By Scholar Elo
I read Mr. Adelowo Adebumiti’s article entitled: ‘‘Why sex education is key to reducing gender-based violence’’ (The Guardian, Thursday, October 29, 2020) with great delight. Great delight because I am a teenager myself and very conversant with the subject matter. First, I must say that the writer’s interest on sex education is quite laudable.
By Ifeoma George-Ufot
I’m not used to writing rejoinders to things I read about but I couldn’t keep quiet after reading the open letter to the Honorable Minister for Education by Mrs Bisi Fayemi. Unlike you, I was elated, overjoyed and felt vindicated when I learnt that the Honorable Minister has directed the NERDC to remove sex education from the basic education curriculum.
For a long enough time we have had a minister who says that the true teachers of this sensitive topic are the parents and this should be applauded. You cited the story of 13-year-old Tanwa who was pregnant for her neighbour due to her ignorance. While I sympathize with the teenage Tanwa who is forced to become a mother so early, your placing the blame squarely on her ignorance rather than on the paedophile adult doesn’t make a case for your position.
By Tony Eluemunor
Why this brazen contempt for any opposing viewpoint. What has made Nigerians known to be the most vociferous critics on Mother Earth to lose all convictions?
Please dear reader, if you were not in Mars during a period of petrol scarcity when the President Goodluck Jonathan-led Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administration held sway in Nigeria, you would have noticed the cascading of rambunctious criticism both Jonathan and the PDP faced – and rightly too. They had failed to make the refineries work maximally even as corruption trailed the petrol importation regime of that era. Apart from the trenchant criticism, all sorts of activists took to the streets to protest the belittling of Nigeria; an oil-producing country that was made to be importing petrol for local consumption just because she could not get her petrol refineries to work optimally.
By Chris Anyokwu
There she was on a typically busy highway clutching a doll swaddled delicately in finery and passing it off as a bundle of joy heartrendingly exposed at dawn of life to the coarser aspects of human society: the unbridgeable class divide between the haves and the have-nots.
Some Lagosians, habitually or customarily empathetic, were moved to dole out some money on account of the “adorable baby”, knowing that millions of people the world over are childless; some ready to give an arm and a leg to have a baby of their own even a deformed one. They always need a child to call their own; a child that would address them as “Dad” and “Mom”. And as a result of this, some desperate couples go out of their way to adopt a child from orphanages and motherless babies’ homes.
By Felix Oladeji
Africa is at a tipping point. With temperatures rising higher than the rest of the world and an increase in the occurrence of droughts, floods and other natural disasters, the people, economy and ecosystems of Africa are especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change. An early pilot initiative for climate change adaptation has provided important lessons, data and insights.
Taking these pilot initiatives to scale will require increased capacity and collaborative management approaches, improved engagement with the private sector, empowering actions that engage women and youth, capacity development to improve climate governance, and a holistic approach that looks at climate change not as a series of linear challenges, but as a systematic challenge that requires transformational shifts, innovative thinking and bold action.
By Luke Onyekakeyah
If you ask anyone on the street what is Nigeria’s number one problem, he would most likely say corruption. The refrain on corruption is so profound that no one has taken time to ask why there is such abrasive corruption. The reasons behind corruption are known but not addressed. They are totally downplayed. Truth is that corruption is merely an effect. The cause is ignored. Chasing the effect and leaving the cause, as in this case, is senseless. It is like pruning a tree, which would blossom once again after a short while. The only way to effectively kill a tree is to uproot it.
Even if you cut it down, shoots could sprout from the stump
showing that the tree is still alive though in a smaller dimension.
To deal with corruption would require a blunt attack on the roots. Nigeria’s corruption is systemic meaning that it is entrenched. A faulty system is responsible. The system is where the problem lies. There are deliberate gaps left in the system that have blended with the body and soul of Nigeria that can’t easily be rooted out. Vested interest would rather shed blood to ensure that the gaps remain untouched. But not until those gaps are closed, Nigeria’s underdevelopment quagmire would persist.
By Charles Okoh
Whoever
advised Governor Chukwuma Soludo on the path he has taken in his
unwarranted attack on the former governor of the state and presidential
candidate of the Labour Party, Mr. Peter Obi, has obviously and totally misled
him. If anything, his reaction was so infantile and lacking tact.
*Obi and Soludo
What would Soludo say was the reason he went overboard and
spewed all those bile when he is not contesting the position of the president?
Between Obi and APGA’s Prof. Peter Umeadi, who realistically has a better
chance?
