Azu Ishiekwene

Get this straight: Atiku Abubakar will lose the presidential election on February 16. I’m not Rev. Father Ejike Mbaka or one of the tongue-in-cheek seers whose predictions you’ll be struggling to figure out after dropping your offering in…

The general election in 51 days will be different from previous ones in nearly two decades in many ways. Money is one way. At this time in a “normal” election cycle, politicians would be in a rat race to outspend one another.

At the belated signing of the Peace Accord, for example, PDP presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, was quite vocal on his fear that the election would be rigged.

Exaggeration is the most common strain of fever at election period. Politicians make voters – and the general public – believe that the world might end on ballot day, when in fact what they are playing for is their own survival.

Oyedepo does not have to like Buhari – and it’s obvious that he doesn’t. Which is fine. But a man of his stature and learning ought to know better than to inflict on church members and propagate publicly a piece of monstrous fiction which,…

I didn't want to write this week. It wasn't writer's block or the occasional frustration from sounding like a broken record. It was not the feeling of speaking to the Nigeria wall, either.

The APC senator representing Rivers South East Senatorial District, Magnus Abe, said the dictatorship of the Minister of Transport and Director General of the Buhari Campaign Organisation, Rotimi Amaechi, may hurt the party badly in the…

But even from the more respectable versions, it is difficult not to come away with the impression that the photograph is symbolic of the growing feeling in the South East that after a long, harrowing spell in the wilderness, Ndigbo might…

In recent times, forecasts about the outcome of the 2019 elections by the Economic Intelligence Unit of The Economist of London, and the United States Institute of Peace, have been hotly debated.

His appointment had been barely announced when some folks with very long memory of their unpleasant encounter with him in their earlier life stuck the knife in his back; they’ve been twisting it since.

When El-Rufai fights, he doesn’t use his size or pick an enemy in his weight class.

It was a memo from a certain school in Rajasthan, India, called Amity University. In the three-paragraph memo, the Registrar, Vishwadeepak Singh, a retired military officer, had given students a deadline of August 13 to get boyfriends or…

Three years on, however, he is struggling to give Buhari a C, where C is less than average in security, the economy and the fight against corruption – three major areas where he promised change.

When he made the last Independence Day speech of his first term, President Muhammadu Buhari might have been speaking only to his prep team and the recording crew. Not that Nigerians were not happy to mark another national holiday.

It’s not yet clear what finally did it or who. But it was clear, almost from the start, that the country could not bluff its way through this flight.

The Minister of Labour and Productivity, Chris Ngige, is wondering why we’re not clapping for the government of President Muhammadu Buhari first thing every morning and, perhaps, last thing at night before going to bed.

It seems MTN is never too far from the speed dial to trouble. Three years ago, the telco, which has the dominant share of the mobile telecoms market in Nigeria, was slammed with a $5.2 billion fine for failing to disconnect 5.1 million…

Governments, especially the executive arm, tend to forget that it is the rule of law that makes it possible, in the first place, to define what national security is. They think national security is what the man or woman in power says it is…

Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State is increasingly becoming the Rochas Okorocha of the South West. With very little effort, he might surpass the latter, the self-acclaimed exponent of iberiberism (an Igbo slang which roughly translates as…

What is it about us, Nigerians, that make others think they can take us for granted and get away with it? Two different recent news items got me thinking about how long we would be prepared to put up with the shenanigans of folks who think…