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...
In a 2000 paper published in the International Journal of African Studies, I presented a case for local police devolutions in Nigeria that will bring the police closer to the people. The article argued that a colossal policing command headquartered in Abuja, Nigeria could not possibly provide adequate policing functions to the security trepidations of the citizens. That proposition was deduced before the mayhem of the Boko Haram insurgency in the northeastern part of Nigeria...
I am the mother of a Black Man (there are many of us), I am traumatized by the death of George Floyd. His mother, just like me, was a mother of a Black Man. I am a traumatized mother of a Black Man and I’m telling you that this isn’t about politics, this is about human rights and as human beings we are better than this, we have to do better than this. Our sons...
Yet, here I am still standing, pledging allegiance to NIGERIA with all sense of patriotism—a nation still being governed by some of the leaders that masterminded the devastating genocide I survived 53 years ago. Evacuating a large family from the village, Achala, to remote farmland called Eziobibi, almost twenty miles away on foot, and through near inaccessible road-paths, and under severe weather conditions was not a joke. I was seven at the time, and I...
Many years ago, the General, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu spoke about the “Biafra of the mind.” Only a few, I think, understood him. Well, they say, only the deep speak to the deep. But let me attempt here to tease out Dim Ojukwu’s prescription: the greatest proof of Igbo survival and aspiration must be to model, wherever Onye-Igbo stands, the ethos of innovation, excellence, ingenuity, and ability that marked the Igbo endeavor in Biafra. We must...
