•When academic brilliance sounds like a funeral Most academics pitch research the way they’d explain a methodology in a conference paper. It’s technically accurate. It’s also boring. When your research sounds procedural instead of urgent, funders don’t fund it, journals reject it, and audiences zone out. Why? Because you sound like you’re reporting facts, not like […]

During World War II, a Norwegian military officer and politician, Vidkun Quisling, helped facilitate the Nazi invasion of his own country and led a domestic collaborationist regime loyal to Führer Adolf Hitler. For his infamous role, he was executed for treason in 1945, and his surname became synonymous with ultimate betrayal. The Norwegian traitor’s perfidy reminds […]

“The power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind; and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise the improvements of social life,” Edward Gibbon Let me begin by stating that for the last forty years or so I have kept close to me the stupendous work of the great […]

Under the 1999 Constitution, the President of Nigeria is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. As the Chief Executive of the Federation, the Nigerian President is also often regarded as potentially one of the most powerful persons in the world. He can make or break anyone. Yet, we notice that not all Nigerian presidents are able […]

There is a way a little sense of history tries to educate and equip us with the capacity to withstand the present and shape the future. History tells us a little bit of who we are and the things that shape our being. History is stubborn. It paints the bad leader with deserved odious colours and […]

The entire drama that featured the abduction of Mrs. Olaide Busayo Adegoke John-Paul and her 12-year-old twin boys lasted for just three days, between Wednesday and Saturday. Those were tension-soaked days that served mostly to highlight or add to the pressure on a federal government that many had come to see as the very symbol of […]

Let us imagine that the opposition parties will boycott the forthcoming elections scheduled for next year. How will such a boycott affect the country and our democracy? And is boycott the best option? Cameroon and Tanzania experienced election boycotts by the opposition recently, but that has not affected the overall rating of the election results. In 2000, […]

When parents send their children to school, they should not have to pray against abduction. When farmers leave for their farms, they should not fear never returning home. When citizens travel from one city to another, they should not have to negotiate their safety with kidnappers. Yet this has become the painful reality confronting millions of Nigerians. […]

By Dele Sobowale A totally truthful politician is an oxymoron; a contradiction in terms. Dissembling apparently is indispensable to the profession — notwithstanding the fact that most of them ensure that they are seen praying!!   The war in Iran is coming to a dreary end. It has cost everybody in the world trillions of dollars […]

In the long struggles against military misrule and for democracy, we lost far more Nigerians under the Babangida dictatorship than under the Abacha regime. However, the fight against Abacha and his bandits was far more taxing. In the case of the former, hundreds were murdered but only a handful of Nigerians were detained at any given […]