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Opinion

Friday, 17 January 2020 06:03

We, the Biafrans! - Dare Babarinsa

It is 50 years now that the Civil War ended and the soldiers returned home. Thousands never returned. They earned their eternal rest on the battlefields and their comrades in hasty retreat or full flight never had the opportunity to retrieve the bodies. They are represented on the Heroes Acres in Abuja with the statue of the Unknown Soldier. My elder brother, Adeyinka, my father’s first son, returned home with a big gash on his handsome face. He had been shot in the head on a battle field after the bloody crossing from Asaba. For Adeyinka, the army was the…

Thursday, 16 January 2020 05:28

Imo and the arithmetic of injustice - Olusegun Adeniyi

There is a famous scene in Tunde Kelani’s movie, ‘Ti oluwa Ni ile’, which speaks to a time like this in our country. At his meeting with the two young men who were trying to co-opt him into the deal to sell a piece of sacred land which belongs to the entire community, Oloye Otun (the inimitable Kareem Adepoju aka Baba Wande) felt he was being short-changed. He had been offered N50,000 out of the N200,000 he was told the land would be sold for. In assuring him that each would take N50,000 while the remaining N50,000 was reserved for…

Thursday, 16 January 2020 05:21

Nigeria is haunted by its civil war - Max Siollun

Fifty years ago, on Jan. 15, Nigeria’s civil war ended. Fought between the country’s southeast region, which seceded and called itself Biafra, and the rest of the country, which Britain supported and armed, the war was brutal. Over a million people died during three years of conflict. After being starved into submission by a blockade, the Biafrans surrendered and their leaders promised to be “loyal Nigerian citizens.” Half a century later, the war’s legacy continues to hold Nigeria captive. It simultaneously brings the country together and pushes it apart. In the early aftermath of the war, the country appeared to…

Wednesday, 15 January 2020 05:37

Making stakeholder capitalism a reality - Laura Tyson & Lenny Mendonca

The recent push by big business in favor of a more socially and environmentally conscious corporate-governance model is not just empty rhetoric. With the public losing trust in business and markets, it is now in everyone's interest to reform the system so that it delivers prosperity for the many, rather than the few. For a half-century, American corporations (and many others around the world) have embraced shareholder primacy, which holds that the only responsibility of business is to maximize profits. But this principle is now being challenged by corporate leaders themselves, with the United States Business Roundtable announcing last year…

Tuesday, 14 January 2020 05:19

The General is Divider-in-Chief - Shaka Momodu

By his occasional exhortations to Nigerians during festive periods and in moments of national tragedies to live peacefully and in unity, the Nigerian Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari wants us to believe he is a uniter and not a divider. He preaches religious tolerance when acts of barbarism and heinous crimes are committed by devilish Muslim extremists who act in the name of religion, when he is riled enough to do so. But when he wakes up on the wrong side of the bed, he looks the other way, aloof and totally unconcerned.…

Tuesday, 14 January 2020 05:18

Shaka Momodu: A columnist as Hater-in-Chief - Femi Adesina

For many years, week after week, Shaka Momodu opens the sewers, and pours vitriol on President Muhammadu Buhari on the back page of THISDAY Newspapers. We ignore him, reasoning that when a mind is diseased, there is hardly much you can do to point such soul to decency. It remains impervious to anything not from the very nether region of hell. However, on Friday, January 10, 2020, Shaka Momodu overreached even himself in hatred and deviousness by his piece with the headline, The General is Divider-in-Chief. Yes, you know who he was talking about. He usually has no other topic…

Tuesday, 14 January 2020 05:17

Everyone knows memory fails as you age. But everyone is wrong - Daniel J. Levitin

I’m 62 years old as I write this. Like many of my friends, I forget names that I used to be able to conjure up effortlessly. When packing my suitcase for a trip, I walk to the hall closet and by the time I get there, I don’t remember what I came for. And yet my long-term memories are fully intact. I remember the names of my third-grade classmates, the first record album I bought, my wedding day. This is widely understood to be a classic problem of aging. But as a neuroscientist, I know that the problem is not…

