Point One

 There is a toxicity in Nigeria’s educational ecosystem that indexes a deeper malaise needing to be unraveled and remedied. This toxicity has resulted in avoidable deaths – not just among learners but also teachers. Consider some of the latest cases: Some two weeks ago, a teacher in Delta State was reportedly attacked by a parent, leading to his untimely death. Until the incident, Sunday Ufua was a Physics teacher at Alihame Mixed Secondary School in Agbor, Ika South council area, where the parent allegedly assaulted him for having disciplined his son over reported bad behaviour. Parading the parent, Nnajiofor Nweke, late last week in Asaba, the police in Delta alleged that he flogged Ufua to death in an incident that took place on 18th October. “The suspect went to the school premises aggressively in search of one of the school teachers over punishment meted to his son at the school (and)… on sighting the said teacher, picked a cane in the school and started flogging him during wh...

 Presidential elections in contemporary Liberia are like the biblical eye of the needle through which a camel seeks to wriggle through. The polls customarily go into runoffs because contenders can’t make the cut of victory at first shot. Things were no different in the latest election held on 10th October, which threw up incumbent president, George Weah, and opposition candidate, Joseph Boakai, in the tightest tally of that country’s two decades long history of restored democratic rule. Weah secured 43.84 percent of the vote and Boakai, 43.44 percent, with more than 98 percent of the ballots counted by the electoral body as at mid-last week. Although the vote was largely peaceful across the country, the elections commission said hundreds of voters in two polling stations in Liberia’s northeast Nimba County were to re-cast their ballots last Friday after unidentified persons stole ballot boxes.  Although official results may not be called by the National Elections Commission un...

It’s always been a hibernating tinderbox environment waiting for the slightest spark to flare. The latest spark occurred early at dawn on 7th October when Israelis at an overnight party in southern Israel were barnstormed by a horde of fighters from the Palestinian militant group, Hamas, who had breached the heavily fortified border with Gaza Strip to infiltrate the Jewish state. That assault was facilitated by a barrage of rockets fired from Gaza, which blew out homes in Israel. The hailstorm of rockets triggered the Israeli system of siren alarm blaring to alert sleepy citizens, but belatedly so. At the party, the Hamas militants fired indiscriminately at frolickers, leaving no fewer than 260 dead. Militants also fanned out into the communities where they attacked Jewish habitants and abducted about 150, mostly civilian hostages, across the border back into Gaza.  The Israeli government rallied to respond to the ambush attack. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu went on air to decl...

Women Affairs Minister Uju Kennedy-Ohanenye  has been busy walking back her blunder. She disclosed last week that she was herself a victim of sexual harassment in her university days and would, thus, not abet such abuse against other victims. She spoke against the backdrop of the sexual harassment allegation by students of the University of Calabar (UniCal) Law faculty against suspended professor and former dean of the faculty, Cyril Ndifon. The minister had recently made a curious call amidst ongoing investigation of the allegations against Ndifon by the UniCal management, threatening students who claimed they were sexually harassed with jail time if they testified against the law professor. Addressing university administrators and journalists on sexual harassment in tertiary institutions at a forum in Abuja last Monday, Madame Minister said she had a lecturer on Constitutional Law while in school who nursed an ulterior motive concerning her and failed her several times because sh...

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo is no stranger to controversy. He exudes the vibes: sometimes frontally like an army of occupation exudes aggression, at other times latently like a decaying organism exudes putrid smell. Either way, you can’t miss the vibes or keep out of its stormy orbit. You get pulled in willy-nilly by the sheer bravado of the old man’s postulations. And he seems to relish all the fuss. With his characteristic imperial temerity, you can’t help recalling that his daughter and ex-Senator of the Federal Republic, Iyabo Obasanjo, once accused him openly of behaving like he is God and owner of Nigeria. ‘Baba Obasanjo,’ as he should be rightly addressed at 86 years of age, rides controversy like a storm. Sixteen years on after he left office as two-term president of the current political republic, besides a three-year stint in the late 70s as military head of state, Obasanjo carries himself as Lord of the Manor. He dictates rules of conduct for everybody based on his pe...

If you ever have to undergo surgery at a Nigerian hospital, you may need to play safe by undertaking inventory scan of your body organs before and after the surgery, just so to be sure the organs remain intact. That is the lesson to learn from the experience of the Kamal couple in Jos, Plateau State. The couple has been in the news over alleged harvesting of one of the kidneys of the wife, Kehinde Kamal, by a neighbourhood practitioner who the victim’s husband, Busari Kamal, recently dealt out to the police. The ‘doctor’ is Noah Kekere and the ‘hospital’ is Murna Clinic and Maternity located in Yanshanu community, Jos North council area. The police in Plateau State took Kekere into custody after Busari Kamal, a businessman, reported him to the Nasarawa Gwom police division, accusing him of having removed his wife’s right kidney during a surgery in 2018. The surgery Kekere conducted on Mrs. Kamal had nothing to do with her kidneys, but he allegedly invaded that region of her body anyway...

 Another African country fell under the jackboots last Wednesday with the ouster of President Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon in a coup d’état. It was the eighth coup in West and Central Africa within three years and the second in just barely above a month, coming after the Niger Republic coup on 26th July. It also marked further rollback of the influence of France on the continent, the successive coups that have taken place being in its former colonies – and that includes Gabon. Ali Bongo, 64, was sacked on the heels of being declared winner of an election conducted penultimate Saturday by the Gabonese electoral board. He was said to have won with 64.27 percent of the vote over his main challenger, Albert Ondo Ossa, a university professor, said to have secured 30.77 percent votes. That election was, however, anything but credible or transparent, and the opposition argued it was downright fraudulent. Contrary to global best practice, international observers were not allowed,  forei...