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Opinion

Sunday, 05 July 2020 05:15

Religion and mysticism in juxtaposition - Kola Oyefeso

The promise was to clearly define what true born again means and to do justice to the matter, it becomes compelling to bring in Mysticism although the acceptable word is Spirituality. When we hear mysticism, the biased fickle minds are wont to conjure some sort of vodoo, occult practices, sorcerers, all kinds of magical incantations, spells and conjurations. This is how poorly mysticism has been misunderstood and badly imagined to be. Because of this, some are so scared stiff of any assembly that has no façade of a religion. We would rather label some mystical schools such as the Rosicrucian,…

Sunday, 05 July 2020 05:14

Covid-19 is here to stay. People will have to adapt - Leader, The Economist

It is astonishing how rapidly the pandemic has spread, despite all the efforts to stop it. On February 1st, the day covid-19 first appeared on our front cover, the World Health Organisation counted 2,115 new cases. On June 28th its daily tally reached 190,000. That day as many new cases were notched up every 90 minutes as had been recorded in total by February 1st. The world is not experiencing a second wave: it never got over the first. Some 10m people are known to have been infected. Pretty much everywhere has registered cases (Turkmenistan and North Korea have not,…

Friday, 03 July 2020 05:16

After all, it is Abu’s money - Dare Babarinsa

Finally, the Federal Government has conceded that inter-state movement can be permitted despite the ravaging pandemic of Covid-19. Nothing really has improved in our battle to stem this costly importation from China, only an admission that the government has not really succeeded in stopping unnecessary interstate movements. In the South-West, movements have been going on all the same despite the ban and law enforcement agents, knowing that toll-gate is good in a democratic society, were happy to create their own. The Covid-19 pandemic would not go away quickly and we know that for many more months to come, the body…

Thursday, 02 July 2020 16:20

How China scammed Hong Kong - Yi-Zheng Lian

After many years of rejecting the people of Hong Kong’s persistent demands for genuine universal suffrage and other rights, China made its position clear again on Tuesday with the legislative equivalent of a cracking head bash. It chose the eve of July 1, a triple anniversary — of the birth of the Chinese Communist Party (1921), the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China (1997) and a break-in of the city’s legislature by pro-democracy activists (2019) — to pass a draconian national security law that will forever harm Hong Kong’s political freedoms and hobble its economic relations with the…

Thursday, 02 July 2020 05:45

We’ve been celebrating the wrong people - and the wrong values - Sally Jenkins

There are a half-dozen statues of Stonewall Jackson peering from pedestals, so tall he can see over three states. For a representation of Pen Hallowell, you can find only an archival photograph of a mildly handsome bearded young man in plain tunic, a forage cap in one hand, the other resting lightly on a sword. Even in that, though, you can see his easy athleticism and his backbone. It’s not really your fault if you don’t know who Hallowell was. His life and slim writings largely have been buried by “Gone With the Wind” nonsense. They should be revived and…

Wednesday, 01 July 2020 05:44

The long, unhappy history of working from home - David Streitfeld

As the coronavirus keeps spreading, employers are convinced remote work has a bright future. Decades of setbacks suggest otherwise. Three months after the coronavirus pandemic shut down offices, corporate America has concluded that working from home is working out. Many employees will be tethered to Zoom and Slack for the rest of their careers, their commute accomplished in seconds. Richard Laermer has some advice for all the companies rushing pell-mell into this remote future: Don’t be an idiot. A few years ago, Mr. Laermer let the employees of RLM Public Relations work from home on Fridays. This small step toward…

Tuesday, 30 June 2020 05:04

The African University - Mahmood Mamdani

It is striking, in the postcolonial era, how little the modern African university has to do with African institutions. It draws its inspiration from the colonial period and takes as its model the discipline based, gated community that maintained a distinction between clearly defined groups: administrators, academics and fee-paying students. The origins of this arrangement lay in 19th-century Berlin, and Humboldt University, founded in 1810 in the aftermath of Napoleon’s conquest of Prussia. The African university makes its appearance later in the 19th century. At the southern end of the continent, colleges were started from scratch – Stellenbosch, Cape Town,…

