Our Beloved Country Is Bleeding

 By Sunny Awhefeada

 I do not know why countries or na­tions are thought of in feminine forms (she/her). Perhaps, it is a strategy to endear us to the place of our nativity and create a bond, the kind that exists between a mother and her child. Growing up, we sang songs that endeared Nigeria to us. Our young and impressionable minds glowed with no­ble ideas to which our sonorous voices gave clarion utterances. Men and wom­en who lived generations before this era also thought of their place of birth in endearing terms and they went to war in defence of their homeland.

*President Tinubu and Senate President Akpabio

Empires and kingdoms rose and fell in battles to defend the homeland. Even Nigeria’s national anthem and pledge have mem­orable and endearing words to configure our allegiance and love for “our beloved country”.

The Truth About Fuel Subsidy: Government Simply Fails Nigerians

 By Olu Fasan

Subsidy is gone. Subsidy is back. Oh no, it isn’t. Oh yes, it is. Such is the confusion that now dogs the fuel subsidy. On May 29, Bola Tinubu veered from his inauguration speech and blurted out: “Subsidy is gone”. With that diktat, market forces would dictate petrol price. Soon after, the price tripled from N197/litre to N620/litre, fuelling a surge in food and transport costs. However, surreptitiously, some subsidy seems to have returned to stop the soaring price of fuel. But the Tinubu administration denies any intervention.

Yet, market operators are adamant. In a recent interview, Festus Osifo, National President of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN, said “the government is still paying subsidies on petroleum”. Mele Kyari, Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum company limited, NNPCL, issued a rebuttal: “There’s no subsidy whatsoever.” But John Kekeocha, National Secretary of the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, IPMAN, said the government “is still spending billions to subsidise fuel,” adding: “I don’t know why they keep peddling lies.”

Stealing Nigeria!

 By Obi Nwakanma

All things bright and beautiful; all creations great and small; all things bright and wonderful, Nigeria ruins them all. This is a twist on the song many of us sang in the Nursery and Primary Schools of yore. But the last twist was first made to it by the late eminent historian, and one-time Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, Professor Tekena Tamuno, during his convocation address at the University of Ibadan in the late 1970s.

What he saw sitting down, many of us had not then seen standing up. But the auguries were there. Nigerians could recognize the handwritings on the wall. In the decades that I grew up and have experienced Nigeria, and I’m just rounding the first half of my fifth decade on this beautiful earth, Nigeria has always presented a challenge.