Mehkurydiaries

Nigeria is 66 this year. At 66, a person is called an elder. A nation is still permitted to describe every failure as growing pains. History is a generous landlord. On 1 October 1960, the British flag came down and Nigeria’s flag rose. Political control changed hands. The harder work began: turning sovereignty into capacity. That work remains unfinished. In this year Independence Day address, President Bola Tinubu said the struggle was never merely for a flag or anthem. It carried the promise of opportunity, dignity and a better life. The Constitution is even less poetic. Sovereignty belongs to the people. Their security and welfare are the primary purpose of government. Not a charitable side project. The primary purpose. A country may control its borders while its citizens remain tenants inside it. When families must privately provide electricity, water, security, education, healthcare and sometimes the road leading home, the citizen carries a small government on his back. The...

There are numbers too large to be allowed to remain rumours. In Borgu, Niger State, residents say hundreds of people were abducted during coordinated attacks in August. Some estimate about 600. A youth association now says the number may be close to 700. The authorities have not supplied a verified figure. One month later, families are still asking the country to count the people it failed to protect. That should disturb us almost as much as the kidnapping itself. Counting is not paperwork performed after rescue. It is the beginning of rescue. You identify who is missing, where they lived, who saw them last, their ages, medical conditions and families. You build a record strong enough to resist forgetfulness. A person who has not been counted is easier for power to misplace. Nigeria is usually comfortable with large numbers. Billions are budgeted. Thousands of officers are deployed. Committees multiply faster than rabbits with government stationery. But when citizens disappea...

Poverty is usually presented as a percentage. Noma makes it impossible to look away. The disease begins inside a child’s mouth, often as inflammation of the gums. In malnourished children—especially where clean water, nutrition, hygiene and early care are scarce—it can move quickly through facial tissue and bone. It is bacteria exploiting a society’s neglect. The World Health Organization recognised noma as a neglected tropical disease in December 2023. Early detection can mean antibiotics, oral-hygiene support, nutritional supplements and healing without long-term consequences. Late detection can mean reconstructive surgery, difficulty eating and speaking, stigma—or death. The disease is cruel. Its timetable is crueller. This week, the Associated Press reported from Sokoto that Médecins Sans Frontières is providing free, multi-stage operations. More than 500 children were treated there between 2023 and 2025. One eight-year-old boy has undergone six operations since 2021. This ...

Nigeria now collects two taxes from many citizens. The first is deducted officially. The second waits at the petrol station. It requires no legislation, public hearing or mercy. On September 21, Reuters reported petrol selling around ₦1,400 per litre in Lagos and Abuja, reaching ₦1,500 in parts of the north. Diesel had crossed ₦2,000. These figures do not remain at the pump. Petrol is a restless traveller. It enters the bus fare. It follows the farmer to the market. It sits beside the generator in the barber’s shop. It hides inside sachet water, refrigerated medicine, bread and the delivery fee for nearly everything. In Nigeria, fuel is not merely an energy product. It is the operating system of daily survival. The painful irony is that this price surge has arrived while the Dangote refinery is reportedly operating at full capacity. Domestic refining has reduced dependence on imported finished fuel, but it has not built a wall around Nigeria. International crude prices still knock on ...

Thirty-seven people went into custody in Niger State. They did not come out alive. Many were artisanal gold miners. Some were teenagers. They had been arrested during raids on suspected illegal mining sites. They were suspects—not men sentenced to die in a locked room. Accounts of what happened remain disputed. The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps initially suggested a disease outbreak. Survivors told Reuters that nearly 70 detainees were crammed into a cell measuring roughly five square metres before officers allegedly sprayed an unidentified substance. The cause of death is now under investigation. The investigation must establish the facts. But the moral fact is already standing in the doorway: arrest is not conviction. A uniform is not a small courtroom with no appeal. Nigeria has grown dangerously familiar with punishment arriving before judgment. The poor are arrested first, explained later and sometimes buried before the paperwork learns their names. The presumption of...

Nigeria can launch an education programme in Abuja. A child in Amorji still has to learn to read on Monday. In July 2026, the government launched HOPE-EDU, a $552 million basic-education programme backed by the World Bank and the Global Partnership for Education. Its announced reach is enormous: about 29 million children and more than 500,000 teachers. Those figures deserve attention. They do not deserve applause in advance. I taught Basic Science and Basic Technology at Government Secondary School, Amorji, during my national service. A classroom teaches you what a podium cannot: a programme has not reached a child simply because that child appears in its target population. The lesson must be explained. The exercise must be marked. A confused pupil must be noticed before silence hardens into failure. Teachers need materials, time, support and an honest account of what their students actually understand. A photograph of new supplies is not the same thing as supplies that survive the ...

My laptop can run for four or five hours on a full charge. That should be enough for serious work. In Nigeria, it merely begins a negotiation with darkness. The battery dies precisely when thought becomes useful. Not because the machine is weak, but because public electricity has been absent long enough for private resilience to become another unpaid profession. We speak about power failure as though it were an inconvenience. It is not. It is a tax on thought. Every outage interrupts more than appliances. It breaks concentration, delays research, corrupts files, shortens equipment life and forces the worker to become a miniature power company. Before a Nigerian builds software, writes a paper or runs a business, he may first need to buy fuel, service a generator, replace an inverter battery and pray that the transformer has not entered eternal rest. Then we ask why innovation is expensive. The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission reported an average available grid-connected ge...

  Power has a peculiar smell in Nigerian politics. It draws men the way lanterns summon moths into flame. Every election cycle, a procession begins: senators, governors, lawmakers, and political drifters abandoning the opposition for the ruling party with the swagger of pilgrims who believe they have finally reached salvation. They cross carpets, wave brooms, chant new slogans, and kneel before cameras like repentant sinners entering a cathedral of power. Then the primaries arrive. And suddenly the cathedral becomes a slaughterhouse. The recent humiliation of defectors who fled to the APC expecting automatic tickets deserves to be studied in political science classrooms as a masterclass in ruthless power management. The ruling party welcomed many of them with smiles sharp enough to cut rope, allowed them to dance at rallies, pose for photographs, insult their former parties, and declare loyalty with theatrical enthusiasm. Then, when the real business began, the party machinery q...

  Within the last three years,Humans have been bombarded with inventions from the scientific world,technological feats considered impossible in the last few hundred years. Now what inventions are literally changing  humans as soon as the hit the world shelf ? Introducing mehkury Top 10... 1. NASA Mars Insight A Craft That Will Probe Beyond the Surface of Mars Built by NASA,Its expected to launch in May of 2018.Its purpose is to hammer a probe more than 16 ft. into the Martian surface to study the planet’s thermal history—in effect, taking its geological temperature. Meanwhile, the seismometers will study Mars’ composition, an X-ray radio link will analyze wobble (the way Mars spins on its axis and is gravitationally tugged by other bodies in the solar system), and cameras will send panoramic and 3-D pictures back to earth. Its usefulness need not to be overstated as it's obvious that if the perception and the knowledge of humans about Ma...