A video clip of Governor Lawal Dare of Zamfara State shows him in the company of one other person discussing a brand new BMW 7 Serie. In the video clip, which is circulating on social media, it was said that the car was recently purchased by the governor at the staggering cost of N300 million. The price elicited double takes from yours sincerely because of the harsh, hard and hostile times that most Nigerian citizens are facing. When someone saw the same video clip and commented that Lawal grew up with the love, and in possession, of fancy expensive cars,…
Author: TheStories
As a country, Nigeria is gradually tilting towards a nation whose unity is being threatened like never before. Almost daily now, new narratives are emerging, with people championing one sectional sentiment or another. And the momentum is growing, and growing with serious speed. Sometimes last month, while President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was on leave in the United Kingdom, the Yoruba Nation advocate, Sunday Adeyemo, popularly known as Sunday Igboho, submitted a petition to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer, calling on the UK, the former colonial master of Nigeria, to consider a secession that would lead to…
‘Conscience natured by truth’ is the slogan of the Guardian, self-touted as the flagship of the Nigerian newspapers. It is a phrase coined by the famous Islamic scholar and reformist, Shiekh Usman Fodio, the leader of the Fulani Jihad and founder of the Sokoto Caliphate. That phrase has remained valid now as then but unfortunately lacking by most Northern leaders who prefer to build themselves rather than build the region. Elsewhere the story is opposite of what happens in the north. By Abdu Labaran By now it should be obvious that the North or a large part of it has…
There is a famous quote that is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States. The quote reads, “Well done is better than well said”. The accepted aspiration of the quote is to advance that, actions speak louder than words, and that it is more important to follow through on promises than simply talk about them. The media space in Nigeria is full of rhetoric, speaking or writing with the intent of persuading the public about the good intentions of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his party, the All Progressive Congress, APC, and the countless…
In Nigeria today, things have gotten so hard that everybody is experiencing one exasperating setback or another. Everyone, I repeat, everyone is affected, from the mighty to the tiny. The discomfort did not start just yesterday, it has been brewing over time. But analysts have concurred on the fact that the situation became exacerbated, according to the introduction of reforms by the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who from day one, began with the abolishment of fuel subsidies. From that day, prices of everything began to fly through the roof. And now the sky, Nigerian air space, is fully…
We can say goodbye to anticipation, as the long wait is finally over. What would happen has happened. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has approved the immediate implementation of eight far-reaching actions to reinvigorate his administration’s capacity for efficiency, in the pursuit of his commitment to deliver on the promises he made to Nigerians. To this effect, the President has carried out a restructuring of some ministries and subsequent shake-up in some ministerial portfolios. By Bala Ibrahim The eight actions approved by the President are: 1. The renaming of the Ministry of Niger Delta Development to the Ministry of Regional Development.…
“The obsession with neoliberal capitalism and privatization is what is going to kill our country. They parcelled out the power system and sold it to themselves. We don’t have an integrated national power system anymore. We’ve been doing the same thing since the mid-1980s, and it’s getting worse and worse, but our rulers obey the Americans, World Bank and IMF, like slaves! No country has developed following their model, unfortunately”. Above is the reaction of a friend, to my article, titled, Grid collapse: Garbage in Garbage out. In summary, my friend is saying, that as far as the National Integrated…
Nigeria is again in the news for unfortunate reasons, this time related to drugs in high places. The National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has alleged that the house of Senator Oyelola Ashiru, a senior member of the Nigerian Senate, serves as a warehouse for illicit drugs. Before this, the same Senator had accused the NDLEA of being the most corrupt and compromised government agency in Nigeria, calling for the establishment of a new organization to curb drug addiction and trafficking. Some time ago, while contributing to a debate on a bill to establish the National Institute for Drug Awareness…
This morning, I watched with delight on Channels TV, an interview with Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, Sardaunan Kano, my former teacher and an awesomely eloquent speaker. By training, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau is a mathematician. A man who was trained to have ways with figures. But nature added to him a special endowment- the gift of fluidity in speech. And he speaks with such eloquence and fluidity, multilingually. There’s a joke out there in Kano, where Mallam was a teacher, a technocrat, a Governor, a Senator, a Minister and now a powerful political leader, that, if you are not ready to change…
It is no longer news that the national grid has collapsed again. For the third time in less than one week, Nigerians have been pushed, pitched, or plunged into darkness. Whatever verb one chooses to use would not be an overstatement in attempting to describe the disgust and heightened horror visited on the nation incessantly. Like a curse, or what my people in the village would call the invocation of a supernatural power to inflict harm or punishment on the nation, the electricity supply in Nigeria today follows a pattern of one step forward, 10 or 12 steps backwards. According…