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Tag: Africans

  • Seven countries Africans are relocating to and why

    Seven countries Africans are relocating to and why

    Relocation in 2025 is no longer only about moving for “greener pastures.” It’s about strategy, opportunity and long-term vision. Africans are choosing destinations that align with their careers, education and lifestyle goals. The countries below are rising in appeal, thanks to visa reforms, economic openings and improved pathways for new arrivals.

    1. Canada

    Canada remains a top choice for African migrants. The country’s Express Entry and Provincial Nominee programs make it one of the easiest destinations to gain permanent residency. With a strong job market, political stability, and a high standard of living, it’s not hard to see why more Africans –  especially Nigerians – are making Canada their second home.

    2. Germany

    Germany’s new Skilled Immigration Act has opened doors for non-EU professionals in tech, engineering, and healthcare. The country is facing a labour shortage, and Africans with relevant qualifications now have easier access to long-term work visas and residency options.

    3. United Kingdom

    Despite tightening immigration rules, the UK remains a hotspot for African students and graduates. The Graduate Visa allows international students to work for up to two years after completing their studies, making it an appealing route for those hoping to transition from education to employment.

    4. Portugal

    Portugal’s charm lies in its relaxed lifestyle, low cost of living, and remote-work-friendly policies. The Digital Nomad Visa, introduced to attract global talent, has made it a new favourite among Africans working in tech, media, and creative industries.

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    5. United Arab Emirates (UAE)

    The UAE –  particularly Dubai and Abu Dhabi –  continues to draw Africans looking for tax-free earnings and international exposure. With “green visas,” freelance permits, and remote-work programs, it offers modern infrastructure and business opportunities across multiple sectors.

    6. Australia

    Australia’s skilled migration program remains one of the most organized globally. African professionals are finding opportunities through state-sponsored visas in healthcare, education, and trade industries. Its work-life balance and multicultural society add to its appeal.

    7. Rwanda

    Rwanda has quickly become one of Africa’s most forward-thinking nations. Known for its safety, cleanliness, and growing tech scene, Kigali is attracting returnees and entrepreneurs looking to build locally rather than move abroad.

  • ‘Africans will be better off with single economy’ 

    ‘Africans will be better off with single economy’ 

    • Malema chides xenophobia
    • Sultan seeks justice access for the poor

    Africa needs a single economy with one currency and military command to be stronger, South African opposition leader and President of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), Julius Malema, recommended yesterday.

    He issued a rallying call for the continent to stand together and resist what he called the continued subjugation by developed economies.

    In a keynote speech that drew a standing ovation from thousands of lawyers attending the Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) in Enugu, with the theme: “Stand out, stand tall,” Malema said Africa must also break the cycle of dependency.

    He deplored the situation where Africa’s minerals are processed overseas and resold to the continent at exorbitant cost as finished goods.

    He believes African countries can harness their areas of strength and forge a formidable united entity.

    Malema, who lauded Nigeria’s role in the anti-Apartheid battle, described xenophobia – the dislike of people from other countries – as a “betrayal” of African unity.

    “Nigerians are not the cause of South Africa’s unemployment crisis,” he said in reference to the attacks that led to the evacuation of Nigerians from the country in 2019.

    Malema said: “We demand one Africa, we demand a borderless Africa, we demand an Africa with one president, one currency, one military command, with one parliament.

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    ”We know the currency of Africa will be much stronger against the American currency. We don’t care what Donald Trump or any other leader thinks of us.

    “Africans must refuse to be subjects of others. We must stand together as the world changes and show the world that Africa is one and equal to all nations.”

    Malema said Africa cannot be described as a “dark continent” when it is endowed with diamonds.

    “How can we be a dark continent when we have diamonds shining among us?

    “We must make sure that no single corner of Africa witnesses Africans killing each other.

    “We must unite against the forces that seek to exploit us.

    ”The land belongs to Africans, and the minerals of Africa must be returned to Africans.

    “We have the capacity to create industries and process our minerals here.

    “We must never allow imperialist forces to divide us in order to take our wealth,” he said.

    He advocated visa-free movement across the continent, adding that its salvation lies “in Lagos and Johannesburg, in Abuja and Pretoria, in the hands of Africans who refuse to be divided”.

    Malema hailed Nigeria for standing firmly with South Africa, describing the West African country as “a comrade nation.”

