Category: Features/Analysis

Only wailers would doubt this administration’s love for Nigerians, especially the poor among them. Both President Muhammadu Buhari and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo have shown in their words and actions that they have a special passion for the poor in Nigeria. That is probably the reason why in spite of the unprecedented suicide cases recorded in the last five years of this administration; the number of job losses (Nigeria Bureau of Statistics says 3.3 million people lost their jobs in nine months); and acute poverty in the land, the President…

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At times like this, one can’t help but go down memory lane and be thankful for some divine helps here and there; for a privilege as great  as undergoing the National Youth Service Corps scheme when Nigeria was still a nation and not nations within a nation as it is today.  I remember my first trip to the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja as a prospective youth corps member.  I had left Lagos early in the morning for the capital city. But I arrived there late. Unfortunately, I had passed the…

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A couple of weeks ago, I sought for and got an audience with my boss, Governor Darius Dickson Ishaku. The venue was his main office in Government House, Jalingo and my mission was to first remind him of his 65th birthday anniversary which was fast approaching and then seek his permission to make some elaborate arrangements for a befitting celebration in the media. What I got was an emphatic rejection of the celebration plan. But he was quick in providing an explanation, perhaps, to assuage my feeling of disappointment. “How…

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Those who were young (men-about-town) in the 80s will remember the 1979 hit track by McFadden & Whitehead, titled Ain’t no stopping us now. The lyrics goes thus: Ain’t no stopping us now! We’re on the move! Ain’t no stopping us now! We’ve got the groove! And if you ponder and reflect on the political journey of President Muhammadu Buhari, right from 2003, when he threw his hat into the ring, till now, there have been spirited attempts to stop him. It got to a head in the build up…

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Liat Malka longed to have children but hadn’t yet met the right person with whom to start a family. Then she became involved in an unusual plan – to help fulfil a stranger’s dying wish of fathering a child. In 2013, Liat Malka was a single, 35-year-old kindergarten teacher living in southern Israel, when she felt the urgency of her biological clock ticking. “I was worrying about time passing and maybe missing out on motherhood,” Liat says. “So I went to the doctor and did some fertility tests.” When the…

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To borrow the words of colourful First Republic politician, Chief Ozumba Mbadiwe, “come has finally come to become” for President Muhammadu Buhari, as he has won election to serve a second term in office, after a pulsating contest. The country, nay, Africa, and the world looks forward to the inauguration on May 29, 2019. What will be the priorities of the Buhari administration in second term in office? Before we look forward, let’s first look back, as the future is often embedded in the past. The key to unlocking the…

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In keeping with the promise by President Muhammadu Buhari that governance would not take the back seat in spite of his busy campaign schedules to all the 36 States and the Federal Capital Territory leading to the presidential election on February 23, 2019, below are hard facts of promise kept. 1. MINIMUM WAGE January 9, 2019: President Buhari inaugurated the Presidential Technical Advisory Committee on the Implementation of the National Minimum Wage (PTAC), with a mandate to advise the Federal Government on how best to fund, in a sustained manner,…

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BY AKOGUN IYIOLA OYEDEPO Every 15th day of January, Nigerian leaders must lay wreath at the cenotaph of our fallen soldier heroes. Cenotaph is built in memory of the fallen heroes and sometimes they are unknown soldiers that kept the country together with their own blood. The wreath is laid for their gallantry and the sacrifice to keep Nigeria one. But then the wreath is laid for the dead, not for the living. When a politician of high profile falls in political battle field and the fall is total and…

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Human memory is short. Tyrannical regimes thrive or endure on the shortness of human memory. When Jesus Christ wanted to enter Jerusalem, it was through loud ovation of hosanna; but shortly after, the opportunity availed the same people before Pilate to set Christ free of false accusation and there was a choice between that innocent soul and robbers, the man that fed thousands, made the blind to see, caused the cripple to walk, raised the dead was pronounced condemned to a painful death on the cross. They said the robbers…

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On February 27, 2019, lawyer and activist, Mike Ozekhome, wrote a piece under the headline, ‘Buhari’s skewed view of the Igbo race.’ On face value, the piece seemed to advocate the cause of the Igbo race, but a dispassionate analysis shows it for what it truly is: drivel meant to incite the Igbo against the Muhammadu Buhari administration, and further inflame passions that would pedestal the ethnic nationality against the rest of the federation. Ozekhome appeared to be a friend to our brothers and sisters across the Niger, but in…

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