All Akunyili’s costly and noisy rebranding campaign, could not secure the rebranding of the country’s image; Youths like Kevin demonstrate that another country is possible

By Owei Lakemfa THREE of the world’’s most famous African Americans sat down to discuss Christmas. Oprah Winfrey, Michelle and Barack Obama. The couple politely and playfully disagreed on gifts. An engaging personality the man is, but he has to struggle between  being a man of principles, and the leader of a powerful country with […]

AMINATOU Haidar is the mother of two sons. She was living with her family in Western Sahara, the former Spanish colony occupied by Morocco.

By Owei Lakemfa I WAS absolved by various  reports on the collapse of the Socialist bloc from 1989 to 1992. Most of the reports took their theme song from the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was particularly engrossed in the “Velvet Revolution” in the old Czechoslovakia which began to unfold from the November 17, […]

DURING the campaigns leading to what was assumed would be the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) primaries for the 2007 Presidential elections, I stumbled on the campaign team of an aspirant. It was a well-organised, motivated, serious but somewhat naively optimistic group. Off record, the team leader took questions on the campaigns and assessed the chances of other aspirants.

Although a White man, Brown became the patron saint of the Black people, and the American government under President Abraham Lincoln had to invoke his name to mobilise Black people to join the American army. One of the leading Americans of his day, Henry David Thoreau said on the day of Brown’s hanging: “I plead not for his life, but for his character- his immortal life …some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was sacrificed; this morning, per chance, Captain Brown was hung.

THERE are basis to conclude that Femi Fani-Kayode’s memory is either fading or he is not acquainted with the readily available literature of the 1966 coup. This can be gleaned from his claims about where his father was taken to in Lagos. He claimed: “They (the coupists) decided to take him to Bonny Camp in Lagos which happened to be still within the control of the loyalist federal forces”.

John Brown had struck severe blows against slavery, he had shamed his accusers and persecutors who might have thought he would beg for his life. He went to the gallows head held high and walked into martyrdom. His adversaries are forgotten in history but John Brown’s saintly accomplishments will never die.

Victor Ladipo Akintola, Akintola’s son in his book, Akintola: The Man and the Legend, wrote that there were demands by the late Oba D. C. Akran that he with his richer political experience deserved to be Deputy Premier not Fani Power. He wrote: “It was a silly, irrational demand since Fani-Kayode was a man whose extreme toughness would be useful to the party in the rough political ride that was to come”. And the rough and tough times actually came with burning and looting, thuggery and murder of political opponents.

Yet Mandela is simply a human being imbued with human frailties. His two marriages crashed before he found renewed love in the hands of Graca Machel, widow of the unforgetable African freedom fighter, Samora Machel. Quite humorous; when he knew his old age can no longer carry his punishing local and international schedules, he told the world: “Don’t call me, I’ll call you”.