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Opinion

Saturday, 05 June 2021 05:42

What is the endgame in Nigeria’s Southeast? - Azu Ishiekwene

Nigeria has been struggling with insecurity for over a decade. Against reasonable expectations six years ago when President Muhammadu Buhari was voted in, things have worsened. Compared with a number of other hotspots around the world in December 2020, however, Nigeria was not even among the three riskiest places. According to global medical and security specialists, International SOS, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan were the deadliest places to be. The group also projected that these places would retain the record by the end of 2021. It seemed so. In April, for example, the United Nations reported that in the first quarter…

Friday, 04 June 2021 05:43

Polygamy: 'I hate it but it's my only option' - Michael West

While I was thinking on a follow-up to last week's edition due to responses and requests for counseling on how to fix some biting sexual problems tabled by some readers and callers, a mail that caught my attention surfaced. I have attended to similar issues on individual basis previously but the urgency of this case convinced me to consider the issue for this week. Previously, some church ministers had sought my opinion on cases affecting some members of their congregations who had been in polygamy before coming to know Christ. And in conformity with their doctrines, a kind of forced…

Tuesday, 01 June 2021 05:39

Why does everyone assume that Russia and China are friends? - Isaac Stone Fish

As tensions rise between China and the United States, many commentators are taking this rhetoric at face value and warning about a growing kinship between the United States’ top two rivals. But it’s not so simple. To begin with, Moscow has more to fear from Beijing than Washington. Like the Philippines, India and Bhutan, Russia is vulnerable to Chinese territorial encroachment. China has supplanted Russia as the most influential nation in Central Asia — Moscow’s traditional geopolitical backyard — and has uncomfortably large influence over Russia’s economy. Despite the countless irritants in the U.S.-Russia relationship, all this means that there…

Monday, 31 May 2021 05:31

Southwest APC: Squandering borrowed time... - Bola Bolawole

Just like the presidency of retired Major-General Muhammadu Buhari, Southwest APC leaders not only live on borrowed times, they also appear hell-bent on squandering it. And like Buhari’s administration squanders the opportunities to tame the storms and turn the tides threatening to swallow him and his government as well as dismember Nigeria, so also are the Southwest APC leaders genuflecting, grandstanding, and playing to the gallery when they should have made hay while it still shines. Nowhere and at no time was this better displayed than at their well-advertised meeting of last Sunday held in Lagos. Whereas they met behind…

Monday, 31 May 2021 05:29

Aliko Dangote: A noxious business model - Daniel Bott

A few weeks ago, news broke that Aliko Dangote was moving 60% of his family investment to the US. Not long after, we saw him in Tanzania promising to increase his investment in the country because he wants to support the new president, whose business decisions have been investment friendly. I am happy for him. He has sense. But as a businessman, I am not sure Dangote is a model. Don't take my word for it. Let the data speak: In October 2016, Dansa, Dangote's fruit juice company packed up because it wasn't making profit. It closed shop, owing it's…

Sunday, 30 May 2021 05:43

Constitutional amendment and the drummer at Alaafin’s palace - Festus Adedayo

There was this Alaafin, monarch of the ancient Oyo Kingdom, who ruled over a century ago, known for his fiery and terrifying wickedness. He spared not both malefactors and critical elements opposed to his method of administration. For anyone who ran afoul of his whims, Alaafin got his dogari (palace guards) to behead them. He then asked the dogari to dig a very deep bottomless pit at the centre of the town whose depth and actual usage were hidden from the rest of the world. Carved out and designated, on the outward, as the shrine where Ogun the god of…

Sunday, 30 May 2021 05:41

Enjoying the power of the new covenant - Taiwo Akinola

And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death .... they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance ~ Hebrews 9:15. Introduction: God’s covenant is our sure anchor and our unfailing shield against any evil in this wicked world. Notwithstanding, you must know the benefits it offers, believing and personally embracing them before you can enjoy them. Losses stall progress, serial defeat seriously endangers destiny, but winning systematically in the various battles of life is very crucial to notable accomplishments. Hence, God planned for His covenant people to be…

