Makinde has done his best but honestly as a critical stakeholder with understanding of the working system of governance, expectations and deliverables, he failed in very critical aspects of governance. Governance is serious business. Not trials and error, just like flying an airplane, it’s about managing peoples lives and you can’t afford to experiment with it. Here are some of the several errors of GSM and why he does not deserve a second term. 1. Insecurity of the worst level. His unrepentant attitude of hobnobbing with touts and dangerous gangsters is appalling. We had thought that Ibadan and Oyo State…
Author: Editor-in-chief
Members of ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) in Oyo State are currently rioting at Sango, Eleyele, Mokola, Oje and Adeoyo area of Ibadan to stage a protest against cash and fuel scarcity ahead of Thursday APC Presidential Campaign in the state capital. Recall that similar protest was staged on last week Monday, which forced the APC to postpone the rally. The State Affairs reliably gathered that Governor Seyi Makinde has given secret order to PDP members to frustrate the APC Presidential Campaign, scheduled to take place at Mapo Hall on Thursday. A top member of aggrieved PDP group in the…
In 1984, Nigeria happened to Ayanyemi Atokowagbowonle. Atokowagbowonle was a musician whose style was unique, his delivery peculiar and he was the official musician of the stormy petrel of Ibadan politics, Adelabu Adegoke, a.k.a. Penkelemes, of the National Council of Nigeria and Cameroon (NCNC). The then-new head of state, Major General Muhammadu Buhari, had just violently seized the reins of power in Nigeria. That year April, Buhari had ordered the colours of all banknotes in circulation to be changed. The currency trafficking prevalent at the time and stolen funds by politicians must be repatriated, he said. The Naira’s official exchange…
The Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, Trade Union Congress, TUC, and the Joint Negotiating Council in Oyo state has issued a January 31, 2023 date to embark on strike should the state government fail to fulfil its promise to pay the unions five months check off dues and cooperative deductions. Rising from a meeting on Thursday in Ibadan, the state capital, the executive members of the unions who lamented the pitiable conditions of Nigerian workers in the face of crushing poverty, general insecurity and increasing cost of price of petrol, urged the Federal Government to revert to the N169 per litre…
The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Oyo state has challenged Governor Seyi Makinde to provide detailed account of what he has done with the sum of over N706billion believed to have accrued to the state government coffers, the 33 local government councils as monthly allocations from the federal government and the state internally generated revenue in the last 42 months or be ready to face the wrath of the law after May 29, 2023 when his tenure of office would have ended. Oyo APC’s challenge came against the backdrop of President Muhammadu Buhari’s recent revelation about state governors hiding under…
Bala-blu-blu-bulaba, All Progressives Congress (APC’s) festival of incoherences, should attract a writer. So also the celebration and justification of its impending fatality. Feeble and laughable as it may seem, Festus Keyamo’s Ananias and Saphirra role in this frightening reality too should not escape a dissection. I would have loved to ask Keyamo, in the words of Peter Tosh, “Where are you gonna run to” on judgment day? However, about the time of this meaningless waffle, I was presenting a paper entitled Between Ayinla Omowura and Ayinde Barrister: Conflicting Notions of Superstardom in Fuji and Apala Music at the African Studies…
Ogbomoso Progressives Group on Thursday described a former chief of staff to former governor Adebayo Alao Akala and a PDP chieftain, Dr. Saka Balogun as irresponsible, ingrate and mischievous. Oyoecho reports that Dr. Saka Balogun had in a video that went viral in social media called his former principal as a fraud while addressing a group of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) supporters. But the group in a statement signed by its Convener Dr. Solomon Stephen, described Dr Saka Balogun as senile man who feels intimidated with the rising popularity and acceptability of the late Akala even after his death.…
Sometime in the 19th century, as he stood in the ancient town of Ijaiye in present-day Abeokuta, Ogun state, an American missionary, Richard Henry Stone saw a young man by the gate of the mission premises. The young man was prepping himself for a war expedition, probably the Ijaiye war. The young man boasted to the people who milled around him that the vest he wore over his coat was so fortified that no bullet could pierce it. From the outwards, however, the vest was made of shells. The missionary said that after he watched him swagger for a while,…
Lokoja, the capital of Kogi State, is facing one of its worst disasters ever. Four persons, which included a three-year-old baby, according to press report, were swept away to their deaths last week by a flood which broke its barriers. Ibaji Local Government Area of the state is the worst hit by a flood that broke the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers coursing through Lokoja. Travelers passing through the 196-kilometre-Lokoja-Abuja highway which connects the North and South got stranded and the road literally cut off. The Niger and Benue rivers had broken their banks, resulting in a flood…
Yesterday, it was 62 years since Nigeria got her independence from colonial Britain. While some countrymen say the October 1 celebration rituals are worthy of flinging the cymbals, some others say it is a day to drench ourselves in sack clothes and ashes reminiscent of mourning moments for biblical Israelites. For decades, until the October 1 saturnalia began to lose its savour, successive governments made a good job of conflating the frills of the rituals as a representation of our national joy and unity. Children looked forward to the symphony of the National Day orchestra, the perfect chemistry of matching…