Politics Governance

The Disturbing Crisis of Parenting

September 27, 2023 Admin

By Sunny Awhefeada A looming disaster with the capacity to wreck the social structure of Nigeria is hanging over our heads like the sword of Damocles. The crisis is pervasive and therefore ubiquitous. It is the crisis of an emergent grossly errant generation. All around us are signs of derailment, turpitude and crass subversion of all that is good, but we seem not to be able to arrest the slide. We complain and talk and point, but we are caving in to the overwhelming pressure of the challenge which…

News Feature: We Shall Not Die

August 12, 2023August 12, 2023 Admin

By Sunny Awhefeada Delta State born gospel singer, Harold Ikuku, released a popular album that was the rave of the moment in the tough and horrible years that the 1990s were. The song’s motif is “I shall not die”. Although a gospel song, it resonated with both Christians and non-Christians as a result of its affirmative message of survival in the face of brutal economic and psychological assault on the citizenry. It was this song that a man sang with so much gusto on hearing of the new pump price…

Column: For Fr. Abaka: Beyond Priesthood (Part 1)

June 15, 2023 Admin

By Sunny Awhefeada The iconic Very Rev. Fr. Dr. Abaka Ambrose Oghenejode, jr. just turned 65 and retired from the services of the Federal University of Petroleum Resources, Effurun,( FUPRE). Below is the text of the public lecture I delivered to mark the double event. I crave the indulgence of this audience to thank the organizers of this event for the inspiring and kind gesture of honouring today’s celebrant, not the celebrant at mass, but the birthday celebrant, Very Rev. Fr. Dr. Abaka Ambrose Oghenejode, jr. Events like these…

News Feature: A Toast For Oby Ezekwesili @ 60

May 5, 2023May 8, 2023 Admin

A Toast for Oby Ezekwesili @ 60 By Sunny Awhefeada The turn of the present millennium bequeathed many tendencies to Nigeria. As the curtain came down for the last century, the genie of military rule took flight and in its stead was the ephemerally refreshing air of civilian governance. The build up to the year 2000 was marked with frenzy and that date was configured as the climax of humanity’s sojourn on the path of modernity which began in the first decade of the previous century. The year…

Analysis & Opinion: To Win Is To Win The People

March 16, 2023 Admin

By Sunny Awhefeada Adversity is an uncommon teacher. Embedded in the lessons offered by adversity is a rare kind of wisdom attributable only to philosophers. Adversity confers on the victim the equanimity that comes with profound and pure thought. It elevates the mind as it cultures the tongue. Those old enough during the crises occasioned by the June 12, 1993 election can attest to how adversity turned the undeclared winner of that election, Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (MKO) Abiola, into a philosopher who minted quotable quotes and wise sayings that…

News Feature: The Race To Chatham House

January 21, 2023January 21, 2023 Admin

By Sunny Awhefeada, It is saddening if not depressing that more than sixty years after Nigeria attained independence the country is yet to plot her destiny and define her character. We remain an uncertain people floundering and lost in a vast and turbulent ocean. Growing up and reading social studies, history and government textbooks as well as listening to inspiring lessons from our teachers my generation felt a profound sense of pride in our nationalists and how they pursued out the nationalist struggle that birthed our independence in 1960. We…

Analysis & Opinion: As We March Into 2023

January 13, 2023 Admin

By Sunny Awhefeada, Chinua Achebe was not just a reputable novelist, but he was a philosopher and thought leader who envisaged an experience that was in sharp contrast an alternative to our present ordeal. Although, he didn’t outline his vision for Nigeria in an outright manner, a perceptive reader could glean his idea of what a nation ought to be in many an Achebe treatise on our country. In his refreshing and thought provoking 1983 monograph, The Trouble with Nigeria, Achebe ranged on the side of Nigerians to counter…

News Feature: And We Survived 2022

January 13, 2023 Admin

By Sunny Awhefeada Nigeria remains a case study of the kind of paradox that can only be birthed by absurdism. Samuel Beckett despite his acclaimed genius would have found it hard put to envision the Nigerian condition in a dramatic sketch. I doubt if any human imagination has the capacity to imagine the scale and depth of the Nigerian condition. When the world celebrated the turn of the millennium in the year 2000, Nigeria was enmeshed in the crises of a hunted past from which it is yet to free…

Education: Ogo Ofuani @ 70

September 22, 2022September 22, 2022 Admin

By Sunny Awhefeada, My class in the Department of English and Literature at the University of Benin resumed in the early days of 1992. Having stayed at home for an unusually long stretch of time, our eager feet saw us rushing to UNIBEN, as it was and still known, to resume as fresh men and women, popularly called jambites. It was a trying moment for many reasons. The screening process was complex, tedious and tasking if not daunting. The Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) had conducted two…

Education: With ASUU For Nigeria

July 28, 2022July 28, 2022 Admin

By Sunny Awhefeada The lad clad in a neat sky blue school uniform could not have been more than eleven years of age. But his conviction, innocent as it was, rang true and it was enough to tug at the heart of a Hitler, Mussolini. Idi-Amin or Abacha. Together with his school mates, this unknown school boy, yes the cognomen unknown is the buzz word in today’s Nigeria, joined other people of goodwill to protest against the Federal Government’s insensitivity to the plight of Nigerians in the provocatively shoddy manner…