What does APC want?
What does the All Progressives Congress (APC), the new party, which just approached the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to consummate its merger, want – power? What else would any...
View ArticleAbibatu Mogaji as exemplar
Chief Jerome Udoji, late patriot and exemplary civil servant, titled his no less exemplary memoirs, Under Three Masters. If Alhaja Abibatu Asabi Mogaji (16 October 1916-15 June 2013) were to write her...
View ArticleWestminster has gone mad again!
When Nigerian playwright, Prof. Ola Rotimi (God bless his soul!), wrote his hilarious play, Our Husband Has Gone Mad Again, he certainly did not have Britain in mind. But is the Queen’s own country...
View ArticleGolden boy, golden age
There is something decidedly golden in the tenure and temper of Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, the governor of Lagos, who turned 50 on June 28. From “Babatunde who?” in 2007, Fashola has become an emblem...
View ArticlePresidential anarchy
Can the president of the Federal Republic levy war against a state and get away with it? From the conduct of President Goodluck Jonathan’s henchmen and women in the Rivers contrived crisis, that...
View ArticleOld soldiers, new battle
‘A lie may travel for donkey years but truth overtakes it in a flash – Yoruba proverb’ Were Chinua Achebe still alive, he probably would have brewed another classic, brimming with sardonic humour...
View ArticleOf leaders and dealers: Soyinka Vs Clark
A community with worthy elders never comes to ruin – Yoruba proverb When do elders morph from leaders to dealers? The latest foxtrot on the Rivers crisis, by the South-South Elders and Stakeholders, a...
View ArticleNeither Jonathan nor the North
If you ran away from a death for donkey years, yet you came back to die the same death, then you have lost your care – Igbo saying, courtesy Chinua Achebe. The opposition column of Nigerian politics...
View ArticleTale of two scapegoats
“When your enemies sit in the assembly for the impeachment of your blessing, the Lord will appear like Chidi Lloyd with a mace and beat them to a coma” – social media joke that went viral. In Rivers,...
View ArticleBeware, Eastern Brother!
The title of this piece is a pun of Chinua Achebe’s Beware, Soul Brother, the late novelist’s collection of poetry, written basically during Nigeria’s Civil War (1967-1970). The symbolism of the pun is...
View ArticleAgain, Sege talks the talk
Somewhat, former President Olusegun Obasanjo figures himself some incarnation of Chief Obafemi Awolowo – the one who must sneeze and the republic must catch a cold. The huge difference is that while...
View ArticleSuntai and the gilt cage
Danbaba Danfulani Suntai, embattled governor of Taraba State, is happily locked in a gilt cage. But those trying to prise him from that golden prison don’t necessarily boast a better moral hue. Both...
View ArticleOf Rehoboam and Jonathan
David had fought all the wars and secured the kingdom. Solomon had taken the kingdom to its zenith, a pearl among nations. All Rehoboam needed was a little wisdom to “possess his possession”. Yet, he...
View ArticleAwo: the unlearned lessons
September 11, 1963 was, for Chief Obafemi Awolowo (1909-1987), programmed to be the beginning of the end. That was the day, 50 years ago, he was sentenced to 10 years gaol, with hard labour, for...
View ArticleASUU strike and its many ironies
The on-going Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike, already in its third month, has come with grand ironies. These ironies are grand enough to evoke that famous personal rebuke from the...
View ArticleSNC: Beware of Greeks bearing gifts
The war to reclaim from Troy, the beautiful Helen Paris the Trojan had stolen from Sparta, had lasted 10 years. Yet, the Greeks could not sack Troy. Achilles, the charmed Greek with the fatal heel, had...
View ArticleSNC: Still gaming?
Femi Macaulay, a colleague on The Nation Editorial Board, wondered if Ripples was prescient, since “SNC: Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” (last week’s offering, October 1), hit the column space the same...
View ArticleThe Oba, his libido and the law
On October 8, an Osun high court discharged and acquitted Oba Adebukola Alli, the Alowa of Ilowa-Ijesa, Osun State, of rape charges. But the same court lampooned the accused for sexual rascality that...
View ArticleHis blood on his hands
He nailed an innocent man on the cross. So, his blood is on his hands. That would be history’s damning verdict on President Goodluck Jonathan, when the odyssey of eminent jurist, Justice Isa Ayo...
View ArticleEkiti ronu
If Ekiti ronu [Ekiti think] echoes Yoruba ronu, iconic caution as mass protest music by late dramatist, Hubert Ogunde, during the 1st Republic’s political storm, it is simply because a storm of similar...
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