With less than three years left for this administration, we are heading in the wrong direction. My beloved President had better start singing, it is time for him to take full charge of his government…if not two things will happen – 1. He will have a very negative legacy or 2. Even worst – the threat of military intervention again. On the latter I almost whispered impossible, but in Nigeria, tell me what is impossible, and this is not inciting, and I mean no harm, so let me quickly quip in, “Allah forbid”. Whether the President was attacked in Kebbi…
Author: Prince Charles Dickson PhD
“When I kaput e go hard you”’, said he, To ever find man wey be like me “How you take think say I want man wey be like you again”, she answered. Dem talk say dem go show her hell but the mistake be say dem forget who get hell and who dey heaven. Some na bottom power, but plenty of we women e dey their head. Dem no be slay mamas dem be queen mothers. The wahala we mothers carry na wetin dem turn to wing carry fly. We fit push our daughters dem down but we no fit…
A day after the war If there is a war if after the war there is a day I will hold you in my arms A day after the war If there is a war if after the war there is a day If after the war I have arms and I will make love to you with love A day after the war if there is a war If after the war there is a day if after the war there is love and if there is what it takes to make love. With all the subterranean moves on…
“A lady in Chicago was reported to have used hammers to kill flies. When asked why she replied that she wanted to make sure the sucker was dead! –Ezeana Achusim So…‘Scientists are wrong’, the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano said with a warm smile on his face. ‘Human beings are not made of atoms; they are made of stories’. It is why we want to sing and draw, tell each other about our lives and our hopes, talk about the wonders in our lives and the wonders that we dream about. These dreams – this art – are what makes us…
Applying a little wisdom and a little stupidity is how a king administers his kingdom. So I have the video, do you have the video, if you have it, have you watched it, who produced it, how about the actors, and those responsible for lighting, the scriptwriters, how about the heroes and villains? This is Nigeria, where everything is a joke, no matter how serious; even the dreaded Abubakar Shekau of Boko Haram man that has been killed several times can’t but end his terror video with the clownish sign off ‘kakakakakau’. Mr. Buhari was booed in Borno state, a…
I have reiterated on countless occasions that a nation where her citizens do not have a collective notion regarding what is wrong and what is right is really in trouble. While this does not translate into being a zombie nation either, truth is that people must agree that a crime is a crime no matter the contexts and who has committed such. So we cannot agree who is responsible for the ban on Nigerians from immigrating to the United States by the Trump administration. No one is responsible for anything in Nigeria until we set up a committee to look…
I must say something. I must say something. Or else the vast cloud swallows us. I want us to say no or else Ponfa Onyedikachi January 24th marked the annual International Day of Education—a moment to reaffirm global commitment to the rights of every child to a quality education. While emphasis is placed on the child; In Nigeria, it is not just the child, of just the girl-child, and then how about those that are managing to get some form of education, and those that are responsible for educating, what form of education and what is the quality of education.…
I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night. All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To…
With a wry smile, before I delve into this admonition, as I like to refer to my essays as, let me define juju. Juju or ju-ju is a spiritual belief system incorporating objects, such as amulets, and spells used in religious practice, as part of witchcraft in West Africa. The term has been applied to traditional African religions. According to popular wiki, the term “juju” appeared in connection with the Priest-Kings of towns in West Africa, upon whom the prosperity of towns was believed to depend. This is recorded by Sir James George Frazer in Folklore (Vol. XXVI.) He prints,…
No matter how stout, long and turgid a penis. Its erection cannot intimidate a vagina. In short, a vagina masterminded the rise and fall of a penis. Local axiom. Dear PMB Compliments of the season Mr. President, I am writing you this letter with love (sic) I am not writing this as a professional economist, nor as a policymaker, but as a citizen of a big country in a tiny planet that is spinning through a vast universe that we barely understand. I write this “As the clever hopes expire / Of a low dishonest decade,” and as “Waves of…
By the time many of us would be reading this, essay it would be the last 48 hours of the year 2019 or the first 48 hours of 2020. For me it is not so much about 2020 but about 2030, let me put it in perspective. A Nigerian child born in 2020 would be 10 in 2030, the young lad who is 10 now would be 20 years, picture the crisis of where we are, where we ought to be, and where we are not. Mr. Buhari wont be president by then, I know for a certain that neither…
