Point One

We are talking Nigerian elections here. Never mind that we have borrowed the title from a 20 th Century classic by ace American playwright, Arthur Miller, on immigration challenges that could well be the case in today’s Donald Trump era. There is a pressing need for massive involvement of credible and non-partisan volunteers in Nigerian elections to boost the integrity of the process. So says former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Attahiru Jega, in his overview of volunteerism in the conduct of elections in the country. Jega spoke in a public lecture titled ‘Volunteers in the Nigerian Electoral Process: Challenges and Prospects,’ delivered at the University of Lagos under the auspices of that institution’s Muslim Community in collaboration with Muslim Ummah of South Western Nigeria. The lecture was in honour of Unilag’s immediate past Vice Chancellor, Professor Rahaman Bello, and former Bursar, Dr. Lateef Odekunle. The former electora...

President Donald Trump in his pushback against Michael Wolff’s damaging book, Fire and Fury , touted himself ‘a very stable genius.’ He truly must be. Because with just another of his famously unguarded weigh-ins, he has elevated a hitherto unprintable obscenity into a pervasive print word. That must surely count for a streak of genius! And it wasn’t that he did anything outside of character when he cast his latest slur on those axes of the world he’s negatively fixated with; he had never been reputed for moderating his xenophobic hubris. The United States leader was lately reported labelling African nations and the southern American states of Haiti and El Salvador “shithole countries.” That, he allegedly did, during a parley on immigration at the White House with a bipartisan group of senators penultimate week. Although he offered tame denials, saying the language he used at the meeting “was tough, but this (‘shithole’) was not the language used,” the remark fitted so well with his...