Point One

Since the United Kingdom exited the European Union bloc in 2016, i.e. Brexit, No. 10 Downing Street has become a veritable bed-and-board for short stays. Prime Minsters come and go in rapid succession, with the seat of British government now awaiting its seventh occupant within a decade.  Vacancy opened up again with Keir Starmer announcing his resignation last Monday after just two years in the saddle. Sir Keir was elected leader of the Labour Party in April 2020 and became prime minister on 5th July, 2024 following Labour’s landslide general election win. He will leave Downing Street as the shortest-serving Labour prime minister in history. His time in office is taking longer than those of his immediate predecessors from the Conservative Party, namely Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, but will be behind all six previous Labour prime ministers. Speaking in Downing Street early last week, Starmer acknowledged he was not best placed to lead Labour into the next general election and had inf...

United States President Donald Trump prides himself as an ace dealmaker. He boasts that with his art of dealing, he could overawe any other world leader into terms that advantage his own country, including juggernauts like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, even enfant teribles  like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Not that he has demonstrated this as a proven fact, though.  He just signed off on a pact to end the war his administration has waged with Iran, and it isn’t so certain he got the best for America and allied interests. Actually, many perceive the pact as tilted in Iran’s favour and not justifying the exertion on a four-month-long war that came out stalemated. Trump signed the 14-point pact dubbed  memorandum of understanding at a post-Group of Seven Industrialised Nations (G7) dinner in France on Wednesday. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed from Tehran, even as a ceremony was fixed for Geneva to formalise the signing at the w...

Kenyan nationals are fighting a defining battle for their dignity, sovereignty and public health concern. They’re up in arms against a decision by President William Ruto to host a quarantine bay in the East African country where the United States could send Americans exposed to Ebola virus for isolation, rather than admit them on American home soil. U.S. President Donald Trump struck a deal with Kenya’s Ruto to open the facility at Laikipia Air Base, a few miles outside Nanyuki in central Kenya and some 150 miles north of the capital city of Nairobi.  The Kenyan citizens’ struggle is instructive because it highlights the question as to what African countries should be willing to give in payback for conditional benefits from Washington. Besides, there is the question of national honour: whether another sovereign country should accept being a dump site for Washington’s rejects. Kenyan President Ruto signed off on such deal, but the citizens are saying no. Hundreds of Kenyans took to ...

It was former New York Governor, Mario Cuomo, who coined the phrase, “You campaign in poetry, but govern in prose.” He used the metaphoric expression to describe how electioneering requires idealistic and elevated rhetoric (poetry), whereas the actual business of governance involves grappling with tough choices grounded in grueling day-to-day realities (prose). Political leadership in Senegal has come full circle from the poetry of electioneering to the prose of governance. That country’s experience signposts the curse on godfatherism in African politics. Senegalese President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and former Prime Minister, now Speaker of the national parliament, Ousmane Sonko, used to be longtime allies with a strong bromance that carried the day in the country’s 2024 presidential election. They were both held in prison on charges widely perceived to be political, and were released by ex-President Macky Sall on equally political amnesty just 10 days before the court-ordered poll. They...

 Horror!!! That is the word to describe the recent kidnap incident in Oyo State and its fallouts. Terrorists stormed three schools in Oriire council area of the state penultimate Friday, 16th May, and abducted more than 30 pupils and some teachers. It was a coordinated assault by gun-wielding criminals on Community High School, Ahoro-Esiele; Baptist Nursery and Primary School, Yawota and LA Primary School, all in Oriire local government  area near Ogbomoso. Efforts by security operatives were underway as at the weekend to rescue the abducted persons.  The incident marked morbid benchmarks in Nigeria’s security experience. It was the first mass school kidnap in the Southwest geopolitical zone, against the backdrop of such incidents in northern areas that government has been battling with. It happened in broad daylight, at about 9a.m., not in the solitary hours of night as was typical of school attacks in the North. (Students and teachers were jacked from classrooms, hence ...

Twelve weeks into the war against Iran by the United States and Israel, the end isn’t anywhere on the horizon. The world’s economy reels yet from its effects and, in Nigeria, the average citizen stews in existential pressures of runaway inflation. American President Donald Trump remains all bluster, but he is not near getting a handle on the crisis. Actually, his bluster isn’t holding up to reality any more. It gets clearer by the day that this is one mission miscarried, with an exit strategy elusive.  As at last week, both sides of the battle line dug their heels into conflicting stances on which convergence appeared remote. Early in the week, Trump dismissed Iran’s counter-proposals to U.S. terms for ending the war as “garbage” and unwelcome. “I have just read the response from Iran’s so-called ‘representatives.’ I don’t like it – TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE,” he said in a Truth Social post.  Same day, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian struck a defiant note against the backdrop o...