Cornucopia, a word with Latin origin and Greek history, comes from the Latin cornu copiae, which translates literally to “horn of plenty.” Cornucopia is believed to represent the horn of a goat in Greek mythology. Legend has it that it was from this horn that the god, Zeus, was fed as an infant. Later, the horn was filled with flowers and fruits and given as a present to Zeus. The word first appeared in English in the early 16th century; a century later, it developed the figurative sense of an overflowing supply. And so, cornucopia means abundance, plenty, an inexhaustible…

As we were crawling into bed, the full investiture of Okon Anthony Okon as the Babajiro of Yanmuyanmu took place at a colourful ceremony at Orile Yanmu on the ancient route to the old capital of Oyo Empire. Dressed in traditional regalia and adorned with the ancient Akoko leaf, the impossible Calabar boy was quite a sight to behold. An elated and tipsy Okon took a look at snooper and yelled: “Oga, se you know say I don become your oga now?” An embarrassed and crestfallen snooper quickly disappeared into the crowd before the mad boy could compel his master…

In October 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel over its occupation of the Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula, two Arab territories. With the now-defunct Soviet Union (read Russia) backing Egypt and Syria, the US automatically queued behind Israel. Arab countries, in solidary with Egypt and Syria, retaliated by placing an oil embargo on the West. Crude oil prices skyrocketed. The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) became awash with raw cash. Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, a Venezuelan politician and lawyer who co-founded the oil cartel in 1960, promptly nicknamed crude oil “the devil’s excreta” as petrodollars…

A little over a week ago, on a Qatar Airways flight journeying to Doha, city of the current World Cup fiesta, I saw a film which clearly depicts the raging back-and-forth arguments between the Arab World and the West. A Betty Kathungu-Furet film, The Medicine Man is a Kenyan Swahili movie subtitled in English. It has as one of its major themes, the danger of orthodoxy and the barrier that a stagnated belief constitutes to human progress. Lead character, Ben Muriithi, a medical doctor working in the State Hospital in Nairobi, hails from a family line of traditional healers as…