It is no longer news that the former Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Mudashiru Obasa, was ousted by his colleagues on Monday, January 13, 2025 while he was holidaying in the U.S., thus bringing his 10-year cruise on the Lagos gravy train to an abrupt stop. Obasa was first elected in 2007 to represent […]

In the three weeks before January 11, 2025 when I returned, I was away from Lagos back in Mbaise, my ancestral home, to bury my mother-in-law, Ezinne Eunice Egowure Okahia. During that period, a lot happened, the most consequential being the election of Senator John Azuta-Mbata as the President-General of the apex Igbo socio-cultural organization, Ohanaeze Ndigbo […]

There is no denying the fact that for many Nigerians, this is their bleakest Christmas ever. It is not because they have lost the zeal to celebrate. No! They simply cannot afford to even contemplate, not to talk of actually making merry in this triumphant season. Happiness has become a luxury in the land. Rather than celebrating, […]

When my attention was drawn to Governor Monday Okpebholo’s “Now, it is confusing me” video, I thought his political enemies were at work aided by Artificial Intelligence. The one-minute, 17-second video captured him stuttering while presenting the 2025 Appropriation Bill to the Edo State House of Assembly. Struggling to pronounce the numerical value of the Bill […]

On December 6, Ukrainians commemorated the Armed Forces Day. It is an occasion used annually in honouring their “brave defenders who protect their homeland from Russian aggression.” I happened to be at the Ukrainian embassy that Friday where the Ambassador of Ukraine to Nigeria, Ivan Kholostenko, said the heroes being honoured “safeguard not only Ukraine but […]

A lot has been agitating my mind in recent times on the state of our union and why evil seems to continually thrive over good. Why is it that the things which disqualify people in other climes from holding public office are exactly what is needed by an average Nigerian politician to be considered astute? In […]

Ordinarily, the innocuous question – who speaks for President Bola Tinubu – should be a non-issue because it ought to be a given. But these are no ordinary times. In Tinubu’s bumbling emi l’okan dynasty, where the end justifies every means and jejune politics trumps governance, absurdity is the norm. Such intrigues, in the warped estimation […]

ON December 2, 2024, Nigerians will converge at the main auditorium of the National Universities Commission for the public presentation of Senator Chris Anyanwu’s autobiography, Bold Leap. To be sure, this is her third book. She wrote the first, The Law Makers, Federal Republic of Nigeria, while she was NTA correspondent at the National Assembly […]

ON Wednesday, November 6, Donald Trump, the 45th U.S. President, pulled off what, to all intents and purposes, is an extraordinary political comeback – an exceptional feat that has catapulted him once again to the enviable position of the president-in-waiting. On January 20, 2025, he will take another oath of office as the 47th U.S. President. […]

I am worried that Nigerian leaders have captured the Nigerian state, taking beleaguered citizens hostage in the process and yet carrying on as if all is well. I am even more worried that the grossly abused citizens, afflicted with the debilitating Stockholm syndrome, rather than standing up to their abusers are actually coping, having over time […]