Author: Azubuike Ishiekwene

IT’s hard to argue when U.S. President Donald Trump says that God saved him to save America. Not only is a rational argument often suspended or lost when God enters the matter, but Trump’s return as the 47th president defies logic. A leader’s job is never done. But how do you rationally explain Kamala Harris’s defeat in the presidential election and, along with it, the routing of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party in the Congress? If the election were a boxing match, it would have beaten the record of Vitali Klitschko vs Shannon Briggs’s 2010 fight as one of…

On the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 45th President of the U.S., on January 19, 2017, I wrote an article I could easily write now. It was entitled “A Memory of America on Obama’s Last Day.” With minor edits, it’s worth repeating as Trump happens again as the 47th President of the U.S. ONLY exceptionalism could have offered that opportunity. Only exceptionalism could produce a Barack Obama and, eight years later, bring forth a Donald Trump—one neoliberal and the other a neo-anything-is-possible. The peculiar aspect of the U.S. is that everything is extraordinary. If any doubt remains, the…

“Arsenal fans are currently over the moon, testosterone pumping – and why not? The story will not change in 2024… the odds are not in Arsenal’s favour… My forecast is that despite setting his ducks in a row, (Godwin) Obaseki’s candidate would lose in September. His biggest undoing would be the large army of political enemies he has created in the last eight years – some inevitably from the reforms he introduced, but others, and in a far larger number, avoidably from his mean-spirited, opportunistic politics.” – What You Might Expect in 2024, December 29, 2023 THIS is the fifth…

PERHAPS three will be the lucky number. After at least two previous failed attempts, a peace deal between Israel and Hamas might be reached by January 20 or in the early days of Donald Trump’s second term. Or… It’s a matter of perhaps, with a big P. Optimism is a rare commodity in a region with the longest-running conflict and the largest river of bad blood. Yet, after over 450 days of war with its predations, traumas and devastations, a bit of optimism is not a bad thing. In that spirit, I accepted the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs invitation…

APART from General Sani Abacha, I have met one-on-one with every Nigerian leader since 1992, from General Ibrahim Babangida. However, I have only participated in one televised live group media chat with former President Olusegun Obasanjo. If you have met Obasanjo before – whether for an interview or anything else – you might agree that he’s a handful and more. You never know what to expect with Obasanjo, especially when he is in his lair. I narrowly missed being punched by the former president during an untelevised interview in his Library in the Villa in 2004 for asking why his…

IF I’ve learned anything these past 35 years of journalism, it’s looking for a story in every situation. It wasn’t different when I left home for the airport on December 14, except that this time, the story found me. My Uber driver started the conversation: “Are you Mr. Azu of LEADERSHIP?” he asked. I confirmed I was but didn’t make much of his question since he could have gotten the information from Truecaller. I also found from my Truecaller that he was identified as “Doc. Jibrin.” However, in a country where people love big titles that mean nothing, anyone can…

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, just waiting for the axe to fall. His party’s loss in the December 7 presidential election was a defeat foretold. It was barely two years after Akufo-Addo assumed office in 2017 when doubts about his party’s viability began to surface.…

I WAS watching the evening news on Monday night when two presenters used a word at different times that jolted me. I’ve heard and seen that word used often, especially by millennials and Gen Z, but I didn’t entirely pay heed because they were mostly in informal settings. Anyways – I meant to write, anyway – I was jolted to hear that word, anyways, twice from two TV presenters on different programmes on the same station just minutes apart! My Use of English teachers would have beaten the straying “s” out of me if I had used that word even…

DONALD Trump’s election overshadowed Kemi Badenoch’s emergence as the leader of the Tory Party of Britain. Yet, no one gets the worst political job in one of the world’s oldest political parties and walks away quietly. This is especially the case when the candidate is a straight-talking, ideological woman and a child of an immigrant in a largely conservative society. It was not a mistake that a section of the British press framed the last contest for the Tory leadership as one of the worst match-ups in recent times, if not in its history. Here was Badenoch, a black woman…

IT’S a famous story in Christendom. Palestine, a vassal territory under the Roman Emperor Caesar, was obliged to pay tributes and taxes to Rome. A radical teacher in the territory, Jesus, taught things that the teachers of the law and local administrators in Palestine were uncomfortable with. After setting traps for him but missing, they pitted him against Caesar by asking him a question that could have gotten him in trouble and possibly gotten rid of him for good. “Is it lawful to pay taxes?” the Pharisees asked him. “Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is…

