Alemayehu Atomsa, former chairman of the Oromo Peoples’ Democratic Organization (OPDO), one of the four parties that make up the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), and president of the Oromia regional state, the largest regional state in the country, has died of his illness.
It is high time that the intelligentsia renews the age-old spirit of public intellectual by recovering its connections with the social and political realities of the society, as our Columnist Taye Negussie (PhD) argues in this article
Relegating its traditional role of standing for truth, justice, and freedom only to the social activists, today the intelligentsia has become oblivious on the public scene. With the ever distancing of the intelligentsia from the day-to-day social, economic and political realities of the society, subsequently, the academia in many parts of the world has now turned to be an inert and lifeless intellectual environment. The members of the intelligentsia now seem more preoccupied with playing on dogmatic scientific doctrines and procedures than by the need to use intellectual ideas to deal with life’s concrete problems.
ABUJA – It was only a matter of time before Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan moved against Lamido Sanusi, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, who has spent much of the last year waging an anti-corruption campaign against the government. But, while Sanusi has been suspended, his corruption allegations cannot be withdrawn – and the public outcry that they have provoked cannot be silenced.
