Magu agonistes
Shorn of its classical flavour, this headline simply means the agony (or many agonies) of Magu. But why might Ibrahim Magu, acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), be in...
View ArticleNational question or just gaming for relevance?
Sometime in October 2016, a colleague on The Nation Editorial Board asked if Ripples would be available to review a book, soon billed for launch, on Nigerian contemporary politics and history. The...
View ArticleFrom Iroko to Arakunrin: Ondo on the march again
Oluwarotimi Odunayo Akeredolu, SAN, as simply “Arakunrin” (Yoruba for generic male, connoting “commoner”), reminds one of Shakespeare’s tragic hero, Caius Marcius Coriolanus, in the play, Coriolanus....
View ArticleThat Soludo yabis
The Soludo bomb, that the Buhari Presidency met a poor economy, but made it poorer still, is somewhat reminiscent of Fela (God bless his soul) in his African Shrine days. When the irreverent Afrobeat...
View ArticleAt 80: Ebora Owu sweet and sour
From his wild rants, Ayo Fayose, Ekiti governor, cuts the picture of a doomed dog, deaf to the hunter’s whistle. His gruff request for a “refund”, of “his” N10 million, the then President Olusegun...
View ArticleFani leads ‘em to Kigali
Femi Fani-Kayode is strutting to Kigali. Yet, the Yoruba nation — at least its media-savvy denizens — barge along, too angry, it appears, to remember their essence. When did the cherished Omoluabi...
View ArticleOde to ideas and compassion
For Asiwaju Bola Tinubu at 65, it is ode to brilliant ideas and deep compassion — and just as well; for no politician of his generation better epitomizes these two concepts. But the remarkable thing...
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Osun: History meets the historic
You can’t step in the same river twice —Heraclitus, Greek philosopher The excitement reached a head, as the party hit the November 27 interchange, that flies over Gbongan road, in Osogbo. He was no...
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Save Stella Monye’s son
Ace crooner, Stella Monye, needs N20 million (US $50, 000) to save her only child, Ibrahim. But why should anyone listen to her cries? Ever read Michael Echeruo’s Victorian Lagos? The magic of that...
View ArticleElite children of perdition
Nigeria’s elite children of perdition easily forget: Goodluck Jonathan’s electoral rout of 2015 was a rejection of a feckless fellow, as it was an elite gambit at class preservation. Yeah, a bumbling...
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Between Fayose and Kanu
Ekiti maverick, Ayodele Fayose and IPOB’s Nnamdi Kanu, are a peculiar pair. The one is twice a blight on his Ekiti generation. The other, a heady presage to avoidable catastrophe: again, for the...
View ArticleDeath of empathy
The president is sick, with not a few fixated with morbid tales and ghoulish fancies. But what is clear here, even in every mortal’s helpless surrender to the uncertain certainty of death, is the death...
View ArticleThe troika self-rouses
Generals Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar, all former military heads of state, rouse themselves at the scent of presidential ill health. Rendezvous point: IBB’s Minna hill...
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Edo: Renaissance afoot?
In Benin City, there is a sweet whiff of Lagos. In Lagos, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, like the Biblical David, came and fought all the battles, state and federal, to soundly establish the Lagos neo-political...
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From old Biafran to new: war is nasty business
Correct the mistake of 2015. Vote out the corrupt legislators Today, exactly 50 years ago on 30 May 1967, the Republic of Biafra was born. “Now Therefore I, Lieutenant-Colonel Chukwuemeka...
View ArticleBiafra, Oodua and allied acolytes
It’s a season of supremacists; and Biafra, Oodua and allied acolytes preen, strut, caper and crow! It is not unlike that Yoruba proverb: at the fall of Ajanaku, the mighty elephant, knives and daggers...
View ArticleVandals at the court gate
Stained judges, preening from the Bench, are akin to barbarians sacking the Rome of Justice. Yet, that’s the path of self-ruin the National Judicial Council (NJC) is treading. Vandals at the gate of...
View ArticleWanted: a Third Force
“The civil war was a disaster, the failure of reason and the triumph of egoism and narrow-mindedness” — Sam Amadi, in a 4 September 2002 piece published in This Day, headlined “Nigeria: enter the Third...
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Osun: threat to a new order
An Osun, it is a birth pang of sorts. An old order is dying — and frankly, no sane mind would mourn its passage. But a new order is struggling to be born. Again, until it is delivered, safe, healthy...
View ArticleRestructuring buzz
It’s a “restructuring” buzz out there. But it’s not unlike blind folks feeling different parts of an elephant. Is “restructuring” like this elephant — a simple case of different perspectives? Or a...
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