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President Buhari’s Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Sheikh Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, could have casually slithered through public office with scant notice if he could delete his past. Unfortunately he cannot run faster than the jagged shadows from his past. In these parts, a ministerial portfolio with an oversized office and some fancy title […]
Continue ReadingBetween economists and their enabling politicians, the fate of nations often hangs precariously on a balance. On their own, economists can be a miserable enough bunch in ordinary circumstances. Their professional relevance hangs on the precarious uncertainty that all things may never become equal in real life. Like Delphic oracles, economists keep their relevance and […]
Continue ReadingVice President Yemi Osinbajo is a man of subdued political symbolism and a compact admixture of values. It comes across mostly in his costume which is, in some ways, emblematic of his ambiguous adventure in the political arena. On an average day, he is most likely to show up in a darkish variant of a […]
Continue ReadingA spectre of strategic instability stares Nigeria in the face. It is not coming from jusst the rhetoric of politicians or the drama of the new breed of ethnic thugs and populist demagogues. We are familiar with noisy threats to Nigeria’s unity as a mode of political expression. Nigerians as a public are distinguishable by […]
Continue ReadingPresident Muhammadu Buhari would have made a bad orchestra conductor. In that line of business, a certain faithfulness to synchrony and harmonious outcome is the secret of success. Even in his primary lifelong career of soldiering, order and uniformity have remained the hallmarks of the best traditions of the military endeavour. His present occupation of […]
Continue ReadingIn July 2017, the tiny land locked but oil and gas rich kingdom of Qatar fell out with its Arab neighbours. It was charged with supporting terrorism! What made news was not just that Arab states ganged up to accuse their Qatari kinsfolk of a familiar neighbourhood pastime. The neighbours went ahead to clamp an […]
Continue ReadingBy May 2023, military generals spawned by the Civil War will have ruled Nigeria in one form or the other for a total of 45 years out of 62 years of independence. Out of this period, 16 years will be accounted for by the two double term presidential tenures under generals Obasanjo and Buhari, both […]
Continue ReadingBy a curious subterfuge, cattle and their handlers have finally managed to conquer centre stage in our national attention and discourse. Our security agencies and nearly all state governors are now engrossed in some form of interrogation of the herders’ menace. A few weeks ago, all the governors of the South West states held an […]
Continue ReadingIn a little over two years, the curtain will close on the Buhari presidency. Of the time left, the final one year will be spent in the drama of political succession. In the festival tradition of our politics, little or no governance takes place in the year preceding the exit of the incumbent. It is […]
Continue ReadingNigeria enters the new year draped in curious contradiction. A protracted sixtieth anniversary celebration has recently been interrupted by an untidy debate about the nation’s very survival as a viable state. The question is simple: Is the Nigerian state failing? Among most enlightened Nigerians, there is now an inconvenient consensus that the Nigerian state is […]
Continue ReadingThe dead farmers of Zabamari may have claimed a political casualty. They have dealt a further blow to President Buhari’s dwindling political capital. The mass murder of the farmers by a more emboldened Boko Haram has further heightened Mr. Buhari’s legacy of nationwide insecurity. If this were a realm with scientific opinion polling, by now […]
Continue ReadingIn a nation besieged on all sides by frightening insecurity and a frenzy of violent convulsions, diverse merchants of violence seem to be in a contest of supremacy. Boko Haram seems insistent on occupying the front row. With over a decade of expertise in hands-on terrorism, this untidy army of fanatical zealots has graduated from […]
Continue ReadingI have an ancient method of measuring the mood and state of the nation. And it has always worked for me. It is a casual greeting in normal Nigerian street parlance. Simply put, it is just a simple greeting cast in the mould of a universal non- committal question: “How Country?” You throw it around […]
Continue ReadingIn the decade leading up to 2010- 2015, global discourse on Africa’s development prospects adopted a new mantra: Africa Rising. Major influential media echoed it and the message went to major investors, increasing the interest and appetite of Africa’s traditional partners while luring new ones to discover what used to be the ‘dark continent’ in […]
Continue ReadingIn the aftermath of the frightening ENDSARS protests, government seems confronted with a choice of two untidy pathways. Either pursue reprisals against the suspected leaders of the protests or address the pervasive inequality that inspired the spin off anger, rampage, looting and criminal lawlessness. The first option is lazy and untenable because the protests were, […]
Continue ReadingNigeria is currently like a small hamlet invaded by a thousand witches, each bearing a sack full of assorted plagues and poxes. The trouble is in not knowing which affliction ails us most or which is likely to deal the ultimate fatal blow. Of late, sensitive elders, faction leaders and honest citizens have put a […]
Continue ReadingTwo contradictory images and news feeds recently competed for this reporter’s attention. The first was a ceremonial outing in the North East displaying rows of ‘repentant’ Boko Haram combatants in neat government uniforms. They were being admitted into an amnesty programme to rehabilitate and reintegrate them into normal social life. The second is a mammoth […]
Continue ReadingNational history has a moral arc. It bends perennially in the direction of justice no matter how long it takes. This truism is my response to the three dominant positions on the desirable geo-political location of the Nigerian presidency in 2023. The first is the repeated general political advisory by my friend Nasir El-Rufai, Governor […]
Continue ReadingIn a season of sundry masks, Mr. Mamman Daura has courageously cast off his political mask. He did so in order to speak on a matter of great general public interest: the 2023 presidency. This is an act of unusual boldness for an elder who has been content with living as a shadow under his […]
Continue ReadingThe architecture of a new world order may just be sketching its untidy outlines. Today’s axis of strategic equilibrium is a deformed triangle with two and half sides. The two sides are the United States versus China with a supporting undefined half role for Vladimir Putin’s neo-Tsarist Russia. But by far the more consequential axis […]
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