​The 2026 FIFA World Cup final on July 19th is not merely a match; it is a funeral for the game as we knew it.  Every civilization has a moment that historians later recognize as the quiet beginning of a new age. It rarely arrives with the fanfare of revolution. More often, it wears the […]

It was not merely the accident at Chappaquiddick that destroyed Senator Ted Kennedy’s lifelong ambition of becoming President of the United States. It was Mary. Mary Jo Kopechne. She was the young woman who died after Kennedy’s car plunged from a narrow bridge on Chappaquiddick Island in July 1969. Kennedy escaped from the submerged vehicle, but he […]

Theirs was a classic Father/Daughter story. She was the apple of his eyes. His Miss Nigeria if not Miss Universe. He was her knight in shining armor. The one person who could do no wrong. She sat on his knees into her teens – much longer than many puritans would deem acceptable. He was putty in […]

Vice President Kashim Shettima cannot be blamed for having doubts about whether President Bola Ahmed Tinubu would renominate him as his running mate for a second term. As governor of Lagos State for eight years, Tinubu used three deputies: KofoworolaBucknor-Akerele, Femi Pedro, and AbiodunOgunleye. Only Senate President GodswillAkpabio (as AkwaIbom governor) matched this record in the […]

I do not support the call by Oyo State Governor SeyiMakinde that international bodies like the United Nations (UN) should participate in probing the 56-day abduction of 39 pupils and six teachers in the state. In receiving the freed victims, he called “on the appropriate international human rights and accountability mechanisms, including those within the United […]

IN the last two weeks or thereabouts, I have been one very angry Nigerian. I don’t know whether there are others like me who are angry. If there are, I do not know how many of us are angry. I also don’t know where the other angry Nigerians are, apart from those who vent their anger […]

Twice in recent presidential election cycles, Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria’s former one-term president, allowed speculations to spread like wildfire that he would seek the presidency again. But twice, without as much as a whimper, the speculations fizzled out into thin air like a puff of wind. Recently, Jonathan issued an angry rebuttal to an allegation that he […]

There is no well-meaning Nigerian who is not relieved that the Oyo State kidnap saga ended happily despite the eight fatalities and the 56 agonising days it took to embrace the light at the end of what was, to all intents and purposes, a very dark chapter in Nigeria’s beleaguered history. The mass abduction, which took […]

Imagine this scenario: a senior manager publicly interrogates a junior employee about a minor reporting error. “Did you even think before submitting this?” he asked, voice dripping with contempt, as colleagues shifted uncomfortably in their seats. “What exactly goes through your mind when you do such sloppy work?” The employee, visibly shaken, mumbled an apology. The […]

After 56 harrowing days, the 44 abductees in the Oriire community of Ogbomoso LGA are now out of the forest. These are schoolchildren and their teachers. Two of the teachers had been killed after the abduction while another was killed on their school ground. A commercial bike rider was also killed as the abduction unfolded. But […]