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Opinion

Saturday, 10 November 2018 04:15

The Nigerian Left and the future of politics - Jibrin Ibrahim

Last weekend, a significant number of Marxists in the country met in Keffi to review the state of the Left since the Marx Centenary conference, which took place in Zaria in 1983. The meeting was organised by Nigerian Committee for the Advancement of Working Class Solidarity, Nigerian Political Science Association and Faculty of Social Sciences, Nasarawa State University, Keffi. The conference’s theme was “Capitalism, Imperialism and Revolutions in the 21st Century” and the venue was Keffi, Nasarawa State. The key objectives of the conference were to: Rejuvenate the study and practice of Marxism; strengthen the relationship between the academic community…

Thursday, 08 November 2018 05:00

Nigeria, MTN and pseudo-nationalism - Jideofor Adibe

The recent report that two global banks – HSBC and UBS- have closed shops in the country should be a source of concern to well meaning Nigerians. Though no reasons were given for their decision to leave the country, it could be assumed that the banks no longer see the country as good for business. It should be recalled that the HSBC in its research note of July 18 2018 had argued that a second term for President Muhammadu Buhari “raises the risk of limited economic progress and further fiscal deterioration, prolonging the stagnation of his first term, particularly if…

Thursday, 08 November 2018 04:58

How should Nigerian Leftists vote? - Edwin Madunagu

We begin with a proposition which may be framed this way: “The question as to how Nigerian Leftists should vote in the 2019 general elections will not arise if there are in existence, and participating in the elections, political parties that are serious, clearly Leftist, ideologically anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist and categorical on each of the burning questions before the Nigerian people, before the country, and before the nation”.The proposition is enclosed in quotation marks – though it is new and comes from me – merely to indicate that it is fundamental at this critical point in Nigeria’s political history. My…

Monday, 05 November 2018 05:00

PDP or APC will give Nigeria Lucifer President- Bayo Oluwasanmi

In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, we see Lucifer the Great Deceiver banished from Heaven. In Dante’s Inferno, Satan is presented as a ghastly Beast. In Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, Satan is a pathetic collector of souls. What about the dark ones in Nigerian politics? When you consider the characteristics of Lucifer and Satan in Milton, Dante, and in Marlowe, if Lucifer, Satan, or the Beast had a political party, definitely it would be APC or PDP. APC and PDP candidates are contesting for 2019 presidential elections. This is the fifth time PDP will contest for the presidency after uninterrupted 16 years…

Monday, 05 November 2018 04:55

Mr. ‘Fix-It’ Tony Anenih was no patriot - Sonala Olumhense

“As a culture, we do not speak ill of the dead. Well, we ought never to speak blatant falsehood before God either or betray the living through flagrant hypocrisy. Anenih was clearly and particularly a PDP figure. He was a cold-blooded PDP-partisan who saw Nigeria through the eyes of his party; he never saw PDP through the eyes of Nigeria.” -Olumhense Mr Anthony Anenih, one of the most influential chieftains of the Peoples Democratic Party from 1999 to 2016 who was widely-known as “Mr. Fix-It,” died last week, aged 85. A veteran of various political parties since the early 1980s,…

Sunday, 04 November 2018 06:46

WAEC certificate home delivery, Buhari and El-Zakzaky - Festus Adedayo

Wherever Can Themba is today in the spirit world, I have no doubt that he sees me as a fellow ecumenical spirit. Since that first day, sometime in 1989 or thereabout, as a second year Philosophy student of the University of Lagos who ‘minored’ in English, when then Dr., now Professor Karen King-Aribisala, read Themba’s The Dube Train short story to us in the class, Themba and I developed a strong literary affinity. A very pretty, brilliant Guyana-born scholar, King-Aribisala, who herself had written the famous Our Wife and other stories – apparently her experience as a foreigner married to…

Friday, 02 November 2018 04:17

Buhari’s ‘new affection’ for Jonathan and the 2019 elections - Jideofor Adibe

As we nudge towards the 2019 presidential election, and with many people predicting that it will be more bitterly fought than the acrimonious 2015 poll, there is something that is giving me some hope that the doomsday scenario may not materialize after all: it is Buhari’s increasingly softening rhetoric on former President Jonathan. For instance when he hosted members of the Kannywood entertainment industry to a dinner at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, about two weeks ago, Buhari, after recalling his futile quests for the presidency between 2003 and 2011 (and becoming fourth time lucky in 2015), said he would continue…

