Category: Opinion

Public debate on government finances in Nigeria is once again clouded by confusion, little knowledge, and deliberate misrepresentation. At the centre of the current controversy is a misunderstanding of the distinction between total revenue generated by government agencies and the portion that actually belongs to the federal government.   The confusion has been amplified by commentators who should know better and by a media ecosystem increasingly driven by noise rather than nuance. As a result, statements by President Bola Tinubu on revenue performance and remarks by the Minister of Finance…

Yesterday, President Donald Trump unleashed his fury on the South American country of Venezuela. Woken to Trump’s tweet on his Truth Social that the US had carried out a ‘large-scale strike’ against Venezuela and captured its president, Nicolas Maduro and wife, Cilia Fores, the world was aghast. Sensing where Trump was going, Maduro had accused him, in an earlier statement, of “extremely serious military aggression”, stating that, “Venezuela rejects, repudiates, and denounces before the international community the extremely serious military aggression perpetrated by the current government of the United States…

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth.” We start with the well-known first stanza of Robert Frost’s iconic poem, ‘The Road Not Taken.’ With 2026 already upon us, Nigeria itself stands at a crossroads, contemplating which path it must take in transitioning into full nationhood and its accompanying national ethos. Perhaps we should take the road we have avoided for…

The man in the glare of public curiosity at this moment is the immediate past Managing Director/CEO of the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), and former two-term Commissioner for Finance in Osun State. He is Asiwaju Munirudeen Bola Oyebamiji, famously known as AMBO. Oyebamiji is in the public eye because, as the flag-bearer of the All Progressives Congress (APC), nothing can be taken for granted regarding the forthcoming August 8, 2026, governorship election in Osun State. This stands in sharp contradistinction to the projections of independent analysts concerning Ekiti State…

The demolition of Baptist Primary School 1, Idikan, reportedly carried out under the authority of the Baptist Church, is an outrageous assault on education, justice, and communal coexistence. This act represents not merely the destruction of a building, but the deliberate disruption of the lives and future of innocent children. Baptist Primary School 1, Idikan, is a historic public primary school that has served the Idikan community for decades. The overwhelming majority of its pupils are Muslim children from the host community, a community that is itself predominantly Muslim. The…

There are moments when a nation reveals itself not through speeches or statistics, but through instinct. In the split seconds after metal met metal on the Lagos–Ibadan Expressway near Sagamu, Nigeria’s character surfaced with uncommon clarity. A global boxing icon lay in the aftermath of a violent crash, two lives were already lost, and chaos threatened to metastasise. What followed was not panic, but purpose. Not indifference, but empathy. Not disorder, but discipline. Anthony Joshua’s name may fill arenas from London to Las Vegas, but on that stretch of Ogun…

If we were Christian in my family, Christmas would have been for us a mixture of joy, mourning and remembrance. But still, it is. When others celebrate Christmas, I mourn my mother. We call it celebration of life; it is a forever act that undie the dead. She died just before dawn on December 24, 2005. But she lived long enough such that even I, her second to the last child, enjoyed her nurture for over forty years. She died happy and fulfilled. She was extremely lucky; she even knew…

“Beware the quiet man; for while others speak, he watches. And while others act, he plans. And when they finally rest, he strikes.” Not all quotes have the fortune of being attributed to an inventor; the above is one of them. Author known or author not known, the quote is fit for my use and I use it here, guardedly. Reticent Oyo State governor, Seyi Makinde, packed a punch last Tuesday with a media chat that landed like a cluster bomb.   Exactly like America’s missile strike of Thursday, lethal…

This article was first published in December 2020. In light of recent U.S. airstrikes targeting terrorist groups linked to transnational extremist networks and the renewed focus on international counterterrorism efforts in Nigeria, I find this write-up highly relevant to current developments. God willing, next week we will continue the Trending Events Amidst Governor Buni’s Yobe Achievements series, which began last week. March 2020 was a sad one for Chad. There was an attack on its Bohoma army base by Boko Haram terrorists. They killed more than 92 Chadian soldiers in what army…