-By Abdul Mahmud Editor’s Note: Shortly after PACESETTER received this week’s column for publication yesterday, Sunday, December 21, 2025, the abducted students were released. We have gone ahead to publish this piece for historical and academic purposes. Four weeks ago, students of a Catholic school in Papiri in Niger State were seized along with their … [Read more…]
The photograph released by Amnesty International Nigeria of Mary Talmon, one of the women shot dead during a protest in Adamawa, confronts our country with a tragedy that demands collective introspection, if not accountability. The organisation posted her image on its X handle while calling for an impartial investigation into what it described as the … [Read more…]
-By Abdul Mahmud Nigeria has finally plunged into the depths of morass. Deep and troubling depths, difficult to climb out. The new list of ambassadorial nominees tells a familiar story. It is the story of a country that refuses to rise. A country that recycles its worst. A country that decorates failure and calls it … [Read more…]
-By Abdul Mahmud Contemporary Nigeria feels like a country pulling against itself. Every day brings shock and surprises. Every night brings deeper worries. The country moves, but it moves without directions. It is not collapse, yet it is not order. It is something in between. Something that drags Nigerians down and wears them out. It … [Read more…]
-By Abdul Mahmud Another week has opened in Nigeria with blood on the ground and fear in the air. The country wakes up each morning to new tragedies. Each day closes with fresh accounts of death, kidnappings, and retreats. Nigeria is living inside a vortex of violence. Nothing breaks it. Nothing interrupts it. The state … [Read more…]
There are times when ideas become prisons. When ideology blinds those who hold it. When conviction turns into a wall that shuts out reality. This is what has happened to some of the comrades on the Nigerian Left. They have chosen to see the world only through the prism of anti-imperialism. So much so that … [Read more…]
-By Abdul Mahmud Nigeria has finally plunged into the depths of morass. Deep and troubling depths, difficult to climb out. The new list of ambassadorial nominees tells a familiar story. It is the story of a country that refuses to rise. A country that recycles its worst. A country that decorates failure and calls it … [Read more…]
-By Abdul Mahmud There is a strange affliction that festers in our land. It is the compulsive habit of adorning the ordinary with grandiose labels, of dressing the barely local in the borrowed robes of the global and international. Here, words are stardust sprinkled on names, banners, and signboards to confer false importance. The humblest … [Read more…]
-By Abdul Mahmud I did not know Somnachukwu Maduagwu. I never met her in the studios of Arise Television in Abuja, where I have gone many times for interviews. But her death touched me deeply. She was young. She was bright. She was a lawyer. She was a news anchor. She was her parents’ pride. … [Read more…]
-By Abdul Mahmud They dress it up as negotiation and baptise it as dialogue, but it is nothing more than doublespeak. A masquerade of words. Behind the velvet of their language lies deceit. To call surrender by another name does not change its essence. To dignify capitulation with the vocabulary of peace is to mock … [Read more…]
-By Abdul Mahmud A few States have announced the ban on graduation ceremonies in public and private schools. Ekiti State, in particular, the ban affects pupils in kindergarten, nursery, primary, and secondary schools. These states say the practice is unnecessary, costly, and distracting. They insist that schools should focus on learning rather than ceremonies. On … [Read more…]
-By Abdul Mahmud Last week, my phone rang. The voice on the other end was familiar. It was Mike Igini, the former Resident Electoral Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission and my old comrade from the student movement. “Comrade Mahmud, how you dey na?” he asked with a chuckle. His call was brief, yet … [Read more…]