Opinion

By AZU ISHIEKWENE Peter Obi has the best chance against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in 2027 of all opposition candidates. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s People’s Democratic Party (PDP) may have received a slightly higher percentage of the votes (6.9 million or 29.1 percent) in the last presidential election; still, that was poor for Atiku, a sixth-timer in the presidential race. Obi had less than one year to prepare after his former party, the PDP, shafted him, followed by the bitter struggle for control between Atiku and the former Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, which left the party in…

By Kehinde Olaosebikan At the annual Pan-African Business and Development Awards held in June, the Nigerian Finance Minister and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Olawale Edun described the outgoing President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), Professor Benedict Okechukwu (Okey) Oramah, as “a true son of the soil” whose leadership had fundamentally reshaped trade and development across Africa. Those words capture accurately and succinctly the lifework of Okey Oramah, who turns 64 on Thursday, 24 July. Only recently, the President of Nigeria, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCFR conferred on Oramah the National honour…

By FUNKE EGBEMODE She was only 18 years old when she got married in 1989 to her husband who was already a national public figure. Indeed, her husband was already a former Head of State when they became husband and wife. And no, she did not marry him for money. Her grandfather, Alhaji Muhammadu Ribadu, was Nigeria’s first Minister of Defence. Aisha Halilu Buhari, born in 1971, married in 1989, widowed in 2025, is the one my heart goes to today. May the soul of her husband, our former president, Muhammadu Buhari, rest in peace. Everybody is talking about the…

By Adeyẹmí Johnson Ademọwọ The death of the late Awujale of Ijebuland, Oba Sikiru Adetona, was always bound to be historic. But not many expected the seeming negative storm it stirred in the soul of Yoruba culture. From the undercurrents of public reactions, one thing is clear: we are fast losing our grip on what it truly means to be Yoruba and more urgently, what it means to sit on the sacred stool of Obaship. It is unfortunate and, indeed, very disturbing that this moment has ignited a painful question: Are the Ijebu now to be seen as people who…

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…