I Want to be a Nigerian Citizen, Please!

 Also published in DAILY TRUST

                          NIGERIAN PILOT

Modern civilization has among other things redefined the concept of citizenship as the right of belonging to a sovereign political entity, where citizens’ rights and obligations are defined in the context of the appropriately enacted laws of the land. It therefore abolished the old concept of subordination that used to define the relationship between rulers and the ruled.

Nigeria’s Irony of Affluence

 

Also published in DAILY TRUST

One of the funny ironies in Nigeria is how even the rich hardly if at all enjoy comfortable lifestyles worth their accumulated fortunes. This perhaps represents one of the implications of bad governance perpetrated over the decades by the ruling elite in collaboration with their cronies, most of who are rich or even super rich for that matter. Incidentally, while indulging in their inconsiderate looting spree, they never seemed to have realized that they were simply creating an unfriendly social environment for themselves where they could not enjoy their loot.

Nigerians’ Ironic Religiosity

Also published in DAILY TRUST 

         Nigeria's President kneeling down before a pastor 

Perhaps the much publicized finding that Nigerians are “the most religious people in the world” yet among the most corrupt, to say the least, represents the trickiest paradox I have ever come across. Because after all, I know for sure that all religions irrespective of their ideological differences have more or less similar core values.

Nigeria’s Vision 20:2020 and America’s Failed-State Prediction

 Also published in DAILY TRUST

Back in 2005, The US National Intelligence Council predicted the outright collapse of Nigeria by the year 2015. However on its part, Nigeria launched an “ambitious” initiative (i.e. Vision 2020) designed to take the country into the list of the best 20 economies in the world by 2020. There is of course an unmistakable contradiction between America’s prediction and Nigeria’s vision, and it is pretty clear that, reconciling these two predictions is absolutely impossible.

Panacea to the Boko Haram crisis

Also published in DAILY TRUST

  

When recently a Facebook friend cynically threatened to report the state governments that refuse to pay the 18,000 minimum naira wage, to Boko Haram, I found her comment quite funny indeed. And even when I read how a self-acclaimed radical Islamic scholar in Kano retracted a “negative” comment he reportedly made against Boko Haram, after he had apparently realized the possible consequences, I still never thought that Boko Haram evoked such scare in people.