By
Ibrahim Hussain Abdulkarim
Fellow Nigerians, let’s unite for a brighter future and reject the divisive traps of religion and tribalism.
The time has come to rally behind Peter Obi, a leader whose actions prove he’s committed to uplifting every Nigerian; North, South, Christian, Muslim, or otherwise—through agriculture, economic empowerment, and poverty alleviation.
By Basil Onwukwe
The dream of lasting peace in Nigeria remains a fleeting illusion until fundamental human rights are equal and guaranteed for all. Without this, the pursuit of economic growth and political stability can never be fully realised. Righteousness exalts a nation, and doing things right is not an option? Let’s not pretend that political alignment is about public interest.
Nigerians will be waiting to see whether they will establish a legal framework that enables the reconstruction of the nation’s failed issues. Let’s call it what it is: a carefully masked attempt to fund elite wasteful spending. Any change from frying pan to fire cannot be tolerated anymore, or state capture that offloads systemic failure onto the backs of the masses will not be acceptable.
By Ebuka Uko
I arrived in the United States in the fall of 2021 to start postgraduate studies, only to find myself engaged in conversations about Blackness in ways I had never experienced in over 30 years of life in Africa.
Suddenly, I constantly faced questions that never really came up for me before. What does it mean to be Black? What does it mean to belong? I have always been a global majority, and that’s all I knew.
In that wrestle, I stumbled on something James Baldwin said in 1961: “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage, almost all of the time.” Reading those words, I felt exposed. It also gave me a new understanding of Nelson Mandela’s long walk to freedom.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
At best, Nigeria’s democracy in this Fourth Republic has been wobbly, standing, as it were, on feet of clay. And a quarter of a century thence, rather than getting better, things have got worse as the politicians are busy dismantling all the guardrails of democracy – civic participation, which undergirds every genuine democratic project; the rule of law, that norm which says no one is above the law and makes a democracy function properly; separation of powers and checks and balances, democratic values which ensure that no individual or institution would have too much power over others; federalism and limited government, which Dr. Meena Bose, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Peter S. Kalikow Center for the Study of the American Presidency, at Hofstra University, described as “principles that ensure that the American political system protects liberty and natural rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
By Ejike Anyduba
Major General Aguiyi Ironsi has been dead for five
decades and nine years. July 29, 2025, made it 59 years since Nigeria’s first
military Head of State Major General Johnson Thomas Umunnakwe Aguiyi Ironsi and
his host, the Governor of Western Nigeria, Lt. Colonel Francis Adekunle Fajuyi
were whisked away from Government House, Ibadan, and shot over the brooks of
Iwo, Osun state.
By Banji Ojewale
Ghana, Black Africa’s oldest independent nation, is preparing for two landmark events in 2026 and 2027. In 2026, the Black Star land will be looking decades back, recalling 60 years after the tragic overthrow of the legendary Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, its founding president.
Then, in 2027 Ghanaians and the international community will celebrate the 70th anniversary of the country’s bold and befittingly blistering break with colonial servitude. The one sought to kill the foundation for a different approach to governance adopted by Nkrumah in a world weighed down by imperialistic paradigms. The other, an unforgettable African narrative scripted by Africans, will bring back the story of how one country triggered the revolution that consumed the Western imperatorial order imposed on the continent since the 19th Century.
By Ugo Onuoha
Who is a buffoon? I will not put my thumb on the scale so that I will not inject my personal bias and anger in the definition of a buffoon. I will simply ask MetaAI. Please AI who is a buffoon? “A buffoon is a person who behaves in a silly, foolish, or absurd way, often causing amusement or annoyance. The term can imply someone who: acts foolishly or absurdly; makes a spectacle of themselves; lacks seriousness or judgment; [and/or] engages in clownish or ridiculous behaviour”.
AI elaborates by saying that “In modern usage, ‘buffoon’ can be used to describe someone who is seen as ridiculous, incompetent, or silly, often in a way that’s entertaining or annoying”. It went on to illustrate: “He’s such a buffoon on social media, always posting ridiculous videos”. Which one of these descriptions does not fit the governor of Edo state, Monday Okpebholo? He is silly. He acts foolishly. He is absurd in conduct and utterance. He causes amusement and annoyance at the same time. He makes a spectacle of himself. He never appears to be a serious person. Indications are that he is a dullard.
By Oluwafunbi Awe
The recent wave of killings in Benue State which reportedly claimed the lives of hundreds of innocent citizens is yet another dark reminder of Nigeria’s ongoing security tragedy. Once again, communities have been razed, families shattered, and livelihoods destroyed. While statistics estimate over 200 people dead in just a few weeks, the human cost cannot be measured in numbers alone. Each life lost represents a voice silenced, a future extinguished, and a nation’s conscience bruised further.
