People sacrificed their lives fighting for you, many wasted their active years in the bush only to be abandoned at the end of the  Civil War. The effects are here now, MASSOB, IPOB, power drunk 419ers, there will be no peace until we remember those who died defending Ndigbo. My message is clear. Until the Igbo, as […]

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 […]

For a Senate that has not only in herited but arguably worsened its predecessor’s reputation as a rubber stamp, the scene that played out during the screening of President Bola Tinubu’s ambassadorial nominees was bound to be bewildering. Yet, even by Nigeria’s increasingly elastic standards of legislative conduct, what unfolded in Senate Committee Room 211 last […]

A couple of weeks ago, three people very close to me had their homes and therefore, privacy violated. The three of them live off Admiralty Way which is about the busiest street in highbrow Lekki Phase One. They live in gated areas. They live in gated homes. In addition, they have private securities. Yet, as easy as […]

If it seems like only yesterday when the founder of LEADERSHIP, Sam Nda-Isaiah, passed away, it’s because he is still here in the present tense. Yet you might disagree if you are looking for him in the wrong place. Let me lessen your confusion. If, for example, you still hope he’d call at 2.30 am to […]

Earlier on this year, I flew to Freetown to interview President Julius Maada Bio of Sierra Leone, his First Lady, and several members of his cabinet. I was touched by the warm welcome I received and highly impressed by the quality of the conversations I had with all of the above; and I remember thinking that it […]

Early morning Sunday, December 7, 2025, while many Beninois slept, hoping to go to church, mosque and traditional places of worship at dawn, some members of their armed forces fanned out. Led by Lieutenant Colonel Paschal Tigri, they planned to bring the people under their claws. At 05:00 they attacked the Presidential Palace and then retreated […]

TWO major ironies are staring Nigeria in the face at the moment, in so far as it concerns air travel. A few days ago,  the Ministry of Aviation and Aerospace Development rolled out the drums to celebrate 100 years of civil aviation in Nigeria. An international air show was organised and held in Abuja, among other events, […]

At the time Lucy Kibaki, wife of Mwai Kibaki, the third President of Kenya, died at the Bupa Cromwell Hospital, South West London, on April 26, 2016, aged 75, she had the unenviable reputation of being Kenya’s grouchiest First Lady. In the ten years her husband was in office (2002-2013), she was, in the words of […]

Twelve years after I last came to Nigeria in 2013, I returned home last month. The purpose? To launch my new book, “In The National Interest: The Road to Nigeria’s Political, Economic and Social Transformation.” The event, held at the famous MUSON Centre, Onikan, Lagos, on Thursday, November 20, 2025, was both memorable and splendid. Indeed, […]