Tuesday, 30 October 2018 04:32

Anthony Anenih: A personal and political portrait - Reuben Abati

Mr Anthony Anenih, political leader, chieftain of Peoples Democratic Party who has died aged 85, was one of the most important figures in the story of Nigeria’s return to civilian rule, and a founding father and a major influence in the party that ruled the country for an unbroken stretch of 16 years. I knew him and was privileged to know him, even more closely, when I assumed office as President Goodluck Jonathan’s official spokesperson and media/publicity adviser. For four years, we worked together and met regularly. We lived in the same neighbourhood in Asokoro, so it was very easy…

Sunday, 28 October 2018 04:09

Day Ibikunle Amosun met Sango at Koso - Festus Adedayo

Shortly before the 2003 governorship election, then Governor Olusegun Osoba had come on television to address the common grouse of Ogun State people against his four-year reign. He had apparently gleaned security report which predicted his waterloo at the polls. It was a grouse that was ostensibly the river that would shortly drown his ambition to do a second term. “I am not proud,” he had begun pleadingly. “People say I am proud… I am not proud.” This apologia was coming rather too late to save the second journalist to rule Ogun after immortal Editor of First Republic influential newspaper,…

Sunday, 28 October 2018 04:07

Buhari, show us your certificate - Reno Omokri

Nothing could prepare me for the shock that greeted me when I opened the dailies on Friday, October 26, 2018. Right there on the front-page headlines was the news that President Buhari, again, could not present his West African School Certificate Examination certificate because the original is with the army. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me! That lame excuse could hardly suffice in 2015 when President Jonathan was the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, but it is certainly an untenable excuse today! How on earth could Buhari again tell the Independent National Electoral Commission that…

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Friday, 26 October 2018 04:44

The return of Nnamdi Kanu - Jideofor Adibe

The recent re-surfacing of Nnamdi Kanu, the uncouth leader of Indigenous Peoples of Biafra (IPOB) in Israel, raises more questions than answers: How did he escape from the raid by Nigerian security forces on his father’s compound on September 14 2017? How did he find his way to Israel? And why is he resurfacing just as Atiku Abubakar selected Peter Obi, an Igbo, to be his running mate in the 2019 presidential election?While the cacophony of grapevine tales and conspiracy theories will make the search for the answers to the above difficult, what is clear is that his reported resurfacing…

Wednesday, 24 October 2018 04:58

What has Google ever done for us? - Jacek Rostowski

Even Google’s fiercest critics use its technologies to research their fiery tirades against it or, more mundanely, to find their way around a foreign city. Let’s be honest: life without Google would be awfully more tedious in a variety of important ways. But that is not a good reason to leave Google and the other tech giants alone. On the contrary, the nature and importance of their contribution make it imperative that they be placed under democratic control – and not just because of the well appreciated need to protect individual privacy. In recent years, Big Tech companies have been…

Tuesday, 23 October 2018 04:11

The “Oshiomhole must go” coalition - Reuben Abati

Mr John Odigie Oyegun, former National Chairman of All Progressives Congress (APC) must be having a good laugh wherever he is. If he is just finishing a meal, he can afford to pick his teeth and belch from the deepest part of his biological system, and even turn up his nose as he asks for a glass of water. He can also look around and thank Karma for being kind to him, as he gulps down the water and reflects on the circumstances of APC since he was shunted aside and Adams Oshiomhole, former Governor of Edo State and former…

Sunday, 21 October 2018 04:27

Ulli Beier’s ‘madman’ at Aro psychiatric hospital - Festus Adedayo

Ulli Beier, that German kindred spirit and arts connoisseur, had wandered into Nigeria on October 1, 1950. Within a few weeks, Nigerian culture and arts, which had begun to be disclaimed by the emerging elite on the pretext of modernization, began to feel his hands of renaissance. Dugbe Market area in Ibadan, the Western Region capital, was where he founded his Mbari Club in 1961, at the site of an old Lebanese restaurant which he and his gang converted into a literary pot-pouri of an open-air performance venue, an art gallery, a library and an office. Beier’s Mbari thus became…

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