Uncollected waste has become a permanent fixture along highways, markets, and residential streets of Lagos. Hardly any other Nigerian city wears its refuse crisis quite so visibly. Heaps of decomposing waste do more than disfigure a city that stands as the nation’s commercial capital. They breed rodents, flies, and mosquitoes, and with them the diseases […]

Nigeria should press ahead with finishing its national identity project, and fast. No modern state can govern, plan, or protect a population it cannot properly count. After nearly two decades of fits and starts, the country is finally within sight of getting this right. The numbers tell part of the story. More than 137 million […]

The Federal Government did well to suspend its proposed increase in the registration fees for the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and the National Examinations Council (NECO) examinations. It is a decision that reflects not only sensitivity to public opinion but also a recognition of the harsh economic realities confronting Nigerian families. We are calling […]

Nigeria’s performance at the 2026 International STEM Olympiad in Rome was outstanding not only because of the medals won, but because it came from a broad spread of schools and subjects, showing that the country’s academic promise is still deeply embedded.  At a time when school abductions by jihadists and bandits, insecurity, and the wider […]

The Senate has finally given voice to a national outrage that has simmered for too long: Nigeria’s policy of rehabilitating and reintegrating so-called repentant Boko Haram fighters without doing them justice. It has outlived whatever limited utility its creators may once have claimed. A programme that begins with surrender and ends with return to the […]

Nigeria and the world are bleeding biodiversity at an alarming rate. Globally, the United Nations (UN) reports that 420 million hectares of forest, which is roughly the size of the European Union, have been lost since 1990, with mangroves vanishing even faster at 35 per cent of their original extent. In Nigeria, the Niger Delta’s mangrove […]

Nigeria’s absence from the 2026 World Cup is not fate. It is the bill finally arriving for years of reckless housekeeping at the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), and those responsible must be made to pay for it. Our football history shows that Nigeria rarely loses to better teams. It loses to itself. Rabat, en route […]

President Bola Tinubu’s ribbon-cutting for a gleaming new ECOWAS headquarters in Abuja offered a flattering image of ambition — but brick and glass do not heal the fractures that threaten the community’s very purpose. Fifty-one years after its founding in 1975 in Lagos to promote economic integration, collective security, free movement and democratic stability across […]

Kano’s recent announcement that it spent N1.5bn to bankroll mass weddings should prompt national alarm rather than applause. Kano State remains rampant in the worrying roster of northern states – including Kaduna, Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina and Borno – that have for years organised and financed large-scale nuptial ceremonies. Authorities offer three common rationales: to reduce […]

In the past decade, Nigeria’s name has become increasingly associated with crime, insecurity, and institutional decay, at home and abroad. Official corruption, weak institutions, terrorism, banditry, and the routine kidnapping of schoolchildren for ransom have normalised a national crisis that has eroded public trust and damaged the country’s global standing. The crimes not only persist; […]

The proliferation of small arms and light weapons across Nigeria is not a distant threat; it is an immediate, corrosive reality that bleeds communities dry of security, livelihood and hope. Pistols, assault rifles and improvised firearms have become the currency of violence, multiplying the lethality of banditry, kidnapping, communal clashes and organised crime. Where once […]

The Senate’s planned probe of the Safe Schools Initiative (SSI) has arisen from a bitter national irony: a programme meant to protect children has become a symbol of waste and recurring insecurity. Fresh outrage over school kidnappings has pushed lawmakers to demand answers on how about N144 billion was spent with so little visible protection […]

Nigeria cannot keep applauding its seafarers once a year and then abandoning them to harsh working realities at sea. The renewed call for better welfare is timely because, without sailors, there is no maritime trade, and without maritime trade, the wider economy suffers. The demand for improved welfare is driven by a few hard facts. […]

The torrential rains that pounded Lagos, Ogun, Rivers and several parts of southern Nigeria on 30th June were not merely another episode of seasonal downpours. They were a damning reminder that Nigeria has learnt little from decades of recurring flood disasters. As roads disappeared beneath raging waters, homes were submerged, businesses grounded and thousands of […]

The Federal Government is right to reopen the minimum-wage question, because no wage can be called fair if it is continually outrun by inflation and the rising cost of survival. The N70,000 minimum wage was agreed in 2024 at the outset of President Bola Tinubu’s economic reforms. Nigerians were asked to absorb painful shocks in […]