On Tuesday 15th May, Nigeria witnessed its first mass wedding in the Northern city of Kano when 100 couples were married off by the Kano state government under a programme to address the high rate of divorces in the state. Mass weddings around the world are nothing new; with the earliest recorded in 324 BC during Alexander the Great’s wedding to [...]

It is no longer news that in the past year or so, Nigeria has become another byword for terrorism. From the first bomb blast at the 50th independence anniversary celebrations in October 2010, we have experienced countless others, almost on a daily basis. Just over this weekend, two churches, during service, were attacked in Kano. The attacks killed at least [...]

Your first gray hair, turning 30…40….50! At some point in our lives, we start experiencing things that seemed so far off. As these experiences come and go, they fade into the past and we store them safely within the confines of our memory. Some memories are forgotten and eventually replaced with new ones while others remain underneath the surface, waiting [...]

The man on the stretcher seemed lifeless at first, his face serene, albeit a bit swollen. His shirt was completely unbuttoned showing a massive stomach which drooped at the sides and bobbled as the stretcher was wheeled. The stretcher was pushed by a nurse who seemed a bit reluctant or nonchalant. The nurse’s apparent disdain was in contrast to the [...]

Issues is a new NT series in which academics and policy experts write on their areas of expertise. If you would like to contribute to the series send an email to Olumide (his email address is on the page under the link).  The columnists this week are sociologist Ebenezer Obadare and cultural theorist Akin Adesokan Video footage of Bishop David Oyedepo, [...]

by Anja Choon Naija Stories: Of Tears and Kisses, Heroes and Villains edited by Myne Whitman is a collection of thirty short stories by Nigerians about life in Nigeria except for one story, which plays in the Nigerian Diaspora. Apart from this shared element, the stories are very diverse. Many, many topics Two stories touched me the most. The first [...]

Youths constitute the strongest force every nation has, and with the right orientation they do great things. In Nigeria, the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has a community development group saddled with the sole responsibility of anti-trafficking in persons – the ATP CD group. This is perhaps one of the means through which governments in African countries (from which most [...]

It is no longer news that the Boko Haram terrorist group has held the city of Maiduguri, which happens to be my hometown, captive for almost 2 years now. Having turned it into their centre of operations, they have made a city once reputed to be the most peaceful in the entire North into something closer to a city in [...]

We all crave for something deeper, a meaning to life, some of us more than others. My interest in philosophy was piqued when I read Sophie’s world at age 12. Then I started to ask more questions about why people acted the way they did, what drove their actions. Again, not so much the action in itself, but the reason [...]

So it’s the end of the month again, the time when I write an article and ask people to read it. (I’ve come to accept the humility required to be a writer). Anyway, I thought about my contribution to the month of March and the temptation to write something about growth and its correlation to spring was strong; a New [...]