Petrol subsidy is gone, means petrol subsidy is gone. Anything short of saying so on day one, would have amounted to kicking the can down the road, again. And that, we have seen, has been the graveyard of speeches in the last several decades full of economic philosophy and poetry but meaning nothing. Enough.
Tinubu Biting the Bullet from Day One Read More »
She was having weight problems and had undergone liposuction, a process which she later described as one of the darkest periods of her life. To come through that period and announce a plan to challenge the world’s record holder, a task that would test even the very fit seemed like a bridge too far. Yet, Hilda was willing to try
On Eve of Transition, Nigerian Chef Cooks Up A Storm Read More »
Obasanjo being Obasanjo, he did not mind imitating a low-grade version of Otto von Bismarck’s philosophy, that the business of Nigeria’s redemption at the time – restructuring, corruption and a pariah economy – required bloody noses and a hand of iron. By the time Buhari was elected eight years later, the landscape had changed somewhat. Yet, Buhari’s hands-off approach was dictated just as much by the relatively mature political landscape as by his complicatedly insular, almost abdicatory political style. Tinubu is a different matter altogether
What Should Tinubu Do About the Assembly? Read More »
Aliko Dangote was dealt a bad hand in a failed transaction. Later, he vowed revenge. Not in a pound of flesh, but by venturing to make his own success where he had been ambushed. At issue was the decision of the government of Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in 2007 to reverse the sale of the Port Harcourt and Kaduna Refineries (two of Nigeria’s moribund refineries) to Blue Star, the Dangote-led consortium. Blue Star had paid about $670 million for the plants in the twilight of the Obasanjo administration and gone away thinking it was a done deal. It wasn’t.
Dangote Refinery Challenges Global Narrative Read More »
The real elephant in the room is that the NPC knows the Bola Ahmed Tinubu government would reject the outcome of a census rammed down the country’s throat with only days before President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration leaves. They’re dealing with a familiar customer. It was Lagos State, under Tinubu, that dragged the Federal Government to the tribunal over the 2006 census, on grounds that the state’s population had been underreported by nearly half its size
The Fowl of Mecca and Nigeria’s Census Palaver Read More »
In the last election, Buhari showed himself as the master of strategic ambivalence. He did not want Tinubu as his successor. Yet, in his valley of indecision, he knew that the surging wave would land the shore and was quite pleased, in spite of his misery, to go with the flow. It was not always like that
What Nigeria’s Election Cannot Teach Does Not Exist Read More »
As Hadiza would later find out, office politics for a political appointee could be more fierce, more complicated and often more vicious than electoral politics. And if you’re going to make too much noise about principles or patriotism, Hadiza wrote, you must be prepared to resign or have your head served on the platter of the big man
Hadiza and the Toes of the Nigerian Big Man Read More »
It would have taken extraordinary nerve for the government under Buhari to formally bring charges against Abubakar, his main rival and leading opposition candidate on the eve of the elections. And even if Buhari’s government succeeded in doing so, it would have been interesting to hear what the US and other Western countries would have said…It is difficult to imagine that the prosecution would come up with this raft of charges against Trump – and press them in court now – if he was not interested in running again in the 2024 elections
Why Trump’s Trial Doesn’t Make America Special Read More »
The presidential candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Atiku Abubakar, for example, campaigned in the South East that he deserved their vote because he has an Igbo wife. And then, to the embarrassment of his Igbo wife, he went to the North to say, “only a Northern president can best serve the interest of Northerners.” Others are on their own.
A British Example in Our Rascally Times Read More »
I took particular interest in four anglophone countries with a fairly vibrant and robust tradition of press freedom and randomly browsed coverage, just before, during and after the polls, to see if I would be disappointed. I wasn’t. Not by Ghana, Nigeria’s western neighbour, which has its own district and local elections later this year…The Editor of a major Ghanaian newspaper, The Chronicle , Emmanuel Akli, explained why: ‘The Ghanaian economy is in a very bad shape,’ he said. ‘The press is struggling. Readership is very low. Advertising is even worse. We are all struggling, and that includes Daily Graphic the biggest daily. We can’t even cover internal issues well, never mind sending reporters to cover elections in Nigeria!
A British Example in Our Rascally Times Read More »