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Opinion

Saturday, 16 July 2022 07:27

The happiest people on earth - Niyi Osundare

We are H-A-P-P-YWe are H-A-P-P-YWe know we areWe are sure we areWe are H-A-P-P-Y Happppppy! I I come from the country Of the Happiest People on earth,Where death sells at ten for one kobo And the Living envy the peace Of the hastily dispatched. Living every day on the edge of the knifeSuffering all night at the mercy of the bullet Taunted and tossed from wall to wall Foodless, drinkless, and faint from fright Lean like a line from the book of pain Hunger has a seat in my little hovel My growling stomach is the devil’s drum I count…

Friday, 15 July 2022 07:13

The battle of the second fiddles - Dare Babarinsa

No one really worries too much about who the Vice-President is until there is trouble with Number One. The Vice-President is often not the second most powerful person in the government of his principal. He gets his position because it is convenient, and politically expedient that he be given the job. After the election and the winner settles into office, the Vice-President is often dispatched into distant lands to go and attend funerals and wave to crowds. When real decisions are to be made, only the President does that. But we have seen since Atiku Abubakar emerged as the Vice-President…

Friday, 15 July 2022 07:11

Tinubu, Shettima and the Christian vote - Azu Ishiekwene

If the presidential flag bearer of the All Progressives Congress (APC) Bola Tinubu thought a placeholder would be a lightning rod, and maybe soften the blow of his final decision, he has seen by now that he is mistaken. There is a gathering storm. Those who are mad at him are not only upset by his decision on Tuesday, they are doubly upset that it took him five weeks to decide what they always suspected he would do: pick a Muslim running mate to complete what is now Nigeria’s first Muslim-Muslim ticket in nearly 30 years. Why is Tinubu’s choice…

Thursday, 14 July 2022 06:48

Feeling the urge to take back control from power-mad governments? Here’s an idea

George Monbiot Congratulations to some of Labour’s leading figures, who have begun to discover some 19th-century proposals for political reform. Proportional representation, devolution from the centre, abolition of the House of Lords: a few senior Labour politicians are now taking the daring step of contemplating these “radical” innovations. While I have nothing against 19th-century solutions to our 18th-century government, would it be too much to ask, at the risk of sending these bold pioneers into a dead faint, that they might also start exploring some more recent ideas? Regardless of which creep beats the other creeps to become the next…

Thursday, 14 July 2022 06:46

Nigeria, choose your poison! - Cheta Nwanze

In an ideal situation, a Muslim-Muslim ticket or a Christian-Christian ticket should not be a problem if the two candidates on the ticket are good persons. But having said that, Nigeria is far from ideal, and the current Nigeria is very different from the Nigeria of 1993, when Abiola and Kingibe were clearly heads and shoulders above Tofa and Ugoh. That Nigeria was also a more forgiving place when you consider that the said Sylvester Ugoh was, just over a quarter of a century before, the governor of the Bank of Biafra; but that is a digression. The Nigeria of…

Wednesday, 13 July 2022 05:49

Parliament of eunuchs - Tola Adeniyi

I really don’t know what to call them. We labelled them men without balls, it didn’t bother them. We accused the few women in their midst as being mere decorations and carriers of scents and perfumes to deodorize the legislative chambers, those lipsticked ‘wives and mothers’ merely shrugged their shoulders. We say they are irredeemably corrupt and lacking in character and stature befitting people expected to represent their constituents, they just look the other way as if our words were Greek to their ears. Wikipedia says a eunuch is a man who has been castrated. Throughout history, castration often served…

Wednesday, 13 July 2022 05:44

Tinubu’s audacious Muslim-Muslim ticket (1) - Bola Bolawole

Audacity is a word made popular in our own time by the erstwhile United States of America president, Barack Hussein Obama. A relatively little-known Black man, in a country still seething with racial discrimination against the people of colour - as Blacks, African-Americans, Latinos, etc were called - decided to go for not just the highest office in the land but the most powerful, most respected, and most feared in the entire world. He was not really a national icon at the time but a little-known state Senator just serving his first term in the US Senate. Though talented with…

