Lindsay Barrett and Mia Mottley: The Pull of the Diaspora, by Owei Lakemfa
Lindsay Carlton Eseoghene Barrett was a twenty-five-year-old Jamaican when he came from Britain to Nigeria in July 1966 on a few weeks’ visit. Those weeks have stretched to over sixty years, with the playwright, poet, journalist and photographer becoming one of the best-known Nigerians. He was eighty-five years on September 15, and not unexpectedly, I […]
The orphans of coronavirus
By Owei Lakemfa THE victims of the coronavirus, COVID-19, are not only those who contracted it. Not just those who lay helpless in hospitals, homes and isolation centres hoping to survive or waiting for death. They are not only the doctors and nurses, pharmacists and technologists, radiographers and medical workers who in a universal war […]
Nigeria’s siamese twins of justice
By Owei Lakemfa NO two other judges in Nigeria have stood and fought jointly for justice, including taking military dictatorship head-on, like Justices Yaya Abiodun Olatunde Jinadu and Isiaka Isola Oluwa. They believed that a judge should not only be upright and fearlessly dispense justice, but should not be answerable to administrative powers more so […]
Africa shall have its day
By Owei Lakemfa AFRICA, the continent from which humanity fanned out and which begat modern civilisation, is marking its Day on Monday, May 25. It is Africa’s most significant day for it was on that day in 1963, they consciously came together as a people after centuries of divisions, enslavement and colonisation. The meeting in […]
The Nile that unites should not divide
By Owei Lakemfa SUDAN on Tuesday refused to sign agreements that will enable Ethiopia start filling the waters of its $4.6 billion Renaissance Dam from July. But Ethiopia had made it known over the years that such objection will not stop its completion of the dam which began in 2011. Egypt had threatened military action […]
General Buhari was more democratic than President Buhari
By Owei Lakemfa President Muhammadu Buhari was Military Head of State from 1984-85. His claimed principles including a zero-tolerance for corruption and fierce patriotism in that era partly propelled his return as a two-term elected – not necessarily democratically elected – President. He encapsulates Karl Marx’s assertion that: “History repeats itself; first as a tragedy, […]
