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Opinion

Thursday, 21 March 2024 05:02

How capitalism became a threat to democracy - Mordecai Kurz

Does free-market capitalism buttress democracy, or does it unleash anti-democratic forces? This question first emerged in the Age of Enlightenment, when capitalism was viewed optimistically and welcomed as a vehicle of liberation from the rigid feudal order. Many envisioned an equal-opportunity society of small producers and consumers, where no one would have undue market power, and where prices would be determined by the “invisible hand.” Under such conditions, democracy and capitalism are two sides of the same coin. Domestic propaganda in the United States has pushed the same optimistic vision over the past century, aiming to convince voters that free-market…

Wednesday, 20 March 2024 04:31

For Jimi Solanke - Niyi Osundare

(Maestro with a Thousand Masks) I The last time we met Our laughter rang through the concert hallThe evening was young, with you readying up For a long expected show Your crowd was large and young and old But their ageless longingRode the crest of the wind as you Swung and swayed in your purple moments You sighted me from a distance Ploughed through the foldTo meet me in the threshold of Of a wide and busy door. A warm embrace, then our customary question: “When shall we have the collabo?”*A cryptic code over thirty years old Born when Songs…

Tuesday, 19 March 2024 04:50

When the Chief Justice brings the judiciary to ridicule - Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

On 27 February, Nigeria’s National Judicial Institute (NJI) in Abuja opened a continuing education course for judges. The opening featured an address by the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Olukayode Ariwoola, who invited the participants to eschew “unethical conduct that could expose the judiciary to ridicule.” Beneath his text, it seemed as if the Chief Justice desired to warn the participants to stay away from interfering with a brief that he has chosen to make entirely his own. Under his watch, judicial appointments in Nigeria have become corruptly farcical. The fortnight before this address, it emerged that the CJN’s daughter-in-law,…

Monday, 18 March 2024 04:21

Tinubu, beware the gathering clouds (2) - Hassan Gimba

Last week, we read how the signs are not looking good for a nation like ours that wants to be reckoned with internationally. We concluded by asking the federal government to look at ways to reduce the cost of governance and the unimaginable take-home pay of political leaders and redirect the excess towards production. And we emphasised that we must become a productive nation that eats, drives and wears what it produces. We also exhorted anyone genuinely interested in the welfare of workers, and of Nigerians, to proffer solutions that would boost our economy and strengthen our currency and not…

Monday, 18 March 2024 04:20

Misguided elites arrest Nigeria’s economic development with wrong focus - Justice J Faloye

It's obvious that Ignorance competes with corruption in our arrested development since all major presidential candidates and the intelligentsia supported subsidies removal and floating the Naira that have turned out to be an economic disaster, because they overlooked the fact that every advanced industrialized economy was built on and continue to be stimulated with production and consumption subsidies. This reaffirms my November 22, 2022 article "2023: Neocolonial administrators or Economic revolutionaries” that the political class were just neocolonial administrators that couldn't uplift the masses from poverty. The coloniality of knowledge sources mentally enslaves and robs them of knowledge of how…

Sunday, 17 March 2024 04:55

Abdul Ningi and the ‘Apapin’ fraternity - Festus Adedayo

Talented filmmaker, Tunde Kelani, recalibrated a popular Yoruba folklore in his famous Agogo Ewo (the forbidden gong) movie. A supremacy battle ensued between Eledumare – God, and Land. The two earthly ancient principalities had gone hunting and jointly killed an Emo rat. When it was time for sharing of the game, both got locked in a duel on who was the eldest and thus should take the chunkiest part of the animal. Armistice could not be found. In unspeakable display of greed, Land eloped with the totality of the ground game. Furious at this despicable treatment, Eledumare relocated from the…

Sunday, 17 March 2024 04:54

The Holy Ghost In our valleys of dry bones - Taiwo Akinola

So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army ~ Ezekiel 37:10. Introduction: True to life, certain unpleasant scenarios occasionally occur on the path of our journeys of destiny. Times come when we are fully pregnant with royal ideas and highly expectant of full expressions, yet the power to deliver does not show up. At such times, we feel that we've reached the limits of our strength, and yet a demand is made for more steam to go forward. The glories within our…

