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Jonathan is Obasanjo’s worthy successor, By Okey Ndibe
Okey Ndibe Nigeria’s crisis of leadership has grown so malignant that one is frequently tempted to cry, “Where is Fela Anikulapo-Kuti when we need him?” The latest distraction is news that former...
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Who’s Exploiting Nigerian Mobile Phone Users? By Okey Ndibe
Okey Ndibe One of the biggest revelations of my recent brief visit to Nigeria was to discover the shabby, deteriorating state of mobile telephony in Nigeria. In a word, service providers are serving...
View ArticleWhat Patience Jonathan Owes Nigerians, By Okey Ndibe
Last year, Nigeria’s First Lady Patience Jonathan spent six weeks in a Germany hospital receiving treatment for an undisclosed ailment. Nigerians footed the bill for her treatment, but neither her...
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These Corpses Must Speak Their Names, By Okey Ndibe
Okey Ndibe Collective forgetting – otherwise known as mass amnesia – is one way Nigerians cope with their scandal-marred, misshapen lives. In a country where scandals come at the rate of a dozen a...
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Jonathan Is Doing His Job, By Okey Ndibe
Okey Ndibe Memo to the US government: Mr. Jonathan is doing his job. A central requirement of that job is to NOT fight corruption. Last week, the US government was so miffed by President Goodluck...
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Bona Ezeudu: Using Art To Contain Tragedy, By Okey Ndibe
Okey Ndibe For at least three decades, enthusiasts of Nigeria’s visual arts scene have been familiar with the name Bona Ezeudu. In the mid-1980s, Mr. Ezeudu emerged as a sought-after artist, a member...
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Amnesty for Boko Haram: Dancing with Ghosts, Ignoring the Dead, By Okey Ndibe
Okey Ndibe One of the greatest crimes of which the Nigerian state is guilty is a failure to take Nigerians seriously. Last week, President Goodluck Jonathan took a step in the direction of weighing...
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The Cult of Power, By Okey Ndibe
Okey Ndibe From all accounts, President Goodluck Jonathan and Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State are staring each other down. For months, the Nigerian press and blogosphere speculated that a feud...
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Ngala Eight-Eight, By Okey Ndibe
Okey Ndibe My mother, Elizabeth Ofuchinyelu Ndibe (nee Odikpo), turned 88 years old last Thursday, April 18. The way she chose to mark her latest milestone was altogether in character. First, she took...
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Naturalizing Nigeria: A Strategy for Fighting Corruption, By Okey Ndibe
Okey Ndibe “Achebe’s first novel shows how a community works in concert to subvert one man’s rude power. “ From the outset, Okonkwo, the tragic protagonist of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, comes...
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From “Village” Ethics To A Moral No-Man’s Land, By Okey Ndibe
Okey Ndibe The consequences of that colonial redrawing of Africa’s map persist with us today. One of the enduring lessons in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is that the ethical interests of the Umuofia...
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Which gods must be appeased? By Okey Ndibe
Okey Ndibe Modern Nigeria’s crisis, I suggest, is primarily a crisis of values. In Umuofia, Okonkwo may give vent to unruly deportment, but his community is also equipped with the coercive instrument...
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A Case For Canceling The 2015 Elections, By Okey Ndibe
Okey Ndibe Once again, Nigeria has entered an awful, familiar season. The country’s air is rent with talk of power. Not electric power, no; we’re talking raw political power! And the general elections...
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What Emperor Jonathan Owes His People, History, By Okey Ndibe
Okey Ndibe President Goodluck Jonathan – like former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Umaru Yar’Adua before him – is nothing short of a Nigerian-made emperor. Nigeria is an unformed, misshapen...
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If Mandela Were A Nigerian, By Okey Ndibe
Okey Ndibe If Nelson Mandela were a Nigerian, he would never be treated in a hospital within his country. God forbid! At the slightest sign of ill health, he would be airlifted to a hospital in...
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The Country of Laughter and Forgetting, By Okey Ndibe
Okey NdibeMany lovers of contemporary fiction would quickly recognize that my title is a nod to Milan Kundera’s intriguing novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.In Kundera’s title I have found...
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Scholars As Criminals, By Okey Ndibe
Okey NdibeLast week, I came across a cruel, disturbing story that illustrated a festering crisis in Nigerian education. The story had to do with a young woman’s horrific experience after she made a...
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Nigeria As Lagbaja’s Perfect Mumudom, By Okey Ndibe
Okey NdibeThe masked phenomenon known simply as Lagbaja is one of the few Nigerian musicians whose art is inspired by the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.In keeping with the Felaian spirit, Lagbaja’s act and...
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Nigeria’s Minna, Abeokuta Future, By Okey Ndibe
Okey NdibeThe starkest evidence yet of Nigeria’s despairing circumstances could be glimpsed in the fact that Minna and Abeokuta have become major destinations for a certain kind of political pilgrim.In...
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Lagos Deportations and Crisis of Citizenship, By Okey Ndibe
Okey NdibeThe debate over Lagos State’s deportation of some Igbo elements to Anambra State has done two things at once. One, it has underlined the shakiness of the idea of one Nigeria. Then, two, in...
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