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 […]
Sunset for Nigeria?
Pay attention folks: Nigeria is in a spin. This has never happened before. Not even during the civil war did Nigeria as a nation experience the kind of internal stress that it is currently passing through.
As the Presidency hogwashes Pantami, Ohaneze warns on Igbo youths
By Obi Nwakanma These are most certainly troubling days in Nigeria. First, there are signs that Nigeria is broke. Under this administration, which inherited a very robust economy, Nigeria is now what people are calling “the hungry capital of the world.” The administration came with an economic idea whose kernel was, simply put, the “almajirinization” […]
The Igbo do not want to be president anymore (2)
Let me be clear: the Igbo are the makers of modern Nigeria. Let no one quibble about this. But the Igbo project of nation-building stalled in 1966 when the republic was overthrown, and a violent civil war levied against the Eastern Region, where the Igbo were dominant
The Igbo do not want to be president anymore
A new development is now taking place in the East of Nigeria: Police and personnel of the Armed Forces are now targeted for execution by an increasingly faceless and ferocious group
On Malami’s doctrine of exclusion
By Obi Nwakanma The President is the Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces and Chief Executive of the administration of the Federal Government of Nigeria. This is elementary knowledge. In much the same way, it is elementary knowledge that the National Assembly is the law-making body of the Federation of Nigeria. Because the nation is established […]
The Horror of Zabarmari
By Obi Nwakanma Last Saturday, in the rice fields of Garin Kwashebe, in the town of Zabarmari, in the Jere local government of Borno State, forty-two local rice farmers (UN accounts claim One hundred and ten) lay dead; slaughtered by Boko Haram killers who invaded their farms disguised as Islamic preachers according to reports. About […]
Umahi’s moves
By Obi Nwakanma Mr. David Umahi, governor of Ebonyi State, has finally decamped from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC). This move did not cause the kind of political earthquake that he must have been expected, primarily because, one, the news cycle these days is much like instant coffee. It […]
Zik’s anguish, Nigeria’s failure
By Obi Nwakanma Ogbuefi Nnayelugo, Owelle Osowa Anya n’Onitsha, Dr. Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe was the leader of the African nationalist resistance to colonialism from 1937 to 1957. He spearheaded it. He theorized it. He catalyzed it. In spite of the puny attempts by characters whom Azikiwe himself would have dubbed “Lilliputians” to revise the history […]
American election: A new Atlantic doctrine
By Obi Nwakanma Americans dodged a bullet. Four more years of Trump would have turned the US into another Banana republic, with the irretrievable destruction of its foundational democratic institutions. The defeat of Donald J. Trump in penultimate week’s poll gave the United States a new lease of life. It offered Americans an opportunity once […]
The Obigbo killings
By Obi Nwakanma Last week, US SEAL Team 6 sneaked into Nigeria under the cover of darkness, and rescued an American citizen, Philip Walton, held in the north of Nigeria after he was kidnapped from Niger Republic. It was a precise and clinical operation. The US Commando team viciously decommissioned and terminated six armed men […]
Government wants peace, but of the graveyard
By Obi Nwakanma Sagir Musa, a Lieutenant-Colonel, and spokesman for the Nigerian Army, came on air last Monday to threaten young Nigerians protesting on the streets on behalf of the Army Chief, Lt. General Tukur Yusuf Buratai. In a public press statement read after the Chief of Army’s Conference with Principal Staff Officers, GOCs and […]
As Nigeria boils…
By Obi Nwakanma Nigeria has a President who is, by the designation of the Constitution, the Commander-in-Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces. His real name is Muhammadu Buhari. Some Nigerians might however be justified in calling him, ‘President Photo,’ on account that he has turned out to be a wall-flower President. The only time they […]
End SARS
#EndSARS: The police history and character as a colonial constabulary force unsuited for a sovereign nation of free citizens in a democracy.
Femi Adesina: Buhari and Arthur Who?
By Obi Nwakanma Femi Adesina, the President’s Chichidodo – you all remember the bird in Ayi Kwei Armah’s grim novel, The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born? – well, he came again last week with a whopper: a big fat shit; an essay he titled, ‘Buhari and the South-East: Arthur Eze nails it.’ I really […]
Vincent Chukwuemeka Ike: 1930 – 2020
By Obi Nwakanma Professor Vincent Chukwuemeka Ike, novelist and University administrator, who became Eze Ndikelionwu, an old Aro town founded in the middle of the 17th century, died on January 9, 2020, and was buried on June 11, 2020. Chukwuemeka Ike also held the “Ofo Aro” and was one of the trinity that made up […]
