Author: Rareview

OPINION By Peter Ameh Concerns are heated up in the media and political space over the arrest of Dele Farotimi and a purported invasion of his law Firm and harassment of lawyers and staff within the premises by alleged members of the Nigeria Police force. As at the time of making this statement, Dele Farotimi have been arraigned on a 16 count charge for alleged Defamation and Cybercrimes before a Magistrate Court sitting in Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State, and upon arraignment having pleaded not guilty to the charges, he was denied bail and remanded in prison custody in Ekiti state. This goes to show a steep level of decadence in the operations of our modern day democracy. Issues surrounding the said arrest are not farfetched. The unsavory action having been activated by a petition against...

OPINION BY TONNIE IREDIA According to Section 39 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999,”every person shall be entitled to freedom of expression including freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart ideas and information without interference.” To underscore the importance of this right, the constitution further expands the empowerment beyond private discussions by recognizing the use of the media to effect communication across the globe by anyone desirous of consummating the freedom of speech provided by the section. Hence, Section 39(2) explicitly empowers citizens to “own, establish and operate any medium for the dissemination of information, ideas and opinions.”It is perhaps to avoid the misuse of this powerful right, that Nigeria also has a law of defa...

OPINION By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu PAUL Anyebe was a judge of the High Court of Benue State in north-central Nigeria who had a young son with sticky fingers and a sense of adventure  It was his role as a dad that endangered his job as a judge.  One night around 1983, Anyebe caught his son attempting to steal from his bedroom. In response, Anyebe pulled his gun in an effort to scare the boy. The gun went off, discharging a bullet which hit and seriously injured the boy. The Attorney-General of Benue State decided to prosecute Paul Anyebe for attempted murder. The Penal Code applicable in Benue State at the time had ample provisions for the crime of attempted murder.  The Attorney-General also added a charge of illegal possession of firearms, a federal offence. Unlik...

OPINION By Azu Ishiekwene I was watching the evening news on Monday night when two presenters used a word at different times that jolted me. I’ve heard and seen that word used often, especially by millennials and Gen Z, but I didn’t entirely pay heed because they were mostly in informal settings.  Anyways – I meant to write, anyway – I was jolted to hear that word, anyways, twice from two TV presenters on different programmes on the same station just minutes apart! My Use of English teachers would have beaten the straying “s” out of me if I had used that word even in error.  But that was at another time, before young adults invented more new words and other tokens of social expression, including memes and abbreviations, than at any other time in recent lexical history...

Image courtesy: Realnews OPINION By Paul Ejime WHEN the news filtered in on Saturday, November 28th, 2024, that Prince Yormie Johnson, Liberia’s professed “President,” “Field Marshal,” “General,” and warlord-turned-politician, had died at the age of 72, many took it for a fluke based on similar reports in the past, including in Nigeria, where he spent some time during his country’s civil war. Charles Taylor, Johnson’s fellow warlord and ally-turned-enemy. once told the world that he had killed Johnson, which proved untrue. Reports of Johnson’s death this time cited a domestic accident. It was said that he slipped in his bathroom and later died in a hospital in Paynesville, Montserrado – a tragic irony for a man who killed and supervised the killings of many during the war. A...