March 2024

an image depicting okuama community burning along with the images of the deceased soldiers with a main focus on Col AH Ali

The Okuama Dead: Story Behind the Grief

Human Interest /

Oil money, mixed with militancy and violent local politics in the area, has created and nurtured private armies with money, weapons, and political clout comparable to rogue states… But politicians don’t mind. In their desperate search for solutions to the problem of oil theft and also to consolidate their political hold, they have indulged the private armies. Officers deployed in the area are left to invent their own ways of serving two masters – the state and the communities on the one hand and the powerful private armies on the other

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an image of a natural woman and the same image of her heavily photoshopped

Photoshopping Princess and The Perils of Manipulation

International Affairs /

What’s the point of it, really? Since the outbreak of the so-called Kate pic scandal, I have been brooding over images that I see very often as DPs and also on WhatsApp Status. I’m keeping myself to that microblogging site and the mainstream press. No need to bother with Insta, probably the worst photographic crime scene since Joseph Niepce invented the camera

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a group of students with bandits behind

The Famished Road to Kuriga

Human Interest /

Politicians who shed crocodile tears for a living visit crime scenes like Kuriga twice in their lifetime. They visit unfailingly during election campaigns and then grudgingly – more for the camera – at a time of grief, like this. Kaduna State Governor, Uba Sani, for example, was in Kuriga on Thursday, shortly after the students were kidnapped… It was as if was going to a war front

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An image of a man standing in a dark rrom with no electricity

Rolling Blackouts, Heatwave and Tales from Dead Bulbs

Economy /

One day in the last week of February, for example, the light went off and came back, surging each time at different frequencies, four times in less than 10 minutes. It was as if someone somewhere was testing the supply or that in my confused state, I never quite saw the light come on before it went off again. That was late evening, after work. I’m not counting how many other times this erratic supply may have occurred after I went to bed that night. But the evidence was waiting the next day

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