Public Affairs Analyst

Say it loud – I’m black and I’m proud” – R&B legend, James Brown in his 1968 album. Can you believe that the World Health Organisation has adjudged Nigeria as the country with the highest number of women who use skin-lightening products in the world? In a recent skin bleaching snap survey conducted by NOI Polls from February 3 – 5, and published on March 18, 2014 in Abuja, the polling agency said the assessment result confirms the submission of WHO on the endemic nature of skin bleaching among Nigerian women. Recall that a report in The Vanguard newspaper of June 3, 2013 had said the WHO had indicated that 77 per cent of women in Nigeria use skin-bleaching products being the highest in the world. The figure compares with 59 per cent in Togo, and 27 per cent in Senegal.  Asians are facing a similar trend as 4 out of 10 women in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan use a skin-whitening cream. The NOI Polls report reads,   “Latest snap poll re...

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” – Martin Luther King It is the season of anomie in Nigeria. The country is now in the Hobbesian State of Nature where life is short, brutish and nasty. In the last one week, hundreds of lives have been lost to myriads of terrorist attacks in Katsina, Borno, Benue, and Kaduna States. We are still mourning the loss of these hapless citizens when news broke on Saturday, March 15 that over a dozen deaths had been recorded during the 2014 Nigeria Immigration Service recruitment exercise. Many of the news media put the death toll at between 16 and 23 with several others injured. However the Minister of Interior, Abba Moro on Monday, March 17 put the official figure at 15. Moreover, some of the applicants also lost originals of their academic certificates during the stampede occasioned by poor crowd control. Is this tragedy avoidable? Are there things NIS could have done different to safeguard the lives of t...

How are the mighty fallen, and the weapon of war perished! – Holy Bible in 2 Samuel 1:27   The fall of supposed men and women of God is not a new phenomenon.   Even Holy Bible has records of such: Adam, Moses, Judas Iscariot were examples. In contemporary times we have heard about the humpty-dumpty fall of some great men of God. In July 1986,   Marvin Gorman, pastor of the 5,000-member First Assembly of God Church in New Orleans confessed to an adulterous relationship.   In 1987, it was American preacher, Jim Bakker whose illicit affair with his secretary was exposed. In 1988 it was the turn of a world renowned televangelist, Jimmy Swaggart who admitted before his congregation to have patronised prostitutes. As a punishment, the elders of his Assemblies of God Church slammed him with a three-month suspension from his U.S. pulpit, and a two-year rehabilitation period. In 2006, another revered man of God, Tedd Haggard admitted to being a bisexual.   Haggard,...

Have you ever visited a local market or a motor park in Nigeria lately? Have you noticed the bedlam, I mean the din? The hooting of vehicles, music blaring from the loudspeakers mounted by those selling compact discs and DVDs as well as those doing one form of sales promotion or the other, the noise from the generators, etc. Anytime there is no public power supply, I have no rest in my house as everyone in the neighbourhood is likely to put on their generators. The noise from these contraptions usually set me on edge.  Noise pollution is actually causing more havoc to humans than we are cognisant of. Noise is one of the nine sources of pollution. Researchers identified eight others as air, water, thermal, personal, soil, radioactive, visual, and light pollution. An online source, Green Living, explained some of them as follows:  Causes of air pollution include vehicle or manufacturing exhaust; forest fires, volcanic eruptions, dry soil erosion, and building construction or ...

The February 20, 2014 removal of CBN Governor Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, four months to the end of his term of office, reminds me of how President Goodluck Jonathan unjustly dealt with the former President of the Court of Appeal, Honourable Justice Isa Ayo Salami. This recent Salami treatment of Sanusi is ill-timed and a bad omen to all anti-corruption whistleblowers. Why the haste? I am of the opinion that the suspension was aimed at scuttling the on-going National Assembly investigation into allegations levelled against NNPC by the suspended governor of CBN. It would be recalled that SLS had accused the NNPC of non remittance of huge sums of money into the federation account. The initial amount was about $49b and more recently, after some financial reconciliation between the NNPC, Ministry of Finance and CBN, the disputed sum came to about $20b. Sanusi also accused NNPC of providing subsidy on Kerosene when the administration of erstwhile President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua had written a...