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Opinion

Thursday, 25 January 2018 03:17

How will a breakthrough come? - Edwin Madunagu

About five years ago, in late January and early February 2013, The Guardian published my three – part column titled Struggling for seats in a sinking boat. When, recently, I examined the first part of that series (the one that appeared on January 31, 2013), I was struck by the freshness of what I wrote. For a moment I thought I was commenting on the current situation. Let me reproduce just a paragraph from that article: “Nigeria is currently like a sinking boat: Boko Haram; corruption and political economy of class and state robbery; state delinquency (that is rapidly acquiring…

Thursday, 25 January 2018 03:15

Aisha, Obasanjo and Buhari’s burden - Olusegun Adeniyi

Conventional wisdom teaches that when you get to a situation where your friends and enemies are singing from the same page on issues affecting you, it is time to reflect on what you are doing wrong. Against the background of a groundswell of disaffection to his stewardship and the yet-to-be declared aspiration for a second term, that wisdom will serve President Muhammadu Buhari very well. For a man who came to office with much adulation, the president has squandered such enormous goodwill that he is now the object of all manner of unpleasant memes on social media, including those being…

Tuesday, 23 January 2018 04:21

Aisha Buhari: The critic in the other room - Reuben Abati

Mrs Aisha M. Buhari, the wife of President Muhammadu Buhari is probably the most loved person in Nigeria today, especially by critics of her husband’s administration. She first came to our notice in this regard when in the course of her ailing husband’s medical vacation in London, she famously declared through BBC Hausa Service that the Buhari administration had been hijacked by a cabal. Long before anybody raised the issue, she was the first to observe that President Buhari has no business seeking a second term in office the way he was carrying on. She even added that she would…

Monday, 22 January 2018 03:26

The right question about inequality and growth - Jason Furman

The belief that inequality hurts economic growth is gaining currency among policymakers. Some argue forcefully that high levels of inequality can make sustained growth impossible, and may even contribute to recessions. This view stands in stark contrast to the traditional view that there is a tradeoff between equality and growth, and that greater inequality is a price that must be paid for higher output. Lost in the discussion, however, is whether any of this is actually germane to economic policymaking. I don’t believe it is. Whether inequality is good or bad for growth should and will continue to concern social…

Monday, 22 January 2018 03:22

Nigeria: It’s just few hours to Kigali - Festus Adedayo

Narratives of hatred and violence are similar all over the world. Take for instance Hitler’s Nazis. Jews were subhuman and were comparable only to maggots, lice and rats, the narrative went. In pre and post-President Juvenal Habyarimana of Rwanda’s murder in April, 1994, (the Falcon 50 aircraft conveying him and Burundi’s President, Cyprien Ntaryamira, as well as twelve presidential aides, was shot down) the narrative was not dissimilar. Two surface-to-air missiles had been shot at Habyarimana’s jet as it made to land at the Kigali airport. Hutus christened their ethnic neighbours – the Tutsis, with whom they had been living…

Sunday, 21 January 2018 03:09

Why I stand with Buhari - Femi Adesina

These are very difficult times in our country. Sad, mournful and dolorous times, as the New Year opened with killings in Rivers, Kaduna, Taraba, and Benue states, among others. Of course, there had been gruesome carnage on the Mambilla plateau mid last year, and bloodletting in Numan, Adamawa State, as well as in other places. Hell suddenly seemed to have enlarged itself against Nigeria. Sincere condolences to those who are grieving and mourning the loss of loved ones. But instead of finding solutions, and joining to chart the way forward, some people are making political capital out of the killings.…

Sunday, 21 January 2018 03:08

Buhari: Blessed are those who knew beforehand - Kayode Samuel

In John 20:29, Jesus said to Thomas, the doubting disciple, "...because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." And I say, blessed are those who did not need herdsmen's massacres and the northernisation of security apparatus to believe that an evil was about to befall the land in those heady days of the 2015 Change! campaign. Don't mind me ooo, I'm not the Bible guru that this post may suggest. Just ruminating over the vocals now emitting from the Benue elders...

