Point One

 You could say we are running rings. Gun-toting bandits strike under the cover of darkness in a remote residential secondary school and herd away rattled pupils seeking the golden fleece into the leaden night. Oftentimes collateral victims get caught in the fray, as it happens to school security guards who get killed by the assailants and other residents of an attacked school who may be abducted alongside the pupils as was the case in Kagara, Niger State, last week. On the heels of the incident, government springs out a statement dripping with pump action – condemning the attack as cowardly and ordering security agents to remedy anyhow and rescue the victims. Heavy weather is made of government doing all within its power to secure lives and property, as if that were a benevolent endeavour and not its primary constitutional obligation. Nothing gets said about why attacks are recurrent and why they recurrently succeed, and what must be done to prevent further recurrence; only a gener...

Even with the crushing effects of Covid-19 on humanity, Nigeria has not lacked in shiny spots of large-heartedness embodied by personal and corporate givers who take out from their abundance to help other citizens wade through and ultimately overcome the ravages of the pandemic. Whatever may be underlying self-interested motivations (if there are) for their munificence, these givers are voluntary agents who could have chosen to look after their own narrow conveniences; that they rather exert themselves on others’ wellbeing is noble and dictates that they be appreciated for the altruism amidst deluging distress. Donors are nevertheless humans and not angels, and they have their own petty battles as played out last week within the Coalition Against Covid-19 (CACOVID), a private sector task force superintended by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to pool financial, technical and operational resources in aid of Nigeria’s efforts to fight the pandemic. During the first wave of Covid-19 pand...

 Ethnic warriors have never been far off the Nigerian political space, plying causes that typically locate them at odds with the law but simultaneously in warm embrace of whatever kindred group they are championing its interest. Thus, the kinsman-warrior poses a constant dilemma: under strict legal framework and from the prism of the establishment, he is an outlaw who should be harshly repressed or altogether taken out of circulation; but to those whose cause he champions, he is a hero and rallying point of group emancipation. It is typically like walking a tightrope seeking to contain the ethnic warrior without upsetting the fragile tolerance of his kindred group for the challenged status quo.  Some ethnic warriors commit mission suicide by overreaching themselves in aggression and alienating moderates in the group they hold the banner for; and where those moderates are in the majority, the mission gets effectively disavowed and the warrior isolated. That, for instance, is th...

‘It’s a new day in America.’ That was the first tweet sent out by Joe Biden as the incoming President of the United States (POTUS) moments before he took the oath of office and shortly after his predecessor, Donald Trump, left Washington area for the last time as president. Later in his inauguration address at the US Capitol, Biden described the transition as “democracy’s day, a day of history and hope, of renewal and resolve.” He declared: “America has been tested anew, and America has risen to the challenge,” adding: “The will of the people has been heard and the will of the people has been heeded.” Biden’s advent in office effectively pulled the curtain on nearly the most roguish era of American presidency that the Trump years marked. The former leader had by his personality tendencies energised the demons of racial supremacy and ultra-nationalism and rolled back the liberal multiculturalism that historically characterised America, leaving the country in its most disunited state sin...

Ghanaians head to the poll today, 7th December, 2020 to elect their president for the next four years in a race widely billed as a “battle of two giants.” Incumbent President Nana Addo Akufo-Addo of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) is facing-off with former president, John Dramani Mahama, who is the torchbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).  Although there are 12 candidates vying for the presidency, including three women, and for the first time a woman standing for vice president on the ticket of a major party, the contest is effectively between Akufo-Addo and Mahama. It is also the third consecutive election where the two politicians are squaring up for the highest office – with both having previously won apiece: Akufo-Addo in 2016 and Mahama in 2012. Whereas it is the third match-up by the ‘big two,’ however, it is the first time in the electoral history of the West African neighbour of Nigeria that voters are having to choose between a sitting president and a fo...

Indications emerged last week that the official universe of the United States had finally come to terms with the win by former Vice President Joe Biden in the 3rd November presidential election in that country and the inevitability of his taking over power on 20th January, 2021 from President Donald Trump.  Since Biden won the election three weeks earlier, Trump had – unlike what was known of American electoral culture – refused to concede the poll and allow formal transition to Biden White House. He plied conspiracy theories that the election was fraught with fraud and pursued multiple lawsuits across U.S. states to overturn results announced in favour of Biden. As at late last week, he had lost more than three dozens of those suits while many key states had certified Biden’s victory, even after some obliged vote recounts. In effect, the president-elect held comfortably to his 306 electoral votes over Trump’s 232 (270 are needed to win the presidency) and an edge of more than 6mil...

After some respite apparently occasioned by restive temper in the citizenry, we are back in Nigeria on the stretch racks of periodic hikes in the cost of petrol that government believes citizens will sooner than later come to terms with. But there are indications the idea isn’t flying that easily. All is thankfully calm for now, but another blowout may well be brewing. Recent experience teaches that the trigger could come so gratuitously and improbably that it might not even seem connected with the issue of fuel price and concomitant economic hardships. Seething exasperation over hardships disposes citizens to any stray trigger, just the way it takes only a slight pinch to unleash hot air from an inflated balloon. Government, penultimate week, announced a new price regime by which the ex-depot price of petrol was raised to N155.17 – thereby nudging marketers to sell at between N165 and N173 per litre to consumers. The move followed from the policy since March 2020 to deregulate the dow...