welcome!
Against the appropriate backdrop of the ongoing pro-reforms protests is the sobering fact that close to 50% of Nigerians are in the death grip of multi-dimensional poverty. Nigeria as the Margaret Thatcher famously once remarked ‘Nigeria is a rich country full of poor people.’ So what is new about rich man…poor man in Nigeria? Nothing…
Ah… sometimes I wistfully ache for the good old days when the media channels for this political war was limited to a predictable daily cycle of newspapers, television and radio. Nowadays the news cycle is twenty-hours and there is, of course, social media and the Internet. The medium might have changed, but the message remains…
Ah… sometimes I wistfully ache for the good old days when the media channels for this political war was limited to a predictable daily cycle of newspapers, television and radio. Nowadays the news cycle is twenty-hours and there is, of course, social media and the Internet. The medium might have changed, but the message remains…
Well… decades on, the hustle is real. Upon reflection, the reference to ‘a Neanderthal appreciation of food and shelter,’ was my own way of describing the lowest rungs of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. With over 90 million Nigerians wallowing in systemic and multi-dimensional poverty, most Nigerians will never climb up that ladder to the point…
Well, there it is. The cogent submission and guidelines for evolving from a country to a nation in less than 500 words. Now understand that when this was written 36 years ago 75% of Nigerians living today had not been born. Fast forward to present times, we are still more country than the nation and…
But all hope is not lost for Nigeria, despite the foreboding. We can if we are prepared to make sacrifices, redeem – somewhat – and refurbish our sullied image. All our most bizarre quirks can actually be harnessed and put to work for us, instead of against us. And so, instead of trying to swim…
The irony of this piece then and now does not escape me. Here we are inveighing on the psychological impact of British colonial rule in English. Then and even more so now, it clearer to me that two generations on, we really need to de-colonize our minds, way beyond the fiery rhetoric of the post-colonial…
This was a fun piece, taking a satirical look at the politicians of the Second Republic. I suppose the description is still applicable to most of the politicians of the Fourth Republic too. I chuckle at the youthful poetic license and the somewhat cartoonish archetype employed to satirize Nigerian politicians. Even so, judging by their…
This piece has some resonance with the just concluded Ekiti elections. It is a cautionary tale that underscores the need for a tactile kind of empathy with the people. Recently, I paid an unscheduled visit to a state owned general hospital. Mercifully the visit was not for treatment but to make some inquiries; either way,…
I must confess that I typically ignore the insincere and outright mendacious rant that issues forth like effluence from the Federal House of Representatives. However this morning, seating in traffic and listening to the radio, I was somewhat startled by the media report that the Speaker of the House, Alhaji Aminu Tambuwal, had reportedly…