The people of Benue have become unwilling tenants of violence. In scenes disturbingly familiar, these communities were invaded, homes torched, and residents slaughtered without provocation. It is a cycle that has persisted for too long—so long that public outrage has dulled and official responses now sound robotic, recycled, and empty. The real tragedy, however, is not just the killings themselves but our collective indifference.
By Dele Sobowale
“Every government is run by
liars; and nothing they say should be believed…” – I. F. Stone,
1907-1989
I was halfway through with the article intended for this week when two things happened. Former President Buhari, 1943-2025, passed on in a London Hospital; where he undoubtedly had gone to save his life.
*Buhari
Unfortunately, the man might have realised that only Allah gives life.
Without Almighty Allah’s approval, all the best doctors on Earth labour in
vain. Incidentally, I almost went a few days before Buhari.
I was given
extended tenure above ground by an overworked doctor in a General Hospital in
Nigeria.
So much for overseas’ treatments! Garba Shehu, a former Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to Buhari, had launched a book titled, ‘According to the President: Lessons from a Presidential Spokesperson’s Experience’, in which he confessed to telling reporters a lie about the former President’s health condition.
By Obi Nwakanma
Let me begin here by saying that Mr. Femi Adesina is a very dishonest interlocutor of Nigerian history. I really do wish to emphasize the word “dishonest.” Perhaps a stronger word might even suffice, but I am in no mood for invention. I would like it to be as clear, and as plain as possible, that Adesina, a one-time newspaper editor is bent towards hagiography. Buhari found his Shadwell in Adesina. His memoir of his time as Buhari’s factotum, for whom he spent eight in Aso Rock as Spokesman, Working With Buhari, is an annoying insult on Nigerians. In this book, Adesina launched an EMP on truth in aid of Buhari.
*Adesina and Buhari
Nigerians cannot recognize the Buhari in that book, nor fathom the credentials of the writer of that tome full of all kinds of subaltern cliches that no serious writer should now be caught using, e.g. “ straight as an arrow…clean as a whistle” Very elementary use of language. Too many tired phrases that to me, indicate the stasis in which Adesina lived. But that is not the real point. The real point is that, that book, as much as its subject is a lie. When a book is a lie, it marks its time on the shelf. Eventually, it will end up in the dustbin of history; certainly not among the great chronicles of an era.
By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu
“The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.”
–Article 21(3), Universal Declaration
of Human Rights
By Amos Jolaoye
What was once viewed primarily as a natural or humanitarian issue has now evolved into a pressing threat to real estate investment, infrastructure, and sustainable urban development across the country.
Flooding occurs when water overflows onto land that is typically dry, often due to heavy rainfall, inadequate drainage systems, or overflowing rivers. However, beyond natural causes, it is essential to acknowledge the man-made dimensions of this crisis. Poor urban planning, lack of maintenance of public infrastructure, and a general absence of proactive policy implementation have significantly worsened the situation.
There is a growing sense of restlessness among today’s African youth. Many are questioning the systems that surround them. They want more than just formal education or another training program that leads nowhere. You find it in the way they talk about soft skills, tech, crypto, side hustles, and remote jobs. They ask questions at conferences, on X, and even in WhatsApp groups.
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Chuks Iloegbunam toasts to a political phenomenon on his birthday...
Decades ago, there was another politician in this country who believed in ideas, in planning, and in directly facing challenges. He always aimed to identify the core issues, not for fame, but to find ways of mastering them. As a Premier, he ran a government that invested heavily in education, building a university, a pioneering television station, and housing estates for his people. Yet not one of his achievements was named after him.
In a moment of inspiration, General Ibrahim Babangida, as Military President, sent the man a birthday message in which he declared him “the main issue” in Nigerian politics. That man was, of course, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. There were a few others in Awo’s mould, including Dr. M. I. Okpara, who, as Premier of Eastern Nigeria, oversaw the fastest-growing economy in the world. Dr. Okpara rapidly industrialised Eastern Nigeria and escalated educational growth from kindergarten to the tertiary level. Yet, he named none of his achievements after himself. By the time he passed in 1984, he did not have a house to his name.
Between Awo and Okpara, there is a common set of traits that are evident in Peter Obi. Neither valued extravagance nor engaged in chasing shadows. Neither made grand claims of unearned academic laurels, dubious ancestry, or unverified identities. Neither would have entertained, even for a millisecond, the inane thought of riding in a 100-vehicle cavalcade with sirens and horns blaring through dirty, potholed streets to showcase their political stature. To this practical and realistic duo, who harboured neither illusions nor pretensions, being grounded in thought and positive actions was the guiding philosophy.
