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Opinion

Wednesday, 17 November 2021 05:57

We’re all famous now - Sean Illing

Are we all famous now? I know that’s a strange question. If everyone is famous, then no one is famous, right? Well, it depends on what exactly we mean by “famous.” Last month, I read a New Yorker essay by Chris Hayes, the host of All In on MSNBC, that sharpened the question. He asked, what happens when the experience of fame becomes a universal possibility? Anyone who’s on a social media platform like TikTok or Twitter or Instagram is always one viral post away from instant fame — or what feels like fame, anyway. Most of us don’t ever…

Monday, 15 November 2021 05:43

Ndigbo and the politics of identity - Hassan Gimba

Even though Anambra has been in the kitty of the All Progressive Grand Alliance (APGA) for a long time, the recently concluded gubernatorial election in which Charles Soludo bested other candidates to emerge winner is a straightforward case of identity politics. Identity politics is a political approach in which people of a particular gender, religion, tribe, ethnicity, race, social background, class, etc., develop political agendas based upon these identities. The term can apply to multiculturalism, women’s movements, civil rights, lesbian and gay movements, and regional separatist movements. While a majority of the Igbo may not be comfortable with a separate…

Monday, 15 November 2021 05:43

The true costs of government spending - Micheal J. Boskin

While all politicians exaggerate, US President Joe Biden’s claim that his proposed $3.5 trillion spending package “costs zero dollars” rises to a higher plane, and Americans aren’t buying it. Even if the legislation was fully covered by tax increases, the costs for the economy would be significant. US President Joe Biden insists that his $3.5 trillion ($5 trillion without the budget gimmicks) “human infrastructure” bill “costs zero dollars” – nothing, nil, nada. While every president makes foolish statements, this must be the most economically illiterate presidential utterance since Jimmy Carter’s demand that the US Federal Reserve lower interest rates in…

Sunday, 14 November 2021 06:04

Okon makes a bid for Diezani’s bra as Baba Lekki smells a rat - Tatalo Alamu

Political magic has become a staple diet of governance in postcolonial Africa. Why tell a simple lie when a more complicated lie will suffice? Why remonstrate with the truth when you know that dispelling and dispersing it with a canister of lies is a more effective and direct solution? When a whole Minister of Information, a man who is not always known for fidelity to the truth or loyalty to inconvenient facts, begins to moan and mutter about being bullied by the press, you begin to wonder whether the Oro-born master of dissimulation has taken the biggest flight of fancy…

Sunday, 14 November 2021 06:02

Anambra election: Lessons for Southwest - Bola Bolawole

The Anambra elections have come and gone but the reverberations will continue for some time to come. The “Igbo party”, APGA, trounced the APC and PDP combined, with the APGA candidate, Charles Soludo, winning with a wide margin that surpassed the combined votes of the APC and PDP. The other parties, except the APC candidate Andy Uba, appeared to have accepted the result but Uba is spitting fire and has threatened court action to retrieve what he described as his stolen mandate! Some politicians! But never put anything past our politicians and never take their threats as empty! Who could…

Sunday, 14 November 2021 06:01

Who needs pardon: Saro-Wiwa or Buhari? - Festus Adedayo

At No 9, Rumuibekwe Road in Port Harcourt on November 10, 1995, the devil sat in a corner, having a saturnalia. No one could see him. He wore dark goggles, donning the uniform of a five-star Army General, wrapped up in a huge celebratory mood. His arch-enemy, Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists had just been hanged at the Port Harcourt Prison. Inside No 9, Rumuibekwe, family members sat on the hood of parked disused cars, weeping profusely, others holding their heads in anguish. By that instant the most recently widowed woman in the world, Hauwa Saro-Wiwa, was…

Sunday, 14 November 2021 05:59

Receiving present help for present troubles - Taiwo Akinola

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee ~ Isaiah 41:10a. Introduction: Life is a journey, excellence is the target. However, until you receive supernatural assistance, people are bound to see your sweat. Why? The universe is too complex for any human being to exist here without supernatural help. Man's search for supernatural help always begins at the point where he realizes that he is faced with a resistance beyond his power, and that his needs are beyond his human capabilities. Happily, this…

