The tale of Nigeria’s journey from June 1998 till date is like the tale of the child whose birth was heralded with joy, whose infanthood gave so much promise, whose future was as bright as the mid-day sun, but who never really outgrew his diapers. This is the very sorry tale of a sickly infant who has retained the world’s… Read More »The Child Who Never Really Grew
Just like every single one of the four million people who were forced to leave their families, cattle, and burning villages behind, she walked for hundreds of miles into the great unknown after the outbreak of civil war in Sudan in 1985, not aware if she would ever return to the place she had always called home. Several years after… Read More »Beauty of the Dark Continent
Every Nigerian who has had the privilege to travel out of the country (whether to Ghana or Russia) knows the pains of being a Nigerian, and every Nigerian who has a relative who has enjoyed such privileges has at least heard about the countless headaches and embarrassments that Nigerians are condemned to suffer out of the borders of their fatherland,… Read More »Pains we live with
The last twenty days in Nigeria have been days of untold torture for all those who hoped against all reasonable hope that the Nigerian contingent to the 2012 London Olympics would return with a medal. Considering our history at the global games, no one harboured expectations of a rain of medals, but no one equally thought that we would not… Read More »If the Olympics came to Nigeria…
Over the last couple of months, I have found myself having to make repeated analyses of the state of education in Nigeria – focusing mainly on primary and secondary education. Hardly any Nigerian is unaware of the decrepit state of school facilities across the country or the woeful results that are reported every year when senior school students take external… Read More »Nigerian Education: What Works?
Over time, Nigerians have proven to be very patient people; they understand that there will always be a wide hollow between the fortunes of the average citizen and those of the political elite. They have lived through military regimes in which successive dictators have stashed away so much of the nation’s wealth in foreign personal accounts and determined by free… Read More »Moving Nigeria Forward (VI): Silencing the Wolves
When the announcement was made on Monday July 23 that Pastor Tunde Bakare, presiding overseer of Latter Rain Assembly, convener of the Save Nigeria Group and former Vice-Presidential candidate of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), had been summoned by the State Security Service (SSS) on account of statements he made in his church sermon on Sunday, Nigerians did what… Read More »Moving Nigeria Forward (V): Freedom of Opposition
Only a few weeks ago, President Goodluck Jonathan made a very difficult decision by his own standards and hosted a media chat, where he fielded questions from members of the national media and attempted to address some of the concerns of the Nigerian people. Whether or not he really answered any questions at all remains a debated issue, but he… Read More »Moving Nigeria Forward (IV): Respect to the People
In an ever-evolving world, it is not entirely strange to look to the past to garner inspiration for moving forward, but it is quite unsettling to persistently agitate for the glory days in history. This exactly is what Nigeria has grown to personify at the moment. Very little in the present gives satisfaction to the older generation or the new… Read More »Moving Nigeria Forward (III): Back to the ’70s
Several development experts and commentators have given wide-ranging opinions about the path to sustainable development for African countries (lumping all into one group), and most of them have focused on developing the leadership capacity of African leaders and fighting corruption. These are two very pivotal steps to the progress of the continent, but neither of them necessarily translates directly to… Read More »Moving Nigeria Forward (II): Security and Infrastructure
Nigeria, a country with an estimated population of 167 million people drawn from about 400 indigenous tribes is an idea that many argue should never have been in the first place. So much has been made of the decision of Lord Frederick Lugard and the British regime in 1914 to amalgamate three divergent groups of people; the northern and southern… Read More »Moving Forward (1): Rethinking the Idea of Nigeria
It feels like several millennia ago since Nigerians were touted to be the happiest people on earth. We took pride in the fact that in spite of economic hardships, we always found a way to maintain a colourful national spirit through our sports, music, festivals, local merchandise and every other source of national pleasure that we could muster. Forget the recent… Read More »Theater of Calamities