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 [...]

On Friday, 13th April 2012, the Nigerian mainstream and new media were awash with reports of Nigeria’s dwindling savings. In particular, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala raised alarm over the depletion of the Excess Crude Account (ECA) from $20 billion in 2006 to current levels of $3.6 billion. Ngozi thus confirmed what many analysts [...]

  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 [...]

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 [...]

I have always heard that Nigeria’s borders are porous, but I never quite grasped the magnitude of the “porousness” until I received these pictures below of the Nigeria-Niger border at Birnin Kuka. I kept thinking afterwards, of a word synonymous with, yet which would signify an extreme form of “porousness”, combined with the words ”Useless” “farce” “joke” and “ridiculous”  to capture this [...]

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 [...]

Allegations of bribery and corruption made on live television at a legislative committee show some of the problems with our democracy that needs urgent fixing.

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 [...]

Although I only speak one language, I am fluent in at least 3 accents. One of which can only be done in jest, behind closed doors. But I digress. The other two accents are to be taken more seriously for they disclose details of my life that people cannot gather from looking at me. Accent #1 is a special case [...]