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 […]
Rice red alert before crisis consumes us
By Dele Sobowale “The time is a quarter to midnight” — Norman Borlaug, 1914-2009 Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution and Nobel Prize Winner in Agriculture in 1970 opened his address while receiving the prestigious award with those words. It catalyzed governments globally to take the issue of food security seriously. Nigeria briefly embraced it […]
Paradoxes of Nigeria’s crude oil and fuel sector
By Dele Sobowale “How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress” – Niels Bohr, 1885-11962 Bohr, a Danish Nobel Prize Winner in Physics was one of the leaders in unraveling the mysteries of quantum theory. Along the line, he discovered that atoms don’t act in predictable […]
Mohammed Babangida, welcome to a hot seat
By Dele Sobowale I‘m ready to serve, says Mohammed Babangida – Report, July 22, 2025 High fertiliser cost: farmers dump rice, maize cultivation – Daily Trust, July 21, 2025 Over 3.7 million people face food insecurity in North-east Nigeria – ICRC, July 22, 2025 There was never a doubt in my mind that Mohammed Babangida would accept […]
Needless controversy over NNPCL refineries
By Dele Sobowale “If you shut up truth and bury it underground, it will but grow and gather to itself such explosive power, that the day it bursts through, it will blow up everything in its way” – Emile Zola, 1840-1902 Two things are now certain about Nigeria’s so-called refineries. One, President Bola Tinubu will, henceforth, […]
What should not happen is happening at NNPC, by Dele Sobowale
Pause a moment and wrap your mind around the revelation that Nigeria might not have had to borrow one kobo – if only its national oil company had been managed by honest citizens from the Chairmen of the Board of Directors to the gatemen.
Hunger, poverty corruption and underdevelopment
By Dele Sobowale Talk of stating the obvious as profound wisdom, the National Security Adviser, NSA, Malam Nuhu Ribadu and the Chief of Defense Staff, CDS, General Christopher Musa, speaking at the 14th National Security Seminar, organised by the Alumni of National Defence College, Abuja, “said yesterday that hunger and poverty are catalysts fueling insecurity, violence and […]
Why borrowing $24.14bn is inevitable
By Dele Sobowale “Mice are mice; that is why mouse traps work.” President Bola Tinubu’s fresh request to the National Assembly to approve external loans totalling $24.14 billion is tiresome. Once again, it raises concerns that Nigeria is hurtling towards a fiscal precipice, with public debt increasing at an alarming rate even as government revenues show signs […]
NIGERIAN PRESIDENTS AND NNPC MOUSE TRAP
By Dele Sobowale “Mice are mice; that is why mouse traps work.” More than half of the corruption in the Federal Government, FG, would be wiped out; if only the Presidents responded to those reports the way they should. I stopped downloading, reading and analysing the Annual Report of the Auditor General of the Federation, AuGF, when […]
Time insecurity and poverty in Nigeria
By Dele Sobowale ”Capital is a coward: it flees from wherever there is turbulence.” Time managementFor almost ten years, the idea has been disturbing my mind that perhaps the time has come in Nigeria when governments at all levels must consider security as an economic variable. Right now, Nigerians, in and out of government remain […]
NNPCL controversy long foretold
By Dele Sobowale “$3bn refinery fraud: N80bn found in sacked MD’s account” – Report, May 3, 2025 There is probably no adult Nigerian alive who was shocked or surprised by the news report. It was a tragedy waiting to unfold. That the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, would be probed was never in doubt. The […]