Sunday, 14 November 2021 05:58

Article of faith: New wine, new wineskins - Femi Aribisala

Many Christians are still living frustrating lives. We cannot live lives of victory. We cannot stop smoking. We cannot stop drinking. We cannot stop fornicating. We cannot stop losing our temper. We find it difficult to forgive and forget. We still have ungodly thoughts. We are still held in the bondage of masturbation. We are addicted to pornography. We still find ourselves telling lies. And all the time, the devil keeps telling us that we are not Christians. Our hearts continue to condemn us, and we come to believe that we are hypocrites. In many respects, the church has been…

Saturday, 13 November 2021 06:09

Expanding the frontiers of relations between Nigeria and France - Muhammadu Buhari

It is possible that the first contact was made in 1601 between the French and the peoples of “Guinee” – the name for the lands we know today as Nigeria. Only a few years before, the then Protestant King of France Henry had devised a plan for adventurer Francois Pyrard de Laval to navigate the “Ethiopian Sea”, then onwards around the Cape of Good Hope in search of new markets and trade. Four hundred years later, much has changed. (Today there are more Protestants amongst Nigeria’s 200 million population than there are people in France. Maps, and geography, have improved:…

Friday, 12 November 2021 05:50

A wealth of sorrow: Why Nigeria’s abundant oil reserves are really a curse - Kenneth Mohammed

In Nigeria, oil has been more of a curse than a blessing. Weak institutions of state and poor governance in managing the vast revenues have led the country to fail to realise its full potential in a textbook example of what academics know as the “resource curse”. First coined by Richard Auty in 1994, the term refers to the inability of nations to use their windfall wealth to improve their population’s lot and bolster their economies. The rich natural resources bring corruption and poverty to a nation, rather than positive economic development and, counterintuitively, these countries end up with lower…

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Friday, 12 November 2021 05:49

Facebook's foreign disasters - Eric Posner

A long line of ugly Americans, mostly government officials, have believed that applying simple formulas based on idealized versions of US institutions could convert long-suffering places into Western-style consumer utopias. Today, the ugliest of all Americans is not a public official but a private citizen, Mark Zuckerberg. “The ugly American,” the title of a novel published in 1958 by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer, entered the language to refer to boorish American officials abroad who sought to improve the lives of natives without taking the trouble to learn their language, culture, or needs. A long line of ugly Americans, mostly…

Friday, 12 November 2021 05:48

This thing called aging - Azu Ishiekwene

The cold blast of the air conditioner from the room hit me by surprise as I opened the door. I wasn’t expecting a draught from inside at eight on a damp morning. But there was my cousin under the duvet, hugging what seemed like a pillow as he snuggled diagonally across the bed, deeply asleep.I grabbed the electric iron from the floor right next to the standing fan, which was purring at a speed that made the room even cooler, and left quickly. How could he be sleeping so comfortably with the AC at a cold blast on a wet…

Friday, 12 November 2021 05:46

Sex palaver: 'Clergy are men like others' - Michael West

I knew before hand that last week's topic would elicit reactions that would raise some profound underlying issues in the family life of the clergy. The reactions came from the Christian circle more because their issues are much more reported in the media than the others. There are reported cases of divorce involving Christians than the others. One of the reasons it is so is because of monogamous family lifestyle largely embraced and practiced by Christians. They have limited options on how to satisfy their sexual urges beyond the women they married. Expectedly, torrents of reactions poured in from different…

Thursday, 11 November 2021 06:03

Southwest: Fanning the embers of religious bigotry - Bola Bolawole

Religion is the opium of the people – Karl Marx (1843). In the aftermath of the collapse of the 21-storey Ikoyi skyscraper, conscious and deliberate efforts have been made in some quarters outside and within the Southwest to foul the air, pollute the age-old cordial relations amongst Yoruba Christians and Muslims, and trigger a religious crisis that will consume the Yoruba people and their civilization and cause them to remain slaves to the hegemonic, feudalistic and conservative forces fighting tooth and nail to maintain and reinforce their stranglehold upon the Nigerian polity. The “foreign” wing of this army of vile,…

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