    “Xenophobia is a sickness borne of poverty, inequality, and government failure.

    “Africans must love themselves, not kill one another. Black people are not loved in Africa, and not loved abroad either, but we must learn to treat ourselves better,” he said.

    The opposition leader urged Africa to end the “debt trap to our foreign colonisers”.

    Getting out of the debt burden, he said, “begins by regulating these loans that our leaders commit future generations to, because they will not be there when the colonisers come to collect them.”

    Sultan seeks rule of law observance

    Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Sa’ad Abubakar, who chaired the opening, said law must target justice as the ultimate objective.

    He called for reforms that will bring laws closer to “our values” and address exclusion from access to justice that can result in uprising.

    “Today, justice is increasingly becoming a purchasable commodity and the poor are becoming victims of miscarriage of justice while the rich commit all manner of crime and walk the streets scot-free,” he said.

    Setting agenda for lawyers, he added: ““By the theme of the conference, you’re resolving to uphold the principles of the rule of law, to ensure that everyone, including those in power, are subject to and accountable under the law and that the law is applied fairly and equally, so that no one operates above the law.”

    Osigwe preaches sacrifice

    NBA President Mazi Afam Osigwe (SAN) urged Nigerians to embrace courage, sacrifice and commitment to justice and equity.

    He said: “Standing tall means being unbending in our defence of the rule of law, equity and justice and being principled in the face of power and unwavering in our pursuit of national progress.

    “We must have the courage of conviction in moments where silence will otherwise be more comfortable.

    “To build a strong and economically viable nation, sacrifice will routinely be required of individual citizens,” he said.

    Mbah: no devt without trusted justice system

    Enugu State Governor Peter Mbah, who declared the conference open, stressed that no one should be too poor to afford justice in Nigeria.

    He said development cannot be achieved without “a justice system that is fair, functional and trusted.”

    According to him, the theme of the conference is a timely reminder of the responsibility lawyers have.

    The governor, also a lawyer, said Enugu was among the first states to implement financial autonomy for the judiciary.

    He said his administration is digitalising the courtrooms and introducing verbatim recording systems.

    The governor welcomed lawyers to Enugu and urged them to enjoy the state’s hospitality.

  • Wealthy Africans often don’t pay tax: The answer lies in smarter collection

    Wealthy Africans often don’t pay tax: The answer lies in smarter collection

    By Giovanni Occhiali

    Faced with some of the worse debt levels in over a decade, African countries are struggling to find ways to balance their books. Increasing revenue sources from their citizens is an obvious place to look.

    A good starting point for African countries would be to focus on the tax contribution of wealthy citizens. This is because the most underperforming taxes across the African continent are those bearing on the income of wealthy individuals, namely personal income and property taxes.

    The reasons for this are twofold: People who are better off in some countries often remain invisible to tax authorities. This is even though they have higher tax liabilities. Compare this with citizens who have formal labour contracts. Think of public school teachers or supermarket clerks. Their taxes are withheld by their employers. This makes tax evasion impossible. Most taxes on personal income in Africa are paid by citizens in these forms of employment.

    In contrast, prior to 2015, only one of the top 71 Ugandan government officials and 17 of the country 60 most successful lawyers paid any personal income tax. Similarly, only 16% of all landlords identified in Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone, during a registration drive in 2021 had registered for taxes.

    This shows that wealthy Africans face lower effective tax rates than average citizens, replicating a trend already demonstrated for the relative tax burden of small and large companies.

    This situation is disheartening. But there are immediate steps that African revenue authorities can take to address this unfairness.

    Research led by the International Centre for Tax and Development, to which I have contributed, shows that revenue increases from wealthy citizens can be obtained by focusing on better enforcement of existing taxes rather than by introducing new ones or hiking tax rates.

    An effective approach to increase wealthy citizens’ tax contribution relies on three strategies:

    • Their identification

    • A simplification of tax compliance processes, and

    • The effective enforcement of existing taxes.

    While these suggestions might seem banal, they can lead to some quick revenue gains: as much as US$5.5 million in Uganda or US$900,000 in a single Nigerian state in one year, or tripling property tax revenue collection in Sierra Leone.

    But these improvements require changes in the way African revenue authorities operate.

