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Opinion

Wednesday, 18 May 2016 01:45

Buhari's inconsistent management of fuel subsidies leaves loyalists confused

Frisky Larr An unnecessary own-goal indeed. Who doesn’t remember Muhammadu Buhari’s infamous interview before he became President? He talked elaborately about fuel subsidies, stressing very clearly that the measure was a fraud and that he hardly understood what it was all about. So far, so good. He went further to express his dismay, how we got to where we are, asking repeatedly who was subsidizing who. He emphasized clearly, how shortfalls in domestic supply were managed during his days as Minister of Petroleum Resources when the refineries were dysfunctional in the wake of Turn Around Maintenance. Muhammadu Buhari, the private…

Tuesday, 17 May 2016 11:20

Troubled ghosts in the soul of promise

Pat Utomi These times are times of a patriot’s nightmare in Nigeria. Conduct is zero-sum. From extreme ends, the pressure is high to smother intelligent public conversation and typecast those who dare to raise their voices. As citizenship behaviour retreats, you see threats to the promise of Nigeria. At the security level, it goes from gruesome murders by herdsmen, pipelines being blown up by militants, to the Boko Haram savaging of the North-East and kidnappings and armed robberies elsewhere. At the economic policy level, we see a worsening of the misery index as people cannot find fuel or jobs. And…

Tuesday, 17 May 2016 04:52

Nigeria: We have been fantastically deceived

Tunde Asaju A morally corrupt David Cameron goes to visit Mama Charlie and in the frontal view of television cameras, describes Naija and Afghanistan as two 'fantastically corrupt countries' he has invited to a London anti-corruption summit. Our elders say that when you want to send a message to a deaf person, you send it through her children. Some said the outburst was a gaffe but I believe it's Britain's diplomatic way of passing an insult. Mama Charlie herself has been caught on camera describing Chinese officials as very rude. Unlike hailers who descended on Cameron for adding a new,…

Monday, 16 May 2016 12:55

Lai Mohammed is a lie

There was always going to be a minister who would emerge as more intoxicated by his new station than other members of the cabinet, one who would win the shameful honor of being the first in the new administration to be outed for abuse of office, one who would generate a needless but tectonic scandal that the president has to answer with the swift rebuke of a sack –at the very least!Early in the day, Abdulrahman Dambazzau, the minister of internal affairs, came close to being that man. His outrageous indiscretion of demanding, receiving, and relishing the cleaning of his…

Monday, 16 May 2016 11:22

The price of delayed adjustment

Simon Kolawole Now that the pump price of petrol has nearly doubled, we can officially conclude that President Muhammadu Buhari has finally blinked. For a man of the masses, we can assume that this was a very difficult decision for him. The truth is: any upward adjustment in the price of petrol increases the cost of living and worsens economic hardship, even if in the short run. Transportation is a major component of the cost of living in Nigeria. It is not just about commuting; we are transporting goods and services. We are powering our homes and businesses with generators.…

Monday, 16 May 2016 01:47

FG denial of Fulani role in massacres protects terror sponsors

Peregrino Brimah Quoting from a statement by the Federal Government of Nigeria as delivered by Minister of Agriculture, Heineken Lokpobiri on May 10th: “Available statistics to us in government show that contrary to media report that these violent herdsmen are the conventional Nigerian Fulanis, they are not, as none of those apprehended was able to speak any of the Nigerian languages. This gives strong credence to the possibility of the violent herdsmen to be another form of terrorists in the mode of Boko Haram. The problem is not Nigeria, but regional, more so, when the Nigerian Fulani man has always…

Sunday, 15 May 2016 07:39

Social media and the English language

Reuben Abati I get confused these days reading many of the posts on social media, and text messages sent through cell phones, because of the kind of new English that young people now write. The English language is without doubt quite dynamic. In the last 200 years, it has lent itself to many innovations, as cultural, religious, and situational codes have transformed the language and extended the dictionary, with new words and idioms. The kind of new English being written by twitter and what’s app users, particularly young people is however so frightening and lamentable, because it is beginning to…