Monday, 29 June 2020 05:28

As Ondo governorship election hots up...(8) - Bola Bolawole

For good reasons, South-westerners are nostalgic about the tenure of Obafemi Awolowo as the first premier of Western Region – what with the ‘first this’ and ‘first that’, and the free education policy especially! While that age remains golden, it is usually eulogised to the point of faultlessness. These days when we talk of run-away corruption, the impression is usually created as if there was no corruption in the First Republic: That is baloney! The breakdown of law and order apart, corruption was another reason for the first coup of January 15, 1966. Kaduna Nzeogwu, who led that coup, labelled…

Monday, 29 June 2020 05:27

The Main Street manifesto - Nouriel Roubini

The historic protests sweeping America were long overdue, not just as a response to racism and police violence, but also as a revolt against entrenched plutocracy. With a growing number of Americans falling into unemployment and economic insecurity, while major corporations take bailouts and slash labor costs, something had to give. The mass protests following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer are about systemic racism and police brutality in the United States, but also so much more. Those who have taken to the streets in more than 100 American cities are channeling a broader critique of…

Sunday, 28 June 2020 06:09

I warned Bola Tinubu that this day would come - Farooq Kperogi

The political coalition between Muhammadu Buhari’s CPC and Bola Tinubu’s ACN has all but collapsed. There was nothing even remotely surprising about it. In previous columns, media interviews, and social media updates, I predicted that this would happen. For example, in my June 23, 2018 column titled “Buhari’sJune 12 Pandering and Naivety of Yoruba Elite,” I wrote: “Buhari may well get a second term with the help of votes from the Southwest. But one thing is as certain as tomorrow’s date: he will spectacularly fall out with the Yoruba elite whose support he’s bending over backwards to court now. He’d…

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Sunday, 28 June 2020 05:59

APC as one big forest of lion, hyena and cobra - Festus Adedayo

Professor of Linguistics and President, Academy of Letters, Francis Egbokhare of the University of Ibadan, on an Ibadan, Oyo State, radio programme where we both appeared yesterday, made a profound analysis of the ongoing political chess-gaming in the All Progressives Congress (APC). Only last week, at the National Executive Council (NEC) meeting of the party, President Muhammadu Buhari had dissolved the party’s National Working Committee, (NWC) appointing Yobe State governor, Mai-Mala Buni, as Caretaker Chairman. Other chain reactions which apparently signaled a huge conflagration in the party, came in tow. This was reminiscent of similar crisis which led to the…

Sunday, 28 June 2020 05:58

Now, give me this mountain - Taiwo Akinola

Now therefore give me this mountain, whereof the Lord spake in that day; for thou heardest in that day how the Anakims were there, and that the cities were great and fenced: if so be the Lord will be with me, then I shall be able to drive them out, as the Lord said. Joshua 14:12 Introduction: Beloved, you’re never too old or ever so disadvantaged that you cannot yet win and enjoy the sweet promises of God. Caleb the son of Jephunneh was numbered among the twelve leaders of Israel that Moses sent out to spy the land of…

Sunday, 28 June 2020 05:57

Defining the true Born Again - Kola Oyefeso

Since we resumed this series, we have discussed philosophy, science and, lately, we have been on religion, trying to examine how well all these have fared in making life more abundant for us in the coarse material plane. Philosophy tries to bring rationality to life's phenomena, science has an edge in devising instruments to soothing the effects of our stay in the world, while religion is conceptualised to unite us back to our Creator. What we have, however, discovered is that religion itself has become generally limiting. This is because some of its practitioners have settled for the external aspect…

Sunday, 28 June 2020 05:56

Falling statues and the collapse of moral authority - Mathew Walther

Why does it feel like autumn? I am not referring to the weather, which has been almost unseasonably hot in many parts of the country, but to something else one sees venturing outdoors or turning on the television: our great cities emptied out, like clusters of silver birches, save for the tens of thousands of people massed together in stratonic clusters: fallen leaves. It would be premature to say that what we are witnessing is the "fall" of the American political and social order. What is happening instead is that we are all from our separate vantage points coming around…

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