Author: Chief Editor

PENDULUM BY DELE MOMODU Fellow Nigerians, it is difficult to ignore the helplessness and hopelessness which hapless Nigerians have suffered since the year of our Lord 2015, when our presumed Messiah descended upon our section of this planet. Before then, Nigerians had reasoned that there was only one saint standing and he is no other than Major General Muhammadu Buhari, our brutal disciplinarian and former Head of State. In our selective or collective amnesia, and out of an incredible frustration and pathological hatred for the ruling party, PDP, and the President fate had contrived to foist upon us, Goodluck Jonathan,…

The Lagos State Government yesterday responded to the rising cases of COVID-19 pandemic infection as it announced an indefinite closure of public and private schools, restriction on churches and mosques, among other measures to reduce fatalities in the state. The state Governor, Babajide Sanwo-olu, who reeled out the measures explained that “The Lagos State Government is now sounding a clear note of caution to all residents on the importance of maintaining the guidelines that we have put in place to protect us from the ravages of COVID-19. We cannot afford a reversal of the gains we have made against this…

•Okonjo-Iweala’s fate hanging, body laments absence of substantive head The United States has suggested that the process of finding a new director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which is almost completed, needs to be reopened. US President, Donald Trump’s trade chief, Robert Lighthizer, told the BBC News on Thursday that the WTO needs “someone with real experience in trade, not someone from the World Bank or a development person.” This is coming on the heels of WTO’s lamentation that the absence of a substantive director general is hurting its operations. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Nigerian minister of finance and former…

President Muhammadu Buhari was upbeat yesterday when he met with the returnee Kankara boys at the Government House, Katsina, and reiterated his determination to provide security for all in Nigeria. The schoolboys were abducted when gunmen stormed their school, Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina State, on December 11. The president, who spoke in Hausa, was excted by the rescue of the schoolboys within six days and congratulated the children for their safe return. He stressed that the government would continue to improve the nation’s security system. Buhari advised the freed students to remain focused in the pursuit and acquisition…

President of the Senate, Dr. Ahmad Lawan, has said that the All Progressive Congress,  APC, was determined to remain the vehicle for the emancipation of Nigeria, saying the APC-led federal government will not be distracted. Lawan stated this yesterday while delivering a keynote address at the 2020 Conference organised by the APC Press Corps in Abuja. The Senate President, who was represented by his Special Adviser on Media, Mr. Ola Awoniyi, said the ruling party understands the workings of democracy, through its aggregation of variegated interests, and how it has managed the interests. He added that Nigeria had been on…

‘The Kankara abduction was so belligerently orchestrated that it happened the day Mr President arrived Katsina State on a private visit… It smites the face of the Commander-In-Chief and further proves what we once said that the bandits rule in many communities and do as they wish with impunity”. -Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III. The Sokoto Tracker, Monday, December 14, 2020 Widely reported and discussed is the statement by the Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar III, quoted above, that the sensational mass abduction of hundreds of students of Government Science Secondary School, Kankara is a slap on…

Niran Adedokun niranadedokun@gmail.com Friday’s attack on Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina State, tells copiously about Nigeria’s current state and level of preparedness for the future. That the event could happen is an indication that that the country is deaf– unable to hear, dumb –unable to articulate any strategy for survival, numb –too far gone to feel and too dense to learn from the past. It is doubtful that any other country, where over 200 female pupils were abducted in 2014 and 110 in 2018, would allow that happen again. But Nigeria is unlike countries where lives have value and…

Aimbola Adelakun aadelakun@punchng.com On Friday, hundreds of schoolchildren were abducted in Kankara, a community in Katsina State. As of the time of writing this, more than 300 of those schoolchildren were still reportedly missing. This shameful development is a recrudescence of the 2014 Chibok girls’ abduction in the same Borno State. About 125 of those girls have yet to return home. Only time will tell what has become of them. Then, there was the Dapchi abduction that happened in 2018 in Yobe State. Though those schoolchildren were recovered, one of them, Leah Sharibu, was left behind. As we are…

Concerned Nigerians is a civic group of eminent compatriots some of whom have been in the trenches for many years in the frustrating and dispiriting struggle to rejig our nation and make it a fair and just society for all its citizens. The group boasts of some 43 eminent Nigerians among whom are such well-known men as Bishop Hassan Kukah, Dr Olisa Agbakoba, Professor Jibrin Ibrahim, Professor Attahiru Jega, A.B. Mahmoud and Professor Koyinsola Ajayi. These eminent men are, like most of us, fully aware that our country faces critical existential challenges arising from the worsening insecurity. This is no…

There is gross and grotesque insecurity in Nigeria. Nigeria is not safe, and there is general hopelessness in the homeland. More than six hundred young boys with boisterous lives were kidnapped by hoodlums a few days ago in Katsina State, Nigeria, and there is no qualms and fury about the dreadful incident. It is ridiculous to note that the President was on a visit to the State at the time of the dastardly operation. According to the BBC report last night, the heinous undertaking was said to have taken more than two hours by the hoodlums while President Muhammadu Buhari…