Can Nigeria Learn To Think Ahead?
When floods swallow roads in Lagos, food prices jump in Kano, classrooms overflow in Niger Delta communities, or young graduates queue for scarce jobs in Abuja, government is expected to respond.
Institutions
Articles
52 articlesThe Niger State tragedy: Another reactionary inquiry
The loss of 37 lives in state custody is a grave indictment of public safety standards. Setting up a panel is not an achievement. The measure of true leadership lies in unyielding structural reform, state level accountability, and uncompromising prosecution.
Bureaucratic sabotage: How corruption at NAFDAC endangers national security
In modern statecraft, health security is national security. Professor Adeyeye’s courageous exposure of these internal bottlenecks must serve as a turning point. She needs all the support and for the country to stand behind her in her quest to bring sanity.
Rethinking Policy From The Ground (II)
Last week, this column began with a simple proposition: Nigeria’s public policy conversation is often conducted at the wrong altitude.
Rethinking Policy From The Ground (I)
Nigeria’s policy conversation has long been conducted at the wrong altitude. We speak of federal programmes, presidential initiatives and national plans as though Abuja is the decisive theatre of development.
Memo to the House of Representatives on the AfCFTA Domestication Bill, HB 2765
HB 2765 offers the most comprehensive framework for implementing the AfCFTA in Nigeria compared to previous bills.
Nigeria’s Dangerous Worship Of Failed Leaders
When Emperor Nero died in AD 68, Rome was not short of people who remembered him fondly. Those who benefited from his generosity, public entertainment, and personal favour mourned his passing.
The End Of Development Economics: A Manifesto For A Post-Industrial Policy
A driver who insists on using a 1960 road map to navigate a twenty-first century city is not necessarily lost because the map is inaccurate.
Nigeria’s Recovery That Millions Still Cannot Feel
A bridge is only useful when it connects two sides of a river. If engineers complete one end while the other remains untouched, what exists is not infrastructure but symbolism.
Ambition without architecture: Why Nigeria must regulate AI
We currently have no binding, AI-specific statute. While the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 exists, it governs what happens to data, not what complex AI systems do with it.
Constitutional Reform in Nigeria: Key Areas and Issues for Review by the 10th National Assembly
Since the restoration of democratic rule on 29 May 1999, diverse groups of Nigerians have pressed for amendments to provisions of the 1999 Constitution seen as out of harmony with the country’s federal character.
Trust, Efficiency And Fiscal Transformation In Nigeria
A nation’s tax system is like a long suspension bridge stretching across a turbulent river. The steel cables represent legislation, digital infrastructure, enforcement machinery and administrative reform.
Did World Bank Misread Development?
Economic development theory has never been a neutral exercise in abstraction. It is an arena where ideas are shaped by institutional power, geopolitical interest, and the historical position of those issuing policy advice.
Data As Fiscal Infrastructure
A tax system without data is like a pilot navigating through thick cloud cover without instruments.
Rebuilding State Tax Capacity For Growth
A state’s tax system is like the circulatory system of a body; it is not the quantity of blood that ensures vitality, but the efficiency of the vessels, the strength of the heart, and the coordination of every pulse.
The soul of Nigeria Police: Addressing soft issues for modern challenges
For the Nigeria Police to truly fulfil its mandate, it is essential to create an environment in which merit and professionalism are consistently rewarded, rather than allowing patronage and favouritism to dictate advancement and responsibility.
Zubaidat Isah: Victim Of Murder, Or A Pawn In A Trafficking Syndicate?
History has rarely been kind to societies that avert their gaze from difficult questions, especially when those questions involve the disappearance of the young and vulnerable.
Nigeria’s Strategic Choices In A Fragmented World
On Friday, 30 January 2026, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the World Trade Organization, delivered the 45th Pre-Convocation Lecture at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
When Faith Meets Fiscal Truth
I started watching The Source of the River last month, seeking an evening of entertainment but finding an unexpected masterclass in human behavior, economics, and governance.
Reform Or Retreat: A Moment For Northern States
On June 26, 2025, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu assented to four landmark laws that signal the boldest reconfiguration of Nigeria’s fiscal architecture since the return to democracy.
Two years of Uba Sani: What matters
Two years into the administration of Governor Uba Sani, Kaduna State presents a portrait both hopeful and troubling, one marked by flashes of progress and deep, systemic voids.
Rent rules without supply fix
Lagos, a sprawling megacity of dreams and contradictions, lives and breathes through its housing market. This market is as vibrant as it is volatile, as complex as it is crucial to the city’s economic heartbeat.
Nigeria’s Journey On Broken Asphalt
Nigeria’s economy today feels like a bike with a good rider, a decent engine, but a cracked and muddy road. The rider – our entrepreneurs and businesses – is full of energy and resolve.
The NWDC: A Regional Development Misstep In The Making
If you were to ask Roger Martin, one of the sharpest strategic minds of our time, about the Northwest Development Commission (NWDC), the first question that might come to mind would be: Where is the region’s intended place to win?
