Nothing indicates that the 2027 general elections is barely 90 days away. Both the ruling APC and its major opponents seem stuck in an ideas quagmire. The only central national issue seems to be the the prices of petroleum products. It is all about the removal of petroleum subsidy...
Chidi Amuta
President Tinubu delivered a mostly predictable Independence Day address to the nation. In one respect, the speech was somewhat different. It sang about the new statistics of economic recovery that Western media and domestic economics elite have recently been rehashing. The external reserve has climbed to the neighbourhood of...
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...
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...
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...
By CHIBUZOR NNABUIKE (University of Georgia, Athens) – HIGHLIGHTS: “I preferred the peace of nature in the bush to the cold lifeless cement floor of the classroom” Easily one of Nigeria’s more readable newspaper columnists, Chidi Amuta engages constantly with his fluid prose and often arresting logic. His background...
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...
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...
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....
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...
The Tinubu presidency is caught in a web from its own DNA. A grand Ponzi scheme born and bred in the bowels of the presidency has burst into the open. A famous con man ostensibly hired by highly placed officials has been exposed. His elaborate scheme of floating a...
The saving grace of the democratic state is the prospect of positive change through periodic elections. For those who live in a democracy, the classical belief is that the next election offers the populace a chance to change their lot for the better by trooping out to queue at...
The raging insecurity all over Nigeria has altered our reality. We now count our lives in days, weeks and months. At the beginning of each month these days, most of us receive these silly “Happy New month” greetings and prayers. We now celebrate our lives in bits and pieces,...
When a republic is held to ransom by an affliction that appears intractable to its government, the populace is left hopeless and helpless. About the viral insecurity now holding Nigeria hostage, the Tinubu government is in consternation and quandary. And the Nigerian public is in total darkness as to...
As we trickled into Yemi Ogunbiyi’s cosy bungalow in the Staff Quarters at Ife, we were greeted by pulsating calypso tunes playing from a real stereo equipment. The trending hit songs of Lord Kitchener and Mighty Sparrow were softly booming in the background. A rich whiff of good food...
In times when our national conversation becomes too heated, fuzzy and bogged in intractable controversy, I prefer to take matters to the barber’s shop at Ikeja Bus Stop. That is my definition of the Public Square. In that place, fact, fiction and faction meet and mix in a noisy...