Amina, Sambisa, and the Parable of a Wobbly Nigeria, By Okey Ndibe
Mr. Buhari’s burden is to view and treat every Nigerian with the same concern and solicitude he showed to Amina. All Nigerians, not just Amina, deserve access to sound healthcare, good education, and...
View ArticleNigeria’s Strange Business Of Corpses, By Okey Ndibe
I am deeply troubled that some people are quick to display the images of bloodied bodies. Perhaps the goal is to trigger moral outrage. But the unintended consequence is the debasement and cheapening...
View ArticleThe Revolt Of Mandela’s Grandchildren, By Okey Ndibe
South Africa’s student-led struggle has a racial component, but the struggle is not reducible to race. It is a multifocal struggle in which matters of race, patriarchy, gerontocracy and other issues...
View ArticleThe Unbearable Cost Of Political Foolishness, By Okey Ndibe
Times are bleak in Nigeria. Yet, Nigerian senators who gathered to think about the subject of “governance accountability in Nigerian federalism” could not see beyond their noses. Their first and last...
View ArticleFayose And Nigeria’s Immunity Scandal, By Okey Ndibe
Nigeria ought to amend its constitution to adopt a much narrower immunity clause. There’s little sense in permitting a criminal, one whose record of crime is significant and provable, to continue in...
View ArticleMemo To Buhari: Take A Hard Look At Nigeria’s Map, By Okey Ndibe
It may be the case that the president is incapable of broadening his horizon when he has a job to fill. In that event, it behooves those closest to him—especially the Muslims and Northerners whose...
View ArticleA Tale Of King Buhar, Melayus, Tinubs And Gari, By Okey Ndibe
In fact, even Fela, that artist of yabis, would have been proud. History will record that there was no reason any king should have spent a second thinking about ending hunger in his land when a circus...
View ArticleJunaid’s Jeremiads, Buhari’s Burden, By Okey Ndibe
If—and I put a big ‘if’ here—Junaid’s allegations are true (as I write, there had been no refutation from the Presidency), then President Buhari is guilty of the basest privatisation of political power...
View ArticlePadded Budgets, Padded Change, By Okey Ndibe
The whole scandal is an opportunity to rethink the structure and size of Nigeria’s machinery of governance. I’ve said before, and restate here: There’s no financial or political sense in having...
View ArticleThe Theology And Ideology Of Nigerian Violence, By Okey Ndibe
There’s a great challenge and opportunity for mainstream Muslims, those who have declared no overt fatwa on western education. These adherents often stipulate that Islam is founded on peace. It...
View ArticleNigeria: Time to Question Everything, By Okey Ndibe
Despite his hectoring rhetoric, President Buhari has no formula for taming the country’s divisive impulses and knocking Nigeria into shape. The sooner he abandons the illusion that he runs a cohesive...
View ArticleNigeria Should “Boycott” Future Olympics, By Okey Ndibe
Odds are, there won’t be any consequences. Sports officials will continue to keep their posts, seeking other opportunities to fatten their bank accounts precisely by exposing their country to global...
View ArticleChronicles Of Tragedy And Absurdity, By Okey Ndibe
It’s only in Nigeria that public officials fatten their bank accounts from funds budgeted for public purposes—and then demand that the people whose lives they have impoverished must fast and pray for...
View ArticleMark Zuckerberg’s (Free) Education Of Nigerians, By Okey Ndibe
Unlike the tech entrepreneur, many of Nigeria’s wealthiest amassed their fortunes by shooting their way to power, rigging elections, through contract fraud, from questionable acquisition of oil blocks...
View ArticleBuhari Rewrites Change Gospel, By Okey Ndibe
A more important question to President Buhari is why, as president, and having heralded himself as a change catalyst, he has hardly defined an agenda nor used his offices to alter the system of doing...
View ArticleObiora Udechukwu: Honouring Genius, Moral Integrity, By Okey Ndibe
For me, the ultimate takeaway from taking part in, witnessing, the adulation of Udechukwu was this: that the last word belongs, not to the greedy ones who make a fetish of conspicuous consumption, but...
View ArticlePhD Truck Drivers And The Urgency Of Now, By Okey Ndibe
Mr. Buhari continues to invoke his personal virtues, his ascetic mindset, and his commitment to change. And he continues to blame his predecessors. But those attributes—self-assessment, rhetoric and...
View ArticleRight War Against Judicial Corruption, Wrong Tactics, By Okey Ndibe
If Mr. Buhari does not envision a game plan against corruption, he’s likely to go down in history as his predecessors did—as leaders who merely paid lip service to a war in which they had no heart. In...
View ArticleAisha Buhari Schools the President, By Okey Ndibe
President Buhari’s response to his wife’s censure was painfully tactless… In that graceless response—which the president’s handlers at first tried to pass off as witticism—President Buhari confirmed...
View ArticleTruth, Other Casualties Of War On Judicial Corruption, By Okey Ndibe
A war against judicial corruption should be fought as part of a broader war against corruption in Nigeria. Tragically, President Buhari has not defined that broad, systemic template that would combat...
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