Simon Kolawole: What we need to do about Ebola now

by Simon Kolawole Perhaps, jolted by the criticism over his handling of Chibok kidnappings (that is why I like criticisms, even from my enemies), President Goodluck Jonathan has also swung into action, announcing a series of measures under an emergency plan to contain the spread of the virus There is something about us, Nigerians, that... Read More

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August 3, 2014

Simon Kolawole: If Omisore wins Osun, I will be shocked

by Simon Kolawole Even though PDP is spending a lot of money, aggressively distributing kerosene and rice ahead of the August 9 poll, Aregbesola still has the edge. Anything else will shock me. The August 9 governorship election in Osun State is a tougher test for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) than Ekiti State. Allow... Read More

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July 27, 2014

Simon Kolawole: Did the APC try to kill Buhari?

by Simon Kolawole There is a third possibility – that it is politicians within his party who want to take him out before the presidential primaries. According to the theorists, Buhari has become a problem for the APC big boys – they cannot live with him, yet they cannot live without him. We have many... Read More

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July 20, 2014

Simon Kolawole: Do the right thing for Pete’s sake

by Simon Kolawole Nigeria is faced with many avoidable tragedies – avoidable since they are not natural disasters but those wrought by our own hands – because we refuse to do the right thing. I was in shock – in fact, trauma – on Friday afternoon. I was in my bedroom, trying to do some... Read More

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July 13, 2014

Simon Kolawole: Shall we tell APC the home truth?

by Simon Kolawole I know many commentators and analysts think the problem with APC is that people do not yet see them as better than the PDP. Maybe. Maybe not. The fastest-selling narrative in Nigerian politics today is that if the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) wins an election, it is because of rigging; if the... Read More

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June 29, 2014

Simon Kolawole: The clear message from Ekiti voters

by Simon Kolawole My conclusion, therefore, is that Nigerians who pontificate in classrooms, on pulpits, in newspapers and on the social media about democracy, good governance and development need their heads examined. I was at work sometime in 2003 when I got a call from my wife. She said with a form of excitement: “There... Read More

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June 22, 2014

Simon Kolawole: What’s happening at the airports?

by Simon Kolawole As I write now, not much work is going on at the airports. The projects that were getting close to completion last year are now being halted. I am not seeing progress at MMIA. Sometime in 2000, I travelled to South Africa for a week. It was the first time I was... Read More

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June 8, 2014

Simon Kolawole: Governors and their juicy pensions

by Simon Kolawole The first is that governors and their deputies are, without any questions, enjoying too much at our expense. To add insult to injury, they carry this enjoyment into “retirement” If I were a former governor, I would be cursing Governor Godswill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State by now. He has inadvertently revealed... Read More

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June 1, 2014

Simon Kolawole: ‘Dem say money no loss o!’

by Simon Kolawole To start with, Sanusi never said money was missing. He didn’t say Jonathan stole money. He didn’t say Diezani Alison-Madueke stole money. He didn’t say NNPC stole money. Go and read the letter again. History repeats itself. In 1977, the military head of state, Lt. Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, set up a... Read More

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May 25, 2014

Simon Kolawole: Why do we keep empowering foreigners at our own expense?

by Simon Kolawole Government officials are ready to go to any length to please foreign media perhaps because of the image they want to paint to the outside world or perhaps because they worship skin colour, or maybe both. No, I’m not making any excuses, but it seems we don’t know what we are doing... Read More

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May 4, 2014

Simon Kolawole: How did Boko Haram become so powerful?

by Simon Kolawole How did Boko Haram become so powerful that the state is becoming powerless? You hear the proverb all the time, don’t you? “He that sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind.” Let’s stop being sentimental and face the truth: the security challenges that we are facing today are exactly the outcome of... Read More

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April 20, 2014

Simon Kolawole: 3 home truths about Boko Haram

by Simon Kolawole Ladies and gentlemen, we are in trouble. The US, with all its military might, sophistication and financial resources, has not been able to extinguish the threat of Al-Qaeda. If it was as simple as ABC, Americans would have done it by now. They practically ran away from Iraq and Afghanistan. But how... Read More

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April 13, 2014

Simon Kolawole: Nigeria’s GDP rebasing – No, we haven’t arrived yet

by Simon Kolawole Good news. Nigeria now houses the largest economy in Africa. We achieved this by simple arithmetic we changed the base year of measuring our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from 1990 to 2010. That means we have included new sectors that were previously not captured in the calculations. Trust me, a lot has... Read More

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April 6, 2014

Simon Kolawole: Why Nigeria stays among the poorest nations in the world

by Simon Kolawole Ironically, a few days later, the World Bank President, Dr Jim Yong Kim, classified Nigerians and Indians among the poorest in the world. He said “two-thirds of the world’s extreme poor are concentrated in just five countries: India, China, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and the Democratic Republic of Congo”. This is simply ironic. I... Read More

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March 30, 2014

Simon Kolawole: Religion and politics in Nigeria

by Simon Kolawole There is something I want to keep hammering on: Nigeria is bigger than PDP and APC. Do you know how many parties we have seen in this country? NPC, AG, NCNC, UPN, NPN, NPP, SDP, NRC, just name them. Where are they now? They are gone with history, but Nigeria remains. If... Read More

