Opinion

By ISABELLE ROUGHOL "We don't really get promoted in journalism," a friend lamented in a group chat where with others in finance, government or marketing, we compared our career paths. He wasn't wrong: in one longitudinal study of the media market in Seattle, nearly 40% of professionals surveyed in 2015 were in exactly the same role in 2021. Another 30% had left the industry. Just 16% had seen career progression within journalism in those 6 years. (For comparison if comparison there can be, over the same period in a fast-growth tech company, I was promoted five times.) Keeping a job in journalism for six straight years might seem lucky, but it's not good enough. Our people deserve career progression and our organisations will be all the better for holding onto and developing our...

By Ali Elias Life offers us priceless insights or secrets into how to run or redeem our lives. Unfortunately most times we are emotionally trapped or involved in the popular chant gooal, the obvious objective or aim, as in AFCON, obscuring the hidden lesson that should be the game changer. The Ivory Coast team, the ultimate winner of the just concluded AFCON 2023 football competition, offers us one such not-so-hidden insight: Change the leadership. The ivorian team had struggled and fumbled all through the group stage that "by the final whistle of that disastrous outing against Equatorial Guinea they required a series of results in the groups to go their way in other for the hosts, host with three points and a minus three gold difference, to advance to the round of 16 as one of th...

Senegal President Macky Sall By Azu Ishiekwene AS the troubled Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, convenes its Ministerial Council meeting in Abuja on February 8 to discuss the quit notice served by three of its members – Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger – the situation in Senegal might well be the elephant in the room. Three weeks to the presidential election earlier scheduled to hold in that country on February 25, President Macky Sall announced that the election had been postponed, without immediately giving a new date or any believable reasons. After a wave of protests, he instigated the Senegalese Parliament to announce December 15 as a possible new date. It’s not the postponement that will worry ECOWAS leaders as ministers meet in Nigeria, where president...

Demolished Building at Ijegun By Ono Yima Today, September 27, Lagos State officials came to demolish a two-story building on Monsuru Street, Ijegun, Ikotun. This, according to residents, followed a failed integrity test, which the government said they conducted on the building. Consequently, they marked the building as distressed. The marking, as could be seen from a part of the fence, still standing, was done on September 21, 2023. In other words the demolition is being carried out barely a week after the integrity test and the marking. Was the result that critical to warrant this exceptional efficiency on the part of the government agency, or Is there more to it? According to some residents of the area, their action may have been prompted by another two storey building that ...

Religion is a lockstep, step-by-step, graded course on the spiral staircase of divine knowledge. Each rung on the staircase is as important as the other, and fulfils the necessary need, without which a piece would be missing in whole of the Divine learning or enlightenment equation By Els William Professor Wole Soyinka recently spoke out condemning the banning of the celebration of Aje Olokun, also known as Isese festival, in Ilorin, capital of Kwara state, North Central Nigeria. While condemning the action of the Emirate, headed by Emir Ibrahim Sulu Gambari, Soyinka asked, “Must we turn the turban of enlightenment into a crown of bigotry. And in a society whose very constitution that supposedly governs us all guarantee freedom of belief, association, and movement. Should r...

By Paul Adams, BBC Diplomatic Correspondent This was not a complete victory for South Africa, or the Palestinians. The ICJ did not order Israel to halt its military campaign - an implied recognition of Israel's right to self defence in the wake of the Hamas attacks on 7 October last year. But the UN's highest legal body has recognised that the situation in Gaza is catastrophic. Crucially, it said that situation was "at serious risk of deteriorating further" before the court delivers its final verdict on the charge of genocide, a process that could take years. As a result, it made several demands of Israel, broadly in line with most of the nine "provisional measures" demanded by South Africa. By large majorities the court's 17 judges ruled that Israel should do eve...

Who is the man who today sits atop the presidency of Nigeria? What is his name? Who are his parents? Who are his childhood friends? What was his childhood like? What primary school did he attend? Where did he attend secondary school? Or, the university? Is he a criminal? Is he a serial forger? On account of the above, can we trust him? Can he be trusted with the destinies of over 200 million Nigerians? Can the rest of the world trust him as the embodiment of Nigeria? Who is the man who today sits atop the presidency of Nigeria? What is his name? Who are his parents? Who are his childhood friends? What was his childhood like? What primary school did he attend? Where did he attend secondary school? Or, the university? Is he a criminal? Is he a serial forger? On account of the above, ...

Saying Dangote left his Kano mega-city with nothing and came to the Lagos mega-city to build “the biggest empire in the world”, the same narrative ascribed to the Igbo success in Lagos, is a talk-down on Dangote and all successful non-indigenes resident in Lagos. By Ochereome Nnanna The first story is about a young Nigerian 45 years ago, and you see the coincidence in the story, 45 years ago, a young Nigerian came to Lagos all the way from another mega-city, Kano, who saw the prosperity, and diversity of our country, who came with nothing but in 45 years has built the biggest empire in the world — Babajide Sanwo-Olu, Governor of Lagos State Ordinarily, this statement, which Governor Sanwo-Olu made amidst befitting accolades for Alhaji Aliko Dangote for finally delivering the worl...

By Ali Elias “We come, we go…” That’s the nature of life. Death or translation, just as birth, is as sure as the sunset or sunrise, for as long as the earth endures. But what really is death all about? In my younger days, growing up in the village, death was rare, not so often– but when it occurs, it brings out a grotesque picture of life. The mourning is usually heavy, the mood melancholic and scary. Scary, not of death or dying itself, since it’s always the elderly that dies, but scary because of the perceived thought that the ghost of the departed will be hovering around the village. The fear was always so strong that I could hardly sit at the end of the long bench which served as our chair in the village. I had to sandwich myself in between others. Of course, you dare not...