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Africa
Why Ghana’s Election Matters
The news from Ghana was not how John Dramani Mahama’s opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), defeated Nana Akufo-Addo’s ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP). The news was how Akufo-Addo managed to survive a full second term. Towards the end of his first and for much of his second term in office, he governed with his head on the block,…
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Features
The Price We Pay When Legislators Die
We met last on April 21. I went to Asaba from Lagos to promote my new book, Writing for Media and Monetising It, at Delta State University, which, according to JAMB statistics, is one of the country’s highest subscribers to Mass Communications in 2021. Senator Ifeanyi Ubah was on the flight to Asaba that morning. I didn’t see him until…
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Arts & Culture
Thrills, Joys and Surprises of Selling
There are probably more books on how to sell everything than there is sand by the seashore. I have read a few myself and might say that when it comes to selling, even though what you have read might help, nothing teaches like what you learn by doing it. For some, selling feels natural. I cannot remember how many…
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Entertainment
Rolling Blackouts, Heatwave and Tales from Dead Bulbs
I don’t know how it is in your part of town. But it’s been a nightmare in mine, a supposedly middle-class residential area in Abuja, Nigeria’s federal capital. Rolling blackouts do not begin to explain the depth of the misery. It’s been a dreadful time of rolling and erratic blackouts. Like surfing an angry wave, if you understand what I…
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Politics
APC Digging Its Own Grave in Edo
Nigeria’s politicians have perfected the art of burying themselves with one foot sticking out. And it appears that the All Progressives Congress (APC) will, once again, stage this rite of self-destruction in the forthcoming governorship election in Edo State. The party’s primaries on Saturday were such a shambles that it has now been forced to conduct them again, with no guarantee…
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Featured
Nuts for the living: A personal story
I was going through some old files in my closet the other day when I saw some documents and receipts that absolutely cracked me up. Among the browning, time-worn papers was the receipt from a private primary school for the payment of my first daughter’s fees. It was a middle-class school that charged N5,000 naira per term. Attached to…
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Opinion
ECOWAS: Is This the Beginning of The End?
Mali and Burkina Faso obviously have a lot more in common than squaring off in a game of football like they just did in the Round of 16 knockout stage of the African Nations Cup (AFCON) in Cote d’Ivoire. Along with Niger, these countries have been a great source of misery for the continent in the last four years, with…
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Features
Reflections on Adesina’s Work with Buhari
I knew Femi Adesina when he was “Daddy Tobi.” He still is, of course. But back in the day when we were neighbours in “Olowora Inside”, a Lagos suburb, when you could call to a neighbour from your frontage, often by using the name of their first child, that was how we called Femi: Daddy Tobi. I have heard…
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Featured
In pursuit of the last Hamas
After futile attempts by others to get the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate allegations of genocide against the parties in the war in Gaza, South Africa raised the stakes by filing a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Unlike the ICC, the ICJ is an organ of the UN for civil complaints,…
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Featured
Kwankwaso After the Supreme Court
In the last one and a half decades, Rabiu Kwankwaso has been the most charismatic politician out of Kano after the passing of Abubakar Rimi. Kwankwaso is not just charismatic; he is consequential, with a cult-like following that responds twice, even when he calls once. He is facing yet another defining moment in his political career. The outcome of…
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Featured
Small Chance for INEC to Save Itself in A Big Way
Elections in Nigeria this year might be nearly over but the war by other means could well receive fresh fire from three state elections this weekend. The year began with general elections in February and March, and is closing with off-cycle elections in Imo, Bayelsa and Kogi on November 11. Conducting elections for three governors after the major round of…
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Featured
Atiku, Obi and the Road to Kilimanjaro
Former vice president and presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, said on Monday that Nigeria was the bigger loser in last week’s decision by the Supreme Court to uphold the election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. That was a convenient exaggeration to hide his misery. But it was unnecessary. After unsuccessfully contesting to be president six times, it…
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Africa
Gumi’s Extremism Shames Decency
Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, 60, is a medical doctor and retired army captain. But he has not had a job after retirement 37 years ago. His day job since has been bandits’ advocacy. He has become so used to getting away with saying what he likes when he likes and how he likes it, he hardly knows when he needs help to extract…
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