Peter Obi is cast in that mould, which is why, for each of his claims and postulations, he optimistically leaves a challenge: “Go and verify!” As a State Governor, Peter Obi was often in convoys of just a handful of vehicles bearing only officials, security personnel, and pressmen. Well, Awo passed in 1987. Neither he nor Okpara departed with their legacy. Their positive footprints in the sands of time remain with the people they led – a testament to steadfastness and purposefulness.
Peter Obi is very much around. So, how would he mark his anniversary today? One thing is certain. There would be no parties. Stories abound in this country of folks with undocumented pedigrees and undeclared sources of wealth who hire tourist Caribbean villages in any of Barbuda, the Cayman Islands, Mustique, Eleuthera or Saint Kitts, etc., for the celebration of their birthdays with bashes crawling with aspiring felons, freeloaders, hangers-on, never-do-wells, assorted parasites, and plenary sycophants. Count Peter Obi out of such bizarrity. He would rather sit alone or with like minds to ruminate and meditate on ways to improve the Nigerian condition.
It is this practice of subjecting Nigeria to constant interrogation that has enabled him to proffer, at every turn, the best steps forward for the country to become meaningful. Baldly, he has repeatedly declared that directing the affairs of a nation should never be left to the devices of drug barons, turncoats, kleptocratic vultures, conceited ignoramuses, and their retinues of “cut it down, whether ripe or not.” To demonstrate that he wasn’t simply all talk and no action, he contested a presidential election in which he trounced, even in their backyards, self-declared electoral “champions” and political “strategists.” Then the heist came. Who doesn’t know that, just as the shell follows the snail, so does desolation trail plunder? Today, woe is in ascent. The entity, previously in a state of stasis, has degenerated into sepsis.
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That is why a coalition has come up. A coalition to determine whether an 11th-hour salvation is feasible in the circumstances of near hopelessness. How does one say no in the face of thunder? No new jobs are being created. The employed are rapidly receiving severance letters. Those clinging precariously to jobs are hardly paid. Of the miserable few that earn at all, the shock is that, in most cases, the take-home pay is barely enough for commuting.
There’s no health system worthy of the name. A good percentage of the available drugs are either fake or expired. It bothers them not because, when ill with even an earache or a toothache, they jet off at public expense to the Riviera or somewhere nearby for expert medical attention. When, as sometimes happens, they kick the bucket in alien territory, their remains are crated home, again at public expense.
Tell that to the doubly jeopardised septuagenarian afflicted by diabetes and hypertension. Holding tightly to her doctor’s prescription, she rues the insufficient money in her purse and mutters, “I will buy the diabetes drug and go home. The management of my high blood pressure can wait.” Why should this tragedy of unrelenting proportions be commonplace in an oil-rich country?
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How could it be said and repeated that Fulani herdsmen invaded and wiped away 200 lives in one night, with Abuja unable to call the massacre by its name? How can it be the case that Abuja is unable or unwilling to confront, halt, and reverse the bloody effrontery of mass killers prowling across the national vastness with impunity? The dire straits in which the country is trapped are the reason a coalition has been formed to determine whether an 11th-hour salvation from national despondency is attainable. This alliance to overturn dismal political leadership is a frontal attack on injustice. After all, clueless leadership is a gross injustice to the people. There is, therefore, one piece of advice for anyone who would come into equity. Come with clean hands! It would be absurd to confront blatant injustice with a process that is itself unjust.
All other geopolitical zones have produced presidents, some for repeated times. But not the South East. When the 2022 PDP presidential primary election discarded the process that could have addressed the grievous injustice, Peter Obi, on principle, ditched the party and became the Labour Party’s presidential flagbearer, a role in which, with his unwavering army of the Obidients, he stunned the cynics.
The coalitionists know, or ought to know, that in treating conjunctivitis, the application of pepper is anathema. If, despite this knowledge, they give him a short shrift, Mr. Peter Obi, the main issue in Nigerian politics today, will look in another direction because nobody will be allowed to use him and the Obidients to boost their political avarice.
If Mr. Obi turns his back to the coalition, it will instantly collapse like a pack of cards, and it will become clear to all that the alliance cheerleaders were insincere charlatans livid because power resided other than in their backyard, and not because of the imperative of extirpating a cancerous tumour from the body politic. Will reason and statesmanship ultimately prevail? Or will covetousness and a rabid sense of entitlement press the default button for the sustenance of a decadent status quo?
