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Opinion

Saturday, 15 August 2020 04:17

Akinkugbe: Father, mentor, friend and confidant - Folu Olamiti

One of the most illustrious sons of Nigeria in contemporary history, Oladipo Olujimi Akinkugbe, professor emeritus of medicine, was laid to rest recently in a hail of glory with a modest crowd of the high and mighty in various walks of life in attendance at his home town in Ondo, Ondo State, Nigeria. The homily as delivered by the charismatic preacher, Joseph Akinfenwa, an archbishop of Ibadan Diocese, Church of Nigeria Anglican Communion, was electrifying. Akinkugbe was somebody I respected and revered so much as a great man in every sense. He was an accomplished personality whose prowess reverberated globally…

Friday, 14 August 2020 05:21

Kashamu: Backstory of Obasanjo’s letter to the dead - Azu Ishiekwene

From the way he addressed the letter, you could almost guess that he had some difficulty writing it, but Olusegun Obasanjo being Olusegun Obasanjo, he wrote it anyway. Usually, condolence letters are addressed to the bereaved family, while others could be in copy. But former President Obasanjo chose, instead, to indulge his pet peeve his own way. He sent his condolence letter on the passing of Buruji Kashamu to Ogun State Governor, Dapo Abiodun, hoping that somehow, the family will get the message. Well, thanks to social media, not only Kashamu’s family, the wider public also read Obasanjo’s letter to…

Thursday, 13 August 2020 05:02

Dead or alive, crooked leaders deserve no kindness - Abimbola Adelakun

In Nigeria, when beggars die, there are no comets seen. But when a politician dies, we have to contend with hagiographic writings that fly into the public space seeking to beatify these dubious saints. As noted when the President’s chief of staff, Abba Kyari, died recently, the attendant obituarisation-the effusive rain of tributes poured on him and which was at dissonance with the inept government that he served till his death-was a strong indication of how the living was using the dead to rewrite public memory. Since that time, a few more people that have served in public offices have…

Thursday, 13 August 2020 05:01

Funtua: Honour not deserved (3) - Bola Bolawole

We start the third part of our subject matter today with the views of three thoroughbred professionals that journalism has produced in this country. The first is Steve Osuji, the journalist par excellence whom Oga Ray Ekpu, in his defence of Funtua, cynically and condescendingly referred to as “someone” and “the fellow”. Oh no, Mr. Ray Ekpu! Respect, as they say, begets respect. Besides, Osuji is not an unknown quantity in Nigerian journalism. He has made important contributions and, I dare to say, he has paid his dues and is still firing on all cylinders. To trample him so whimsically…

Thursday, 13 August 2020 05:00

The Robot question - Edmund S. Phelps

Although robots that can perform human labor will put downward pressure on wages in the short term, they also will increase the rate of profit, encouraging more investment and a recovery in the wage rate. It is not so much the economics of new technologies that should worry us, but rather the politics and ethics. The robots are no longer coming; they are here. The Covid-19 pandemic is hastening the spread of artificial intelligence (AI), but few have fully considered the short- and long-run consequences. In thinking about AI, it is natural to start from the perspective of welfare economics…

Tuesday, 11 August 2020 04:13

Buruji Kashamu: Deconstructing Nigeria’s ‘grassroots’ politics - Seun Kolade

The death of Ogun state Senator, Kashamu Buruji, has generated a lot of comments and reactions in the Nigerian public space. Former President Obasanjo, in his reaction, did not pull punches when he denounced the deceased as one who, in his lifetime, “used the manoeuvre of law and politics to escape from facing (sic) justice on alleged criminal offense in Nigeria and outside Nigeria”. Many commentators have suggested, rightly in my view, that General Obasanjo’s intervention is driven more by personal animosity than any commitment to higher principles of ethical conduct and accountability. Nevertheless more and more people agree that…

Tuesday, 11 August 2020 04:11

The other global power shift - Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

The world is increasingly obsessed with the ongoing power struggle between the US and China. But the technology-driven shift of power away from states to transnational actors and global forces brings a new and unfamiliar complexity to global affairs. Since 2017, America’s National Security Strategy has focused on great power competition, and today much of Washington is busy portraying our relationship with China as a new cold war. Obviously, great power competition remains a crucial aspect of foreign policy, but we must not let it obscure the growing transnational security threats that technology is putting on the agenda. Power transitions…

