When talking about similarities between people of great minds, two individuals quickly come to mind: Abiodun Abayomi Oyebanji, aka BAO, and Asiwaju Munirudeen Bola Oyebamiji, aka AMBO. Oyebanji is currently the Governor of Ekiti State and in the business of taking the state to greater heights. The governor has just secured the All Progressives Congress,...
Like I predicted over a year ago, Governor Ademola Adeleke will emerge the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate for the 2026 Osun governorship election. With barely a month to the primaries, it is becoming increasingly clear that he is the man to beat for the party’s ticket. Adeleke is from Osun West Senatorial District. Interestingly,...
In Nigeria, elite oppression and callousness are often mostly abstract. Most people at the lower end of the social scale think and feel that many people in positions of power, comfortably ensconced in their sinecures, are haughty, self-impressed, and possessed of ice-cold disdain for them. But it is FCT Minister Nyesom Wike, more than anyone...
The bully in me met its match in my primary school classmate, Lukman Oluwuyi, on our way back home one afternoon. In the eyes of a schoolkid, St Paul Anglican School, Idi-Oro, Lagos, was a couple of giant two-storey buildings on an expansive compound which served as an assembly ground in the morning and a...
“A 17th century English author, diplomat, and politician, Sir Henry Wotton (1568 – 1639), was quoted as describing, in 1604, an ambassador or diplomat as ‘an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country’” “How can an honest gentleman also tell lies?” “That is the irony of it – but the...
I have read competing perspectives on the correctitude (or lack thereof) of FCT Minister Nyesom Wike and Lt. A.M. Yerima’s conduct in the viral video of their gladiatorial rhetorical combat. My concern, however, is different. Several social media commentators, irrespective of partisan affiliations, appear united in proclaiming that Wike finally “met his match” in Yerima....
In a nation often gridlocked by debate, the Nigerian Senate’s firm stance against sachet alcohol represents a critical intervention for public health. The 10th Senate’s recent resolution to enforce the ban on sachet alcohol production by December 31, 2025, has ignited a necessary firestorm. The conversation is, predictably, mixed. On one side, cries of “elitism”...
Sheikh Abubakar Mahmud Gumi (1924 –1992) was shocked when he got to Mecca for the first time in 1955 and discovered that the city had no streetlights. Sheikh Gumi was an Islamic scholar and Grand Khadi of the Northern Region from 1962 to 1967. He was the father of Sheikh Ahmad Abubakar Gumi, the man...
Greek philosopher, Socrates, may be the most famous Western figure of his time to have swallowed the poisonous plant’s juice called hemlock. But, Africa, too had its. As he was sentenced to death in 399 BCE, Socrates was forced to drink this poisonous plant secretion which causes muscular paralysis, leading to respiratory failure. As he...
Nigeria’s online and offline discursive arenas have been suffused with frenetic, impassioned, and intensely heightened dialogic exchanges in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s designation of Nigeria as a “Country of Particular Concern” and this threat to militarily invade the country to stop what he called a “Christian genocide.” Nigerians are predictably divided largely along...