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Opinion

Friday, 24 April 2020 04:37

One death and why the poor must not be kept hungry - Dare Babarinsa

The death of Abba Kyari, Chief of Staff to the President, has brought home to us the grim reality of the COVID-19 pandemic and its devastating possibilities. Kyari was President Muhammadu Buhari alter-ego. Few weeks ago, he went on national assignment to Germany where it was believed he contracted the deadly virus. Few days after his return, he knew he was ill and he was quickly taken to the hospital. Only recently, Lagos State Commissioner for Health confirmed that he died in a private specialist hospital in the city. Olusegun Obasanjo, Nigerian former President, stated in his tribute that Kyari…

Thursday, 23 April 2020 05:08

The oil industry: A view of the future

Oil, it has been said, is the blood coursing through the veins of the world economy. In 2020 the economy is bleeding red. As covid-19 keeps workers at home and planes on the ground, demand for oil has fallen faster and further than at any point in its history. Amplifying the shock, a furious row between Saudi Arabia and Russia set off a price war in early March. Last month oil prices fell by more than half, leaving a giant industry reeling. On April 12th the world’s energy superpowers broke bread and reached a new deal to try to prop…

Thursday, 23 April 2020 05:06

A Chief of Staff in times like these... - Bola Bolawole

So many “quotable quotes” played on my mind as I fixed my heart on writing this piece. The first was John Donne’s “Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in Mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee!” It is not as much as for the sake of the one who dies that Donne thinks like this as it is a reflection of Donne’s own personality and an understanding that death, as they say, is a debt that everyone will pay. The same bell waits to toll for thee as…

Wednesday, 22 April 2020 05:42

Re-introducing the “Lugano Report” - Edwin Madunagu

Sometime in 1999, as both the 20th century and the second millennium were drawing to a close, the Pluto Press, London, released a book with the title: “The Lugano Report” and subtitle, “On preserving capitalism in the 21st century”. The author, Susan George, who shares this name with another well-known but much younger woman, was born in 1934. The older woman, our own Susan George, is an American-French Leftist, a writer, a global popular-democratic activist and a public intellectual. Before writing the “Lugano Report” in 1999, Susan George had written several research-based books on world poverty (and its roots), hunger…

Tuesday, 21 April 2020 05:41

Coronavirus: Would China become the new economic superpower?

On Saturday, the Mail launched a new series uncovering China's role in fuelling the coronavirus pandemic. We have investigated claims about the origins of the virus in Wuhan and documented the cover-up of the outbreak by the Chinese authorities. Today, in the concluding article, we explore fears that China is in prime position to exploit the West's economic implosion in the wake of Covid-19. With hindsight, one of the more surreal video clips to appear on the internet during this coronavirus global crisis was filmed halfway up a Swiss mountain on January 22. That was the day before the city…

Monday, 20 April 2020 05:47

Abba Kyari, the Best Man - Geoffrey Onyeama

I first met Abba Kyari in 1977 at Warwick University in England. I had gone there to do law as a second first degree. He had come to do a degree in sociology. I had a pending application to do Law at Cambridge and when the result of that application came and it was positive, I left Warwick during the second semester. But my five months at Warwick was enough to build a strong friendship with Abba that lasted till his passing. Almost 43 years! There was a small group of Nigerians at Warwick then, which included former President Yakubu…

Monday, 20 April 2020 05:46

Will the media houses survive COVID-19? - Bola Bolawole

The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to preserve these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs through the channel of the public papers and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to…

Monday, 20 April 2020 05:45

A global Covid-19 exit strategy - Ngaire Woods & Rajale Batniji

The Covid-19 pandemic poses an unprecedented threat to both public health and the global economy. Only by ditching nationalist rhetoric and policies, and embracing stronger international cooperation, can governments protect the people they claim to represent. The world that emerges from the coronavirus pandemic may be a warring collection of countries that are more closed off and nationalistic than before. But without rapid and effective global cooperation, the world may not exit this crisis safely at all. For now at least, heavy-handed nationalist responses predominate. Alongside curfews, lockdowns, and requisitioning, governments are closing borders and using wartime rhetoric to rally…

Sunday, 19 April 2020 05:55

To my friend, Abba Kyari - Muhammadu Buhari

Abba Kyari, who died on 17th April, 2020, at the age of 67 from complications caused by the Coronavirus, was a true Nigerian patriot. My loyal friend and compatriot for the last 42 years - and latterly my Chief-of-Staff - he never wavered in his commitment to the betterment of every one of us. He was only in his twenties when we first met. A diligent student, soon after he was blessed with the opportunity to study abroad - first at Warwick and then law at the University of Cambridge. But there was never any question Abba would bring his…

Sunday, 19 April 2020 05:50

Should retired judges be drafted to handle election matters? Respected retired Supreme Court Justice Akintan weighs in

In Thisday newspaper publication of Tuesday 24 March, 2020 (Lawyer Pull-out page 5), it is reported that Mr. Femi Falana said that “all election petitions and pre-election matters should be handled by retired Judges”. He went further to say that “doing this would help the courts, which have been turned into a theatre of war by politicians.” The learned SAN was said to have made the observation in the second annual memorial lecture he delivered in honour of that distinguished lawyer, late Pa Tunji Gomez, at the foyer of the High Court, Igbosere, Lagos, the previous Wednesday. Falana is not…

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Sunday, 19 April 2020 05:48

Baba Lekki defends Jenifa in court - Tatalo Alamu

To the Magistrate Court in Ilubinrin where Baba Lekki is holding the rudimentary staff to ransom over his insistence on entering a nolle prosequi plea on a matter that had already been determined by another court of competent and equal jurisdiction. It was the celebrated State Vs Jenifa palaver. Despite the fact that the famed actress had already accepted the guilty verdict, paid her fines and sensibly commenced community service, the old stormy petrel was insisting that the verdict was entered in error as there was no case to adjudge in the first instance. Despite the massive Covid-19 clampdown, how…

Sunday, 19 April 2020 05:46

Unraveling the puzzles of earthly life - Kola Oyefeso

In the penultimate message I hinted on reincarnation and entreated us to attempt to solve the riddle of Abiku/Ogbanje. We were to individually make recourse to the forebears to shed some light on the issue, if need be. Rather than being part of the inquisition, few response I got was that some scriptures didn't support the idea, while some would rather I explain the mystery. With this mindset, we would prefer information on it from someone else. Thus,we miss the vital point that information and knowledge are not synonymous. Information is an experience of the other person that we are…

Sunday, 19 April 2020 05:45

Abba Kyari's death and Koronu people in COVID-19 Nigeria - Festus Adedayo

The death of President Muhammadu Buhari’s Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, last Friday, like the death of any mortal, calls for sober reflection. May God grant the repose of his soul. However, for all of us – politicians, those controlling the levers of political power, lowly-placed people and humanity in entirety – the major lesson therein, aside the ephemerality of life, is that this passage is another wake-up call on us not to assume our immortality. If the high and mighty can fall when death stings them, no man is immortal and we should live our lives as if death…

Sunday, 19 April 2020 05:44

Coronavirus does discriminate, because that’s what humans do - Rebecca Solnit

In theory, all of us are vulnerable to coronavirus, but in practice how well we fare has to do with what you could call pre-existing conditions that are not only medical but economic, social, political and racial – and the pandemic, which is also an economic catastrophe, has made these differences glaringly clear. Age was the first factor most of us in the west heard about in the unequal impact of this virus. It seemed to affect older people the most and children hardly at all, with a lot of younger adults having mild cases. This was misread as young…

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