Saturday, 14 May 2016 01:38

The busy person's lies

Laura Vanderkam How's life? Oh, busy. So goes the mindless modern conversation — a constant assertion of the scarcity of time. A December Gallup poll found that 61 percent of working Americans said they did not have enough time to do the things they wanted to do. Some of us feel this more acutely than others: A 2015 Pew Research Center survey found that 9 in 10 working mothers said they felt rushed all or some of the time. In an attempt to understand this frenzy, I spent the past 12 months studying my own time during what might turn…

Friday, 13 May 2016 05:01

President Buhari, Cameron and corruption

Reuben Abati “We have got the leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain… Nigeria and Afghanistan, possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world”, UK Prime Minister David Cameron was caught on tape telling the Queen ahead of the anti-corruption summit organized by the UK Government, this week, which was attended by Nigerian President, Muhammadu Buhari. This diplomatic gaffe rubbed many Nigerians on the wrong side, but most of the responses, coloured by overtly emotional love of country and a certain defensiveness is downright hypocritical. We all know that indeed Nigeria is “fantastically corrupt”, and that is…

Thursday, 12 May 2016 00:30

Nigerian govt must stop rejecting the Naira as a legal tender

SKC Ogbonnia Section 20 of the CBN Act of 2007 clearly states that the Naira “shall be legal tender in Nigeria at their face value for the payment of any amount.” Yet this law has meant nothing to many Nigerian businesses which commonly reject the Naira in preference to the US Dollar. But these businesses are not alone. The Nigerian government is also guilty of the same charge. Perhaps this practice is not new by any stretch and far predates the current Buhari government, but an eye-witness account below exposes a specious dynamic. Ikenga, a fellow Nigerian citizen resident in…

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Wednesday, 11 May 2016 01:38

After my trip to Nigeria, I hoped to help my mother heal her scars of war

Karen Attiah When I learned last year that I would be going to northeastern Nigeria, I was more afraid of what my mother would say than I was of encountering Boko Haram militants. I broke the news to her over the phone two weeks before I was to leave. I held my breath as I finished telling her about my plans. “You know how I feel about Nigeria,” she said, after a pause, with an exasperated sigh. While I was growing up, my mother, Grace, rarely talked about her childhood in Nigeria. It’s only in the past few years that…

Tuesday, 10 May 2016 02:46

Enugu Killings 4th Dimension

Benjamin Obiajulu Aduba The killings in Enugu is a done deal but should be made to be the turning point of Boko Haram’s southward incursions. Let history understand that the point where the dead martyrs of Enugu were buried was the furthest and the last stop of the terrorists. That here was where we stood and declared that we will not take any more nonsense. Here’s how: 1. Burials of the dead: Let’s bury the dead one at a time and make each burial as gruesome and emotional as possible. The dead should be carried around the entire LGA with…

Monday, 09 May 2016 05:54

Putting the herdsmen issue in the right perspective

Olusegun Adeniyi: Early in 2012, I took my son to the birthday of a classmate of his at Maitama Amusement Park, Abuja where I noticed a familiar face. As I muttered almost to myself, “is that not Mrs. Maryam Abacha?” my son, then eight years old, replied in the affirmative. “Yes, that is his grandmother. His grandfather was General Sani Abacha that you wrote about in your book.” Although I didn’t say anything to that, my son then added: “They say his grandfather was a very wicked man. But he (the classmate) is not wicked. He is a good person.”…

Sunday, 08 May 2016 00:49

Lucy Kibaki’s death: Africa’s most violent First Lady

Reuben Abati Lucy Muthoni Kibaki was buried yesterday, 9.12 am, Nigerian time, in Othaya, Njeri County, Kenya in the presence of about 300 guests and family members, after a requiem mass attended by over 3, 000 dignitaries and 20, 000 mourners. She was the wife of President Mwai Kibaki, the third President of Kenya, in office from 2002 -2013. She is definitely, one of Kenya’s most controversial public figures in the last 50 years. There has been no other First Lady like her in the history of Kenya and perhaps in the whole of Africa. It was indeed not suprising…

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