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Opinion

Wednesday, 26 December 2018 04:19

Globalization 4.0 for whom? - Winnie Byanyima

Imagine a world in which women and girls have their rights respected, climate change receives the attention it so urgently requires, and poverty has been eliminated. Never before have we had the means that we have now to make this vision a reality. In Africa, for example, I am excited to see how off-grid solar energy is expanding rapidly. In Kenya, mobile banking has significantly improved financial inclusion, particularly for poor women. These and other technologies associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) have the potential to boost productivity, incomes, and leisure time for workers, while also decarbonizing our economies…

Tuesday, 25 December 2018 03:13

The uncommon power of grace - Peter Wehner

A revolutionary idea lies at its core: radical equality. In his book “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” Philip Yancey describes a conference on comparative religions where experts from around the world debated which belief, if any, was unique to the Christian faith. C.S. Lewis happened to enter the room during the discussion. When he was told the topic was Christianity’s unique contribution among world religions, Lewis responded: “Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace.” Lewis was right. No other religion places grace at its theological center. It was a revolutionary idea; as Mr. Yancey puts it, grace “seems to go against every…

Sunday, 23 December 2018 05:26

The beheaded boy by Ogun River bank - Festus Adedayo

On the morning of September 21, 2001, the dismembered body of a boy was found by the Thames River, near Tower Bridge in Central London, United Kingdom. He was putting on orange girls’ shorts and paraphernalia of voodoo ensconced the remains. The Metropolitan Police was astounded but it knew it wasn’t dealing with a strange phenomenon. It was said that on the average in London yearly, the Met Police and the Coroner’s Court have on their hands between forty and forty-five cases of bodies retrieved from Thames. Preliminary evidence pieced together by the police revealed that the torso was that…

Sunday, 23 December 2018 05:24

Do election debates really matter? - Jideofor Adibe

Since the Vice Presidential debate on December 14 2018 between the candidates of selected five political parties, there have been continuous spin not only on who won the debate but also on whether Buhari would show up for the presidential debate slated for January 19 2019. The debate, which was organized by the Nigerian Election Debate Group (NEDG) and the Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria (BON), featured the following Vice Presidential candidates: Abdulganiyu Galadima (Allied Congress Party of Nigeria, ACPN); Khadijah Abdullahi-Iya (Alliance for New Nigeria, ANN); Yemi Osinbajo (All Progressives Congress (APC); Peter Obi (Peoples Democratic Party, PDP), and Umma…

Tuesday, 18 December 2018 05:00

Dr. Google is a liar

Haider Warraich Fake news threatens our democracy. Fake medical news threatens our lives. It started during yoga class. She felt a strange pull on her neck, a sensation completely foreign to her. Her friend suggested she rush to the emergency room. It turned out that she was having a heart attack. She didn’t fit the stereotype of someone likely to have a heart attack. She exercised, did not smoke, watched her plate. But on reviewing her medical history, I found that her cholesterol level was sky high. She had been prescribed a cholesterol-lowering statin medication, but she never picked up…

Monday, 17 December 2018 02:52

A dozen reasons for Buhari’s re-election - Garba Shehu

Today Monday December 17, 2018, President Muhammadu Buhari who is seeking re-election for a second term of office marks his 76th birthday and, in his own words, “still going strong.” His age is no longer an issue in this campaign because by the will of God, not by any design, his main challenger is equally in the same age bracket. This election in February next year then comes down to what each candidate will offer. There are many reasons why President Buhari deserves to be re-elected. I shall speak to a dozen of them here:He is the best ever President…

Monday, 17 December 2018 02:50

Buhari’s catalogue of failures: Read and despair - Dele Sobowale

“Failures are those who, despairing to rise into distinction by their virtues, are happy if others are depressed to a level with themselves."Benjamin FranklinVBQ, p 54. By any measure known to observers of any government, the Buhari administration is a dismal failure. Let me once again apologise to Nigerians that in 2011 and 2015 I was a fanatical promoter of Buhari. On both occasions, it was my belief that the man once elected will recognise his own limitations and appoint people who will fill the gaps in his capacities — including low educational qualifications and inability to cope with complexities.…

