Opinion

FESTUS ADEDAYO “Why should I bother myself with what is done to my body when I die? Oyomesi (the council of seven high-ranking chiefs in the Oyo Empire) knows what to do with my body!” That was what immediate past Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi 111, told me in his palace, a few weeks before he journeyed to Ibara - where Oyo buries its kings. He was furious with Ogun State traditional rulers. His grouse was with the Obas and Chiefs Law of 2021. That law has aberrant stipulations that are repugnant to tradition and customs. One of them…

By SHEDDY OZOENE It is not always that any arm of the nation’s security apparatus gets praised in the pages of newspapers. It is compelling to do so today, and the Enugu State office of the Directorate of State Security (DSS) gets the prize for the manifest results of its contributions in managing insecurity in the state. It may be too early in the day to say that the threat of insecurity in the state has fully been arrested, but much progress has been made in recent months, especially in the key flashpoints of Nimbo and Eha Amufu. The DSS…

By OREVA GODWIN It gladdens my heart that the mere thought of writing this article puts a smile on my face. Your handsome face is forever etched in my heart. My lookalike, my first true love. My mentor. My joy. Loving you was so easy because you were a good man. Today, I declare my love for you again and remind you, even though you're gone, that you are not forgotten. Godwin Ukoko was an amazing father and a loving husband. He made our house a home built on love, unity, and support. In his words to my older siblings:…

BY ABRAHAM OGBODO Finally, President Mohammadu Buhari died on July 13, 2025. He wasn’t quite the coward alluded to by William Shakespeare in Julius Caeser. But he had died many times before his real death last Sunday. In the build-up to the 2015 presidential election, the state of his health was about the only campaign issue in the opposing camp. Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, then a pretentious promoter of President Goodluck Jonathan, had expressed deep worries. He said his own mother who was of the same age as Buhari, was suffering various forms of age-induced incapacitation and that Buhari, as…

By Azu Ishiekwene I met him several times after he became Nigeria’s president in 2015, but the meetings did not change my impression of him as an enigma. Yet, as history peels back layer after layer of Muhammadu Buhari’s place, we may discover the essence of his beguiling simplicity. Tight-lipped and taciturn, a soldier in bearing and character, his life was marked by complex dimensions that shaped his political and personal trajectory. Escape routeBorn on December 17, 1942, in Daura, northwest Nigeria, in a region now fraught with banditry and violent crimes, Buhari began his military career by joining the Nigerian…

BY DOMINIC KIDZU The Nigerian political and busines elite are insuferably pretentious and miserably hypocritical to the dead, in the way they pay them generous epithets that tell little of the story of their lives, in retrospect. Unfortunately, one of my overarching bankruptcies is that I am unable to put on a bold face to these ungainly platitudes; base fawnings, false affectation and what some might tragically call crocodile tears. I thank the Almighty that history is written with the ink of cold, hard, immutable facts, not sentiment, or the tongue-tied monologue of the usually lice- infested memory of politicians…

FESTUS ADEDAYO Sometime in the early 2000s, at the cusp of Tafa Balogun’s glory as the Inspector General of Police, an oil magnate from a Southwest riverine area was arrested. He was travelling into the state capital from his riverine part of the country. It was at nocturne. The oil magnate, who moved like an Oba, was in a convoy of cars. Inside the car was a falange of private security persons. They were armed to the teeth with sophisticated weapons. It was obvious that this Oba-like man was into oil bunkering as well. At a checkpoint, the police stopped…

By Jibreel Muhammad Babangoshi With what I saw from the VP yesterday, he’s ready to give it to Mr. President and the cabals with a bonus just like the Iranian Ballistic Missiles against Israel. Shettima is not a coward and does not look like one. He’s smart, intelligent, witty and outspoken. He’s a Kanuri man who endures for a year or two and it seems he’s ready for this cold war. He systematically opened a can of worms by attacking the first Nuclear facility (Rivers' State of Emergency and the Attorney General ) and I pray Mr. Wike will not…