Author: Tony Ogunlowo

New Year, new wahala! Everywhere you look its doom and gloom: politicians come and go promising Heaven and Earth but fail to deliver leaving the average person on the street still hungry as ever, despondent and doubtful about things will ever get better in their lifetimes. We are all, currently, living in difficult times: the cost of living has skyrocketed and there is uncertainty everywhere you look. The Hope we all believed in is fast dwindling into nothingness. So, we carry on, toiling on, hoping for a miracle, hoping for a change eventhough, deep down, we know it may never…

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A Satirical Article I’m not a big fan of reality TV programmes: the original concept of showcasing the lives of ordinary people has been lost in a maelstrom of faceless (- and often talent-less) wannabes acting out badly written scripts in an effort to boost ratings and get their fifteen minutes of fame. ‘Big Brother’ started out as a social experiment and now has become the ‘must-be-on’ show; the Kardashian clan would probably be waiting tables, working check-outs or standing at street corners in skimpy outfits – at night – if it wasn’t for ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians’ and…

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Just as ECOWAS is about to send a military task force to Niger in a bid to uproot coup leader General Abdourahmane Tchiani, and his cronies and return the country back to its elected ruler another coup d’état erupts in Gabon. This brings to eight the number of coups in Africa in the past three years. This throws the spanner in the works and will force the ECOWAS military command to re-think its strategy: you can’t fight two countries at once. African leaders haven’t changed over the years: they are still inefficient, corrupt and couldn’t less about the countries they…

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We all have dreams of where we want to be in Life or what we want to achieve in Life. But for some reason, or reasons, our aspirations become an elusive goal. Despite our best efforts it still remains elusive. What are we doing wrong? For the uninitiated Life is too complicated: we live in the matrix whereby outside influences, often beyond our control, dictate how we live our lives. Things like peer pressure, culture, religion and conformity to society’s expectations of us determines how we live. Break away from all this and you are labelled as a non-conformist, or…

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When Asiwaju Bola Tinubu is sworn in as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on the 29th of May 2023 he will have his work cut out for him: not only will he be inheriting a morally and financially bankrupt nation questions will, continually, be asked about his checkered past and his ability to run the country. How old is he really? What are his true educational qualifications? Does he really have dual-nationality? What’s the true source of his mega-wealth? Also, questions will be asked about whether he’s medically-fit to run the country and the continual questions about his…

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The theme for the World Autism Week 2023 is colour: the powers that be want to promote autism awareness with a splash of colours. As usual the autism activists will be out there in force on sponsored walks, raising money, doing talks trying to educate the general public on autism. I believe those on the autistic spectrum really don’t care about an awareness week devoted to trying to understand what they are: most would prefer to be given a fair chance to live in a world that rejects them and treats them like circus freaks. Perhaps more time should be…

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For all who know me one of my pet hates are people who talk too much, overblowing their importance and going on ego trips, plastering Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media portals with their ostentatious lifestyles (- often fake!) looking for public validation. Truth is nobody needs to know who you are unless you have a serious insecurity problem. I’m a firm believer in the maxim of ‘you don’t have to tell the world how great you are, let the world tell you how great YOU are’. Sometimes it’s best to let your real achievements speak for you rather…

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Tony Ogunlowo First of all, ‘emilokan’ for my non-Yoruba readers simply means ‘it’s my turn’ in English. In Nigerian politics it’s a syndrome which affects a narcissistic few who believe they’re entitled to something they’re not. And because they’ve been kingmakers themselves, in the past, hand picking leaders to rule the country, a favour is owed and its now their turn to collect. It’s not something that started recently, as is widely believed, it’s been going on for awhile. When Murtala Muhammed overthrow General Gowon in 1975 there was no real reason to do so other than the latter believed…

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Let’s say I want to re-build a nation that’s already on life support and clinically dead. The population is blaming the politicians, past and present, for the predicament the country is in and the politicians themselves are blaming each other. With elections looming, the politicians have started their usual game of lying, trying to outwit each other, promising Heaven and Earth in an effort to win the populace over. The biggest liar wins! Any body elected to any political office in Nigeria is only there for a fixed period of time, a tenure of between four and eight years, that’s…

