Opinion

By SHEDDY OZOENE  Let me state upfront that I was not one of the people excited about Nigeria's change to the old national anthem. When,  in 1978, the military, in a rather whimsical manner, replaced that national anthem with the one that we used till last month, they did not offer any plausible explanations. And there is none either for its reintroduction on May 29, except, perhaps, to shake the ground as another mark of President Tinubu’s 1st anniversary in office.  In any case, none of the two is particularly inspiring and only a few people have bothered to attach…

By SHEDDY OZOENE  Nimbo community in Uzo-Uwani Local Government Area of Enugu State has become a metaphor for the dastardly actions of suspected Fulani herdsmen who have terrorised it for decades. At night and in broad daylight, innocent men, women and children of the community are gruesomely murdered by the marauders who desire their homeland for grazing their cattle.  The beautiful grassland have been turned to killing fields and the people who try to resist the take-over of their ancestral homelands have become the guinea-pigs in a chilling experiment in forceful land grab.  Penultimate Sunday, the marauders who have encircled…

By TUNDE OLUSUNLE Sceptical reporters had indeed cast the headlines of the stories they were going to file, ahead of the 98th National Executive Committee, (NEC) meeting of the Peoples' Democratic Party, (PDP), Thursday April 18, 2023. They were awaiting the news of the implosion of the party after what was going to be a testy, nervy convergence of the party leadership at that level. The NEC ranks next to its National Convention. The recent PDP, NEC engagement was the first since the rancorous 2023 general elections. Very bitter acrimony hallmarked the elections with partial breakaways by stakeholders at various…

By SHEDDY OZOENE In his days as governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello assumed the nickname ‘the White Lion’. Many people thought it was befitting, in an ironical sense, for an elected governor who saw his fellow men - his constituents - as prey. He hunted and haunted them to no end during the eight years of his tenure. His favorite pastime was boxing. He never tired of showcasing himself in the gym with different makes of boxing gloves, and with those huge biceps of his, one could imagine he packed some deadly punch. Behind the faćade, however, Bello is…

Almost all the fiscal and monetary policies of the Bola Tinubu administration in the last ten months were carefully calibrated to make the poor get poorer and the rich get richer... The government to all intents and purposes is borrowing a leaf out of Joseph Stalin’s anecdotal book of cruelty. Legend has it that the defunct Soviet Union’s dictator once plucked a live chicken to show how easy it was to control a subjugated people. By IKECHUKWU AMAECHI  I wanted to comment this week on the feigned surprise by the former Accountant General of the Federation (AG-F), Ahmed Idris, that…

The first civilian governor of Abia State and former Minister of Science and Technology under President Muhammadu Buhari, Dr. Ogbonnaya Onu, is dead. He was aged 71. He has been in an Abuja hospital for the past month for the treatment of an undisclosed ailment. Details of his death are still sketchy but sources close to his family confirmed that he suffered a stroke last month and died today, Thursday, in Abuja. Ogbonnaya Onu was a lecturer at University of Port Harcourt before he made a foray into National Politics during the scuttled transition to civilian rule of former president…

While we continue to luxuriate in foolhardy work lethargy, idling away in the name of needless public holidays, serious nations are ramping up production in anticipation of increases in product demand from us – the revellers. By IKECHUKWU AMAECHI As you read this, Nigerians are still at home ‘savouring’ the Federal Government’s ‘magnanimity’ in awarding them extra public holiday for the Eid-el-Fitr celebrations that mark the end of the month-long dawn-to-sunset Ramadan fasting by the Muslim ummah. As it is always the tradition, the Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, on Sunday, April 7, declared Tuesday and Wednesday public holidays for…