Student venture capital grant: Mentorship is vital
By Dele Sobowale Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen and a push in the right direction.” VANGUARD’s Editorial on April 22, 2026, titled, ‘Making the Student Venture Capital Grant successful’, was mostly right in its recommendations to the Federal Government regarding S-VCG. The editors can be forgiven for not knowing that the […]
FIX FOOD FIRST AND FAST OR FORGET IT
By Dele Sobowale The great Indian leader and liberator made that remark before he was assassinated in 1948 at a time when his country, now divided into at least three nations, suffered from food scarcity worse than Nigeria is experiencing now. Certainly, it can also be said that there are millions of people in Nigeria today, […]
Budget 2025 political not economic document
Why Nigerian budgets often fail “Whatever a man prays for, he prays for a miracle; every prayer reduces itself to this; Great God, grant that twice two be not four.” Ivan Turgenev, 1818-1883 VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ p 198. No Federal or, as far as I know, state budget since 1999 has been successfully implemented as […]
We must save Dangote Refinery at all costs
By Dele Sobowale “Our refinery has recorded 22 incidents of sabotage” — Dangote Nigerian history, since my return from the US in 1974, has always made me to thank God, that I not only read History as an elective subject as an undergraduate in the US; but, that the interest remains abiding. In fact, if I […]
Dangote versus others, time for FG mediators
By Dele Sobowale “Sacked workers: PENGASSAN threatens to picket Dangote Refinery” – Report, September 29, 2025 When Alhaji Dangote embarked on establishing the largest single train refinery in the world in Lagos, his intentions could not possibly have included fomenting trouble. He had more exalted aims like ending Nigeria’s perennial and intractable fuel scarcity; saving Nigeria […]
Two metaphors on public waste: Flyovers and tractors
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 […]
