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To several Nigerians, Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president, should not run for president next year. Some cite age, others zoning. On the first, the general view is that, at 80 years old by the time of the next presidential election in January 2027, Atiku would be too old to run for president. On the second, […]
Continue ReadingThe vexed debate over the Senate’s refusal to guarantee “mandatory” and “real-time” electronic transmission of results in the electoral law ignores two fundamental problems. The first is Nigeria’s utterly weak state capacity; the second is the total lack of institutional independence. Even if the electoral act provides for mandatory and real-time transmission of election results, “mandatory” […]
Continue ReadingToadyish as ever, it supinely rubber-stamped President Bola Tinubu’s tacky list of ambassadorial nominees without as much as a whimper. Last week, following the infamous and shameful “bow and go” practice it has adopted in approving President Tinubu’s political appointees, the Senate waived through his ambassadorial nominees without questioning. The perverse implication of nominating controversial […]
Continue ReadingThe world is full of parallels. But some parallels are stranger than others. Where, for instance, are the similarities between Nasir el-Rufai, former governor of Kaduna State, and Elon Musk, the world’s richest man? On the surface, there’s clear blue water between them: one is a modestly successful technocrat, administrator and politician in Nigeria; the other is […]
Continue ReadingAs Lagos State governor, Bola Tinubu had a reputation for squeezing water from a stone by extracting taxes from even the most unlikely people. Stories still abound in Lagos of how menacing tax collectors forced struggling market women and small and micro businesses to pay taxes. For Tinubu, the end always justifies the means. And the […]
Continue ReadingSince he became president in May 2023, Bola Tinubu has enjoyed nothing more than hiring and firing people. A week hardly passes without Tinubu making one public appointment or another, which shows the enormous patronage power of the Nigerian president. But equally, Tinubu has fired more people on grounds of corruption in less than two years in […]
Continue ReadingMost of those who have commented or are commenting on the Dele Farotimi-Afe Babalola saga have not read the book at the heart of the story: Farotimi’s Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System. I have. I bought a digital copy from Amazon last week, and spent four hours slowly reading – more appropriately, perusing – the […]
Continue ReadingTrust Nigerians, some will scoff at any comparison between Britain’s democracy and what Nigeria calls democracy. But if democracy is, as Abraham Lincoln famously defined it, “government of the people, by the people, for the people”, then Nigeria must be held to universal standards. The critical electoral link between the government and the governed must […]
Continue ReadingRecently, faced with escalating violence across Nigeria, the president, Bola Tinubu, reportedly agreed with state governors to establish state police. The news excited those calling for state police in Nigeria. But the agitation for state police is misguided; it is based on shallow reasoning, not on a rational, hard-nosed analysis of the potential consequences. To […]
Continue ReadingBola Tinubu, Nigeria’s new president, was determined to hit the ground running from his first day in office. He was haunted by the ghost of his somnolent predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, who sat desultorily on his hands, doing nothing for the first six months of his administration in 2015. Unlike Buhari, who was called, and relished […]
Continue ReadingLast week, Nyesom Wike, the outgoing governor of Rivers State, gave Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s putative next president, extravagant welcome to Port Harcourt, the state capital. Tinubu was in Port Harcourt to open a Magistrate’s Court complex that Wike named after his wife. Wike declared a public holiday and closed down shops so that Rivers people […]
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