Essays

The Dana Air crash and the recent lifting of it’s suspension from flying in Nigeria has once again brought to the fore the issue of plane crashes and the safety of air travel in our country. The fact of the matter is that ninety nine per cent of fatal air crashes that have occured in […]

I am sad and troubled for our nation. I just cannot sleep when I consider the amount of innocent blood that has been spilt in the 24 hours before I wrote this piece. Kano, Bayelsa, Bauchi….it goes on and on. So much blood, so much hate, so much division and so much destruction. And at

Boko Haram say they have ”no problem with Jonathan” yet they are killing his people like flies, destabilising his country, bringing his government to it’s knees, destroying national unity and cohesion, waging a relentless religious and ethnic war against the state and committing genocide and ethnic cleansing against a section of the population.

When I challenged Chief E.K. Clark’s assertion that there was ”nothing wrong with placing soldiers on the streets of Lagos” last January during the oil subsidy crisis at a conference of the Political Summit Group in Lagos I knew that I was heading for trouble. I was given the floor to speak just a few

Yesterday (4th of Jan. 2012) during a specially convened meeting of the Federal Executive Council of the Goodluck Jonathan administration Mrs. Ngozie Okonjo-Iweala, my former cabinet colleague and good friend, threatened to resign from her position as Finance Minister and de-facto Prime Minister and go back to the World Bank from whence she came if

Like everyone else in the country I was informed about the death of the Waziri of Ilorin, Dr. Olusola Saraki, on the morning that he passed on and the news saddened me immensly. This is because he was one of the greatest, kindest, most compassionate, most generous and most selfless leaders that we have ever

When I heard that Major Hamza Al Mustapha was convicted of murder and sentenced to hanging by a Lagos High Court yesterday afternoon I was utterly shocked, saddened and disgusted. And let me tell you why. I was one of those that opposed the late General Sani Abacha’s government and fought against Al Mustapha and

When President Olusegun Obasanjo was in power we spent 300 billion per year on the fuel subsidy. Under the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan it shot up to 1.3 trillion naira in the last one year alone. Can someone please explain to me how it got so high in 4 years and what exactly they

“I can go back to fight a war to keep this country together even at 71”..some people are saying that should anything happen to President Jonathan, forget about Nigeria and so on. I know those who are saying this. Yes, they are supporters of the President. But I know the President is a sensible person

Lord Apsley and I were colleagues at Harrow School in England approximately 36 years ago. I have never forgotten his uncharitable remarks about Nigeria which led to a heated arguement between us. At that time I found it ironic, and I still do, that this quintessential member of the English upper class not only had