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Beyond age limit

 A policy initiative by government has never been more knee-jerk. That, perhaps, is why government has found itself stuck in equivocation in the narrative being plied to justify the policy to Nigerians. Education Minister Tahir Mamman lately restated government’s resolve to bar pupils under 18 years from sitting the secondary school leaving certificate examinations, which are a prerequisite for proceeding to the tertiary level. He said pupils would henceforth not be permitted to sit the West African Senior School Certificate Examination organised by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and the Senior School Certificate Examination organised by the National Examination Council (NECO) unless they attain that age. And since these are primary requirements for advancing to the tertiary level of education, it follows that any candidate sitting the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) cannot be below 18. Speaking at
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How Harris won the debate

 United States Vice President Kamala Harris is making a strong bid to enter into history books as her country’s first ever female commander-in-chief, and she’s having a roll. She dramatically reshaped the presidential race after she was tapped for the Democratic ticket less than five months to election day when President Joe Biden abruptly pulled his stalled re-election bid in July. Now, she’s further paved her path towards the White House with a commanding performance in her first match-up against Republican nominee and former president, Donald Trump. She’s aced her moments so far and the tides are swaying in her favour.  The presidential debate in Philadelphia last Tuesday night – exactly eight weeks before election day – was the first face-to-face encounter between Harris and Trump who are locked in a tight race. The Democratic and Republican nominees went head-to-head at the event hosted by ABC news network that was advertised to run for 90 minutes with two commercial breaks, but w
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Is Biya staying on?

Cameroonian President Paul Biya is 91 years of age and has been at the helm of his country for 42 years. He holds a dubious record as the world’s oldest head of state, the second longest-ruling president in Africa after Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea who has been in power for 45 years, and the longest consecutively serving current non-royal national leader in the world. And news is that he isn’t done. He is reported to have thrown his hat in the ring for re-election next year to an eighth presidential term of seven years that will last till he is 100 years old if he runs out the tenure. He will be the oldest candidate in electoral history anywhere when he stands in the poll, as he’s reported set upon. The number of years that the old man has been in commanding heights of power in a non-monarchical setting has no equal if you add to his 42 years of presidency the seven years he served as prime minister under his country’s first president, Alhaji Ahmadou Ahidjo, from
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Biden’s valedictory

 It was a brutal, though benignly couched rite of passage at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in the United States, last week. President Joe Biden was cheered off into history by an adulatory crowd at an event where he could well have delivered an oration at his own funeral. He had strongly pushed to stay on, and had the imprimatur of the party’s primary elections to lead Democrats into battle against former President Donald Trump of the Republican Party in the forthcoming national polls in that country. But his hands were forced by his party to pull his re-election bid, and he was at the convention in Chicago formally passing the torch to Vice-President Kamala Harris. Politics is glamourous, but it can also be cruel.  Until he folded his campaign about a month earlier, 81-year-old Biden was his party’s presumptive nominee and had looked forward to delivering the keynote on the final night of the 2024 convention after he would have formally accepted the presidential nomination.
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Labour House raid

Security operatives penultimate Wednesday, i.e. 7th August, raided Pascal Bafyau Labour House where the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has its national headquarters and secretariat in Abuja. The 10-storey building in the vicinity of the Federal Ministry of Finance, in the federal capital’s Central Business District, houses NLC’s offices on its three topmost floors with tenants occupying other spaces. It was the NLC itself that broke the news of the raid. In a late night statement on the said day, the congress made known that heavily armed security agents at about 8:30p.m. stormed its offices in a raid it suspected linked to its sympathetic disposition towards then roiling hardship protests that began across the country on 1st August. NLC spokesman, Benson Upah, said in the statement that the security squad – initially assumed to also involve Department of State Services (DSS) agents – “swooped on the 10th floor of the NLC (building) and arrested the security operative on duty and then c
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UK riots and travel advisories

Britain was in recent weeks convulsed by violence resulting from the behaviour of protesters waging a xenophobic cause. The riots were so unhinged that the Nigerian government had to issue a travel advisory to Nigerian citizens going to, or resident in the United Kingdom – a stinging role swap with a country that has been in the habit of periodically issuing travel alerts to her own citizens about Nigeria. Over the past couple of weeks, crowds spouting anti-immigrant slogans stood up to law enforcement personnel in one of the UK’s worst violence in more than a decade, leading  to arrest of hundreds of rioters who hurled bricks and other projectiles at the police, looted shops and attacked hotels housing asylum-seekers. The unrest was allegedly instigated by far-right agitators who used the social media to spread misinformation about a knife attack that killed three girls aged between six and nine years penultimate Monday at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, a coastal town
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Miracle Harris

She was tapped for the presidential race exactly 107 days before election day. Within the available time, she is to alchemise a party in disarray into a united and potent force, clinch the nomination that momentarily seemed a toss, redirect the party’s mood from despondent anticipation of defeat to resurgent pursuit of victory, upend a long headstart of victory run by Republican nominee Donald Trump, plus overawe historical prejudices about gender and race. That was the task slate thrust on United States Vice President Kamala Harris over the past week; and so far, she’s maximised the moment. She transformed into the presumptive Democratic nominee without having run a primary, and has rattled the very core of Trump’s candidacy. Harris entered the race after 81-year-old President Joe Biden bowed to pressure and dropped his bid for re-election. No sitting American president reportedly ever dropped out of a race so late in the election cycle. Biden was Democrats’ presumptive nominee for th
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