Ahmed Dodo

“As long as I have any choice, I will stay only in a country where political liberty, toleration, and equality of all citizens before the law are the rule.”    - Albert Einstein I don’t know how you might feel, but I think it is important to voice out my worries and publicly lament the deplorable condition in my dear country, Nigeria. Though, it is said to be untraditional for an African man to cry out, I will rather cry out than allow a few of my fellow country men and women, whom we had erroneously entrusted into their kleptocratic hands, the affairs of our country, to kill me in silence. As such, I see it as an obligation to myself, my nation and importantly to God, to openly lament on their woeful performances over the years. I am highly piqued by the insecurity in our dear nation and the dehumanized face of poverty as it has boldly taken over most homes. The insincerity of our leaders and their wasteful years on the seats of power is nothing that gladdens the h...

  “ A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men” - Thomas Carlyle There have been various suggestions by different thoughtful minds on the need to do away with a few living human species among us here in Nigeria, where a few group of men and women   have over the decades turned us into modern slaves in our own country. These segregated few have greedily before and after independence forcefully inherited our collective national treasure. They cut across all the political zones and have been enjoying the vast rich wealth of this nation to the detriment of the majority of the population. To be honest, it takes an animalistic feeling for someone to wish his fellow human being death, but the current situation in my dear country is quite frustrating and pathetic which could instigate a rational thinker to wish for the demise of some of his country leaders.   The Nigerian ‘rich few’ to be candid, are extremely greedy and sometime inhuman to their f...

“God must have loved the common people He made so many of them”                                                                                                            - Abraham Lincoln First, I must confess that I am still a stranger in this pampered city; since I am barely two months old in this capital of chaos and confusion. But all the same, these two few months have been quite challenging and eye-opening in my sojourn as a curious journalist. Hones...

When the news first hit town   few months back that the Federal Government under the leadership of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, has plan to   soon roll out an indigenous special   bread for the mass population of   hungry Nigerians, the first thought that raced through my curious mind was that of bewilderment and   inquisitiveness . I was bewildered that despite all the security wahala the administration was going through, the president and his team could still have this indigenous idea to feed Nigerians on specially made cassava bread, a one- in - town baked loaf for the matter. Secondly, I was equally full of inquisitive, wondering what this famous bread would look like. But my prying eyes needed not much worry as the presido in company of his inner cabinet and other well wishers launched the yummy looking bread few weeks later amidst elaborate fanfare and   behind the scene expensive owanbe party and other chop-chop , merriment and jamboree tha...

Recently our dear country has been grappling with the menace of insecurity occasioned by the terrorist activities of some known and unknown groups. This has resulted in an imminent threat to that thinning fabric that was hitherto holding the various units of the country together. However it is not only the acts of terrorism that is challenging the corporate existence of Nigeria. The conduct of our public office holders has been identified as yet another possible cause of the present state of insecurity. For several years now, the sharing of the “National Cake” has almost assumed a constitutional status, where public servants and politicians criminally enrich themselves with impunity to the detriment of the populace.  Most patriotic Nigerians who would have otherwise teamed up with the security agencies to fight the prevailing insecurity are reluctant to do so when considering the high rate of corruption in the polity. Public corruption ultimately carries in its wake extreme reacti...

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well. -Voltaire To be sincere, I have never seen or met General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida a.k.a IBB, Maradona, the gap-toothed general, evil genius, the general on the hill top and so on, in person.   The closest I have ever come across or seen the alluring general was on TV, newspaper or magazine.   Being a Nigerian, naturally compelled me to   hear, know and see him on TV , hear his calm soft-spoken voice on radio or see his famous gap-toothed   smile in some of the   newspapers and magazines that were still lucky and bold to be floating during his long martial rule   as Nigerian military   president. As a reader and writer , I have been fortunate to read and hear many of his utterances and actions, including the many gossips and hear say about him. And as time goes on, I became facilitated and at the same time awed about this Nigerian that has still remained a...