Category: OP-ED

Every month of September annually global leaders usually gather at the United Nations headquarters in New York, the US, for the UN General Assembly sessions. Leaders in attendance, including those from Africa, are always billed to address the world and meet and familiarise with each other. President Joe Biden is participating for the first time in this year’s 76th edition having been sworn in in January. His remarks were impressive as he hammered on the need for a COVID-less world and the one with controlled human-friendly climate. Promising to release…

School na scam! I hear this phrase a lot of times these days, especially from Nigerian youths. Ask them what they mean, they will tell you that the whole hype about education being the foundation for a productive and profitable future is all lies – that all the talks about schooling being the gate pass to a life of comfort are all made up.   As far as they are concerned, Nigerian schools are teaching them things they may never need or use in life. Unfortunately, society keeps telling them that…

On Saturday, 11 September 2023, the good people of Isoko South Constituency 1 came out to choose a new representative to fill the Delta State House of Assembly seat left vacant by reason of the sudden and sad death of Mr Kenneth Ogba, an amiable gentleman, my last recollection of whom was at the reception of guests following the burial of my 107-year-old mother on the 1st of May. I gladly and proudly flew the banner of the All Progressives Congress in the bye-election. I have been seeking an elective position…

Power. It excites and incites. It can excite hope and strength, or incite tension, hate and bitterness. Why should the regional background of the next president be a vexatious issue, evoking threats and recriminations? Why should brothers be at daggers drawn with each other over the geography of power? What happened to gentlemanly ententes, negotiations and trade-offs? What happened to the Nigerian agenda – if there was ever one? Brothers sheathe thy swords.  If the principal interest of acquiring power at the centre is to steer Nigeria and all Nigerians…

Justice, equality, and fraternity were the tripod forces and principles that triggered the 1789 French Revolution. These became the song on the street of Bastille and other parts of France that year. It was sung and animated so much so that it became the signpost of hundreds of demonstrations of people’s power around the world in the years and centuries that followed. The organization of polities around the notion of a nation-state and the political coordination of such an entity was at this time remodeled. This implies that the 1789 revolution brought a deep search-light on the social contract that existed between the ruled and the rulers. Even more interesting in this year’s event is that since then, the French aristocracy has neither stopped nor yielded its place…

The APC led Buhari administration is no doubt desperately in need of exciting distractions to keep the focus of the people away from its abysmal failure, but she has chosen a wrong masquerade for the job!   With a masquerade living in anger of the south easterner over his betrayal of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, and waiting for the vengeance of his own people on his suspicious moves against their ideology of the Yoruba Nation, the question is what does the Federal Government stand to gain with a man with absolute loss…

Ambition Never Comes To An End.– Kenneth Kaunda Ring the bell!  Sound the alarm! There is an eight month rumour in Nigeria that has refused to go away.  Never, ever, doubt it when you are told that in every rumour, there is an iota of truth somewhere. Ignore it at your peril.  Perhaps the adage; ‘No smoke without fire is a Nigerian invention.’  Even if these sayings of the wise do not apply in other climes, you can be sure that Nigeria in all her uniqueness, good or bad, is…

The prevalence of the members, privies and agents of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) flaunting the law, breaking the instituted rule of law and not adhering to due process of the law is getting out of hand and they must hence be called to order and get their tail tamed for good or they risked being scrapped like their colleagues in the defunct State Anti Robbery Squad (SARS). The members of the Economic and Financial Crimes commission are currently undertaking the journey the members of the State Anti…

Ispent over 20 years of my working life abroad as a university teacher, banker and international civil servant with an unblemished record. I have no criminal record — not even a parking ticket. Sadly, it is in my own fatherland that I’m being subjected to criminal investigation and such extreme political persecution. Please, pray for me. I have reasons to believe that my life is in danger and that some powerful political forces want to silence me forever for speaking the truth. For speaking on behalf of the Holy Martyrs — of thousands of innocent children,…

Civil society groups, including Non-Governmental Organisations are a positive force for change and progress in society, oftentimes helping to bridge the gaps of alienation between government and the people. In developed parts of the world, CSOs and NGOs have been in the forefront of making our world a much better place by helping to fight injustice, man’s inhumanity to man, environmental abuses, global health challenges, gender discrimination and the evolution of a rules-based international system. Ordinarily, power figures succumb to the temptations of power, they get carried away, they trample…