Opinion

By Ali Elias Let me clarify from the onset: Akpabio Nigeria, has nothing to do with the Senate President’s recent remark of "Prayer in the bank", his tacit way of telling his colleagues in the Senate that a certain allowance for them has been made through their bank accounts; that caused a wide uproar in the country. No that's a trifle. “Akpabio’ Nigeria” is focused on a bigger issue. In 2014, then as the editor of Adpoint International Magazine, now rested, I was specially invited to cover the 44th edition of the Annual General Conference (AGC) of the Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers, at Uyo, Akwa Ibom state capital. On arrival, I was shocked at the rare positive transformation of the city, contrary to its outlook at my previous visits, during the previous ...

Abimbola Adelakun By Abimbola Adelakun At an academic conference some years ago, two students walked up to me after learning I was a Nigerian. They had based their academic projects on popular cross-dresser Idris Okunenye (Bobrisky) and they wanted to know a few things about her. Bobrisky was still a straw weight then but was not ignorable. One of them asked how she survives a Nigeria virulently opposed to any display of nonconforming sexuality. I opined that Bobrisky’s survival partly owes to the internet, particularly its feature that allows virtually any sight to escalate into a spectacle made Bobrisky one we could view remotely from the display show glass of our phone screens. That distance also put her out of the physical reach and social orbit where she could be harmed. Bobr...

By Emmanuel Onwubiko THE National Youth Service Corp scheme is a potpourri of the very best, the bad, the ugly, and the unexpected. It is an annual event piloted by a government institution where humans are the principal characters. Philosophers have taught us that man is frail and imperfect, so there are bound to be divergent interests, dimensions, and distinctive characteristics among the youngsters participating in the annual national service and the institutional platform called the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). By and large, the NYSC is a mixed bag of all that can be imagined and the unimaginable. From its inception fifty years ago, the scheme was set out to fundamentally reshape the thinking and modus operandi of youngsters from different parts of the Nigerian federation...

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk on Pexels.com By Prof. Mike Ozekhome, SAN Introduction THERE is no doubt that the fundamental attribute of law is its ability to curtail excessive behaviours of man. In the absence of law in any society, anarchy and survival by strength become inevitable. The purpose of law is to produce either of two things: (a) an idealistic society or (b) a practical society, more tolerable than what has been labeled by some philosophers as ‘the state of nature’, in which there are no formal ties between mankind, and no civil or statutory law. The importance of law is such that it is difficult or impossible for a society to exist without law. Mike Ozekhome The force of law is a major requirement for maintaining social order and preventing chaos in a society. ...

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu By Bello Matawalle CONSEQUENT to my position on the recent attack on the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu by a spokesman of the Northern Elders Forum (NEF), it has come to my attention that Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed who once served as the Spokesperson of the group and currently a Special Adviser on Political Matters in the Presidency took to his page on it to express a different position. His Excellency Bello Matawalle According to Dr. Baba-Ahmed ,my stand against the unjust and spurious attack against the new administration of President Tinubu that is working very hard to reposition our country and economy for better as ‘ill-advised’. He suggested I could have done a better job in my defence of the administration where I have the rare hono...

By ISABELLE ROUGHOL What does an editorial career ladder look like? Again, let's get concrete. Here are (summarised and simplified) guidelines for one of my roles at LinkedIn. Ladder (manager track)Lead news editor > Managing editor > Senior managing editor > Executive editor (director) > Executive editor 2 (senior director) > Editor-in-chief (VP) TitleExecutive editor LevelManager level 5 Role guidelines Manages a team of managing editors Scales a team & builds future leaders Owns multiple editorial lines of business Individual guidelines Sets product vision and strategy Embodies culture and values Achieves consistent high scores for 360° feedback Recognised as a strong mentor and cross-functional partner, makes others feel p...

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 ...