Nigeria’s democracy and its federalist architecture face two critical challenges. First is how to elect governors that are sufficiently literate and enlightened to understand the rudiments and responsibilities of governance. The second and perhaps more important challenge is how to get state governors to understand that democracy is only...
COLUMNIST
It is perhaps the most cursed portfolio in the Nigerian cabinet: Minister of Power. From Chief Bola Ige who famously promised to fix power in six months and could not, through the $16 billion power probe under President Olusegun Obasanjo that fixed nothing, to Adebayo Adelabu who in 2024...
There are moments in the life of a nation when an economic policy ceases to be a matter for government papers, economists and policy conferences and becomes painfully personal. For millions of Nigerians, the removal of fuel subsidy is one such moment. It is no longer merely about what...
Chidi Amuta In Nigeria today, the market of memoirs is now a field jammed with a buffet of titles by political mammals. And politicians in these parts have a penchant for poisoning most things they come into contact with. Anything hugged by Nigerian politics never remains the same. It...
By Sufuyan Ojeifo When Benue decided to go back to the altar for a governor, it was not out of lack of politicians. It was out of fatigue with politicians. The choice of Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Alia in 2023 was both redeeming and redemptive. It was redemptive for a...
Sometimes, a controversy that appears to be about one thing is really about something else. Former Anambra State governor and 2027 presidential candidate of the Nigerian Democratic Congress (NDC), Peter Obi, may have set out for Benue last week with the relatively simple intention of commiserating with victims of...
In the stormy wellspring of a torrential national discourse, something useful has emerged. Suddenly, the written word as the expression of national memory has emerged in a flurry of memoirs. We are in the season of memoirs and recollections. Selective remembering in writing has since emerged as a distinctive...
Campaigns for the 2027 general elections are off to a predictably shameful start. Those who expected novelty are in shock. Others who expected depth of insight may yet embrace disappointment. The lead contestants for the office of president are already sounding like cracked vinyl records in an annoying echo...
There comes a point in the life of a nation when a problem becomes too large, too complex and too consequential to be treated as a temporary emergency. I believe Nigeria has reached that point with the crisis of internal displacement. That is why I am adding my voice...
What, really, should determine the composition of a presidential campaign team? Is it the candidate’s political strength? The geographical spread of the party? The experience and competence of those recruited for the job? Their ability to mobilise voters? Or is a campaign council simply another opportunity to accommodate as...
When in February 2025 Babangida released his long awaited memoir, A Journey in Service, the book launch at the Congress Hall, Abuja Hilton Hotel, was filled beyond capacity. A combined team of the military and secret police had a hard time for several hours managing access and controlling the...
By UZOMA NWEKE, University of Jos – Chidi Amuta’s just released memoir, HOMAGE, is remarkable in one respect. It projects Nigeria’s national history from the perspective of an individual’s personal life experience. The book is not just the way the author’s life reflects Nigerian history from pre-independence, independence, political...
There is something profoundly unsettling about a government announcing a policy ostensibly designed to resolve one of Nigeria’s most intractable security and agricultural problems, only to discover that the announcement itself has become another source of anxiety. That, increasingly, appears to be the predicament of the Federal Government’s proposed...
I am endlessly enthralled by a recent viral social media story. A bright young man in Kenya became enamored of the legal profession by being in the vicinity of a law office and attending courts regularly to observe the ways of lawyers and judges. So, he assumed himself a...
Let it not turn out to be what I am thinking: that former Ekiti State governor and newly appointed Chairman of the Board of the Rural Electrification Agency (REA), Ayo Fayose, has already found an alibi for explaining away the possible failure of the agency under his watch. Because...
On the dichotomy of kingly power and clerical obligations, there is an undisputed demarcation. Unto kings is given the power to guarantee the orderly governance of the state and the welfare of citizens in a republic. But the ultimate preoccupation of the divine is the good of all humanity....
Two widely discussed commentaries—one drawing from Chinua Achebe’s literary masterpiece and the other questioning official electoral disclosures—have offered an early glimpse into the narratives that may shape Nigeria’s 2027 presidential election. Together, they suggest that the contest has already begun, not with campaign rallies, but in the battle for...
Nelson Mandela must be churning in his resting place. An exemplary life lived and a myth created on a dream and a vision is now literally reduced to ashes. The rainbow nation with prosperity for all races as a vision has been badly damaged . Its previously thriving post-apartheid...
Our federal capital could as well have been a perfect setting for a series of gangster movies from Hollywood. Perfect scripts. Excellent casting. Professional rehearsals. The dry runs are already provided by the existing government bureaucracy with its rituals and pomp. The voluminous costumes of agbadas and starched kaftans...
In the feverish race towards the 2027 elections, no one is concerned that many Nigerians may be left out of the democratic process. Yet democracy by its definition and nature ought to be a majoritarian enterprise. The originators of democracy designed it to be inclusive; a unifying platform that...