Olaniran News Network ONN

Prof Kperogi  I fully anticipate that most Nigerians will figuratively call for my head after reading this headline. How could it be that a leader who has inflicted such profound and unrelenting hardship upon the populace, and who appears utterly disinclined to offer even the smallest relief, could ever be missed?   (Tinubu’s wirepullers at the World Bank have essentially declared that Nigerians must, at the barest minimum, endure this misery for not only the entirety of Tinubu’s possible two terms but for an additional seven years thereafter.) But, one must ask, who could have ever predicted that Nigerians would miss Presidents Goodluck Jonathan or Muhammadu Buhari, to cite two recent examples? A video trended on social media about five weeks ago of a man who, on President Muhammadu Buhari’s last day in office, sunk to his knees and supplicated to God to never let Nigerians miss Buhari.  “When Jonathan became our president, we were missing Yar’adua,” he lamented. “When Buhari became p

  Mr Bayo Onanuga Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy has descended heavily on the Guardian Newspaper over its lead story expressing anger over economic hardship that majority of Nigerians are grappling with. Responding to the newspaper, Onanuga calls it irresponsible to compare the regime of Bola Ahmed Tinubu to the military regime. The newspaper in its lead story titled  "MISERY, HARSH POLICIES DRIVING NIGERIANS TO DESPERATE CHOICES" could not hide its fang for an alternative to Bola Tinubu’s draconian policies that have driven Nigerians into abject poverty. According to the publication, “Nigerians were exhilarated with the return of democracy in 1999, but 25 years on, the buccaneering nature of politicians, their penchant for poor service delivery, morbid hatred for probity, accountability, and credible/transparent elections, among others, are forcing some flustered citizens to make extreme choices, including calling for military intervention in go

Wike And Fubara If today’s Federal Government had known its limits, it wouldn’t have suffered the disgrace it suffered in Rivers State at the weekend. The election it struggled to frustrate eventually held. And I see it as a victory for federalism and one major step in our forward march to defeat the current forces of resurgent unitarism.” Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s 1947 book, ‘Path to Nigerian Freedom’, opens with three quotations. The first tells the reader: “This above all: to thine own self be true…” It is from William Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’. It simply says do not deceive yourself – like the one with a sore in the right leg but who nurses the healthy left. The one who deceives himself suffers deception from the gods. The second quote, from Shakespeare’s ‘King Lear’, is a warning that “Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.” In today’s English, it says those who cover their faults always end up being shamed by them. The third quotation enjoins you to “fight all opinions contrary

  Ajuri Ngelale  Citing medical reasons, the Special Adviser to the President on Media & Publicity and Official Spokesperson of the President; Special Presidential Envoy on Climate Action, and Chairman, Presidential Steering Committee on Project Evergreen, Mr Ajuri Ngelale has offered to step down from his position. This was contained in a memo he sent to the Chief of Staff to the President, Mr Femi Gbajabiamila. The memo reads:  “On Friday, I submitted a memo to the Chief of Staff to the President informing my office that I am proceeding on an indefinite leave of absence to frontally deal with medical matters presently affecting my immediate, nuclear family. While I fully appreciate that the ship of state waits for no man, this agonizing decision -- entailing a pause of my functions as the Special Adviser to the President on Media & Publicity and Official Spokesperson of the President; Special Presidential Envoy on Climate Action, and Chairman, Presidential Steering Committee

  Festus Adedayo  SKITS literally crack ribs with laughter. The line separating fact from fiction or faction (fact and fiction) in skits is paper-thin. An instance was a skit cobbled together in Addis Ababa on January 11, 1976 at an OAU Extraordinary Session on Angola. This high-octane skit was documented by General Joe Nanven Garba in his Diplomatic Soldiering (1987). Garba was a Langtang-born Federal Commissioner for External Affairs under Murtala Muhammed and Olusegun Obasanjo. Self-titled ‘Field Marshal’ Idi Amin Dada, the notorious Ugandan despot, was then the OAU chairman. It was also a time when African Heads of State were locked in acrimonious relationships. That conference was where Dada, a title-besotting despot, added “Dr.” to the list of his titles. Present were African leaders whose memories evoke mythical remembrances, like Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Leopold Sedar Senghor, among others. At some point, Dada interjected Heads of State delivering their speeches. He said

  Simon Kolawole When Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, the president-general of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, died last month, it reawakened a topic I had been ruminating over for decades. I had been following the trajectories of politicians who aspired to be president of Nigeria at one point or the other and I had been genuinely startled by how many ended up as active members or leaders of ethnic associations. I have been asking myself for years: what changed? Why did they — having desired to lead a country of 250 ethnic groups and two dominant religions — decide to return to their ethnic cocoons? I am not interested in judging them, by the way; I am just trying to understand what happened to them. Chief Olu Falae, former secretary to the military government and minister of finance, twice aspired to be president of Nigeria — in 1992 and 1999. But the last phase of his public career is as a champion of ethnic nationalism. He is a frontline member of the Afenifere, the Yoruba group. If Afenifere’s ide