Nollywood star Mercy Johnson-Okojie’s appointment as Special Adviser on Public Engagement and Advocacy to Edo State Governor Monday Okpebholo marks more than a routine celebrity crossover into government.  It is a signpost of Nigeria’s evolving political culture, where fame, narrative power and emotional connection increasingly shape political legitimacy and governance communication.  In a media-saturated democracy, celebrities […]

In case some people haven’t noticed – and it is so difficult not to notice in a country as religious as we claim to be – that both Ramadan and Lent started this Wednesday. Which means the same day. The Lenten season for practicing Christians is a season characterized by penitence, humility and denials. The […]

All gratitude to God to see a 90 – year – man stand on his feet, move like a Sandhurst trained subaltern and dance better than most of his contemporaries. Engineer David Oladipo Williams, known to everyone as DO, is just a decade away from 100 years. DO who resides overseas, was in Lagos recently to celebrate […]

There Was a Country, lamented Chinua Achebe, Nigeria’s literary icon and one of the world’s greatest storytellers. Achebe’s title evokes many things in the mind beyond its primary thematic concern – a journal of the author’s experiences of the Biafran War, which raged between 1967 and 1970. Among other things, it raises the question: What happened […]

I’ve just been told that Senator Barinada Mpigi, who represented the Rivers South East senatorial district, has died, aged 64, following a protracted illness. Barry, as many of us called him, was a fellow Ogoni from the Tai Local Government Area segment of our ancestral terrain. He was first elected to the House of Representatives in 2011 […]

Africa is in the vile grip of insecurity. This was the verdict of the African Union, AU, Heads of State 39th Summit which held on February 14, 2026 in Addis Ababa. This should call for a state of emergency. But this was not part of the Summit outcome. It was business as usual. In the first […]

After weeks of back-and-forth, the National Assembly just passed the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill into law. We all witnessed the legislative histrionics that attended the legislation, right up to its conclusion with its signing into law by the President. I call it legislative histrionics because it appears that as a collective, the National Assembly, comprising the […]

The 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” […]

When TheNiche, an online newspaper, exclusively reported on February 13, that a few hours after announcing the 2027 elections timetable, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, was set to tinker with the schedule due to pressure from some Muslim groups, many were incredulous. Earlier that day, INEC Chairman, Professor Joash Amupitan, after waiting endlessly for the […]

How to craft a compelling introduction that opens doors in business, networking, and beyond You step into an elevator with the CEO of your dream company. The doors close. You have 30 seconds—maybe less—before they reach their floor. What do you say? This scenario represents a very real challenge that professionals and students face daily: the […]