Can Tinubu dvice Governors On What He Controls? By Emmanuel Aziken
President Bola Tinubu’s extraordinary intervention in the freezing of an Osun State Government account by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has brought into sharp relief a question that has increasingly shadowed his presidency: who exactly acts in the President’s name, and how much of what is done around him carries his prior knowledge and approval? […]
Dysfunctional social spaces, thieving rulers
A LINGERING memory from my early child in Ilorin is the shortage of potable water in many homes in the city. During the 60s, there was a standing pipe which served hundreds of families, in a depression where what was then Oyo. Bypass (today’s Ibrahim Taiwo Road), meets the Emir’s Road. People will form long lines of buckets with regular outbreaks of fights as each one desperately attempts to get water for their family use.
Climbing a tree from the top
By Josef Omorotionmwan NIGERIA reminds us of the case of the smart messenger with a short memory. This messenger soon turned his mother into a money spinning machine of sorts. One morning, he came to the office to announce that his mother was critically ill and he needed money to procure her medication. Out of […]
Trouble, yanga and religious palavers in Osun
AMONG Nigeria’s ethnic regions and nationalities, the ecumenical spirit is arguably most at work in the Yoruba West. Unlike Eastern and Northern Nigeria that are respectively dominated by followers of Christianity and Islam, Western Nigeria presents a far more diverse and fluid picture of religion with Christians, Muslims and Ifa worshippers cohabiting and cooperating in relative harmony.
What do Nigeria’s public ‘servants’ think about when going to work in the morning?
I HAVE known Senator Femi Ojudu for 25 years, since his days at the defunct African Concord. We were co-tenants of General Abacha’s gulag at 15A Awolowo Road and Inter Centre at Obalende, Lagos, until I was transferred to Ikoyi Prison while he remained a ward of the State Security Service (SSS). In all that time, even as a founding editor of The NEWS, I have not known him to be a man given to impulsive speech, sensationalism or self-exhibition. Thus, when he spoke recently of some curious things in the 2014 budget, I was all ears.
Bullying the South-South minorities
WHILE speaking recently on a current affairs programme on Liberty Radio, Kaduna, General Muhammadu Buhari boasted that the APC (All Progressives Congress) will wipe out the insecurity bedeviling Nigeria. The General conveniently forgot to tell us how he intends to do this. Since even the Americans with their military might and sophisticated intelligence outfits have not succeeded in wiping out Al Qaeda in over 25 years, one may well wonder how Buhari proposes to work his magic and wipe out the Boko Haram in Nigeria within four years.
