“The emancipation of the poor must be the act of the poor themselves”—   Classical Socialist Thought  In the ever shifting terrain of Nigerian politics, where power has increasingly become the preserve of entrenched elites, the re-emergence of populist currents is both inevitable and necessary. Indeed, it is both a historical and contemporary need that must come […]

“The true measure of a man is how he bears up under misfortune”—   Plutarch If the early phase of Alhaji Ado Bayero’s reign was defined by adaptation and consolidation, the later decades were marked by endurance, influence, adversity and the quiet exercise of statesmanship. By the 1970s and 1980s, Nigeria had entered a prolonged period of […]

“A great man is one who leaves others at a loss after he is gone”—   Paul Valéry To do justice to the life and times of so illustrious a personality as the late Alhaji Ado Bayero, CFR, Emir of Kano, would require the pen and erudition of historians of the calibre of Ibn Khaldun, Edward Gibbon […]

“Between the strong and the weak, it is liberty that oppresses and the law that sets free“—   Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire My sustained engagement with questions of sovereignty, strategic autonomy and global order is shaped not only by my background as a career diplomat, but also by a lifelong study of world history. In “The Martyrdom of […]

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other“—  John Adams Few observations capture the enduring dilemma of democratic governance as succinctly as this warning by John Adams. Long before the modern age of mass democracy, Adams understood that constitutions and institutions, however carefully […]