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Opinion

Sunday, 09 February 2020 05:10

After BREXIT, enter YEXIT! - Bola Bolawole

"Few individuals want to willingly invite their death. Yet many will be found who are prepared to fight fearlessly for their rights even if their life is threatened. The human spirit has a remarkable capacity to rise above oppression and only the fools who misrule Guyana can imagine that our population alone lacks such capacity" "... For the only great men among the unfree and the oppressed are those who struggle to destroy the oppressor" - Walter Rodney, author of "Drink from my Calabash" and the seminal "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" The “National question” has been a vexed issue from…

Sunday, 09 February 2020 05:09

Prune Northern Nigerian mistletoe, cure Nigeria - Festus Adedayo

All right, you do not know what mistletoe is? It is, according to a dictionary definition of it, a “leathery-leaved parasitic plant which grows on apple, oak, and other broadleaf trees.” Yoruba call mistletoe afomo. What this weed does is stick to trees, either cocoa or kolanut tree. Farmers are always watching out for an afomo on their crash crops because, the moment a tree gets infested with it, it is on its way to barrenness. While the mistletoe has no root of its own, it bores roots inside the trunk of its host and starves the tree of nutrients.…

Sunday, 09 February 2020 05:08

Are you a member of the ‘pepper dem’ gang? – Tara Aisida

I once escorted a friend to our children’s school Accounts office to help plead for more time to pay her children’s school fees. My friend was a single parent, her ex-husband would not pay school fees but would buy the children expensive stuff like phones, gadgets etc so he could be seen as a good daddy whilst shirking his responsibilities. Anyways, back to my story, The Accountant was apologetic and told us that he couldn’t do much as the school was servicing a huge loan and many parents were owing. In confidence, he told us that the graduating set of…

Thursday, 06 February 2020 05:32

If Britain could exit Europe... - Bola Bolawole

If Britain could exit Europe, as it did close to the midnight of 31st January, 2020; if Eritrea could exit Ethiopia; if Southern Sudan could exit Sudan, then, there is nothing that says nations cannot exit nations. To say a country’s unity is non-negotiable is, therefore, laughable. It is mere wishful thinking and a ruse. Such grandiose statements are neither supported by facts nor vindicated by history. Eritrea’s declining autonomy and growing discontent with Ethiopian rule led to the formation of an independence movement, Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), in 1961 but the Ethiopian government, rather than address Eritrea’s concerns, adopted…

Thursday, 06 February 2020 05:31

Okada ban will not solve Sanwo-Olu’s problem - Abimbola Adelakun

Beginning from last Saturday, Lagos State placed a ban on commercial motorcycles (okada) and tricycles (keke) in 15 local government areas. The development has further impeded movement around Lagos, a city already plagued with some of the worst traffic gridlock in the world. With the perennial issues of congestion and mobility, Governor Jide Sanwo-Olu faces considerable problems in the administration of Lagos State. He has been throwing up solutions, but none appears to stick. Shortly after he was inaugurated, he signed an Executive Order directing LASTMA to run at least two shifts and work till 11 pm. After that, he…

Monday, 03 February 2020 05:53

AIG Oyebade: Victim of Amotekun’s FG/South-west tango? - Bola Bolawole

AIG in charge of Zone XI of Nigeria Police Force comprising Ondo, Osun and Oyo state, Mr Adeleye Oyebade, has reportedly been posted to National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, Jos as “a directing staff” – a euphemism for “from the field, where you command troops, to the classroom or office where you stand in front of blackboard or sit behind a desk” Oyebade was replaced by Mr Bashir Makama. Meanings have been read into the new postings, especially as it came immediately after the pro-Amotekun rallies which held in South-west states under Oyebade’s jurisdiction. Recall that…

Sunday, 02 February 2020 04:00

Why Buhari should not resign - Festus Adedayo

The Nigerian parliament regained its balls last week. Before now, it was coasting home to victory as the most supine legislature in Nigeria’s recent history, especially with its leader’s effeminate claim that parliament would rubber-stamp every leaflet with presidency’s imprimatur, including any trash-receptacle from President Muhammadu Buhari’s lavatory. Minority Leader, Enyinnaya Abaribe, it was, who burst Senate’s empty balls sack and stuffed it with some guts and grits, thereby resituating the parliament’s typecast as an assemblage of sissies and yes-men. While parliament was discussing worsening state of insecurity, Abaribe stood up and declared: “Nigerians will go to the government and…

