Tag: Opinion

“It was about the pidgins,” he said to us by way of explanation. “The pidgins wouldn’t fly,” he said again. Perhaps he was under so much pressure from people who were so disappointed that, like an emperor, he had prophesied that President Goodluck Jonathan would lose the 2015 election because of the pidgins who refused to fly. They wanted Rev Fr Camillus… Read More

Only Sowore put his hands to the plough! The moment Buhari’s government assumed power, it militarized our democracy and disabled the civic space, thereby subjecting dialogue, dissent or disagreement to a foreclosure. Hence, the state rolled out its full arsenal of coercion, armed to the teeth, men (and a few women) of the secret police, elite squads of the police,… Read More

The apology issued by the Church of Scotland for its role in capturing and torturing alleged witches in early modern Europe is an example and an initiative that churches in Africa must emulate. In a historic gesture of mea culpa, the Church of Scotland has, at its General Assembly, in May, acknowledged their role in the persecution and execution of… Read More

The 2022 industrial action by Nigeria’s academic staff union of universities (ASUU) is worrying on many grounds, but it is nothing new in the Nigerian context. It is the fifth industrial action in the last ten years – 2020, 2017, 2014, and 2013 – and this is becoming more like a tradition. As an academic and an active union member in the higher education sector, I empathise with the ongoing industrial action by ASUU. I also worry for the… Read More

That the All Progressives Congress (APC) flag bearer, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, is exactly where the party’s last presidential candidate President Muhammadu Buhari was when he got the ticket eight years ago, shows just how our politics has stagnated, if not regressed. After Buhari won the APC ticket in December 2014, the next major hurdle was getting a running mate.… Read More

Nigerian political leaders are evil. They possess a “dark core of personalities.” They put their own interests ahead of the Nigerian people. They take pleasure in causing pain to Nigerians.  Nigeria is the only country in the world where workers are not being paid while the political elites take home millions. Look at the National Assembly. Do you see any… Read More

On Monday, August 4, 2004, one week after he made a speech at the Democratic Party’s convention in Boston, I wrote a column for the Nigeriaworld called “Obama: An audacity of hope?” Here is how the column started. “Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Congresswoman, recently visited the White House with a congressional delegation. Making her way out, she passed President Bush,… Read More

The blind ambition of Bola Ahmed Tinubu to rule Nigeria at all costs is on course to provoke a civil war. But this war will not be fought between the Yoruba and the Igbo, as Tinubu would wish; it is a civil war between the Nigerian masses and the corrupt oligarchy that he represents.   Keenly aware that he is neither… Read More

The stage is set for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) slated for June 20 to 26 in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital. With four of the seven East African Community partner states being members of the Commonwealth of Nations, the EAC Secretary-General, Peter Mathuki, says it will be an opportunity for the four partner states – Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda – to reap the… Read More

Nigeria’s desperation for a messiah and her strong desire for a non-existent elixir is understandable, yet it could further deepen her leadership crisis that has lived for just too long to survive another four years. If the people fail to learn from how the messiah of 2015 has rendered Nigeria messier today, we would find ourselves sharing stories of pains… Read More