There are two young Nigerians whom other young Nigerians love to hate – Reno Omokri and Ohimai Godwin Amaize. There are several reasons why they are hated, but among the top reasons are their perceived excessive vocalizations of the Jonathan administration’s agenda, their insistence that young Nigerians should not be satisfied with ‘Twitter activism’ but should challenge government in the… Read More »Is Ohimai Crazy?
Politics in Nigeria is extremely screwed up, but that is not exactly headline news. For several decades, Nigerians have mourned, bemoaned and agonized over the kind of politicians they have been cursed with. Some argue that a people deserve the kinds of leaders they get, but Nigerians are yet to be convinced that what they have received is really what… Read More »Whipping Governors, Phony Pilots and Private Jets
Now that Governor Babtunde Fashola has concluded that the next phase of the ‘remodelling Lagos project’ is the eradication of commercial motorcycles from the streets of Lagos, the debate about whether he actually is a hero or villain inevitably resurfaces. In all honesty, no one doubts that at the core of his being, Fashola means well for the generality of… Read More »If Not For ‘Okada’
I was barely five years old when I first encountered the Curse, or Corps or Corpse or whatever it is called these days. Little young boy that I was, I was fascinated by the very smart uniforms, head caps and yellow boots that hung in the corner of my dad’s rom (who knew that those dusty boots were called jungle… Read More »Intrigues of the Nigerian Youth Slavery Curse
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
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 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