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Opinion

Thursday, 31 October 2019 05:34

From Hong Kong to Chile, 2019 is the year of the street protester. But why? - Jackson Diehl

By last week it was undeniable: 2019 has become the year of the street protester. As hundreds of thousands marched in Hong Kong and Santiago, Lebanon and London, what has become a global explosion of people power was prompting panic among a host of governments — and raising some interesting questions about how and why it was all happening. Of course, the phenomenon is not new, even in modern times. Since the late 1980s, when people took to the streets in the Philippines and South Korea, and then in the captive nations of Eastern Europe, mass movements of people have…

Tuesday, 29 October 2019 06:03

Al-Baghdadi is dead. The story doesn’t end here - Thomas L. Friedman

The killing of the founder and leader of the Islamic State by United States commandos operating in Syria should certainly further weaken the most vile and deadly Islamist movement to emerge in the Middle East in the modern era. The world is certainly a better place with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi dead and a measure of justice meted out on behalf of all the women ISIS raped, all the journalists ISIS beheaded and the tens of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis it abused. Good for President Trump for ordering it, for the intelligence agents who set it up, for the allies…

Tuesday, 29 October 2019 06:02

Middle East’s dangerous new hegemonic confrontation - Joschka Fischer

Although Yemen's Houthi rebels have claimed credit for the sophisticated nighttime strike on Saudi oil facilities last month, the attack was almost certainly launched by Iran. By giving Iran no other option but to demonstrate its military prowess, US President Donald Trump has exposed himself and his Saudi allies as paper tigers. In the old Middle East, a single overarching conflict – between Israel and the Arab countries – had many fronts, and it was the West’s prerogative to protect the flow of oil to the global economy. In the new Middle East, the defining conflict is a broader struggle…

Monday, 28 October 2019 06:04

Kogi’s paradox of six and half-a-dozen - Bolanle Bolawole

That which is crooked cannot be made straight: and that which is wanting cannot be numbered. – Ecclesiastes 1: 15 “A friend of my friend is my friend. A friend of my enemy is my enemy. An enemy of my friend is my enemy”. “There are no permanent friends but permanent interests”. “If we do not forget or forgive what happened yesterday, we will have no one to associate with today”. “Politics is a dirty game”. “Friendship or friends are not forever” “The end justifies the means” “The first casualty in war – nay, politics – is truth” “The elements…

Monday, 28 October 2019 06:02

The open secret of Development Economics - Yao Yang

To many in China, this year's Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences seems to have shone a spotlight on one area of development economics at the expense of another. While randomized controlled trials might be useful for creating or improving welfare programs, they can't tell poor countries how to achieve and sustain rapid growth. This year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences recognizes Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer for their work using randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in developmental studies. This year’s selection has elicited a broad array of reactions from around the world, not least because RCTs are…

Sunday, 27 October 2019 05:39

The faith vultures of Dutse and our carcasses - Festus Adedayo

Trapped for about thirty minutes in a lone-occupied lift a few minutes before I began to write this piece, I frenetically prayed to God. So, I can connect with what Professor of Sociology at the University of Kansas, United States, Ebenezer Obadare, in his book, Pentecostal Republic, called the “theological project” and the different ways in which “religion and religious factors” continue to shape our lives as Africans. Thus, when I read about Jigawa State government approving constituency projects of N1.5billion for state lawmakers to complete “ongoing constituency projects initiated by the members,” which included “134 community mosques, 23 Friday…

Sunday, 27 October 2019 05:37

Okon and Baba Lekki vent their spleen - Tatalo Alamu

To the trendy and pace-setting Mercury Television in upmarket Magodo where the impossible Okon is fielding question on the state of the nation having been declared Man of the Decade by a rogue organization calling itself Movement for the Survival of the Indigenous People of Nigeria, MOSOSIPN. It was a wet and soggy morning with thunder crackling in the background as torrential rains pounded the old capital into submission. The truth of the matter is that the award is the equivalent of a time bomb, akin to hauling out the buried tail of a quiet cobra. Before then, Okon had…

