A few days ago, Felix, a childhood friend that I had not seen or heard from since we both left secondary school in Jos (he went to St. John’s College whilst I was to St. Murumba College) called me up from the blue. After all the usual felicitations he commended me for attaining national prominence […]

During the early years of the Punch Newspaper, I had a colleague who later became a brother. He studied in the US and was besotted with the country. He often talked about life in the US in a way that tickled my curiosity and heightened my expectations. He talked about its system and its advanced technology. Being […]

The book title veered off my expectations, I thought Offiong Esua would write about how the Nigerian factor denied his maternal grandfather the much deserved position of First Indigenous Chief Justice or why members of the family avoid politics after their paternal grandfather supervised elections in the First Republic. ‘Trenchant Focus’, Dollar for Dollar, is Esua’s entry […]

Dear Lion of Ubima. I greet you. God said, Don’t put your trust in man. But you put your trust in Buhari and ran around the stadium in premature triumph. You must write your memoir. A frog doesn’t make an afternoon dash in vain. What exactly led to that joyful exuberance? Buhari must have promised you something. […]

It’s nearly 20 years since Mark Steyn wrote a non-fiction book, America Alone: The  End of the World as We Know It.  Steyn, a Canadian newspaper columnist, could not have known that the kicker of this book title, which extolled America as the last bastion of civilisation as we know it, would become the metaphor for […]

My most loyal VIP friend and dearest brother, the amazing Dr Kayode Fayemi, former Governor of Ekiti State, is turning 60 this weekend and kindly invited me to a commemorative birthday symposium he hosted in Abuja yesterday. The venue was jampacked with excellencies and other dignitaries, including ex-President Yakubu Gowon, the current Vice President Kashim Shettima, the […]

The rebels of the Tutsi M23 backed by the Rwanda Defence Force, RDF on January 27, 2025 rolled into Goma,  eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC eliminating  whosoever they found in their path. These included the peacekeepers of United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the DRC, MONUSCO and,   the Southern African Development Community Mission in the Democratic […]

LAST week, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed into law a bill establishing the Federal University of Environmental Technology in Ogoni, Rivers State. Announcement of the university’s establishment came after a delegation of Ogoni Leaders and other Rivers State personages paid a visit to the seat of power in Abuja. That was on January 21, and it was […]

Since he became president in May 2023, Bola Tinubu has enjoyed nothing more than hiring and firing people. A week hardly passes without Tinubu making one public appointment or another, which shows the enormous patronage power of the Nigerian president. But equally, Tinubu has fired more people on grounds of corruption in less than two years in […]

Former Rivers State governor, Rotimi Amaechi, has once again stirred up the proverbial hornet’s nest by choosing to be politically incorrect in a clime where doublespeak not only walks on all fours but is also seen as an exemplar of political astuteness. But not for the man who was Speaker of the Rivers State House of Assembly […]