Ruyi's World of Books & Stories

Sunny Jack Obande Wilfred was indeed surprised when he got home at few minutes to six that evening and met Rita’s absence. It was unlike her; she usually arrived home before him especially since her office closes at 4pm, an hour earlier than his does. In addition, on the occasions that she opted to stop over either at her hairdresser’s place or to pick a few confectioneries from the stores, she’d always put a call through to intimate him of her movements. At first, Wilfred figured she might possibly have taken a stroll to the mall in the neighborhood to get one household item or the other. This thought was reinforced when he remembered she had complained days earlier on the need to restock the condiment in their food store, as they were already low on supplies.  He thought to himself that the quarrel they had the previous night might be the reason she had refused to call him. He picked his mobile phone to dial her number to know where she was, but sheer pride got the b...

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter:  @farooqkperogi I was one of seven professors who facilitated a leadership training in my university here in Georgia for local government chairmen from a major Nigerian southwestern state. In the course of the training, I adverted to a January 13, 2018 column I wrote about how power literally damages the brains of people who wield it and causes them to be dissociated from reality. A few of the chairmen at the training initially said they “rejected” what I said “in Jesus’ name.” But the more I expounded the research on the psychology of power, the less resistant they became. In the light of the interest it excited among these local power wielders, I thought I’d share a revised version of the column for the benefit of other people in power.   On Nov. 20, 2014, Buhari, Amaechi, Oyegun and other APC honchos protested in Abuja against the increased insecurity and killings in the country. Insecurity and killings are worse on...

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi As a scholar and teacher of journalism, I am troubled by an emerging character of Nigeria’s diasporan and homeland digital-native news formation, which had functioned as alternative outlets for the sort of critical journalism that the homeland legacy news media have abandoned.  They start by attracting attention to themselves through what seems like uncompromisingly adversarial journalism against venality in government. But just when they succeed in persuading people to invest faith in their journalistic integrity, they cash out and become indistinguishable from, and sometimes worse than, the compromised homeland legacy media they were thought to be an alternative to. It started from Elendu Reports, the first successful diasporan citizen media outfit, which, after sensationally unmasking high-profile corruption in the high reaches of government in Nigeria in 2005, turned around to furtively serve as “media consult...