These are certainly troubling times in Nigeria. Almost all citizens are living on edge and in fear of attacks by the so called bandits and gunmen. Travelling to and from different parts of the country has become a hazardous venture. In the North, especially between Abuja and Kaduna, commuting by whatever means has become more perilous than passing through the lake of fire and brimstone. Danger looms at every point. Gunmen have taken over the highways and the railway is no longer safe while air transportation is also within their range. The fear of being molested, abducted or killed by…
Author: Editor
“Where the state is too weak to be dangerous, non-state actors might become too strong.” – Robert Cooper, The Breaking of Nations: Order and Chaos in the 21st Century, p. 18 (2003) Supporters of Nigeria’s ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) are fond of telling their critics they “can’t stop a moving train.” In Kaduna on March 28, the moving train of the APC derailed, both as a fact and a metaphor. The following day, on March 29, the second leg of the Nigeria-Ghana World Cup qualifier was to occur. The four days between the two legs of the Nigeria-Ghana encounter…
Nigeria is calamitously moving to the abyss of anarchy with the serious tendency of tragic disintegration. Life is becoming unbearable to a common man by the day. To many Nigerians, the daily essentials for a good or even manageable living are difficult to afford and access. Prices of necessities; rent, food, transportation, health services, electricity, water rate, and the rest have all skyrocketed to high heaven with seemingly no effort from any corner to bring the prices down. People are at the mercy of producers and traders. At the beginning of this year’s (2022) Ramadan, the Chairman, BUA Group, Alhaji…
Africa has an important role to play in meeting European energy needs today and tomorrow It would be fair to say that when it comes to Africa’s energy industry, Africa and Europe have been at odds for the last several years. Europe, which has valid concerns about protecting the climate and moving the world toward net-zero emissions goals, has been urging African oil- and gas-producing states not only to accelerate their transition to green energy sources, but also to send it into overdrive. The general sentiment in the European Union (EU) is that the time for new oil and gas…
This article or excerpt is published at GLP and culled from the website Reporters like to lecture the public about the importance of science while promoting obviously unscientific ideas when it suits them. The pandemic brought this contradiction into the spotlight as news outlets like CNN, The Guardian and The Washington Post defended COVID-19 vaccines while routinely publishing sloppy stories about the dangers of pesticides and the blessings of eating organic food. Such inconsistency isn’t exclusive to the popular press; it’s very common in science media as well. Scientific American has fallen into this trap multiple times, as has The…
Her name is Chinelo Megafu. She graduated in Dentistry from the University of Port-Harcourt in 2015. Ah, you already know her? She had never been one to seek cheap popularity. Her becoming a household name was entirely beyond her control. As a medic, she was trained to save lives. Nothing prepared her for a situation in which lives would be ebbing away all around her (including her own life, by the way) and she would be totally helpless in doing anything about it. The train ride had been a jolly one until the loud band which signalled the arrival of…
First, they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me The above stanzas, variations of which…
Prior to the July 11, 2007, coordinated bombing of commuter trains in India’s largest city of Mumbai, Indians, like Nigerians, were wrapped in the shawls of their innocence and naivety. On that day, terrorists violently yanked the terror purity shawls off India’s face. In a matter of minutes, multiple explosive devices were detonated in a near-simultaneity. The devices instantly killed at least 183 people, with hundreds of others sustaining varying degrees of injuries. In a replay of this Mumbai attack in Nigeria last week, at least seven passengers were killed after gunmen attacked a busy train plying Nigeria’s capital, Abuja,…
I have been engaged in countless conversations with my European friends across continents, groups and social media about current world events and whether their leaders are right in pursuing a solitary military solution. Were they right in the 1990s in just being interested in winning the ideological battle by encouraging the atomisation of Europe? Could the wars that have devastated that continent, especially from the 1990s, have been prevented? With the seeming end of the Cold War, was it in the interest of humanity for European powers to have been primarily interested in expanding their military wings, rather than investing…
For the past few years, armed men – terrorists, insurgents, militants, bandits, jihadists and so on have been on the war path against the Nigerian people. Each year, thousands of people are killed, kidnapped for ransom, sexually assaulted and their homes burnt, their food taken and millions have had to flee as internally displaced persons or refugees. We are in a state of anomie and there are no moral values or standards holding the society together anymore. We have entered the era of self-help and increasingly, Nigerians are buying guns to defend themselves or to rob and kill others. The…