By DAVID JOHN-FLUKE An Economy of Desperation WHEN Temitope Afolabi’s husband faced imprisonment over a ₦48 million debt, she turned to surrogacy to save her family. Paid just over ₦2.2 million for carrying another couple’s child, she was promised transportation, accommodation, and medical support. But in reality, she was underpaid, overworked, and left with serious […]
By REVEREND FRANK CHIKANE, via KADARIA AHMED THE World Council of Churches (WCC), representing over half a billion Christians worldwide, finally spoke with moral clarity in June. At its Johannesburg meeting, the Central Committee condemned Israel’s apartheid system, demanded sanctions, divestment, and an arms embargo, and called for an end to occupation and the Gaza […]
By AOIRI OBAIGBO ON a rain-soaked morning in Lagos, a writer set aside his daily walk and returned to an old question that has haunted Nigeria for decades: what does it mean to be an intellectual in a society where truth is often an inconvenience? The answer, he insists, is simple yet radical. An intellectual is […]
By DR. JOE OKEI ODUMAKIN TWENTY years after the tragic death of Comrade Chima Ubani, his ideals and the struggles he championed remain as urgent as ever. Ubani, a fearless activist and labour leader, died in 2005 while leading a protest against a fuel price hike—from ₦50 to ₦65 per litre. At the time, his death […]
By FIDELUS ZWANSON NIGERIA’S private charter aviation sector has, for years, been a theatre of fraud. At the centre of it lies the abuse of the Temporary Import Permit (TIP)—a loophole that allows foreign-registered jets to fly freely across our skies while denying the country billions in badly needed revenue. The scandal is not just […]
By OBIARAERI, Nnaemeka Onyeka FOR too long, the South East has blamed “external forces” for its lack of a functioning river port, a massive international airport, and industrial transformation. But the truth is uncomfortable: no one is stopping us—except ourselves. Our failure lies not in geography or federal neglect, but in a toxic mix of […]
By ANITA KNIGHT WHAT does it take to build a fairer world order? For decades, Africa has asked this question while struggling under global systems designed without its voice. Now, with China’s launch of the Global Governance Initiative (GGI), the conversation has returned with urgency — and Nigeria is uniquely placed to answer. At the […]
By EMMANUELLA NDUONOFIT THE death of dictators has always carried with it a strange relief, like a soothing balm on a festering wound. Their demise often feels like a long-awaited exhale for those who lived under their cruelty. Take Saddam Hussein. His death sentence stirred outrage from some quarters—Syria denounced it, Hamas called it political, […]
SOMEONE once told me some people are born without feeling — “spies of humanity,” they called them — those who live off others with smiles that hide greed. Think of the faces who run pension treasuries, who siphon what should keep the old and infirm secure. If such people are the ones vying to lead […]
By HALIMA TAKWAS TEN years after Boko Haram’s mass abduction of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok, Borno State, at least 91 girls remain missing or in captivity, according to a damning new report by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The committee’s findings, released after a confidential two-week mission to Nigeria […]