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Opinion

Sunday, 18 February 2018 04:26

Language as development: The Lagos example - Festus Adedayo

A creative edge was brought into governmental policy decisions last week. It was the unassuming but very consequential policy of the Akinwumi Ambode government of Lagos State to rescue the Yoruba language from extinction and revive its utility as midwife of development. Henceforth, candidates seeking admission into all tertiary institutions in the state, according to the state Yoruba Language Preservation and Preservation Law, must possess credit pass in Yoruba Language. It is compulsory for all primary and secondary schools – private or public – to make the teaching of Yoruba Language a core subject at all levels. The purpose, according…

Saturday, 17 February 2018 03:38

The tyranny of convenience - Tim Wu

Convenience is the most underestimated and least understood force in the world today. As a driver of human decisions, it may not offer the illicit thrill of Freud’s unconscious sexual desires or the mathematical elegance of the economist’s incentives. Convenience is boring. But boring is not the same thing as trivial. In the developed nations of the 21st century, convenience — that is, more efficient and easier ways of doing personal tasks — has emerged as perhaps the most powerful force shaping our individual lives and our economies. This is particularly true in America, where, despite all the paeans to…

Friday, 16 February 2018 03:33

For Muhammed, February is not about love - Dare Babarinsa

February 13, 1976, was General Murtala Ramat Muhammed’s death day. Our historical trajectory may have taken a different path had Muhammed escaped his assassins 42 years ago. But he did not and we paid and continue to pay dearly for it. Muhammed led an extraordinary life. His death, dramatic and shocking, reverberated across the world. When he came to power on July 29, 1975, it was in a bloodless coup ending the nine-year-old regime of General Yakubu Gowon. The coup was a well-choreographed events and everything moved with military precision. Gowon was away for an Organisation of African Unity Summit.…

Friday, 16 February 2018 03:31

Are ‘Digital Age’ leaders really the answer? - Jideofor Adibe

One of the important issues highlighted by innuendo in Obasanjo’s recent letter to Buhari on the basis of which the Ota General advised him to forego any second term ambition is the issue of his age. Buhari is officially 75 years old.Babangida sought to reinforce Obasanjo’s call for Buhari not to go for a second term by underlining Buhari’s age as a disqualifier. As the Minna General put it: “In 2019 and beyond, we should come to a national consensus that we need new breed leadership with requisite capacity to manage our diversities and jump-start a process of launching the…

Tuesday, 13 February 2018 04:32

To NatGeo: A story idea on Nigerian animals - Reuben Abati

Dear Editor, NatGeo, I am a great fan of your magazine, National Geographic, and your sister platform, National Geo Wild, and your coverage of natural history, particularly the behaviour of animals in the wild. I must commend you and your organization for the high level of commitment, attentiveness to details and professionalism consistently and habitually displayed in your various reports both in print and the broadcast form. As a journalist of many years standing myself, I will like to suggest to you and your various channels, a story idea that you may probably find interesting, for professional reasons and for…

Monday, 12 February 2018 04:17

IBB, Catholic bishops and Buhari’s pillows - Festus Adedayo

Of a truth, Nigeria is a very great country. Each time you are downcast, wondering why providence was this unkind to have herded you among this lot, something to cheer just juts out from the dark to brighten your face. It tells you that Nigeria may not be a lost case after all. The past years have been very dispiriting for those who trade opinions about how society should be run through public commentaries in Nigeria. You ask yourself repeatedly if it makes sense to engage in this ritual of soliloquy when those who are to interrogate issues you raise…

Sunday, 11 February 2018 04:29

Sun Tzu vs. Clausewitz: Obasanjo and Babangida compared - Jideofor Adibe

The dust had not properly settled on Obasanjo’s call on Buhari not to seek a second term when Babangida, Nigeria’s only military President, in a statement issued on his behalf by his long-term spokesman Kassim Afegbua, reinforced that message by suggesting that Buhari, as an ‘analogue’ leader, should step aside for younger ‘digital’ leaders to take charge. However barely 24 hours after Babangida’s uncharacteristic straightforward message, came another press release, personally signed by Babangida himself, in which he repudiated the earlier statement issued on his behalf by Kassim Afegbua. In his purported repudiation of Afegbua’s press release on his behalf,…

