Azu Ishiekwene

Understanding the Nonsense About State Creation

politics /

It’s not for nothing that none of the world’s most prominent federations, such as India, the US, Canada, or Brazil, has created a new state in the last 50 years. This is not because of a lack of demand or because these countries have no ethnic minorities who feel endangered. Instead, they are evolving ways of managing their diversity that reduce the salience of statism as a basis for social justice, such as prioritising merit and competence

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an image of Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Justin Trudeau and Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo imposed on a background of 'tariffs'

From America First to America Alone: The Lab Meets the Street

International Affairs, politics /

When America Alone is mentioned today, it’s not a defence against threats to Western values or civilisation; it’s simply that Trump’s America First has turned the country into a clear and present danger to the values that built and prospered America and the rest of the world. America is losing its way, alone and aloof, in a brazen insularity that evokes pity and surprise in equal measure, even amongst its harshest critics

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Clockwise: Inset Ela, Orna and Itzik

A Nation at War: Five Days in Israel

International Affairs /

As Flight ET 404 approached Ben Gurion… I thought, what if a stray rocket hit us? It may sound like the product of an overwrought mind contaminated by familiarity with bad news. But after Hamas killed more than 1,139 people, including women and children, on October 7 and took 364 hostages, many of the victims at a peace party in Nova, southern Israel, overthinking the worst appears to be the standard way of life

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presidential media chat with tinubu and journalists seated in a room in a U-shaped seating arrangement, with the president in the middle

Back Story of Tinubu Interview

Interview /

I had asked him why he ordered a shoot-on-sight against members of the militant Yoruba self-determination group Oodua People’s Congress (OPC), which operated mainly in the South West, Obasanjo’s home base. He was livid. He warned me, on air, that if I were going to bring the irreverence of my weekly column to the Villa, he would immediately throw me out of the panel. I insisted on an answer, to which he said, “If you’re a member of OPC, tell your people that I mean what I said!”

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