Author: Mahmud Jega

It at first sounded like a normal social media rumour, until Mr. Bohdan Soltys, Second Secretary at the Ukrainian Embassy in Nigeria, told a Punch reporter that hundreds of Nigerians had applied to go and fight invading Russian forces in Ukraine. That was however not the part that shocked many Nigerians. Instead, it was the embassy’s demand that anyone who is volunteering to go and fight there must pay $1000 for visa and air ticket. I am going to fight for you in a war that does not really concern me, and you are asking me to pay for air…

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The dilemma facing many Nigerians at the weekend was, if you have a very good police officer, kind of one in a million, who has been combing the bushes and the digital world and apprehending some of our vilest kidnappers and murderers, and some foreign agency is accusing him of collecting bribes from a scammer and doing the scammer’s bidding to settle intra-gang scores, what is the best thing for us to do? This question immediately elicited four clashing points of view between imported African legalism, old fashioned African morality, instinctive African cynicism and native African practicality. Each one of…

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Something does not add up in this business of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. Some people have rushed to the press and are sending petitions to foreign governments and international organisations trying to portray him as a victim. They said he was “illegally” seized in a foreign country and brought back to Nigeria, which made me to wonder which legality Kanu respected when he jumped bail from a civilian court and fled the country through an illegal route. Maybe Nnamdi Kanu’s capture in an unnamed foreign country was not legal, as his supporters now allege, but what was legal about his wild…

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The statement put out at the weekend by South Eastern state governors, Ohanaeze chieftains and community leaders, which disowned IPOB and its secessionist agenda, reminded me of several things all at once. For one, “it was long overdue,” to quote a 1984 Supreme Military Headquarters statement that announced Chief of Staff Brigadier Tunde Idiagbon’s promotion to Major General. It also reminded me of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, in one of his resorts to native African wisdom. Early in his tenure as civilian President in 1999, Obasanjo went to Port Harcourt to address a large gathering of Niger Delta governors and community…

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Last week, we should have heard the deafening sound of the Buhari Administration blowing its own trumpet to mark the completion of its sixth year in office. The Administration has spent 75% of its maximum 8-year term in office. As we say in the village, the barber finished with the back of the head long ago; he has finished with the center of the head, and barbing has now reached the forehead. Instead of self-congratulation, the Buhari Administration spent the better part of last week fighting the microblogging site Twitter, which deleted the president’s posting, and the Federal Government in…

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New Army Chief Lt. Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru, who told you that changing the name of something automatically leads to better results? He has just renamed the army’s Operation Lafiya Dole to Operation Hadin Kai. In the six years since former Army Chief Lt Gen Tukur Buratai renamed Operation Zaman Lafiya [live in peace] to Operation Zaman Lafiya Dole [living in peace is a must], and its subsequent corruption to Operation Lafiya Dole [peace is a must], the name was built into the vocabulary, psyche, fears and hopes of Nigerians. Our hope was for it to conclude, not to assume another…

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Please, these new rail lines that the government said it is building with Chinese loans, which one of them can I enter and ride back to the Year of Our Lord 1980? We read a story in one of our secondary school English textbooks about a time machine. One customer went to it, paid the fare and asked to be taken 60 million years back because he wanted to see the dinosaurs. He asked the operator whether he will guarantee his safety. The operator replied that he could only guarantee the dinosaurs, so the man must run really fast if…

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