By Tonnie Iredia The oil-rich Niger Delta Region of Nigeria consists of Nine (9) coastal southern states of the country; namely: Ondo, Edo, Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers, Imo, Abia, Cross River and Akwa Ibom. The 2006 controversial census recorded for the area some 31 million Nigerians – a figure that would today be about 40 million. […]

By Tonnie Iredia One of the distractions in Nigeria’s governancenarrative is the requirement for the nation’s president to supervise the day to day running of his political party. It is for the same reason that governors run both their states and their political parties. If so, why do political parties elect officials to run the […]

By Tonnie Iredia Senate President Lawan’s senatorial nomination bid and the earlier Imo State Governorship election are two recent cases whose controversial outcomes have continued to annoy many people including retired and serving judges. A third case that may have such lasting impact is the controversy concerning what a candidate must score in Abuja, the […]

By Tonnie Iredia To say that the next set of Nigerian legislators may also fail implies that their predecessors had earlier failed. But considering that since 1999 when democracy was restored in the country, our lawmakers have become Nigeria’s wealthiest class, is it not contradictory to describe them as failures? But when the steady decline […]

By Tonnie Iredia Section 36 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1999) provides that judicial proceedings should be conducted in public. If so, can the subsisting arrangement of allowing only a few people to watch proceedings in a courtroom be described as public? Some people would answer this question in the negative […]

By Tonnie Iredia The lofty gains which experts say a nation can reap by premising its development on population figures probably leaves some people, especially foreigners, wondering why Nigeria has remained in existence from its origin without an acceptable census figure. Many Nigerian citizens and groups who permanently dispute their country’s figures are neither mad […]

By Tonnie Iredia Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) would shortly undertake a review of election activities and actors in the recently conducted general elections in the country. The review which must necessarily include issues in the institutional environment should begin with party primaries that usually serve as the foundation of the complications in Nigerian […]

By Tonnie Iredia Between Saturday, February 25, 2023 when the presidential and national assembly elections were held in Nigeria and today, the mass media have been replete with calls for the next president to compose a government of national unity (GNU). The argument is that such a strategy could calm frayed nerves and create some […]

By Tonnie Iredia Voter turn-out in Nigerian elections, that is, the number of voters who actually vote in comparison with the total number of those who registered to vote is usually incredibly low. The general belief is that the trend is attributable to poor public enlightenment suggesting rather wrongly that many Nigerians are unaware of […]

By Tonnie Iredia The 2023 general elections and the naira redesign policy were the two most dominant issues of the last few weeks in Nigeria. Luckily, the nation’s Supreme Court,two days ago, resolved one of them by its rulingthat the old naira notes should continue to be in use till the end of this year. […]

By Tonnie Iredia Nigerians went to the polls yesterday to elect a new president for their country. 18 political parties got the green light to sponsor candidates for the elections. Prior to 2002, Nigeria had only 3 officially recognized parties, namely: Peoples Democratic party (PDP), Alliance for Democracy AD and All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP).  […]

By Tonnie Iredia Too many things have since shown that in truth, there is not much difference between our ruling party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and its biggest rival, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP). Both parties have a few decent members but majority are political traders. When in power, the two parties behave exactly […]

By Tonnie Iredia These days, my table tennis club has become more exciting with daily discussions on politics and elections in Nigeria. Last week was particularly interesting going by the divergent but well-articulated viewpoints on election petitions especially the judgment delivered by the Supreme Court concerning the candidature of the APC for the Yobe North […]

By Tonnie Iredia Last week’s revelation by Governor Nasir El Rufai of Kaduna State that some elements within the Presidential Villa were working assiduously for the defeat of the ruling party and its presidential candidate in the coming general elections was a major story of the week. But for the general hardship caused by the […]

By Tonnie Iredia The several interventions of the Nigerian military in the governance of the country affected one arm-the legislature more than the other two-the executive and the judiciary. This is because at each intervention, it was only the legislature that was always suspended. Thus, the overzealousness of members of that arm since 1999 when […]