Kolanut needs no introduction, fish needs no tutoring to swim…this is our Nigeria Don’t look for the meaning of anyhowness, but by the time you are done reading this, you would know the operative meaning of the word. So do you belong to a WhatsApp group? I do. Yes WhatsApp group, we all these days belong to one, either alumni, professional or religious group, political, and off course ethnic groups. It’s so tough sometimes keeping up with these groups or managing them, oops and not also for those administrators who’s only leadership experience is managing a WhatsApp group, and yet…
So there was this Hausa man who want to see a Yoruba native witch doctor (babalawo), of the native doctor he requested a voodoo that would give him power to eat in a restaurant without paying his bills, the native doctor obliged him. So he went to this Igbo eatery, ate to his fill, the choicest of meals. After which he preceded to leave, he passed everyone, and was at the last exit when he was reminded that he needed to pay his bill. There he was standing, hand in pocket, frolicking the voodoo item and asking them must he…
There is this African riddle and I think it is most appropriate today and for the few words I have. The riddle asks, if you are in a dream and you encounter a lion about to attack you, what do you do? …Run, defend yourself, or attack the lion, certainly no and much easier, just wake up, WAKE UP! A nation that has no modus operandi Nigeria a nation where the energy office uses a generator to generate light Where an electric company owes Distribution Company Nigeria, where vigilante guards a police station …Where there is no pillow at the…
The kangaroo, and the chameleon set out to visit the turtle, after days in the forest trekking, they were almost at the turtle’s home, when the lion roared, they did not see the lion, but heard the roar, both kangaroo and chameleon were supposed to scamper, however it was the kangaroo that hopped away, the chameleon changed its color to suit the circumstances, the turtle no one could say… How much is a Nigerian life worth, to the kidnapper, to the arsonist, to the murderer, when a Nigerian’s life is cut short by the bullet of the same security forces…
By next week it would be December, the month of Christmas, better put the last month of the year, so just some 30 plus days to the year 2020 and again we will be wishing ourselves the best of the in-coming year. The year 2019 has come and soon will condemned to the back of history, with very little in terms of lessons learned for us as a people or a nation. 2019 is going, going and soon would be gone and those that have suffered most is the Nigerian masses, the large population that will be looking forward to…
A coup is a curious thing. Those who make the coup never admit that they have made the coup. They claim that they are restoring democracy or that they are taking extraordinary means to establish the conditions – eventually – for democracy. This is precisely why the definition of the events around coups are so fraught. But all coups are not the same. There are at least two types of military coups – the General’s Coup and the Colonel’s Coup. It has been a long time since we have seen a classic Colonel’s Coup, perhaps the last major successful one…
In 2017, Issa Shivji delivered the Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Issa, who taught at the University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) for decades, reflected on the idea of revolutionary intellectuals. He remembered a lecture given by Ali Mazrui fifty years previously, where Mazrui defined an intellectual as someone who is fascinated by ideas. ‘Even a clown is fascinated by ideas’, yelled out one of the students. That’s true. In the early years of the Soviet Republic, Anatoly V. Lunacharsky – the Bolshevik Soviet People’s Commissar of Education – wrote an essay…
To the thinking man, the world is a comedy; to the feeling man, it’s a tragedy. I think all the time–Ken Saro Wiwa. The young woman walks down the highway. She carries the Nigerian flag. She wants to live in a country where her aspirations can be met and not suffocated by the detritus of Nigeria’s tragic history. The sound of gunfire is familiar; it has returned to the city, with the bullets flying towards the protestors. That’s how we simply die. Simple people kill simple people. At the edge of hope lies the gunfire from what Frantz Fanon called…
I know from experience that criticisms, even apparently destructive criticisms, are helpful to government—Lateef Jakande, former governor of Lagos state When Houston energy worker Shawn Baker was laid off in 2015, she opened a new business that quickly became a “smash hit.” It’s a place for angry, stressed out, or anxiety-filled people to take out their frustrations on inanimate objects. Inside the building are four rooms lined with thick plywood, all stocked with old furniture, dishes, burned-out TVs and appliances, out-of-date electronics, and even feather pillows. Baker buys from junk dealers or used furniture shops. Customers get their choice of…
