Author: Osmond Agbo
“Personal success will not insulate you from the failures of your society”—Author Unknown For many Africans in the diaspora, there is a quiet but enduring dream that our children will not grow up as strangers to the land that shaped us. We long for them to feel a living connection to the motherland, not as tourists, but as heirs to a history, a culture, and a people. In pursuit of this, many families make deliberate sacrifices. Some send their children back home for a few formative years, enrolling them in secondary schools so they can absorb the rhythms of daily…
In a world that has long profited from Black fragmentation, unity rooted in respect for difference may be the most enduring gift we offer each other. In recent weeks, Somali Americans have been subjected to baseless insinuations in the United States. What renders this episode particularly disquieting is not merely the malevolence of the attacks, but the ambivalence of the response. Some Blacks have hesitated to offer unequivocal solidarity, emphasizing that some Somalis do not self-identify as Black. The implicit message is unmistakable: if one does not claim Blackness, one cannot reasonably expect Black protection. This situation recalls my visit…
Even karma seems confused, looking the other way as if justice, too, has been kidnapped and no one is willing to pay her ransom. They call it non-kinetic a soft whisper in a burning field, a handshake offered to hands still wet with yesterday’s blood. In secret rooms they bargain away our lives, counting ransom in bundles as if naira could purchase conscience, as if money could bribe a monster into becoming a man. Each payment buys silence, yes a brittle, borrowed peace, the peace of a graveyard at noon when even the wind holds its breath. A Pyrrhic victory…
No amount of personal success, no matter how celebrated, can shield any of us from the consequences of a society that fails. In the first installment of this series, we revisited the historical distortions that shifted Ndigbo from the center of Nigeria’s political life to the periphery of its power structure. We examined how the January 1966 coup, hastily and wrongly branded an Igbo plot, and the chain of miscalculations that followed, created a narrative of suspicion that has defined the Igbo experience for decades. These events provided the scaffolding upon which exclusion and scapegoating were built. Yet history must…
And our deepest wound is not only that Nigeria marginalizes us, but that we are yet to master the discipline of thinking strategically about power. Umunne m, I write to you today not in anger, but with a mind sharpened against self-deception. This is neither a letter of comfort nor a stage for fragile egos, but a reckoning forged through brutal reflection. If you are seeking reassurance, validation, or easy affirmation, this is not for you. You may stop here. These past few weeks no doubt, have exacted a serious emotional toll on all Nigerians. The country has mutated into…
In Eruku, prayers ascended and bullets answered first. Church doors splintered; a sanctuary of hope transfigured into an altar of smoke and screams. Three worshippers collapsed beside their Bibles, their blood seeping like unanswered supplications across the fissured concrete. The pastor was dragged into the night, his lamentations swallowed by bush paths now highways for the damned. Elsewhere, in the same beleaguered land, Musa who had dedicated his life to the green-white-green was ensnared by ISWAP’s shadowed hands. An ambush. A loyal soldier struck down, while the very soil he bled for continued offering its children as sacrifices to…
In a country where compromise often wears the face of wisdom, Dapo Olorunyomi remains proof that integrity can survive influence and that conviction, when deeply rooted, does not bow before convenience. Like John the Baptist, who confessed himself unworthy to even loosen the sandals of the one he proclaimed, I find myself hesitant to speak of the man his friends fondly call Dapsy. Though our paths have crossed and his legend had already filled the air before his presence ever did, I remain unsure that words are sufficient vessels for a soul such as his. But then, it dawned on…
For evil triumphs not merely through violence, but through the preachers who defend it and a governments that looks the other way. In the great city of Kaduna, Northern Nigeria’s political capital, there is a man who, though trained as a doctor, is better known as a Sheikh. He hails from a long line of Islamic scholars, and his father was even a Grand Khadi. He preaches from the pulpit, prays with the pious, and to the faithful, he appears a voice of reason. He wears rich, flowing robes whiter than snow. Yet, when the echoes of terror rose from…
….if this new pressure from abroad forces the Nigerian government to take the fight against insurgency seriously, to finally follow the money and prosecute those who fund and shield terrorists, perhaps we should welcome it, cautiously. Because let’s be honest: our government has failed us. At best, it’s complicit. At worst, it’s aiding and abetting. In the last 24 hours, President Donald Trump has intensified his rhetoric on Christian persecution in Nigeria, warning the Nigerian government to act swiftly against the growing insurgency. He even directed the Department of War to prepare for possible military action, boasting that any U.S.…
The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown-Albert Camus Aso Rock may continue to dismiss rumors of a coup, but the stench of panic hangs thick in the air. First came the sudden cancellation of the Independence Day parade. Then, a flurry of forced retirements and reshuffles swept through the military’s top ranks. And now, reports emerge of security operatives storming the Abuja home of Buhari’ petroleum minister and hauling his brother into custody. It’s all hauntingly reminiscent of Obasanjo’s third-term fiasco, where every denial only confirmed what we already knew. Once again, power…