Category: OPINION

Part Two By Nwankwo T. Nwaezeigwe, PhD Not long after my arrival in Lagos to begin another phase of my activism, I was adopted as a political son and Special Advice by Chief Frank Ovie-Kokori, the then General Secretary of NUPENG and iconic hero of democracy of June 12 fame, who unfortunately just departed this mother-earth few weeks ago. That period coincided with the incessant harassment and attacks against Igbo traders and land-owners by “Omonile” including those working in Apapa Wharf, backed by members of Oodua People’s Congress (OPC) in…

By Moses Oludele Idowu “There are only two families in the world, the Haves and Have-Nots.”        – Miguel de Cervantes “A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true.”      – Isaac Newton The large crowd I saw at Bourdillon, in front of the house of Bola Tinubu, President of Nigeria and one of the leading politicians who have heavily profited from politics in this political dispensation, made me sad and caused my heart to sink. The long line of crowds…

By Nwankwo T. Nwaezeigwe Beyond the shock of the sudden death of Dr. Pius Chukwuemeka Ezeife, the Okwadike of Igbo-Ukwu Clan and by extension, Igboland, what shocked me most was that he died in that most detestable Federal Mortuary Centre, officially miscalled Federal Medical Cente, Abuja, which has become notorious for calculated deaths of its patients and now doubles as the slaughterhouse for senior Christian personalities.  In fact, the questionable manner in which Dr. Obadiah Mailafia died at the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital (UATH), another Federal Government unofficial Mortuary…

By Ejeh Josh In its recent report released on December 13, 2023, the World Bank presented a graphic image of a country receding deeper into the pit of poverty as a result of years of accumulated mismanagement, bad governance and poor system of leadership. The report shows an economy plummeting despite reforms by the present federal government to salvage the situation. This has sent, at least, 104 million Nigerians to the dungeon of extreme poverty, rapidly moving away from 79 million people living in poverty in 2018, according to the…

Normally, the most prayerful countries on earth should be the most prosperous. Unfortunately, according to data released recently by the Pew Research Centre, a non-partisan American think-tank based in Washington D.C., that is not the case. In fact, the most prayerful countries in the world are among the poorest! Result of the Pew survey showing the most prayerful countries in the world in percentage has the following countries on top of the list: Afghanistan, 96 per cent; Nigeria, 95 per cent; Algeria, 88 per cent; Senegal, 88 per cent; Djibouti,…

If Nyesom Wike had read the character portrait of the Ijaw man as sketched by Dr. Percy Amoury Talbot, an early 20th century British historian and colonial administrator, he would most probably have thought twice before settling for Simnalaya Fubara as his third term placeholder. Wike was a two-term governor of Rivers State and today, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory. In his highly authoritative 1926 book, Peoples of Southern Nigeria: a Sketch of their History, Ethnology, and Languages, with an Abstract of the 1921 Census, Talbot reserved an unflattering…

By Charles Ogbu Now more than ever, Ndigbo must be intentional about turning AlaIgbo into an economic giant. The Aku-Ruo-Uno campaign has become an existential issue and more imperative now that states can generate, transmit and distribute electricity. But we must realise that the success or failure of the campaign depends largely on the actions of our Igbo governors which is why we need to focus more on how our respective states are being run and call out any governor that is not demonstrating enough fidelity to this noble project.…

By Farooq Kperogi I was one of seven professors who facilitated a leadership training in my university here in Georgia for local government chairmen from a major Nigerian southwestern state. In the course of the training, I adverted to a January 13, 2018, column I wrote about how power literally damages the brains of people who wield it and causes them to be dissociated from reality. A few of the chairmen at the training initially said they “rejected” what I said, “in Jesus’ name.” But the more I expounded the…

By Funke Egbemode It is not every marriage that is founded on love, not every married person who married for love. Don’t tell me you don’t know a few people who took their vows based on what they could see rather than what they felt. They stood, all dressed up in front of their Pastor, Bishop or Reverend Father and repeated the right lines rightly after the clergy, in front of men, not because they were ecstatically, deliriously in love but because they had chosen who they chose at that…