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March 23, 2014

Simon Kolawole: How Peter Obi swore to me over Anambra finances

by Simon Kolawole Looking in my direction, he said: “Simon always writes according to his convictions. You don’t have to agree with him, but he believes in whatever he writes.” I considered that to be a sweet compliment. We live in an environment where journalists are viewed with suspicion for everything they write. “Somebody has... Read More

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March 16, 2014

Simon Kolawole: How conflict underdeveloped Nigeria

by Simon Kolawole While our politicians are still busy playing 2015 politics with Boko Haram, the conflict is killing us softly. I had not been to Abia State in ages. My visit to Umuahia sometime last year set me thinking yet again about the Nigerian condition. That was when today’s topic nestled in my mind:... Read More

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March 9, 2014

Simon Kolawole: The evil that diesel does

by Simon Kolawole MTN alone spent N34 billion on diesel to power its business, mainly generators serving its 11,000 base stations. You may wish to read that figure again: N34 billion! Glad and sad. That sums up my mood since MTN released its 2013 results last week. I have been going through the statistics with... Read More

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March 2, 2014

Simon Kolawole: We should stop playing politics with everything

by Simon Kolawole But Boko Haram? No. Never. We are talking about life and death here. It is beyond politicking. Alhaji Bamanga Tukur recently canvassed something that has always been uppermost on my mind “constructive criticism”. The former national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was, of course, seeking support for President Goodluck Jonathan’s... Read More

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February 23, 2014

Simon Kolawole: How would you remember Sanusi?

by Simon Kolawole I wonder: when Sanusi’s name is mentioned in the future, how would you remember him? The CBN governor who dared the President and got his fingers burnt? The activist inside government who exposed the rot in the oil industry and got fired? The man who shook the financial sector and touched the... Read More

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February 16, 2014

Simon Kolawole: NNPC- The death of a dream

by Simon Kolawole Imagine: NNPC’s operations could have been very transparent, meeting every standard of global best practice. NNPC could have been the pride of Nigeria, a jewel in the crown. It could have been a Shell, not the empty shell it is today, fully content with being a plaything. Heartbreaking. That is the story... Read More

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February 9, 2014

Simon Kolawole: Wars and rumours of war

by Simon Kolawole To the Junaids, my advice is if you don’t want Jonathan, vote against him. No Northerner should be intimidated about whom they choose to support. A Northern governor said recently that he had the list of 400 Northern leaders who are working against “Northern interest”, a euphemism for “supporting Jonathan”. This is... Read More

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February 6, 2014

Olusegun Adeniyi: Nigeria’s imperfect constitution and the National Conference

by Olusegun Adeniyi But to us in Nigeria, having failed to forge a nation out of our diversity, and with a penchant for mismanaging our scarce resources, our leaders have for almost two decades now told us the only solution to the challenges we face is having a conference. Yet after more than three of... Read More

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January 26, 2014

Simon Kolawole: Lagos-Ibadan Expressway – The FG has a lot of explaining to do

by Simon Kolawole The Umaru Musa Yar’Adua Expressway always inspires me to think of what is possible in Nigeria. I dream of driving between Lagos and Ibadan on such a wide and smooth road. I was over the moon when President Goodluck Jonathan announced last year that the Federal Government was taking over the reconstruction... Read More

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January 19, 2014

Simon Kolawole: All the President’s enemies

by Simon Kolawole That is why despite the massing of anti-Jonathan figures in APC’s corner, I think it is too early to count him out. I will certainly not proclaim his political demise yet. To start with, his opponents have given him a whole year to get ready for them. And 24 hours, they say,... Read More

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January 12, 2014

Simon Kolawole: Minting our way to the top

by Simon Kolawole Let me state clearly that I am not one of those who expect Nigeria to develop overnight. I’m a realist. I don’t expect to go to bed tonight and wake up tomorrow to discover that all the mosquitoes, rats and cockroaches have disappeared. It took decades to destroy Nigeria. It will take... Read More

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January 5, 2014

Simon Kolawole: Rethinking the mistake of 1914

by Simon Kolawole But what was the “Mistake of 1914”? Was it the fact or the act of amalgamation? Those who blame the “fact of amalgamation” say there should never have been a Nigeria, that Nigeria is a fraud, that the various ethnic groups had nothing in common and that Nigeria is just a colonial... Read More

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December 22, 2013

Simon Kolawole: OBJ and the manual he forgot at Aso Rock

by Simon Kolawole Former permanent secretary in the Ministry of Defence, Dr. Julius Makanjuola, was being tried for corruption under Obasanjo’s government. Suddenly, the government entered a plea of nolle prosequi – reportedly the first in our history – and set the man free. In 2000, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Salisu Buhari,... Read More

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December 19, 2013

Simon Kolawole: Before they sell the refineries

by Simon Kolawole Many questions were still agitating my mind when stories started flying round the media that there was a pre-conceived agenda to sell the refineries to certain favoured friends of government. Names were being mentioned – including those who were indicted in the fuel subsidy probe. We also saw the names of people who have benefitted too much from the... Read More

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