Ns-Opinion

Opinion

Sunday, 22 July 2018 03:18

A tale of two Sundays - Bisi Fayemi

Sunday June 22nd 2014, I woke up at 7am. I had gone to bed at 3am but did not drift off to sleep till 5am. It was no surprise that I had a dull ache in my head. JKF was already up and getting dressed. I picked up my phone and saw the large number of missed calls and text messages. I put the phone down and called for my morning coffee. I was told that visitors were waiting to see us. I nodded my head but made no move to leave the bedroom. I looked at my phone again…

Sunday, 22 July 2018 03:16

Ekiti electoral corruption and our "baa ko daya" politics - Festus Adedayo

Ekiti State exploded on July 14. Pundits who had predicted an explosion of firearms and blood spillage initially thought that their predictions had gone off target as no blood was actually shed on that day. With the benefit of hindsight however, what pundits probably foresaw was an explosion of repulsive stench. As we speak, the odour from the Ekiti election is still disturbing the nose of the world. Global media is analyzing Nigeria’s brand new variant of electoral corruption which is emerging from our globally acknowledged lush field of corruption. Coming on the heels of an earlier Edo and Ondo…

Sunday, 22 July 2018 03:14

Grand alliance, Ekiti election and 2019 - Jideofor Adibe

The buzz created by the signing on July 9, 2018, of a Memorandum of Understanding between PDP on the one hand and over 30 political parties on the other hand (some media organizations put the number of parties that signed the MOU at over 40) has not fizzled out, when Ekiti State governorship election, with its hype and razzmatazz, beckoned. For some people, Ekiti election was to test the strength of that grand electoral alliance while for others, it was to presage what we should expect in the 2019 presidential election. So is there anything we can glimpse from Ekiti…

Saturday, 21 July 2018 04:30

Tinubu’s breathtaking hypocrisy - Shaka Momodu

When last February President Muhammadu Buhari saddled the former Lagos State governor, Bola Tinubu, with the task of reconciling all aggrieved members of the All Progressives Congress (APC) across the country, I scoffed at the idea and stated then that it was a futile exercise. The reasons were not far-fetched: Buhari by his actions had no genuine desire at reconciling the party members; with Tinubu as the chief aggrieved member, leading such efforts was a misnomer because he needed to be reconciled with some of the party members. I predicted that by the end of his brief, the party would…

Friday, 20 July 2018 04:59

Adeosun’s NYSC Certificate is as Fake as Buhari’s Integrity - Farooq A. Kperogi

The moral outrage over Finance Minister Kemi Adeosun’s obviously forged National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) exemption certificate, which the Nigerian presidency has chosen to strategically ignore in hopes that it will peter out, dramatizes, in more ways than one, the spuriousness of President Muhammadu Buhari’s self-serving claims to embodying “integrity.” Any person who is obsessed with proclaiming his “integrity” at the slightest opportunity but won’t investigate, much less fire, shady characters he has appointed to work with— and for— him can’t possibly be truly a person of integrity. From PTF to The Buhari Organization (TBO), Buhari has consistently protected corrupt…

Wednesday, 18 July 2018 03:54

Why PDP’s loss in Ekiti is bad news for APC and Nigeria - Femi Aribisala

All the treachery, betrayals and double-dealings that formed the bedrock of APC in 2014 has now come back to haunt the party in 2018. With the declaration that Kayode Fayemi has won the gubernatorial election in Ekiti, APC spin-doctors went into overdrive. Lai Mohammed, well-loved by all and sundry for his vacuous bombasts, came out shouting on the rooftops that the Ekiti election is a referendum on the Buhari administration. However, the honorable minister needs a gentle reminder that Buhari was not on the ballot in Ekiti. Femi Adesina, the president’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, also proclaimed: “With…

Wednesday, 18 July 2018 03:52

Hadi Sirika and the return of Nigeria Airways - Reuben Abati

One of the usual features on Nigerian social media is the nostalgic passion with which Nigerians often distribute pictures of the old Nigeria Airways and how that company once considered one of the best in Africa was mismanaged and made to fail. Established in 1958, it was liquidated in 2003. I have seen pictures of old tickets, images of Nigeria Airways pilots and crew, and for anyone who travelled with Nigeria Airways, you cannot but be moved to pity. Pity yes, because while Nigeria, the most populated country in Africa can no longer manage an airline of its own, the…

