There has been renewed talk lately about the need for Nigerians to patronize locally made goods, (someone should have added… and services!). Championed by Senator Ben Murray Bruce, and supported by the Senate President Bukola Saraki, the Minister of State for Industry, Trade and Investment, Hajia Aisha Abubakar and a large crowd of online campaigners, so much ink, saliva, and emotions have been inves ...

  Teachers are the most important persons in anyone’s life. Teachers teach us everything that we know. They inspire us. They leave their imprints, almost like genetic imprints in our lives, and those imprints survive forever. They come in different shapes. The teachers in the classrooms, the ones we meet in our life-long journey of searching and probing. The ones who cross our paths and leave indelible ...

  "I Owe Long Life, Peaceful Coexistence To Almighty Allah" – these have always been the humble words of the Emir of Zazzau Alhaji Shehu Idris whenever he is approached for a remark on his decades of accomplishments on the throne of Zazzau. The 18th Fulani Emir of Zazzau, Alhaji Shehu Idris marked the 41st year of his ascension on Monday, February 8, 2016. Alhaji Shehu Idris, the 18th Fulani Emir of Za ...

Catholic priests in Nigeria have always captured the public imagination, some of them have served in government positions, some were prominent in the fight and struggle for democracy, some of them have proved their mettle as poets, teachers, musicians, social critics, and public affairs commentators, but Rev. Fr. Ejike Camillus Anthony Ebenezer Mbaka is a cut above the rest, not necessarily in terms of inte ...

  There has been so much concern about how the Federal Character principle has since its introduction in 1979, promoted mediocrity within the public service, and retarded national growth and progress. Introduced after the civil war to promote national integration, and to address the fears of sections of the country which felt marginalized, the Federal Character principle was meant to ensure that public ...

  My criticisms of the excesses of the online phenomenon in terms of its brazen abuse in an unregulated environment has often made me the target of attacks, with many insisting on quoting the opening paragraph of a piece I once wrote along these lines as if it is a memorial verse, but further developments have shown that indeed, liberal, accommodative, useful and open as the growth of the new media may ...

  “See what your friends are writing” “Who?” “Your fellow columnists. See how they are attacking the Minister of Interior, General Abdulrahman Dambazau, just because an orderly helped to shine his shoes in public.” “I really don’t see what the hoopla is all about” “Me too” “I think many of our people just like to talk about shoes. For five years, Nigerians kept talking about how former President Goodlu ...

I have been musing over the conundrum above for a very long time, even before this new dispensation of the sincere and stern President Buhari, and I can’t get it off my mind, the possibility, that is. Corruption is defined nowadays simply as “The abuse of entrusted power for private gain”. Please don’t get me wrong, I am not a subscriber to puritanism or absolute inviolability. Corruption is part of humanki ...

  January 15 every year is Nigeria’s Armed Forces Remembrance Day: wreaths are laid, statements are made, soldiers, government officials and the Nigerian Legion attend parades, pigeons symbolizing peace are released, a dinner is organized for widows of fallen soldiers and there is so much talk about death and dying for one’s country all in honour of Nigerian soldiers who have had to die so that Nigeria ...

I was on my way back from Botswana, after attending a conference organized by the Africa Leadership Forum (ALF). This was sometime in the 90s, on that same trip was Professor Tekena Tamuno, the eminent historian of blessed memory. We boarded an Air Afrique flight from Johannesburg to Abidjan, where we were scheduled to join another flight to Lagos. But Air Afrique at the time had started having problems. It ...