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Some of the recurring problems of poverty, corruption, vices, and the perennial decay in our society can be attributed to a hope decline. When people are no longer driven by hope, they stop trying. When they become convinced that nothing they do ultimately matters, they imprison their own agency; they look everywhere else for survival […]
Continue ReadingFrom initially expressing unease about the protests billed to start today, the government changed its stance to advocating “peaceful protests.” It was a smart move. If they had refused people the chance to protest outrightly, they would have fuelled the rage driving them. By asking them to exercise their rights, albeit peacefully, they took the […]
Continue ReadingAt the end of July 2017, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) issued a joint report on the public experience of and response to bribery in Nigeria. Among its findings, the report ranked several institutions with reference to public perceptions or experience of demand for bribes from […]
Continue ReadingWhen information minister Mohammed Idris addressed the public on the Daily Trust’s recent controversial report, he took the worn path of adding moral panic to the existing one. Rather than address the matter at stake straightaway, he first went on self-justificatory explanations before whipping out the All Progressives Congress’s favourite allegations of ethnic bias and how everything […]
Continue ReadingYoruba people have a proverb that translates, “When a youth stumbles, they look ahead; when an elderly stumbles, they look backwards.” As a child, I thought the proverb was talking about how children and elders contrarily process the embarrassment of falling in public. I assumed that an elder looks backwards when they fall because it […]
Continue ReadingThe truth is, I do not particularly care about the words in the re-introduced national anthem that some people deem offensive. They consider words like “tribe” and “native” as derogatory and outdated, while the idea of a nation where people stand “in brotherhood” bespeaks its female gender as alien to its body politic. None of […]
Continue ReadingThis week last year, two things were enthroned in the Nigerian political space. One was the man, Bola Tinubu, who was sworn in as the president. The other was the myth of the man as a headhunter endowed with a unique instinct for sourcing the right talent and an astute administrator. So much was this […]
Continue ReadingPopular singer Yemi Alade recently drew the ire of some online commentators when she decried the frequency of house demolitions in Lagos. Some of these commenters’ vociferous defence of the government’s decision to demolish houses left me wondering if this is not schadenfreude. Do these people truly believe in the irreproachability of the government, or […]
Continue ReadingSince the arrest of another Nigerian socialite, Pascal Okechukwu (aka Cubana Chef Priest), I have come across jejune assertions justifying the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission’s pursuit of those spraying naira at parties. While reading comments made by a random commenter on social media but unsupported with sensible evidence is one thing, it is another […]
Continue ReadingFrom the description of the VIP treatment given the two Binance executives abducted by the Nigerian government in a Mohammed bin Salman’s Ritz-Carlton style, one gets the impression that they did not think their tactic through. They detained the men (Nadeem Anjarwalla and Tigran Gambaryan) deemed economic sabotages, still allowed them several privileges, somehow forgot […]
Continue ReadingOne of the oft-repeated myths in this country is that when the poor are hungry enough, their final resort will be to eat the rich. But when one considers the Nigerian situation, one wonders just how much more hungry people need to get before they finally combust. Several revolutions in human history have been triggered […]
Continue ReadingAt a recent public event where he represented his principal, Chief of Staff to the president, Femi Gbajabiamila, used the opportunity to retrieve the hackneyed topic of social media regulations. While he noted the bid failed while he was the Speaker of the House of Representatives, he did not indicate that any new development had since […]
Continue ReadingAt a recent function in Abuja, Vice President Kashim Shettima expressed his disappointment that some Nigerians would rather be amused by the free fall of Naira value than pour ashes on their heads. According to him, “It is not only disheartening and disenchanting but also heartbreaking that yesterday when the Naira culminated to N1,500 to […]
Continue ReadingFor those of you who watched the BBC Africa documentary, Disciples: The Cult of TB Joshua (three episodes), an expose on the Synagogue Church of All Nations’ late founder Temitope Joshua and still insist on defending him, I have four words: you are not serious. Yes, the whole lot of you. Your faces are looking […]
Continue ReadingFollowing the attacks on some communities in Plateau State during the Christmas season, groups from the South to the Middle Belt regions of the country, have once again re-ignited the call to the government to let them bear arms. One cannot blame them. So far, the Plateau attack has culminated in about 190 deaths while […]
Continue ReadingThe revelation by the Ondo State Commissioner for Information, Bamidele Ademola-Olateju, that the presidential intervention in the state’s political crisis climaxed in demanding a signed resignation letter from the Deputy Governor, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, should have caused an outrage. There is no circumstance under which a deputy governor handing over his pre-signed resignation to the president […]
Continue ReadingThe argument that democracy is not working for Africa due to our historical and cultural factors is not new. Critics after critics have posited that Africans must evolve indigenous methods of democracy suitable for their temperament. The latest advocate to recuperate this old debate is ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo. At a forum last Monday, he shared […]
Continue ReadingThe various reports of the profligacy of some states in the country accentuate a crucial defect in our system of governance: the absence of autonomous entities that can hold leaders accountable. In several recent reports, the leadership of Lagos, Ogun, and Abia states was called out for the untenable expenses listed in their respective budgets. […]
Continue ReadingThe news report that about 15 airports that gulped no less than N301bn altogether failed to meet an annual threshold of passenger traffic exemplifies Nigeria’s white elephant peculiarity that I call “concrete democracy.” It is a phenomenon where the supposed dividends of democracy are expressed through concrete infrastructure or facility divorced from perceptible ideological agenda […]
Continue ReadingThe stories that dominated the news cycle in varying degrees the past week have something in common: they reported on the true nature of our politics as an infinite cycle of warfare among combatants who do not know alternative states of existence. They cannot figure out other ways to live, move, and have their being […]
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