Sunday, 30 May 2021 05:38

Article of faith: Mega pastors and mega churches - Femi Aribisala

Pastors contradict the counsel of the Lord without batting their eyelids. They plant church parishes like supermarkets in every street corner. They build cathedrals and church monuments like World Trade Centres, each one striving to be the biggest and most splendiferous in the universe. They gather thousands, even millions, of “worshippers” in front of television cameras every so often on the mountains of Kilimanjaro. They are the new spiritual superstars; the mega-pastors of the mega-churches. While the emphasis of some mega-churches on branch-networking and exponential growth might be a wonderful policy for a fast-food chain, as a framework for a…

Sunday, 30 May 2021 05:35

The Jewish history of Israel is over 3,000 years old. That’s why it’s complicated - David Wolpe

My first visit to Israel was when I was 12 years old. The group was led by my father, a rabbi from Philadelphia. We had been invited to participate in an archaeological dig near the city of Beit Shean, in the country’s north, near the Jordan River Valley. Soon after we arrived, one of my friends happened upon a pottery shard, really an ostracon, a fragment with writing on it. The archaeologist on site said something to him in Hebrew. My father translated: “He said you are the first person to hold that in over 2,000 years.” Such shocks of…

Friday, 28 May 2021 05:38

Covid-19 stories by children - Azu Ishiekwene

It all seems like memories from a distant past. But it’s not. This time last year we were in a lockdown. The world was under the monstrous grip of the Coronavirus. Rumours and speculations about the origin and nature of this invincible foe were rife, leaving data and science in the dust. Fear ruled the world.The situation in Europe, especially in Italy and Spain, was particularly dire as the virus overwhelmed their sophisticated medical systems. While researchers and scientists struggled to crack the pathogen, dead bodies that could not be accommodated in morgues began to spill onto church pews and…

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Friday, 28 May 2021 05:37

Sex: ’Suffering in silence, I want to quit’ - Michael West

I have listened to several women saying "sex is not food," and that they could do without it for the rest of their lives if not for the need to procreate. "Children, for me, is the basic reason I need a man. Otherwise, their wahala is way too much than the short moment of sexual enjoyment they offer." A mother of two told me recently when she accompanied her friend to a counselling session. Her friend had made up her mind to quit her marriage because, according to her, she's suffering in silence over the years without her man caring…

Thursday, 27 May 2021 05:42

Attahiru’s tragic death and the obscenity of certain reactions - Kenneth Ikonne

I am of the view that notwithstanding the stark political divisions presently rocking the polity, it was grotesque and base to celebrate the tragic death, in an air crash, of eleven officers of the Nigerian Armed Forces, including the Chief of Army Staff, Ibrahim Attahiru. I am not saying that anybody be made to feel obligated to mourn. But the least they should do is to refrain from mouthing crude obscenities at a time like this! Not even an open war would have sanctified such a reaction, unless the victims were felled by deliberate hostile fire, in which case those…

Thursday, 27 May 2021 05:41

Just thinking aloud (IV) - Bola Bolawole

Gbooo! Gbaaa! One of the friends hit head and limbs against tables, chairs and other sundry objects as he tried to make his way out of the dingy basement that goes by the name “Unity Enjoyment Palace”. “You had better watched it”, his friend, still calmly ensconced in his seat, called out to him; “they will soon put on the gen”, he added. “It’s taking too much time”, the impatient man fired back, as a result of which his friend called out to the attendants: “Why are you delaying in putting on the gen.?” An attendant’s response shocked them: They…

Thursday, 27 May 2021 05:40

The other trouble with Malami’s illogic - Abimbola Adelakun

In the past week, one would have counted, easily, more than a dozen articles that have fiercely denounced the rascally comments by the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, while on a TV programme. While on air, Malami made a series of ill-thought pronouncements on the ban of open grazing by the southern governors. To sink more into his self-made quandary, Malami made the unfortunate analogy about northern governors banning “spare parts trading in the North.” A sizeable number of commentators have already dissected the illogic in Malami’s response and I am not about to litigate…

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