State of the Nation with Olu Fasan

Broken politics: Deeply flawed primaries point to a messy 2027, by Olu Fasan

The morning foretells the day.  Early signs can indicate how a day will unfold. In that sense, the recent presidential, gubernatorial and legislative primaries foretell a very messy general election next year. Over the past two weeks, the media have been awash with endless stories about deeply flawed party primaries. The primaries betray a political […]
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PEPC judgement: The verdict can destroy presidential democracy in Nigeria, By Olu Fasan

At one point, a cynical thought ran through my mind: Did INEC’s and Tinubu’s lawyers write the verdict for the judges? I quickly dismissed the thought but was struck by how the judges treated Obi’s and Atiku’s lawyers, most Senior Advocates of Nigeria, SANs, like morons, who were utterly incompetent and ignorant of the law, but treated INEC’s and Tinubu’s lawyers with total deference, regurgitating their arguments. 

War with Niger? Tinubu is playing reckless macho politics, By Olu Fasan

IT is a truism that a country’s foreign policy is the reflection of its domestic circumstances. A country that faces huge economic, political and security crises at home would be foolhardy to prosecute a war abroad. Furthermore, a robust foreign policy depends on domestic support. Thus, it’s utterly reckless and dangerous for a president to […]

Why do Nigerian governors swear allegiance to the president? By Olu Fasan

This is a subject I have long wanted to address. It first caught my attention when I watched the inauguration of Professor Charles Soludo as governor of Anambra State in March 2022. As he recited the oath of office, I was struck by how many times he mentioned the words “Federal Republic of Nigeria”, “President […]

Tinubu’s ministers: A bunch of political rewardees and cronies, By Olu Fasan

ONE of the popular myths around Bola Tinubu, stemming from his time as governor of Lagos State, was that he had an uncanny ability to pick competent teams of technocrats to run the affairs of state. Indeed, some genuinely wanted Tinubu to be president and “run Nigeria as he ran Lagos.” But the myths have […]

Adamu’s forced exit: The post-power humiliation of Buhari, By Olu Fasan

MUHAMMADU Buhari, Nigeria’s immediate past president, had a post-power syndrome. He once said he would find life difficult if a president from another party succeeded him. He genuinely feared that a successor from another party would treat him and his allies the same way he treated his predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, and his loyalists in 2015. […]

PDP’s Gang of Five: A danger to Nigeria’s ‘representative’ democracy, By Olu Fasan

In theory, Nigeria is a representative democracy; in practice, it is not. Unlike in a direct democracy, where people determine how they are governed by voting on policies and laws themselves, in a representative democracy, they elect those who govern them, who make policies and laws for them. However, to be truly “representative”, a democracy […]

El-Rufai’s wish for an ‘Islamic Republic of Nigeria’, By Olu Fasan

Mallam Nasir el-Rufai is an unrepentant religious bigot; a militant Islamic supremacist, who believes Islam is superior to Christianity and should be privileged in national leadership. He doesn’t just hold these views, he actively pursues them. As governor of Kaduna State for eight years, until May this year, El-Rufai ran an Islamic government, with a […]

‘Democracy Day’: The deception and betrayal of ‘June 12 activists’, By Olu Fasan

General Ibrahim Babangida erred tragically and did a great disservice to Nigeria by annulling the presidential election of June 12, 1993. But nothing has deepened the wounds more than the deception and betrayal of the so-called “June 12 activists”, who turned the annulment into a self-serving political lodestar and built their political careers around it, […]

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