Nigerian Killings: Is Enough Not Enough?

 By Tonnie Iredia

From 2009 when insurgency reared its ugly head in the Northeast of Nigeria till today, it has been killings, killings and killings in Africa’s most populous nation. Authentic figures of how many citizens have since died or suffered from traumatic kidnapping are unknown. What is not in dispute however is that insecurity is now topmost in the nation’s current record of events.

The only other phenomenon of significance that is at par with the exceedingly high degree of insecurity is the rapid growth of the nation’s contaminated democracy. Many people actually attribute the unacceptable situation to the political class hence, voters quickly lined up behind candidate Muhammadu Buhari during the 2015 elections believing that the former stringent military ruler would naturally tackle insurgency headlong.

Is Gov Soludo Envious Of Peter Obi?

By Ugoji Egbujo

President Tinubu was in Anambra. The timing of the visit was ominous. Anambra governorship elections are due in November. Southern first-term governors from opposition parties are defecting in droves to Tinubu’s party. Soludo didn’t defect but a defection might have been more hygienic. Soludo showcased his projects and swore allegiance to Tinubu. Soludo was within his right to twerk for Tinubu, but did he have to spit on  Peter Obi to magnify and enchant the president? 

*Soludo and Obi

The first line of Soludo’s speech was reeked with pettiness. He said that the last time a  President visited the state was in 2021 to commission the Premier Breweries which he called a private brewery project. That Soludo’s preferred hook was puerile.  Some might say it should be seen as political banter. But did Soludo need to introduce that famed line of bigotry peddled by Tinubu’s men in this welcome address to the president to the home of Peter Obi, Tinubu’s arch-rival? 

One-Party State: Nigerian Political Parties Are Mere Special Purpose Vehicles

 By Olu Fasan

Ostensibly, Nigeria is a multi-party democracy. But in reality, it is a one-party state. Those ululating over the recent gale of defections wrongly assume that there are material differences between Nigerian political parties. Yet, in truth, the prevalence of defections, decamping, cross-carpeting, or name it, only proves that nothing distinguishes political parties in Nigeria.

*Tinubu

Lord Palmerstone, a former British prime minister, famously coined the phrase “there are no permanent friends or permanent enemies but permanent interests” to describe relations between nations. However, Nigerian politicians have appropriated that saying and turned it into the leitmotif of their political culture. Indeed, Bola Tinubu used the phrase in 2014 when he and others were cobbling together the All Progressives Congress, APC, a potpourri of strange political bedfellows who were united merely by a self-serving agenda to seize and share power. “There are no permanent friends or enemies in politics, but permanent friends, ” Tinubu said, without any sense of irony. Politics in Nigeria is all about selfish interests.

End Amnesty, Empower The Military To Crush Boko Haram Now!

 By Mukhtar Ya’u Madobi

The time has come to draw a firm line in Nigeria’s protracted battle against insurgency. With thousands of so-called “repentant” terrorists surrendering, rehabilitated and reintegrated into society, the recent resurgence of Boko Haram and ISWAP terrorism in the North-East demands a critical reassessment of the nation’s counter-terrorism approach, especially the controversial amnesty programme.

The recurring waves of violence suggest that leniency has been mistaken for weakness. Now is the time for Nigeria’s military to shift gears and pursue an uncompromising offensive against the insurgents. Enough is enough.

Borno State, the epicenter of Nigeria’s decade-long insurgency, is once again engulfed in violence. Boko Haram and its ISWAP faction are ramping up attacks, employing asymmetrical warfare tactics with alarming effectiveness — ambushes, improvised explosive devices, IEDs, assaults on military formations, and strategic sabotage such as the destruction of critical infrastructure.

Soludo: Professors Sans Commonsense

By Steve Osuji

Nigerian professors are giving a bad name to the academia. We grew up to revere people who wear the tag 'professor' as very special kinds.

And as we went through the university, the power and aura of professors on our campuses didn't wane. Indeed, we cherished being under their tutelage.

I encountered a few in my journey through those rarefied corridors of learning. Who would forget in a hurry, Professors Alfred Opubor, Ebun Clark, Alaba Ogunsanwo, Onuora Nwuneli, among others, in the University of Lagos of the 1980s and early 90s. 

But today in Nigeria, everything seems upside down; including the university system and the professors therein.

If a professor is not being goaled for sexually harassing his students - in a most idiotic tango - he's being jailed for helping a rogue politician rig election. 

One cannot understand how our university system crashed so low to the point that professors, even vice chancellors, are co-opted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), into a tacky and highly malleable electoral system. 