    Tax collection services need change of focus

    Revenue services in all African countries need to be better resourced. A typical tax officer on the continent might be responsible for as many as 10 times the number of taxpayers than a tax officer in the Global North.

    First, their efforts need to be redirected away from the registration of small informal businesses. These efforts have been shown to contribute little revenue in countries as diverse as South Africa and Sierra Leone.

    Instead their efforts should be directed a developing a definition of high-net-worth individual appropriate for their domestic context. In Uganda this includes criteria such as having performed land transactions of approximately US$300,000 over five years, or earning approximately US$150,000 in rental income in any given year.

    Due to its federal structure, criteria in Nigeria vary across states, for example including a yearly income above N2 million in Borno and Kano states, with the threshold rising to N15 million in Imo State, N20 million in Niger State and N25 million in Lagos State.

    However, in both countries criteria also cover less directly measurable assets, such as owning high-value commercial forestry or animal ranches in Uganda, or having received contracts from the government in Nigeria’s Kaduna State.

    Property taxes are especially important. Research in Ethiopia and Rwanda shows that investing in real estate represents one of the main strategies to store wealth when inflation and foreign exchange fluctuation make bank deposits unattractive.

    These properties then contribute to increasing the income of wealthy citizens who rent them out or resell them for profit. While we lack granular data on capital gains or rental income taxes, there are good reasons to think they are also significantly underperforming. Capital gains refers to the additional value which an investor accrues when disposing of assets such as houses or companies share previously bought at a lower price.

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    Second, this should be followed by the creation of an office to follow the affairs of high net-worth individuals. This already happens for large taxpayers. Most countries, including the majority of Anglophone African countries, have a dedicated office following the tax affairs of large companies active in their territory.

    Having dedicated resources for high net-worth individuals would be useful because using the international definition (a net worth of US$1 million) might be hard to operationalise. The reason for this is that most revenue authorities lack detailed data on assets owned by their taxpayers. Even when they know some information, such as the number of houses, estimates of their market value might be lacking.

    African countries are better off relying on data already in their possession as they seek to collect further useful information on their taxpayers. This allows the establishment of a set of multiple core and non-core criteria.

    Third, high-net worth individual units require substantial backing. In the first instance from revenue authorities’ senior management, who in turn needs to have the support of the government in pursuing often well-connected individuals. This backing is needed for actions as apparently easy as obtaining data from other government agencies, without which identification efforts could be quickly thwarted, and becomes crucial when it’s time to move to enforcement.

    However, a cooperative approach should be the initial choice. One approach is voluntary disclosure programmes with associated tax amnesties. These are useful to obtain information about the assets of wealthy citizens. Additionally, they contribute substantial revenue – as much as US$296 million in South Africa and US$192 million in Nigeria.

    Fourth, requiring candidates running for public office to obtain tax clearance certificates can also be an important source of information and revenue. This has been shown to work in both Uganda and Nigeria.

    This set of actions represents an optimal starting point for African countries looking to improve the tax contribution of wealthy citizens.

    Efforts to produce suitable guidance for wealth taxation for low-income countries by the United Nations, or to introduce a global wealth tax on billionaire by the Brazilian G20, are important to highlight the role of fiscal redistribution in addressing inequality. But many African countries are better off by first being bold about the basics of their tax systems, which can already make them more effective and progressive.

    •Occhiali is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, United Kingdom. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. https://theconversation.com/wealthy-africans-often-dont-pay-tax-the-answer-lies-in-smarter-collection-expert-252437”

  • ‘Why Africans should be proud of continent’

    ‘Why Africans should be proud of continent’

    The Group Chief Executive Officer of Felak Concept Group, Aisha Aichimugu, OFR, has urged Africans to be proud of their continent.

    The businesswoman stated this when she received an award at the 2024 African Achievers Awards in the House of Parliament, UK, where she was honoured as the African Female Business Leader of the Year for her contributions to the business sector in Nigeria and Africa as a whole.

    In her speech, Achimugu stated that Africans are great people created by God.

    She affirmed that the continent has produced great people who are doing great all over the world and who are also proud of where they come from.

    “I feel very proud to be an African. Not just being an African, being black African. If you’re proud to be an African please clap for yourself. Africa is a great continent with great people created by God and we are proud of it.

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    “We should move away from making empty speeches. We should endeavour to walk the talk so as to make Africa great,’’ she said.

