Category: Opinion

By Tunde Odesola At 14, Ogunwande left his father’s house for the clinic of a renowned olóòlà, the penis stylist in Akeetan, his Oyo hometown, and declared his mission to have the foreskin of his manhood surgically removed. “Mo fe da’ko,” he told the baba of his intention to be circumcised. The baba shot him […]

IT’S been a gloomy new year for most Nigerians. Chiefly, the cost-of-living crisis has pushed millions to the edge of privation, preventing them from celebrating the traditional festive season. The months-long nationwide cash shortage aggravated the economic hardship. Businesses are not exempted from the headwind, as operational costs spike out of control. President Bola Tinubu […]

EXPECTATIONS that the Port Harcourt Refinery Company would come on stream by December, as promised by the Federal Government, have again been dashed. The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Heineken Lokpobiri, had indicated the “mechanical completion” of repairs and promised that the refinery would resume operations by the end of the year, but this […]

By Abdu Rafiu One cannot but be struck by the spate of deaths that occurred in the year that has just passed. I am not referring to those who left at what may pass as a ripe old age. Some left in their prime. And when you add those who passed away through the banditry […]

MANY years after Nigeria transited from military dictatorship to civilian rule, it is alarming that there are currently 50,000 soldiers involved in internal security operations around the country. The Chief of Army Staff, Taoreed Lagbaja, substantiated this aberration during an end-of-the-year event in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, saying, “Over 50,000 of our colleagues” are on […]

UNDETERRED by Nigeria’s precarious finances, the National Assembly has characteristically raised its own allocations in the 2024 budget from the initial proposal. Lawmakers brazenly increased the N197 billion originally earmarked to over N344 billion. In a country ravaged by mass poverty among its 226 million people, cornering limited public funds for just 469 persons is […]

As the year 2024 gets underway, not even the staunchest optimists and the predatory political class can pretend any longer that all is well with the world’s largest agglomeration of Black people. In all sectors of national life–governance, the economy, security, infrastructure, social services, and national cohesion–confusion, decay, and misery are prevalent amid unmistakable symptoms […]

By Abdu Rafiu After a very long time, one arm of our electric power authority had the courtesy of alerting us that it would shut down for three days and we would not have power supply for that period. The last time there was a semblance of this, at least within memory for me, was […]