In physical terms and, perhaps, its sheer lack of social character and cohesion, Nigeria has been described memorably as a mere geographical expression. But as an anthropomorphised social formation, she could well be compared to a woman, victim of multiple rapes and mental torture, that is eventually shot and left for dead by a deserted […]

Colin Kaepernick was an American National Football League player with the San Francisco 49ers. He played for six seasons. He was and still is a civil rights activist. During a game in 2016, he knelt, refusing to stand as is the custom, when the American National anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner, was being played. He was in […]

A lot has been said about the manner Dele Farotimi was arrested and how he has allegedly been unfairly treated. What are the details of this? CCTV footage exist of armed security operatives entering his office and they would appear to have seized the phones of his staff. We cannot quite tell from the footage what […]

LESS than 24 hours to the planned protest against the arrest and detention of activist and Labour Party stalwart, Dele Farotimi, the authorities responsible for his detention took the wind out of the sails of the disaffected community of his supporters comprising human rights activists, professional agitators and opposition politicians, home and abroad. They arraigned him […]

The manner the Northern political establishment, represented especially by governors of the far North and most of their legislators, have reacted to the introduction of the tax reform bills explains why President Bola Tinubu’s proclamation of the removal of petrol subsidy within hours of his assumption of duty as president on May 29 last year, should […]

The likes of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, then Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy and now DG of the WTO; Charles Soludo, then Governor of the CBN and now governor of Anambra State and Oby Ezekwesili, a former Vice President of the World Bank, are Nigerian-born apostles and advocates of the World Bank- and IMF-style […]

AT a recent gathering of so-called stakeholders of the Nigerian economy at the Lagos Business School, a Deputy Director of the International Monetary Fund, IMF, Catherine Patillo, remarked that the reforms made in the last 18 months of the Bola Tinubu administration are not working. This claim was made with neither sympathy nor concern for both […]

One more thing made clear by the outcome of the American presidential election of November 5 is that politics and many other things connected to it are aspects of the human sciences driven by human actions that can be explained, but not always with mathematical precision. When pollsters make projections within “the margin of error” and […]

When former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon, marked his 90th birthday on October 19, he was celebrated far and wide by both friends and foes. He was a war-time dictator and could not be expected not to have those who love him and others who still have an axe to grind with him for his […]

THE report about a member of the House of Representatives assaulting a Bolt driver was one I had read earlier in the day the news broke. Even after I had seen a footage of the despicable encounter and the infantile utterances of the supposed legislator, I still didn’t think it was strong enough to displace the […]

THERE is a curious assertion of statehood, the rights and powers of states against the extent and limit of federal control in our so-called federation that has emerged in the last couple of months. Suddenly, some individuals and groups are waking up to the realisation that Nigeria is not all about the Federal Government, that the […]

Nigeria’s wobbly economy appears to have humbled everyone. If they are to be taken seriously, not even the big men of the immediate past and the few others used to feeding off the sweat of the struggling majority are spared. Food prices are soaring even as the cost of energy increasingly spirals out of reach. A […]

Action Peoples Party, Sim Fubara’s proxy party, the special purpose vehicle through which he is establishing his own hegemony, is certainly full of action, having made a near clean-sweep of the available seats in the 23 Local Government Areas of Rivers State. Twenty two of these seats are now under the control of the APP, an […]

ABOUT an hour before I started writing this, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu read his nationally transmitted address on the 64th Independence Anniversary of Nigeria. Not unexpectedly, he made of this speech a pep talk to advise Nigerians not to lose hope in the face of the mounting economic, social and political challenges that have followed the […]

CONTRARY to the end-time predictions of fake cabalists and aspiring soothsayers masquerading as political pundits, the governorship election in Edo State was essentially violence-free. But for a pocket of incidents that resulted in the disruption of the electoral process, reports of the election were mostly favourable. Voter-turnout was very low with just over 500,000 ballots cast […]