Opinion

OPINION By Valentine Obienyem I was delighted to learn from the attached video https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1EuHA4cvr9/?mibextid=wwXIfr that Agaba Awgbu is back. Everything that happened after its arrest could have been lawfully carried out, and the public duly informed of the government’s action, without desecrating our customs and traditions in the manner that was done. The law enforcement authorities could simply have announced that those accompanying or acting on behalf of Agaba had been arrested, rather than stripping our tradition naked before the public. I saw some people justifying what happened, and I could only pray that our forefathers would forgive them, for they did not know what they were doing. In our eagerness to enforce the law, we must be careful not to r...

OPINION By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu JOSÉ Eduardo Van-Dúnem dos Santos was 37 when the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (better known by its Portuguese acronym, MPLA) chose him to succeed its founding president, Augustinho Neto, in September 1979. By 2010, dos Santos had been in power for 31 years. But the shy and retreating dos Santos was neither an enthusiastic glad-hander nor a wildly popular figure. For a long time, dos Santos laboured in search of a cure for both ailments. In 2010, he finally found one. Under Angola’s 1992 constitution, the president was the only leader with national standing. The citizens elected him directly on a national ticket. In December 2006, Angola issued a three-year notice of presidential election to be conducted in 2009. Whe...

OPINION By Valentine Obienyem THE Greek biographer Plutarch, in the preamble to his “Life of Alexander”, observed: “I am writing biography, not history; and the most brilliant exploits do not always manifest a man’s virtue or vice so well as a slight thing, a word or a jest, which often tells us more of his character than a siege where ten thousand die.” He understood that greatness is often revealed not by monumental achievements but by seemingly insignificant habits and moments. Thus, in seeking to understand Alexander, he did not begin with his conquests but with the youthful prince taming the wild horse Bucephalus after discerning that the animal feared only its own shadow. It was a small incident that revealed an extraordinary mind. The same approach is useful i...

OPINION By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu THE history of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) parallels the country’s political evolution. It began in 1900, the same year in which Queen Victoria’s British colonial government assumed formal authority over Nigeria after revoking the Royal Charter of Taubman Goldie’s Royal Niger Company. For the next 59 years, leadership of the NBA was a lifetime preferment. Christopher Sapara Williams became Nigeria’s first lawyer in 1888. Twelve years later, he emerged as the first Chairman of the national bar. Sapara Williams served in that role until his untimely death in 1915. His successor was acclaimed colonial collaborator, Sir Kitoyi Ajasa. Like Sapara Williams, Sir Kitoyi served until he died in 1937. He holds the record as the longe...

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu THREE score and three years ago, a defining dispute erupted in the old Western Region of Nigeria over the scope and reach of constitutional conventions in determining or terminating the tenure of high-level political leadership. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which ultimately had to pronounce on the matter, described conventions in that case as “a body of understandings which no writer can formulate.” The aftermath of that decision took the country to the brink of ruin. This year, the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) confronts its own moment of truth concerning how far conventions initially designed to accommodate national diversity in its leadership processes can be converted into ethno-tribal vetoes by entities that, in f...

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu  OPINION SWAMI Kesavananda Bharati was a senior Hindu monk who became an unlikely icon of constitutional law and a provocateur for judicial independence. Better known by the honorific, “His Holiness”, Kesavananda was by 1970 the senior pontiff of a Hindu Monastery in Edneer, Kasaragod District of Kerala State in south-western India. The Kerala Land Reforms (Amendment) Act of 1969, which came into force at the beginning of January 1970, empowered the state government to restrict the management of lands belonging to Kesavananda’s monastery. To the senior Hindu monk, this was not a matter for prayer or fasting. In February 1970,  Kesavananda sued. Arguments began on 31 October 1972, ending on 23 March 1973, before a full pan...

OPINION By Valentine Obienyem AS far back as  we can ply into history, we observe that the pattern of the principled statesman recurs with rhythmic persistence. To observe the life of Mr. Peter Obi, both publicly and privately, is to witness a modern resonance of that ancient stoic harmony once embodied by Aristides. Aristides was an Athenian statesman and general who lived around 530–468 BC and became renowned for his honesty, fairness, and incorruptibility, virtues that earned him the title “the Just.”Have you heard of the book Parallel Lives, commonly called “Plutarch’s Lives?” Written by Plutarch, it explores the character, virtues, leadership, and moral choices of great men from Greek and Roman history by pairing their biographies –  Alexander the Great with Julius...

OPINION By Mike Arnold ON the biggest night of his second term — a ceasefire with Iran announced ninety minutes before his own deadline to destroy a civilization — Donald Trump strategically injected Nigeria into the global conversation. In a Truth Social post at 8:01 PM Eastern, seen by millions, he blasted CNN for reporting an Iranian victory statement — calling it a “FRAUD” linked to “a Fake News site (from Nigeria).” One sentence. Maximum audience. Nigeria is now in the room. This is how Trump operates. He doesn’t need a press conference. He plants a seed in the biggest news cycle of the year and lets the world’s gears start turning. Every foreign ministry that read that post now has Nigeria alongside Iran in their head. Every sleazy lobbyist on Tinubu’s payroll ...

OP-ED By Ali Elias Nigeria’s political conversation was recently stirred by a widely circulated statement reflecting a worldview that places competence above ethnic allegiance and leadership performance above symbolic identity.At its core lies a provocative assertion: support for political leadership should not be determined by where a candidate comes from, but by what that candidate represents. The statement’s defining line captures the philosophical centre of the debate: “Igbos don’t follow a king because he is a king but on what he is.”This idea, while controversial in public discourse, is not new. It echoes a long-recognised feature of Igbo political culture — decentralised authority, negotiated legitimacy and a tradition of evaluative leadership. In historical terms, power in ma...