Auto Added by WPeMatico
RIGHT OF REPLY Approximately 1,030 words Azu Ishiekwene asks the right question, and he is right that the World Cup answered it before any of us did. The hostility Bafana Bafana met in those stadiums was not football. It was a bill arriving. I take his question seriously and respectfully disagree with part of how […]
The post What shall we do about South Africa? appeared first on Vanguard News.
If South Africa needed any serious signal that the mobs roaming the streets of its cities and townships in search of immigrants were a disgrace, the FIFA World Cup in June 2026 provided a large screen. But the country is not looking. Or it is looking but cannot see. In the last three years, according […]
The post What shall we do about South Africa? By Azu Ishiekwene appeared first on Vanguard News.
The piece by columnist and former Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of The Guardian, Martins Oloja, entitled “Why Should We Celebrate Daily Times @ 100, FRCN @ 75?”, published on September 5, was an angry one. And Oloja had many good reasons to be angry. Daily Times, Nigeria’s newspaper of record, was 100 years old on June 1, […]
The post The Daily Times we wish for, but can’t have, by Azu Ishiekwene appeared first on Vanguard News.
Vice President Kashim Shettima cannot be blamed for having doubts about whether President Bola Ahmed Tinubu would renominate him as his running mate for a second term. As governor of Lagos State for eight years, Tinubu used three deputies: KofoworolaBucknor-Akerele, Femi Pedro, and AbiodunOgunleye. Only Senate President GodswillAkpabio (as AkwaIbom governor) matched this record in the […]
The post Shettima’s final test, by Azu Ishiekwene appeared first on Vanguard News.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup has entered the knockout stages, yet it has been remarkable not only for being the biggest in football history so far, but also for its unusual moments. It has delivered remarkable fan antics, underdog stories, emotional scenes and controversial decisions. On a personal note, because I’m visiting the US and Canada, […]
The post Unusual moments in the World Cup, by Azu Ishiekwene appeared first on Vanguard News.
Journalists like to think that the world would be finished without them. Nothing illustrates this vanity more than the joke by my old school journalism teacher that even when the world ends, reporters will be there to tell those in paradise what is happening on the other side. This illusion deprives the profession of its sanity. […]
The post They’re coming to America, by Azu Ishiekwene appeared first on Vanguard News.
The former Labour Party presidential flagbearer, Peter Obi, thinks he is Nigeria’s most misunderstood politician. Why is it hard for us to see that his serial party flipping is not a sign of desperation but a tactic of survival for our own good? Why, even though he has flipped political parties five times in three election […]
The post Who is After Obi, Kwankwaso Again? By Azu Ishiekwene appeared first on Vanguard News.
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 […]
The post Tinubu-Ruto banter as food for thought, by Azu Ishiekwene appeared first on Vanguard News.
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 […]
The post Adelabu’s power lines as laundry lines, by Azu Ishiekwene appeared first on Vanguard News.
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, […]
The post Obi’s transition from serious contender to Mascot, by Azu Ishiekwene appeared first on Vanguard News.