Fashola and the argument for a Christian successor
Responding to a campaign by a section of the Lagos electorate to vote in a Christian candidate as the next governor of Lagos, Governor Babatunde Fashola last Monday warned that Lagos politics would be...
View ArticleLagos wrong on regionalism
Whether by reading its lips or by observing its body language, we now understand that Lagos State has become indifferent, if not entirely opposed, to the idea of recreating the Western Region as a...
View ArticleIs anyone really subverting Jonathan’s govt?
President Goodluck Jonathan pursues red herrings with relentlessness that shames his security forces’ pusillanimous effort to exterminate the Boko Haram menace he now says threatens his government. Dr...
View ArticleJonathan in the eyes of Kagame, Mugabe, Museveni
It is rare for African leaders to turn on themselves, except perhaps over border disputes and maybe ideological disagreements. It is rarer still for more than one African leader to come together to...
View ArticleAbuja protest ban: what on earth were the police thinking?
Early last week, the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) police commissioner, Mbu Joseph Mbu, banned further “Bring Back Our Girls” protests in Abuja. They had become a nuisance, he said irreverently. But...
View ArticleMilitary impunity, creeping fascism
A day after President Goodluck Jonathan lectured the media to desist from celebrating terrorists, particularly the Boko Haram sect, the military, probably reading his lips, launched an all-out...
View ArticleJonathan’s obsession with ‘negative forces’
President Goodluck Jonathan’s speech at the All-Political Parties Summit in Abuja last week took Nigerian politics to an abysmal low as it blamed everyone else but himself and his party for the...
View ArticleBoko Haram: Sri Lankan strategy has its pitfalls
While presenting a security briefing to their Nigerian counterparts last Tuesday, visiting Sri Lankan military chiefs led by their Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Jagath Jayasuriya, suggested that Nigeria...
View ArticleAPC’s Ekiti defeat
No one can sensibly challenge the right and freedom of Ekiti people to vote into office whomsoever they like. Two Saturdays ago, they exercised that right effectively, admirably and remorselessly to...
View ArticleEkiti unleashes strange metaphysics
Immediately the All Progressives Congress (APC) lost Ekiti State in the June 21 election in a fashion many have described as spectacular and unnerving, a strange spirit seems to have seized parts of...
View ArticleThat Fayose-Bamidele entente cordiale
One of the distinguishing features of the June 21 Ekiti governorship poll was the unprecedented collaboration between the supposedly progressive politician and House of Representatives member, Opeyemi...
View ArticleConfab resolutions: impractical, idealistic, provocative
I have always felt that in constituting the national conference, President Goodluck Jonathan was chasing a chimera. Given some of the resolutions of the national conference, Dr Jonathan is apparently...
View ArticleSecret service on BringBackOurGirls ‘franchise’
Going by the reaction of the Department of State Services (DSS) to the BringBackOurGirls protests in Abuja, it is clear that the federal government continues to loath the gathering, perhaps because...
View ArticleAPC juggernaut slows down
The euphoric beginnings of the All Progressives Congress (APC) have all but given way to concealed despondency. In February 2013, four political parties – the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Congress...
View ArticleThe Nasarawa formula
President Goodluck Jonathan’s impeachment train may become stuck in Nasarawa, if the civil society in that state keeps its wit and determination not to be intimidated. Everyone knows that like Adamawa,...
View ArticleJonathan, Malala and Chibok girls
Newspapers missed both the strident tone and essence of the message Malala Yousafzai passed on to President Goodluck Jonathan during her visit last Monday. The Pakistani girls’ education advocate was...
View ArticleExternal loan to fight Boko Haram a hard sell
If proof is required to show how and why Nigeria has been misgoverned, last week’s request by President Goodluck Jonathan to the National Assembly to be allowed to borrow one billion dollars from...
View ArticleJonathan’s war, from Buhari’s perspective
After observing the ruling party’s open and unremitting war against the opposition, Gen Muhammadu Buhari last week felt compelled to warn President Goodluck Jonathan not to take the country on the...
View ArticleJonathan, Buhari and demonisation of the North
Former head of state, Muhammadu Buhari, may not have reached mythical status like the eponymous Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello, but he has clearly become a genuine hero whose death, had it...
View ArticleThe El-Zakzaky tragedy
Five years ago, security agents grossly mishandled Boko Haram’s unorthodox approach to social and religious engineering. Many analysts, including this column, and rights groups warned stridently that...
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