    The entrepreneur also thanked the organisers of the award for recognising African achievers while also congratulating other honorees. 

    Other honorees at the prestigious ceremony included Visu Thembekwayo, Founder and CEO of MyGrowth Fund Venture Partner, South Africa; Barrister Caleb Muftwang, Governor of Plateau State, Nigeria; Olu of Warri, Ogiame Atuwatse III, Gospel Singer Moses Bliss; amongst others.

  • Isese priest to Africans: stop bearing foreign names

    Isese priest to Africans: stop bearing foreign names

    Oyo State Secretary of Traditional Religion Worshippers Association (TRWA), Dr. Fayemi Fakayode, has expressed reservation about Africans bearing foreign names.

    He said such names have no correlation with the circumstances of their births and how they will succeed in life.

    He said the best names that bring fortunes to a child are ancestral names, “as it is easy to seek the right path to a successful life when divination (Ifa) is consulted.”

     Speaking at the installation of Iyanifa Fakayode, an African-American formerly called Mrs. Dawn Millings-Obidiebube as Yeye Gbawoniyi of Ijo Imole Olodumare Agbaye, held at Olodumare’s Temple of Light International, Fakayode said there was need to consult divination and make appeasement to individuals’ spiritual identity (Ori), through unique Yoruba names given to concerned persons after birth.

    He said people seeking wealth and healthy living from other means than their unique spiritual being (Ori) were doing so in vain until they made appeasement to their own spirit.

        Said he: “African names, especially Yoruba names, have uniqueness and are very significant to how we live our lives. They are like the purveyors of good or bad to the bearers, which is why the Yoruba check the divine path of each new born baby in connection with his or her name.”

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    He urged parents to pick Yoruba names that have significance on the birth of their children and easy to relate with as the children grow in life, saying foreign names contribute towards misfortunes of most Africans.

    Speaking about the installation, Fakayode said he was happy that most Africans, whose forbearers were taken to America and Europe during the slave trade, had been tracing their ways back to Africa and their traditional religion.

     Iyanifa Fakayode advised Africans to appreciate their tradition and culture because, according to her, “Yoruba tradition has been established to be the best among others in the world.”

  • France’s inhumanity to Africans

    France was perhaps not the worst foreign power in Africa during colonial rule but it is, without question, the cruelest post-colonial tormentor of former African colonies. I will elaborate. But first, let me explain what prompted this intentionally angry outburst: an account by Sahara Reporters titled “France Honours African Fighters in Ceremony to Commemorate WW-II”, a ceremony at which French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly paid tributes to about 260, 000 brave soldiers from Francophone Africa who fought alongside allied troops for the liberation of France from the clutches of Nazi Germany 75 years ago this August. Helpless under Nazi military oppression, France could only be rescued by the combined expeditionary forces of the Allied Powers, including hundreds of thousands of brave soldiers from several African colonies, during and immediately after the Normandy invasion in 1944.

    At the event held in Saint-Raphael in southeast France, and surprisingly witnessed by presidents of two Francophone West African countries (Alpha Conde of Guinea and Alassane Ouattara of Cote d’Ivoire), President Macron said of the African fighters that “the names, the faces, the lives of these heroes of Africa must be part of our lives as free citizens.” That would ordinarily pass for a noble and laudable sentiment, except for the uncomfortable fact that the same France not only committed and is still responsible for the most horrendous atrocities imaginable in and against African nations and their peoples. France is directly and indubitably culpable, although I do not excuse the agency and culpability of African leaders, in the severe retardation and backwardness of its former African possessions.

    What is most ironic is that the President of Guinea-Conakry, the colony whose open defiance of continued French domination of Africa in 1958 opened the floodgates for independence for the rest of Francophone Africa, and which President Charles de Gaulle deliberately subjected to the most callous punishments, would grace such an occasion. Let me quickly remind us that it was in Conakry, the capital of Guinea, during his tour of the colonies in 1958 to market his proposal for a French African community, that the arrogant President de Gaulle suffered his worst public humiliation at the hands of the radical trade unionist and political mobilizer, Ahmed Sekou Toure, who trenchantly demanded for independence for Guinea rather than to be part of any nebulous French community. Angrily, he agreed to grant independence to Guinea but subjected it to the most callous and malevolent punishment to snuff life out of the new sovereign country. Whatever the French could not cart away from the country they destroyed, including physical infrastructure, schools, buildings, agricultural equipment, vehicles, even books, thereby sending it back into a state worse than its pre-colonial existence, exactly what they did to Haiti more than 200 years ago. It had to take Ghana’s immediate injection of a grant of ten million pounds to prevent the country from going under. Much more horrible treatment awaited Algeria, the territory that the French loved to regard as an overseas extension of mainland France; it had to fight a most brutal war of independence in which millions of lives were lost and extensive physical destruction deliberately inflicted on it.

