Point One

Labour and Employment Minister Chris Ngige holds an outstanding record of nationalistic commitment with the recent graduation of his second son, Andrew Ngige, from the College of Medicine, University of Abuja. It was the third successive graduation of the minister’s brood from different Nigerian medical schools within a span of 16 months. His first son, Ralph, graduated from the College of Medicine, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University (COOU), Amaku Awka, Anambra State, in September 2020. Some 10 months later, in July 2021, his daughter Marilyn graduated from the College of Medicine, University of Lagos. And in December 2021, Andrew got certificated for the lab coat and stethoscope by UniAbuja College of Medicine. Although he oversees the Labour portfolio, Ngige is himself a Nigerian-trained medical doctor, and so is his wife, Evelyn, with whom he sired the freshly minted medical doctors. Ngige’s is a unique family, having a shared profession – medical doctors all, the way the Dafino...

You wouldn’t expect that such a culture underlies the education system of the twenty-first century, much less in a place where parents pay a hefty sum to put their wards through school. But that seemed the case with the reported circumstance in which a 12-year-old boarding pupil of Dowen College, Lekki in Lagos State, Sylvester Oromoni Jnr, died. Sylvester was alleged to have been brutalised on Friday, 26th November, by some senior students of the school over his refusal to join a cult group. He died 30th November in hospital where his family took him for medical attention, and one of his relations took to social media shortly after to call out five individuals accused of being responsible for the alleged brutalisation that resulted in the youngster’s death. The news about Sylvester Jnr’s death hit the airwaves on 01st December when his cousin, Perrison Oromoni, opened up on how the junior secondary school two (JSS2) pupil was allegedly battered in the school dormitory by the named sen...

 Freedom was momentarily thought imminent for detained leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), Nnamdi Kanu, last Thursday when a federal high court in Abuja held an emergency hearing in his ongoing trial for alleged terrorism and treasonable felony among others. But liberty through the courts can be convoluted, and the separatist warrior will have to await another day as the emergency hearing turned out to be on procedural matters in the case and not on bail plea by Kanu’s lawyers or suit discontinuance application by government lawyers  as widely anticipated. For now, Kanu remains in incarceration.    Justice Binta Nyako had at the last scheduled hearing on 10th November set 19th January 2022 as the next adjourned date and when word got out Wednesday, 01st December, that an emergency hearing was slated for the following day, it was presumed in many quarters the hearing was being arranged specifically to broker Kanu’s release. That presumption got traction ...