Category: Analysis & opinion

In Search Of The Incorruptible Judge

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By Sunny Awhefeada,   The title of this essay will resonate with my age mates and others before us as it invokes pleasant memories of the play, The Incorruptible Judge, by D. Olu Olagoke. The play excoriates corruption and privileges the judiciary as the agency to eradicate it. Readers of the play marveled at the refreshingly sound logic and verbal dexterity of the lawyer-characters. However, the character who stole the show was the trial judge, Justice Faderin, who resisted pressure and attempts to get bribed and compromise the case. His…

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Echoes From Ground Breaking Ceremony Of N78bn Effurun/Warri Flyovers

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By DENNIS OTU   “Today, I will go to bed a happy man because of what I have witnessed today. Am so excited today. This is a historic day in our lives. If I am not mistaken, the last night Julius Berger Nigeria Plc worked in this our environment was over forty years ago. But today, Monday, November 27th, 2023, our dynamic Governor, Rt Hon Sheriff Oborevwori has just performed the ground breaking ceremony for the construction of road expansion and improvement works between Effurun and DSC Roundabouts, PTI junction…

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Re-Addressing Public Housing In Nigeria

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By Fred Edoreh   I stumbled on the keynote address by the former Minister for Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola SAN, at the 50th anniversary of the Federal Housing Authority, with theme, “The future of housing in Nigeria and 50 years of FHA: A call to action for political leaders and policymakers for decent and affordable housing.” The thrust of his presentation was an advocacy for federal and state governments to adopt the Rent-to-Own approach towards providing mass housing to address the pressure of housing needs on families.…

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Is Nigeria Worth Calling A Country?

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By Sunny Awhefeada,   The harsh and disparaging title of this essay was uttered by a sixteen year-old girl, fresh out of secondary school. It was her response to her mother’s correction on a family whatsapp platform that the name of a country should be spelt with an initial capital letter. After thanking her mother for the correction, the lass fired the salvo, “Is Nigeria worth calling a country?” The worried mother then realized that the daughter’s scripting of Nigeria as “nigeria” was a deliberate act of negation and revolt…

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Opinion: Tales Of Many Woes

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  By Sunny Awhefeada   Charles Dicken’s perception of the Victorian world defines how humanity apprehends that era more than one hundred years after it elapsed. The Victorian era eponymously christened after the phenomenal Queen Victoria also saw Britain attaining the peak of greatness. Britain ruled the waves and the world, and she was not just a significant factor in the colonial enterprise, but she was very wealthy through the unsympathetic plundering of her rich colonies. Despite the fortunes she enjoyed, the citizens were afflicted by grave misfortunes and that…

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My Landcruiser Is Bigger Than Yours

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By Sunny Awhefeada The Nigerian’s taste for luxury and anything foreign has become a plague. This fad is not restricted to the affluent. Everywhere you turn, there is the tendency for people to fight, and even die, for that which is foreign or a luxury. The Nigerian mindset is not attuned to altruistic sacrifice. It is all about “bring it and let us share it”. Stones are often thrown at those at the helm of affairs, but the truth, albeit bitter, is that many of those throwing stones are also…

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Turning And Turning In The Widening Gyre

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By Sunny Awhefeada Literary aficionados or anybody who has read Things Fall Apart must necessarily remember the memorable lines which gave this piece its title. Taken from William Butler Yeats “The Second Coming”, the Nigerian sage and writer, Chinua Achebe deemed the thematic concern of the poem and the imagery of chaos it evoked as fit for the African experience which colonialism bequeathed.   Yeats’ poem was birthed by the dysfunctional world that the modern period turned out to be. Yeats wasn’t alone in the depiction of the crisis that…

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The Living Legend: Celebrating The Highly Spiritual Gospel Singer, Evang. Amos Ighaka

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By Stanley Ugagbe   In a world often overshadowed by the cacophony of trivial pursuits and fleeting fame, there emerged a rare and resplendent talent who defies the ordinary, a voice that rises above the mundane and reaches deep into the heart and soul. Today, I celebrate the living legend, a highly spiritual Isoko gospel singer, Evangelist Amos Ighaka whose profound resonance with the divine has touched our lives in ways that words alone cannot capture. In an era where music often panders to commercialism and superficiality, Amos Ighaka stands…

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The Tragedy Of Our Independence

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By Sunny Awhefeada The notable Kenyan writer, Ngugi wa Thiong’o dedicated his novel A Grain of Wheat to “the peasants who fought the British yet who now see all that they fought for being put on one side.” African independence didn’t meet the aspirations of the people. It did come with betrayals of tragic proportions. The decades of nationalism from around 1920 to the late 1950s were not just about the struggle for freedom, but were years of hope anchored on Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah’s admonition, “seek you first the political…

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The Disturbing Crisis of Parenting

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By Sunny Awhefeada   A looming disaster with the capacity to wreck the social structure of Nigeria is hanging over our heads like the sword of Damocles. The crisis is pervasive and therefore ubiquitous. It is the crisis of an emergent grossly errant generation. All around us are signs of derailment, turpitude and crass subversion of all that is good, but we seem not to be able to arrest the slide. We complain and talk and point, but we are caving in to the overwhelming pressure of the challenge which…

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