Avoidable distractions on the political trail, by Rotimi Fasan
When one observes the actions and utterances of Nigeria’s political actors, their habit of moving in circles, and the people’s preference for sensationalism over substance, it becomes clear why we are not making progress politically. We are back again where we were. We are in the campaign season, and the discourses of our engagement are […]
Choices, not chance: Why China is rich and Nigeria is poor, by Dakuku Peterside
China and Nigeria, two continental giants that entered the late 1970s with similar per capita incomes, have since taken opposite economic trajectories. In China, the decisive moment was Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 decision to “open the windows” and let the world’s capital know-how to blow in. In Nigeria, the same decade ushered in the oil boom that […]
Nothing to be gained from declaration of state of emergency(2), by Eric Teniola
From last week, the Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, on May 29, 1962, summoned an emergency meeting of the Federal House of Representatives which was then the Federal Parliament in Lagos and moved a motion on the Action Group crisis The motion reads thus: “I rise to move the Resolution standing in my name which […]
Nigerians served peculiar mess, a la carte, by Owei Lakemfa
Adelabu Adegoke was one of the most flamboyant and charismatic politicians in pre-independence Nigeria. When one day, the press asked him about deliberations in the Western Region House of Assembly, he replied that it was a “peculiar mess”. He pronounced the words with a Yoruba intonation making the two words sound […]
DisCos’ operations as legalised scams on consumers, by Dele Sobowale
DISCO hiked my bill from N2.7m to N29m” — Lagos Deputy Gov. The report in a national newspaper of April 15, 2025, provided the best opportunity for all stakeholders to re-visit the matter of privatisation of electricity supply to Nigerian consumers. Put bluntly, Nigeria’s electricity Distribution Companies (DisCos) have become the greatest fraudsters in the […]
The wages of presidential subterfuge
On the evening of 5 April 2012, the prime-time bulletin on the television news of the Malawi Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), announced to the country that the president, Ngwazi Professor Bingu wa Mutharika, “had been taken ill and had been flown to South Africa for specialist treatment.”
