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 […]

There is no gainsaying that steadily, the faithful are confronted with issues and realities that make them consider abandoning their Church.

The telecommunications industry opened with a bang in early 2000 after a snail-walk in the previous years of political uncertainties and economic decisions that were at best tentative. The industry was not only deregulated but phone ownership was so democratised that the development mocked previous assertions that telephones were for the rich. It was the birth […]

Well before he arrived Nigeria from Egypt, Nasir el-Rufai, a former governor of Kaduna State and frontline promoter of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, the new political home of the major opposition figures that have sworn to unseat President Bola Tinubu, had announced that he would be arrested upon arrival in the country. More than a […]