Olatunji Ololade

Lagos

Associate Editor at The Nation

Multiple Award-winning Journalist, Multimedia Specialist, Editor

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Articles

Her right-handed serve to glory: On Aishat Raji’s becoming

2 weeks ago | thenationonlineng.net | Olatunji Ololade

Aishat Raji enchants the tennis court. Not from electric chants or thunderous applause, but from the sheer astonishment of her being. Just 14, she saunters into the Games arena shorn of symmetry but with the sovereign gift of a single right hand that swings like a poet’s plume. Raji is a product of grit. Her left hand—once part of her whole body—got severed by the cold blade of tragedy in 2014.
Nightmare in nirvana

3 weeks ago | thenationonlineng.net | Olatunji Ololade

Winter in Chicago had always been unforgiving. The temperatures plummet and the wind-chill becomes a silent, deadly adversary. For Marcus Faleti, the cold proved fatal. On January 1, 2017, at exactly 12:09 a.m., the 58-year-old succumbed to hypothermia and alcoholism, the temperature biting through the meagre layers of his existence. The wind-chill that night registered at 18 degrees. It was a lethal cold that Faleti could no longer fight.
Do not die in their proxy wars

4 weeks ago | thenationonlineng.net | Olatunji Ololade

For the love of country is still their sexiest lie. The curvaceous plague of coalition politics. Every desperado cops a feel – the scorned ministerial hopeful, the tamed party rebel, losers at the 2023 polls. All partake in the prurient rite. They all identify as patriots, too.
Freeloaders’ creed

1 month ago | thenationonlineng.net | Olatunji Ololade

It is a curious thing, isn’t it? The ease with which a society can hold out its palms, demanding honey from the hive it has not tended. Once again, I find myself at the front seat of this perennial circus—a boisterous affair where the ringmasters are the very citizens who brazenly dodge taxes, yet demand effective public services. It is the Nigerian penchant for freeloading, a national pastime disguised as survival. The story is as old as the first misstep of our fledgling republic.
Orphans of the republic

1 month ago | thenationonlineng.net | Olatunji Ololade

History will never be kind to the staff of the Federal Scholarships Board (FSB), who dared starving and homeless scholars abroad, to come back home and flog the education minister. Beyond his contempt for the state-sponsored scholars cum recipients of the Bilateral Education Agreement (BEA), subsists an inordinate lack of tact and sensibility, perhaps. Another tragic manifestation of systemic and human failings.
The good Nigerian - The Nation Newspaper

1 month ago | thenationonlineng.net | Olatunji Ololade

The Hausa tricycle driver did not set out to be a hero. He owns no newspaper column, has no audience hanging onto his every word, and wields no influence beyond the handlebars of his humble Keke NAPEP (tricycle). Yet, in the holy month of Ramadan, while inflation alternates its grip on random food prices and every naira bears the weight of a thousand worries, he made a simple choice: to give. He scrawled a declaration on his tricycle: Ramadan Discount: From N200 to N100 per Drop.
The killer dumpsite called Kurata

1 month ago | thenationonlineng.net | Olatunji Ololade

Within the cesspit mantle of Kurata, beneath the swamp, the peat bog, and refuse dump, some houses stay buried by dross. Some lives, too. For residents of nearby Oloko Estate, life is hellish amid the fumes of flaming waste. Hell is watching your spouse perish surrounded by smoke from the wasteyard, in common hours. Ask Yisa Salami, whose wife suddenly slumped and died while doing the laundry. “She was not sick. She simply collapsed and died while washing clothes,” said the 62-year-old.
Gaslighters - The Nation Newspaper

1 month ago | thenationonlineng.net | Olatunji Ololade

Gaslighters live on fancied time. A curious affliction bedecks their psyche—I’d call it antipathy for bitter truth. In Nigeria, this anomaly transcends personal and social relationships and spills into the political space. Whether online or offline, gaslighting manifests in layered self-deception; it presents as a shared national pastime where illusion is venerated and reality is exiled.
There is no perfect nation to be born

2 months ago | thenationonlineng.net | Olatunji Ololade

There is no perfect nation to be born yet Nigeria is deemed an ultimate hell to every newborn. Thus the rat race by most Nigerians to Japa. In 2013, an Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) report ranked the country 80th out of 80 countries assessed in its Where-to-be-born-index. Twelve years on, Nigerians throng American and European consulates in a frantic bid to Japa.
The artist as Nigeria’s true architect

2 months ago | thenationonlineng.net | Olatunji Ololade

A nation is more than its borders and governance. It is the sum of its stories, the melody of its anthems, the rhythm of its cultural heartbeat. Where politics flounders and policies fail, the arts endure, casting in ink, film, and sound, the indomitable essence of a people. The soul of every nation is thus enshrined in its stories, the verses of its poets, the visions of its filmmakers, and melodies of its musicians.