It seems Africans in the Diaspora generally and Nigerians in particular have reached a saturation point where any public event which features high profile African guests or speakers especially public office holders, is regarded with a “so what”, “what’s new” and “haven’t we heard it all before” attitude. This much was somewhat palpable in the atmosphere at the Eirenicon-Africa [...]

At around 01.30 am in the wee hours of Tuesday 13th March, while checking local Nigerian and global news as I usually do before heading to bed, I came across an article on the British daily’s website The Independent, titled “On the Trail of Boko Haram” by Andrew Stroehlein, the Communications Director of the International Crisis Group. Thinking it was one of those [...]

“I should have known that ambition and success were not to be expected in an African woman. An African woman should be a good African woman whose qualities should be coyness, shyness, submissiveness, incompetence and crippling dependency. A highly educated independent African woman is bound to be dominant, aggressive, uncontrollable, a bad influence.”                 [...]

With tears streaming down his cheeks, Vladmir Putin outgoing Prime Minister and now President-elect of Russia declared with great conviction, that his victory in the just concluded presidential elections was the outcome of an “open and honest battle”. While his speech attracted cheers and ovation from many supporters, members of the opposition like prominent anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, claim that Putin shed [...]

  The popular adage “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” kept crossing my mind in the run-up to the just concluded London Conference on Somalia. I wondered why a gathering focusing on a Sub Saharan African country was to be hosted by the UK government in London, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to be precise. I thought of keeping [...]

chimamanda adichie has a wonderful piece in newsweek, reposted in the daily beast, that asks whether the jury would have believed dominique strauss-kahn or his alleged victim, guinean immigrant nafissatou diallo. On television, she was familiar: the skin tone that suggested cheap bleaching creams, the ambitious hair weave, the melodrama. An American friend of mine thought her interview too theatrical [...]

“Our world is one of terrible contradictions… Plenty of food but one billion people go hungry. Lavish lifestyles for a few, but poverty for too many others.” -          UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon 31st Oct 2011 Just two minutes before midnight on the 31st of October 2011, in the crowded Jose Fabella Memorial Hospital in Manila Philippines, the tiny Danica May [...]

There’s a saying in Hausa that goes thus: “juma’a mai kyau daga laraba ake gane ta” loosely translated means  the signs of a beautiful Friday can be discerned from the preceeding Wednesday. I cannot help mulling over this proverb as events unfold in Libya with the capture and summary execution of former Libyan leader Mu’amar Gadhafi and the declaration of [...]

by Kola Tubosun
On “being” the relative of a dead prince

by Kunle Durojaiye
Occupy Nigeria, to be or not to be?