ONE year ago, on November 15, 2023, the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) invited me to speak on “Nigerian Media, Sustainability and Existential Threats by Big Tech.” Being asked again this year is a privilege, but I won’t be surprised if this is my last invitation. Perhaps I won’t need to come as a presenter next time. A learning machine, Anaba possibly, might be here to do the job. This may sound incredible, but increasingly, with improvements in infotech and biotech, it seems that what AI cannot do does not exist. In its most basic definition, generative artificial intelligence (AI)…

I UNDERSTAND wealthy US citizens and conservatives of the evangelical hue rooting for Donald Trump. The rich believe he would loosen regulations and protect them and their businesses from excessive taxation. Conservative evangelicals believe he is the bulwark against wokeism, especially the ultra-liberal variety. And white folks want their country back. But Africans at home and in the Diaspora – what is their business supporting a guy who described their continent as a “shithole” and has worn his anti-immigrant rhetoric on his sleeves? It didn’t seem to make sense that anyone who saw Trump 1.0 would ever dream or wish…

Dear former First Lady, YOU asked the question that millions outside the US have been asking for weeks if not months: Why can’t America see former President Donald Trump for who he is – a congenital liar, a narcissist, a fascist, and a demagogue? At a campaign rally in Michigan on October 26, you criticised those holding Democratic candidate Kamala Harris to a higher standard than they have held Donald Trump despite his four chaotic years as president and his even more crooked lifestyle, long before that. “I’ve got to ask myself,” you said, “why on Earth is the race…

THREE – maybe three and a half – stories go to the heart of why Nigeria appears stuck in a rut. And for some strange reason, all of them are rooted mainly in energy and power. The first is about a project, the Mambilla Hydroelectric Project. If you live in Nigeria – except you’re the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu – there’s a good chance you would have heard about this project, which is located in Gembu, Taraba State. In that case, there’s a chance you might also have heard that the national power grid, more in the news for…

THIS was tough to write. My heart resisted it, but I yielded to my head. The petrol in my car, a 2.0-litre 2012 Tokunbo Camry, was at half-tank the day before writing. When pump prices went from 195/litre to 617/litre between May and June 2023, I parked my Jeep and, despite being occasionally mistaken for an Uber driver, opted for the saloon, which, as of the third fuel price increase by September this year, cost about 65k to fill up. After petrol pump price went up again by about 15 percent last week, it would now cost about 80k to…

WHEN the Israeli-Hamas war started one year ago, it didn’t look like it would last long. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promise to avenge the deaths of over 364 Israelis killed and dozens taken hostage by Hamas on October 7 at a music concert left little doubt it was going to be a bloody phase. But how long, ugly or bloody, it would take for Netanyahu to kill the last Hamas, which was his minimum condition for peace, was hard to tell. Unfortunately, with over 42,000 killed in Gaza, including women, children, UN workers and journalists, over 1500 Israelis killed…

SEVERAL good things happen in the bedroom, often the place of rest and renewal. Sometime in 2004, Sam Nda-Isaiah and his wife Zainab conceived the idea of a newspaper there. She told the story before of how her husband got up in the wee hours, scribbled a few things in a jotter, and asked what she thought of the names and the sketch. That was not the day the newspaper started, of course. But it was only a matter of time. That idea, which later became LEADERSHIP, has evolved from the feisty flimsy of decades ago into a news content…

THE Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had barely finished announcing the result of last Saturday’s Edo governorship poll when I got a call to eat the humble pie. Senator Adams Oshiomhole, the man I called a product vendor in my last article, had pulled off another big one! Why? I had no dog in the fight. But I got the drift. I had warned that given Oshiomhole’s reputation for campaigning for candidates for whom he often ended up apologising, voters could hardly ignore the warning label on his candidate, Monday Okpebholo, and that, at any rate, if it wasn’t that…

BY his admission, Senator Adams Oshiomhole is a lousy product vendor. In the real commercial world, his premises would have been closed and his products banned. But in politics, crime multiples grace. Oshiomhole dragged Godwin Obaseki into the governorship race in 2016 when the odds were against him. Obaseki’s daytime job was minding his business at Afrinvest, a financial services company he founded. But he soon landed a side hustle as chairman of the Edo State Economic and Strategy Team in Osadebey House, Benin. When Oshiomhole wanted to hand over the baton in 2016, after two terms as governor, Obaseki,…

I DON’T get involved with what the security services do or how. Their ways are so complex and their motives so unsearchable that sometimes you’ll be forgiven for thinking that working from the answer to the question is the standard operating procedure. Of course, you are told that whatever happens in between is in the public interest. As far as fiction imitates life, there is a striking resemblance between the recent hyperactivity in Nigeria’s security services and what happened in a novel set in mid-17th century England. Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Terry…