Point One

It was the legendary Williams Shakespeare who wrote: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.” This saying, I think, fittingly describes the fate of embattled leader of the now proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPoB), Nnamdi Kanu. Kanu’s was a swift and dramatic twist of fate. You could say it was by conspiratorial factors of expediency. Crunch line is: he has gone barely overnight from being a courted ally in the portals of power to a disavowed fugitive from the law. To boot, his separatist group is effectively delegitimized. Yet, with little less bluster against the existing order and some moderation in his crusade, these outcomes were avoidable and his avowed mission even negotiable to certain limits. Secession bid is no pastry item in any nation of the world – not even in the most liberal states. Whereas the United States constitution envisages and pr...

Kenya made African history penultimate Friday when its Supreme Court voided the August 8 presidential election that had returned incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta as winner and ordered a fresh run within 60 days. That apex court ruled the East African country’s election management body, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), out of order in the manner it conducted the poll, which their Lordships held inconsistent with the dictates of Kenya’s grundnorm law. The verdict was historic, being the first on this continent of Africa where opposition challenge in court against declared victory of an incumbent contender carried the day. National Super Alliance (NASA) candidate Raila Odinga had red flagged the purported victory of Jubilee Party’s Kenyatta – not on account of suspected violations in the voting procedure or indeed the ballot counting, but for procedural infringements in the results transmission. And he succeeded in swaying the court to his trench. It was ...

Mexico is clearly not what you would call a fair match for the United Stares in many regards – not in military armoury or economic fortunes, for instance. But that Latin American country lately showed a markedly superior edge in moral high grounding over its illustrious neighbour. United States President Donald Trump, even before assuming office last January, had for much of his public life made a favourite punching bag out of Mexican immigrants (Latinos) in his country, and without sparing a breath for their home land of Mexico. He flagged his prejudice most luminously when he kick-started his stumping for the American high office on June 16, 2015 with diatribes on Mexico, as he said: “When do we beat Mexico at the border? They’re laughing at us, at our stupidity. And now they are beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me…When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those prob...