    But enough of colonial history already. A cursory look at France’s atrocious and sadistic treatment of its former colonies in the so-called ‘post-colonial’ era will not fail to convince even the most skeptical that France takes the prize for the cruelest post-colonial (read neo-colonial) power in Africa. Since the grant of independence had been made inevitable by Guinea from 1958 onwards, most French colonies became independent in 1960, and France enslaved all of them by setting the most ignoble neo-colonist traps for them, traps that validate Nkrumah’s assertion that any country in the clutches of neo-colonialism is never a master of its own destiny. No Francophone African country is a master of its own affairs. At so-called independence France corralled them into signing one-sided military and defence agreements, which included basing French troops on their soils, infusion of French military intelligence personnel into their defence and security establishments. France is the only former colonial power with its troops permanently based in several African countries (Senegal, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, etc) to pursue and defend exclusively French national interests, including to support friendly governments, as well as to overthrow and assassinate recalcitrant leaders such as Sylvanus Olympio of Togo and Jean Bedel Bokassa of Central African Republic.

    As if that is not pernicious enough, it cleverly wove their economies into France’s economy, tied them together into a single currency whose value is dictated from Paris, compels them to save their external reserves in the French treasury in Paris, from which it gives them loans for development, collects and pockets the accrued interests! This is apart from compelling them to sell most of their primary produce to France, and import mostly French-made products and award their most important infrastructure development contracts only to French firms, and then to other countries only if there are no willing French takers. And this is besides forcing them to pay millions of dollars annually for whatever infrastructure – roads, railways, airports, dams, electricity station, and bridges – that the French had built in colonial times to facilitate resource plunder, and at rates determined by Paris. Have you ever wondered why Africa is full of failed states!

    I don’t know any neo-colonial peonage worse than this, and France is the sole author and beneficiary of it. Now you may understand my assertion that France is the cruelest foreign power in post-colonial Africa. That is why Macron’s egregious tributes to fallen African soldiers who helped to liberate France from German oppression are not sincere. What can be more sincere and honourable than ensuring that peoples who made such enormous sacrifices for France are treated with respect rather than their countries being held in perpetual servitude?

    Today, France exhibits all the outward impressions of a prosperous first world power only because of the tyranny of its ne-colonialism, its relentless pillage of the vast resources of its former African colonies, its control of their national economies and the callous extraction of colonial debts, a national wealth built on sheer inhumanity. Even Jacques Chirac, former French president, sincerely owned up to this in 2008 when he noted that “without Africa, France will slide down into the rank of a third world power.” Take for example Niger Republic’s rich uranium mines which are guarded by French forces, providing security for French firms exploiting the strategic mineral. France is nothing but a country whose prosperity is based on the proceeds of heinous crimes against the humanity of Africans and a country whose leaders are hardly better than conscienceless armed robbers. It is frankly nauseating that such people also have the guts to condemn us for being unable to develop the same states they selfishly pauperized.

    Not making excuses for the two African leaders who attended that ceremony in France, they are not unaware of how vicious and vengeful French leaders could be if humiliated, and attended to avoid any unpleasant consequences. The French should be exposed for their ignoble role in retarding Africa’s progress.

     

    • Prof Fawole writes from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.

     

  • Africans and GMO foods

    Sir: An agricultural engineering method which includes the artificial inclusion of a new (and most times greater) trait to plants as opposed to the traditional cross-breeding is called Genetically Modified Organisms (G.M.O). GM plants are those that have been processed in a laboratory in order to make them resistant to diseases, pests and certain environmental conditions. Selective breeding or artificial selection has been practiced for ages in order to influence the characteristics of organism; however, it was in the 1900s, after the scientific discoveries of DNA that gave rise to GM foods.