Tuesday, 17 July 2018 05:10

Buhari’s Executive Order 006 - NIG

Perhaps mindful of the growing perception that the anticorruption crusade of his government ,which was the major plank upon which he was elected, has not been as effective as promised, President Buhari recently sought to add bite to it by issuing Presidential Executive Order 6 of 2018. The order seeks to enforce the temporary forfeiture of property linked TO anyone suspected and accused of engaging in corrupt practices. Section 5 (b) of the order defines corruption or corrupt practices as any corrupt activity ... in excess of N50 million or its equivalent in foreign currency. Paragraph 8 also states that…

Sunday, 15 July 2018 04:03

Adeosun and the certificate narrative - Festus Adedayo

At a Media and the State class which held at the University of Ibadan during the week, I told my audience which comprised Political Science students, that the governance structure in Nigeria had been so compromised by our collective corruption that no public institution is immune from integrity issues. If the students expected that I had come to dress the rostrum with platitudes, they were sorely disappointed. Every word that proceeded from my mouth was laced with distressing sound bites. Having been recommended for the talk by my media and state pedigree, the audience ostensibly expected that my media and…

Saturday, 14 July 2018 04:16

Buhari has been terrible for the North - Chinazor Onianwa

He has not done anything to develop the north since he first became the military governor of northeastern Nigeria. He has done nothing to change the plight of Northerners as shown here: 1. 12 million children are out of school in Nigeria, of which 10 million are from the north whilst Kano state alone has 3 million beggars. Buhari has never addressed the lack of educational pursuit amongst northerners. Rather he would appoint poorly educated northerners to positions of power. 2. Nigeria has the highest number of young girls suffering from Vesico Vaginal Fistula (VVF) in the world. And 90…

More...

Saturday, 14 July 2018 04:10

Further notes on political alliances - Edwin Madunagu

In a previous piece on this subject (Notes on political alliances, July 4, 2018), I proposed that the following three broad objectives have propelled Leftist organisations, at home and abroad, to seek political alliances with non-Leftist formations: to fight or to prevent the emergence of certain forms of dictatorship (e.g. fascism and the one-party state); to expand the existing “democratic space”; or to capture power/accede to office. The aim of the present piece is to extend this proposition in two or three directions and then provide more historical illustrations or instances beyond the one offered in the previous piece. Although…

Friday, 13 July 2018 04:27

Much ado about coalition of opposition parties - Ayo Olukotun

“So, let nobody come and deceive you on corruption, they (APC) are more corrupt than any government I know since 1999…Fighting corruption is not the only responsibility of government” Former Vice President, and presidential hopeful, Atiku Abubakar, July 11, 2018. Anyone who remains in doubt that political campaigns, with their heated rhetoric and partisan narratives, are in full bloom only needs to read the charges hurled at the ruling All Progressives Congress, quoted in the opening paragraph, by a former member of that party, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar. A speech made on the hustings does not enjoy the coherence…

Thursday, 12 July 2018 04:35

Nationalism will go bankrupt - Anatole Kaletsky

Nationalism versus globalism, not populism versus elitism, appears to be this decade’s defining political conflict. Almost wherever we look – at the United States or Italy or Germany or Britain, not to mention China, Russia, and India – an upsurge of national feeling has become the main driving force of political events. By contrast, the supposed rebellion of “common people” against elites has not been much in evidence. Billionaires have taken over US politics under President Donald Trump; unelected professors run the “populist” Italian government; and all over the world, taxes have been slashed on the ever-rising incomes of financiers,…

Tuesday, 10 July 2018 05:26

The Adebayo Adedeji example - Reuben Abati

Professor Adebayo Adedeji, the towering intellectual, scholar, pan-Africanist, international civil servant and pioneer Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and Under-Secretary General of the United Nations (1975 -1991) died on April 25, 2018 at the ripe age of 87. He was buried on July 6, in his home-town of Ijebu-Ode in Ogun State. On July 7, the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) organised a symposium in his honour and memory in Lagos, with the theme: “Africa’s Development Agenda: Lessons from the Adebayo Adedeji years and policy options for the 21st Century.” I was privileged to…

Page 216 of 274

Opinion

More...

Search

Most Read

Editorial

News

Business

Politics

Opinion

Features

Strangely

Crime

Wars

SCIENCE & TECH

SPECIAL REPORTS

Sports

VIDEOS