Debts are nowadays like children begot with pleasure but brought forth in pain So is it news that we have roads that have collapsed or that the roads are no longer there, that you fly several hours and land Nigeria with minimal jet lag, but travel four and five hours for a journey that ordinarily is two hours and thirty minutes, with check points that punctuate the journeys on very bad patches of the road. On the Abuja-Jos or Jos-Abuja road it is sheer pain, intact the alternate route has collapsed from the Kaduna axis, and the Akwanga-F/Karshi route is…
The occasion was the Post 2019 Election Review Conference. The idea was to look at how all the stakeholders fair, from the electorate, security apparatchiks and the voters. However when my friend Femi Falana senior advocate of the masses and rights activist, Baba Falz like I called him when we were chatting earlier changed the direction and said we have no serious business discussing the election. Rather we should be having an accountability summit asking the leaders to deliver on their promissory notes. So first to the election matter that brought us together, the INEC State Commissioner a guest was…
Akì í mú ìbọn tetere. One does not hold a gun carelessly. (Always be careful in handling dangerous matters.) So Nigeria is 59 years, 59 years after the British officially handed over to us, to run the show, we call it Independence Day anniversary; sadly all is not well with our beloved nation Nigeria. I am drawing this conversation from almost ten years ago; to wake us up if at all we are asleep to the realities of the times. That we are at one of our lowest ebb as a nation in many indices is in itself no news,…
A stone that is visible cannot destroy a hoe. Rwandan Proverb I am tucked in my hotel room in the Nobleza, their motto quality and luxury and I dare say they are delivering on both…my room just by the pool side is equally delivering an Afrobeat sound and if your guess is as good as mine. It was Burna Boy, one of Nigeria’s poster boys of Afro beat sounds. Meanwhile, I had peeped, to see tall beautiful Rwandan girls twisting their bottoms to the beat, the lights in my hotel, had come on and off, I do not know exactly…
Violent crime, such as armed robbery, assault, carjacking, kidnapping, and rape is almost commonplace throughout the country. Most Travel Advisory would ask that one exercise extreme caution throughout the country due to the threat of indiscriminate violence. Terrorists continue plotting and carrying out attacks in Nigeria, especially in the Northeast. Against this backdrop, myself and Barrister Madaki, and a client of his were jaw-jaw-ing about how unsafe our local communities have become unsafe, even my wife had recently commented, we have kids, so it is no surprise we are concerned. The Kaduna-Abuja road has for long been a nightmarish experience,…
“Don’t ask the deaf man to beat a drum for you to dance”… Anonymous I love Nigeria, we largely a people with a short fuse memory, preferring to largely forget very quickly from a point of learning slowly, we either never remember or we choose to totally forget. We are a nation that has no staying power. We do not have the staying power to push through an issue or go through substance, our strength or determination to keep going until we reach the end of any matter is lacking. Our deficit of staying power is deadly and often at…
Chains by any other name would still hurt as much—anonymous 2023 presidency: Northern youth group endorses Tinubu to lead, Nigeria: Igbo Presidency 2023 – Nigeria’s Date With Justice and Unity. 2023 Presidency: Nigerians divided over Tinubu’s ambition. Disunited South-West, South-East Risk Losing 2023 Presidency, Says Sani. Why North may retain power in 2023 –Kwande A cursory look at the few headlines above from a cross section of Nigerian newspapers tells you that the story of Nigeria is one comical entertainment, when the subject matter is serious, and off course by persons that should know better. So I dare ask Nigeria,…
The baboon does not issue an ultimatum to the leopard, pepper is small but its fight is much bigger. My young friend, Rekwi Sunday Musa ruminating some weeks back had stated his puzzle, he asked, when did being young become synonymous to being stupid? In local parlance he asked, ‘dem do us or we simply enjoy stupidity? Even youths in the villages aren’t left out; these evil blood sucking old men go into their meetings and fight bloodless battles without exchanging anything beyond harsh words (not even a slap), and they come back into the village square and feed gullible…
The whole of last week was one hell of a week, it was work, work and travels, I was equally en-route several time belts and weather. In between, I was in Jos, Plateau state and I was reciting in my head Gil Scott-Heron’s the revolution will not be televised… You will not be able to stay home, brother You will not be able to plug in, turn on and drop out… Because the revolution will not be televised The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox In 4 parts without commercial interruption The revolution will not show you…
It is the back of the man with a blunt cutlass that suffers. (A person who does not make adequate preparations for a task or test will rue his or her negligence). Let me start this way, an old man dies, leaving behind two sons. In his will, he orders his sons to race with their horses, and the one with the slower horse will receive his inheritance. The two sons race, but since they’re both holding their horses back, they go to a wise man and ask him what they should do. After that, the brothers race again —…