    GM foods cause controversy for a number of reasons and it remains a divisive issue worldwide, especially within Europe. For instance, 19 out of the 28 member countries, including France, Germany, Austria, Greece, Hungary, The Netherlands, Poland, Denmark, Malta, Slovenia, Italy and Croatia are calling for a total ban of the GM foods. So far, the only GM crop grown in the EU (within Spain and Portugal mainly) is the GM Maize MON810; manufactured by Monsanto; an American Multinational Biotechnology Company. There is the fear that GM foods have potentials to cause harm to human and animal health and eco-systems; and due to this, the Green Peace (an environmental activist group) has strongly protested against GM foods.

    The environmental safety aspect of GM crops varies considerably according to local conditions. These fears range from stability of the gene, the persistence of the gene after such food has been harvested, reduction in the spectrum of other plants, including loss of biodiversity and increased use of chemicals in agriculture. Fears arising from the varied laws governing GMO across Europe have necessitated many groups and individuals to call for the total ban across Europe. In Africa; only South Africa permitted GM foods; Burkina Faso, Sudan and Egypt permitted only cotton of which Burkina Faso later revoked that permission due to issues bordering on environmental safety.

    Monsanto is an American Multinational Bio-technology Company that offers farmers a wide range of solutions from crops seeds like corn, Soybean, cotton, wheat and sorghum to vegetable seeds crop protection products and data solutions. Monsanto’s role in agricultural changes, biotechnology products and lobbying of government agencies, and roots as a chemical company, resulted in controversial products such as the insecticide DDT, PCBs, Agent Orange and recombinant bovine growth Hormone. Monsato is currently the biggest producer and manufacturers of GM foods.

    Looking at these, one is left in no doubt why the GM food is causing serious controversies in Europe and the world. Technology is great, technology is an achievement, and technology should be desired and longed for but not all technological advancement creates or adds value to the society. GM foods, is one of those advancements.

    • William,

     nwanucci@yahoo.co.uk

  • Perception of Africans to dance has changed – Kaffy

    World record dancer and founder of Imagneto Dance Company, Kaffy, has said dance in Africa has been accepted with integrity.

    According to Kaffy, whose real name is Kafayat Oluwatoyin Shafau, there is a different perception of dance and dancers in Africa now.

    “Dance in Africa is now something that has been accepted with integrity,” said Kaffy.

    “I thank God that so far so good in the past 19years i think i can beat my chest to say that I have been able to change a lot of things and perception concerning; first of all the sustainability of dance as seen as a career option.

    “Also the look and feel of being a dancer in general, where parents are scared of security challenges like what is your plan for the future?. Who are you going to end up marrying? And what kind of children are you going to bred? Is there guarantee that you can sustain your home? Among others were the driving forces that propelled me to want to get it right and correct all these fear.”

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    “And every time I took a left turn, I make sure I discover the right one, which had led us here.”

    she also shared the value of dancers.  “I can go on with the value of dancers in the industry; which is the reason i am giving it this much sacrifice and believing this much because dance has helped me stay off the street and helped me maintain my sanity. And i am here to help you guys understand the power of dance; that before man could speak, he moved. He gesticulated, he actually had to use actions to express himself and that is how powerful dance is.

    “Dance can be used to express love, it can be used to charged warriors for war, it can be use to communicate for peace, it can be used to celebrate. I don’t see anything that dances is not embedded in. Even for our health and state of mind. I have never seen anybody that dance and does it with sadness. So for me, if dance is that powerful, that is how much i knew that i can do so much helping people through dance. As well as the health sector too.

    Kaffy is also a choreographer and fitness coach.

  • Golden Boot for worthy Africans

    The English game was a spectacle to behold last Sunday, with the last 10 matches of the Barclays English Premier League producing plenty of drama, twists and turns as the game rolled its course of 90 minutes. The attention was on Anfield where Liverpool, with 94 points, were engaged in a must-win tie against giant killers Wolves. The Reds won 2-0. The fans listened to radio commentaries or checked livescore.com for the results as Manchester City pushed to retain the title with an away tie against Brighton. The Citizens won by 4-1. Manchester City were champions again.

