The attack on Peter Obi and other opposition leaders was entirely foreseeable. The opposition must grasp its current predicament and unite to resist. So far, it has remained too aloof , too feeble. It has to take the bull by the horns or thrown in the towel. In 2023, local  opposition parties in Rivers State could barely […]

A coalition of big-time hustlers has christened itself a movement. Their motivation is thinly veiled. They will  channel their aggression toward the re-election of President Bola Tinubu. To dress up the enterprise, they chose a catchy name. Tinubu became “City Boy.” Pa Tinubu will surely welcome any residual boyishness young people can credit him with now. The […]

I pity Oshiomhole. At 73, our grandfathers had young wives. The culture of polygamy permitted them to keep a harem to cater to all their fantasies. They probably believed a touch of  nubility was needed to soothe aging nerves and joints, especially when the gaze of the older wives had shifted to their grandchildren. But Western civilisation […]

Tinubu’s presidency must be closely watched. At inception, it hurriedly sacked ambassadors like it had a clear foreign policy direction to salvage the country. Then for two and half years, it couldn’t nominate ambassadors, leaving the embassies rudderless. In the midst of that baffling shiftlessness, the president globetrotted unperturbed, with the all-knowing ease of a magician. Had […]

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 […]