RECENTLY, the International Monetary Fund, IMF, lamented Nigeria’ low tax revenues. Two weeks ago, when launching the IMF’s Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa, the Fund’s Director for Africa, Abebe Selassie, said: “For a country like Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, with all those development spending needs, we think it is problematic that the tax revenue […]

THE images of Godwin Emefiele, flummoxed as he is chaperoned by state security agents from custody to custody, from courtroom to courtroom, contrast sharply with those of the man who, as governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, bestrode, until just a year ago, the Nigerian financial and banking world like a colossus; the man who […]

A nation is civilised not because of its aesthetic, its beautiful architecture. Rather, a nation is civilised because of how it treats its citizens, because of the duration and quality of life of its citizens. That’s why social security or safety net for the poor is a badge of the heathy society. However, Nigeria creates billionaires […]

BOLA Tinubu, Nigeria’s president, is gloating. The economy “is looking much better”, he says, and wants Nigerians to start rejoicing because their woes will soon be over. In his Easter message, Tinubu told Nigerians that “the seeds of patience, which they have sown, are beginning to sprout and will in no time bring forth an abundance […]

Tinubu will fight tooth and nail and use his power of incumbency to the fullest, including through settlements and co-options, to retain power.

THE incessant ambushing and killing of soldiers and policemen by civilian gangs in Nigeria is a sign of anarchy. When soldiers and policemen, symbols of state authority, become frequent targets of civilian attacks, it’s an indication that citizens are rebelling against the state and that the state lacks a monopoly on the use of organised violence. […]

TWO weeks ago, on March 7, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer presented the UK government’s annual budget to parliament. The Financial Times and other British broadsheets pored over the budget and each devoted over 15 pages of a special supplement to analysing its intended and likely impacts on different categories of people, on families, […]

THERE was much hoopla when the Bola Tinubu administration recently announced that it would implement the 12-year-old report of the Stephen Oronsaye committee on the rationalisation of federal parastatals and agencies. The extensive media coverage and public commentaries suggested the announcement was a game changer. Sadly, it is yet another evidence that Nigeria majors in […]

Truth be told, it is impossible to govern a multi-ethnic country with a strongman mentality by centralising powers and vesting them in one person

AHEAD of last year’s general elections, I wrote a piece titled “2023: Shettima unfit to be Nigeria’s vice-president” (Vanguard, September 22, 2022). I argued that despite his education and seeming bibliophilism, Kashim Shettima suffers from negative parrhesia, expressing indecorous views freely without aforethought. I wrote: “With Shettima’s inherent tetchiness and truculence, he would be gratuitously provocative. […]

RECENTLY, faced with escalating violence across Nigeria, the president, Bola Tinubu, reportedly agreed with state governors to establish state police. The news excited those calling for state police in Nigeria. But the agitation for state police is misguided; it is based on shallow reasoning, not on a rational, hard-nosed analysis of the potential consequences.  To […]

BOLA Tinubu, Nigeria’s self-regarding president, says he deserves an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for his economic reforms. Speaking at the 10th German-Nigerian Business Forum in November last year, Tinubu said: “To me, if you didn’t mention me in the Guinness Book of Records, I would find a way to insert myself because […]

ATIKU Abubakar, former vice president, made his sixth attempt to become Nigeria’s president last year, 30 years after his first foray into presidential politics in 1993. He failed. However, God sparing his life, Atiku wants to make his seventh attempt in 2027, aged 80. Leaving aside the age for the moment, what does Atiku think will […]

The controversies over the Federal Government’s plans to relocate some departments of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, and the headquarters of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, FAAN, from Abuja to Lagos are yet another proof that Nigeria is deeply divided. The country that the British colonialists cobbled together from several ancient kingdoms and […]

OLA Olukoyede, the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, recently appointed by Nigeria’s new president, Bola Tinubu, is saying the right things and making the right noises about fighting corruption in Nigeria. Recently, he struck a chord with me when he called for unexplained wealth legislation in Nigeria. Unexplained wealth laws are the […]