Monday, 13 January 2020 05:40

Isn’t a wealth tax common sense? - Svetlana Alexievich

The wealth-tax proposals being advanced by Democratic US presidential primary contenders clearly meets the public-finance standard for an ideal form of revenue generation. So why have these plans drawn such vehement criticism from so many who should be supporting them? I was not surprised when leading Democratic primary contenders began endorsing a “wealth tax” along the lines of what has been proposed by my University of California, Berkeley, colleagues Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez. What has surprised me is the level of pushback these candidates have received, particularly from those who should be in favor of anything that moves the…

Sunday, 12 January 2020 05:28

The electricity tariff tango - Simon Kolawole

Which came first — the chicken or the egg? This is one of the most fascinating debates around. All chickens hatch from eggs and all the chicken eggs are laid by chickens. How then do you determine the cause and the effect? That is the “causality dilemma” we always have to deal with in certain discourses, especially on public policy. If you believe in creationism — as I do — you are more likely to argue that God created the chicken and it started to lay eggs. However, if you are an evolutionist, the Darwinian principle is that species evolve…

Sunday, 12 January 2020 05:27

Nigeria and the American Matsuyama mirror - Festus Adedayo

There is this Japanese tale of the Matsuyama mirror. Matsuyama, according to the folktale, was located in the Province of Echigo, somewhere in Japan. It is centered round a couple who lived in a village where there was no trace of civilization. The husband thus planned to travel to “the great city, the capital of Japan,” to embark upon some business. Many people, including the husband, had told the wife of her stunning physique and sultry look. However, she took the commendations with a pinch of salt, believing that since she lived in a society where wry jokes and plastic…

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Saturday, 11 January 2020 04:56

Tell Dajuma to speak up! - Bola Bolawole

Recently, Mr TY Dajuma, retired army general, was quoted as saying “Nigerians won’t sleep if I reveal things happening in our country.” Grandma taught me there is nothing falling from the sky that the ground cannot receive. TY merely exaggerated his own importance! What is it that will shock this country again? Thanks, King Sunny Ade: “Eran ki la o j’eri?” What information is hid again from our eyes, including the identity of the butchers and murderers of Ibadan? There is no new happenings under the sky. Thanks, Chief Commander Ebenezer Obey: Ko s'oun titun l'abe orun mo. Let’s quote…

Thursday, 09 January 2020 20:30

Harry and Meghan: Why the Queen must FIRE Their Royal Hustlers - Piers Morgan

I've seen some disgraceful royal antics in my time, but for pure arrogance, entitlement, greed, and wilful disrespect, nothing has ever quite matched the behaviour of the ' and .' I put inverted commas around those titles because I sincerely hope they won't exist much longer. Indeed, if I were Her Majesty , I would unceremoniously strip Harry and Meghan of all their titles with immediate effect and despatch them back into civilian life. These two deluded clowns announced yesterday they were quitting life as senior royals. In a series of staggeringly pompous statements on their gleaming new Hollywood-style website,…

Thursday, 09 January 2020 06:11

Imagining a world without capitalism - Yanis Varoufakis

On September 24, 1599, not far from where Shakespeare was struggling to finish Hamlet, the first corporation with tradable shares was born. Liberalism’s fatal hypocrisy was to celebrate the virtuous neighborhood butchers, bakers, and brewers in order to defend all the East India Companies that have since made a mockery of freedom. Anti-capitalists had a miserable year. But so did capitalism. While the defeat of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party in the United Kingdom this month threatened the radical left’s momentum, particularly in the United States, where the presidential primaries loom, capitalism found itself under fire from some unexpected quarters. Billionaires,…

Wednesday, 08 January 2020 05:48

For Jeyifo (BJ) and Komolafe (KK)- Edwin Madunagu

This is not a tribute in the usual sense the word is used and as suggested by the title of this piece. Rather, it is an aspect of a story that has not been told in full, but which - I have now been persuaded - should, at least, be elaborated in some areas – for the benefit of the younger generations of the Nigerian Left. The opportunity I have now seized to do this partial elaboration, January 2020, is the start of the 75th year of existence, on earth, of one of the preeminent characters in that story and…

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