Football is not for sale
Football is the world’s most popular sport. It belongs to everyone. From dusty neighbourhood pitches to the grandeur of the FIFA World Cup, its appeal has always rested on the belief that sporting merit, not financial engineering, determines its destiny. That is why the reported proposal by FIFA under President Gianni Infantino to create a […]
Sallah: Celebrating under economic strain
MILLIONS of Muslims around the world are celebrating the Eid-el-Adha religious holiday today. Eid-el-Adha, which literally means the “festival of sacrifice” commemorates monumental…
Ismaila Isa Funtua, OFR, mni(1942-2020)
IT is with great regret and sadness that we pay our humble tribute to a media colossus, astute businessman, industrialist, administrator, suave member of the power elite and highly esteemed friend of the Vanguard family, the late Mallam Ismaila Isa Funtua. Funtua’s sudden passage on Monday, July 20, 2020, aged 78, came as a painful […]
Need to cut cost of mobile data
WITH the advent of the coronavirus pandemic which occasioned over six weeks of near-total lockdown of Nigeria, the citizenry was forced to turn to mobile data as a means of coping with the outbreak and advancing their economic and social livelihoods behind closed doors. Nigerians, like their peers in other parts of the world, adopted […]
VIPs flouting airport protocols
IT is hardly surprising that some highly-placed individuals have reportedly been disregarding protocols deployed by the Ministry of Aviation to ensure safe air travel in Nigeria amidst the still burgeoning coronavirus pandemic. The reopening was considered necessary in order to resuscitate the economy. Three major such incidents have been reported in the Abuja, Port Harcourt […]
When it matters to step aside
ON Monday, July 20, 2020, Olubunmi Tunji Ojo, the former Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee probing the alleged financial malfeasance in the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, set what should be the gold standard in all cases of alleged involvement in misconducts involving public finance. At the venue of the probe, Ojo was […]
As the 774,000 jobs kick off
PERHAPS the most ambitious mass-employment programme in the history of this country has just kicked off. The tweet by the Federal Government on Tuesday, July 14, 2020 that the programme had started effectively overrode the earlier purported suspension of the Special Public Works, SPW, which the Joint Committee of the National Assembly on Labour had […]
Resolving Nigeria – Ghana trade disputes
IT is cheering news that the hundreds of Nigerian-owned businesses earlier shut in Ghana are being reopened after over six months of closure. This might be part of a gradual easing of months-long tensions between the two West African Anglophone countries over trade disputes and a diplomatic spat, with Ghana more on the offensive. These […]
The danger in reopening schools now
WE stand firmly on the same page with the Federal Government that schools should not be reopened for now. Reopening schools at this juncture of the coronavirus pandemic is a romance with disaster. After a recent meeting of the Federal Executive Council, the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, announced that it was suspending plans […]
Ghana’s pledge to rebuild Nigerian diplomatic property
WE are mollified by the steps the Republic of Ghana has so far taken to vitiate the latest act of diplomatic hostility towards Nigeria through the demolition of buildings in the compound of the Nigerian High Commission in Accra. Some weeks ago, an agent of the Osu Traditional Council in Accra went to Nigeria’s diplomatic […]
Broadcast Code: NBC’s curious processes
NIGERIA’s latest broadcasting regulatory framework, which the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission, NBC, released to the industry and general public on May 27, 2020, is a mish-mash of defective thinking, with a potential to leave the industry and the wider economy worse off. Prefaced with the rote claim of a desire to make the industry more robust […]
Why reopening of worship centres is dicey
THE Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, this week renewed its call for the reopening of worship centres in Lagos and Ogun states which remained shut on the orders of the state governors despite the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19’s earlier easing of the closure. The two states are among the highest-risk areas in the federation. […]
As domestic flights resume
AFTER three months of lockdown during which only emergency flights were able to operate, the Nigerian aviation industry roars back to life today, July 8, 2020. Flights were to resume on June 21, 2020, but the industry regulator, the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, NCAA, decided to hold action until all stakeholders came to full terms […]
COVID-19 invasion of Government Houses
ONE of the factors that have been feeding the myths surrounding the raging coronavirus pandemic is the unusual rate at which it has affected the upper strata of our society. It is this factor that led many to the unfounded and dangerous notion that COVID-19 is a “big man’s disease”. The disease entered Nigeria through […]
Needless spat over 774,000 job scheme
ON Tuesday, June 30, 2020, Festus Keyamo, SAN, the Minister of State for Labour, Employment and Productivity, was reportedly walked out by the National Assembly Joint Committee on Employment, Labour and Productivity over his refusal to apologise to them after defying them at an investigative public hearing over the implementation of the Federal Government’s 774,000 […]
Tackling the plight of road sweepers
ONE of the ways of keeping our urban roads clean is through the employment of daily road sweepers. These “highway managers” also help to control the indiscriminately-dumped wastes by our undisciplined road users to ensure they do not block the drains and worsen flooding. In states like Lagos, the engagement of road managers is also […]
