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Opinion

Thursday, 27 July 2023 04:20

The Lagos necropolis - Abimbola Adelakun

Since the ill-fated night of October 20, 2020, the Babajide Sanwo-Olu administration has heavily invested in propagating its version of what went down. One press release issued by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health, Olusegun Ogboye, to deflate the outrage following the leaked memo revealing that the Lagos State Government planned a mass burial for the 103 victims of the 2020 #EndSARS violence punched a hole in one of their strongest arguments. From the Dis-Information Minister, Lai Mohammed, to state officials who traversed the news media circuits over the Lekki toll gate incident, one of their most vehement…

Thursday, 27 July 2023 04:19

This puny presidency - Steve Osuji

HOBBLED PRESIDENCY LAPSES INTO INERTIA: There seems to be something about those who crave a thing so bad before they land it. When they finally get that object of their desire ennui seems to quickly embrace them and squeeze the joy out of their victory. Let’s make a quick checklist: that beautiful lady you chased for years before she said yes. That dream car; that mansion or that job you wanted badly. After you finally get it, you find yourself asking: is this all?This must be the same feeling now with President Bola Tinubu. Storied to have craved the presidency…

Wednesday, 26 July 2023 04:08

What to do about radical uncertainty - William H. Janeway

A central premise of neoclassical economics is that the consequences of the decisions of market participants can be known in advance and quantified as risk-adjusted estimates. As John Kay and Mervyn King showed in their 2020 book, Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making Beyond the Numbers, such probabilistic reasoning has a long history. As applied in economics, it has operationalized the concept of “expected utility” – the desideratum that rational economic agents are defined to be maximizing. As the author of a major analysis of the stock market sponsored by the British government (Kay) and a former governor of the Bank of England…

Tuesday, 25 July 2023 04:28

Our generation was told liberal economics would make us free. Look at us now - Nesrine Malik

Jane is a junior doctor working several extra locum shifts to make ends meet. Burnt out after the pandemic, and struggling with her physical and mental health, she would really like to take unpaid leave, but she cannot afford to do so. Last month, her landlord hiked up her rent, then served her with an eviction notice when she said she couldn’t afford it. She now has to move for the fourth time in three years, and is back in a flat-hunting market where rents are higher everywhere. She feels trapped, she tells me. Trapped in her job, with her…

Monday, 24 July 2023 03:21

The Shylocks within - Hassan Gimba

Last week, the federal government, through the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), banned two loan app banks, permanently removing them from Google Play Store and initiating the process of deleting their respective apps. The culprits, Sycamore Integrated Solutions Limited and Orange Loan and Purple Credit Limited, along with their apps, Getloan and Camelloan, were permanently delisted due to their illicit practices and for their harassment of Nigerians. They were also accused of duplicity and illegal activities when they were discovered to be using APKs to attract borrowers, which is both illegal and unregulated. The truth is that loan…

Sunday, 23 July 2023 04:17

Tinubu as Sobia in need of Oluganbe - Festus Adedayo

Initial applauses from Bretton Woods and some local economists that greeted the economic reforms of the Bola Tinubu presidency were deafening. The reforms were termed bold and courageous. The most surgically painful of them, which drilled deep down into the marrows of Nigerians, was the removal of fuel subsidy. In a country that is almost totally dependent on PMS, the unbearable pains of the people reached ear-shattering decibel. Cars disappeared from the roads. Costs of transportation are tearing the roof, with rife social dislocations. Rates of crime have since been on the increase, with rising matrimonial disorder figures. Local political…

Sunday, 23 July 2023 04:15

How to thrive and prosper luxuriantly! - Taiwo Akinola

Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year an hundredfold: and the LORD blessed him. And the man waxed great, and went forward, and grew until he became very great ~ Genesis 26:12-13. Introduction Life becomes exciting when it’s dotted with supernatural breakthroughs. Contrariwise, failure, poverty and stagnation can actually breed stubborn and complicated troubles for anyone here on earth. Success is sweet; failure can be bitter and very brutal! Poverty kills ingenuity, engenders inferiority complex, destroys influence, demeans testimonies and curtails progress. Most despicably, stagnation inherently frustrates even starry potentials. Largely today, the economy is…

