Biodun Jeyifo (1946-2026), by Obi Nwakanma
There are these times when uttering words feel too overwhelming, because words sometimes weigh like stones. Such moments are like now, when we must make offerings to the memory of a man like Biodun Jeyifo – BJ for short. At his death, I was too tongue-tied to make appropriate tribute. In these times, when vulgar […]
Zikism: Nigeria and Risorgimento
It does seem clear to many of us who still have, and are guided by a sense of history that Nigeria derailed from its historical course, and drifts, when it abandoned Zikist ideology as its foundational myth. Much of Nigeria’s history, particularly since the civil war, has been shaped by a cynical disregard and disinterest in nation-building.
The police assault on the National Assembly
As the law permits, Speaker Aminu Tambuwal remains Speaker of the National House of Representatives, until the House convenes and the Majority Leader in the House musters the whip to get enough votes to elect a new speaker. It is fairly clear that the Job of the Speaker of the House is dependent largely on the privileges of the Majority party in Parliament or a governing coalition.
We are all Boko Haram
Boko Haram’s latest onslaughts in Potiskum and Mubi this past week draw our attention once again to the growing strength and defiance of its terrorist operations. If anything has defined the Jonathan presidency, it has been the Boko Haram insurgency, the single most dangerous political development in Nigeria since the civil war. In a sense, Jonathan is struggling with history, and the nature of his presidential legacy.
P.O.C UMEH’S POETRY
Philip O.C. Umeh studied English at the University of Lagos; taught English at the Government College, Umuahia where he was senior English Master until 1978, and where he himself had been a student, from 1955 to 1961, one year below the writer and political martyr, Ken Saro-Wiwa in the famous school, to whom he addresses a eulogy, “To Ken Saro Wiwa” in his poems:
Goodluck Jonathan’s Albatross
Of all those who emerged to lead the government in Nigeria, Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, Nigeria’s current president is the darkest of its dark horses. Nigeria’s governments have always been led by dark horses – those least expected to emerge: Balewa was sprung from the political loins of the British colonial office; Yakubu Gowon from a concert of neo-colonial and regionalist military interests that dismantled the firm hierarchies of the Nigerian Armed Forces; Obasanjo from the need to enact balance and reassure Nigeria’s “foreign partners” after the assassination of Murtala Muhammed; as a much younger politician, Shehu Shagari was the late Sarduana’s “ears and eyes” in Balewa’s cabinet, and so the Caliph’s vizier, in Nigeria’s central government. In the second republic, while those who sought power actively were busy, he was taken from his senatorial ambition and made President, and on and on.
