By Oyekunle Olalekan

That fragile moment when the body relaxes before the journey ends. When the mind moves ahead of the plane, stepping already into tomorrow. Below them, the land unfolded – wet, familiar, waiting. Port Harcourt breathed under the rain, unaware of how many stories were descending toward it.

They were aboard Sosoliso Airline Flight 1145, traveling from Abuja, descending toward Port Harcourt.
A routine journey. A trusted path.

Among them were students. Young voices carrying laughter from Abuja back to the places that shaped them. Schoolbags tucked beneath seats, futures folded carefully inside. The cabin filled with normal sounds. Seatbelts fastened. A familiar announcement.

But they were not alone.

There were parents too, travelling with quiet endurance. Strangers bound together briefly by chance and shared air. Lives intersecting for only a few hours, never knowing how closely their fates had aligned. Each seat held a history. Each name carried someone else’s heart.

The cabin was filled with normalcy. Seatbelts clicked. The familiar announcement was made. Almost there. No one prepares for loss while preparing to land.

Rain followed them in silence. It fell steadily, blurring sky and earth, erasing certainty. The city below dimmed, and in that narrowing space between cloud and ground, time faltered. What happened next came without permission, without mercy.

And then… impact.
And then… absence.

What remained was not only twisted metal, but waiting. Phones that rang into nothing. Families pacing airport floors long after arrival time had passed. Names repeated until they lost their shape.

They were students.
They were parents.
They were individuals whose lives did not deserve to end as headlines.

Twenty years have passed. Twenty years of birthdays uncelebrated. Of classrooms that never felt quite full again. Of parents who learned how to live with a silence that does not heal. Time moved forward, as it always does, but grief did not dissolve; it only changed shape.

A nation mourned not just what was lost, but what was unfinished, the futures that never unfolded, the questions that lingered about responsibility, about safety, about whether this loss could have been prevented.

Grief does not discriminate. It visits the young and the old alike. It settles into uniforms never worn again, into meals cooked for those who will never return.

They were almost home. That is what makes the loss unbearable. Not the distance, but the nearness. Not the journey, but the promise of arrival.

This is more than the story of a crash that happened twenty years ago. It is a reminder that every passenger matters, that safety is a responsibility, not a suggestion, that memory must outlive negligence.

They were almost home.

And now, two decades later, they live in remembrance.

RIP to the 107 lives lost that day.
Gone from sight, but never from memory.

By Oyekunle Olalekan

There was a time when the long stretch of highway running through the middle of Nigeria symbolised unity. It was the route that carried families to reunions, traders to markets, students to school, and workers to opportunity. That road was the lifeline that stitched our regions together, a shared path, a shared hope.

But today, that same road has become the nation’s most painful wound.

Across the central corridor, travellers now journey with trembling hearts. Buses move in fear, not confidence.

Every stop along the highway comes with silent prayers. The road that once connected homes now threatens to break them.

In recent months, the nation has woken up repeatedly to chilling news: travellers ambushed in the middle of the highway, entire buses hijacked, ransom calls echoing through the phones of helpless families.

Stories of kidnapped students, traders, children, and clergy have shaken communities to their core. Some victims were rescued after courageous operations; others are still missing, their families clinging to hope in the dark.

The human cost is immeasurable. Mothers stay awake through the night waiting for travel updates. Fathers count the hours, fearing the worst. Students postpone journeys out of dread.

Traders lose income because the safest option is to stay home. Even the most essential movement, the simple act of travelling across one’s own country has become a gamble with fate.

This is more than a regional crisis. When danger grips the central road that binds the country together, the entire nation bleeds. If that artery fails, movement fails. If movement fails, unity fails.

By Foluso Ojo Sylvanus

When Donald Trump sneezes, the political world catches a cold. Love him or loathe him, one thing you can’t deny is his brutal honesty or, to put it more bluntly, his lack of diplomatic restraint. And that, precisely, is what makes his recent action toward Nigeria all the more revealing.

For years, detractors have tried to stain the image of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu with every imaginable accusation from certificate forgery to phantom drug links in the United States. The propaganda was relentless, and many began to wonder if there might be a grain of truth somewhere in the noise. But Trump’s recent behavior has made something crystal clear to me: those allegations are nothing but lies from the pit of hell.

Let’s think about it. As a president of the United States, Trump has access to some of the most classified information in the world. If there were any credible evidence tying Tinubu to those allegations, Trump would know. And knowing his fiery, unfiltered style, he would have wasted no time spilling it to the world especially now that he seems desperate for opportunities to discredit Nigeria and ridicule Tinubu’s government.

But he hasn’t. Not a word. Not a whisper.

That silence speaks louder than a thousand tweets. It tells me that there’s simply nothing there no hidden file, no scandal, no secret waiting to explode. Because if there were, Trump would have been the first to weaponize it.

This is the same Trump who has insulted world leaders without blinking, who has mocked allies and enemies alike, who once called entire nations “shitholes.” Are we to believe that such a man would quietly hold on to damning information about Nigeria’s president out of respect or restraint? Certainly not.

His silence, therefore, becomes an unintended testimony a silent vindication of Tinubu’s integrity.

What this moment reveals is deeper than politics. It exposes how easily falsehood can masquerade as fact in our social media-driven age. For too long, we’ve allowed political opponents to define the narratives that shape our national image abroad. But now, even the world’s most outspoken leader has unintentionally confirmed what many of us have always believed: Tinubu’s story is not one of scandal but of survival, strategy, and statesmanship.

In a strange twist of irony, Donald Trump a man not exactly known for diplomacy may have just done more to clear President Tinubu’s name than all the press conferences in Abuja combined.