Friday, 09 February 2018 03:55

Before the next round - Edwin Madunagu

I am inviting our country’s popular-democratic forces, especially the Nigerian Left, to join me in looking back once again. We have to look as the Nigerian state and the various fractions, factions, groups and blocs of the ruling class now begin to take the country through another political turbulence that will end in a reconstitution of their political representation. It is this reconstitution of its “political class” that the ruling class calls election. This opening clarification leads to an opening proposition, namely: that if the Nigerian Left consciously, responsibly and seriously adopts electoralism, it is only its participation in elections…

Friday, 09 February 2018 03:51

Of drowning men and national security - Reuben Abati

Jimoh Moshood, the current Police Public Relations officer in Abuja is probably the most unprofessional occupier of that office since 1999. His lack of professionalism and ready capacity to perpetually say the wrong thing at the right time is the reason why he should be relieved forthwith of that important position. He obviously loves the Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris more than Ibrahim Idris loves himself. When subordinates are sworn to that kind of oath of sycophancy, they do more harm than good. So it is with Jimoh Moshood who went on Channels Television this week to declare that…

Friday, 09 February 2018 03:50

Three old men in the ring - Dare Babarinsa

The people of Lafia trooped out last Tuesday to welcome the nation’s number one citizen to Nasarawa State. The enthusiastic welcome was an indication that Buhari still pack a lot of muscle and those who are thinking of taking him on should consider what they are up against. However, it is clear too that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is restive and rebellion is rearing its head from unexpected quarters. This is more so when its reign, despite the resounding victory Buhari recorded in 2015, now seems precarious if not endangered. Buhari is the first politician to lead the…

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Wednesday, 07 February 2018 04:10

What’s IBB up to? - Olatunji Dare

President Muhammadu Buhari and his senior aides must have spent this past weekend trying to decipher the inner meaning and long-term implications of broadsides about his Administration released for public consumption last week by two of his predecessors. The first, from former President Olusegun Obasanjo, was a no-hold-barred excoriation. There is no doubting its author, for it is composed in the blunt, sledge-hammer tradition of political pamphleteering that is his trademark. He painted in broad strokes what he regarded as Buhari’s failures, urged him not to seek a second term, and announced he was going to convene a Coalition for…

Tuesday, 06 February 2018 03:22

What exactly is Babangida saying? - Reuben Abati

The drama, the controversy, the confusion, the double entendre, attended by seeming cowardice, that grew around a statement, perhaps the statements, purportedly issued by former military President Ibrahim Babangida on Sunday, February 4, is absolutely unnecessary, unfortunate and utterly avoidable. A statesman, the new role in which President Babangida has since found himself, is a father of the nation –more or less, that is; the statesman’s role in the retirement corridors of power is to speak truth to power, as a guide, as a conscience of the nation, as role model and as a highly-placed influencer. Being a statesman thus…

Monday, 05 February 2018 04:13

Buhari: The making of a tragic hero - Abraham Ogbodo

The Aristotelian perspective defines the tragic hero as being complete in all the indices of greatness, but lacking in an essential character trait that makes all the difference. This is called the tragic flaw in literary theory and criticism. But for this tiny character failure, which occasions the tragedy, the tragic hero will have arrived safely at destination in the great journey called life. This was when tragedy was defined as the exclusive experience of kings and princes. That definition changed with the advent of the 20th Century American playwright and essayist, Arthur Miller, who made everyman (not only noble…

Monday, 05 February 2018 04:12

The stupid economy - Harold James

Most discussions about the march of robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) have understandably concentrated on fears of massive job losses. But the implications of these technologies are actually far more terrifying. We have been brought to the brink of an alarming evolutionary transformation, not just of human capacities, but of the individual self. History provides only a partial guide for the uncertain future we face. What we know from the first Industrial Revolution is that new technologies can fundamentally alter humans and other species. The key to this process, according to Cambridge University’s Tony Wrigley, the great historian of the…

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