How The Military Taught Nigerians The Art Of Looting

 By Owei Lakemfa

It will be fallacious to say the military taught Nigerians how to steal. In truth, stealing maybe as old as humanity itself. In fact, stealing is so old that it features in the Ten Commandments God reportedly gave humanity: ‘Thou Shall Not Steal’.

*Abacha and a Newswatch magazine cover 

However, while the politicians who stole  before military rule commenced in Nigeria, were petty thieves, the Generals raised the standard to actual ‘state capture’. While the former, given the consequences, were afraid to be caught, the latter actually lived in the treasury, conscious that, even if caught, there might be no adverse consequences. In any case, esprit de corps obliges Generals to look out for each other. So, despite all the accusations of looting against the Babangida regime, including the Gulf War windfall, nobody dared or has dared to probe it.

Mr. President, Rein In Your Son, Seyi

 By Dan Onwukwe

Have you pondered why presidential offsprings sometimes behave in such bizarre and irascible manner that bring embarrassment to the first family? Mr Seyi Tinubu, a pampered grown adult and son of President Bola Tinubu, has had some run-ins with some people since his father became Nigerian president almost two years ago. The controversies he has attracted have hugged the headlines. If this bizarre behaviour is not normal, you may ask, why? Does the President feel hurt watching his son each time his son’s conduct makes the headlines? 

*Bola Tinubu and his son, Seyi

If the President does, why hasn’t he deemed it necessary to rein him in as he did early in his administration when Seyi reportedly barged in, without invitation, at the Federal Executive Council (FEC) in the Presidential Villa? This is what the President said on that day: “I have noticed the undue access of people sneaking in and out of this Council, including my son, Seyi, sitting behind the cubicle. That’s not acceptable”. The president instructed the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, George Akume to take note of his order.

Nigeria And The Fading Lights Of Justice

 By Chidi Odinkalu

As he settled in to deliver the judgment of the Edo State Governorship Election Petition Tribunal on 2 April 2025, presiding judge, Wilfred Kpochi, felt obliged to get one ritual out of the way. Glancing left and right, he asked each of his two colleagues on the three-person tribunal to confirm that the judgment he was about to deliver was unanimous. Justice Kpochi only proceeded after each, one to his left and the other to his right, nodded their affirmation.

The judge had good reason for this preliminary ritual. 48 hours before it was due, a leaked document purporting to be the judgment of the tribunal went into circulation.

Chinua Achebe, Nobel Prize And African Literature

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

March 21 was here again recently. On this particular day in 2013, Professor Chinua Achebe, one of the world’s most distinguished writers and intellectuals took his last breath in Boston, Massachusetts, mourned and celebrated by his teeming readers, critics and divers people across the globe on whom his work and life had significantly impacted in various ways. I have decided to use this period to examine some of the important discussions that have continued to circulate around Achebe, his work and African literature which appear to have even gained considerable weight since his demise and have also distinguished themselves by the largely tantalizing distortions, half-truths and deliberate misinformation that have been carefully injected into them.

*Achebe 

This service is for the benefit of students, younger professors and scholars   who were yet to be admitted into the African literary household when some of the events stoking these discussions took place and who are innocently gobbling up the horribly deficient accounts being fed them by those who either do not have any better grasp of those aspects of the African literary history themselves or are on a deliberate mission to distribute misleading concoctions.

It seems so natural to commence with Chinua Achebe and the Nobel Literature Prize given that discussions on it have stubbornly refused to go away even after over a decade of Achebe’s passing.

*Achebe and the Nobel Politics  

By 1986, it was very obvious that the Swedish Academy which annually selects the recipients of the Nobel Literature Prize had decided to bring it to Africa. But to actualize this, they did something that viciously affected the credibility of that year’s prize. They summoned African writers to Stockholm to discuss African Literature before them. While several African writers including the illustrious Wole Soyinka who won the prize that year trooped to Sweden to attend the conference which held from 11-17 April, 1986, Chinua Achebe thought that such an event was not worth his time.

In his message to the Nobel Committee rejecting their invitation, Achebe wrote:

“I regret I cannot accept your generous invitation for the simple reason that I do not consider it appropriate for African writers to assemble in European capitals in 1986 to discuss the future of their literature. In my humble opinion it smacks too much of those constitutional conferences arranged in London and Paris for our pre-independence political leaders.

“The fault, however is not with the organizers such as yourselves, but with us the writers of Africa who at this point in time should have outgrown the desire for the easy option of using external platforms instead of grappling with the problem of creating structures of their own at home.

“…I strongly believe that the time is overdue for Africans, especially African writers, to begin to take the initiative in deciding the things that belong to their peace…” (See “Ikejemba: He Had in Him the Elements So Mixed” by Professor Michael Thelwell, Usaafrica dialogue google groups).

