Tag: Azu Ishiekwene

Gas car rigmarole, questions Tinubu can’t ignore, by Azu Ishiekwene

Emporium Reporters

It was not meant to be this way. But like a good number of things Nigerian, the story is hardly complete without a twist in the tale. And so it has been for at least three years now with the story of the gas car that was supposed to lessen, if not end, Nigerians’ petrol misery. Sometime in 2020, state oil company, Nigerian National Petroleum Company (now NNPC Limited), launched what it advertised as the National Gas Expansion Programme (NGEP). The major objective of the programme, according to NNPC Group…

BOOK REVIEW: Cyber Politics-Social Media, Social Demography and Voting Behaviour in Nigeria

Emporium Reporters

Author: Dr. Omoniyi P. Ibietan Publisher: Premium Times Books Year: 2023 Pages: 460 Reviewer: Azu Ishiekwene Date: July 25, 2023, Abuja, Nigeria My job today is to review the book, and not the man. But since the man made the book, I would, to slightly paraphrase Oscar Wilde, overcome by yielding to the temptation of reviewing the man. In case you didn’t know the meaning of the “P” as it appears in the middle of the author’s name on the cover of the book for review, “P” is for “Paul”,…

Why Museveni Video Shames Africa By Azu Ishiekwene

Emporium Reporters

An aircraft descending on the tarmac with the control tower telling it to return to base There’s a trending video from nine years ago. If you watched it casually, you might in fact think that it was done yesterday. It was a clip of Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni, narrating what happened in 2014 when a delegation of African heads of state was asked by AU to mediate the Libyan crisis at the time. Museveni’s account of the outcome of the assignment, which has so far not been denied by NATO,…

What Does It Mean To Be A Father Today? by Azu Ishiekwene

Emporium Reporters

What Does It Mean To Be A Father Today I’m getting ahead of myself. Father’s Day is still next Sunday. But after the Executive Editor of LeVogue, LEADERSHIP’s Fashion and Lifestyle magazine, Nikki Odu-Khiran, asked me if I could write a piece to mark the day, it got me thinking.   If my father, who passed on May 28, 2000, ever had to write on Father’s Day, what would he have written? Of course, he wouldn’t have written anything. A pensioner who worked as a storekeeper at the Apapa (Lagos)…

Titan and Migrants: Two Tragedies, Different Stories by Azu Ishiekwene

Emporium Reporters

It doesn’t make sense to weigh tragedies on a scale. How do you measure them? Leo Tolstoy got it right in Anna Karenina when he said whereas all happy families are alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.   And so indeed it was on June 14 when it was reported that a boat carrying 750 migrants had capsized near Greece in the Mediterranean killing over 500 with dozens missing.     It was one of the most horrific tragedies in recent times, claiming the lives of…

Plugging Gaps in The Students’ Loan Scheme By Azu Ishiekwene

Emporium Reporters

Within minutes of the release of the video of President Bola Tinubu signing the students’ loan bill into law, it was trending on Twitter as was the name of Chief of Staff Femi Gbajabiamila, who sponsored the bill in his former life as Speaker.   Apart from the Nigeria Maritime University which was charging N81,500 per semester in 2019 – the highest in a federal university – the average tuition is about N45,000. State universities charge between N60,000 and N120,000, while polytechnics and colleges of education charge less of course,…

Dangote Refinery Challenges Global Narrative – Azu Ishiekwene

Emporium Reporters

It started like a grudge match. Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, was dealt a bad hand in a failed transaction. Later, he vowed revenge. Not in a pound of flesh, but by venturing to make his own success where he had been ambushed. At issue was the decision of the government of Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in 2007 to reverse the sale of the Port Harcourt and Kaduna Refineries (two of Nigeria’s moribund refineries) to Blue Star, the Dangote-led consortium. Blue Star had paid about $670million for the plants in the…

A British example in our rascally times, by Azu Ishiekwene

Emporium Reporters

When King Charles, the head of the Church of England, is crowned on May 6, there would be two very unusual non-Protestant special guests at the ceremony, among others: British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak who is Hindu; and the Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and next First Minister of Scotland, Humza Haroon Yousaf, a Muslim. Not two unusual guests. Three, actually. The third, Ireland’s Prime Minister and son of a Hindu Indian doctor, Leo Varadkar, is openly gay; one of the only five openly gay world political leaders.…

Africa: Why does Burna Boy rock more than Nigeria’s elections?, by Azu Ishiekwene

Emporium Reporters

From Accra to Cape Town images of Nollywood, Nigeria’s popular movie footprint, are a common staple in homes across the continent as are the sights and sounds of its pop icons who are also amongst Africa’s biggest.   When politics is on the menu, however, it does not appear that the rest of the continent has the same appetite for what Nigeria has to offer as it does for the country’s jollof rice, its captivating movies or perhaps the Afrobeat of superstar, Burna Boy.   Between February and March 2023,…

INEC server and other Election Day stories, by Azu Ishiekwene

Emporium Reporters

For the third time since 1999, I voted at a general election on February 25 and did so without much hassle.   I knew my candidates would lose at the unit where I voted, but that didn’t matter. Voting mattered more.   The Bimodal Voter Accreditation System processed me so quickly it was almost like magic. I had no reason to suspect my experience would not be the norm that day. As I walked away from the booth a family friend who had just voted caught up with me. “Thank…