Point One

Revenge is a dreaded forte of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He deals the hand coldly and assuredly. In the wake of the mutiny in his country last June, Russia watchers branded Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin a ‘dead man walking.’ Prigozhin had led his Wagner mercenary troops to rebel again Russian military command, seized a southern Russian city and threatened to overrun Moscow – coming within 250 kilometres of the capital before the mutiny was pulled at the instance of a hurried pact that wrung humiliating concessions out of Mr. Putin. The Russian leader survived the rebellion appearing demystified and weakened. The Putin mystique was dented, but pundits predicted it wasn’t the final word. The final word, as is seems, was Prigozhin’s mangled remains in a plane wreckage, unless fate wrought a chilling coincidence on the mercenary warlord.  Prigozhin, 62, was a longtime ally of the Russian strongman and Wagner, his 25,000-strong private army, has been a major fighting force for Ru...

Nigeria currently has a vicious war on her hands. Only that the war hugs the backlines of national attention unless something dastardly happens as it did last week when another set of gallant soldiers fell to the battle against terrorism. Some officers and men lost their lives in a Nigeria Air Force (NAF) helicopter crash in Shiroro council area of Niger State. The official narrative was that the helicopter crashed in bad weather while on casualty evacuation mission en route to Kaduna, but terrorists laid claim to shooting it down for assaying to attack their positions. Whichever is true, this country is ruing  her loss of high grade manpower to the mishap. The surveillance MI-171helicopter crashed near Chukuba village in Shiroro council area last Monday, according to a statement by the military. Air Force spokesman Edward Gabkwet, Air Commodore, said the aircraft departed Zungeru Primary School on its way to Kaduna, but was discovered to have crashed near Chukuba village. “Efforts...

For 19-year-old Mmesoma Ejikeme, the claim to being the top scorer in the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has turned out to be a crown of nails. She has been exposed by the examination body as a fraudster, or at the least duped by a syndicate of fraudsters. But even if duped, the board says, it has been with her complicity. Mmesona claimed she scored 362 marks in the examination whereas JAMB said its own record showed she scored 249 marks. Following the controversy, the board withdrew her score and slammed her with a three-year ban. But she mounted a daring front to impugn the board’s credibility. She postured like the biblical puny David taking on the huge Goliath. Only unlike David, she didn’t off with Goliath’s head. The examination body brought the controversy into the open early last week by accusing Mmesoma of manually inflating her scores to hoodwink the public into showering her with undeserved reward...

 In his 23-year hold on power, Russian President Vladimir Putin woke up to the most rattling test of his iron clad rule penultimate weekend. He faced a day-long mutiny by forces of Wagner Group, a mercenary army led by Yevgeny Prigozhin. The mutiny not only progressed nearly unchallenged while it lasted, it was called off by Prigozhin on concessional terms extracted from Putin that were widely viewed as caging his dreaded sting. Much to the disappointment of his many foes, Putin survived in power. Only he did at the cost of coming across as demystified and vulnerable, rather than impregnable as was hitherto assumed. Effectively, the Putin mystique was dented, but it may be a long way yet from being ended. Paramilitary Wagner Group had been a major fighting force for Russia in her invasion of Ukraine that elicited worldwide condemnation and was met with robust alliance with Ukraine by the West to thwart the expansionist aggression. It may be tangential but nonetheless noteworthy tha...

 Stunt leadership: Aliyu’s example Fresh-in-the-saddle Sokoto State Governor Ahmad Aliyu, last week, broke with the conventional mould of the conduct of power as we are familiar with in this country. He paid an impromptu visit to a government hospital on a fact-finding mission; and what’s more, he went in a disguise and rode in a tricycle to get there. It was a populist foray outside the conventional mould, because their excellencies typically ride in motorcades with sirens blaring to sites where reception parties had advance information they were coming and would have put up veneers that accord with, or at least border on what would gratify the August visitor. Most times, those veneers are deceptive and only momentarily dissemble the stark reality that ordinary members of the public encounter in transactions with facilities in question. The Sokoto governor toed a different path. He reportedly arrived at Sokoto Specialist Hospital unannounced last Monday following complaints by sta...

On the day the 10th National Assembly (NASS) was inaugurated last week, there was a fluke report on some online sites that the Department of State Services (DSS) had arrested Clerk of the National Assembly Sani Tambawal and some other parliamentary staff. The inauguration held on Tuesday, 13th June, and it was reported that agents of the secret police on Monday night picked up Tambawal alongside other senior officials in NASS bureaucracy in a bid to coerce them into manipulating the assembly’s standing rules to favour certain candidates in the leadership contests. It was an unsubstantiated report that didn’t gain traction beyond the few sites which posted it, and many of those sites pulled it down soon after flying the headline. Fluke as it was though, the report illustrated the crass image the DSS has acquired. Few days earlier, pandemonium was reported at the Anambra State House of Assembly as operatives believed to be from the DSS attempted to arrest then lawmaker-elect for Nnewi No...

If there is a prize for con artistry, the proposed national carrier project, Nigeria Air, as midwifed by former Aviation Minister Hadi Sirika gets it.  When a Boeing 737-860 aircraft in the carrier’s colours and logo was unveiled at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja (NAIAA) on 26th May, the ex-minister rhapsodized about accomplishment of a long nursed dream. He trumpeted the arrival of the aircraft via a celebratory tweet, saying: “We are here. To Almighty God be all the glory. It has been a very long, tedious, daunting and difficult path…” Later same day at the unveiling of the aircraft, he suggested that the carrier was a project delivered, saying inter alia: “We started in 2016 and it ended today. There is a history behind all of these. There were challenges for that matter. We didn’t allow them to make us lose focus. We stayed with our eyes on the ball and today we’re here.” Sirika postured like the aircraft that came in on 26th May was a first of many aircraft ex...