One wonders what the astounded Nobel Committee members must have whispered to each other after receiving this letter.

Life In Ghana Under An Nkrumaist President

By Banji Ojewale

Here in Anyaa, Accra, capital of Ghana, I’ve come across some of the country’s leading newspapers. Their contents—news reports, opinions, vox pop, book reviews, cartoons, (dearth of these), sports, photo stories, advertorials etc.--give me a larger-than-life image of the Ghanaian society.  The two oldest journals, Daily Graphic and Ghanaian Times, with their sister weeklies, The Mirror and The Spectator respectively, are on parade.  The later appearances, Daily Guide, The Ghanaian Chronicle, Modern Ghana (Online), The Insight, Finder, Business Ghana, Statesman etc. have also been consulted, considered or captured for this short essay. 

Ghana no longer has evening sheets. Kwame Nkrumah, the country’s founding president, introduced an Accra evening paper in the late 40s to fight colonial rule and give a voice to the local population. In the 60s, there was also the popular Evening Times. Since then, there’s been no serious contention for a comeback.

Pastor Kumuyi’s Washington Trip And The Shifting Cynosure

By Banji Ojewale

In Washington DC, USA, Pastor William Folorunso Kumuyi of Africa is invited to lead the prayer and praise session as part of the ceremonies for the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47^th president of the US. The revered Nigerian evangelist is through after a delivery of 290+ words in 1 minute and 36 seconds. 

*Pastor Kumuyi, his wife, and American ministers in Washington 

Reporters also note that Kumuyi, Convener of the denomination-disavowing Global Crusade with Kumuyi, GCK, is the only Nigerian and African cleric asked to minister. There’s this observation, too: His assembly, Deeper Life Bible Church, DLBC, trashed all the prognoses of infant death made by religious pontiffs on account of its pick of unyielding holiness as its motto; it then went on to survive withering headwinds, internal and external, to position itself in the forefront of the push of evangelical Christianity from the Global South, rather than from its cradle in the Global North.

OJUKWU: Exile, Diplomacy And Survival (Book Review)

 By Ugochukwu Ejinkeonye

Volumes have been said and written about the Nigeria/Biafra War: the pre-war hostilities that degenerated into the pogroms that eventually provoked the mass exodus of Eastern Nigerians from several parts of the country to the East; the secession of the people of the East to create a separate entity for themselves where they felt they could take charge of their own security and dignity as humans; the war that followed and the gallant efforts by the Easterners to pick the bits and pieces of their lives and survive the devastating effects of the bitter war.

But despite the very huge body of historical (and fictional) works that have accumulated on the war from Nigerian writers, foreign observers and journalists, a key aspect of the story continues to be conspicuously missing. The leader of the defeated republic, Biafra, left the country for Ivory Coast few days to the end of the war in January 1970 and remained there as an exile for twelve years before returning to a hero’s welcome in 1982 following the unconditional pardon granted him by the Shagari government.

Naturally, there have been intense yearnings by many people to be updated on the developments that marked those years between the end of the war in 1970 and Ojukwu’s return from the Cote d’Iviore in 1982. What were the things that occupied the Biafran leader in exile? What were his plans for Nigeria for which several meetings were held in Cote d’Iviore, Ghana, Nigeria and some European cities? Who were the Nigerians that visited him several times in Cote d’Ivoire and how were their trips arranged to ensure that the security operatives of the Yakubu Gowon’s regime which were keenly interested in him and his activities in exile were not aware?  How did he build the very formidable network of trusted contacts, friends, loyal and dutiful associates and aides that facilitated his ability to easily send and receive messages to and from Nigeria and  know almost every significant event that occurred in Nigeria within the shortest time – in fact, even before many people in Nigeria got to know?            

Accomplished electronic and print media journalist, eminent writer and public relations expert, Kanayo Esinulo “who worked at General Ojukwu’s State House…” in Biafra and followed him “to Cote d’Iviore and served as one of his closest aides all through his years of exile” has finally bowed to pressure from friends, colleagues, journalists, scholars and diverse interested parties, to write a book that admirably fills that gap.

Nightmarish ‘Prophets’ And New Year Predictions

 By Banji Ojewale

The true prophet of God is not the one who delivers predictions about the New Year or the future. No! Rather he reveals the Creator’s mind and how fallen humanity can be convinced to embrace that vision for his eternal good – William Folorunso Kumuyi, Convener, Global Crusade with Kumuyi, (GCK)

*Kumuyi

In one of his sermons at the December 2024 Global Retreat of the Deeper Life Bible Church and Global Crusade with Kumuyi, GCK, in Lagos, Nigeria, Pastor W.F. Kumuyi, Africa’s world-renowned evangelist, said the integrity crisis faced by today’s ‘prophets’ is the result of their desertion of the prophetic station ordained by God. He told millions of multitudes who watched and heard him worldwide online and physically that the true prophet of God is expected to hear from God and say only what he hears from Him, as sacredly served in the Holy Bible. 

