FREDERICK Forsyth’s account of the Nigerian Civil War, mainly from the Biafran lens, is perhaps one of the most riveting you would find. Yet, it is remarkably deficient in its one-sidedness, for which the author made no pretences or apologies. As Nigeria marks the 60th anniversary of the beginning of events that changed the country forever this week, I reread, not Forsyth’s The Biafra Story, but John de St. Jorre’s The Brothers’ War: Biafra and Nigeria, a book that contains some of the most intimate accounts of January 15, 1966, highlighting the tragedy of elite failure. The Day Before People…
Author: Azubuike Ishiekwene
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I FORCAST that by May 29 or earlier, the president will replace ministers, especially those who have since outlived their IOU value. As pressure mounts ahead of the pre-election year, no fewer than five of them will be replaced or reassigned by the end of 2025 – What You Might Expect in 2025, January 10, 2025 This seventh edition of my special yearly forecast might be the last. I’ve enjoyed doing it – the hits and the misses – especially the big hits. From twice forecasting that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar would lose (2019 and 2023, he’ll lose again…
I INTENDED to write about something else, but changed my mind halfway through. Apart from making New Year’s resolutions a habit, which nearly half of adult Americans engage in, another common feature of this time of year in many parts of the world is making predictions. It’s as hazardous as knowing a baby’s sex before birth used to be before the 20th century. But somehow, I’ve managed to make yearly forecasts over the last five years without eating too many humble pies. Before retiring the idea, I thought about something different, as you wind down what has been, for the…
IT’s rare to find a multibillionaire who hasn’t had nasty battles. Yet, as battles go, the fight between Aliko Dangote, the founder of the Dangote Refinery, and the CEO of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), Farouk Ahmed, is among the most spectacular that Africa’s wealthiest man has had to fight in recent times. It won’t be a surprise if the resignation of Ahmed (and the chief executive of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission, Gbenga Komolafe) on Wednesday marks a pause, rather than an end, because the problems run very deep. Dangote’s cement and noodle wars…
IF it seems like only yesterday when the founder of LEADERSHIP, Sam Nda-Isaiah, passed away, it’s because he is still here in the present tense. Yet you might disagree if you are looking for him in the wrong place. Let me lessen your confusion. If, for example, you still hope he’d call at 2.30 am to wake you up and ask why you’re asleep at that time, which he did without a hint of irony, and such calls have stopped since, then you may consider him part of the past. There are other footprints. His hearty laughter, or the echo…
NONE of the three Guineas is thriving, but in Guinea-Bissau, the country that sits on Africa’s map like a tongue of fire, recent events are twisting that nation’s fate into profound misery. Guinea Conakry is in the grip of a military dictatorship with a messianic complex, while Equatorial Guinea is led by an authoritarian civilian government that has lost its way. Now, Guinea-Bissau, the country that gave the world Amilcar Cabral, one of Africa’s most foresighted revolutionaries, has added manufactured military coups to its long list of notoriety, which includes being one of the continent’s most deadly drug routes. Making…
THERE’s no need to obsess over what US President Donald Trump said about Nigeria being disgraced or his threat to attack fast, viciously, and sweetly with blazing guns. He has perfected the art of blowing hot and cold, perhaps more hot than cold. Yet, his unstable nature is rarely foolish; he’s a controlled bully, driven by flattery. It’s not Trump’s fault that Nigeria is where it is. Three recent incidents demonstrate the significant work required to fix this country, if we’re serious about being respected. The first was how the Minister of State for Defence, Bello Matawalle, responded to the…
WHEN I saw the programme for the 2025 Nigerian Guild of Editors annual conference listing Imo State Governor, Hope Uzodimma, as the keynote speaker, I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. Uzodimma has been in the press mainly for the wrong reasons. As one of Nigeria’s leading journalists and public intellectuals, Reuben Abati said on a recent TV morning programme, the Imo State governor appears to govern more from the presidential villa in Abuja than from the Government House in Owerri. Often, he is at the top of the line at the airport in Abuja to welcome or see…
IF the name of the chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), its secretary, or convention date were the subject of a quiz, there would not be a correct answer because answers don’t exist. The best attempt would be an open-ended response: It depends. It either depends on who has the latest favourable court ruling or who has forced their way into the party’s National Secretariat in Abuja, assisted by the police, thugs or a combination of both. Why has the mighty party fallen? In April, a faction, led by Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed and his Oyo State counterpart,…
IT feels somewhat like nostalgia, but it’s not. Life, they say, happens. There was something else I used to hear while growing up: A fool at 40 is a fool forever. I suspect that the wit here, if I may call it a wit, is that whatever one cannot achieve in life at age 40 may not be achievable thereafter. This saying may be valid only in some cultures or inapplicable in all cases, even in cultures where it is commonly used. It suggests that whatever is not achieved by age 40 – believed to be the beginning of midlife,…
