Campaigns for the 2027 general elections are off to a predictably shameful start. Those who expected novelty are in shock. Others who expected depth of insight may yet embrace disappointment. The lead contestants for the office of president are already sounding like cracked vinyl records in an annoying echo...
Chidi Amuta
By CHIBUZOR NNABUIKE (University of Georgia, Athens) – HIGHLIGHTS: “I preferred the peace of nature in the bush to the cold lifeless cement floor of the classroom” Easily one of Nigeria’s more readable newspaper columnists, Chidi Amuta engages constantly with his fluid prose and often arresting logic. His background...
When in February 2025 Babangida released his long awaited memoir, A Journey in Service, the book launch at the Congress Hall, Abuja Hilton Hotel, was filled beyond capacity. A combined team of the military and secret police had a hard time for several hours managing access and controlling the...
By UZOMA NWEKE, University of Jos – Chidi Amuta’s just released memoir, HOMAGE, is remarkable in one respect. It projects Nigeria’s national history from the perspective of an individual’s personal life experience. The book is not just the way the author’s life reflects Nigerian history from pre-independence, independence, political...
I am endlessly enthralled by a recent viral social media story. A bright young man in Kenya became enamored of the legal profession by being in the vicinity of a law office and attending courts regularly to observe the ways of lawyers and judges. So, he assumed himself a...
On the dichotomy of kingly power and clerical obligations, there is an undisputed demarcation. Unto kings is given the power to guarantee the orderly governance of the state and the welfare of citizens in a republic. But the ultimate preoccupation of the divine is the good of all humanity....
Nelson Mandela must be churning in his resting place. An exemplary life lived and a myth created on a dream and a vision is now literally reduced to ashes. The rainbow nation with prosperity for all races as a vision has been badly damaged . Its previously thriving post-apartheid...
Our federal capital could as well have been a perfect setting for a series of gangster movies from Hollywood. Perfect scripts. Excellent casting. Professional rehearsals. The dry runs are already provided by the existing government bureaucracy with its rituals and pomp. The voluminous costumes of agbadas and starched kaftans...
In the feverish race towards the 2027 elections, no one is concerned that many Nigerians may be left out of the democratic process. Yet democracy by its definition and nature ought to be a majoritarian enterprise. The originators of democracy designed it to be inclusive; a unifying platform that...
The Tinubu presidency is caught in a web from its own DNA. A grand Ponzi scheme born and bred in the bowels of the presidency has burst into the open. A famous con man ostensibly hired by highly placed officials has been exposed. His elaborate scheme of floating a...
The saving grace of the democratic state is the prospect of positive change through periodic elections. For those who live in a democracy, the classical belief is that the next election offers the populace a chance to change their lot for the better by trooping out to queue at...
The raging insecurity all over Nigeria has altered our reality. We now count our lives in days, weeks and months. At the beginning of each month these days, most of us receive these silly “Happy New month” greetings and prayers. We now celebrate our lives in bits and pieces,...
When a republic is held to ransom by an affliction that appears intractable to its government, the populace is left hopeless and helpless. About the viral insecurity now holding Nigeria hostage, the Tinubu government is in consternation and quandary. And the Nigerian public is in total darkness as to...
As we trickled into Yemi Ogunbiyi’s cosy bungalow in the Staff Quarters at Ife, we were greeted by pulsating calypso tunes playing from a real stereo equipment. The trending hit songs of Lord Kitchener and Mighty Sparrow were softly booming in the background. A rich whiff of good food...
In times when our national conversation becomes too heated, fuzzy and bogged in intractable controversy, I prefer to take matters to the barber’s shop at Ikeja Bus Stop. That is my definition of the Public Square. In that place, fact, fiction and faction meet and mix in a noisy...
Democracy and adversity are strange bedfellows. Hungry and deprived people either troop out to vote or look the other way at election time. Deprived people who observe the ritual of elections do so in the forlon hope that perhaps a new political cast could alleviate their condition. But more...
In the countdown to the 1993 presidential election between the National Republic Convention(NRC) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP), I served on the think tank of Chief M.K.O Abiola’s campaign. Our search for a unifying national resonant theme came down to one thing: the need to imbue Nigerians with...
I have fallen victim to two sets of phone calls in recent weeks about political developments in Nigeria. Between foreign friends and associates on one hand and my local elite readers and friends on the other. The foreigners have uniformly expressed consternation at recent political developments in Nigeria. They...
Chidi AmutaUnited States President Donald Trump seems intent on fulfilling a self- appointed tragic destiny. Every step he takes to avoid being thought weak is leading him towards the inevitability of a disgraceful end and an apocalyptic legacy. Worse still, every step he has taken to show strength has...
A blistering urgency currently envelopes Nigeria. It is an urgency of war, the clear and present danger of an imminent national meltdown. It is a common truth that Nigeria is desperately embattled on all fronts. It has been so for far too long. Our leadership may not agree that...