The Petroleum Industry Bill and the Quest for a New Nigeria
By Obadiah Mailafia LAST week, Thursday July 1, the Senate finally passed the long-awaited Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB. A milestone in the history of our legislative affairs. Too many interests had repeatedly scuttled it over the years. According to the auditing and advisory firm, KPMG, previous attempts in 2009, 2012 and 2018 failed “because of […]
What’s the big deal about Cryptocurrency?
By Obadiah Mailafia A NEW CBN directive, dated February 5, 2021, has ordered all deposit money banks, DMBs, non-bank financial institutions, NBFIs, and other financial institutions, OFIs, that have opened windows for dealing in cryptocurrencies or facilitating payments for such currencies to close them down. They are required to identify “persons and or entities transacting […]
Angela’s Ashes
By Obadiah Mailafia I have always been an admirer of German culture and civilisation. I have visited Deutschland more times than I can recall. I have studied German history with assiduity from Leopold von Ranke to Friedrich Meinecke and Golo Mann. German history, for the most part, has been dark, harsh, slippery, bloody and icy-cold. But […]
Next year in Jerusalem
By Obadiah Mailafia The German Kaiser once asked his Chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck: “Can you prove the existence of God?” Bismarck was supposed to have replied: “The Jews, your majesty. The Jews.” The return of the Jews to the Land of Promise after 2000 years of dispersal is a miracle of our times. Hebrew, […]
Israel as the Start-up Nation
By Obadiah Mailafia ISRAEL is a small country of nine million, with a landmass of 20,22,145 km2 – about the size of Cross River State. Niger State, with a landmass of 76,363 km2, is more than three and a half times the size of Israel. Most of the country is desert, with little or no […]
How Zamfara State is spearheading a renaissance in the North
By Sesugh Akume Today, we welcome a guest columnist in the person of Sesugh Akume, a public policy analyst and businessman, who is offering his personal reflections on how Zamfara State is making progress in healing the wounds of a broken people. UNTIL recently, Zamfara was by far the most depressing State in Nigeria. Everything […]
The perils of being an economist
By Obadiah Mailafia THE year 2020 was a rather tumultuous one for the world economy. The spread of the novel coronavirus from the provincial city of Wuhan in China to the rest of the world was one of those Black Swan events that appear once in a century. By year’s end 2020, the total number […]
The year of the scorched yams
By Obadiah Mailafia WHEN some of us were young, our country had the promise of greatness. We entertained the vision of a New Jerusalem. Today, it has become a dream deferred. There is a creeping, odious, despondency in the atmosphere. The collective zeitgeist is one of hopelessness. The flame has died. The signs everywhere foretell […]
How to kill, skin and bury a country
By Obadiah Mailafia NOTHING lasts forever. Except true love as rhapsodised by the poets. Life has taught me that whatever you have to do, do it now and do it with all your might. You must strike while the iron is hot. Because you might never pass through this road again. Today we are here […]
Remittances, diaspora and development
By Obadiah Mailafia EARLY in the month, CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele announced a new directive on Diaspora remittances. The new directive allows all recipients of remittances to collect their funds in dollars. They are also free to keep such funds in domiciliary bank accounts and to withdraw them in the same denominations at any time. […]
The man on horseback and the better angels of our nature
By Obadiah Mailafia WHEN I first heard about the concept of spiritual warfare in connection with the Nigerian army, I was rather taken aback. The military are a fighting machine. They are trained to use kinetic force to suppress or degrade an enemy. They perform combat duties in pursuance of their constitutional mandate of upholding […]
Did Gowon loot the Central Bank?
By Obadiah Mailafia I love Nigeria. But there is a part of me, to echo the poet Rupert Brooke, that is forever England. Perhaps it’s on account of her medieval knights and Plantagenet troubadours; her baroque royal trumpets; her decency and manners; her poets and seers; her afternoon teas with scones — her love of liberty. […]
Rawlings and the verdict of history
By Obadiah Mailafia Ghana’s longest serving leader, Jerry Rawlings, passed away on Thursday November 12, aged 73. He had been a fixture in Ghana’s politics for four decades. Jerry John Rawlingswas born on June 22, 1947 in Accra, the son of a Scottish chemist, James Ramsey John, and an Ewe mother, Victoria Agbotui. She died […]
Gold and monetary policy
By Obadiah Mailafia TODAY, Monday, November 16, South-South Governors are scheduled to meet over the subject of Zamfara gold. Not too long ago, it was announced that the Government of Zamfara State will be “selling” N2 billion worth of gold to the Central Bank of Nigeria, pursuant upon the Presidential Artisanal Gold Mining Development initiative, […]
A letter to Theodora
By Obadiah Mailafia This is an imaginary letter to my adopted daughter. She’s unfortunately in no state of mind to read it. But I have written it to come to terms with what she has had to go through. Not too long ago, we met through some strange rendezvous with fate. Those who understand these […]
The American elections
By Obadiah Mailafia TOMORROW Tuesday, November 3, millions of American voters will go out to vote. The world’s greatest democracy will decide between two candidates: the incumbent Donald J. Trump for the Republican Party and challenger Joe Biden, representing the Democratic Party. When I seek a better understanding of the muddy waters of the American […]
