A rejoined is necessary I have not written for NigeriansTalk in quite a while but after reading Salisu Suleiman’s piece titled Private universities in Nigeria: Where are the ‘big’ men? I could not resist the need to comment on a particular part of his article. By the time I finished writing my comment, I realised I might well have broken [...]

When, about 20 years ago, signboards announcing Heritage University sprang up around Kaduna, many thought the founders were setting the stage for the emergence of private university education in Nigeria, especially in the disadvantaged areas. Today, even the faded remnants of those signboards cannot be found. The much heralded Heritage University never took off. Nigeria’s 170 million people have a [...]

Over 30 years after leaving office, former US president Jimmy Carter remains one of the most visible and respected international figures. By contrast, George W. Bush, who left office just four years ago, remains generally hidden from the public. While President Barack Obama called on former president Bill Clinton to help him campaign, neither John McCain nor Mitt Romney called [...]

It is said that when you notice a neighbour’s beard on fire, sprinkle water on yours; in other words, when you detect trouble from afar, try to resolve it even if it doesn’t affect you directly, because left to spread, it may engulf everyone. When reports of disturbances between an obscure sect and the police first came to light a [...]

“All glass fitted to a vehicle shall be clear and transparent to enable persons outside the vehicle to see whoever is inside the vehicle and the glass shall in no way be tinted except as may be approved by the Inspector-General of Police for security reasons”, – Section 66(2) of the National Road Traffic Regulations (1997) In carrying out this [...]

“Mr Shekau said his group had done no wrong and so an amnesty would not be applicable to them. It was the Nigerian government that was committing atrocities against Muslims, he said. “Surprisingly, the Nigerian government is talking about granting us amnesty. What wrong have we done? On the contrary, it is we that should grant you [a] pardon,” AFP [...]

There is a joke about a morgue attendant who had gotten so used to seeing dead bodies that one day, he came to work to find a supposedly dead body twitching. His response was, “this is the morgue, not the emergency room”, so he promptly smothered the twitching body until it was well and truly dead. “That’s more like it”, [...]

“This is a new dawn for our generation. This is unusual. It is gratifying that they are here to see and share with us,” the middle aged man remarked with tears of joy when he saw the nine state governors trekking through the volatile Monday Market in Boko Haram hotspot, Maiduguri, shaking hands with fish mongers, vegetable sellers and taxi [...]

Between 1951 and 1966, when Nigeria practiced a parliamentary system of government, there were two houses of parliaments in the three – later four – regions. These were the Houses of Assembly, with the members elected, and the House of Chiefs, comprising of the traditional rulers in the region. The House of Chiefs acted in an advisory capacity, drawing from [...]

At a car wash recently, I watched with astonishment as a car was emptied of debris while the interior was being cleaned. One after the other came bottles of cough syrups. In all, fourteen bottles of a popular make of cough syrup were removed from the car. Upon closer inspection, I found that all the bottles came from the same [...]