In eight weeks — between January and February 2020, to be specific — a disease killed 118 Nigerians. According to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), there were 2,633 “suspected” cases, 609 “confirmed” and nine “probable” during the period. The NCDC disclosed that as at February 23, the disease had spread to 27 of Nigeria’s 36 states, affecting 115 local government areas. Fatality rate was 17.1 percent. The worst-hit states are Edo, Ondo and Ebonyi — the trio taking a 72 percent slice of the total number of cases. You are forgiven if you did not know the extent…

To the outskirts of Majidun where Pabanbari, a hit and run mobile radio station given to incendiary early morning broadsides against the authorities, is hosting Mama Igosun to a question and answer session sponsored by Otito Koro (The truth is bitter) a local self-determination movement known for its no-nonsense fiery denunciation and bitter invectives against the status quo. Mercifully, the long expected rains had arrived in the dead of the night clattering on the rooftop like a noisy burglar. As a result of the downpour, the whole world felt calm and sedate unlike the scalding heat of the previous week…

Reflections on the current “insecurity” and “threatening state failure” in Nigeria – and what the Nigerian Left can do – recently led me, in a tortuous manner, back to a formulation on revolutionary intervention which I thought I had transcended long ago. We shall first discuss the formulation and then come to “insecurity” and “threatening state failure”. The formulation was provided by a Leftist revolutionary about 115 years ago. The revolutionary was young (about 27), idealistic and romantic. But he was idealistic and romantic not simply because he was young, but essentially because he was brilliant and came to revolutionary…

South-west security outfit code-named “Amotekun” may have survived threatened abortion, widely-expected still-birth, vicious Fulani attacks and scantily-concealed bellicosity of the Federal Government; it may appear to be well and alive, loved by the mass of Yoruba people home and abroad; and supported by other conscionable Nigerians; the truth, however, is that it is not yet ‘uhuru’ or freedom, as it were, for Amotekun. Witness spirited efforts by Federal authorities controlled by non-Yoruba desperately and virulently struggling to whittle down Amotekun and reduce it to toothless, disjointed and segregated “community police”! And South-west governors appeared to have acquiesced! Truth be told,…