Category: OP-ED

Living in poverty is the default system of human nature, and the alternative approach requires perpetual struggle. Thus, anyone can manage to live in poverty, but to live out of poverty, one must learn. Nigeria is rated among the low-income countries and has surpassed India in the extreme poverty rate ranking. Based on the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (GMPI) measurement,… Read More

There’s a growing feeling in high political circles that the media is too free for its own good, and maybe also, for the good of the country. As a result, there are attempts on multiple fronts to save the media from what, for lack of a better description, may be called diarrhea of freedom.  Those worried about this “excessive” media freedom… Read More

I got several telephone calls following reports of the N500 cash prize awarded to the best graduating students of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka a few days back. According to the news report, the three best graduating students of the federal government-owned institution were asked to share a sum of N1, 500 among themselves.  The award was tagged Sir Odumegwu… Read More

Democracy is a widespread people’s participatory system of government that runs deep into citizens ’consciousness with the freedom it promises and hits back to the cord of human preservation against oppression and human right violations. By its very intention, democracy leaves the human race with an attempt at bettering and reshaping the world until politicians stepped into the equation, society… Read More

Divided like never before in its tortured history of nationhood Nigeria is unsafe, wracked by rampant banditry and armed robbery, terrorism, ethnic strife, industrial kidnapping and random violence. The country has never had it so bad, this bad! Yet, despite these challenges sapping the morale of Nigerians our ‘elected’ leaders in Abuja carry on as if nothing is amiss. There… Read More

It began with a 183 km journey from Lagos to Ede-South local government area of Osun state. According to the data made available by the National Social Safety-net Coordinating Office (NASSCO), Ede-South LGA has 3,673 households and 12,947 individuals captured in the National Social Register (NSR). I headed to the social development office at the local government where I met… Read More

I’m not happy to say what I’m about to say, but I just have to say it. I know there are lots of people who would take exception to me describing public actions by the Nigerian government and/or the government officials themselves as dumb and dumber. While I respect such people’s choice of what is polite language in public space,… Read More

For decades Nigerians have been battling with all kind of illnesses, the pains are too much to bear.  The strength to withstand the ground has been shattered. Nigeria is bleeding at the moment and no amount of surgery can stop it from bleeding. The unity of the country has been murdered by  assassins in power. The arrogance of Dictator Buhari,… Read More

Unfolding events in Nigeria have unleashed array of coinages on the polity. Prominent among such words are: restructuring, gunmen and unknown gunmen. With the rising spate of kidnapping, banditry, secessionist agitation and associated militarized response from the state; we are constantly interacting with the literal interpretation of the famous poem by William Butler Yeats- things fall apart; the center cannot… Read More

I have been privileged to interview quite a number of world leaders in the course of my journalism career. These include President Olusegun Obasanjo, President Ketumile Masire of Botswana, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Commonwealth Secretary General Shridath Ramphal, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan etc..not to talk of holding the microphone across the world in the presence of countless Presidents in… Read More