Sunday, 21 January 2018 03:06

Abortion rights go against the spirit of civil rights - Michael Gerson

Forty-five years after Roe v. Wade was decided, the right to abortion that the Supreme Court discerned remains controversial and disputed.The expectation of legal abortion is deeply embedded in U.S. law and practice. Many states were lifting restrictions on the procedure even before Roe. Justice Harry Blackmun’s landmark decision seized upon an existing social trend. According to a May 2017 Gallup poll, 78 percent of Americans think abortion should be legal in some or all circumstances. A constitutional amendment against abortion — favored by many social conservatives — is a practical impossibility.But the Supreme Court created a legal regime more…

Friday, 19 January 2018 03:17

Bakare, Mbaka, Williams, others: It’s time to do it again - Oluwamuyiwa Okuseinde

The situation in which we have found ourselves in Nigeria today does not require any elucidation. It is clear enough even for the blind to see. But just in case you require that the obvious should be restated to you, you may read Pastor Tunde Bakare's beautiful piece on the ugly state of our nation. I have tried to mind my own business, staying clear of making overt documented remarks on public affairs of our nation for decades. But to further stay quiet is assuming a criminal dimension because, at the end of the day, Nigeria too is my business.…

Friday, 19 January 2018 03:15

Fulani herdsmen and the logic of false consensus - Jideofor Adibe

Many adults can remember the ‘class idiot’ in their primary and secondary school days. Virtually every class had its own ‘idiot’ – someone who was always the butt of jokes for either being an academic or social misfit or both. Ironically whenever the ‘class idiot’ decided to quit the school, another idiot would quickly be invented to replace him as the butt of jokes. The new class idiot would mostly likely be one of the victimisers of the former class idiot. We can use this class idiot theory to explain the profiling of the Fulani ethnic group in the light…

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Thursday, 18 January 2018 04:07

As Benue unites in grief ... - Kayode Samuel

I guess many have now forgotten that Benue is actually an APC state and that Ogbeh and Ortom are indeed members of the same party. It's what happens whenever you try to elevate some changeable alphabets and party labels over and above the real concerns of the people. Today in Benue, APC vs PDP has taken a back seat as the people confront an existential threat. I hope that the same thing doesn't need to happen to Nigeria before we all come back to our senses...

Tuesday, 16 January 2018 03:22

The season of recanting - Reuben Abati

“I wish I could travel to the US right now” “Why? Why not wait till summer time?”“No, I feel like going there physically to tell President Donald Trump exactly how I feel about the statements he has been making about the black world.”“You don’t need to go to the US to do that. Follow him on twitter and tell him what you feel.”“I am just angry.”“We all are. Each time the man opens his mouth, pure shit comes out. I mean, he has lowered the dignity of the office of the American President.”“You know when he said Haiti and African…

Monday, 15 January 2018 05:04

It is time to renegotiate our union - Tunde Bakare

Introduction For today’s State of the Nation broadcast, I have chosen as a theme: “It is Time to Renegotiate our Union,” and for the texts of Scripture, please turn your Bible with me to Jeremiah 8:20-22 & 9:1-9. Fellow Nigerians: Happy 2018 once again. This year promises to be an unusual one and a turning point in the history of our nation. In conveying my optimistic salutations, I am not unmindful of the unpleasant circumstances that characterised the turn of the year, including the fact that the first “Merry Christmas” uttered by many Nigerians was to their fellow compatriots in…

Monday, 15 January 2018 04:14

Leftists in electoral politics - Edwin Madunagu

The Calabar Group of Socialists (CGS) was in power at the local government level between March 1988 and May 1989. That was during the political transition programme of the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida. But the group came to power in the old Calabar Municipality (comprising the present Calabar Municipality and the Calabar South Local Government Area) not through a coup d’etat, but by means of a non-party nation-wide election. This particular experience in popular electoral struggle and revolutionary exercise of power in a non-revolutionary national setting may be retold here for record purposes and for its enduring political…

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