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As the condolences pour in for the victims of the St. Francis Catholic Church, Owo, Ondo State terrorist attack in which more than 50 people lost their lives with scores injured the rest of the country is left wondering why God would let such atrocities happen. So, has God left Nigeria? A lot of religious leaders will want to jump on the bandwagon and claim God has left the country(?) and the Devil has moved in due to the many sins of the people. Perhaps, but I don’t think its an excuse to extort more tithes and financial ‘gifts’ from…

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2023 is just around the corner and very soon Nigerians will be trooping to the polling stations to cast their votes to elect a new President. It’ll be a defining election that will determine whether the country will remain as one or whether the chaos, anarchy and hardship will continue. Their options, unfortunately, will be very limited. All the major presidential candidates are over the age of seventy suffering from incontinence problems, dementia and other old-age ailments and have at one time or another been in government or involved in it. A majority of them don’t have clean slates and…

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It’s going to be a different world when all this palaver with Ukraine is over: ‘Bad Boy’ Russia will be relegated back to its former cold war status, its economy in ruins and Vladimir Putin will become Public Enemy Number One. Ukraine, on the other hand will be rebuilt and remain an independent nation. Wars are always messy: there is no such thing as a surgical war where nobody dies unless you discount, of course, the Taliban calmly walking into Kabul in Afghanistan in 2021, following the Allied Forces withdrawal without a single shot fired. We have all seen the…

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When you look at Nigeria today you see a replay of the ‘Wild, Wild West’ of America in the 1800s when anarchy, lawlessness and the near non-existence of a central government existed: cowboys and Indians were killing each other; slaves were worked to death on plantations and the few rich were getting fatter – and dangerous – as feudal lords. Fast forward to the year 2022, another country, Nigeria, in another continent, Africa, is embarking upon the same journey. Insecurity is the word on everybody’s lips: bandits, kidnappers, robbers and killers roam the land and commit crimes with impunity. Unemployment…

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It’s coming to that time of the year when all the pastors and prophets will start releasing their prophecies for the coming year. They all claim to speak to God directly and he reveals everything to them about what lies in stock for us next year, even though it’s strange that none of them were forewarned about the 2020 Covid pandemic last year. By the end of the year a great many of their predictions would have failed to materialize and they’ll start coming up with excuses for their failures. God can talk to anyone and not just his ‘self-appointed’…

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  Nigeria has recently been voted for as one of the safest countries in the world to live in. It has a zero-crime rate and you’re a lot safer walking the streets of Lagos than you are in London or New York. This of course, is one big fat lie! As part of his Eid el Maulud message to the nation President Buhari suggests “time has come to revise the prefixes ‘rising insecurity’ with ‘declining insecurity’ “. In short, he’s asking us to be economical with the truth. So, in short, the DSS can only do so much to stop…

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The new breed of femme fatales is young, pretty – and they can kill you! The on-going case of Chidinma Ojukwu has gripped – and shocked – the nation and the one question everybody is asking is why did a young lady like her kill a grown man. The answer is simply – Money! If her victim, the late Michael Usifo Ataga, wasn’t well -connected and the police were forced to act she might have got away with it: how many homicides go un-investigated in Nigeria every day! Perhaps hundreds, the police service is stretched to its limits and…

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The fires have been lit and South Africa still burns: widespread looting, pandemonium and killings have erupted since the jailing of former President Zuma for contempt of court and the security services are still struggling to restore law and order. Before the advent of independence Africans clamoured for the right to rule themselves: they were fed up of their white colonial masters running their lives. They could do it themselves. After a lot of countries gained independence in the early sixties in-fighting led to the collapse of the early republics. Civil wars followed leading to military dictatorships taking over to…

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The new wave of democracy sweeping across Africa was meant to usher in a new kind of freedom – freedom to elect leaders of choice, freedom of religion and most important of all freedom of free speech. Sadly these so-called ‘freedoms’ are being repressed across Africa. In recent times we’ve seen President George Weah closing down a radio station for criticizing him; Sowore and others continue to languish in custody in Nigeria for trying to lead peaceful protests against the government and regimes across Africa have put into effect Public Order Acts that limits or controls free speech. Some less…

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