Opinion

Wednesday, 15 December 2021 05:58

From Lagos to Ilorin to Ife... - Bola Bolawole

The past many days, starting from Saturday, December 4, 2021, witnessed, for me, a flurry of activities, beginning with the Distinguished Great Ife Alumni Award hosted at the Marriott Hotel, Lagos by the authorities of the Obafemi Awolowo University (formerly the University of Ife). Sixty alumni were honoured for contributing in various ways to the well-being of their alma mater. Yours truly was one of those so honoured - for which I am grateful! It must have been a herculean task for the Great Ife authorities to pick just 60 names out of thousands of qualified candidates – whatever the…
Our current situation of a glaring failure of the rule of law must disturb any Nigerian who has come of age. The average citizen today lives in fear. When you retire into your house, you pray to God to deliver you from evil marauders who have removed peace from the calmness of the night. When the sun rises, you again rely on God to protect you from those who have become the law unto themselves. In Nigeria today, the rule of law has taken flight. Charlatans carrying guns that are daily becoming accessible to any riff-raff who wants to own…
Northern Nigeria, particularly Muslim northern Nigeria, has become by far the most dangerous place to live in Nigeria— and one of the most dangerous places to live in the entire world. Terrorist bandits have almost literally taken over the region. Terrorists habitually waylay and burn passengers alive, kidnap Islamiyya and conventional school pupils, murder imams and worshipers in mosques, slaughter innocents in their sleep and incinerate their homes, vandalize and burn harvested crops and farms, and constitute a source of permanent terror. The carnage and terror are unabating. They are spreading out to previously sedate parts of the region. Niger…
As former governor of Osun State and pioneer Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bisi Akande, got ready to launch his autobiography in Lagos last Friday, a day before the launch, one very unAfrican event occurred in Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso. Christophe Joseph-Marie Dabiré, the West African country’s Prime Minister, presented his letter of resignation to the country’s president, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré. It was accepted. Dabiré threw in the towel on the heels of persistent demonstrations against his government’s inability to stop the bloodletting Burkinabe faced from ceaseless jihadist attacks. With the PM’s resignation, according to Burkinabe…
It is a good thing to give thanks unto the LORD, and to sing praises unto thy name, O most High ~ Psalms 92:1. Introduction: If you take a moment to reflect on this passing year, you will likely recall some bittersweet memories, the continued political upheavals, the insecurity challenges, the global health uncertainties, and so on. But in the midst of all these, we must not be unmindful of God’s daily provisions, His supernatural defense, His guiding light, His timely exemptions from common evils and His sure mercies to us, which must be joyfully appreciated. No act of God…
Christians say we are saved. But Jesus says we are not. He puts salvation as the final bus stop, saying: “He who endures to the end will be saved.” (Matthew 10:22). But Christians proclaim their salvation at the beginning. Inevitably, Christians are in for a big surprise. Jesus says: “The last will be first, and the first last. For many are called, but few chosen.” (Matthew 20:16). Today, Christians are the first who are now destined prophetically to be last. This means we will be flabbergasted when we finally discover that many non-Christians that we have held in outright contempt…
I still remember that night like yesterday. Our lives had been turned upside down by the resurgence of the second wave of Covid-19. Like most people, my sleeping pattern was no longer regular; which is to say, out of fear and boredom, I was now learning to sleep before midnight, and waking up without any idea of what to expect. On that Friday, I had drifted off to sleep when my son rushed into my room with a phone. “Dad”, he said, “I think there’s a problem.” I grumbled that except if the world was about to end, there was…
And the boy died in agony! His mouth was sore swollen, writhing in pains all over his boyish body frame, unable to stand on his feet neither was he able to walk. He was crushed, dehumanized and tortured to his untimely grave. A Nigerian future leader was cut short. His bright future was shattered. His parents became bereaved in the broad daylight. While other parents came to pick their children back home from the school, the innocent soul was committed to Mother Earth in grief! What an irrecoverable loss! That was the fate that befell Sylvester Oromoni, a 12-year-old student…
Frank Kokori, remember him? He was the petite but fire-spitting General Secretary of NUPENG who led the oil workers’ strike that crippled the entire country and held the Sani Abacha military junta by the jugular, until he was arrested on August 19, 1994 and the strike crumbled. Kokori was thrown into solitary detention in Bama prison where he remained until the death of Abacha (8 June, 1998). Abacha’s demise threw open the prison door for Kokori's release by the succeeding military regime of Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar on June 16, 1998. Kokori’s “crime”, like that of many other civil society activists…
A little more than a year after the first success of a Covid-19 vaccine in a clinical trial, a sense of dread has struck much of the world. The Omicron variant of the coronavirus, first publicly identified on November 24th, may be able to circumvent the defences built up by vaccination or infection with covid-19. The World Health Organisation declared that Omicron poses a “very high” global risk. The boss of Moderna, a vaccine-maker, warned that existing jabs may struggle against the heavily mutated new variant. Faced with the ghastly prospect of yet more lockdowns, closed borders and nervous consumers,…
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