THE Senate, on July 4, 2024, passed for a second reading a bill that seeks to remove police retirees from the Contributory Pension Scheme, CPS. Promoters of the bill, which seeks, among other things, to replace the Nigeria Police Force Pensions Limited, NPF Pensions, the pension fund administrator, PFA, charged with the exclusive administration of police […]

THE  Federal Capital Territory Minister, Nyesom Wike, is a cantankerous old fossil – irascible, quarrelsome and testy, no doubt. Whether as a local government chairman, chief of staff, minister or governor, he is bad-tempered, cranky and grouchy; a man not only at war with himself but perpetually with others. This is not the quality of a […]

IN his 1961 book, The Theatre of the Absurd, Martin Julius Esslin, a Hungarian-born British journalist and professor of drama, lamented what he called absurdism, “the inevitable devaluation of ideals, purity, and purpose.” Esslin, who died in London, United Kingdom on February 24, 2002, aged 83 years, couldn’t have had the oil-rich state of Rivers, Nigeria, […]

IN my column on April 11, 2024, titled, “Nigeria, a country in love with public holidays,” I lamented that “the idea of unending public holidays is not only absurd but also sickening” in reaction to the Federal Government’s ‘magnanimity’ in awarding Nigerians an extra day for the Eid-el-Fitr celebrations in early April. As it is always […]

A LOT  of mischief is going on in the banking sub-sector of Nigeria’s financial ecosystem since the Central Bank of Nigeria, on June 3, 2024, announced the revocation of the banking license of Heritage Bank Plc. The not so subtle campaign by some faceless groups to demarket an otherwise solid financial institution like the Fidelity Bank […]

In his article titled, “Biafra Day: How not to honour the fallen heroes,” my friend and colleague, Emeka Alex Duru, lamented the bizarre attempt of some misguided Igbo youths to keep the spirit of the dead alive by killing the living all in the name of a utopian Biafra. “Causing harm to the living, putting the future […]

ASKED last December to comment on Bola Tinubu’s performance as President and Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria’s Armed Forces since May 29, 2023, Professor Wole Soyinka, first black man to win the Nobel Prize in Literature and one of the most fervent cheerleaders of the Tinubu presidency, said he will only do so on the administration’s first anniversary. […]

AS the political crisis engulfing Rivers State festers, many leaders have proffered solutions. Former President Goodluck Jonathan joined the bandwagon on Monday, May 20, at the flag-off of the multi-billion naira Trans-Kalabari Road project where he warned that the impasse, if unchecked, has the potential of destabilising not only the Niger Delta, but the entire country. […]

LET us be categorical from the outset. There is no constitutional or statutory significance to the first 100 days of a governor or president’s term, which, nevertheless, seems to have become a tradition. In fact, the origins of the concept is hazy and its import remains a subject of debate. Some historians trace its origins to […]

ASIWAJU Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Nigeria’s president since May 29, 2023 is a man of many parts, talented in multiple areas of life. As someone who is able to do many different things almost effortlessly, Nigerians perceive him as a superman – the “ideal superior man of the future,” as described by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, the 19th […]