Sunday, 16 December 2018 03:51

Absence of lafiya in Lafiya Dole’s expulsion of UNICEF - Festus Adedayo

Apart from the booming of bombs and painful cries at the Northeast theatre of the Boko Haram war that the world has been accustomed to since the war of terror berthed on the Nigerian soil, another booming, shocking and destabilizing bomb exploded at the war front on Friday. This time, it reverberated beyond the theatre of war, across the length and breadth of the world. A terse press statement signed by Onyema Nwachukwu, a colonel and Deputy Director of Public Relations, on behalf of the Theatre Command of the Operation Lafiya Dole, had ordered the world-acclaimed United Nations International Children’s…

Friday, 14 December 2018 03:56

2019: Opposition versus state institutions - Jideofor Adibe

By the time Nigeria conducts its elections in February and March next year, it will be almost 20 years since its current experiment with liberal democracy – the longest period the country has been under a civilian rule since gaining flag independence from the British in 1960. As we inch towards 2019, growing apprehensions sit side-by-side with growing optimism. For the optimists, just as no sensible person judges a weather only by its inclement side, no right-thinking member of the society should judge our experiment with liberal democracy only by its flaws. The optimists will remind us of former British…

Tuesday, 11 December 2018 05:00

Is fake news here to stay? - Joseph S. Nye

The term “fake news” has become an epithet that US President Donald Trump attaches to any unfavorable story. But it is also an analytical term that describes deliberate disinformation presented in the form of a conventional news report. The problem is not completely novel. In 1925, Harper’s Magazine published an article about the dangers of “fake news.” But today two-thirds of American adults get some of their news from social media, which rest on a business model that lends itself to outside manipulation and where algorithms can easily be gamed for profit or malign purposes. Whether amateur, criminal, or governmental,…

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Monday, 10 December 2018 04:38

Buhari: Not a clone but a clown - Farooq Kperogi

My Saturday column syndicated in Daily Trust on Saturday and Nigerian Tribune on Saturday. Snippet: Last Tuesday was an awkward day for me here in the United States. It wasn’t just that President Buhari’s ill-advised response to the insanely absurd IPOB whispering campaign that he is a body double from Sudan was the butt of hurtful jokes in American news media, all that my students wanted to talk to me about was this issue. “While your president certainly isn’t a clone, he sure is a clown,” one student said. Although this jibe jabbed at my national self-esteem, it’s painfully accurate…

Sunday, 09 December 2018 04:16

Aisha: Flippant activist or frustrated First Lady? - Festus Adedayo

Weird, unusual and a clear contradiction of the mannerisms of the class she belongs, events are fast proving that the persona of Nigeria’s First Lady, Aisha Buhari and the driving force of her clear departure from the norm, certainly need looking into. Weird, no doubt, Aishat isn’t the first queer First Lady in the world. Is she a destructive female, bent on destroying her husband, what the French call the femme fatale? The femme fatale is an archetype of literature and art referring to a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms and deploying of her feminine wiles ensnare the collective…

Friday, 07 December 2018 05:06

Predicting the 2019 presidential election - Jideofor Adibe

As 2019 elections draw close, we should expect an array of election entrepreneurs and predictors to become ubiquitous. A few days ago, the influential London-based Economist magazine was reported by several media organizations to have predicted a Buhari win in the February 2019 election. For instance, The Nation of December 4 2018 quoted The Economist’s, ‘World in 2019’ report to have said: “The president, Muhammadu Buhari, will win re-election in February, as a new opposition coalition may collapse before the vote.|” The paper however noted that the magazine’s foreign correspondent, Aman Rizvi, disagreed with the official position of his magazine…

Thursday, 06 December 2018 04:21

Technology will soon be able to tinker with who we are. Are we ready? - Elizabeth Bruenig

Sometimes the future arrives in waves, advancing abruptly and then withdrawing. Last week, a Chinese researcher named He Jiankui announced that he had successfully altered the genetic code of a pair of twin girls born this month. He said that while they were still embryos, he had edited the babies’ genes to make them resistant to HIV infection, but offered few further details. Scientists and bioethicists from around the world were incensed by He’s announcement, given serious concerns about the danger the still-developing technology could pose to humans. Jennifer Doudna, a researcher at the University of California at Berkeley who…

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