By ANITA KNIGHT WHEN Nigeria’s Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) announced it would begin a two-week nationwide strike starting Monday 13 October, it felt like déjà vu. The script is familiar—promises made, committees formed, reports submitted, and silence from the government until classrooms go dark again. At the University of Abuja on Sunday, ASUU […]
By FRED LONGJOHN OBEH THE seizure of 9.6 tonnes of cocaine worth ₦819 billion off the West African coast on 22 September is more than just another headline about global narcotics—it is a loud alarm for Nigeria’s maritime security. Conducted by the French Navy with support from the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), the operation revealed […]
By STELLA JOHNSON OGBOVOVEH Bauhaus Global’s rise in Benue symbolises a deeper national crisis — one where foreign contractors profit from public contracts while Nigerian workers pay the price in blood and silence. IN Benue State, where billion-naira contracts are meant to transform infrastructure and livelihoods, a Lebanese-owned construction firm, Bauhaus Global Investment Limited, is […]
By JULIET EKANEM FROM its parades of election banners to the pomp of state inaugurals, Nigeria presents itself as a democracy. Yet peel back the layers, and what emerges is something far darker: a kleptocracy built on the laws of appearance, not justice. Defining the Kleptocracy A true democracy is one in which power both […]
By NJORIGE LYNUS FOR decades, Nigeria’s political class has been dogged by one recurring scandal: certificate forgery. From governors to ministers, senators to presidents, the allegations cut across party lines, generations, and governments. Recent revelations about Uche Nnaji, Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, have once again pulled the issue into public view—reviving questions about […]
By DAVID JOHN-FLUKE WHEN U.S. Senator Ted Cruz stood before Congress last week to introduce the Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act of 2025, his message was clear — and damning. He accused the Nigerian government of enabling what he described as the “systematic extermination of Christians.” The Texas senator’s speech, later echoed on his podcast […]
By PAULINA NZERUBE IN Nigeria’s long history of state creation, maps have never been mere geography. Each new state is a reordering of power, a redistribution of resources, and a chance to correct political and social imbalances. From the 1967 restructuring that birthed 12 states to the 1996 exercise that gave us Bayelsa and Ebonyi, […]
By HAUWA MAGANA WHEN the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) Prize for Literature announced SANYA by Oyin Olugbile as its 2025 winner, it did more than honour a novel — it celebrated a voice that has given new meaning to silence, womanhood, and memory in African fiction. The $100,000 award — Africa’s most prestigious literary […]
By STELLA JOHNSON OGBOVOVEH EVERY basket of tomatoes, every bag of rice, and every tuber of yam that reaches Nigerian markets carries an invisible tax — a toll extracted not by law, but by corruption. Across the nation’s highways, truck drivers ferrying food items are bled dry at countless checkpoints manned by police, soldiers, road […]
By DIANA CHUKWUKA ON a humid Lagos afternoon, E.O. Obanor sits on the veranda of his one-room apartment, watching his children play. Three years ago, he was a bakery supervisor earning ₦220,000 monthly. Today, he’s unemployed, battling debt, and fighting thoughts that frighten him. “I never thought I’d come this low,” he says quietly. “When […]