Many officers of the Nigeria Police Force obtain bribes from their compatriots as a matter of course. Some people even claim that the bribetaking phenomenon runs bottom-up in the system, like a pyramid of sorts. This suggests that the trickle of sometimes lower denominations of the naira that commuter bus drivers and conductors routinely drop…
Two friends, who do not know each other, wanted to know what this column thought of the faceoff between the Kogi State Government and the Dangote Industries Limited over the cement works sitting on vast Obajana limestone. First off: Because nine of the 10 members of the Technical Committee on Evaluation of the Legality of…
In his poem, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote the lines, ‘Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink’, about the plight of the hero, marooned mid-sea, surrounded by so much seawater that is not suitable for drinking. Though Coleridge wrote his poem as a metaphor for those who sometimes…
Emeka Duru, a columnist with online newspaper, “The Niche,” suggested that presidential candidates for the 2023 general elections should be talking to the Nigerian voters, telling them what they’d do differently to correct past errors (of the political elite). It’s funny, but social media appears to be dominating the politicking and electioneering campaigns of presidential…
Ever wondered why Nigeria’s military rulers, their civil servant collaborators, and the neo-colonial Western powers, brought down the commodities marketing boards that accumulated hard currency after trading cash crops on behalf of farmers with the metropolitan economies? The policy compromised the capacity of the Nigerian economy to accumulate enough foreign currency to finance its import-oriented…
Tope Fasua, banker, development economist and former presidential candidate of Africa Renewal Party, thinks the Central Bank of Nigeria should have changed the Naira a long time ago, as other countries, like Ethiopia and Great Britain, had always done. But Ayo Teriba, an economist, CEO of Economics Associates and sometimes economic policy adviser to the…
Kunle Gbenro nearly broke down in tears as he drew attention – in a nearly broken voice – to the nearly-endemic incidents of Nigerians jumping off the Third Mainland Bridge to their deaths in the Lagos Lagoon. Watching Anderson Cooper of CNN International Television talk about his older brother who jumped to his death from…
Maybe you’ve seen video footages of separatist Yoruba Nation agitators insisting that Bola Tinubu’s quest to be President of Nigeria via the 2023 presidential election ignores the interest of the Yoruba Nation. Like their other southern Nigerian compatriots, the Yoruba Nation agitators think the country that was commanded into existence by British colonial agent, Lord…
There is a conspiracy against the people of Nigeria by the political elite, who have fraudulently captured state authority and state violence and converted both to meet their own private existential needs only, without remorse or apologies. Afrobeat musician, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, christened the official fraud in Nigeria, “Authority Stealing,” a rebuke of the grand larceny…
If terrorists take over the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Nigeria’s biggest economic artery and busiest road in Africa, from the Nigerian state, or make it difficult to travel on it, a major setback will hit Nigeria’s import-oriented economy. The Lagos-Ibadan Expressway is important to the distribution channels of the Nigerian economy. Indeed, if this road is shut…