Our public service in this country is atrocious. People employed in government offices to run the affairs of the citizenry, ensure their safety and drive development are preoccupied with other selfish pursuits. Nobody pays a price for failure that leads to loss of lives and property. This syndrome, which is evident at all levels, is […]

About 30 years ago, what is happening to Nigeria would have been unthinkable. The internal security of this nation was so sure that the military government of General Ibrahim Babangida fronted the formation of the ECOWAS Monitoring Group, ECOMOG, a military coalition that successfully restored order and democracy in war-torn Liberia and Sierra Leone. Today, […]

The Steve Oronsaye Report is a hot-button document that every president since the past 12 years had wished but failed to implement. The political will has been spectacularly lacking. This prompts the question: how far is President Bola Tinubu willing to go in confronting it? Over a decade ago when our national debt stock was […]

For those untutored on Nigeria’s history, the passage of the South- East Development Commission, SEDC, last week was just one of the crummy activities of the Senate. In truth, it was a historic milestone of sorts, the breaking of a jinx. The effort has fared particularly badly in the House of Representatives, where it was […]

THE Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, recently swallowed its pride and reversed its sanctions against member-states now under military juntas. Currently, five ECOWAS countries, all French-speaking, are under military rule. They are Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad. They form an unbroken arc across the Sahel. Mauritania, one of the few countries […]

About two weeks ago, protests erupted in some parts of the North, notably Minna, the capital of Niger State, over the wave of hunger, food hyperinflation and hardship. The police arrested and detained many of the protesters (among whom were women). The state’s Governor, Mohammed Bago, later got them released and issued a public apology. […]

President Bola Tinubu has continued to show his pragmatic approach to governance instead of sticking to his own pet ideas even when they are not yielding the desired results. He has constituted a tripartite economic advisory committee to help him steer Nigeria out of its worsening difficulties. The president said his intention was to broaden […]

NO matter how popular or credible a government is deemed to be, it must face crisis situations from time to time. How it responds to such emergency situations shows its readiness and capacity for effective governance. The government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu may have had good intentions in taking some hard decisions in the […]

Members from almost, if not all, the six geo-political zones have submitted requests or bills to the National Assembly for the creation of a federal-funded regional body for the development of their geopolitical zones. Already, the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, has been in operation since 2000 when former President Olusegun Obasanjo yielded to agitators’ […]

THE International Monetary Fund, IMF, feels entitled to plug Nigerian leaders with constant advisories on how to run our economy and society because we are always running to borrow from it. History has, however shown that the IMF and its Bretton Woods twin, the World Bank, are more concerned in propagating their neo-colonialistic interests than […]

The 10th Session of the National Assembly headed by the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, has served notice of its intention to embark on further alterations of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999. This is a routine assignment undertaken by each session of the Assembly, with the Deputy President of the […]

THE chicken is coming home to roost at last. For the first time ever, the political leadership of this country has flashed the green light over the idea of decentralising the federal monopoly of policing in Nigeria. After President Bola Tinubu’s meeting with state governors last week, the Minister of Information, Mohammed Idris Malagi, announced […]

GOVERNOR Mohammed Umar Bago of Niger State reacted very poorly to the protests that rocked Minna, the state capital, and other areas recently over rising hunger and hardship. He blamed the “opposition” for allegedly “sponsoring” them. Some women who were part of the protests were arrested but later released with public apologies from the Governor. […]

PRESIDENT of Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, Ibrahim Gusau, practically counted Nigeria’s eggs before they were hatched when he told the News Agency of Nigeria in Abidjan that “the Super Eagles will win the AFCON trophy for Tinubu”. Gusau claimed that the Super Eagles’ 1-0 quarter-final victory over Angola was as a result of President Bola […]

TODAY, February 14, is Valentine’s Day, also called Saint Valentine’s Day, or the Feast of Saint Valentine. Ironically, some Christians scoff at it, not knowing that Valentine Day actually originated as a Christian feast that honours a martyr named Valentine. As it evolved through the years, Valentine Day became a “significant cultural, religious and commercial […]