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By Bolanle Bolawole

Tunde Obadina (where is he?) was one of the columnists of yore that I relished reading, both for his flair and bluntness. I think he was of the National Concord stable. Others were the likes of Lewis Obi and Sina Adedipe (both also of the Concord); Sonala Olumhense of The Guardian, Muyiwa Adetiba of The PUNCH (published here last week) and, of course, Kayode Samuel of the Vanguard. I have not stopped wondering why Kay stopped maintaining a column – and I have told him so. The riposte he fires regularly on Facebook does not, in my view, compensate for the great loss his absence from serious opinion writing has meant to many. Today, I bring readers one of Obadina’s writings that I ferreted out of my library last week. Titled “Reaping what you sow”, it speaks to our situation today as it did decades ago when it was first written. Enjoy it:

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By Godknows Igali

Reminiscent of the time of his forebear, William the Conqueror in 1066 till modern era, Great Britain's monarch, King Charles III, was coronated in the same Westminster Abbey in Central London on Saturday, April 6, 2023. Accompanied by perhaps one of the most colourful military parades ever seen in modern history, the new British sovereign mounted the 700 years old throne; grotesquely seating atop a not too Christianly "stone of destiny". Although, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari was amongst 2200 royals and world leaders invited to join the show-off of pageantry and opulence at the medieval era church, which interestingly is also a graveyard of some of humanity's most impactful persons, for the first time, millions of people around the world watched the ancient religious ceremonials.

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By Funke Egbemode

Whether he is giving sperm or money, a man’s manhood feels rock solid only when he is the giver. All normal men are divinely wired to give. I hope you noticed the emphasis on normal men because not all men are normal. Forget the six-pack abdomen and rippling biceps, many of today’s men don’t mind being humped and getting paid for it. The Yoruba call them ‘alabodo’. Kept men. Gigolos. Men for hire. Toy boys. They are all over the place, dangling their sugar sticks, hoping to net the highest bidder. But their day will come. Today is about the hard task of living with men who are ‘financially under the weather’, if you get my drift. Yes, broke-ass men.

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By Bola Bolawole

The interest generated in “Ubuntu and Omoluabi: Kindred spirit or what?” published in this column on March 22, 2023, is yet to die down. That day’s column was actually devoted to my brother and friend, Prof. Babafemi Badejo’s chronicle of his first visit to Zimbabwe titled “Quick visit to Zimbabwe: My case for rekindling of the Ubuntu spirit in Africa” Badejo drew a parallel between Ubundu as enunciated by Paul Kagame’s Rwanda and the Yoruba’s Omoluabi ethos, philosophy or way of life. In a world fast becoming individualistic or atomistic and losing every sense of communalism, Africans, propounding and spreading the concepts of Omoluabi and Ubundu, have something to teach the world. And knowing full well that the “White” world is always quick to hijack anything good from Africa, appropriating it and alienating Africa from it, some African intellectuals are determined to see that this is not going to be the case with Omoluabi and Ubundu. Africa and Africans must own this; and they must be the ones to propagate it as well. They must lead the way for others to follow.

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By Comfort Obi

I don’t know if it is appropriate for the old saying, “How are the mighty fallen”, to come into play here. But chai, life is a joke. Full of ironies. Tosses us up and down. And, I just wonder, and ask myself, why we struggle, so much, to impress life, instead of allowing it to deal with us as it deems fit.

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By Azu Ishiekwene

It started like a grudge match. Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, was dealt a bad hand in a failed transaction. Later, he vowed revenge. Not in a pound of flesh, but by venturing to make his own success where he had been ambushed.

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