    The stories in the week cut across the teams, but the most significant was the emergence of three Africans – Mohammed Salah (Liverpool), Sadio Mane (Liverpool) and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (Arsenal) – as joint highest goal scorers with 22 goals. As the games were going on, pundits were coming up with various theories to decide the eventual winner of the Golden Boot. Some of the theories included the first of the three scorers to get to 22. Others argued for the number of assists they provided for teammates to score goals. The rest talked about the quality of opposition against whom these scorers got their goals. Those in this last school mischievously pointed at Romelu Lakuku’s penchant for scoring against weaker teams and freezing like ice-cream before top-notch teams. Lukaku, happily, scored goals for Belgium at the Russia 2018 World Cup against Panama (two goals) and Tunisia (two goals). The Mundial isn’t a platform for Lilliputians. In the annals of the World Cup, Lukaku is a renowned goal-scorer.

    Until the final day’s games, Salah was ahead with 21 goals, although Mane and Aubameyang had scored 20 goals each. Goals make a game exciting, and it was good to hear or watch Africans adding to the spectacle with breath-taking goals in one of Europe’s biggest league competition. Years past, nothing good could have come out of the ‘Dark Continent’.

    Salah, Aubameyang and Mane are involved in Cup finals where they can score goals with aplomb to underscore the contributions of Africans to the beautiful game in the last decade. Mane and Salah will lead  Liverpool’s attacking onslaught against Tottenham in the finals of the UEFA Champions League on June 1 in Spain. Aubameyang can also increase his goals tally this season when he files onto the pitch with Arsenal in the finals of the Europa Cup against Chelsea on May 29 in Baku.

    If Liverpool and Arsenal triumph in the Champions League final against Tottenham and in the Europa Cup final against Chelsea, then the final of the Super Cup will be the turf to settle their difference, depending on how well they score in the two final matches.

    It is quite interesting to note that three Africans (Aubameyang, Salah and Mane with 22 goals each) rank behind Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi in goal-scoring, not withstanding what the duo have done this season. Ronaldo and Messi have surpassed the 600-goal mark, though Ronaldo did his with several clubs, unlike Messi who did his with Barcelona.

    Aubameyang, in a post-match comment, told The Sun: ‘’It means a lot. I am really happy and proud of it. I am sharing this trophy with Mane and Salah – and I like these two guys. We are representing Africa so it is a good sign for the continent. I am really proud and I have to thank my team-mates for helping me to get it.’’

    “It was a tough season, but I had the chance to score goals because the team played a great season. Of course, the last months were not the best in the Premier League, but the whole season, we put in a great effort. I was near (to a hat-trick) but sometimes that can happen,” Aubameyang said.

    Salah, who scored 32 goals last season to clinch the crown, retained the highest goal scorer’s award with 22 goals. He shares the award with two others. However, Salah scored 32 goals last season to clinch the crown. Will Salah dump Liverpool if the side fails to lift the UEFA Champions League in Spain on June 1? Or will he stay with the Reds next season with a victory over Tottenham Hotspurs?

    “I say congratulations to Manchester City and we will fight again next season for this trophy. I don’t know what to say. We had a great season,” Salah told beIN SPORTS.

    “We earned a huge number of points and lost only one game, but we have to forget all of that and think about the next season in order to win the title. It’s great to share the Golden Boot with Sadio Mane. Winning the award for the second time is an incredible feeling,” Salah concluded.

    Records were broken in this year’s EPL, such that a team which lost one game and grabbed 97 points didn’t win the trophy. Previously, such points-haul was enough for the title, except for the previous season when champions Manchester City got 100 points to set a competition record. City retained the title this year with 98 points. Will City win the league title a third time on the trot? Possibly, more so as manager Pep Guardiola isn’t in a hurry to leave the team. He is willing to stay with the Citizens for another two years.

    Manchester City will on Sunday aim to beat Watford FC at Wembley to lift the English FA Cup, their third domestic title this season. Certainly, Guardiola would have loved to be in the final, with his achievement this season. He has to strengthen his team and learn what the finer details of winning the UEFA Champions League diadem are, beyond having the best players in your camp.

     

    Iheanacho is a good player

     

    What kind of soccer analysts do we have here? Yes, people have a right to express themselves on topical issues. But such views become worrisome when they destroy other people’s future. Our football critics need to take it easy because what we say or write goes viral. It is unfair to pillory Kelechi Iheanacho simply because he is listed in Nigeria’s provisional squad for the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations holding in Egypt.

