“He had a good heart, see where he died.” “To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.” – Thomas Campbell “Daga Allah sai talaka,” (meaning service to the poor after that to God) was his campaign slogan. Bukar Abba Ibrahim was a man whose life was spent in service to the people….
The promotion of peaceful and inclusive societies is the focus of goal number 16 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It also broached “access to justice for all and building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.” Strong institutions are necessary to respond effectively to the needs and concerns of nationals and are better…
FAAN, CBN and the short trip to Lagos Nigeria is a country of one week, one issue; but insecurity, spreading over the nation like a cancer in a diseased body, remains constant. However, in some ways, a nation’s behaviour tends to reflect that of its leader’s character. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Nigeria’s president, is that…
The North under siege: A rehash, by Hassan Gimba As reporters and analysts, we must inform, based on trends, and where possible, raise the alarm, hoping that those in authority will heed. In 2018, six years ago, that was what I did. And so, this is just a rehash of my article “Insecurity, the North…
I want to talk about Tinubu, even though I lost my mother, by Hassan Gimba On Monday, January 8, I lost my mother. She died at the age of 85. Despite the age being ripe, it was still a shock. It is normal for a child to see his parents as immortal despite an…
Last week, we got a dose of what investigative journalism ought to be. Umar Audu, a promising young journalist, proved to be an outstanding student of his mentor, Ja’afar Ja’afar, an investigative journalist of the first order. Reporting for Daily Nigerian, Ja’afar’s online newspaper, Umar Audu went underground to bag a degree in Mass…
An Igbo adage says that when an anomaly persists for one year, it becomes the norm. So slowly, steadily but surely, it is becoming a norm, an accepted aberration, for a president in Nigeria to appoint himself as a minister. It is like saying in a country of 200 million-plus, there is no one…
Rivers, a state so rich because God blessed it with an abundance of crude oil and gas, is named after the many rivers that border its territory. Forty per cent of Nigeria’s output of crude oil is produced in the state. It also has deposits of silica sand, glass sand and clay. According to the…
In the first part of this write-up, we saw how in 1983, the National Party of Nigeria (NPN), afraid of defeat, capitalised on Shehu Shagari’s perceived likeability and reversed the election timetable and started with a vote for the president. They relied on what they christened the “bandwagon effect” to commit monumental…
Is there something with the presidential system of democracy we have twice adopted for ourselves that necessitates involving the courts where judges are made to be the ultimate arbiter between contestants? In 1979, it was the judges who decided who emerged as the president between Alhaji Shehu Shagari and Chief Obafemi Awolowo when they told…