Kayode Ojewale (1984-2024): Departing Soon At Noon!

By Banji Ojewale

January 17, 2025 would have marked the 41st natal anniversary of Solomon Kayode Ojewale, the young man who was beginning to be noticed as a regular name in Nigeria’s vast media space, online and main-view. He was a migratory writer. One time he’d be in The Guardian, The Punch, The Nation, Nigerian Tribune, or Vanguard, all in Nigeria’s south, or another time up north in Daily Trust, Leadership or New Nigerian.

*Kayode 

Kayode also had a promising presence in the online publications: Premium Times, Newspot, Sahara Reporters etc. He wrote and read lustily. On a number of occasions, he would query me: “Dad, what’s going on? I haven’t seen you write lately.’’ Sometimes, he was a monitoring spirit, searching for my articles on the internet and railing at the ubiquitous devil in the print. He also preyed on books. He took from me a book on John McCain, once a US presidential aspirant, which Emeka Eluem Izeze, former MD of The Guardian, loaned me.

Human Rights And Freedom In Nigeria Under Tinubu

By Kenneth Okonkwo

Gasiokwu defined human rights as claims made on society by individuals and groups which claims have found expression in objective law either at national levels and international levels, and serve as the standard for measuring the conditions of human existence below which no human being should enjoy.

*Tinubu
They are rights held by individuals simply because they are part of the human species. They are rights shared equally by everyone regardless of sex, race, ethnicity, nationality and economic background. They are rights inbuilt by God in human beings and discernable by human reason and man-made laws must conform to these natural law rights of human beings.

Nigeria: A Nation On Trial

 By Sunny Awhefeada 

The Nigerian state is undergoing a series of turmoil that is a desider­atum in her sojourn to nationhood. Great nations did contend with such moments in their history. The jour­ney to nationhood is not a hundred metre dash. It is long, tortuous and treacherous. It births heroes and throws up villains.

*Farotimi

While the heroes struggle to delineate the clear path the nation should walk, the villains deploy everything including subterfuge to subvert the quest in order to satisfy some base desires that often denude the major­ity of the people of stability, fairness and justice. What often baffles humanity in the course of the struggle laden quest is that some of the heroes turn out to be “heroes” who were wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Deaths And Blood Rituals For Bulaba Balablu Christmas

 By Ugo Onuoha

‘It will get worse before it gets worse’. That was the title of my article published here and in other newspapers on November 21, 2023, six months after Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, assumed office, and started his incoherent economic policies and programmes. The chicken is coming home to roost but it’s doing so at the cost of limbs, livelihoods and lives of the majority of Nigerians who are at the receiving end.

Everyday we wake up to news of tragedies, especially of avoidable accidents, miseries and needless deaths. Tragedies now straddle the land – at home, school, market, highway, sea/river, farm, stream, bush path. Everywhere, really.

Nigeria’s Hostages In Law

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

In 1991, Nigeria was in the full throes of the interminable transition to civil rule programme of General Ibrahim Babangida.

The effort by the regime in 1991 to relocate their terminal date from 1992 to 1993 coincided with a planned meeting in Ibadan, south-west Nigeria, of the leadership of the National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS).

National Assembly Should Repeal Criminal Libel Now

 By Tonnie Iredia

The handling of the on-going defamation case between legal giant, Afe Babalola and social activist, Dele Farotimi has provided strong evidence that Nigeria has probably lost its fight against media trial. Many years back, there was the well-articulated viewpoint that because the word “trial” is associated with the process of justice, trial by the media constitutes an undue interference in the process of justice delivery.

The argument has since been overtaken by the nature of social media which has made public communication exceedingly rampant, just as lawyers have themselves contributed to the development by engaging in the new wave of minute-by-minute commentary on cases already before a court of justice. Apart from publicity-seeking lawyers, some others with scanty briefs are too anxious to let the public know that they are learned.

Kemi Badenoch And Mob Attack Of Pseudo-Patriots

 By Emeka Alex Duru

The trending controversy on Kemi Badenoch, Leader of the British Conservative Party and her disposition to Nigeria, reminds me of an encounter with a media aide to a governor in the South East. 

*Badenoch

An obviously traumatized citizen had posted a comment on his social media Facebook page, chiding the governor for always frolicking in Abuja while the state suffers on account of insecurity and poor governance. That was all that it took for our friend, the media aide to break loose against the hapless citizen.