Backstory of Osun Poll, and What’s Next for Adeleke, by Azu Ishiekwene
The money that politicians didn’t spend in Osun during the August 15 governorship election was the money they didn’t have and couldn’t steal. All kinds of figures have been bandied about, in hundreds of millions and billions. It’s difficult to say if these are over- or underestimations. But damn, it was some cash! Credible sources suggest […]
Nigeria’s rise to the bottom
This week, I invite you to consider the following excerpts from Toyin Dawodu’s response to Forbes’ (a foremost international business magazine) conclusions from its interview with Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister of the Economy. Dawodu is Managing Partner of Capital Investment Group in the United States, and he wrote as follows:
Babalawo Pastors
Bishop David Oyedepo says poverty is not of God. He insists a child of God has no business being poor and declares: “There’s a proven covenant cure for poverty.” If this were true and proven, all the world’s poor would have become rich Christians by now.
M&M: The two most dangerous men in Nigeria
One American politician once said that every political party, sooner or later, develops its “lunatic fringe” – people who carry the advocacy for the political party to the most dangerous extremes. Nigeria has not reached there yet. But, we are getting too damn close for comfort. And two men, one belonging to the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP, and the other a member of the All Progressive Congress, APC, are driving us “hell for leather” to the brink of political madness.
Criticism and the unmistakable signs of a society in decline (1)
Last week, I received an arrogant SMS message from a certain Dr. Nelson in response to my essay entitled “The anti-intellectual character of Nigerians,” in which I lamented the overbearing anti-intellectualistic influence of religion in the consciousness of Nigerians. In the text, Dr. Nelson claimed that “Nigeria is in need of people who can give advice and solutions to its many problems.
BOB MIGA (1949-2014)
Valentine Soroibe Agim was mostly known as Bob Miga. For those like me who grew up in Nigeria in the 1970s and early ‘80s, Bob Miga was a classic act; a superstar, and one among a wave of music celebrities whose sounds touched a core in our lives in a powerful and memorable way. It was particularly so for those in the East of Nigeria who came out of the civil war utterly devastated by war. Music saved our lives. It was young men – many just barely out of high school – who consoled us with the pulse of the most invigorating sounds ever created in the continent of Africa – with their unique, modern Afro-rock idioms. These young men took Nigeria by storm. They played music to fob-off anger and despondence. They played music to live.
