The SEDC will need protection from political extortion, by Chidi Anselm Odinkalu
When he presented his budget proposals for 2024 to Nigeria’s National Assembly, the first full year of appropriations under his presidency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu identified as his priorities human asset development, poverty reduction and fighting insecurity. Last week, his official spokesperson, Bayo Onanuga, appeared to forget or renounce that policy direction, when he acknowledged […]
Judges and political mating games, by Chidi Odinkalu
“In the general course of human nature, a power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.” – Alexander Hamilton, Federalist, No. 79, cited in O’Donoghue v. US, Id., 531 at 516 NEARLY one year before he eventually prevailed in the legal contest over the destination of the governorship election which occurred in […]
Corpus Juris Abracadabrum, by Chidi Odinkalu
“I am surprised that lawyers can be so blind as to suffer the principles of law to be discredited.”— Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Fugitive Slave Law, 186 (1851) THERE is a joke that when he or she wants an excuse to impress a client in order to finagle substantial earnings, a Nigerian lawyer resorts to Latin […]
In Nigeria, judicial appointments have become network of corruption, by Chidi Odinkalu
“Fools at the top would cause damage to any system not to talk of the fragile institutions of a fledgling democracy.”—Charles Archibong, A Stranger in Their Midst: A Memoir, 97 (2021) IN the last week of April, 2024, Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Olukayode Ariwoola, co-convened and chaired a “National Summit on Justice” in Abuja, Nigeria’s […]
Attorney-General Adoke and the burden of freedom, by Chidi Odinkalu
SENIOR Nigerian public officers are notoriously parsimonious with their recall once out of office. From among their club memoirs are the unusual. In a country ruled by whim, risk aversion is prudent when you are out of power. By feigning amnesia, yesterday’s men limit the likelihood that their successors may remember them for the wrong reasons. […]
Yahaya Bello and a complicit Judiciary, by Chidi Odinkalu
Turning to the State Chief Judge, meanwhile, Yahaya Bello made life unbearable for Nasir Ajannah. He began by banishing the man from official state functions.
