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Opinion

Friday, 11 September 2020 05:34

A Democratic doomsday? - Ana Palacio

For years, liberal democracies have been beset by deepening political polarization, declining confidence in the rule of law, and widespread institutional decay. With the Covid-19 crisis accelerating these trends, the need for a clear strategy to defend liberal democracy has become more urgent than ever. In 1947, two years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were decimated by nuclear bombs, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists launched the Doomsday Clock to convey the world proximity to annihilation – and to spur action to “turn back time.” Today, it is worth considering the need to create a clock to show how close our…

Thursday, 10 September 2020 05:30

Now, your suffering commences... - Bola Bolawole

An authoritative report once described Nigerians as the happiest people in the world. That report came as a surprise to many because, even as at that time many years ago when things were not as parlous as they are now, Nigerians were nowhere near some of the most prosperous people in the world. Nigerians believe – largely erroneously, though – that their country is rich, the people have always been poor, the majority of them living miserably below the poverty level. The APC/Muhammadu Buhari civilian regime has taken the misery of the majority of Nigerians to horrendous and horrifying levels,…

Thursday, 10 September 2020 05:28

How China lost Nigeria - Adagbo Onoja

Even as China built up its influence, it remained deeply vulnerable to negative counter-narratives from the United States. That’s the paradox of hegemony. China is currently being hit in Nigeria by a burst of discontent whose outcome is still uncertain. Triggered in late July 2020 by what has become known as the “sovereignty clause” controversy in loan agreements between Nigeria and China, the discontent has, however, a longer history. The current backlash draws mainly on anger over the timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan, China dateline; questions about Huawei’s participation in 5G networks; claims of uniquely Chinese racial practices…

Tuesday, 08 September 2020 05:11

Winners and losers of the pandemic economy - Michael Spence

While it is true that bullish equity markets are out of step with the historic contraction in the real economy, to say that they are disconnected from it misses the point. In fact, the lofty valuations of companies with high intangible capital per employee make perfect sense in today's economy. Much economic commentary nowadays focuses on “divergence”: while broad equity-market indices are at or near all-time highs, much of the wider economy struggles to recover from one of the most severe downturns ever. Whereas the Russell 2000 is still down 5.4% year to date, the S&P 500 and the Russell…

Monday, 07 September 2020 05:08

Of Karma, CAMA, the Church and mushrooming churches (3) - Bola Bolawole

In addition to the rants and chants on social media, subtle diplomacy is ongoing on CAMA by church leaders whose umbrage at government - and the public’s outrage against CAMA - has been as vociferous as they have been ferocious. Religion is a matter of the heart and emotions and sentiments are the fuel that drives its engine. Governments from time immemorial have tried to suppress religion or ruin it altogether; however, religion has always triumphed while the cemetery signposts the skeletons of a countless number of anti-religion leaders. It does not appear as if the narrative will change any…

Monday, 07 September 2020 05:06

How (not) to fight Covid-19 - Peter Singer & Joanna Masel

Public-health experts who adhere to rigid rules for containing the pandemic are standing in the way of new technologies that can help us develop a more flexible approach. By focusing on those with the highest risk of spreading the virus, we can inflict less harm and contain the pandemic more effectively. When Covid-19 first appeared, strict quarantine requirements and short, tight lockdowns would have been a small price to pay to keep it at bay. Now that the pandemic has infected over 26 million people in 213 countries and territories, we need to find new ways to control it that…

Sunday, 06 September 2020 05:35

Baba Lekki upstages Okon at Agidingbi - Tatalo Alamu

To Empire Hall at Agidingbi where Baba Lekki is fielding questions from a posse of star-struck reporters on the state of the nation. The meeting had been summoned to collapse all the groups agitating for a better Nigeria into one. Okon’s group, the incendiary and subversive Coalition Against Criminals Out of Jail (CACOJ), was one of these and the crazy boy was up in arms. Originally built by a famous Lagosian philanthropist of the early twentieth century for relaxation and recreation among the hinterland rustics thronging the capital in search of a better life, the Empire Hall had fallen into…

