Guest Columnists

Nigeria has debated state police for decades. We are now closer than ever to creating it. Yet the harder question is not simply whether policing should be brought closer to the people. It is how to do so without replacing one set of weaknesses with another. That is the purpose of the reforms now under […]

The full Victor Osimhen transfer picture: Galatasaray's stance, Chelsea's wage collapse, the €120m offers, and what every club move means for the Super Eagles.

I finally had the leisure this weekend to read, one after another, the essays that followed the Catholic Bishops’ visit to the Presidential Villa. I read Temitope Ajayi, Sunday Dare, Bayo Onanuga and Sam Omatseye, not as a partisan seeking ammunition, but as a Nigerian interested in how power explains itself when challenged. The sequence […]

Three weeks ago, I argued that the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission was not really investigating the Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council; it was investigating itself. The question I wrote was whether Nigeria’s anti-corruption agencies could apply to the highest offices in the land the same rigour they routinely apply to clerks, […]

Data is good, but it often doesn’t tell the whole story. Data cannot capture the extent of our efforts to get a prepaid meter at my workplace in Abuja after we were disconnected from the grid in February. We’re still off-grid. Our meter misery mocks any statistics you may find on the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory […]

By now, you must have noticed how the APC hound dogs’ attack quickly turns into an echo chamber. For instance, one of them uses derogatory language, and others take up the refrain to resound it across multiple channels. In their case against Archbishop Emeritus of Abuja, John Cardinal Onaiyekan, the accusation they settled for is […]

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo was again in his element on Friday when news broke that he had done one of the things he is best known for in Nigeria’s political space: descending heavily on the man who served as his vice president for two terms spanning eight years, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar. In his latest onslaught, […]

There has been quite some drama out there in the lead up to Nigeria’s 2027 general elections and one of the most outstanding episodes would be the unending, protracted feud between former President Olusegun Obasanjo and his former running mate, former Vice-President, Waziri Atiku Abubakar. Both were in charge of Nigeria at the centre between […]

There was a time when the halls of Nigerian justice were revered as the sanctuary of the aggrieved. Today, under the heavy gavels of an increasingly punitive bench, they resemble an extortionate tollbooth where only the oligarchically wealthy dare to pull up a chair. The recent judgment of Justice Salim Ibrahim at the Federal High […]

Quite often, democracy is presented as the ideal system of government for every nation. Across Africa, elections are held regularly, constitutions guarantee fundamental rights, and governments proudly describe themselves as democratic. Yet, despite these outward symbols, many African countries continue to struggle with authoritarianism, electoral violence, corruption, weak institutions, and a widening gap between leaders […]

I am a founding director of Front Foot Media Initiative, a civil society organisation pursuing, among others, public accountability. One of those issues: Auditor-General reporting in the states, for which, in three years, we engaged or trained hundreds of journalists and managers. Recently, FFMI concluded an in-depth study of the non-compliance reports of the Auditor-General […]