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 […]
A nation and her discontents
It is very true that Nigeria’s elite – its political, business and intellectual leadership – has much to answer for its regard of its historical role in shaping a better Nigeria for posterity. Part of the crisis of Nigeria is elite incoherence where it matters.
America to the rescue
As I write this, I have right here before me, the full text of the speech made to Nigerians by Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, first president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, on Republic Day, October 1, 1963, titled, “Bravely Struggling Against Odds.”
The lost girls of Chibok
Americans themselves rose up and backed their president across party line. They closed ranks in the national interest. Nobody blamed the president for a National Security slip that allowed terrorists to acquire a plane; operate under the radar of a vast and sophisticated American Surveillance capacity, and haul a deadly flying missile each on the World Trade Towers in New York, and the Pentagon in Washington DC, two powerful symbols of American power and invulnerability.
BOB MIGA (1949-2014)
Valentine Soroibe Agim was mostly known as Bob Miga. For those like me who grew up in Nigeria in the 1970s and early ‘80s, Bob Miga was a classic act; a superstar, and one among a wave of music celebrities whose sounds touched a core in our lives in a powerful and memorable way. It was particularly so for those in the East of Nigeria who came out of the civil war utterly devastated by war. Music saved our lives. It was young men – many just barely out of high school – who consoled us with the pulse of the most invigorating sounds ever created in the continent of Africa – with their unique, modern Afro-rock idioms. These young men took Nigeria by storm. They played music to fob-off anger and despondence. They played music to live.
A kidnap, the Nyanya Park bombing, and the last straw
A specter hangs above Nigeria. It is the specter of war and violence. The election year 2015 draws very close, and closer still rises this spectre that will mark the coming year as Nigeria’s second annus horriblis. Since the election of the current President, Nigeria has been inundated by serial acts of extreme violence and subversion, coming mostly from the North.
