Public Affairs Analyst

October 1 is here again and it is another season of ‘celebration’ of Nigeria’s independence anniversary. There will be speeches, parades, exhibitions, religious services, dinners and all manner of pageantry. Unfortunately, it will be another vacuous celebration with the president, governors and other political as well as religious leaders issuing press statements appreciating God for keeping Nigeria together and enjoining Nigerians to patiently wait for dividends of democracy. The religious leaders will be telling us to continue to pray for our leaders for that is what the Holy Books say. I have been hearing these platitudes since my adolescent years yet we continue to wait for Godot as we dream on for better and higher standard of living. At the country’s golden independence anniversary in 2010, President Jonathan gave a number of sound-bites such as “I prefer to see the silver lining in the dark cloud rather than the dark cloud in the silver lining.” “We may not have overcome our cha...

For many years now, geographers, climatologist and meteorologists have been warning about climate change occasioned by ozone layer depletion. We were warned about change in weather pattern and that there will be unusual rise in water levels and flash flooding. Our governments did little or nothing to prepare for the likely consequences of the climate change. Yes, we have National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) but how many states have their Emergency Management Agencies? How well-funded are our disaster management agencies especially the Federal and State Fire Services across the country? As I write this, after over 50 years of oil explorations, gas flaring continue unabated in the Niger Delta, there is growing desertification in the Northern Nigeria causing drought and threat to food security. I do hope we will not wait for Tsunami and Hurricane before taken pre-emptive actions. Ibadan in Oyo State witnessed backlash of climate change on Friday, August 26, 2011. A seven hour torre...

Congratulations are in order for our heroines and heroes of Team Nigeria to the 10th All African Games in Maputo, Mozambique. After 16 days of stiff competitions which took place from September 3 – 18, 2011, Nigeria’s sports ambassadors placed third on overall medals table. They were only bettered by perpetual rivals, South Africa and Egypt out of about 50 participating countries and at least 5,000 athletes that vied for honours at the quadrennial games. Very painful is the loss of the second position to Egypt on the final day of the competition as the North African country was one gold medal better than Nigeria. Hence in spite of our 98 medals to Egypt’s 66, the athletes from the land of Pharaohs still came second. Nigeria was represented at the sports fiesta by contingents of 459 persons made up of 324 athletes and 135 officials. The country participated in about 18 out of 20 sports being competed for. The breakdown of the representatives in each sport is as follows: athletes - 36...

Nigeria for the umpteenth time grabbed the world news headlines for the wrong reasons on Friday, August 26, 2011. It was a day of two significant and tragic incidences. While one was manmade; the other was a natural catastrophe. The unprecedented happened in Abuja when a suicide bomber rammed his car into the United Nations House. The impact of the collision coupled with the detonation of an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) or perhaps a bomb had led to the death of at least 23 persons with scores of others injured. Part of the sprawling UN building which provides office for about 400 staff and 26 UN Agencies was badly damaged. It was the first time UN building will be attacked in Nigeria even though similar incidences had occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan. Investigations have since commenced into the unprovoked and unwarranted disaster with local and international security agencies cooperating to unravel the causes and effect of the blast. Many Nigerians have rightly condemned the att...