I’m Andrea Okoye. I have written for this renowned newspaper, NATIONAL ACCORD a decade ago and this is a big come back and for the better. In this outing, I will be covering Entrepreneurship. The page shall be called MARKETGIRLAFRICA, under which I will bring over 10 years of marketing and entrepreneurial...
COLUMNIST
Nigerians are a very impatient people. Our hunger for instant outcomes should have made us the nation that invented the microwave oven. But our impatience is directed at other ends. We can at least content ourselves with the many unusual things that we have reinvented and perfected our instincts...
The general atmosphere of violence and anarchy threatening to overwhelm the South East portends ill for our national security. A spate of senseless killings, random arson and general insecurity has since become a veritable signature of the region in recent years. The trend has recently intensified. The subsisting regional...
President Buhari’s Minister of Education, Mr. Adamu Adamu, is a man who likes to take himself seriously. In ordinary circumstances, he should pass as one of the islands of some enlightenment in the arid cabinet of the outgoing administration. A long standing regional newspaper columnist and commentator on public...
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has stirred an unnecessary storm and in the process may have scored an inconsequential victory. Last week, the NBS revised the definition of poverty by shifting from the now proverbial living on $2 a day to something called “multidimensional poverty”. This has unsettled...
Ordinarily, the hidden hands of an ancient Italian devious thinker should have no relevance to Nigeria’s 2023 election. But Machiavelli lived in a bad time and in a treacherous political terrain pretty much like the Nigeria of 2022. Like in the Florentine city state, our politics has been reduced...
An urgent threat hovers over Nigeria’s democracy. It is not just the spectre of bad elections or the predominance of atrocious politicians. It is instead the rise and increasing numbers of authoritarian governors all over the country. Though enthroned by our often murky democratic process, an increasing number of...
What is Greatness? In every life God created there’s a deposit of greatness. For Joseph, that deposit was the gift of dreams. Your key to greatness might usher you through crisis before bringing you to greatness. The deposit of greatness can be submerged, exchanged, drowned, stolen or dimmed. Greatness...
It is a famous dictum that when one insists (too much) on claiming his rights (especially against overwhelming public opinion and pleadings to let go for peace to prevail), such a person may end up with the blame. As in, you too do sef! The raging controversy in the...
The distance between political campaign promises and their fulfilment is an infinity. Between when these promises are made and the end of the tenure of those who usually promise paradise and deliver hell, people are often too dazed to remember. As it were, empty promises seem to be part...
I disagree with you sir. If Adebanjo had spoken for himself, I would have respected him more. But instead he rode on Afenifere. When did Afenifere meet to take a position and issue communique on supporting Obi? Is Olu Falae not a member of Afenifere? But he dissociated himself...
The crowds of power wear amorphous but identical faces. It does not matter whether they are the Roman plebeians, renegade factions of the Athenian metropole, or the rough racist hounds that accompanied Donald Trump to defile the US Capitol on 6th January 2021. They are all roughly the same....
“The fear of the Lord leads to life, so that one may sleep satisfied, untouched by evil”– Proverbs 19:23 The best text reflection I read on the fear of God comes from David W. Dyer, founder of “A Grain of Wheat” Ministries Publication. He wrote: “The fear of God...
Throughout history, it has been recorded that men and women of courage have, at vital times, always made the difference in the lives of a people, and thus steered the people’s destiny to greater outcomes. The lives of great individuals like Martin Luther King (Jnr); Nelson Mandela and several...
Tyrants and mad men suffer a common ailment: they are condemned to a feeling of loneliness and a routine of endless wandering in search of what they alone understand. No other world leader at the present time better illustrates this ancient folk wisdom than Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Mr. Putin...
Mr. Adzegeh. You look too serious in the picture. Smile, it is well. Whilst it’s true that in your scenario the North comes out with the short end of the stick, the reality is that separation, unless agreed, will be violent. Once separation is achieved, then there will be...
The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) expects victory in the 2023 election almost as an entitlement. This is for one reason only: it is the incumbent party in national power. President Buhari and core party leaders are carrying on in a manner that suggests that electoral victory is a...
By exchange of agricultural products by barter among women especially and in particular, being analogous to the “trading by barter” of yester years, those among the women who farm different crops, either as individuals, family members, or community members, could exchange by barter with each other some of their...
From all indications, 2023 promises to be a major turning point for Nigeria and its 220+ million people. It is a year that should decide so many issues in this crudely welded entity of so unlike minds. 2023 will prove beyond a doubt if the British in fact made...
The race for the 2023 presidency is looking more like a tripartite sprint among unequal parties. In that race, the advantage of the main opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) should ordinarily have been defined by two factors: age and a minus sign. It is the oldest of the three...