I received an invite early last year from the editorial team which was putting together a diamond birthday festschrift in honour of my good friend and brother, Sunnie Ododo, a professor of performing arts and incumbent chief executive of the National Theatre. The proposed publication was titled: Sunnie Ododo: One Tree A Forest. My first reaction was: How can a …

Former US President Donald Trump didn’t just happen to the United States. He hit the world like the climax of a horror movie. Scene after scene, act after act left the thoughtful in bewilderment, the reserved in shame, and even the incorrigible in doubt. Only the fantasts and ultra-right wing extremists were impressed by Trump’s macabre dance. It was a phase …

The National Bureau for Statistics (NBS) released a not-so-jarring statistics penultimate week, that 133 million Nigerians at home live below poverty line. All that the NBS-released fact did actually, was to add a seal of formality to what is already well known. It is neither a secret, nor contestable, that the poverty bracket in Nigeria has expanded drastically in the …

It was a Friday. The weekend was imminent and people, expectedly, were winding down after a busy week. The Jum’mat service would also hold in the afternoon. These, however, did not impact the zestful participation of guests at the 77th birthday public presentation of the biography of a retired Justice of the Supreme Court (JSC), John Afolabi Fabiyi. Justice Fabiyi …

First they came for the socialists, and I didn’t speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – …

All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. No one calls on your name or strives to lay hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us and made us waste …

In this last of our series on interrogatories on the three frontline political candidates as they canter towards the 25th February 2023 presidential election in Nigeria, we shall direct our attention at their utterances and promises on constitutional reforms with potential impact on democratic dividends and enhancement of peace, unity and welfare of the Nigerian people. Of the three, the …

If there was a prize for Nigeria’s No 1 letter writer, journalist-turned-lawyer and one-time minister, Tony Momoh would appear to be the undisputed champion. The late Momoh performed the difficult task of making sense of General Ibrahim Babangida’s largely messy and convoluted political and economic programmes by writing regular letters to “fellow countrymen”. His extensive and elaborate undertaking later packaged …

Our problem in this country is hysterical blindness. Selective amnesia. The profound inability to see self and absolve deeply our pathetic situation. We see other people’s joy as our joy. Rather than ask: how about our joy? Who did we offend to find ourselves in the rot we are. We are celebrating Qatar. We are marvelling at a country that …

When the stormy petrel governor of Rivers State, Barrister Nyesom Wike threw his 13 percent derivation windfall bombshell last week, his fellow Niger Delta governors must have been gutted, even as ordinary Nigerians within and beyond the oil-producing areas were alarmed. It was a shock to me that some governors can receive such a humongous amount of money in these …