Author: loladeville

My father and I usually engage ourselves in deep reflections of the Nigerian state. I have a son who has his own years ahead of him and I ask myself, what story will he tell his son/daughter when our times pass? He is alive today, in a Nigeria where we have to run a Generator to power an Inverter when power from ‘somewhere’ is lost. So I have my son, outside the United States, dispensing baby knowledge for such subjects as Inverter, Generator and ‘there’s-no-light-there-Dad’ moments. He has Nigeria now forming a worrisome curriculum for him that will shape...

The new wave of democracy sweeping across Africa was meant to usher in a new kind of freedom – freedom to elect leaders of choice, freedom of religion and most important of all freedom of free speech. Sadly these so-called ‘freedoms’ are being repressed across Africa. In recent times we’ve seen President George Weah closing down a radio station for criticizing him ; Sowore and others continue to languish in custody in Nigeria for trying to lead peaceful protests against the government and regimes across Africa have put into effect Public Order Acts that limits or controls free speech....

Anyone who followed the national new minimum wage negotiations between the organised Labour and the Federal Government at the peak in November 2018 would have known, as they say in Nigerian street lingo, that it would “end in tears”. While receiving the report of the Tripartite Committee on New Minimum Wage from the Chairman, Amal Pepple, on November 7, 2018, Buhari had said he was “fully committed to having a new National Minimum Wage Act in the very near future”. Many newspapers reported that the President had “endorsed” the proposal. This was quickly denied by the Presidency, which was...

Corruption has been the bane of our lives ever since Nigeria came into existence: every year billions and billions of naira of public funds are stolen with very few prosecuted.Our judiciary is laughable and with one former president claiming he doesn’t believe corruption is a crime, politicians will continue to loot with impunity knowing they can’t be punished. There is no shame in being corrupt as we live in a society that encourages it – everibodi wants to chop dem own!The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission was set-up in 2003 for the main purpose of investigating and bringing to...

We are told that South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa apologised on Saturday for the xenophobic attacks against foreigners living in South Africa, particularly persons involved in business who are seen by the ordinary South African as enemies. He reportedly did this in Harare, Zimbabwe, at the funeral ceremony of former president Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Most appropriately, the South African President was booed. He was offering too little too late, and other Africans have every reason to think that South Africans having behaved badly deserve to be booed and even shut out of the African Union, or reported to the International Criminal Court...

For the first time ever, Nigeria-based Nigerians gave a violent response to the killing and maiming of their countrymen in South Africa. South African enterprises, the most unfortunate being food retailer Shoprite and telco MTN, were targeted, leading to the destruction of property and obstruction of trade. In some instances, innocent Nigerian shoppers and business owners were affected. The attacks have since been quelled but the worst mistake anyone can commit is to discountenance them. Xenophobic attacks have been a distinct feature of South African life for decades. At the latest, they’ve been occurring since 1994, and have reached...