Category: Opinion

Street protests often arise from social unrest, dissatisfaction with government policies, or a perceived lack of effective communication between authorities and citizens. I will explore the significance of effective communication strategies in preventing street protests, emphasizing the importance of transparency, active listening, and community engagement. By fostering a collaborative environment, governments and organizations can address grievances before they escalate into public demonstrations.   Street protests have been a critical aspect of societal change and expression of public sentiment throughout history. While protests can serve as a powerful tool for advocacy,…

I met a former Member of the House of Representatives about five weeks ago. He had established a huge institution with sprawling structures. He said as an Honourable he found himself receiving N7 million monthly. He quickly decided to establish the institution. So, monthly, he went to his home town and poured the funds into the project. By the time his tenure came to an end, he had all that was necessary in place.   The Honourable’s revelation was a well guarded secret as Nigerians are not supposed to know…

The National Assembly Service Commission NASC and by extension the National Assembly under the leadership of Engr Ahmed Kadi Amshi FNSE and his commissioners from the six geopolitical zones has taken the activities of the commission to greater heights, all in efforts to equate it’s services to the new order.   This efforts had paid off in the last three years down the line as the consistent training and retraining both locally and internationally had been sustained among staffers at all levels and management cadre.   With renewed vigour under…

Nothing we do or say now will change Nigeria unless it turns back from its present plunge. Nothing. “No spring changes the desert. The desert remains; the spring runs dry. Not one spring, not thirty, not a thousand springs will change the desert…” That quote is from ‘Two Thousand Seasons’, a tumultuous novel by Ayi Kwei Armah. Remember he also wrote ‘The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born.’ We won’t stop asking that this country be rebuilt on the foundation of its beginning. Nothing will shoo away the present birds…

The UN Sustainable Development Goals SDGs in accordance with its 17 goals had strived to ensure the impact of the UN provided goals is felt both at the national , sub national and global levels.   Hence, the quest to address the decade of action 2010-2030 agenda had become a major drive towards addressing all the goals in line with global pursuit and domestic requirements.   In Nigeria under the leadership of Princess Adejoke Orelope-Adefulire as Senior Special Assistant on the program, soon after the migration from Millennium Development Goals…

This week, Yobe State will become 33. On August 27, 1991, President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida sliced Yobe State out of the old Borno State, which was itself carved out of the North Eastern State that was hewed from the Northern Region.   The IBB regime thought it better to situate its capital in Damaturu. The British chiselled this sleepy, hazy, whistle-stop settlement out of the Alagarno district as a colony in 1902 when they conquered the Bornu Empire. It was no more than a little big village.   Yobe, then…

Have you ever read Heidi Holland’s Dinner With Mugabe? It was published in 2012 by a Zimbabwean journalist and columnist who worked with Illustrated Life Rhodesia magazine. The book is a very penetrating portraiture of Robert Mugabe. It is a psychobiography of a freedom fighter, liberal lawyer and revolutionary who later became, first Prime Minister and later, President of Zimbabwe. The book’s title was a product of a 1975 sudden call from a Holland friend. He wanted her to arrange dinner and meeting with a friend she had no idea…

Twice in two months , the National Assembly management under the Clerk to the National Assembly, CNA, Sani Magaji Tambawal has not only prioritised capacity building, but technologically driven and automation along with digitization so as to consign the psyche of staff of the National Assembly to modern technology. Since technology advancement is the demands of the 21st century, the management of the National Assembly has developed the template of ensuring staffers from the intermediate level to the top echelon, developed the skill of application of the new order into…

_“Not to know what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child.” — Cicero, 46 B.C._   Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC-43 BC), renowned statesman, lawyer, philosopher, poet and ‘the greatest forensic orator Rome ever produced’, was right! We have to go into the past to understand today!   The present conundrum in the National Assembly highlights just how far we have departed from many rational definitions of public service. It wasn’t always like this! From the early 1950s, with the commencement of self-rule in the regions…