Sunday, 23 July 2023 04:14

Article of faith: God’s preference of the last above the first (1) - Femi Aribisala

God says: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9). This means God always acts in ways, not only different from ours, but antithetical to ours. He contradicts our customs, values, and norms. Jesus presents this most emphatically: “What is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.” (Luke 16:15). The practical implication of this is dumbfounding. It means gain in this world becomes loss in God’s…

Friday, 21 July 2023 04:52

Bankole Ajibabi Omotoso: We did not permit you to go! - Jeyifo, Ogunbiyi, Ohiorhenuan Osofisan, et al

The death on Wednesday, 20 July, of our friend, compatriot and fellow writer, Kole Omotoso, came to us with a great shock. But in our sadness we give thanks for his life and his work. “We” here refers to the moribund Positive Review-Ibadan Ife Collective. By a few years, Kole was the oldest among us. He also came to writing as a serious, committed and lifelong project before all of us. But among us, he was the freest spirit, the most maverick and unpredictable in his positions and actions! These facts are reflected powerfully and ineluctably in perhaps his two…

Friday, 21 July 2023 04:45

Why Museveni video shames Africa - Azu Ishiekwene

There’s a trending video from nine years ago. If you watched it casually, you might in fact think that it was done yesterday. It was a clip of Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni, narrating what happened in 2014 when a delegation of African heads of state was asked by AU to mediate the Libyan crisis at the time. Museveni’s account of the outcome of the assignment, which has so far not been denied by NATO, was a scandal – an African shame – on steroids. It’s surprising how the incident remained largely unreported until this video resurfaced again recently. It wasn’t…

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Thursday, 20 July 2023 03:41

Will the poor in Nigeria eventually breathe? - Abimbola Adelakun

In at least 70 recorded cases of police brutality in the United States, the victim cried out three words: I. Can’t. Breathe. From Eric Garner in 2014 to George Floyd in 2020, people hogtied or put in a chokehold cried out those words but were ignored by officers who thought they were lying or exaggerating their distress. If they could still talk, they were still breathing. Such presumption of how far the police could stretch the thread of life caused many of them to be needlessly snapped. Those words would eventually become the rallying cry of the 2020 global #BlackLivesMatter…

Wednesday, 19 July 2023 04:53

Wrong step, Mr President – Dan Agbese

President Bola Tinubu has asked for and received the approval of the national assembly for N500 billion to be used as palliatives. It is a thousand pities that the president has allowed himself to be persuaded to regress and take the inadvisable option of a trek down the same path in which hypocritic care for the poor was used as an emotional blackmail to corrupt and ruin the national economy for many, many years. His decision came as a huge and disturbing shock to those of us who enthusiastically applauded his courage to bite the bullet by letting fuel subsidy…

Monday, 17 July 2023 04:42

The parable of the body mechanic - Hassan Gimba

Who has not had an old car before? The type of car that makes you become a friend to the mechanic? This is because when one issue is resolved, another rears its head, necessitating you to visit again. Sometimes the problem may be those of “rings”. Repair them and the gearbox seeks your notice. Pacify it, the brake pad packs up. Change it, the shock absorber begins to get shocked. All these and more make you a regular, visiting the mechanics again. And again. And again. Sometimes you have to leave the car with the mechanics for a day or…

Sunday, 16 July 2023 03:26

The Isese stoppage in Ilorin - Festus Adedayo

A little over a week ago, Wole Soyinka turned the attention of Nigerians from their current harrowing economic existence to one of the tyrannies that religion inflicts on them. Soyinka was apparently in his elements. For decades, he had fought battles of willful violations of human existence in various guises. Young Yakubu Gowon was one of the experiments Soyinka conducted on his intolerance for governmental tyranny. Gowon’s government had detained the comparative literature professor for two years in the wake of the civil war on allegation of hobnobbing with bearded Odumegwu Ojukwu who had just declared a civil war. From…

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