“The east is rising, the west is declining”, according to the narrative propagated by the Chinese Communist party (CCP). Many outside China take its “inevitable rise” as read. On the way to becoming a “modern socialist country” by 2035, and rich, powerful, and dominant by 2049, the centenary of the People’s Republic, China wants to claim bragging rights as its GDP surpasses the United States, and project its power based on its expanding economic heft.There is, however, a critical flaw in this narrative. China’s economy may fail to overtake the US as it succumbs to the proverbial middle-income trap. This…

Many patriots concerned with our rapid nose-diving in morals and abandonment of the rule of law believe that the British left too early. Some theorise that perhaps if our independence, achieved on a platter of gold, was delayed for 20 more years, we would have still been on the course. Had we gotten our independence in 1980, about three generations of Nigerians would have gone through tutelage under the prim and proper Britons rather than just one generation. And perhaps respect for the rule of law might have been so engraved in our national psyche, they reason. Well, our situation…

Could Ajibola Ige, former governor of old Oyo State, ex-Attorney General of the Federation and foremost apostle of Yoruba’s recent ancestor, Obafemi Awolowo, have escaped the gruesome death that took his life on December 23, 2001 if he had chosen the sobriquet “Demosthenes,” rather than “Cicero”? Ige’s gruesome murder and the unfortunate circumstances surrounding it have attracted mottled commentaries in the last 20 years. This was the crux of the intellectual spat that respected professor of Political Science, my Master’s class teacher at the University of Ibadan and former Minister of Education, Tunde Adeniran and I engaged in after the…

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends ~ John 15:13. Introduction Glory be to God! It is Christmas Sunday!! Alleluia!!! Christmas commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ the Saviour about two thousand years ago in an out-of-the-way place, called Bethlehem of Judaea. That day, the future of the world changed forever, when love and hope took the human form and appeared in swaddling clothes, in a manger. No wonder then that Charles Spurgeon said: "The greatest and the most momentous fact which the history of the world records is the…