Of course, in the first subjugation, Nigeria had no choice beyond putting up feeble resistance. But in what looks like the second, it’s a willing instrument. Truth is, Nigeria is a willing pawn in China’s debt-trap diplomacy, and has deliberately put itself in China’s economic, political and ideological spheres of influence.

By Olu Fasan PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari’s recent renaming of railway stations across the country after certain Nigerians was gesture politics at its crudest. The Cambridge dictionary defines gesture politics as “any action by a person done for political reason and intended to attract public attention but having little real effect”. How else would anyone describe […]

READING the biographies of the eight candidates for the next Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, WTO, it’s obvious that Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has the most intimidating and awe-inspiring credentials.

By Olu Fasan DEAR readers, please allow me to start this week’s column with a heartfelt “thank-you” to those who made my 60th birthday last week so memorable. My deepest gratitude goes to the Almighty God for making the day possible. Thanks to everyone who sent their warm wishes. Special thanks to Vanguard, Nigeria’s best-read […]

By Olu Fasan FELLOW Nigerians, I am 60 this week; precisely tomorrow, Friday, July 24. For which I am absolutely grateful to my creator, the Almighty God! Being 60 this week, of course, means I was born in 1960, a few months before Nigeria’s independence. My mother never stops telling me that she carried me […]

By Rotimi Fasan NO country is inherently immune to corruption. What makes the difference between a more corrupt country and a less corrupt one is the incentive structure of their anti-corruption institutions and the integrity of those running them. As the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, rightly says, “Corruption is a failure of institutions.” That […]

PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari is governing Nigeria by fiat. In a practice alien to previous civilian presidents, he is using executive orders to take far-reaching actions. Since assuming office in 2015, Buhari has issued 10 executive orders. So proud is he of such instruments that the Presidency said in a document marking his administration’s fifth anniversary: […]

By Olu Fasan RIGHT from the inception of his administration in 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari has been dogged by accusations of sectionalism in his appointments. Recently, prominent Southern leaders went to the Abuja Federal High Court to seek a declaration that his appointments were “ethnically discriminatory and lopsided”, in breach of the Federal Character and, […]

By Olu Fasan LAST month, on May 1, President Muhammadu Buhari ordered the implementation of the Oronsaye Report on the rationalisation of federal parastatals and agencies six years after it was submitted to his predecessor, President Goodluck Jonathan. Recently, in his Democracy Day speech, President Buhari said he approved the implementation of the report because […]

By Olu Fasan THE 1990s were a turbulent and dire period for Nigeria. With the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election and the catastrophic events that followed, the 1990s were the darkest moments in Nigeria’s history, after the 1966 coups and the ensuing civil war. But while Nigerians at home personally lived through […]

By Olu Fasan IN 2015, when Akinwumi Adesina ran for the presidency of the African Development Bank, AfDB, I wrote a piece in my Businessday column entitled “AfDB presidency: Adesina, best candidate for the job” (BusinessDay, May 4, 2015). Apart from the national prestige in a Nigerian heading an international economic institution, I believed Adesina […]

By Olu Fasan LAST week, having self-assessed his five years in power, President Muhammadu Buhari adjudged himself a success. In a 26-page self-assessment report, tagged “Buhari Administration Fifth Anniversary Factsheet”, the presidency said the Buhari administration “has made salutary impact in almost all the facets of Nigerian life”. Basking in the self-congratulatory mood, Lai Mohammed, […]

By Olu Fasan THE appointment of Professor Ibrahim Agboola Gambari as his new chief of staff is President Muhammadu Buhari’s only high-profile and undisputedly meritocratic political appointment since he assumed office in 2015. Over the past five years, President Buhari has run a mediocre and lacklustre government, with uninspiring cabinets, consisting of ministerial poodles who […]

By Olu Fasan PRESIDENT Muhammadu Buhari will be five years in power this month. Next week, on May 29, he will complete the first year of his second term, and thus has three more years in office. But, according to the theory of presidential election cycle, the last year of a presidential term is usually […]

By Olu Fasan Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s kleptomaniac and despotic former dictator died in office in 1998. But if anything reminds us of him, it is Shakespeare’s famous words: “The evil that men do lives after them.” For 22 years after Abacha’s demise, he is still talked about in local and international media. Not for any […]