Sunday, 02 February 2020 03:59

Insecurity in the land - Simon Kolawole

Mr Festus Keyamo, minister of state for labour and employment, gave one of the most sensible responses to criticism by an official of the Muhammadu Buhari administration on Friday. Reacting to calls for the president to resign over growing insecurity in the country, Keyamo said: “The hullabaloo over the call by the opposition for the resignation of the President is unnecessary. It’s the usual singsong of opposition all over the world. They know it’s not going to happen.” Fair enough. Then he added what I had been longing to hear from a Buhari aide in a long while: “It’s just…

Friday, 31 January 2020 05:43

Breaking my 'silence' on Ihedioha's Supreme Court’s abracadabra - Bola Bolawole

Many readers of my columns issued me “queries” over what they described as my “criminal silence” on the Supreme Court’s abracadabra of a judgment in the Ihedioha/Uzodinma tussle over the Imo governorship, which the apex court awarded to APC’s Uzodinma in what many have described as bizarre and out-of-this-world manner. Some thought I must have concurred, hence my silence. Others - some of whom had praised me to high heavens before - alleged I must have been bought over; people are always quick to shout “Hosanna” today and “Crucify him” tomorrow! Some who said they could vouch for me guessed…

Tuesday, 28 January 2020 07:36

Mother hen’s battle with the hawks: 20 years remembrance of a priceless jewel - Sina Ogunbambo

For those who did not grow up in villages, tales of a hen squaring it up with a hawk in a battle might be a mere fiction, but for us privileged to have the luxury of growing up in a somewhat somnolent milieu, with mother nature, enjoying the chirpings of the birds and bleating of the goats, it is the best of live matches. Ordinarily a mother hen panics as a hawk nosedives to pluck one of her chicken, but will still swell her feathers to protect the rest. However, that is not a mother hen one would proudly take…

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Monday, 27 January 2020 06:03

Tinubu and the pangs of leadership - Bolanle Bolawole

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown – A line from the play, King Henry the Fourth (Part Two), by William Shakespeare. Mr Bola Tinubu, ex- two-term Lagos governor and chieftain of ruling All Progressives leader – I don’t know whether we can still call him APC National Leader – was in the eye of the Amotekun storm last week partly for no fault of his. The commotion over Amotekun, the regional security outfit launched with fanfare by the governors of the South-west – five of them APC and one PDP – was ignited by Mr Abubakar Malami, Federal…

Sunday, 26 January 2020 06:11

Can’t Buhari stop waffling on Boko Haram? - Festus Adedayo

Even when its blood-sucking soldiers slash the throats of captured Nigerians in audacious video recordings that periodically go viral on the social media, the truth is that Boko Haram, that deadly terrorist group, has left the consciousness of many Nigerians, especially the political elite. For example, as that eight year-old boy insurgent horrendously gorged out the last pint of blood in the veins of Daciya Dalep, the Langtang student of the University of Maiduguri who was abducted on January 9 as he returned to his University of Maiduguri school, President Muhammadu Buhari was apparently busy battling a mound of Tuwo…

Sunday, 26 January 2020 06:10

Baba Lekki blasts Balarabe - Tatalo Alamu

The grand re-entry of Mama Igosun to the household has set a cat among Okon’s domestic pigeons. It was akin to the arrival of a big cat among a pack of antelopes. Things were no longer at ease as the old girl often strolled into the kitchen to dislodge Okon from his stronghold with a torrent of curses and choleric abuses. The complaints about Okon’s culinary skills or lack of them have been legion with the ancient girl droning and drooling endlessly like a stranded fairy. “If I come know say na dis gbarogudu beans you wan give me make…

Friday, 24 January 2020 05:38

For our departed revolutionary idealists - Edwin Madunagu

Let me begin by saying that the term “idealist” is not used in this article in the philosophical sense. Were this the case departed comrades to whom the piece is dedicated would not be considered as Marxists at all. But they were all revolutionary Marxists. I employ the term “idealist” here in the ordinary sense of a person that “cherishes or pursues high or noble principles, purposes or goals” but without giving sufficient consideration to objective, historically-determined reality. When this description is applied to departed Nigerian revolutionary Marxists you begin to have a picture of the type of persons I…

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