As an Igbo, ever mindful of the country’s chequered political history, when the news filtered in on Saturday that the former governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, a scion of the North and major opposition politician, had been whisked away from the venue of the Odenigbo Lecture in Owerri amid protest, my first reaction was, […]

A braggart by nature, President Bola Tinubu is never shy of boasting about what he, self-referentially, believes are his achievements in managing Nigeria’s economy. Recently, he boasted that his administration had met its revenue target for 2025 sooner than expected in August and would no longer borrow domestically. Speaking to members of a group called The […]

Over the past few weeks, we have examined the dimensions of executive presence. If you recall, we described executive presence as the often-intangible quality that separates leaders who merely occupy positions from those who inspire confidence and command respect. We began with vocal authority and physical comportment, exploring how your voice and body language create immediate […]

“But an active despair has often triumphed over the assurance of indolent success”—  Edward Gibbon The sense of active despair is the only resort that Nigerians are left with, to exhibit their repudiation of their state of anonymity and conditions of restless search for solutions to their pathetic and abject nothingness. Having been reduced to the […]

Since Nasir el-Rufai, the disaffected former governor of Kaduna State, lost his mojo after being played by his former friends in the All Progressives Congress, APC, he has assumed the status of a prophet. With all the petulance he can muster, he has promised to send President Bola Tinubu back to Lagos, away from the soft […]

Broadcasting has enjoyed some enormous coverage lately. Can you imagine that tweak or little speck of irony! The broadcast media itself enjoying the limelight in what may qualify as inversion of service delivery.  From nowhere, a state governor generated a needless controversy by reclining on his imperial powers to order the closure of one of the […]

WHY STUDENTS JOIN CULTISM Why do students join cultism? Many reasons can be proffered but I will attempt just a few. Some of the reasons are: i. Desire to obtain undue privileges ii. Desire to have a sense of power; influence and prestige among fellow students iii. Desire to command undeserved authority and respect within the […]

Trust is the everyday currency of democratic life. When it drains away, institutions keep their seals but lose their weight. The recent Chatham House/NBS findings are not just gloomy numbers; they describe a social contract under strain. Almost half of Nigerians say they “greatly distrust” the police, and roughly a third deeply distrust the presidency and […]

“Elders do not fight battles, but they know which battles can be won or lost”– African proverb. A noticeable flurry of activities in many parts of the North involving elderly northerners, politicians, and others who wear both caps is engaging a lot of attention. These activities have not been seen for quite a while in the […]

From last week continues the narrative of how party supremacy has declined over the years with the President now calling the shot, ordering the party chairman around and can fire him at the slightest excuse. This is unlike what obtained during the NPN era when a caucus chaired by the party boss would take the […]

By JIDEOFOR ADIBE I met Professor Elaigwu through his former teacher and mentor, the late Professor Ali Mazrui who transited to glory on October 12, 2014. My meeting with Professor Mazrui was fortuitous. I was living in London at the time and had founded the publishing company, Adonis & Abbey publishers(www.adonis-abbey.com), in 2003. The following […]

By Dele Sobowale “Nothing is more wasteful than doing with great efficiency that which should not be done.” Theodore Levitt, Harvard Business Review, March-April, 1993. For five years, after being confined to a wheelchair, I now feel strong enough to travel around Nigeria more often. Thus, in August, I was able to touch eight states. What I […]

One of the major challenges of Nigeria since colonial times had been corruption. But President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has now proclaimed its death. Corruption is gone! Futuristic laser technology must have been used to carry out such a comprehensive and professional operation on corruption in the body polity of Nigeria. So sophisticated that we Nigerians were […]

When the House of Lords, as the upper chamber of the UK Parliament is called, debated the Courts Bill introduced by the government of Edward Heath in December 1970, Lord Hailsham was in the Woolsack as the Lord Chancellor.

For the second time in this column,I am today attempting to reach out to one leader who has had the special privilege of serving as a first citizen of Nigeria. The first time I tried it was in May 2012, when this column featured an article titled “Nigeria: If I were General Buhari.” What influenced my […]