Society

Mọlará Wood Even now, decades later, Gbọ́láhàn Ọlálẹ̀mí cannot go to sleep in a dark room. It is a residual anxiety of the psychological trauma of the dictatorial regime of General Sani Abacha, when Ọlálẹ̀mí was detained at the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) in Apapa, Lagos. They had come for him on the morning […]

[Lecture delivered on September 1, 2023 at the Freedom Park, Lagos.] ÌSẸ̀ṢE has come, but not gone. We salute all those – human rights activists, community leaders, affronted citizens, advocates of equity, and all –  but the state governors most especially – who have taken history to task and boldly formalized a level praying ground […]

My teacher and friend. A memorial was held today 8 August, 2023 in South Africa where he settled for most of the past 30 years. Kole was one of the earliest Nigerian academics to move to SA. He left Nigeria as soon as apartheid started thawing, ahead of independence. I first met Kole as a […]

It appears that the news is true, that the writer-director, author of Burma Boy, Biyi Bandélé, has passed. This is a heavy sentence to type because I knew him. Harder to refer to him in the past tense; we still talked on the phone over a week ago, planning to meet in Lagos whenever he […]

A young police officer is standing with a woman I assume to be his mother. She is praying for him loudly, at a major junction on the streets of a Lagos suburb; speaking in tongues unashamedly while passers-by stare, some in admiration, others, not so much. The young force personnel is shy, hiding his face […]

In early October 2021, I was reading a book on Wattpad titled, All Good Things, written by a Canadian author named Renee Racine. It was a lighthearted read—because laughter is something I desperately needed—and I found something rather unexpected in it; I found myself. To give you a wee bit of summary, the story is […]

NIGERIAN SUBSIDY AND THE REAL  SUBSIDISERS Here, in plain, unsubsidized language      Are the basic facts   About the fabled Nigerian “subsidy”      Whose endless lies have besieged our ears We the Nigerian people subsidize      The rampant CORRUPTION of our rulers We the Nigerian people subsidize      Their fatal incompetence and prodigal greed We the Nigerian people subsidize      Those […]

For Ayọ̀ Bámgbóṣé at 90 When I called him the “doyen of African linguistics”  in my valedictory lecture at the University of Ibadan in July 2005 (a celebratory oríkì which, to my greatest delight, has caught on since then),  I did so with not the slightest fear of exaggeration or effusive adulation. Pioneer, pathfinder, scholar, teacher, […]

(Random musings on an internet exchange between  two compatriots on “The Power of Science” ) Ours is a tragic case.  We are the most unscientific people on earth.                                              –    Bunmi Fatoye-Matory A ton of   thanks to Bunmi Fatoye-Matory and Omowumi Ayodele for their  insightful, provocative observations  on the Ekitipanupo Internet Forum of January. […]

For the first time in over a decade, the Olympics were held without Usain Bolt. The track king, Usain Bolt, had been the headliner in the past three editions. Without him electrifying the track, and without fans cheering in the stands, the Tokyo Olympics, pushed one year later than its original date because of the […]