Since he became president in May 2023, Bola Tinubu has enjoyed nothing more than hiring and firing people. A week hardly passes without Tinubu making one public appointment or another, which shows the enormous patronage power of the Nigerian president. But equally, Tinubu has fired more people on grounds of corruption in less than two years in […]

The International Monetary Fund, IMF, and the World Trade Organisation, WTO, both have a remit to monitor and review the economic developments and policies of their members. The aim, for the IMF, is to ensure that countries manage their economies and finances well to prevent financial instabilities both nationally and internationally. For the WTO, the aim is […]

Earlier this week, on Monday, January 20, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the US. Eight years ago, on January 20, 2017, Trump was inaugurated as America’s 45th president. His remarkable comeback, after a four-year interregnum, makes him the second US president, since Grover Cleveland in 1892, to return to office for […]

Everyone is familiar with the famous saying: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” That saying, attributed to Edmund Burke, is as relevant to governance as it is to other human endeavours. Democracy and good governance are dead in any country without strong and probing opposition political parties, […]

There are two models of democracy. One is a direct democracy; the other is a representative democracy. In the former, citizens elect people as “delegates” to the legislature to formulate laws and policies but retain the powers to decide directly themselves what laws and policies they want. One notable example of a direct democracy is Switzerland, […]

At the beginning of every year, analysts look back at the past 12 months – reflecting on what worked and what didn’t – and look forward to the next 12 months – prognosticating on what might and might not be. In that tradition, this column began last year with an article titled “2024: How Nigerians […]

Bola Tinubu’s 2024 budget, his first as president, was a whopping N28.77 trillion. He dubbed it “Budget of Renewed Hope”. But, as 2024 crawls to an end, the hope Tinubu promised to renew turns out to be a mirage. Rather than experiencing the actualisation of a hope, most Nigerians have witnessed utter despair. In 2024, according to […]

Most of those who have commented or are commenting on the Dele Farotimi-Afe Babalola saga have not read the book at the heart of the story: Farotimi’s Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System. I have. I bought a digital copy from Amazon last week, and spent four hours slowly reading – more appropriately, perusing – the […]

The strength of any country consists of its natural resources, human resources and capital assets, namely, the economic wealth that delivers higher living standards. The first two determine the third. If a country can successfully harness its natural resources, using its human talent, it will prosper; if it can’t, it will fail. Now, Nigeria is known […]

Recently, the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, published the results of the General Household Survey Panel, which showed that 63.8 per cent of households face severe food insecurity and are skipping meals, some for a whole day. Nigeria is not in war or ravaged by famine, so why should two-thirds of the population be in the […]