For years, Nyesom Wike seemed untouchable, wielding power with impunity and bending institutions to his will. He could come on national TV ‘barking’.  He could wear crazy colored clothes. He could hold more media chats than the president and all governors combined to gossip about his mentors, who had all become his enemies  As a junior minister, […]

There are no visible electoral reforms. 2027 will be worse than 2023 on every negative scale. Because the ills of 2023 went unpunished, they have been reinforced. The perpetrators will double their efforts. 2023 and its aftermath have bestowed brazen impunity on the immediate political future. The opposition is endangered. The trajectory is predictable. Consequently, Tinubu has […]

Before soldiers seized Cotonou’s state television station to declare Patrice Talon deposed, Benin’s democracy had already become a sham.  Talon entered office in 2016 bearing the hopes of the country’s poor. Benin’s democracy, then 25 years old, was stable but stagnant, yielding little prosperity. Talon pledged to a single term—unshackled from re-election pressures and the politics […]

It is the raw underbelly of Nigerian politics: a toxic cocktail of ethnic entitlement, economic despair, and insecurity sharpened into a political blade. Between Bola Tinubu and a powerful section of the northern aristocracy, there is no love lost. The economic hardship is brutal, the insecurity unrelenting, but that is not the real grievance. The real […]

Nigeria is bleeding. Our soldiers fight with courage, but they are spread perilously thin across multiple fronts. Goats are now eating palm fronds on our heads.  From the Sambisa Forest to the Kotangora thickets of Niger and  the vast rangelands of Zamfara and the valleys of Orsu, violence lurks and consumes lives and livelihoods. It is better […]

When African leaders, neck-deep in debts, go to borrow from foreign lenders, sovereignty is the last thing on their minds. Sovereignty connotes solvency, self-sufficiency, and security. For many African countries, it is no more than a sick  joke—a tool for corrupt, despotic, and indolent leaders to stir up anti-Western anger. It fails to spark real […]

Before Wike started remaking Rivers State in his own image, he used to rail against Lagos’s godfatherism. He thought it was feudalism. But those days are over. Now that he considers the Rivers government his political furniture, the private ownership of Lagos politics must be the manual to control his own stooges. Some say his hypocrisy is […]

Gov. Peter Mbah has left the PDP for the ruling party. Gov. Diri is packing his defection bags. Gov. Soludo is proposing an alliance of the progressives: a capitulation that spares him the tag of a defector. Fubara is a caged bird. Adeleke is keen to defect. By 2027, all the state governors in the south could […]

In exercise of his prerogative powers of mercy, Tinubu pardoned a convicted murderer on death row. He also pardoned drug barons. He pardoned a kidnapper. That power was given to him on trust by the people.  In a country ravaged by insecurity, every message from the leader should reflect a ruthless determination to stamp out crime and […]

Atiku says the federal cabinet is an assembly of serial forgers, money launderers, election bandits and identity thieves. While it can’t be described as a total rogues’ gallery, it harbours far too many shady figures, granting too many reprobates access to the pulpits of power. Tinubu, the acclaimed talent hunter, wanted a minister of innovation, science and […]

In 2023, after Obi defeated Tinubu in Lagos, MC Oluomo addressed the state. He warned the Igbo to sit at home on election day if they wouldn’t vote the APC. He wasn’t subtle. In that live broadcast, he framed  non-APC votes as a punishable betrayal. The police invited him for questioning, but the “chat” was more photo-op […]

Lagos is a bustling coastal city, so its vulnerability to floods is natural. But with a culture of indiscriminate refuse disposal, haphazard building developments, and lousy town planning enforcement, Lagos is the cause of much of its own flooding woes. Often, governments come like pirates or parasites — ravenous and impatient, looking for what and where […]

Good building materials are gone.  Everything is now fake—almost everything. The chronic decline took an acute turn after the COVID epidemic.  A  post-COVID nosedive. The naira started to plummet, prices soared. Surging costs of basic food began to drown the poor. People could no longer make it, so  manufacturers started to fake it. Perhaps to stay […]

A few days ago, things fell apart in Nepal. The country had seen political instability and grinding poverty in recent times, but this week it saw  the gates of hell open. The parliament was burnt. The presidential palace was ransacked. The government fled. Ministers were dragged through the streets and chased into rivers. The youths said they […]

Nigeria has a profound leadership crisis.  It isn’t just recycling indolent,  corrupt and manipulative leaders, it’s incubating a defective citizenship.  The necessary sceptical edge to watchdog democracy has been blunted. The citizenry is aggressively normalising political mediocrity.  Failure is excused. Mundanity is celebrated. Stagnation feels peaceful  For the poor, hunger and joblessness have acquired inevitability. […]