Olaniran News Network ONN

  The 39th President of the United States, Mr Jimmy Carter who had been in hospice care since February 2023 at his home in Plains, Georgia is dead.  Carter, the first US president to reach his 100th birthday died on Sunday December 29, 2024. Born in October 1, 1924, the longest-lived President  served as the 76th Governor of Georgia and later served as President from 1977 to January 1981. Carter, according to Wikipedia was “born and raised in Plains, Georgia, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946 and joined the U.S. Navy's submarine service. He returned home after his military service and revived his family's peanut-growing business. Opposing racial segregation, Carter supported the growing civil rights movement, and became an activist within the Democratic Party. Carter served in the Georgia State Senate from 1963 to 1967.” President Carter was defeated by a wide margin in the 1980 presidential election by President Ronald Reagan and since leaving office, Carter ...

  Odusanya Let's begin on a personal experience with my meeting one-on-one with President Jimmy Carter. I was invited to a private dinner alongside 'Waziri' Abubakar Olusola Saraki, of the blessed memory, a Nigerian politician, who was the Senate leader in the Nigerian Second Republic, Nasir El-Rufai, the then Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), and others at residence of the Ambassador by my friend, the then Deputy Chief of Mission of the United States of American Embassy, Mr. Tim Andrews in the early part of 2002.   From my personal experience and observation at the dinner, I saw in Jimmy Carter, a former President at about age 78 who provided Americans with an ideal model of post-presidential life. In fact, I personally consider him to be America's greatest former President. He emerged as the champion of good governance, human rights and worked for several charitable causes - of course, funded by the Carter Presidential Center at Emory University in Atla...

  Kemi Badenoch Kemi Badenoch, Britain’s Leader of Conservative Party and the Leader of Opposition, has gone through severe stress and strain since she first described Nigeria as a country plagued by “fear, insecurity, and corruption”, while reflecting on challenges of growing up in Lagos. She was accused of the denigrating the country of her parents.  Not even David Cameron who back in 2016 described Nigeria as “fantastically corrupt country” received the type of criticism that trailed what some considered as an unpatriotic assault on Nigeria. But if Badenoch, whose brand of ‘saying it like it is’ and promises to tell ‘hard truths about her country’ does not feel intimidated by a section of the British press who described her as “ever-out-raged Kemi” and a “passionate defender of free speech – apart from any criticism of her” (John Crace Feb 19), she is not going to be cowed by some self-proclaiming patriots, Nigerian journalists whose tantrums include describing her as one “...

  President John Mahama They share the same name; John and they share the same triumphant fate.  Like President Donald Trump of the US, former Ghanaian President John Mahama has staged a come back from defeats he suffered in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. A former communication minister under President Jerry Rawlings, Mr Mahama later became Vice President under the late President Atta Miller from January 7, 2009 to July 24, 2012. He later rose to become president following the death of Mr Miller the first Ghanaian president to die in office. Mr Mahama was sworn in as President on July 24, 2012 and served till January 7, 2017. He lost his bid to win in the 2016 presidential election and suffered another defeat in 2020. He did not give up.  Mr Mahama later contested in the 2024 election and was fielded as candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). He won 56.3% of the votes against Mr Mahamudu Bawumia, candidate of the New Patriotic Party who polled 41.3...

  Bashar Al- Assad President Bashar Al-Assad, the sit-tight Syrian genocidal dictator who was in office for 24 years has been booted out. Few weeks ago, the grip of power had started to slide out of his hand as his soldiers deserted him when the rebels advanced towards Damascus after grabbing one city after another. Rebel commander  Abu Mohammed al-Golani  said, “the future is ours” as widespread jubilation erupted in Damascus. Assad came to power in year 2000 but the country has been mired in 13 years civil war with destruction of over 500,000 lives and properties and displacement of citizens.  Assad relied heavily on Russia and Iran, the two countries instrumental to his continued power grasp for years but both Iran and Russia with enough troubles of their own could not save him especially Russia that has been bogged down by exhaustion from devastating loss of massive casualties of over 600,000 soldiers to Ukraine. The Russia that flexed its muscles with the Wester...

   Babalola & Farotimi When 95-year-old legal luminary Afe Babalola weaponized the Nigerian police to arrest and detain activist Dele Farotimi over alleged defamation in his book, Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System, he inadvertently succumbed to the notorious “Streisand effect.” This is the same phenomenon I previously wrote about in relation to former First Lady Aisha Buhari, whose dramatic abduction and torture of a university student over a tweet about her weight transformed a fleeting commentary into a nationwide cause célèbre in December 2022. Farotimi’s arrest has catapulted his book from obscurity to Amazon’s Best Sellers list, a trajectory likely unintended by Babalola. The very passages Babalola sought to suppress are now illuminated under the unforgiving glare of global attention, which ensures that they will be dissected by countless eyes rather than languishing in relative anonymity. In his obsessional bid to silence Farotimi, Babalola exemplifies the adag...