Point One

Among the Yoruba, there is a cultural awe for monarchs because they are regarded as representatives of the deities. They are esteemed above board in mortal fallibility, hence their recognition as one who is not to be questioned – ‘K’a bi o osi,’ which over the ages has been shortened into ‘Kabiyesi’. Only God is truly infallible and beyond questioning, though. It’s just that monarchs are deemed agents of the gods. But they are mortals after all, and anyone among them who strays from the hallowed ground of royal integrity gets stuck in muck like Oba Joseph Oloyede. The Alapetu of Ipetumodu, a community in Ife North council area of Osun State, recently got sentenced to jail in the United States for 56 months over fraud related to Covid-19 emergency loan for struggling businesses in that country. Oloyede holds dual citizenship of Nigeria and the U.S. And even though he was installed the Alapetu in October 2019, he is convicted and jailed for $4.2million fraud committed between 2020 and 20...

 Fifty bodies were reported retrieved and search continuing for more, though officials confirmed below 40 fatalities, in the  attack by bandits on a mosque in Unguwan Mantau community, Malumfashi council area of Katsina State. The attack on 19th August ranked among the deadliest terror incidents in recent times. It happened during the dawn (Fajr) prayer. Reports said the first call to prayer was barely concluded at about 5a.m. when gunmen stormed the small mosque packed with worshippers, young and old, all bowed in devotion. The timing was obviously intended for maximum surprise and ambush of the worshippers, who scampered hither and thither for their lives when shots rang out from the intruders.  A target couldn’t be softer for the agents of terror: the worshippers were unarmed and possibly praying for peace when violence struck. Survivors recalled a brief moment of stupefied silence in the mosque before the bandits released an indiscriminate volley of gunshots. “Many wo...

 A ranking member of the House of Representatives, Ibrahim Usman Auyo, recently opened the can of worms that typically lets off an odious smell about the conduct of lawmaking in Nigerian legislative chambers. He alleged that the wheel of legislation was more often than not oiled by frontloading bribe money running into millions of naira at each instance, not driven by duty on the part of legislators. Lawmakers ordinarily were elected by constituents into the legislative chambers to hear out and process motions, petitions and bills on their behalf as championed by members representing them in those chambers. But reality, according to Auyo, is that if you want to get heard by your fellow lawmakers, you pay your way to get their ears. The Jigawa State lawmaker, representing Hadejia/Auyo/Kafin Hausa federal constituency in the green chamber of the National Assembly (NASS), made the allegation in response to criticism by his constituents that he had little to show by way of sponsoring b...

 Like Coach Fanny Amun’s famous coinage that stuck though he later denied using the exact phrase, the West African Examination Council (WAEC) ‘wombled and fumbled’ to declaring the results of the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE). The council, last week, published an outcome on which it shortly after backpedalled. On Friday, it announced that 62.96 percent of candidates who sat the examination obtained credit scores and above in a minimum of five subjects including English Language and Mathematics. Earlier in the week, it reported 38.32 percent success rate, which would have been the worst outcome posted by the council in that examination in over a decade. The exam body reported that a total of 1,969,313 candidates sat the examination conducted between 24th April and 20th June, 2025, out of 1,973,365 candidates that registered across 23,554 recognised secondary schools in Nigeria. The examination also held in schools operating the Nigerian curriculum...

 Members of the House of Representatives are reported to be mulling an amendment to the electoral law that will alter the pattern of elections in this country from the staggered mode to a unified mode, whereby all elections will hold on a single day. There are five polls in the general election cycle – three at the national level namely into the Presidency, Senate and House of Representatives, and two at the state level into the governorships and state houses of assembly. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) also conducts elections into area councils of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in line with the tenure of those councils.    Until now, the national elections were held on a day and the state elections on another day some fortnight later. Under the amendment being sought, all the elections will hold simultaneously on the same day. The proposal is contained in “A bill for an Act to repeal the Electoral Act No. 13, 2022 and to enact the Electoral Act ...

 Leader of United Kingdom’s Conservative Party with Nigerian roots, Kemi Badenoch, has a fixation with denigrating the country of her ancestry in the manner of that ancient saying about using the left hand contemptuously to point out one’s father’s house. It is a tack she apparently relishes to prove the genuineness of her nativity transplant to her adopted country, the UK. As the first Black woman to lead a major political party in that country, she built her political career on pro-Western advocacy and hardline anti-immigration rhetoric, and running Nigeria down comes handy for her to show the premium she places on her Britishness. Badenoch was at it again early last week with the claim that Nigeria is so strict with citizenship right that she could not transmit the citizenship she inherited from her own parents to her children because of her gender. This, in her narrative, is unlike the UK where access to the right of citizenship by immigrants is far too liberalised, leaving tha...