Category: Features/Analysis

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

On death row in Malawi, Byson Kaula was nearly executed three times – but on each occasion the hangman stopped work before hanging all the prisoners on his list. So he survived… until the country stopped executing people altogether. Byson Kaula says jealous neighbours were responsible for him being found guilty of murder. It was 1992 and murder in those days carried a mandatory death sentence. Brought up in a small village in southern Malawi, Byson had made enough money working in the gas industry in Johannesburg, South Africa, to…

I’d never had the head for figures. In fact, the enmity between me and mathematics was so bad that if you gave me a bottle, and you asked me to use the bottom to write the letter ‘o,’ it may likely come out as ‘p’ or ‘q,’ or even something more catastrophic. But what God seemed to have denied me in numeracy, He compensated in letters. I was just at home with literary subjects. In 1977, as a secondary class 2 student, I had one Sri Lankan, who taught us…

By Emma Agu Cyprian Ekwensi’s novel: Survive the Peace was premised, among others, on the disrupted family ties and social relations that emerged in Igboland, after the Nigerian Civil War. Those of us, who witnessed the war, albeit as kids, will confirm that things actually went awry: Brothers turned against brothers; most time, as they squabbled over resources that were, indeed, very scarce. Unfortunately, while in some cases, the enmity caused by the situation has petered out, in others, erstwhile harmonious relationships have been destroyed forever. By some surprising amnesia,…

“That’s him, that’s him,” the two old women, wrinkled and bent with age, exclaimed. You could see wonderment and fulfillment in their eyes. And as if on cue, they both began to cry. It was in Bauchi earlier this year. President Muhammadu Buhari was visiting to commiserate with the people on the ravages of windstorm, which had destroyed many homes and other property. As he waved at the tumultuous crowd, the two women saw him, perhaps for the first time in their lives. And so great was their satisfaction, their…