FORMER President Olusegun Obasanjo likes to call God’s name with seemingly frightening irreverence. He is calling down curses on himself in a matter Nigerians thought was well known – that Obasanjo personally insisted Umaru Musa Yar’Adua would succeed him as Nigeria’s President.

THERE is no shortage of suggestions about the problems with Nigeria, and even Nigerians. One major ingredient that has been lacking in the Nigerian situation is leadership – the type that would provide purposeful direction for Nigerians. A shortage of such leadership exists where it matters most, the presidency. When the President returns, he would […]

IT is defeatist to look at riots as if they were indigenous to Jos, the Plateau State capital, which has had an unfair share of them. Riots, unrests, and variants of them, have become common Nigerian ways of expressing their anger at a federation that does not work.

THE police can go to ridiculous ends to cover its poor investigation skills. Sometimes it intimidates suspects in order to extort money from them. A case in point, obviously one of the many that managed to get to public attention, is that of Iyabo Ojo, a pregnant woman who the Special Anti-Robbery Squad, SARS, in […]

THINGS are getting better, depending on who you are, and what you are looking at. In the past few months you would have noticed that justice is available speedily, actually in a jiffy, for a select few, who approach the court with cases that serve special interests.

FORTY years today the Nigerian Civil War that set Biafra, against the rest of Nigeria, ended when Col Philip Effiong surrendered to then Col Olusegun Obasanjo. It ended a 30-month hostility that claimed millions of lives.

IT is difficult to appreciate the dimensions of national conflicts until the victims include some distant and unintended targets. The attack on the Togolese team to the Nations Cup in Angola again restates the unresolved conflicts in Africa and their implications for the global village. We may mouth the import of globalisation, but we fail grossly to see that what hurts one, affects all.

OFFICIALS of the Nigerian Embassy in the United States took detailed interest in the aircraft bombing case involving Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and were present at the court sessions.

AT times like these, we can hold unto straws in the absence of anything more substantial.

HYPOCRISY is already in full display as some self-promoting Nigerians have begun buying relevance with the Nations Cup in Angola. If they succeed, being a World Cup year too, they would have made names for themselves as patriots.