When I told a couple of friends on Saturday that I was going to Katsina State, they asked the same question: Must you go? My affirmative answer elicited a familiar, albeit cryptic admonition: I hope you made adequate security arrangements. That is how scared most people, particularly in the South, are right now about Katsina, […]

Here’s something I’ve been noticing: some of my undergraduate students can’t tell me who the Minister of Communications is, but they can quote three different podcast hosts on media literacy. They skip assigned textbook chapters, but they’ve listened to eight hours of podcast content on the same topic. When I ask them where they learned about […]

Most people say that former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has vied for president of Nigeria six times over 30 years (1993 – 2023). For me, it’s seven times. In 2003 when he was President Olusegun Obasanjo’s deputy, his failed “Mandela Option”, aimed at limiting Obasanjo to one term, was meant to clear the way for him […]

The African Democratic Party was at this time last year a nondescript organisation struggling to stay afloat as a political party. Ralph Nwosu, the founder of the party, had turned the chairmanship of the party into something of a life appointment in which he had served for seventeen years. By July he had turned the party, […]

 “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others”, Mahatma Gandhi If the first task of Nigeria’s post-colonial elite was to secure independence, the unfinished task of our time is to complete nation-building. That task has remained elusive largely because the ruling class has failed to evolve into a […]