Rangers International And The Allure Of Soft Power

By Chidi Odinkalu 

“It was as if the football club wanted to regain through foot­ball what the Igbo ‘lost’ during the war.” – Segun Odegbami, MON

Nearly every Nigerian who was alive then remem­bers where they were at the end of 1976 when Al­yufusalam Rocks met Enugu Rang­ers International in the finals of what was then known as the Chal­lenge (Football Association) Cup. With a history going back to the Governor’s Cup, the first finals of which took place on 7 November, 1945, the Challenge Cup was the premier knock-out competition in Nigerian football. Although strict­ly inferior to the football league, the win-or-go-home traditions of the Challenge Cup captured pub­lic imagination in a way that the league did not.

2019: Why We Must Vote In Young Nigerians

By Dan Amor

At the dawn of civil rule in 1999, after about fifteen years of uninterrupted military gangsterism, rapacity and greed, there emerged on the nation's political firmament, an assembly of politicians and professionals under the age bracket of 50 years, the National Integration Group (NIG). The group's aim was ostensibly to re-engineer the Nigerian public life and take over the mantle of political leadership from the old brigade. There were, indeed, conflicting reactions to the development.

*Gov Yahaya Bello of Kogi State:
Nigeria's youngest governor 

While some Nigerians believed that the group had ulterior motives, and therefore its mission preposterous, many believed and still believe that amidst the despair that has enveloped the nation, there is an obvious need to call to question the desirability of continuing with business as usual. This issue has remained prominent in the upper reaches of our national discourse especially given the woeful failure of the old generation of politicians to improve the standard of living of the people and engender positive development in the country since independence.