If it had been news about the former sports minister who had defiantly sat on $150,000 mistakenly paid into the ministry’s account by the IAAF, I might have found it easier to believe.Never mind Solomon Dalung’s beret and fatigue, his recalcitrance over the miscued money is at odds with his socialist pretensions. The IAAF saga suggests that he likes money [...]
Azu Ishiekwene
ON THE GO
Even though the attention of the world was focused on the role of the media in elections and democracy on the World Press Freedom Day, the shadow of last year’s murderous attacks on free speech still loomed large.Will this be the new normal?In July, The Economist, quoting a report by Freedom House, described 2018 as the year when the muzzling [...]
The immediate reason why the Supreme Court ruling on Zamfara has sparked a civil war in the All Progressives Congress (APC) is that the decision could further complicate the outcome of the leadership vote in the 9th National Assembly in a few days.Before the ruling nullified the election of the three APC senators from Zamfara, the party had 65 senators, for [...]
Comparison between public conduct elsewhere and what obtains in Nigeria can sometimes be awkward, especially because it can be mistaken to suggest that we can’t be up to any good. That’s not only incorrect, such moral equivalence is unfair to millions of Nigerians who are doing their damn best in their quiet spaces. But two stories last week reported within twenty-four [...]
The Sarkin Kano, Muhammad Sanusi II, always wanted to be to local. Even in his heyday as governor of the Central Bank, he said he was often amused when public office holders fought for appointment as ministers, state governors, ambassadors or for any position at all on the big stage. All he ever wanted after his tour of duty at the [...]
Zamfara State Governor and Chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, Abdulaziz Yari, gave a masterclass to incoming governors last week. The governor, who has obviously become wiser on his way out of office, advised his incoming colleagues to start thinking now of what they can do for their people and how they can find the money to do it. The man [...]
Labour and Productivity Minister, Chris Ngige, thinks it’s a virtue to speak first, and then, think later. He’s been that way since he came on the public scene nearly two decades ago.Those who know him well have learnt not to take him seriously.But he takes himself very seriously. We saw that again from his comment on Channels TV last week [...]
Nigerians love travel and adventure. But Ukraine and its forbiddingly cold capital, Kiev, wasn’t a favourite destination for many years. That is until Pastor Sunday Adelaja of the Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations fired the public’s imagination with his evangelical-charismatic brand of the gospel.The news from Kiev last week was not about Adelaja whose outreach [...]
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar made an unpopular statement during the campaign worth a second thought. He said if he was elected president, he would sell off the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), even if it would cost him his life. It didn’t seem anyone was interested in his life, really. Or the point he was trying to make; namely, that [...]
What would it take President Muhammadu Buhari to get the politics of the National Assembly right? Four years ago, he had a problem which, like a stubborn fly, has refused to go away.After his election victory speech in 2015 when he was for all and for none, things went haywire, leading to the emergence of a National Assembly leadership that [...]
At first, I thought it was fake news. But I read it to the end and later noticed that it had also been shared on a number of other serious platforms by serious people. And it was signed by the Vice Chancellor of Ajayi Crowther University (ACU), Rt. Rev. Prof. Dapo Asaju.The right reverend gentleman wore his misery on his [...]
"Aunty, I’m not coming to school tomorrow. The police killed my father.”– Emmanuel Jumbo-OchigboWhen six-year-old Emmanuel Jumbo-Ochigbo got into the blue-coloured Golf hatchback to school in the morning of Wednesday, March 20, it was like any other day – bright and sunny.Emmanuel jumped into the back seat where his mum, Ada, was carrying his younger brother Daniel, and the family [...]
I don’t know why a few state governors are running around, dragging President Muhammadu Buhari by the hem of his agbada to save them from the misery of inconclusive election in their states. Their conduct reminds me of the days when lazy neighbourhood kids used to run home to Big Daddy to save them from the street bully.The only difference [...]
It’s incredible how eight years have ended as a two-word parable: constituted authority. That’s what Governor Abiola Isiaka Ajimobi would be mostly remembered for – the epigram from his encounter with students of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH). That episode was perhaps one of the most catastrophic PR disasters of Ajimobi’s eight-year tenure.A teacher’s strike over the status/funding of [...]
I woke up several times peeping for the first sign of dawn before my phone finally rang at ten-past-six. A family friend who suspected we would be voting at the same place wanted to know if I was already at the booth because she couldn’t find it.I missed her call. When I called back about 15 minutes later, she had [...]
As the final results of last week’s presidential poll were released, three broad groups emerged: Those genuinely surprised that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, Atiku Abubakar, lost; those in pretentious denial of his defeat; and those in a quandary because they hoped to profit from a stalemate.The first group comprise those who expected that the electoral math would be [...]
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