Thursday, 24 October 2019 05:32

Rosa Luxemburg remembered - Edwin Madunagu

My last published piece, “Revolutions that ‘fired’ young Leftists” (September 26, 2019), was actually an abridgement of what was originally planned to be a much longer essay. That longer essay would have included not only some revolutions that failed, but also some revolutionaries that failed to make successful revolutions. In that excised segment was Rosa Luxemburg, a brilliant Marxist revolutionary whose life was brutally terminated a hundred years ago, in 1919, in the German Socialist Revolution that failed. It is with this exceptional woman whose photograph, together with those of five other women, has adorned the wall of our public…

Thursday, 24 October 2019 05:31

Buhari’s House of Commotion and Mamman Daura’s ‘Glass House’ - Farooq A. Kperogi

A few days before it became grist for Nigeria’s overactive social media rumor mills, a retired general and contemporary of Muhammadu Buhari’s told me, in the course of a 30-minute phone conversation, that Mamman Daura, Buhari’s nephew who is nonetheless older than him by three years, had made up his mind to “get at” Aisha Buhari by arranging a quiet marriage between Humanitarian Affairs Minister Sadiya Farouq and Muhammadu Buhari. He mentioned this as an aside and seemed to expect me to be curious enough about what he had told me to ask further questions. But I didn’t. That appeared…

Thursday, 24 October 2019 05:30

‘Alaghodaro’ as Edo’s poor governance metaphor - Tony Erha

Halfway into his four-year tenure, Governor Godwin Obaseki is still experimenting with the destiny of Edo. His administration has been dismal and sloppy in meeting his ambitious electioneering promises to the people. Apart from a bit of urban renewal, the government has failed in the provision of infrastructure and amenities across the state. Joblessness and youth agitations are rife. Crime is fast engulfing the state, thus questioning what the governor has done with the humongous amount set aside as security vote on monthly basis. Urban-rural drift has escalated than before even as the governor’s promise to create 200,000 jobs is…

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Wednesday, 23 October 2019 05:25

Kegame’s Rwanda - Femi Mimiko

A lot has been written on Rwanda, including how differently the Western world reacted to that blight on human civilization that was the genocide of 1994, and its equivalence in the Balkans. Former US President Bill Clinton was man enough to later admit that failure to lead the world to put an immediate end to that incidence, was one of his greatest regrets. While the world watched, the lot fell on Paul Kegame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front to move in from the bushes, and stop the genocidal madness. The man led his country away from the horrors of that…

Wednesday, 23 October 2019 05:24

Tech companies are destroying democracy and the free press - Matt Stoller

As the presidential election approaches, the cracks in the digital facade are once again showing. Facebook just removed an “I Love America” page, run by Ukrainians, which pushed recycled pro-Trump imagery from the Internet Research Agency, the Russian group that tried to influence the 2016 election. As it turned out, “I Love America” wasn’t state sponsored — the Ukrainians were just running the page for the advertising money. A similar page with falsified content, “Police Lives Matter,” is now run out of Kosovo. These two phony Facebook pages illustrate the crisis of the free press and democracy: Advertising revenue that…

Tuesday, 22 October 2019 05:55

For Aisha and her in-laws - Lasisi Olagunju

"Your office is not recognized by law. Funds not approved." A former Aso Rock official told me last week that President Olusegun Obasanjo wrote this in a file there in response to intense pressures from his wife, Stella, that she must 'work' as the First Lady. But the matter did not die there. For women, there is no end to a demand until it is supplied. There must always be a way through any iron curtain. The spirit of women walks on rivers and runs through canals to get at anything and anyone. My people praise them as the silence…

Monday, 21 October 2019 04:44

Ending short-termism by keeping score - Klaus Schwab

As finance ministers gather in Washington, DC, for the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s annual meetings, they will face no shortage of urgent matters to discuss. Fears of a global recession, the US-China trade war, the fallout of the Brexit talks, and a dangerous debt overhang make this the most stressful economic juncture in a decade. These issues must be discussed, and we should all hope that they can be resolved with minimal damage. But they should not deflect attention from even more pressing long-term challenges: achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030; delivering on the…

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