After all said and done, Soludo ended up projecting the candidacy of both Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress (APC), than he has done for his party’s candidate (Umeadi).
By Amanze Obi
I had thought that I would give you a little more time before inquiring into your stewardship as the governor of Anambra State. But your recent outburst about the Peter Obi presidential bid has dragged me out earlier than I wanted.
When your long quest for the
governorship of Anambra State materialized in November, 2021, I was elated. I
felt happy for you, for Anambra State and for Nigeria. I was particularly happy
that the intellectual community to which I belong has got a breather through
your emergence as governor.
You are certainly not the first intellectual to rise to an exalted governance position in Nigeria.
By Chidi Odinkalu
In 1989, academics, Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, published to great acclaim their study of the evolution of the diverse dialects of English language from different empires. Their title was The Empire Writes Back. The book shows how various outposts of the empire took ownership of the language and adapted its grammar and usage.
Few
outposts from Empire have been as prolific in this enterprise as Nigeria.
Conceived as somewhat of an illegitimate offspring in the ménage à
trois between Sir George Taubman Goldie; his mistress, Flora
Shaw; and his successor in propinquity to her, Frederick Lugard, Nigeria became
a colonial experiment in the Tower of Babel.
A national anthem composed in 1959, one year before independence which occurred in 1960, acknowledged this reality in the third line of its first stanza, reminding the world of the aspiration to create a country even “though tribe and tongue may differ.” The anthem itself invited citizens to “hail” the country in antiquarian, biblical third person, symbolising a relationship with the country that was fractured from origin. Never mind that the hailing was to be done in the borrowed language of a foreign country.
By Uzor Maxim Uzoatu
Chinua Achebe lived in glory as the one-man institution who conquered the world for Mother Africa, and the great Kenyan novelist, Ngugi wa Thiongo, put it in these words: “Achebe bestrides generations and geographies. Every country in Africa claims him as their own.”
On November 16, 1930, Albert Chinualumogu Achebe was born to a teacher-cum-evangelist father of the Anglican Communion in the town of Nnobi, near his hometown of Ogidi, in present-day Anambra State.
By Victor Okeke
This year’s tail-end rains in Nigeria have been marked by devastating floods. At least 600 people have died and 1.3 million displaced from their homes. Heavy rains combined with poor urban planning have made parts of Nigeria more susceptible to flooding. Evidence has shown that women, the poor, and uneducated are most vulnerable to floods.
Gender, poverty, and education are interrelated and they have indirect effects on vulnerability in flood disasters. Around the River Niger Bridge which joins Lagos to Onitsha and the rest of eastern Nigeria, sizable portions of surrounding communities have been submerged under water, crippling economic activity for many small traders and farmers.
By Stanley Ekpa
Since we are faced with complex climate crises, regional wars and sovereign existential challenges in many countries around the world, it is only natural to start this conversation with my condolences to the victims of flood, insecurity and other crises in Nigeria and other parts of the world, particularly in Seoul, Ukraine and Somalia. In the entire history of the world, the world has never existed without challenges. At every phase of human history, leadership is required to change the world: authentic, visionary, assertive, creative, transformative, sincere and disruptive leaders are required to fix and forge their societies forward.
At the peak of public leadership is presidential leadership, either a prime minister, a president, or a monarch, every nation looks up to the head of state to provide hope, optimism and shared-social possibilities. To lead a country in a time of chaos and complex crisis, the head of a state requires more than just the desire to lead. It requires the trusted ability to simplify complex conversations; take tough decisions; embody firm convictions of patriotism and act decisively in national interest; showcase the wisdom of insights, the audacity of foresights and creative commitment to bold visions.
By Emmanuel Okoroafor
Corruption has woven itself into the tapestry of the Nigeria narrative such that it has become the eternal plague of this most populous African country. For decades, this malady in its various manifestations – embezzling, backhandedness, kickbacks, internet fraud, thievery and all what not – have defined us more than our characters, capabilities and accomplishments. It is so bad that even one United Kingdom (UK) Prime Minister had the cheeks to brand us “fantastically corrupt.”
For a country touted as the giant of Africa, the tragic flaw of corruption has whittled down Nigeria’s goliath stature to that of a Lilliputian. Today, it has become the gangrene eating away our corporate structure, the poison oozing from every pore of our collective body and the bile in our cup of wine. What is worse, even the younger generation has gradually bought into the corruption franchise. It is now fashionable to hear young people say, “If I get there (public position), I go chop (embezzle) my own.” Which means “if you can’t beat them, then join them.”
