It all began 42 years ago — Ted Turner's creation of a 24/7 news network that would exist on something called cable TV. Few believed it could succeed. And, for its first decade, CNN largely chugged along but wasn't seen as a game-changer or a true competitor to big broadcast news entities based in New York in the form of CBS, NBC and ABC. That all changed when war broke out between the United States and Iraq in 1991. On the night war exploded over Baghdad, CNN was the only news organization that was able to broadcast from the city…

I once had cause to quote Fela Anikulapo Kuti’s 1980 hit song, “Authority Stealing”, where the Afrobeat maestro sang “You be thief” while the chorus chanted “I no be thief”, “You be rogue”, “I no be rogue”, etc, The song readily comes to mind because Nnamdi Kanu denied being an Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) member. Like Judas Iscariot, who gave Jesus Christ “the kiss of death” and betrayed him, two weeks ago in the court, Nnamdi Kanu, who Igbo separatists see as their infallible and courageous leader, denied them vehemently. The “lion” of Isiama Afara, who calls on his…

The All progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governorship party primaries have come and gone but the reverberations may not abate any time soon. Call them primaries of controversies and you will be right. Neither of the two leading political parties can lay claim to the bragging rights over the conduct and outcome of their primaries. And this is a shame! Credible elections are not just about casting and counting of votes and declaring the results on Election Day, the process actually begins with the delineation of constituencies, where the election umpire can apply what is called…

In early 2014, the Zimbabwean public sphere literally caught fire. Rumours that the country’s former Prime Minister and the presidential candidate of the Movement for Democratic Change, (MDC) Morgan Tsvangirai, had suffered “a nasty blow from below,” euphemism for zero virility, spread like bushfire. At about the same time, the virility-restoring prowess of Emmanuel Makandiwa, a ‘miracle-working’ Pentecostal prophet, froze the stratosphere like snowflakes in winter. Estranged wife of Tsvangirai, Elizabeth Macheka, had lit the fire. In an interview she granted The Herald, which was entitled, Why I ditched Tsvangirai: WifeMacheka had been quoted to have said that she had…