Over the last two or so decades, the view seems to have taken root in Nigeria that we can somehow sing, dance, code, post, brand and speculate our way into meaningful development. This is an illusion; it is not going to happen—certainly not soon enough to make much of a difference in the conditions under […]

It was the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) that first alerted Nigerians that a number of tertiary institutions have been aiding candidates to falsify records for the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) mobilisation. “The board has discovered widespread and unwholesome practices whereby some institutions were colluding with candidates to falsify vital records, such as […]

“I hear the people of Ogun State have put the people of Nigeria in serious trouble with the Chinese.” “You did not hear anything. The story is out there and it is so loud that even the deaf can hear that there is a Chinese problem in Nigeria right now. And just to correct your […]

When Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, the president-general of the Ohanaeze Ndigbo, died last month, it reawakened a topic I had been ruminating over for decades. I had been following the trajectories of politicians who aspired to be president of Nigeria at one point or the other and I had been genuinely startled by how many ended […]

In an interview with Financial Times published last Friday, Chairman of Heirs Holdings, Mr Tony Elumelu sounded more upbeat about the Nigerian oil and gas sector than he was two and a half years ago. As an industry player, Elumelu had lamented in March 2022 that the reason Nigeria could not meet its OPEC production […]

An American immigration officer caught me unawares with a probing question. I was doing a research on five oil-producing countries on a comparative scale with Nigeria to draw out lessons for our leaders on policy environment, windfall management, upstream-downstream linkages, local content, and operations of national oil companies. I had travelled to Washington, DC to […]

There you have it. The “hunger protest” that took off in most parts of the country on Wednesday has predictably led to burning, looting and killing. In one instance, demonstrators tried to overrun a government house. A man was seen vandalising traffic lights to — wait for this — “end bad governance”. Unfortunately, at least […]