Sunday, 06 September 2020 05:33

Fuel price, electricity hikes et al: Is Buhari wicked or just absent? - Festus Adedayo

Forget the glittering multi-billion Naira-worth plazas of Abuja, the shimmering skyscrapers on the streets of Lagos and the aesthetic blackness of Port-Harcourt highway asphalt, Nigerians are hungry, very hungry. If you measure their hunger by the infectious smiles that light their faces as they hop out of the ubiquitous tricycle nicknamed Marwa, the boisterous laughter erupting out of their banters on the streets of Owerri or the meandering of latest automobiles that glide past Kaduna highway like maggots wriggling out of decay, you are already misled. Hunger is wracking the belly of the land. Indicator for measuring how hunger is…

Sunday, 06 September 2020 05:32

Power with God through prayer - Taiwo Akinola

And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you ~ Luke 11:9. Introduction History, people say, belongs to intercessors. But, I have long discovered that even the future is divinely guaranteed only for those who can pray. God’s glory becomes your story when you learn to call upon Him very effectively. The Christian calling is a spiritual vocation from start to finish. And, any Christian that refuses to be spiritual has chosen to play the game of life carelessly. Prayer is an essential requirement…

Sunday, 06 September 2020 05:30

Five perversions of the mind (Greed) - Kola Oyefeso

The subject of GREED could be very sensitive to the few riding roughshod over the masses, but truth must be told irrespective of whose ox is gored. It is impossible to discuss greed without x-raying the lives of our public employees, in view of their position, as the mirror of the society. I will be doing so while maintaining the apolitical stance of this column. Expectedly, we all know what greed is, but the fundamentals behind its propensity seem not too clear, hence we continue to imagine how people could be amassing wealth indiscriminately, as if they are going to…

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Sunday, 06 September 2020 05:29

Poverty as injustice - Edmund S. Phelps

Across Western advanced economies, a widespread sense of malaise has given rise to a debate about what the state can and should do to ensure economic justice, particularly for those at the bottom of the income ladder. As always, the fundamental question is whether public policies would help or hamper growth and dynamism. In much of the world, there is concern over abysmal wages for the less advantaged and the many victims of racial and gender discrimination. Though tax credits for low-income single mothers provide support and contribute to the development of their children, there are still signs of poverty…

Saturday, 05 September 2020 04:41

Here am I, send me! - Dare Babarinsa

The cathedral is the seat of the bishop and the major church in a Protestant or Catholic diocese. The first cathedral in Nigeria is the Christ Church Cathedral on the Marina, Lagos. It is the seat of the Bishop of Lagos Diocese, Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion). It was here that the late Primate, Abiodun Adetiloye, had his office when he was the head and Primate Metropolitan of the Church of Nigeria. It is now the seat of the Bishop of Lagos while the Archbishop of the Province of Lagos, Olusina Fape, has his cathedral in Sagamu where he presides…

Friday, 04 September 2020 03:41

Jollof rice, Akufo-Addo and other things we don’t like about Ghana - Azu Ishiekwene

Three years ago, it was a war spiced with condiments and paste over a dish of grain. Nigeria’s Information Minister Lai Mohammed was answering a question by CNN’s Richard Quest about who makes the tastiest jollof rice in West Africa. But Mohammed heard the question wrong. He thought Quest’s question was about the origin of jollof rice and answered Senegal. The minister had scarcely finished answering when social media began to steam over the mistaken answer that Senegalese jollof rice was tastier than Nigeria’s. The avatars treated it as nothing less than culinary high treason. The minister corrected himself, but…

Thursday, 03 September 2020 04:39

How Africans under-develop Africa - Bola Bolawole

It is a little over 40 years since Walter Rodney died; the Guyanese radical historian, political activist, academic and author of the seminal “How Europe underdeveloped Africa” was assassinated on 13 June, 1980 in Georgetown, Guyana. Born on 23 March, 1942 in the same Georgetown, Rodney, father of three – Asha, Shaka, and Kanini – was only 38 years old when he met his untimely death through a parcel bomb in his car a month after returning from the celebrations of the hard-fought independence of Zimbabwe. Rodney’s brother, Donald, who was injured in the explosion, disclosed that a sergeant in…

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