Point One

 “Yoruba ‘Ronu” (roughly translated as “Yoruba race, ponder a while”) was the title of a play and rallying call made by legendary thespian, the late Hubert Ogunde, in the thick of the Western Region crisis under the First Republic. Ogunde’s objective with his 1964 play, which became the most famous in his rich repertoire, was to get the Yoruba people onto a path of deep reflection and reality check amidst in-fighting that he perceived to severely disadvantage them in the emerging dynamics of then nascent Nigerian nationhood. That play was such a biting attack on the premier of the Western Region at the time that Ogunde’s theatre company was banned from the region, marking the first instance of literary censorship in post-independence Nigeria. The ban was in place until 1966 when it was lifted by the military government that overthrew the republic. “Otito Koro” (meaning “Truth is Bitter”) was another offering from Ogunde’s repertoire that satirized political events of 1963 in the We...

 For much of this year, the cost of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), also known as cooking gas, has been on steroids. From a market rate shy of N3,500 for a 12.5kg cylinder at the close of last year, the essential fuel climbed first to about N4,500, then to N6,000, and presently hovers between N7,000 and N8,000 at the point of sale to consumers. And no respite is in sight, with marketers warning that the price could hit N10,000 before December if the present circumstances persist. Cooking gas became staple household fuel for many Nigerians, including the poor, when the price of kerosene, which by the way is a dirtier fuel, got deregulated and spiralled out of reach. Now that gas has also spinned beyond easy reach, many have been forced onto much dirtier alternative fuel sources like charcoal, firewood and sawdust – with all the negative implications for the environmental ecosystem. Those that could afford to revisit kerosene now are middle range consumers, who find it a lesser evil c...

Germany is on the cusp of transition as ‘Woman of Steel’ Angela Merkel winds out as Chancellor after 16 years of steady-handed leadership that saw her country emerge as Europe’s super power and most formidable economy. She held sway and is now bowing out with lavish grace. Not only is she the first female German Chancellor, she served a record four terms in power and is standing down on her own terms and entire volition, without external pressures as forced the hands of her predecessors.  Her country has been in drawn-out ovation as she leaves.  Merkel had since 2018 relinquished the reins of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which was the ruling party of Germany in coalition with the Christian Social Union (CSU), and she had long served notice she would not be seeking a fresh mandate as Chancellor in the election held on 26th September, this year. That poll threw up the candidate of opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD) in a slim victory over her party’s candidate to t...

Like someone with fingers caught in the cookie jar, the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has strained of late to rationalise safety tips contained in one of its handbooks advising corps members to prepare for the possibility of being kidnapped. But it hasn’t made a tidy or convincing job of that effort. The scheme, in a literature titled ‘Security Awareness and Education Handbook For Corps Members and Staff,’ advised any of its members travelling on ‘high risk’ roads to first alert relations and friends to set by some funds that could be used in paying off ransom demanded by abductors in the event that they (corps members) get kidnapped. The document further advised on sundry rules of behaviour by unlucky corps members and their family while dealing with kidnappers. On page 56, the handbook states: “When travelling on high risk roads such as Abuja-Kaduna, Abuja-Lokoja-Okene or Aba-Port Harcourt roads, then alert your family members, friends and colleagues, in order to have someone o...

From every indication, the lockdown adventure by separatist Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has gone utterly rogue, true to the saying that it takes just a tip to start a snowball. It not only seems a tough call for government centres in the Southeast to rein it in, it has apparently gone out of IPOB’s own control. Sit-at-homes had always been a handy tack by the outlawed group in pressing its secessionist cause. The current ‘ghost Monday’ campaign  was flagged off 9th August by IPOB avowedly to protest the incarceration of its leader, Nnamdi Kanu, and force government’s hand on his trial and desired release. Recall that Kanu, who fled this country in September 2017 amidst prosecution for offences including alleged terrorism, arms running and insurrection against the Nigerian state, was rearrested abroad last June and dragged back in the dock in Abuja, following which IPOB launched the latest campaign to compel his being freed. Although the lockdown notice met with robust reassu...

 You do not have to be a fan of Kaduna State Governor Nasir el-Rufai to acknowledge that he runs against the grain in a noble sort of way. Whether he thereby engages in genuine paradigm shifts or mere optics is debatable; but even if it is optics, he is a master at good optics. And optics, as they say, is everything. When the governor personally took his six-year-old son to enroll at a Kaduna public school in September 2019, and placed the boy on his laps as he himself sat in a guest chair before the school’s headteacher like a dutiful parent, it was good optics to the hilt. He not only made a classic statement of elite confidence in an educational system most of his peers won’t touch with a vaulting pole concerning their wards, even though they have the statutory responsibility to manage and rightly position the system, he also epitomised hands-on parenting amidst pressing stately duties in a manner that reinforced assurance in the moral character of leadership. It is reported tha...

 Willful amnesia about willful crime, even when there is seeming momentary respite, never works. Ask Sheikh Ahmad Gumi. The frontline Islamic cleric cum famous bandits negotiator and advocate has all but chilled now, and that likely is because his ‘amnesty for bandits’ advocacy has done next to nothing in reining in banditry in the land. Criminality is an affront to society’s laws and should be dealt with according to those laws; otherwise, attempts to disincentivise criminality by forgiving ‘repentant’ criminals after the fact of their ruinous adventure, or looking the other way when they give up their ‘booty’ per occasion, would end up like merely running rings. Nigeria seems to be straining to achieve a willful and blanket amnesia at the moment: amnesia about insurgency in the Northeast following ‘repentance’ by some Boko Haram fighters who are drilling out of forest hideouts and handing themselves in to the military; fragment amnesia about banditry in the Northwest and Northcen...