By Donu Kogbara LAST week, I mentioned a former deputy governor of Lagos State, Alhaja Sinatu Ojikutu, who wants to renounce her citizenship and move abroad because of Tinubu’s emergence as the President-elect. Bode George, a former military governor and veteran politician, has for the same reason, also expressed a desire to emigrate. It is […]

By Donu Kogbara AS far as many Nigerians are concerned, Wole Soyinka, our globally renowned Nobel Laureate and most venerable man of letters, seriously undermined his reputation when he launched a verbal assault on Datti Baba-Ahmed, Peter Obi’s running mate. Baba-Ahmed had, on a Channels Television programme that was screened in March, expressed the view […]

By Donu Kogbara I ALWAYS feel melancholy on Good Friday because it is an extremely painful date in the Christian calendar – the day on which my Lord Jesus Christ was crucified and subjected to unimaginable anguish. Today, I am experiencing immense sadness for an additional reason, being that I cannot get Nigeria’s tragic underbelly […]

By Donu Kogbara NIGERIAN elections are globally notorious. Disgraceful norms include violence, ballot-snatching, tribalistic and religiously bigoted hate speech, intimidation (including ridiculous witchcraft threats to terrify the gullible and superstitious), underage voting, multiple thumb-printing by individuals, fraudulent amendment of results sheets and bribery of Electoral Commission and security personnel. But some states are a lot […]

By Donu Kogbara RECENT events remind me of a contradictory saying I first heard as a child: “Be careful what you wish for because you might get it.” The English nun – a teacher at my convent school – who directed this warning at me credited it to an ancient Chinese sage who was, she […]

By Donu Kogbara THE gubernatorial race in my home state, Rivers, is being run at fever pitch. The current Governor, Nyesom Wike, is hellbent on installing his successor and has thrown his weight behind a long-standing loyalist – his accountant-general, Sim Fubara. Sim is vying with candidates from other parties for the hottest seat in […]

MOST folks called him Mike. I called him Chuks, an abbreviation of his middle name, Elemchukwu.

By Donu Kogbara MOST folks called him Mike. I called him Chuks, an abbreviation of his middle name, Elemchukwu. We met when he was a toddler. I wasn’t much older. Our beloved and distinguished late fathers – Senator Francis Ellah and Ignatius Kogbara – had attended the same Catholic secondary school – Holy Family in […]

By Donu Kogbara IN 1999, I was married to an English fellow journalist called Dominic and we were based in London with Oliver, our small son. For all sorts of reasons, I felt like a radical change in direction and wanted to try living in an African country, having grown up in the UK; and […]

By Donu Kogbara A LAGOS-based lawyer and I were chatting the other day, and she told me that she had been shocked to discover that quite a few of the foreigners she encounters are unenthusiastic about Peter Obi and don’t want him to win the upcoming presidential election.  I’ve noticed this lack of enthusiasm too, […]