Switching On the Lights
There are many dark areas of the human condition. By dark areas, I mean, things we do not want other people to know about us. Call them pet peeves or guilty pleasures everyone has them. Yet, these dark areas have a way of derailing our lives if we keep them locked away in the quiet […]
Happy World Television Day 2019
The television was one of the most prominent inventions of the 20th Century. Invented in the 1920s, the television did not become mainstream until after the Second World War when black-and-while television broadcasting became commonplace in the United States and Britain. Since then, television has risen to become the primary medium for mass communication across […]
What The Super Eagles Tell Us About Nigeria
When the Super Eagles play good football, we are one nation. We forget who leads the country or where anyone is from. It is really sad that the National Orientation Agency is ever aloof as to using this national past time to forge a more perfect union. For 90 minutes as we played Cameroon this […]
The Pace of Change and Why We Need A New Type of Government in 2019
Our governments are increasingly failing us even with the massive road construction in States like Lagos, Bauchi and Kaduna. Because at the barest minimum, measuring the performance of governments by roads built isn’t enough. The real problem is that Nigerians set the bar too low for government at all three tiers–local, state and federal. As my […]
The Trail of Death
A while back, say about 27 years ago, my mom received a call from a distant relative. It was a Saturday as I recall, and we were very convivial about what we would have for breakfast. It would be a combination of akara and pap or moin-moin and agidi, depending on the mood mom was […]
Discover Nigeria: The Zero-Sum Game and Why Nigeria Needs To Restructure Now
In economic theory, a zero-sum game is a scenario in which the gain or loss of utility by a participant is balanced by the losses or gains of other participants. In much plainer terms, one man’s loss being another’s gain. Nigeria has been this way for the past fifty-one or so years, after Major General […]
The Measure of Intelligence, Redeeming Nigeria from Moral Precipice
Intelligence is often measured by way of standardized IQ tests which in a sense, is parochial. I bring up this argument in my recently published book, The Code: A Simple Story about Raising Great Women. And while I broach the subject of how we measure intelligence from a broader perspective; as a means truly understanding the […]
Discover Nigeria: Igbo Pogroms: A Case of Overactive Imaginations and Transgenerational Silence
Somethings don’t always sound right, even though, more often than not, they are the offshoot of overactive imaginations left unchecked. Last week, news sauntered in about Northern youths asking Igbos residing in the 19 states of northern Nigeria to vacate the north by October 1, 2017 or risk another pogrom. Yet another pogrom—as if to […]
June 12, Remembering MKO Abiola
It was a sunny Saturday morning where I lived. As I recall, my parents were bubbly at the idea of voting for a decade; so bubbly, I wished I was old enough to go out with them and cast my own ballot. Things were truly different then. The politicking was based on sound ideology; the […]
The Nigerian Renaissance- Feminism, Social Media and How to Reshape Nigeria
There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women. -Madeline Albright
Lagos @ 50: A Brief History of Lagos
This month in Nigeria’s history, on the 27th of May 1967, Lagos State was created along with 11 other states by the Gowon Regime to preempt the secession of Biafra. Its first Governor was Brigadier Mobolaji Olufunso Johnson. Originally Lagos belonged to the Aworis who now occupy the Lagos-Badagry stretch but the City-State had long […]
Discover Nigeria: Our Union, Biafra and a State of Different Things
Questions have always been powerful tools for teaching, particularly based on the capacity they give to us to read between the lines and truly interact with the subject being taught, in a manner that arms us with knowledge that is experiential. If you will allow me to quibble a bit: ‘History’, someone once said, ‘may […]
The Ethics of Exposure
To Expose or Not To Expose Exposure—the acquisition of new knowledge through study, emulation or experimentation—as it applies to an individual in any position whether as a ward or parent; employee or employer; citizen or leaders, carries within it the capacity for great good and great evil. The dilemma of how much exposure a person […]
Movie to Watch this Holiday: Zootopia
I saw Zootopia with my sons this weekend and to tell you plainly, I was blown away. Set in a fictional city with the same name as the movie, where prey and predators have evolved to live in harmony, the story smacks of an all-important point about not limiting oneself by the prejudices of others, […]
7 Questions You Need To Answer before Filling Those CAC Forms
I recently read a book, Zero to One, by Blake Masters and Peter Thiel, recommended to me by an article on Inc.com. And having written my first book, partly as a commercial venture to revive my online bookstore start-up—which had failed twice—I could quickly see why I needed to pivot back into retail but not […]
Happy 17th Democracy Day
Our generation has seen more uninterrupted civilian rule than any other in post independent Nigeria. But our democracy has been problematic; yielding very little for our teeming citizenry. Democracy has been a bittersweet experience from the licensing of GSM telecommunication and oil booms to the dismal handling of the national power grid and an impending […]