Opinion

Elections: Lessons from Oyo to Nigeria By Lasisi Olagunju

March 27, 2023March 27, 2023 Emporium Reporters

“The ides of March are come,” Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar says in utter derision and dismissal of a life-and-death warning. And the soothsayer replies “Ay, Caesar; but not gone.” And truly, they were not gone. The 2023 elections should be over by now but they are not. There are people everywhere mocking poets and prophets. Clouds of uncertainty are hanging. Even our president has had to issue a statement denying saying in secret that he won’t hand over to his victorious Khalifa. There are threats of protests and counter-threats of arrest…

The CJN on wheelchair By Festus Adedayo

March 26, 2023 Emporium Reporters

“If you are unlucky not to have a representative in the judicial council, even if you are innocent, you can be found guilty – B’eyan o l’eni ni’gbimo, bo ro’jo are, ebi lo mi a je.” This very profound saying of the Yoruba, translated into a pithy musical line in one of the tracks of Alhaji Ayinla Omowura, late Yoruba Apala musician, point unmistakably to the fact that corruption and favouritism predate colonialism in Africa. When you jointly read this line and D. O. Olagoke’s 1962-written play entitled The Incorruptible…

Fallacies of religion, No-man’s-land, and why Nigeria is unbreakable (1), by Hassan Gimba

March 26, 2023 Emporium Reporters

One of the factors that determined the just concluded elections in Nigeria is religion. Oh, agreed, in our politics, religion has always been a factor in determining winners and losers. But never before was it flagrantly flaunted and made to be the driving force than in 2023. Unfortunately, shepherds led their flocks by the nose, feasting on their ignorance of their faith. What happened buttressed the fact that where there is ignorance, charlatans make hay or, more succinctly put, the one-eyed leads in the country of the blind. …

Betara; Who The Cap Fits For the 10th House of Representatives Leadership, By ABUBAKAR YUSUF

March 25, 2023 Emporium Reporters

The general acceptance of the House of Representatives Chairman, House committee on budget appropriation, Rt Honorable Muktar Aliyu Betara representing Kwaya -Kusar Biu and Sani-Bayo federal Constituency of Borno state is unique both by his constituents and by extension his colleagues and ordinary Nigerians. The development promoted not only his ranking advantage after securing many victories to return to the federal House of Representatives , but his constituents genuinely purchased the last intent form to return to the green chamber for him ‘free of charge’ and without main contenders from…

Abia: Pray for Alex Otti , By Olawale Olaleye

March 24, 2023March 24, 2023 Emporium Reporters

In the lead up to the 2015 general election, and the then opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) was everywhere promising heaven and earth, just to dislodge then ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), presidential candidate of the APC at the time, General Muhammadu Buhari, apparently worried about public expectations, called some of his men on the campaign field and pleaded with them to slow down on the promises they daily dished out to the people. Whatever was his reason, he didn’t quite say, but sources feared he had already begun to…

Tinubu: A Man Who Thrives in Hate By Olawale Olaleye

March 23, 2023 Emporium Reporters

I’m not a fan of the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, and never will be. Fact! Let’s consider this a public declaration for the umpteenth time. And if you like, you can also interpret this decision as yielding from a personal standpoint. It still wouldn’t change me from me. I covered him as Governor of Lagos State, and we were running around Lagos during the Ikeja bomb blast – stressing day and night. So, I had seen and observed him at close quarters. Yet, our spirits do not gel. But I do…

The Lagos Ethnic Politics: My Closing Argument, By Olawale Olaleye

March 20, 2023 Emporium Reporters

How brothers and friends of many ages became enemies overnight on account of support for different politicians, who remain friends and whose children have continued to inter-marry is befuddling. It shows how fickle-minded, thoughtless, and unreasoning a majority of the people can be when it comes to politics. As Nigeria’s melting pot, Lagos is a place for all, notwithstanding creed, faith, ideology, or ethnic nationality. There are young Igbo generations that don’t know anywhere outside of Lagos and hadn’t even been to their places of origin in almost two decades.…

2023 election postscript By Lasisi Olagunju

March 20, 2023March 20, 2023 Emporium Reporters

Under the cover of darkness, a dish was placed on a highway in Lagos at the weekend. It was food for the gods but it was a madman that we saw eating it on Saturday morning. The video trended online in competition with the shrieks of electoral madness which thundered through the Nigerian skies on that election day. Were there symbolic and spiritual relationships between that scene, that character and the elections we held at the weekend? Some people have sat on two hundred needles and got up feeling no…

Memo to their Excellencies, the Governors-elect, By Festus Adedayo

March 19, 2023 Emporium Reporters

In 1953, Honourable Member, Western House of Assembly, Samuel Ladoke Akintola, left a word for today. “I can understand the heaven of acceptance and the hell of rejection. I cannot conceive of a purgatory between acceptance and rejection,” he had told his fellow parliamentarians of the opposition bloc, the National Council for Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC). It was in the thick of a tempestuous debate on a motion on the floor of the House. The motion was on introduction of Education and Health Levy for taxable adults in Western…