Category: OP-ED

If we could cast a vote in the December 8 presidential election in Ghana, President Nana Akufo-Addo, would have won re-election by miles. Nigerians love him to bits. He talks a good game. In the first two years or more of his presidency, I remember a number of videos shared with me on the Akufo-Addo promise. On a tour of the… Read More

Today makes it twenty-one years since Comrade Ola Oni passed on. He was one of the greatest leaders and teachers on the Nigerian Left, from the ’60s till his death. He, along with Eskor Toyo, Baba Omojola and others split from the Socialist Workers and Farmers Party in Augsut 1964 (i.e., a year and four months after SWAFP was formed)… Read More

I was proud to arrive in Nigeria and begin my third ambassadorial posting last November.  2020 will long be remembered as the year of the pandemic COVID-19, and we will look back and honor the lives of the more than 1.5 million people worldwide who lost their lives to this vicious pandemic.  2020 also marked 60 years of bilateral diplomatic… Read More

Two weeks ago, I was a guest speaker at the Annual Law Week of the Nigerian Bar Association, Ibadan Branch. I had the privilege of speaking on the important topic of Justice as the bedrock of an enduring democracy. Different people have different concepts of justice, depending always, on the circumstances and indeed the setting. But the universal idea of doing… Read More

The second wave/spike of Covid-19 exacerbated by winter had sent panic across Europe and other parts of the world. Governments are taking precautionary steps to stem the rising tide of the pandemic with a variety of drastic measures which includes total or, partial lockdowns, mandatory wearing of mask and other safety protocol. This is coming amidst vaccinations especially in the… Read More

Insecurity in Nigeria has revealed the incompetence of General Buhari’s regime, so much so that no one is safe from any region in Nigeria. Kidnapping has become a lucrative business since the government failed woefully to create an enabling environment for industrialisation which ought to have resulted in job creation for citizens. The tragedy of Nigeria is that it is… Read More

For more than four years, government workers in Kogi state have never had the conviction that non-payment of salary was completely surmounted. Kogi state workers, especially those at the local government level didn’t know they would still be mauled by a man whose first tenure was marred with hardship, death and insecurity due to his negligence. During Yahaya Bello’s first… Read More

In the evening of February 19, 2018, 110 schoolgirls of Government Girls’ Science Secondary School, Dapchi in Yunusari local government of area of Yobe state were abducted by Boko Haram and taken into grisly captivity. Five of the girls died in the hands of their captors. But after weeks of negotiations between the government and the abductors, 104 of the… Read More

In a gory event widely described as Black Teusday, Nigerians witness one of the most violent crackdown on protest since the Enugu Iva Valley Massacre in 1949. Like bloodthirsty Vamps, the army and police on October 20, descended on peaceful protesters with the kind of force and desperation only witnessed in movies and war. We lost our Brothers, Friends, Fathers,… Read More

Hurray! Our boys have been brought back safe and sound – all 344 of them. They were suddenly kidnapped by bandits on the 11th of December 2020 from their school, Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina State, North West, Nigeria. The kidnap was attributed to the bandits, one of the violent set of people plaguing the north.  But Boko Haram… Read More