Speaking Out

Need to criminalise estimated billing

Need to criminalise estimated billing

With the forthcoming public hearing of a bill to criminalise estimated billing by Electricity Distribution Companies in Nigeria, one can say things are looking up for millions of electricity consumers denied pre-paid meters and therefore, serially raped by these companies, otherwise known as DisCos.
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EFCC: Will or wherewithal?

EFCC: Will or wherewithal?

IT was Jon Huntsman, American billionaire businessman and entrepreneur who in his humbler days worked as special assistant to the president during the first term of the Nixon administration that wrote in his bestselling book, Winners Never Cheat: “There are no moral shortcuts in the game of life.

The NPA scam: Is two and half years enough?

The NPA scam: Is two and half years enough?

THE conviction and sentencing of erstwhile chairman of the Nigerian Ports Authority, Chief Olabode George and five other members of the NPA board under him to two and half years in prison each, seems to have elated many Nigerians.

The universities and suspended strikes

The universities and suspended strikes

OF the innumerable sms messages this column receives each week in reaction, only a few stands out. The ones that do are not usually the most brilliant or profound.

My Nigeria is different from yours

My Nigeria is different from yours

By Morenike Taire ONE of the phenomena of our times that have endured much assault is the National Youth Service Corps scheme. There have been several arguments in the past in favour of its dissolution, mainly for financial and corruption reasons. The fluid of corruption that had poured upon the fabric of our nationhood from […]

A government and its strange ways

A government and its strange ways

Just when you think you’ve seen all there is to be seen about the strange ways of the Yar’Adua administration and some of its officials, then will the government spring yet another one on you.

Of liberty, enslavement and patriotism

Of liberty, enslavement and patriotism

LAST weekend, I had cause to sit at a roundtable of sorts with a bunch of passionate Nigerian youths. The word ‘youth’, of course, is used rather loosely here as we have the national tendency to do. We appear youthful in these parts much longer than they do in other places.

These filthy Naira notes

These filthy Naira notes

MANY times you wonder as a Nigerian if anything good can ever come out of this country. You despair over the possibility of those in positions of authority ever seeing the need to do something without an eye for some form of personal gain.

After the amnesty

After the amnesty

A COUPLE of weeks back, news broke of how a number of young people were caught, who had connived to kidnap some ministers and others whom they thought had the ability to cough up the tens of millions they had planned to take from stakeholders.

To be a Nigerian millionaire

To be a Nigerian millionaire

ONE of the most inspirational stories Hollywood has ever told is RAY, the biographical work telling of the life of legendary blind African American musician Ray Charles. It focuses on his rise from deep South racial dirt poverty as well as monumental personal and emotional loss to becoming the genius pacesetter we knew.

Gadaffi and a new Africa

Gadaffi and a new Africa

IT was Ryszard Kapuscinski, the late Polish journalist who lived in and wrote so extensively about Africa, who insisted: “The continent is too large to describe… Only with the greatest simplification, for the sake of convenience, can we say ‘Africa’. In reality, except as a geographical appellation, Africa does not exist”.