By Dare Babarinsa
If the November 2, 2022 peace deal in Ethiopia holds, it would be the biggest prize ever won by Chief Olusegun Obasanjo since he retired from the Presidency in 2007.
For
the past 15 years, Obasanjo has become Africa’s most dedicated troubleshooter,
dashing from one trouble spot to another in the frequent African bushfire wars.
But Ethiopia has a bigger stake. It is one of the most important African
countries, sharing the Alpha Grade with Nigeria, South Africa, Congo DRC and
Egypt.
Perhaps, it has seen more wars than most African countries. Hitherto, it is the most successful African experiment in state formation. Its unravelling would be a great tragedy. We need to salute all those who are involved in this peace deal.
By Robert Obioha
In an election season, political campaign can come in diverse forms, including crude use of language to possibly settle an old score or even attempt to diminish someone’s rising fame and political relevance. Even lending support to one’s favourite candidate can be subtly or brazenly done depending on one’s choice of words and deployment of language, which can also be brutal and lacking tact and diplomacy.
Presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) and former Anambra State Governor, Mr. Peter Obi and Rivers State Governor Mr. Nyesom Wike embrace in Port Harcourt....November 18, 2022.
Obi was in Port Harcourt to commission the the Nkpolu-Oroworokwo Flyover constructed by the Wike administration.
During the event, Wike described Obi as "a very humble man" and promised that the Rivers State government will "give him logistics support for his campaigns.”
By Benedicta Egbo
On Sunday, November 6, Arise News held the first of its presidential town hall series. While three presidential candidates, namely Peter Obi of the Labour Party, Rabiu Kwankwaso of the New Nigerian People’s Party and Kola Abiola of Peoples Redemption Party honoured the invitation, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, was represented by his running mate and vice-presidential candidate, Ifeanyi Okowa, which caused a mild drama at the event.
The presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was absent. This is, of course, a familiar pattern with the major political parties, and it smacks of disrespect for Nigerians and the office they seek to occupy. The 2019 election cycle saw the same pattern of behaviour among some members of the political class. Apparently, the leopard never changes its spots. There are two possible reasons that could make presidential candidates absent themselves from town halls and televised debates.
By Andrew A. Erakhrumen
It may be discomfiting, but the truth, (our truth), must be told; that many Nigerians love quick fixes! This is a reason why they (we) have been going round in circles concerning their (our) challenges!
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For instance, the tempo of stakeholders’ clamour, for Nigeria to find sustainable solutions to the underlying challenges causing industrial disharmony in the country’s public universities, subsided within two weeks after Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, suspended its strike on the October 14, 2022.
It was as if Nigerians, owing to the suspension, instantly forgot about the unresolved issues. Now, the people whose actions/inactions led to, and sustained, the painful eight-month strike in public universities are at it again – as usual!
By Alade Rotimi-John
Perhaps, no socio-political plank in Nigeria has impinged on our consciousness or has excited our admiration for the values of dedication to cherished ideals and goals more than Afenifere – the pan-Yoruba socio-political platform. In a society where shifting compromises and mutually-conflicting philosophies are lumped together just to score some cheap debating or political point, Afenifere has stood out as a genuine re-creation of a sincere search for solution to the myriad of problems besetting Nigeria.
Founded in 1951 as an
open window for brandishing the proud bearing and venting the considered
expression of the people of its constituency, its enduring nature contrasts
starkly with a general foreground of aborted, still-born or short-lived
organisations.
For 70 years on, Afenifere has adhered firmly to her foundational strategy in precise observation, discipline and clarity of vision. She has thereby positioned herself as the ruling socio-political ethic in Yorubaland – its primary constituency. Other groups espousing similar or identical values like her are dimly outlined against the towering stature of Afenifere.
By Jumai Ahmadu
Addressing social norms and stereotypes that have over the years impeded naturally inbuilt women’s potentials of not just being managers and stabilisers in the family, but, also, great contributors to a nation’s socio-economic development is very necessary. The power of investment in African women, through promoting growth, stability and development, is akin to investment in nation.
Hence governments of African states have been tasked to prioritise women and gender inclusion in policy making process such that it will create a pathway and cornerstone of actions by government and development partners. African women should liaise with relevant stakeholders, including government agencies, local and international NGOs to have mechanisms to interface with industry experts in ICT, media and entertainment in their respective countries in order to instigate deliberate policies on gender inclusion and women’s economic empowerment.