If, in choosing a presidential flagbearer, the coalition gets its act right, the challenge will shift to the critically patriotic duty of teaching the perpetual perpetrators of electoral corruption that the head is bigger than the body. From all indications, the foreseeable future promises a basketful of news, wholesome and unwelcome, for those who care and others who pretend to be unconcerned. For now, two prayers must end this piece.
One, may God deliver the long-suffering peoples of this country who, interminably, are being incessantly and remorselessly raped with a barbed phallus. Two, and for the birthday celebrant: May the Creator of Heaven and Earth keep and lead you in so far as you intend to place a healing balm on the essences of the severely wounded peoples of your fatherland.
*Chuks Iloegbunam is the author of The Promise of a New Era, a biography of Mr. Peter Obi.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Nigerians are hypocritically sanctimonious, a trait that has become evident since the death of President Muhammadu Buhari in a London hospital on Sunday, July 13. Many, particularly politicians, have lied against the man, literally, by clothing him in borrowed robes in a bid not to speak ill of the dead.
All manner
of adjectives have been deployed in eulogising the departed leader. But in
doing that they lie against him, almost to the point of defamation.
But there is no use flogging a dead horse. While Buhari was alive, I wrote tons of articles lamenting his leadership style not because I hated him but because I wanted him to change. But he was a man set in his ways. Now that he is dead, the inevitable judgement of history will take its natural course. But one fact remains undeniable as Professor Anthony Kila aptly put it: Buhari is a promise unkept.
By Umar Ardo
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s decision to rename the University of Maiduguri as “Muhammadu Buhari University, Maiduguri” in honour of the late former President Muhammadu Buhari has raised fundamental questions regarding its logic, appropriateness and historical justice. While the gesture may appear symbolic on the surface, a critical examination exposes its lack of intellectual, cultural and moral grounding.
2. First and foremost, Muhammadu Buhari was a career military officer and a politician – not an academic, educationist or intellectual in any public sense. His legacy, whether praised or criticized, is rooted in his military career, his ascension to the presidency and his distinct governing style marked by authoritarian tendencies, economic conservatism and a controversial anti-corruption crusade. Renaming a university, a citadel of learning, knowledge, research and intellectualism, after someone whose relationship with academia is at best peripheral, if not outright tenuous, dilutes the institution’s identity and purpose.
By John Onyeukwu
With President Muhammadu Buhari’s death, Nigeria entered a familiar season of national confusion, not about the event, but about how to feel about it. Some Nigerians invoked religion: “Only God can judge.” Others cited culture: “Don’t speak ill of the dead.” Yet a third group, often younger and historically alert, asked: “Why should death erase the need for truth?”
This division is not just emotional; it is structural. It is a mirror of the political economy of memory, how societies remember, what they choose to forget, and who controls the narrative. In the days following Buhari’s death, one thing became painfully clear: we are a country uncomfortable with honest remembrance.
By Emeka Obasi
General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi was firm when he ordered Captain David Laisi Bamigboye to stick to Beatrice Chinyere Asagwara forever, after their wedding at St. George’s Garrison Church, Point Road Apapa on Saturday February 6, 1965.
Ironsi who was the General Officer Commanding (GOC), Nigeria Army, chaired the wedding reception which held at Headquarters, Nigeria Army Officers Mess, Child Avenue, Apapa. Among officers present were Bamigboye’s Nigeria Army Training College (NMTC) Course One mates, Alani Julius Akinrinade, who served as Bestman and Ignatius Ngwu Obeya who coordinated the wedding.
By Dan Onwukwe
The adoption last week, of African Democratic Congress(ADC) by opposition leaders ahead of 2027 general election, has unleashed a great wave of commentaries, columns and articles about lessons in power, the nature of Nigerian politics, the temperament and behaviour of our politicians as well as the struggle for power.
Little is being said about the imaginative visionary necessary to achieve great things with that power. When things go wrong in a country, it’s fair to ask, why? Why are things getting worse, rather than better since Bola Ahmed Tinubu was sworn in as President of Nigeria, 26 months ago?
By Dakuku Peterside
For years, Nigerians have walked through the world with a quiet pride, knowing that their talent, resilience, and creativity were respected far beyond the country’s borders. Our people have built lives in faraway places, contributing as doctors, engineers, professors, artists, and entrepreneurs.
*Tinubu and Akpabio
From Silicon Valley to the lecture halls of Oxford, UK, and Philadelphia, US; from the oil rigs of Alberta to the studios of Nollywood, the Nigerian spirit has pushed boundaries and opened doors that seemed locked to others.
