERE is a sickening campaign by some unfeeling persons that those who claim there were killings at the Lekki Tollgate on October 20, 2020 or are searching for missing loved ones who went to the protests, should produce the corpses. To this group, unless corpses are produced, there could not have been […]

By Owei Lakemfa INTELLECTUALS, diplomats, social activists, trade unionists and international relations experts across the country gathered in Abuja on Wednesday, November 25, 2020, to dissect the state of Nigerians under COVID-19 as they trudge towards a post-pandemic world. It was an occasion to mark the 10th anniversary of the Society for International Relations Awareness, […]

By Owei Lakemfa THE story of Labour leader, John Enas Dubre, and the transnational oil corporations operating in Nigeria, reminds me of the temptation of Jesus Christ. There were 19 unions in the oil and gas industry before they were merged in 1977 into a mega industrial union called the National Union of Petroleum and […]

By Owei Lakemfa WHEN the old or those who play the role of elders die in Africa, we do not weep. Rather, we celebrate them because they merely transit from the physical to the pantheon of ancestors who watch over the living. Three elders who led the struggle for a better humanity transited within three […]

By Owei Lakemfa I HAVE before me, two statements that speak to our present and future. One is by 78-year old Muhammadu Buhari, President and Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces. The other is by Rachael Rinu Bolatito Oduala, 22, a student who is no older than the former’s grandchild or great granddaughter. Buhari came to […]

By Owei Lakemfa THE most fundamental human right to the journalist is life, followed by the right to wages or income. These are the foundations on which his profession and the freedom of expression are built. A journalist with a perpetually rumbling stomach cannot be a reliable soldier of press freedom. At best, he becomes […]