APART from tariffs, another word that the Trump presidency is fond of is genocide. First, it was South Africa. During South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s visit to the White House last May, President Donald Trump played a video suggesting that white South Africans were under genocidal attack. It was a fake video, of course, but Ramaphosa couldn’t convince Trump. Instead of looking at Gaza, where the world has serious concerns about genocide, Trump’s fellow Republicans have now turned their attention to Nigeria, requesting Congress to call out the Nigerian government on charges of genocide against Christians. It’s not just the…
PUTTING it nicely, Aparutu is the Yoruba word for a joker, a clown. In August 1986, when I first arrived at the wooden, fabricated office of PUNCH in Kudeti, Ikeja, Lagos, for a vacation job, that was how the editor then, Alhaji Najeem Jimoh, referred to me: Aparutu. He wasn’t being mean or harsh. That just happened to be one of his favourite words. And maybe I looked the part, too. Skinny and frail, I was only a part two student of Mass Communication at the University of Lagos, chafing under the strictures of school life. I made a little…
US President Donald Trump may be getting ahead of himself with the encouraging signs that, following the ceasefire in Gaza, the world might have another opportunity to end the Middle East crisis, one of the world’s longest-running conflicts. It was a conflict in which Trump took sides with Israel – vetoing resolutions at the UN, supporting Israeli attacks on sovereign states, including Iran, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and feigning ignorance of the attack on Qatar. It seemed no price was too high to “cleanse” Gaza and relocate Gazans away from their homeland to create a nice piece of real estate, a…
THE grave is never satisfied, but other things compete with it for insatiability. I can’t help feeling that some members of Nigeria’s National Assembly will vie for the top place of never enough with the grave, water and fire. Enough is a stranger to them. What happens in these chambers in Abuja, in the name of the people, only God knows. That’s not to suggest that other arms of government are significantly better. But when we reach the point where we have to decide whose greed is eating us more, then we’re in trouble. Last week, the Senate Committee on…
ON the eve of Nigeria’s 65th independence anniversary, I reflected on Harold Smith. He’s not widely known in Nigeria. And that’s probably to be expected for a man whom the British establishment ostracised for decades for daring to be different, before his death. He was everything the British colonial authorities didn’t want him to be, and he paid for it. But for his book, The Harold Smith Story, published by Lawless Publications four years ago, Smith would have died with the knowledge of how a promising country was sabotaged by Britain, with consequences that would last for generations. Sixty-five years…
THE Dangote Petroleum Refinery, Nigeria’s lifeline from decades of rot in the petroleum downstream, has to fight every inch for its turf. The fight started 18 years ago, when the refinery was only an idea. In 2007, those who swore that a refinery, any refinery – public or private would only work over their dead bodies forced President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to reverse the sale of the Port Harcourt and Kaduna Refineries with a gun over his head. Among the vested interests, the unions pulled the trigger on the $670 million sale to Blue Star, the Dangote-led consortium. Since then,…
IN the incredibly sad courtroom drama of Tali Shani v Chief Mike Agbedor Abu Ozekhome (2025) UKFTT 1090 (PC), two ordinary Nigerians from unlikely quarters, each doing what would appear to be their daily work, made the difference. The first was Ibrahim Sani, a superintendent of police at the Force Intelligence Department of the Nigeria Police Force in Abuja, a notoriously corrupt department under retired DIG Mike Ogbizi. Sani had received a request and complaint from Chief Ozekhome (the Respondent in this case) to investigate alleged forged documents, including a “9 mobile” number, stated to be that of Tali Shani…
ZAMFARA State Governor, Dauda Lawal, is hardly in the news. Lawal has enough on his plate in a region struggling with banditry and insurgency, and in a state whose political heavyweights oppose him over political differences. He has learned to mind the state’s business, hardly ever throwing stones except when attacked by Abuja politicians who live in glass houses. It was, therefore, a surprise last week when he released a viral video that made headlines. Following the increase in banditry in the region, especially in Zamfara and neighbouring Katsina State, which left at least 17 dead in two weeks, the…
AFTER the main opposition People’s Democratic Party (PDP) announced last week that it would zone the presidency to the South in 2027, some names have been widely mentioned as possible frontrunners. Former President Goodluck Jonathan and the Labour Party’s presidential flagbearer in the last election, Peter Obi, are perhaps the two most serious contenders. With Obi confused and trapped by his volatile “Obidient” base, Jonathan has been framed as the more viable option, but. The “but,” widely considered to be potentially Jonathan’s biggest obstacle, is a legal risk that the courts might overturn his candidature because of a constitutional amendment…
WHEN I wrote that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) is an animal that eats its curator for lunch, it sounded like a stretch. But so far, the tenure of Bayo Ojulari as group chief executive officer is proving it. This might not be obvious if you look solely at Nigeria’s current crude oil sales. The figure has climbed from about 1.6m bpd when Ojulari was appointed last April to about N1.9m bpd. That is good news for a cash-strapped country plagued by oil theft, weak infrastructure, divestments and thousands of barrels in swap deals. The bad news is…