Point One

With the frontal assault on Nigeria’s sovereignty in Ghana penultimate week, it’s time for this country to reappraise her diplomatic bonds with the sister nation for better effects. There is no question, of course, that cordial relations must be sustained; but things apparently aren’t working as they should at the moment. The Nigerian state was assailed in Ghana when a building in this country’s high commission premises in Accra was pulled down by a bulldozer at the instigation of certain individuals, but with no immediate intervention from the Ghanaian government or its security services. Reports said while the demolition lasted, frantic efforts by officials of the Nigerian mission to get some protection from the Ghanaian police and Foreign Affairs ministry fell through. At about 10p.m. on the fateful day, armed men stormed the Nigerian High Commissioner’s residence, which hosts a block of uncompleted apartments being put up for mission staff and visiting diplomats, and forcibly ...

French philosopher and father of Absurdism, the late Albert Camus, described the rebel as someone “who says ‘no,’ but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation; he is also a man who says ‘yes’ from the moment he makes his first gesture of rebellion.” Don’t be fazed by the seeming contradiction: the whole thesis of Camus’ philosophy is rejection of any meaning to life, at least in relation to humanity, and the absurdity of humans searching for meaning in a meaningless life. The book-essay titled The Rebel is one of the works on which basis Camus won the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. Hip-hop artiste Azeez Fashola, otherwise known as Naira Marley, is a rebel. His rebellion, however, is not in the intellectual sense of Camus’ absurdism; rather, he is a crass bohemian who violates the law to criminal rather than philosophical ends. Since the norms of society are informed by both its written statutes and cultural morality, Marley commands a strong following among a se...