Some 30 minutes ago, I watched two events that got my mind conflicted.

You already know that the Tokyo Olympics officially started on Saturday. Two day after, the global audience is already served to the heroics of Momiji Nishiya. The teenager became Japan’s youngest ever gold medalist. At age 13, she landed her final three tricks to get a rousing applause from lovers of skateboarding around the world. Winning silver was another 13-year old and yes, another teenager — 16 — won the bronze medal.

Around the time this was happening, 28 abducted teenagers of the Bethel Baptist Secondary School…

This morning, a previous beneficiary of one of the projects I handled for UNDP got in touch with me.

Sometimes my line of work involves looking at the unemployability in the country and thinking backwards on what can be done. So for some certain situations, we design programs concentrating on what can be done to build skills which then improves the placement potential of these unemployed/underemployed persons. Some of these programs necessarily involve partnering with employers and training organizations to provide training opportunities.

Anyway, so during one of my M&E activities some years back, I was at one of these…

I wonder how many people know that European countries don’t have term limits for their top government leaders.

I was discussing this with someone today and he was nonplussed.

Unlike in the American and Nigerian systems of government where there is a term limit of 8 years for the President, European countries, only with the exception of France, have no such limits.

This is the reason Angela Merkel, who started ruling in 2005, is synonymous with the Chancellorship of Germany. It is difficult for many people to recall another Chancellor of Germany because she has been in office for 15…

On June 30, the National Hockey League (NHL) made an announcement that I think is worth paying attention to. It tweeted that social media star Josh Richards, a 19-year old, has been appointed a special adviser. This is a fancy word for saying that he will help the league appeal to the younger generation.

Details are still sketchy about how much Josh is being paid for this role but it’s not hard to imagine it’d be a windfall.

The NHL, considered to be the premier professional ice hockey league in the world, is a professional ice hockey league in North…

This morning, I was reading stories in Financial Times and the Economist about the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party taking place this week.

Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping are the most recognizable faces in modern Chinese political era.

Mao for being one of the original 13 members who attended the first party congress in July 1921. After the Communists gained power in the 1949 revolution, Mao led the country to initiate a series of disastrous economic reforms. The China you know today only began to take shape in the late 1970s after Mao’s death, when Mao’s successor, Deng…

Again, I witnessed another heart-wrenching sight of an ‘educated’ man gulping one of these bitter drinks sold in used water bottles.

Some four years ago, my newsfeed was agog with stories of a particular Bitters which they said could cure all manner of illnesses ranging from low libido to arthritis to diabetes to malaria to typhoid to fibroid to gonorrhea to staphylococcus to high blood pressure to menstrual disorder. They even said it could detoxify the body, never mind there is no such thing in medicine. …

A few days back a Facebook friend shared an experience whose variations I am hearing more and more these days: While in a local bukka, a young schoolboy of about 14 accosted him. It was in the evening and the boy pleaded with him to buy him food. The lad explained that he had not put anything in his mouth since the break of that day. Even though he is someone who pays no mind to random folks requesting for funds, it did jolt him that the boy wasn’t asking for money but food. In fact, the boy wasn’t asking…

I just realized that the surface rover that China landed on Mars last week which made them the second country ever to do so is called Zhurong. That’s the name of the Chinese god of war.

Let Nigeria name anything after Ogun (the Yoruba god of war) now and there will be placards everywhere.

While in hindsight I largely support the before-before imperalism because it led to a more efficient use of natural resources and building of better infrastructure, and more importantly it was the only thing that led to the survival of minority groups in a place like Nigeria…