Letters

The most expensive thing in Nigeria is not petrol, not food or medicines, not even cement. It is memory loss – an epidemic that has obviously been escalated by screen addiction from its initial default mode of poor record-keeping and absence of institutional diligence. Nigeria has met Ebola again. Not with the terror of 2014 […]

Last week, Nigerian journalism enjoyed a double-barrelled celebration of its past. On Monday, marking 40 years of the assassination of Dele Giwa, the founding editor-in-chief of Newswatch magazine, key industry figures gathered in Lagos as NewsWatch launched a book, “Dele Giwa’s Granite Journalism,” in his honour. That was followed on Thursday by the launch, by […]

The Federal Government on Thursday, October 15, 2026, came close to declaring a state of emergency. The full War Council of the country, chaired by the Commander-in-Chief, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, gave clear directives to the security agencies that war should be carried to the criminals, the captives in the country should be rescued and […]

I am afraid of flying, yet I never get tired of hearing pilots talk about it. I have some pilot friends, and whenever they describe what it is like to fly these huge birds, I listen like a child at bedtime. Think about it: a machine weighing many tonnes, cruising more than 30,000 feet above […]

This week, families of prospective National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members have been thrown into panic after gunmen reportedly attacked two buses travelling from Ibadan to orientation camps in Abia and Akwa Ibom. Several corps members were abducted, with reports that the kidnappers demanded N50 million ransom for each victim. It is not an isolated […]

It takes a lot of courage to travel on Nigerian roads these days. Preparations for such trips take different forms, depending on the faith of the travellers. Some endlessly recite Psalms 91 and 121, Qur’anic verses such as Ayat al-Kursi, Surah Al-Falaq, and Surah An-Nas, or traditional incantations before embarking on such journeys. The fear […]

Politics, Harold Lasswell reminded us, is about who gets what, when, and how. In Nigeria today, that question has acquired unsettling new dimensions: who is entitled to contest, under which party, on the authority of which register, following which primary, and under what version of the law. The Supreme Court’s verdict penultimate Thursday rendered that […]

Today, Nigeria stands at a harrowing crossroads, marking 66 years of independence from colonial rule with an agonising question: has it fared any better? As the giant of Africa limps through this anniversary, citizens are trapped in a relentless economic stranglehold. The air is thick with despair, and the nation is bleeding. What is the […]

“Hopes and Impediments” is the title of a 1988 collection of essays by the legendary writer, Chinua Achebe, and it is perhaps the most appropriate phrase to describe Nigeria’s present condition as the country celebrates its 66thindependence anniversary on October 1. At 66, Nigeria is “biologically”, a mature nation – no person that attains such […]

The Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank of Nigeria took a bold step last week. The Committee dropped the monetary policy rate with a bang. It was long overdue, but the drop was more than expected. The CBN reset the monetary policy rate from 26 per cent to 23 per cent. The action was […]

There was a time when democracy was spoken of with almost religious reverence. Men and women marched, protested, suffered detention and exile, all in pursuit of a system that promised freedom, accountability and government by the people. Democracy was presented as the antidote to arbitrariness, a departure from impunity and a pathway to responsible leadership. […]

Would you mind this page waxing philosophical today by using the tenant as a metaphor to talk to the Nigerian political elite who seem to always forget that their stay in high political office, as president, governor, minister, commissioner, local government chairman or board member, will be temporary at the end of the day? They […]