By Lasisi Olagunju | In 1528, the sixteenth-century Italian writer Baldassare Castiglione published his classic, The Book of the Courtier (Il Libro del Cortegiano). One of the memorable words in that work is sprezzatura—his description of the art of making…
By Lasisi Olagunju | Somewhere in present-day Osun State, about a hundred years ago, an oba ordered a manhunt for a troublesome strongman in his domain. The man, Kátákatà, was captured one night, killed and beheaded. His severed head was…
By Lasisi Olagunju | President Bola Tinubu’s Villa scriptwriters are supremely gifted. Go back and read Mr. Bayo Onanuga’s So Long a Letter on the Gbajabiamila-Adeyemi ‘feud’ over an agency that is simultaneously legal and illegal. The lengthy statement is…
By Lasisi Olagunju | Jacob Zuma was President of South Africa when he declared on October 21, 2013 that South Africa should not “think like Africans in Africa, generally”. The remark, delivered at an ANC manifesto forum at Wits University,…
By Lasisi Olagunju | “Boldness, be my friend. Arm me, audacity, from head to foot.” Some live by that Shakespearean creed. They say aloud what society only whispers. They speak the unsayable, damn the world and make a difference. Northern…
By Lasisi Olagunju | “The Federal Police Service shall temporarily intervene in the internal security affairs of a state and shall, to the extent necessary, assume specified operational responsibility, including temporary operational command of a State Police Service or any…
By Lasisi Olagunju | President Bola Tinubu, in his June 12 broadcast, condemned terrorists and their work but told us not to “assign blame or point fingers” because “crime has no ethnicity.” Crime may indeed have no ethnicity, but that…
By Lasisi Olagunju | The English Premier League ended yesterday with Arsenal crowned champions. But that triumph almost slipped away because, two weeks earlier, a stolen goal arrived disguised as a legitimate one. I watched the West Ham–Arsenal match of…
By Lasisi Olagunju | The military high command has come out to say that the gunmen who abducted schoolchildren and murdered their teachers in Ogbomoso were JAS men. JAS (Jama’tu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad) is a splinter of Boko Haram.…
By Lasisi Olagunju | AN old firm of architects with a rich history of project design and delivery sent a letter to the Sierra Leonean government on September 15, 1960. In that letter, the firm listed some of the projects…
