Like we all know, one of the functions of the National Assembly include the making of laws, the controlling of the finances of the State, and also a critical role to check the actions of government. However, as it stands, history will judge you leaders and members for not being proactive in directing our economy towards enhancing its innate capacity of attaining self-sufficiency, the ultimate safety valve for debt dependence. So, Mr. Senate President and...
All Nigerians should be vexed about the killings that have befallen the northeastern region of Nigeria and which have also penetrated other areas of the Nigerian federation. In a series of papers presented at the NISEC Homeland Security Conference 2014, I discussed my ideas on how to combat terrorism in Nigeria. Israeli experts and other scholars and security specialists also enunciated their own counter-terrorism initiatives in Abuja. On this subject, today, the data—as depicted by...
Changing “Democracy Day” from May 29 to June 12 is of little significance if Nigerians are unsafe, taunted by government agents and by criminals. As Nigeria marks its twenty-one years of unbroken democracy, a closer look at specifics has become altogether unavoidable. In the light of Nigeria’s penchant for wild claims and increasing proclivity for self-congratulation even for doing nothing except maintain status quo, it has become imperative that the country’s democratic experiment over these...
“You kept your knee on our neck. We had creative skills, but we couldn’t get your knee off our neck. It’s time for us in George’s name to stand up and say, ‘Get your knee off our necks.’” – Rev. Al Sharpton Even the dead knows what is going on right now, that the world has been busy, taking the knee for George Floyd. From the streets, states, and counties, to nation-states, and at the...
On May 27, 2020, the National People’s Congress (NPC) of China passed a decision to introduce a new national security law in Hong Kong to safeguard national sovereignty, unity, territorial integrity and the foundation of “one country, two systems”, though it will take effect in September. The security law sparked protests in Hong Kong and is generating global reaction over whether China has the right to legislate such legal framework or whether its move is...
Karimot Odebode is a poet, writer, gender rights activist, and youth leader from Ibadan Nigeria. She is a Youth Champion for ONE Campaign in Nigeria where she spearheaded the fight against poverty and inequalities in her community. Odebode is one of the 45 female African activists from 15 African countries that signed the open letter for the fight against gender inequality which was addressed and presented to G7 world leaders. She is currently the curator...
I took to remembering Candace Owens, the activist, on this period of our present time that would be recalled infamously until the end of days. Madam Candace, as I have chosen to call her, walked into my dream brandishing a six-foot long two-by-four, staring at me through a pair of red listless eyes, because her lower face was under the cover of a covid-19 mask of a she-tiger brand. Her intention was clearly understood; she...
Disecting this strange phenomenon of hundreds of teenage Northern boys, no girls among them, hiding among cattle in trailers, others in minibusses, traveling in the dead of night, trying to sneak into Yorubaland but more especially into the Southeast and South-South zones. For those unfamiliar with Homer’s tome the Iliad, the mythological story of the ten-year siege by forces from a coalition of Greek states circa 670 B.C. against the city-state of Troy, this saying...
Chief Femi Fani-Kayode had something to say, and he said it in this ten-minute, Facebook oration of pure substance, meaningfulness and brilliance. I watched this brutal, honest-to-goodness diatribe, more of a controlled outburst, a measured chewing and spitting out of a second-rated country, on her death bed, touting her avowed intention to keep the Igbos marginalized. Before this, I couldn’t tell Femi Fani-Kayode from Femi Ransome Kuti from either of their politics or music. But...
May 30, 2019 marks the 53rd anniversary of the declaration of the Republic of Biafra. For the sake of a younger generation that has not been taught Nigerian history, it is important to put some context to the emergence of Biafra. It may all have started from the political crisis of 1964 which culminated in the coups of January 15, and July 29, 1966. What is clear is that the declaration of Biafra followed a...
