After one year in office, there is one area in which the most strident is Governor Seyi Makinde’s detractors will struggle to gain traction: the fulfilment of his promise to pay the salaries of civil servants regularly. In other climes this will be considered trite, perhaps to the point of ridiculing any public officials who
There were waves of joyous felicitation at the beginning of this week on the occasion of this year’s Mothers day. Splashed across social media were photos and videos tinted with goodwill messages, prayers and best wishes for mothers, not to count phone calls from loved ones near and afar. The happy cheers were quite heart-warming. Mothers
Over the course of two days (16 & 17th July 2019) I had the privilege of meeting two of the most incredible human beings one can ever meet on the planet. As many of you reading this are aware I have been leading a project looking at internally displaced peoples in Northeast Nigeria. The project
Applications are invited for researchers currently registered for PhD programmes in a Nigerian university into a training and mentoring scheme aimed at supporting the career aspirations of PhD researchers in various disciplines. This inaugural call is aimed at PhD researchers of Oyo state origin. It is expected that subsequent calls will expand the reach to support students
Fifty five years ago, in April 1963, Dr Martin Luther King Jr penned his now famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail”. In response to those who accused him of being an extremist and a rabble rouser, Dr King said he was indeed an extremist of some sort: an extremist for love, an extremist for justice. He
I have been thinking about the Naija project. In the light of the recent debates concerning the Nigerian government response to the IPOB issue, i must admit that evolution kind of made a full stop in Africa. I don’t have time for a sermon today. Prof Pius Adesanmi has done a brilliant piece on TRANSCENDENTALISM
In a move that has generated widespread controversy, Governor Ajimobi of Oyo State, aka The Constituted Authority, recently embarked on a “judicial review” of the 1957 “Ibadan Chieftaincy Declaration”. In this new arrangement, 11 high chiefs of the Olubadan-in-Council, along with 21 others previously known as Baales, have now been vested with the so-called
Fresh from his return from a 103-day stay in London, President Buhari waxed lyrical about national unity in his televised address to the nation. Nigeria’s unity, he said, “is settled and non-negotiable”. He apparently agreed on this with the late Ojukwu, and he thinks “majority of Nigerians” share this view. He has very strong
Author: Ha-Joon Chang Publisher: Random House, 2007 276 pages. You’ve probably heard the Gospel of Free Market: if a country wants to break the cycle of poverty and achieve economic growth and prosperity, it should deregulate, open up its market, welcome investors, and unleash the power of the private sector. Nationalisation is anathema; protection is
The creation of states was, as far as I can tell, a “joker” deployed by the then Federal government to diminish regional identity and regional aspirations. Remember this was in the wake of the pogrom and the civil war. We must therefore view the current idea to proliferate (non viable) states with curious eyes and