DETTY December is no longer a cultural accident. It is a system—deliberate, monetised, and deeply embedded in Nigeria’s social fabric. Each December, the country enters a high-stakes cycle of celebration that blends entertainment, economics and identity into a single national moment. The phrase captures the intensity of the season: loud music, packed streets, […]
By HALIMA TAKWAS How broken primary healthcare, poverty, and silence are condemning rural women to lives of pain An investigative editorial from rural Niger State A life undone by childbirth WHEN Sheituna Saani speaks about her condition, her voice barely rises above a whisper. Not because she […]
By IGBINAZAKA OGIESUYI OGIAMIEN PRINCESS Igwiyisi, the trailblazing first daughter of Oba Eweka II, occupies a complicated and often overlooked chapter in Benin’s royal history. Upon the passing of their father in 1933, she challenged the traditional succession order, entering into a fierce dispute with her younger brother, the future Oba Akenzua II. Her demand was […]
By NCHONGANYI AKEBULAN FOR centuries, the transatlantic slave trade has been framed through a convenient distortion: “Africans sold Africans.” This oversimplified refrain has endured because it shifts responsibility, absolves European powers, and obstructs honest historical accountability. But archival evidence, court records, missionary correspondence, and early diplomatic letters reveal a very different story—one rooted in systemic manipulation, […]
HISTORY often remembers the Aro-Ibibio War as a clash of kingdoms. But beneath the surface lies a far more intricate story—one of political engineering, contested legitimacy, foreign intervention, and the strategic creation of an entirely new power structure in southeastern Nigeria. What unfolded in the mid-17th century was not just a war; it was a […]
THE Benin monarchy is one of Africa’s oldest and most enduring institutions—revered, sacrosanct, and traditionally beyond public challenge. To disagree with the Oba is to question not just a king, but a centuries-old spiritual and political order. Yet history records rare, seismic moments when sections of the Benin populace—chiefs, elites, and everyday citizens—collectively pushed back. […]
FOR decades, African politicians, preachers, and public commentators have insisted that queerness is a foreign import — a Western invention smuggled in through colonization and reinforced by globalisation. Yet history carries a different testimony, one so powerful and so disruptive that it threatens the very foundation of this narrative. Buried in the layers of Yoruba […]
The Coal That Built a City: How Enugu’s Black Gold Gave Birth to Port Harcourt An Investigative Features-Editorial on History, Power, and the Making of a Nigerian Port City WHEN British engineers struck coal in the hills of Enugu in 1909, they uncovered far more than a rich mineral deposit—they set off a chain of […]
By OKAFOR EMEKA XAVIER The Secret War That Shook the Delta’s Power Structure FOR decades, the Niger Delta’s mangrove underworld has been ruled by fluid alliances, brutal rivalries, and an economy powered as much by oil as by guns. Among its many actors, one man became the unquestioned sovereign of the creeks: Government Ekpemupolo — Tompolo, […]
How Culture, Politics and Law Deny LGBT Humanity in Nigeria IN Nigeria, debates about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are seldom abstract. They determine whether millions can live openly, access health care, raise families, join civil society or even avoid arrest. This investigation traces why, despite global shifts toward recognition, Nigeria’s social, political […]