Tuesday, 12 July 2022 07:23

Hypocrisy and the dysfunctional world order - Omoluabi Dele

Nothing seems to be more definitive of the human experience as hypocrisy is. It is the reason why some, not of as much moral constitution as they would wish the world to believe, would describe others as immoral, primitive, uncivilised, or incapable of being able to organise their societies within the frame of higher values. Yet, our shared history as humans speaks otherwise, and points out primal similarities, while also revealing that the ability to point at others and call them needless names is essentially a function of power. One of the greatest theatres of hypocrisy is certainly the sphere…

Monday, 11 July 2022 06:29

I have no respect for the current leadership of Nigeria’s Armed Forces - Femi Fani-Kayode

I read the response from Defence Headquarters (dated 9. 7. 2022) to my video about the insecurity in the country and the attack on Kuje prison and I was utterly amused. Given the gravity and seriousness of the deteriorating security situation in our country I did not know whether to laugh or cry when I read through it. I would advise strongly that the military High Command and Defence Headquarters spends its time facing up to and fighting the terrorists that have turned our nation into a functional killing field and horrendous bloodbath and abattoir over the last few years…

Monday, 11 July 2022 06:26

Peter Obi and the protestant ethic - Akin Osuntokun

In the book titled the ‘protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism’ the German sociologist, Max Weber attributed the development of capitalism to the protestant ethic (protestantism is a form of christianity that originated with the 16th-century reformation, a movement against what its followers perceived to be errors in the Catholic Church). What then is the protestant ethic? Inclusively it consists of of the dynamic interaction of the the following elements, asceticism, discipline, virtue and the doctrine of predestination-as amended. Of all these elements, Weber argued, the reconceptualisation of the doctrine of predestination is the most decisive determinant in the…

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Monday, 11 July 2022 06:24

When the subject sees through the king - Hassan Gimba

In January 2019, the Daily Trust newspaper had its Maiduguri office shut down by the military over its reportage on the fight against insurgency. This made me think about governments and the failure of leadership, or, aptly, the king whose subjects saw through him. And so on January 14, 2019, on this page, under the title “The Military, Press and War Against Insurgency,” I gave that brief story. There is this fable of a king who, together with his palace courtiers and subjects, was scammed by a con artist who knew that people, rather than acknowledging the truth, would always…

Sunday, 10 July 2022 06:51

Kuje: Did we hand over Nigeria to terrorists in 2015? - Festus Adedayo

For those who watch the complicated Nigerian security mess from afar, the killing of Japanese ex-Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe in Nara, Japan last Thursday and the ambushing, two days earlier, of President Muhammadu Buhari’s advance convoy in Dutsinma, about 152 kilometres from his hometown of Daura, Katsina State, both speak to rising global insecurity. A few hours after on that same Tuesday, that joke went burst. Approximately three hours after shelling the president’s advance convoy with an assortment of bullets, killing two people in the process, around 10pm, terrorists stormed the Kuje Custodial Centre in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT)…

Friday, 08 July 2022 07:04

Matawalle’s guns - Azu Ishiekwene

Nigeria is awash with arms – guns, bullets, charms, drugs and local stuff. Not just Nigeria. The entire Sahelian and sub-Saharan African region is drowning in deadly small arms and light weapons – so-called because of their portability and ease of use and adaptation. The firearms may be out of the line of sight, but they are making the rounds in cars and motorcycles or as headloads and hand luggage, concealed in unimaginable places. Many are also believed to be siphoned from the armouries of security agencies, and are making their way into the hands of “unknown gunmen” with destructive…

Friday, 08 July 2022 06:52

Good night, beloved Akanni Aluko - Folu Olamiti

I woke up in the early hours of 1 July 2022 around 2 am. I felt in my body some kind of chilling feelings, broke into praise worship, read the day's portion of the Bible and said my prayers. Usually I should have read Akanni Aluko's usual new month message forwarded at the end of every month but did not see it before I went to bed. I went to his message platform at 4.45 am still it was not there. I shrugged it off and shifted to doing other things. At 6.02 am, my phone rang. Lo and behold!…

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