Author: Emporium Reporters

In developing democracies, public officials constantly face a tough balancing act: keeping up with their official duties while managing political party expectations. As Osun State approaches its crucial governorship election on August 15, 2026, this tension is taking centre stage. At the heart of the debate is Asiwaju Munirudeen Bola Oyebamiji, the governorship candidate for the All Progressives Congress (APC).   An individual’s candidacy is rarely just about the person. It reflects deeper shifts among political leaders, government systems and public expectations. The central question of this analysis – is…

My name is Amb. Anderson Osiebe. I am Urhobo by tribe, from Delta State, while my mother is Igbo, from Anambra State.   I was born in Nsukka, Enugu State, but I grew up in Kaduna State. I had my primary and secondary education in Kaduna, before proceeding to Bida, Niger State, for my tertiary education.   Having lived over three decades of my life in Northern Nigeria, I can boldly say that growing up in the North was one of the greatest experiences of my life.   The North…

The military high command has come out to say that the gunmen who abducted schoolchildren and murdered their teachers in Ogbomoso were JAS men. JAS (Jama’tu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad) is a splinter of Boko Haram. One of the kidnapped teachers was beheaded on camera by the terrorists who flung the video into cyberspace to our collective horror. So, finally, in Yorubaland, they have come. I can count two, three, four people around me who watched that video and fell ill. Yet those who did it felt normal and may…

The Arbiter The nurses at Al Shifa Hospital in Makkah are well-trained, diligent and passionate about their work. They are very active as well. When I started to come around — returning to this world through the gate of the other world — I imagined the hospital as an army unit and the nurses as soldiers. Mostly Egyptians, they were active, agile young men aged between 23 and 35. Among my favourites is Walid Abdel Elah Ahmed, an Egyptian. A strong, good and cheerful young man with a wife and…

Nigeria has become the proverbial forest of the heartless, the Igbó Òdájú. It is where mothers must take extreme care to double-strap their sucklings to their backs. Even when they do, these Òdájú, the heartless, violently yank suckling infants off their mothers’ back. Politicians are indistinguishable from bandits. Like vultures, both of them have talons soaked in blood. It is difficult to say we have a government. Or a country. Thomas Hobbes must be smiling in his grave now. His famous 1651-propounded theoretical state of the life of nature, wicked…