Sunday, 17 March 2024 04:53

Article of faith: The God who kills before He makes alive - Femi Aribisala

Jesus met a man who had been sick for 38 years and asked him a strange question: “Do you want to be healed?” (John 5:6). “What kind of question is that?” I asked the Lord. “How can You ask a man who has been sick for that long if he would like to be healed?” The Lord replied: “Femi, I asked him that because sickness was his life.” I was a bit slow on the uptake. “What does that mean?” The Lord said emphatically: “I said sickness was his life. He had known nothing but sickness. To save him, I…

Saturday, 16 March 2024 04:26

Can we restructure the neocolonial political system without its economic foundation? - Justice J. Faloye

Unless we rely on anarchy and total system collapse to push complete political Restructuring, we need a quorum of two thirds, 66%, of votes, but with only about four states being financially viable, it might be a tall order to expect financially dependent states to vote for true fiscal federalism. Therefore it might be wise to address the colonial foundations of the Nigeria economy that has skewed development towards only a few states. Nevertheless, low hanging fruits like State Police demands could be achieved, but things like true representative democracy whereby ethnicities are empowered to vote out states to join…

Friday, 15 March 2024 04:42

The famished road to Kuriga - Azu Ishiekwene

The journey to Kuriga in southern Kaduna, North-west Nigeria, did not start with the kidnap of 287 students last week. In the early 1990s a neighbouring town, Zangon Kataf, was the boiling point. About a decade later, the beast of sectarian violence, which had reared its head in Kaduna, surfaced several hundreds of miles away in two major places that have become the epicentres of insurgency: Borno and Yobe States, both in the North-east. Even though misery travelled southwards aided by Mohammed Yusuf, the itinerant extremist Muslim preacher in Yobe whose activities heightened the rise of extremism in the early…

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Thursday, 14 March 2024 04:45

School kidnaps: Another APC hen comes home to roost - Abimbola Adelakun

Exactly one month to this day in 2014, Nigeria became the subject of international interest when 276 students of Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State, were kidnapped by the terrorist group Boko Haram. The brazenness and the novelty of the Chibok incident turned many Nigerians into conspiracy theorists. In those days, the All Progressives Congress/Congress for Progressive Change was the so-called opposition, and they really dug a spear into former President Goodluck Jonathan’s side. Bola Tinubu was the leader of the APC. Then Borno governor, Kashim Shettima, could not devise enough ways to stitch up the Jonathan administration…

Wednesday, 13 March 2024 04:45

The brink - W.J. Hennigan

Today’s generation of weapons — many of which are fractions of the size of the bombs America dropped in 1945 but magnitudes more deadly than conventional ones — poses an unpredictable threat. It hangs over battlefields in Ukraine as well as places where the next war might occur: the Persian Gulf, the Taiwan Strait, the Korean Peninsula. This is one story of what’s at stake — if even one small nuclear weapon were used — based on modeling, research and hundreds of hours of interviews with people who have lived through an atomic detonation, dedicated their lives to studying nuclear…

Tuesday, 12 March 2024 04:25

The mystery gunman and other myths from the East - Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

On 15 October, 1965, as political uncertainty and violence raged in Western Nigeria, Ladoke Akintola, the regional premier, was due to deliver a primetime radio broadcast to his people at 19:00. Some minutes before the appointed hour, an armed, unmasked and bearded young man appeared in the studio and required Akinwande Oshin, head of the newsroom at the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation (WNBC) to substitute the recorded broadcast of the premier with a tape provided by the gunman. At the appointed hour, the entire region – including the premier – listened as the voice from the gunman’s tape exhorted the…

Monday, 11 March 2024 04:37

Tinubu, beware the gathering dark clouds (1) - Hassan Gimba

I do not want to believe that in a country of close to 250 million people, I am the only one who thinks there is a gathering of ominous dark clouds over our dear country beginning from the North. I cannot afford that foolish and lazy thought even if I wanted to dream so, because it is that type of thinking that brought us to this sorry pass. Yes. Not long ago, we had a leader who believed he knew more than everybody and was better than everybody. And surprisingly, many northerners believed he was the only upright person in…

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