Tag: Sunny Ahwefeada

Analysis & Opinion: An Abraka Buka Conversation

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By Sunny Awhefeada The “buka” and its ally “beer parlour” constitute a significant decimal in the sociology of the poor and the middle class in Nigeria. They are the equivalents of the restaurant and lounge. Both sites have not only evolved to become domains of intellectual and pseudo-intellectual engagements, but they are also newsrooms where information, true and false, is easily available. They are stopgaps in meeting the feeding and recreational exigencies of those that patronize them. The buka was a survival index for me before I tied the nuptial…

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2023: As We Go To The Polls

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By Sunny Ahwefeada   Nigeria has reached that stage where it can be said that Nigerians get the kind of government they deserve. Chinua Achebe, the famous novelist, disputed this thinking some forty years ago in his monograph The Trouble with Nigeria (1983). Many people stood with Achebe’s position then, but things and circumstances have changed. Achebe’s opposition to that thinking must have been predicated on the seeming helplessness of the citizens at the time as a result of ignorance, long period of military rule, lack of exposure to democratic…

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Opinion & Analysis: Mad And Dangerous Times

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By Sunny Awhefeada, These are mad and dangerous times for Nigeria and I must concede that we never saw this coming. Not even the famed prophets envisioned the calamities now buffeting us as a people. Nobody foresaw or warned us. Those among us who lay claims to clairvoyance are largely charlatans who think about causes and effects of actions and offer surmises which they call predictions. That is why they always turn around to tell us they were misquoted, quoted out of contest or point at what they claimed they…

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An Oil Producing Country Without Fuel

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  The ongoing energy crisis manifesting as scarcity of petroleum products has for the umpteenth time portrayed Nigeria for what it truly is, a failed nation. Our failure is monumental and tragically so. A friend drew the analogy between Nigeria and a household that grows cassava, but lacks garri and the children from that home go plate in hand starving and begging whereas their parents’ farms hold thousands of cassava stems with robust tubers ensconced in the womb of the earth. Nigeria prides herself as a leading oil producing nation,…

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Analysis & Opinion: Omotetobore and Our Vanishing Names

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By Sunny Awhefeada,   Growing up, whether it was in Kaduna, Ibadan, Evwreni or Ughelli, we were given indigenous names that reflected significance and wisdom. Some of our names were influenced by happenings and cultural nuances. A mere mention of such names evoked memories, good or bad, of such happenings. The generations before mine had even more profound and significant names than ours. Parents, grandparents or whoever it was that gave names did so after reflections before settling for what was considered apt. Names were not just given. Names were…

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News Features: What The Police Brought Upon Itself

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By Sunny Awhefeada That the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) remains the most reviled public institution in Nigeria has never been in doubt. A police force that has deliberately refused to cleanse itself of its unenviable colonial stigma of repression and exploitation, it continues to sink into worse quagmires each time there was a glimmer of hope that it will shed its sordid character and free itself from its unenviable burden. With the ENDSARS riots of October 2020, not a few Nigerians and even foreigners nursed the hope that a new…

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