Opinions

Nigeria must demand an election of ideas, not another carnival of insults, propaganda and character assassination. Nigeria is approaching another presidential election, and already the familiar machinery of political warfare is beginning to stir. The alliances.The betrayals. The rumours. The accusations.The ethnic calculations.The religious manoeuvring. The social-media armies.The carefully manufactured outrage.And, lurking behind it all, […]Read More

There are some numbers that should make every Nigerian stop scrolling. ₦33.75 billion or is one of them.Not because the figure is merely large. Nigeria has become depressingly accustomed to billions disappearing into the vocabulary of government accounting. What makes this particular number different is the question attached to it: Who received the money? That […]

When pounded yam has lumps, you re-pound the yam to achieve the required consistency. Away from all the contrived obfuscations of contemporary economic analysis, we ought to be able to honestly re-evaluate where we are as a country, where we ought to be, and how we might navigate our way towards the desired destination. The […]

For 27 years, Nigeria has been repairing the past.Perhaps it is time to invest in the future. For nearly three decades, successive governments have poured billions of dollars and trillions of naira into Nigeria’s state-owned refineries. Contracts have been awarded. Contractors have come and gone. Rehabilitation deadlines have been announced with great fanfare. Presidents have […]

For once, the headline should not be about the powerful man who was dragged into the scandal. It should be about the scandal itself. Because if the House of Representatives is right to clear Femi Gbajabiamila, Chief of Staff to President Bola Tinubu, of involvement in the controversial Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, or PFIPC, […]

In Nigeria, public office has too often become a theatre of promises. Politicians announce projects with fanfare, contractors disappear, deadlines are forgotten, and citizens are left wondering when government will finally move from speeches to substance. Then came Nyesom Wike to the Federal Capital Territory. Wike did not arrive in Abuja to be another minister […]

Nigeria’s latest petroleum-sector drama is being described as a war between the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) and Dangote Refinery. That description is not entirely wrong. But it is also not big enough.What is unfolding between Africa’s biggest refinery and Nigeria’s petroleum regulator is ultimately a battle over something much more consequential: […]

The current legal battle over President Bola Tinubu’s old records in the United States has raised a crucial question about leadership. The question is not whether Tinubu has a legal right to keep some of his old records private. The question is: What does a president owe the country beyond what the law requires? That […]

There comes a point in every government’s life when explanations cease to matter and results become the only language citizens are prepared to hear. For President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, that moment has arrived. Three years after the dramatic declaration that “fuel subsidy is gone,” Nigerians are asking a brutally simple question: Are we better off […]

They came to Nigerians with a simple message: “Change!” Change from insecurity.Change from corruption.Change from poverty.Change from bad governance.Change from everything they said the previous government was doing wrong. They campaigned as if they had all the answers. They told Nigerians that once the APC took over, security would improve, terrorism would be defeated, corruption […]

A group of heartless carpetbaggers have captured the Nigerian state, and it appears that they, their biological and political descendants, will hold the levers of government and access to Nigeria’s commonwealth for a long time to come. When you consider news reports of how previous and current state actors steal public funds, buy choice properties […]

Nigeria has begun the long march to the 2027 general election. The campaign calendar opened on August 19, with presidential and National Assembly voting scheduled for January 16, 2027. The politicians have therefore been released from the starting blocks. Nigerians should now ask a rather unfashionable question: what, precisely, are they selling? The answer, so […]