Author: Obayomi Abiola Benjamin

…to share list of defaulters with Police The Executive Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service, Mr Tunde Fowler, has said that the Service, in collaboration with other stakeholders like the Nigeria Police Force, will this year go after wealthy tax defaulters. Fowler said this on Thursday in Abuja when the Acting Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu, paid a courtesy visit to the Revenue House. A statement from the FIRS on Thursday said Fowler informed the police boss that already the service had realised the sum of N23bn based on a closer look at the books of 45,000 tax debtors. He said…

The anti-corruption war of President Muhammadu Buhari received a great deal of applause from the local and international communities when the President made it explicitly clear from the inception that there would be no sacred cow. But the Peoples Democratic Party has claimed that the war is being used mainly as a political weapon to hound, intimidate and frustrate the opposition, while those accused of corruption in the ruling party are spared or treated with kid gloves. This position was also shared by Senator Shehu Sanni from Kaduna State, who sometime in 2018 accused the ruling party of using insecticide…

We have been hitched for almost 10 years now, and until recently our number one piece of advice would have been: Don’t write about how to make your marriage divorceproof. It’s hubris! But we like to take risks (that’s piece of advice number two), so we knocked on wood, threw salt over our shoulders, and forged ahead with all the unstoppable energy that a couple with two kids under the age of five can muster. (Eating a pile of old Halloween candy helped, too.) Ultimately, we came up with this list of marriage rules and reminders—all of which, we hope,…

‘We don’t sell people’s data,’says Zuckerberg Facebook co-founder and chief, Mark Zuckerberg, has revealed plans to unify the underlying messaging infrastructure of its WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger services and incorporate end-to-end encryption to these apps. The three services will, however, continue as standalone apps, the report said, citing four people involved in the effort.The company is still in the early stages of the work, and plans to complete it by the end of this year or in early 2020, the report said. After the changes, a Facebook user, for instance, will be able send an encrypted message to someone…

The whole idea behind leadership is accepting responsibility. When you see people who run away from taking up responsibilities, then such people are not ready to take the lead in their chosen endeavours. Leadership without responsibilities is no leadership at all, because there is no leader anywhere who has not been given or assigned a task to be accomplish. In Isaiah 6:8, Prophet Isaiah said he heard the voice of the Lord saying “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then Isaiah responded by saying, “Here I am, Send Me.” Responsibilities opens up the door into leadership.…

I have watched closely how some Nigerians deify President Muhammadu Buhari. To them, the president is a special kind of saint, a perfect being who can really do no wrong. To some of these Nigerians, the president is the best thing that has ever happened to Nigeria after ‘ewa agoin’ and ‘agege bread’. Whether the president violates the rule of law, or acts sometimes against the constitutional provisions that clearly spelt out the limit of his powers, the president’s praise singers; spread across the media, most especially the social media, would give him a pat on the back. The president…

Despite a lot that has been done concerning the girl child education in Nigeria, we cannot be quiet, feel we have arrived and believe the education of a girl child is settled and without threat. The situation is far from satisfactory. Not oblivious of the fact that a girl child in Nigeria faces so many gender-based challenges as compared to her male counterparts; the freedom and right to be educated is still a major challenge. Recent statistics has it that 34 million adolescent girls are out of school around the world and women make up nearly two thirds, that is…

Minabere Ibelema About three weeks ago, a friend and former colleague who relocated to Nigeria long ago asked me how the 2019 electioneering is playing in the US. My response may well be summed up by the movie title “All Quite on the Western Front.” Every presidential election in Nigeria since 1999 has received heavy coverage here, and usually the thrust is apocalyptic. In contrast, coverage of this election has been low-key and mostly matter-of-factly. So, when I learned that the Euroasia Group — an international risk assessment company headquartered in New York — included Nigeria’s forthcoming election in its…

I can imagine what would be running through the minds of some of president Buhari’s die-hard loyalists right now. It may sound like this..”Please Nigerians, excuse the president for this one, it is not compulsory that he should be cerebral. After all, he has got a capable deputy in the person of Yemi Osinbajo. As long as he is building our railway lines and fighting corruption, that is all that matters.” This is what I believe a typical Buharist or Buharideen would want you to believe after the president’s woeful performance at his own show. Come to think of it,…

There is a Scripture that says God reigns in the affairs of men (Daniel 4:17). When it comes to matters relating to leadership; either in an organization or in the family or even in the nation at large, you can be rest assured that God takes interest in it, as much as men do as well. When it comes to leadership, it is one area that God does not joke with. The reason for this is simply because the direction of a people per time is usually premised on the kind of leadership that is in charge over such people.…