WORDS BY AYO SOGUNRO THE most difficult war the Nigerian people will fight will be the war of liberation from the political elite. Because this war will not be one against foreign enemies; it will be a war against our friends, family, and neighbours who support a dysfunctional political system. But it can be done. […]
By AFOLABI AKINOLA OLAYIWOLA ECONOMISTS have repeatedly submitted that human wants are insatiable. The DNA of Africans, when it comes to losing elections, has given many realistic definitions to our greedy attitudes to power and animosity. A peep into history shows that the Western world has demonstrated nothingness to power and its ephemerality. They applaud […]
By FEMI D. OJUMU SEVERAL centuries later, the aforementioned Thucydidean quote from The Melian Dialogue is a hawkish exposition of the warring vicissitudes of insatiability, power, and annexation or forcible land acquisition, that remains relevant in contemporary times. Adam Smith’s postulation in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776), adopting […]
By CHETA NWANZE THE contrasting attitudes of two prominent British politicians of ethnic minority heritage – Kemi Badenoch (of Nigerian descent) and Rishi Sunak (of Indian origin) – towards their ancestral homelands reveal much about colonialism’s enduring legacies and the complexities of national identity. While Sunak, the UK’s first Indian-origin Prime Minister, has consistently expressed […]
THE humiliating 4-0 defeat of Nigeria’s home-based Eagles by Sudan at the African Nations Championship in Zanzibar on Tuesday is a damning indictment of the rot that has consumed Nigerian domestic football over the past two decades. When a team comprising players from the Nigeria Premier Football League cannot compete with Sudan – a country […]
By JONATHAN NDA-ISAIAH IF there’s one thing President Bola Tinubu has proven since assuming office, it’s that he governs with the urgency of a man convinced time is a hostile opponent. This week’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting was another display of that restlessness — an avalanche of policy directives, fiscal reviews, billion-naira approvals, and long-term […]
By ABDULRAUF ALIYU THE North Central region of Nigeria has long been described as the country’s “bridge” – geographically connecting North and South, culturally diverse, and resource-rich. Plateau, Nasarawa, Kwara, Benue, Niger, and Kogi form a belt of potential that could, in theory, be the nation’s agricultural and industrial heartbeat. Yet the 2025 Phillips Consulting State […]
THE place of research in any country’s development aspirations cannot be over-emphasised. It is no surprise that funds are regularly made available for this purpose. Often, the problem is not with funding but the judicious utilisation of available resources. Recently, the federal government was reported to have approved a ₦4.2 billion research grant for 158 […]
By MUAZU ELAZEH WELCOME to the world of bandits in Nigeria. They kill, we pacify them with negotiation without taking measures to appease the victims of their atrocities and we wonder why banditry remains intractable? We are a bunch of jokers. This week, the Safana Local Government Area of Katsina State signed a peace deal […]
By ABDULRAUF ALIYU LAST week, I provided a detailed overview of the 2025 Phillips Consulting State Performance Index (pSPI), a report that weighs both hard data and citizen perception to assess the performance of Nigeria’s states. Today marks the beginning of a six-week series in which we take a more surgical look, region by region, […]