Wars carry a glib fascination – not for those left to rebuild their shattered lives and landscapes, but for those who observe from a distance, while detached from the ruins of wars. Yet, this fascination is less about the human capacity for destruction and more about the suffering wrought by power – the power to…
Taxation evokes different emotions for different folks. Take the case of Icelandic students who, under the auspices of the then International Union of Students (IUS), gathered in the streets of Reykjavik to protest the exorbitant charges of Icelandic banks. As if the messages inscribed on their placards and banners weren’t driving their messages home enough,…
In this column, last week, I wrote about “The madness which manifests as nothing more than a sickness, to borrow from Michel Foucault, that points at the abnormality that had seized the mind of Abuja, and elsewhere”. I posited, among others, that the madness which manifests in the officialdom has turned our quarters of political…
A few days ago, a post on the Anambra State Government House under construction appeared on my timeline. The mind-boggling cost of the Governor’s official residence put at over six billion naira (N6b) immediately made my mind race to Ayi Kwei Armah’s seminal offering, The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born. The race wasn’t so…
Art imitates life, and life, in its many servile ways, often represents itself as the fiction of genius writers. Chinua Achebe exemplifies this in his book, A Man of the People, and masterfully mirrors the complexities of political choices through the characters, Chief Nanga and Odili. Chief Nanga is depicted as a shrewd and mischievously…
As our people struggle to survive Tinubu’s economic reforms, the President’s New Year address which promised the heavens and the earth to citizens who are not sure of the next day’s meal drew a little more than a passing interest, save for the mealy supporters of President Tinubu who are daily occupied with praising him,…
