Converstion with Azu

Listening to Kenyan President William Ruto diss Nigerians with a smile from faraway Italy, one would think he had taken a page from Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard. It was obvious that Ruto assumed Nigerians spoke that variety of unconventional English rendered by Tutuola in his story of magical realism from Yoruba mythology.  Yes, Tutuola’s English […]

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In many parts of the country, the rains poured down earlier in the week, bringing much physical and psychological relief from the searing heat.  The absence of electricity from public supply channels made it worse. Average daytime temperatures throughout March ranged from 33 degrees to 38 degrees centigrade in Lagos and Abuja, respectively. Nigeria’s public electricity […]

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Friends, admirers, and the “Obidient” fanbase of the former Labour Party, LP, presidential candidate, Peter Gregory Obi, love to call him by the sobriquet “Okwute,” which in Igbo, Nigeria’s third-largest socio-linguistic group, means rock, boulder, or stone. Quite a nice alias – especially if you associate some doctrinal nuances of Obi’s faith with his first name, […]

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This is the last thing the African Democratic Congress, ADC, wants to hear, but it has to be said, even if the party digs its thumbs in its ear. It began with the party’s delayed registration.  When things were not moving as quickly as the early defectors, mostly from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, had expected, […]

The post ADC’s problem is ADC, not APC, by Azu Ishiekwene appeared first on Vanguard News.

When six states in Nigeria’s South-West zone came together in January 2020 to create Amotekun, a regional security outfit to confront social ills spreading across the region, they weren’t reinventing the wheel, despite the political fanfare.  They were re-enacting a past that seemed so far back it had been forgotten altogether – a policing structure that […]

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