    Iheanacho could not have forced himself on the coach, who must have seen something good in him. Besides, we must learn how to support our players when they have issues with their clubs or they have things bothering them. We must stop inviting players to play for us and dumping them when they are either distressed or have lost form.

    When some analysts criticise, they forget that any player who sits on the bench is as good as those playing. In fact, some coaches keep certain players on the bench only to field them to plug loopholes in the team in the second half. We have seen many players coming off the bench to score goals or change the fortune of their teams for the better.

    I wonder why these analysts are after Iheanacho’s jugular for not playing, but keep mute over the invitation of Leon Balogun and Francis Uzoho. Iheanacho is closer to being fielded by sitting on the bench. Balogun sits at the stands, not listed for most of Brighton’s matches. Does it make sense not to invite a match-rusty Iheanacho, but list an injury-hit Odion Ighalo?

    This analogy raises the poser of club players and national team players. It also means that the coach knows how to field Iheanacho and Balogun to bring out their best, for instance, than the coaches at Leicester City and Brighton. Rohr, in picking the three players, wants to see them train with their mates to ascertain their true form. Rohr wants them for their experience. No manager throws away experience, especially of players who were at the last World Cup in Russia.

    No European coach will bench any international for a foreigner. They always like to protect theirs. For Iheanacho to play regularly, he has to bench Jamie Vardy, an England international. Besides, Vardy is a club hero at Leicester. Not fielding such stars puts coaches on the spot. I  think that Iheanacho can bench Vardy if given the playing time Vardy enjoys. Players can only correct themselves if given more playing time. Playing for a few minutes towards the end of games isn’t soul lifting.

    Premier League teams would rather give their players more playing time than allow foreign stars take over the league. This is because England would not watch foreign stars dwarf its own local stars, forcing them to travel overseas and ultimately killing the local league. This cycle, in turn, affects the economy because when England keeps its stars at home, money stays at home; there would be no need to spend what should be used to develop England’s economy outside England.

    New coaches, most times, work with what they have. Where they recruit new players, they stick to them. When I see Iheanacho on the bench, I sympathise with him because the coach who recruited him has been sacked.

    Iheanacho should, therefore, join West Ham next season if the story making the rounds in the transfer market is true. Under Coach Manuel Luis Pellegrini Ripamonti, Iheanacho kissed the headlines and gave big European players something to ponder over weekly. Iheanacho scored 12 goals under Pellegrini in the Premier League (8) and Champions League (4). He couldn’t have suddenly become a bad player. If Iheanacho is, he won’t be in Europe.

  • Black History Month: ‘Africa must tap potentials of Africans in the diaspora’

    In order to develop the continent, Africans have been reminded of the need to bridge the gap between it and Africans in the diaspora.

    Participants gave this advice on Thursday at a panel discussion organised by the United States Embassy, Abuja in commemoration of the Black History Month.

    The theme of the event was “Building bridges between Africa and the Diaspora.”

    The Black History Month began in 1926 in the United States when historian Carter Wooden and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History announced the second week of February as “Negro History Week.”

    Aside from the lecture, there will be a performance by the Theatre Arts Department of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria to showcase African-American contributions to the arts.

    The performance titled “The Meeting” is a play about the meeting between two prominent black- American civil right activists, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr in 1965 during the height of the civil right movement in the US.

    According to the African Union, the African Diaspora is composed of “people of African origin living outside of the continent, irrespective of their citizenship and nationality, and who are willing to contribute to the development of the continent and the building of the African Union.”

    Speaking at the event, Tanya Hill, an officer with the American embassy said the Black History Month is very important because it helps the “lost” diaspora find a connection to their roots.

    Ms Hill, who is an African American, said though she has not traced her descent in Africa, she is proud about everything that makes her African.

    She said as a child of the slave trade, she can only trace her genealogical roots to the 19th century.

    She, however, said it is very important to African countries to start building bridges with Africans in the diaspora.

    This, she said, has become important as it can assist with the socioeconomic development of the continent.

    Ms Hills said revaluing the relationship with Africans in the diaspora is a great way to bridge the gap between people of African descent across the globe. She said many black Africans have been doing so through DNA genealogical tracing of their roots,

    According to the African Union, the African Diaspora is composed of “people of African origin living outside of the continent, irrespective of their citizenship and nationality, and who are willing to contribute to the development of the continent and the building of the African Union.”