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 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 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 […]
Q: The PDP governors filed a case at the Supreme Court on 9 April 2025. What has been the reaction to the court’s silence? Umar Sani (former political adviser to VP Namadi Sambo):“In 162 days, the highest court in Nigeria failed to determine the case brought by eleven PDP governors against the Federal Government. The […]
BY DR AUSTIN ORETTE ARE we really divided by geography or culture? Nigeria is a very heterogeneous society. From the cacophony of our disagreements, there is a straight line that separates the North and the South, the East and the West. We have been presented with the scenario that the North will always want the […]
FROM Paris to Kathmandu to Washington, a troubling pattern has emerged: citizens rising against governments they no longer trust. The anger is global, the grievances familiar—economic hardship, political arrogance, widening inequality, and leadership failures. For African leaders, these events are not distant crises but urgent warnings. A World on EdgeFrance, the land of revolutions, is […]
NIGERIA may be a Black African country, but it often operates under the shadow of white supremacist values. Colonialism may have formally ended decades ago, yet its residue lingers in the collective psyche. The British did not just draw borders and build institutions; they implanted a belief system that equated whiteness with authority, competence, and […]
BY DR AUSTIN ORETTE RELIGION in Nigeria will always be a cog in the wheel of progress because this is the Trojan horse the colonizers left behind. It is the only thing that leads to arrested development of any intelligent discussion of finding solutions to what is holding Nigeria back. At the time the British […]