Opinions

It is just as well that South African telecoms giant MTN has paid nearly $100 million of the $1.7 billion fine for failing to disconnect unregistered SIM cards in Nigeria. Tony Ojobo, spokesman for the Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC), disclosed Friday that MTN has already paid N80 billion of the total fine of N330 billion. […]

Amid the apparent failure of the federal government to pay state governments their share of monthly allocation from the Federation Account (FA), the Buhari administration’s defensive fulminations at suggestions that the country is broke, amounts to an ostrich evasion that is a recipe for social cataclysm and possible violent implosion of the polity over a […]

The worst nightmare to an arm dealer is for a government to make move for a peace deal. The same is true with importers.  And today, that has become the case of the executive arm of the present administration. The move by the National Assembly to do their legislative business, has suddenly become a threat […]

I once wrote about Nigeria’s “children of anger”, but the country seems to have progressed from anger to clinical depression, resulting in a rise not merely in social aggressiveness, but a determination by certain individuals to escape from it all. The percentage of Nigerians seeking escape through suicide nonetheless remains small relative to the size […]

I learnt an enduring lesson on the day General Sani Abacha died. It was June 8, 1998, and death had laid its icy hands on the maximum ruler, and the scepter had fallen from the grip of the king. I was deputy editor of National Concord, the newspaper owned by Basorun M.K. O Abiola, the […]

The Senate, for the second time, rejected President Muhammadu Buhari’s nomination of Ibrahim Magu as EFCC chairman on grounds of adverse report by the Department of State Security Services (DSS). His first attempt at confirmation was rejected in December 2016 on the same ground. Obviously the second time rejection has raised several questions and spawned […]

Permit me to begin this contribution with an aside. The barbarians that launched a terror attack in Westminster, London yesterday in which four people were killed and many more injured are the same type of people that attacked and beheaded the sons and daughters of Ile Ife in their own homes and on their own […]

The call by Senator Ali Ndume (APC-Borno South) for the Senate Committee on Ethics and Privileges to investigate allegations that a N298 million bullet proof Range Rover sports utility vehicle, which was imported into the country allegedly with fake documents belongs to Senate President Bukola Saraki, is a rigmarole that is begging the issue. The […]

The March 8, 2017, crisis in Ile Ife between the host Yoruba community and the settler Hausa community that led to the unfortunate loss of lives on both sides has further exposed the delicate nature of our union as a nation and the need to find urgent solutions to these crises which have bedeviled our […]

Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, a former speaker of Nigeria’s House of Representatives and current governor of Sokoto state, mainstreamed the term “body language” into our national discourse. Presenting a paper during the international anti-corruption day 2014 roundtable organised by the Nigeria Bar Association, Tambuwal said, “The President’s (Dr. Goodluck Jonathan) body language seems to be encouraging […]

Nothing underscores more the culture of greed, insensitivity and impunity that has crept into the public service of Nigeria than the self-serving scenario of multiple remuneration and pension schemes for serving public officers who previously served and pensioned in other capacities. This obnoxious practice aka “double-dipping” involves high office holders such as cabinet ministers, governors […]

Twelve long years after six innocent Nigerians – five men and a lady were shot and killed by police officers in Abuja on June 7, 2005, the emotions now trailing acquittal the other day, of Danjuma Ibrahim, Nicholas Zakariah and Sadiq Salami; three of the six police officers arraigned over the murder have again shown […]