Author: Osmond Agbo

What Sowore has done is to reframe the issue, stripping it of its ethnic garb and presenting it for what it is: a question of justice and equality before the law. His defiance is not for the Igbo cause alone but for the soul of a nation that has made selective justice its moral compass. At the crack of dawn on Monday, October 20, the usually bustling arteries of Abuja were transformed into a fortress. By 6:00 a.m., combined contingents of soldiers, police officers, and operatives of the Department of State Services had fanned out across the city center, sealing…

That tragedy was not an isolated episode but part of a broader pattern, a deliberate effort to push the narrative that Blacks just can’t do it, that we are not good enough. The same psychology that incinerated Greenwood reverberated across the Atlantic, in Haiti. In this magnificent world we inhabit, the Black man is reminiscent of that child with profound autism, whose mother grows uneasy whenever he throws a tantrum in public. To shield herself from humiliation, she might sequester him in a group home, out of sight and out of mind. Little consideration is given to the possibility that…

In a world that once idolized opulence, a fascinating reversal has taken hold. The new elite no longer flaunt their status through gold watches or fleets of luxury cars. They assert distinction through restraint,  through what they decline to consume. Thus emerges the paradox of conspicuous non-consumption, the modern language of quiet supremacy. You notice them wherever they go. The new titans of industry dressed like college students on their way to class. A recent photograph of Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, taken during a visit to Kenya, shows him in a plain cotton T-shirt and nerdy trousers. With…

If Pakistan, Nigeria, or any nation wishes to escape this cycle, leaders must abandon the illusion of clever deals with extremists. Real security lies not in proxy wars or militant allies but in building just societies, resilient institutions, and inclusive politics that deny extremists the grievances they exploit. Anything less is sowing seeds for future catastrophe. In the jagged mountain ranges straddling Afghanistan and Pakistan, a resurgent Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (T.T.P.), are ratcheting up a relentless and deadly guerrilla war against Pakistani security forces as I write this piece. Roads clogged with convoys of battered trucks, overloaded…

Sixty-five candles, yet the flame gutters in the wind, smoke curling over a nation that learned to crawl backward. Independence, they said but what freedom lies in a land independent but totally dependent, a giant bound by its own chains? Broken roads, broken homes, broken people trudging through the wreckage of dashed hopes. We speak of the dead, the dying, the better dead, the long gone— our roll call of grief longer than any anthem. Mega-churches swell with hymns, while empty classrooms echo with silence. Masjid al-Haram finds its mirror in the scattered prayers of almajiri, children of dust…

There’s an image I can’t shake when I think of Nigeria’s young people: a baby impala dropped into the savannah, wobbling on fragile legs as its mother disappears into the tall grass. In those first moments, the calf either finds its feet or is eaten by predators. That is the Nigerian youth story in miniature. A friend of mine visited from Nigeria not too long ago. He runs an oil servicing company back home and arrived in Houston with the usual armour of his tribe; a MacBook, headphones, and a half-dozen Slack channels humming with activities. On the second day,…

I dusted off my dad’s pet name for me, Mondus, and paired it with his own name, Fidelis. Voilà, Osmund Agbo became Mondus Fidelis. It sounded classy, almost like a Roman senator or a luxury brand of whatever. I hadn’t heard of Dauda Kahutu Rarara until my friend Farooq Kperogi wrote about him on Facebook. Apparently, he’s a highlife maestro whose music has captivated northern Nigeria and earned him a massive following. But Farooq wasn’t writing about “Aisha,” or any of the singer’s big hits, which has racked up millions of views and streams across platforms. Instead, he was zeroing…

The unfinished work of Africa’s liberation is not merely political or economic; it is psychological. We need not abandon faith, but we must unmask its misuse. We must recognize when religion serves liberation and when it serves control. We must reclaim the ability to question, to value substance over spectacle, and to prioritize collective progress over empty promises of heavenly reward. The first time I watched the video clip of Charlie Kirk’s murder, I knew I had made a huge mistake. The assassin’s bullet was brutal and merciless, an image now lodged in my mind like a splinter. I wailed…

That day, all I wanted was a quick dash to Chicken Republic. Simple mission: rice, chicken, maybe a few slices of yam with stew to top up the reserves. But in Lagos, no outing is ever truly simple. A short trip can turn into a full cultural immersion. The moment I hopped into a korope, that miniature bus that looks like it was designed by someone who thought humans were made of rubber, I knew food wasn’t the only thing I was about to collect. What I got instead was a buffet of fresh street lingo, served hot and unfiltered.…

The tragedy is that imagined suffering is not harmless. Chronic anxiety triggers cascades of stress hormones, raising blood pressure, impairing sleep, weakening immunity. Our bodies pay interest on emotional debts we do not owe. We rehearse pain, and in doing so, we harm ourselves twice: once in anticipation, and once if it comes, in reality. Our one and only daughter has gone off to college. Madam and I dropped her off the weekend before. As we made the four-hour drive from Houston to Baton Rouge along I-10, the road stretched ahead, both endless and fleeting, as if time itself were…