I wouldn’t write off the government, however tempting. If Tinubu’s shock therapy has been disjointed, and his economic policies severely criticised by a despairing public, the tax-and-spend remedy by The Financial Times, the West’s standard response to budget deficits – apart from the added trope about transparency and corruption – is hardly the cure in Nigeria’s case for at least two reasons
Does it Still Make Sense to Trust Tinubu? Read More »
His government’s two most consequential decisions – announcing the removal of petrol subsidy and attempting to create a more transparent exchange rate system – touched a raw nerve. The biggest beneficiaries, primarily wealthy, powerful, and deadly people across the country, but particularly in the North, are determined to fight his government to a standstill
The Trouble with Tinubu Read More »
We don’t need foreign newspapers to tell us. The daily lives of most Nigerians today, whether at home, school, work, or in the market, tell the story unedited. And folks are beginning to ask, first in whispers and now in louder, angrier tones, what is the point of democracy that does not put food on the table?
A Reckoning in June Read More »
The rot was deep. But the treatment – the radical attempts to scrap market curbs and tighten fiscal and monetary controls – appears, for now, worse than the disease, leaving large sections of the population struggling and impoverished
One Year of Tinubu Read More »
On a good day, it’s improbable that any of Abubakar’s or Obi’s lawyers would say, with a straight face, that they believe that the constitution created Abuja as an enclave of super voters. Even for a constitution widely criticised for its clutter, it would be taking a malicious lack of clarity too far to suggest that the writers meant that Abuja voters were greater than the rest of us. Not even in the US, famous for its ‘federational’ oddities, does the capital, Washington DC, hold an electoral veto vote over the other states. In fact, the whole point of the Electoral College is to equalise the states. Nigerian courts have also made this point repeatedly. But obviously, the election petition industry will stop at nothing to reinvent its growth, expansion, and prosperity
Atiku, Obi and the Road to Kilimanjaro Read More »
Nigeria is not even among the eight countries currently participating in AfCFTA’s Guided Trade Initiative (GTI), a platform that is supposed to boost the region’s trade policy framework. How can Nigeria, which ought to be in the forefront of turning this state of affairs around, but which is sadly one of the laggards in AfCFTA commitments, covet a table at the G-20? And on what terms when, like most of the continent, Nigeria is still largely a market for primary commodities with the inherent disadvantages?
Begging for a seat at the table Read More »
Nobody knows more than Tinubu that even though he carries the same party flag with Buhari, he does not have the luxury of Buhari’s honeymoon period. And should he make any wrong choices – hopefully not – given the scale of the challenges facing the country, he must immediately remove such appointees, instead of indulging them like his predecessor, as if it was some complicated conjugal misery
Tinubu And Burden of Ministerial List 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 »