RECENTLY, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, NAFDAC, debunked a report that 40 per cent of the registered brands of pesticide products in Nigeria were banned or restricted for use by the European Union. Mojisola Adeyeye, the Director-General of the Agency, remarked that Nigeria will not be a dumping ground for […]

RECENTLY, when the Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency, LASEPA, officially banned single-use plastic among its staff members, it was probably following the footsteps of the 400-staff members of the United Nations Climate Secretariat in Bonn, Germany, who chose to endure the heat instead of enjoying the ozone-depleting, energy-guzzling comfort of air-conditioners. At Bonn, it was […]

WITH the dawn of our renascent democracy in 1999, General Abdulsalami Abubakar who took over when General Sani Abacha died, was in the forefront of implementing the resolution of the Provisional Ruling Council, PRC, to put rotation, zoning and federal character into effect. He ensured that the Federal Character principle which had been enshrined in […]

EVERY diverse political entity which desires to last long and prosper must find ways of carrying constituent members of their union along. Every group must be made to have a sense of belonging in, and ownership of the union. Since independence, Nigeria has had more than its fair share of crises of confidence which resulted […]

THE battles for the amendment of the Electoral Act 2010 to ensure the electronic transmission of results from the polling units to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, headquarters were protracted. The ruling political forces fought it because direct electronic transmission would cut off the collation centres where figures were falsified under heavy security cover. […]

BARRING any last-minute hitch, the much-anticipated elective national convention of the All Progressives Congress, APC, will take place in Abuja on Saturday, March 26, 2022. The main opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, had already elected its party leaders at the convention of October 30, 2021. For the APC, this convention which is for the election […]

The President of the African Development Bank, AfDB, Dr Akinwunmi Adesina, broke a cheering news last week that the bank had secured a $15.6 bn facility to build a world-class road corridor between Lagos and Abidjan. At the African Investment Forum which ended on Thursday last week, the AfDB President declared: “The biggest deal for […]

AN old adage says “ignorance is a disease”. In Nigeria and many parts of Africa, ignorance is an epidemic. It is a weapon in the hands of the poor which is used to prey on the fellow poor and downtrodden elements of the society. Last week a shameful video trended on the social media. A […]

TO any committed environmentalist, the waterfronts of Makoko, Ebute Metta Lagos, presents a heart-rending eyesore. Hundreds of thousands of logs floated in from the coastal mangrove and evergreen forests cover the surface of the Lagos Lagoon. This has been the case for decades. It is one grim evidence of the mindless man-made deforestation and desertification […]

Africans have a lot to learn from some of the fall-outs of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Prominent among these is the total and unblemished outpouring of empathy towards the victims of aggression by a military superpower neighbour. After weeks of intimidating dress rehearsals and propaganda red herrings that they were merely having military exercises […]

ANYONE coming into Nigeria through Abuja or Lagos (the political and economic capitals) this passing week would know that something is seriously wrong with the country. The two marquee cities, like other parts of the country, were in darkness. From the air, there were only few and far between patches of light, obviously from the […]

THE “dividends” of incompetent and corrupt governance in the petroleum sector by successive governments have really caught up with us on all fronts. We are now the laughingstock of our own people and the international community. Nigeria is the only major oil-producing country that lacks indigenous refining capacity. Successive governments have failed to address this […]

LIFE in Nigeria has assumed the status of Nollywood movies. Even in the most serious business of governance, we see the Petroleum Minister (President Muhammadu Buhari) jetting off to the United Kingdom on medical tourism while Nigerians languish on long fuel queues, paying through their noses and unsure when normal supply will be restored. Things […]

THE introduction of the Islamic hijab headdress for female police officers by the Inspector General of Police, Usman Baba Alkali, is a display of provocative bigotry and impunity. It must be reversed. A statement issued on Friday, March 4, 2022 through the Force’s spokesman, Olumuyiwa Adejobi, claimed that the dress code was approved “for optimum […]

THE level of destruction already recorded in just two weeks of intense fighting in the Russian invasion of Ukraine shows how nasty war, particularly modern warfare, is. Ironically, the traditional roundtable talks which should have taken place to prevent the conflict, also commenced almost from the day the first shot was fired. Warnings by Western […]