Opinion

Monday, 12 August, 2024 Some 200 years ago, someone could whimsically deport someone from a part of this country to another. It happened to Madam Efunroye Tinubu in 1856. She was given 24 hours to leave Lagos for her hometown, Abeokuta. This is 2024. You can’t have tasty mutton-mushroom sauce …

Nations, diplomacy, and sports are interwoven. Sports persons and sports teams are, in a sense, representatives of and mirrors of their countries. It is no coincidence that most great nations are also leading sporting countries  because it is a significant tool of soft power projection. Nations demonstrate their might either through ‘Fight’ …

Sunday, August 11, 2024 Undoubtedly, the political matrimony between President Bola Tinubu and Northern Nigeria is at Talaq stage. Talaq is the Islamic unilateral repudiation of a marital union. There are no sobs, no wails. No dabbing of the face with a handkerchief. But, the dusts provoked by the matrimonial …

The terrifying videos were not from Hollywood movies but scenes from Northern Nigeria during the #EndBadGovernance protest. The so-called protesters invaded a Government House, vandalised public facilities, looted an ICT training centre, carted away a Police station signpost, invaded banks, destroyed a mosque, hijacked a Personnel Armour Carrier, flew foreign …

[email protected] 0705 263 1058 Yesterday, the #ENDBADGOVERNANCE protests ran its full gamut. In the days, weeks, months and years to come, pundits, critics and analysts will continue to discuss, review, critique and draw useful lessons from it. Did it fail? Did it succeed? Have lessons been learned on both sides …

The benefits of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in agriculture for sustainable food production and improved food security came to the fore at the recently concluded International Conference on Biotechnology 2024 (ICoB24) in Abuja. The conference, which was held from July 15th to July 19th, had experts from various fields of …

Almost everyone thinks they know what is wrong with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his government, except Tinubu himself. And to show that it’s not just bellyaching, there are plenty of examples to beat the president over the head. Headline inflation has risen from 22.2 percent in April 2023 to …

Zenith Bank Plc, in a significant move to meet the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) new minimum capital requirement of N500 billion, is offering its ongoing hybrid rights and public offers at the bank’s lowest price range, locking in about 32 percent gain in potential immediate return for existing shareholders …

[email protected] 0807 552 5533 The story you are about to read is an abridged version of the true life experience of Yusuph Olaniyonu, communications strategist, journalist, lawyer, public affairs analyst and former Information Commissioner in Ogun State. I say without equivocation that Yusuph was one of the finest writers that Nigerian …

Gratitude, But So What? As I entered my seventh decade of life in 2022, I felt an overwhelming sense of triumph and gratitude. Seventy years, a milestone promised by the Psalmist, had finally arrived. Psalm 90:10 states “Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures. …

Oedipus Rex, that Greek mythology which has been popularised by Sophocles and Nigeria’s Ola Rotimi, presents to us a king who has demonstrated abundantly that a ruler cannot command everything. In that play, we are dealing with a contrast between the supreme will of the gods and the vain attempts …

My Response to the President’s Address – Obi Having led the call for the President to address the nation and respond to the demands of the people, and having listened to the belated speech, I needed to delay my response to see if my understanding of the address was aligned …

Monday, 5 August, 2024 They did what locusts do to farms. They spared almost nothing. They ate road slabs, pilfered roofs and stole ceilings. They attacked and looted at least one mosque – and at least one church. They hammered concrete slabs and squeezed out of them iron rods for …

This was published on 10/05/2024, precisely five months ago. Was I clairvoyant? No, the signs were there for all to see. Did anybody give a hoot? Hmmmmn! Well, here is a repeat. I do not want to believe that in a country of nearly 250 million people, I am the …

We are witnessing some of the worst anti-government protests in our recent democratic history, fuelled by economic hardship, hunger and a general feeling of disillusionment among many Nigerians. Whatever the arguments are for or against the protests, it suffices that some Nigerians are making public their anger against the system …

In its editorial of 2nd August, 2024, the BusinessDay newspaper, characteristically, launched another scurrilous and baseless attack on the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd). In the editorial entitled: “NNPCL: Liability or Asset to Nigerians?”, the newspaper set out to paint the picture of NNPC Ltd that is a …

Sunday August 4, 2024 There is this anecdote in Igboland of M̀gbekē and her cutlass. By the way, M̀gbekē is a synonym for an unrefined and unsophisticated girl. Each time M̀gbekē’s farmer colleagues visited her in the farm, they saw haphazardly tilled land and a female farmer lazily fondling her …

BROADCAST BY HIS EXCELLENCY BOLA AHMED TINUBU, PRESIDENT AND COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA ON THE NATIONWIDE PROTEST DATE: SUNDAY 4TH AUGUST 2024 My fellow Nigerians, 1. I speak to you today with a heavy heart and a sense of responsibility, aware of the …

[email protected] 0705 263 1058 Visit any of our institutions of higher learning and you begin to see toddler-undergraduates all over the place! Boys and girls who should still be in SS1 are already preparing to graduate! Merely looking at them testifies to the fact that they lack the much-needed maturity. …

Venezuela was the first Latin American country I ever visited in 2001. It was a land awash with wealth as most of its neighbors like Colombians, Brazilians, and Ecuadorians endangered their lives to smuggle themselves into her borders in search of a better livelihood. From its capital Caracas to the …

The protracted minimum wage negotiation between the Federal government and Organized Labour finally ended on Thursday 18th July, 2024 with the agreement of a new minimum wage of N70,000 for the Nigerian workers both in Public and private sectors. The historic agreement was facilitated by President Bola Tinubu under whose …

We met last on April 21. I went to Asaba from Lagos to promote my new book, Writing for Media and Monetising It, at Delta State University, which, according to JAMB statistics, is one of the country’s highest subscribers to Mass Communications in 2021. Senator Ifeanyi Ubah was on the …

The sonorous songstress, Onyeka Onwenu, has just passed, but my duty here is to add the human angle to the legend of the goddess. Onyeka Onwenu, inimitable singer, ace broadcaster and classy actress took no prisoners in all her undertakings. Back in 1986, in the early days of the defunct …

Protest is all the rage in Nigeria today. Democracy allows for peaceful protest, but it is well-nigh impossible for overzealous state agents and sundry nefarious elements not to conjure up violence to complicate matters. In this wise, the demons of death are on the loose, arranging mayhem and spreading damnation. …

The late Emeritus Professor Akin Mabogunje was a quintessential scholar-practitioner whose work had a profound impact on Nigeria’s development. His commitment to excellence and rigorous training enabled him to produce groundbreaking work, demonstrating the importance of continuous learning and expertise in achieving impactful research and practice. This article explores Mabogunje’s …