WORDS ON MARBLE Obasanjo: ”There is nothing like freedom, freedom from debt and the image that the debt relief and exit from Paris Club debt give to Nigeria. The debt relief has brought benefits to Nigerians and that it first represents a direct saving on debt-service repayment, interest, surcharges and other fees. It also improves […]

[This is my contribution to the present (Nigerian) Constitutional Review.  When it was being contemplated back in 2007, it was my contribution and was presented under the same title; verb now changed as of necessity: "Senate revised-constitution would be carriage ahead of horse."  That contention has not changed.  Tola, November 22, 2012.] Though I lack […]

With the calls for legal backing being given to  “office of first ladies”, I think the time has come to scrap this illegality! On March 19 this year, I posted a fifth in my “first ladies” essays for this Blog though most have been from various essays I’ve written on the subject over the years.  […]

Things are happening in such rapid succession in Nigeria these days that one could almost write a column a day and still have materials to spare!  To avoid writing on stale topics, I have decided to crowd quite some items that call for immediate comments.  There are topics – like the man of a god […]

[This essay first appeared as "The President vs. Sowore" in The Nation on Sunday on December 17, 2006.  It is used here under the title with which it was submitted because in October 2010, I wrote about Mrs. Jonathan's "first ladyism" (Wole Soyinka's coinage during late Stella Obasanjo's time), an essay reproduced here at  http://emotanafricana.com/2012/02/23/the-first-ladies-3-mrs-patience-jonathans-troubling-first-ladyism/.  […]

by Tola Adenle This title is similar to late President Ronald Reagan’s Russia’s “President Gorbachev, bring down this wall”! which he proclaimed to a screaming audience at the West Berlin Wall.  The Vegas Style Sign When I first read the story of the naming of an Abuja District after Dr. Jonathan the sitting president of Nigeria, […]

FIRST:   Muyiwa Adetiba’s story in The Guardian, http://emotanafricana.com/2011/11/21/the-nigerian-situation-brought-face-to-face-muyiwa-adetiba-face-to-face-with-humiliation-at-the-american-embassy/, reproduced here last week has received not only much readership but  has brought some readers asking through my emotanafricana@gmail.com –  about the double “face to face” used in the title.  Adetiba’s column, “Face to Face with Muyiwa Adetiba” in the Punch long before he edited the paper was, perhaps, […]

[The following essay from 2003 was my first public expression of dissatisfaction with the presidency of retired General Obasanjo, a dissatisfaction that would grow and lead to many other write-ups with the president as main subject or as references.  The last I read, the former president is still at it: we all know that his […]