Tuesday, 11 August 2020 04:10

Dear World, you're not going to have the year you thought you'd have

Marc Silver "You aren't going to have the year you thought you'd have." That's what a nurse told my wife and me after my wife was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer. The cancer news came as a shock, as it often does. There were no warning signs. The tumor was picked up on a routine mammogram. It was hard to take in what the nurse was telling us. We had plans and projects and dreams for the months ahead. Then suddenly — surgery, chemotherapy and radiation were the top items on our agenda. We were mad. How dare cancer…

Monday, 10 August 2020 04:15

With love for my brother, Femi Adesina - Bola Bolawole

When Ephraim spake trembling, he exalted himself in Israel; but when he offended in Baal, he died – Hosea 13:1. Lai Mohammed was the undisputed Josef Goebbels of All Progressives Congress (APC)-cum-retired General Muhammadu Buhari’s civilian regime. Mohammed was the face of the APC propaganda machine that demonised the then President Goodluck Jonathan and his party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Learning from Goebbels and his master, Adolf Hitler, aka the Fuhrer, Mohammed weaved tissues of lies and coated them with some truths about Jonathan and PDP. Goebbels and Hitler had posited that all a propagandist needed to lead a whole…

Sunday, 09 August 2020 05:06

Okon reiterates his demand for security vote - Tatalo Alamu

A day after the latest outing of the amorphous group known as Revolution Now was thwarted by heavy-handed police presence, yours sincerely sat in his study meditating about the plight of good old revolution in the hands of revolutionary apprentices and novices of state implosion. It was a far cry from the storming of the Bastille by an irate French mob or the scaling of the Winter Palace by a hardy Russian proletariat primed to punitive exertion against a decaying feudal behemoth. But it was a good reminder of unfinished business and how vulnerable to sustained assault the Nigerian post-colonial…

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Sunday, 09 August 2020 05:04

Why the colour of #RevolutionNow was not Arab Spring-red - Festus Adedayo

They all happened almost simultaneously, as if in a choreography. On February 9, 2011, a huge crowd of protesters had gathered at the Tahir Square in Cairo, Egypt. Unruly, eyes dilating like pellets of ice immersed in mug-full Campari liquor, it was obvious that this was a crowd determined to change the status quo. They shouted anti-government slogans, calling for an end to oppression, economic adversities and collapse of the Arabian spirit in the Arab world. A couple of weeks before then, specifically on January 14, 2011, at the Habib Bourguiba Boulevard in Tunis, Tunisia, it was the same huge…

Sunday, 09 August 2020 05:02

God’s original promise for man’s redemption - Taiwo Akinola

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shall bruise his heel. Genesis 3:15 Introduction In the beginning, God gave man everything needed for life and godliness. But man lost everything through an unholy trade-off with the deception and subtleties of the devil in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 1:28-31; Psalm 8:5-6). Adam lost his qualities in the place of dominion, and was consequently driven out of the garden of opulence. And ever since, man’s life has been filled with toils, hustles and struggles…

Sunday, 09 August 2020 05:01

How man is fearfully and wonderfully made (The soul) - Kola Oyefeso

We are moving on to stimulating thoughts on the two basic inner unchanging components of man which are the MIND and the SOUL. I have used the term "stimulating thoughts" because spirituality cannot be taught. It must be caught by individual firsthand experience. Not by any fanciful or petty-flogging theories or blind dogmas. Instead of believing or disbelieving this or that, adherents are urged to have an open mind and take posulations even from the best of Mystics, as mere working hypothesis or concepts for our individual research. This is for the fact that man doesn't really know for being…

Saturday, 08 August 2020 04:12

The world can still be destroyed in a flash - Editorial, NYT

It seems that the United States is plunging into a new arms race without learning the lessons of the last. The nuclear weapons dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki 75 years ago this week wreaked a devastation never before seen in human warfare. Yet they were firecrackers compared with the nuclear weapons that were soon developed — bombs, warheads, shells, torpedoes and other devices capable of vaporizing the human race in an apocalyptic flash. For decades, that thought cast a pall of acute anxiety over America and the world. Whether because of that fear, a strategy of effective deterrence, chance or…

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