Why the Nigerian security apparatus must be free of politicisation
To break the cycle of insecurity that plagues our nation, we must depoliticise our security system and appoint people with the requisite expertise and skills, who citizens can trust, into crucial roles in the system.
Nigeria’s engine, rider and roadblock
There is a growing murmur in Nigeria’s business corridors – an air of restrained optimism, captured in the April 2025 edition of the NESG-Stanbic IBTC Business Confidence Monitor (BCM).
Development must be taken seriously
It is often said that institutions reflect the values and visions of those who design and manage them.
Nigeria’s unfinished war against poverty
In 1996, the World Bank issued a now-historic report titled “Nigeria – Poverty in the Midst of Plenty: The Challenge of Growth with Inclusion.” It was a stark paradox: a country blessed with vast oil wealth, fertile land, and youthful energy was…
Establishing and Managing an SPV-PPP in Nigeria’s Telecom Sector: Requirements and Selected Experiences
A Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) established for telecom infrastructure development in Nigeria must comply with various legal and regulatory requirements outlined in the Nigerian Communications Act, 2003 and regulations issued by the Nigerian Communications Commission.
Nigeria’s lost diplomatic glory
On December 31, 2024, Nnamdi Obasi, Senior Adviser on Nigeria at the International Crisis Group, shared an important report with me via email.
Climate Litigation before the ECOWAS Court of Justice: Enforcing the Right to a Healthy Environment in West Africa
Responding effectively to climate change requires upholding the evolving concept of climate rule of law and justice, which provides for climate protection against harm as a legal duty of the State and other duty bearers.
Nigeria’s Tax Reform: Striking a Balance Between Growth, Equity, and Transparency
Tax reform in Nigeria is no longer just overdue—it has become an urgent necessity. With persistent fiscal deficits, a narrow tax base, and growing economic pressures, the government’s proposed Tax Reform Bill aims to modernize the tax system, increase revenue, and stimulate economic growth.
Northern Nigeria: Time to pedal forward
The Northern political class must confront a stark and unavoidable reality: the economic road ahead will demand proactive efforts, strategic vision, and collective action.
What Stops Policies From Succeeding?
In Nigeria, public policies frequently miss the mark, leaving their intended beneficiaries wondering where the promised benefits went.
Traditional institutions and the role of servant leadership
Despite the myriad security challenges facing Nigeria, data indicates that, aside from the high incidences in 2021— which the Emir addressed vocally and proactively — the Zazzau Emirate has not been significantly afflicted by banditry and kidnappings in recent years.
High crimes and threats to the state: Corruption or treason?
Now what should a responsible state do when it is threatened to this level? All the malevolent actors involved should be tagged as agents of treason, and the state should treat them as such, by every legal means available.
The Oronsaye Report, a New Ministry of Livestock and the Soaring Cost of Governance
On February 26, 2024, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR directed the implementation of the Stehpen Oronsaye report after 12 years.
The global anti-corruption agenda and questions of compliance
Until the impact of corruption outweighs concerns around national interest, countries are unlikely to take serious measures on it. So what do we do?
Remarks at a Dialogue with Media and Civil Society on Accountability and the Fight Against Corruption
Ladies and Gentlemen, may I start by welcoming every one of you on behalf of the Center for Fiscal Transparency and Public Integrity.
For national security and economic development, fighting corruption matters
A critical aspect that appears to elude the administration’s grasp is the imperative of waste reduction and relentless battle against corruption.
Tenure of EFCC chairs: The need to reform the electoral system
Until the process of vying for political office is reformed by reducing the expenses involved, with the perquisites of public office sanitised, alongside the curbing of the other attractions of political office, every chairman of EFCC will be brought down…
Time to Retire “Security” in the Image of the Military: An Agenda for the National Security Adviser
The time has come to retire “security” in the image of the military and begin the construction of security in the image of civilian and civil rule in Nigeria.
President Tinubu, beware of corrosive capital
With a debt profile of N77 trillion, Nigeria is the sixth largest recipient of Chinese loans in the continent.
Thread of deception: Nigeria's subsidy burden
Verse on the refineries that were never repaired, the maintenance funds that were never spent as intended, and the subsidy that was never what it seemed.
Democracy: Between Supreme Court Judgment and Perpetual Executive Disregard
In the week that Nigerians await the outcome of its presidential election, the dominant news in the U.S., the nation we copied the presidential system of electoral democracy, was on its Supreme Court, as the court convened to hear cases that challenged President Joe Biden’s $400 billion worth student loan forgiveness.
Of Campaigns of Calumny, Monetization and Integrity of our Electoral Democracy
The world renown political scientist and communications theorist Harold Lasswell referred to politics as “who gets what, when and how.” Politics for him, is a way of determining, without recourse to violence, who gets power or controls state’s resources, and how they get them.
Understanding, Domesticating and Strengthening Security, Development and Peace as Critical Factors for Anti-Corruption in Nigeria
Nigeria’s legislatures need to create legislation to supersede the 1999 Constitution’s provisions on security.
Resolving Security, Security Situations of Conflicts and Thinking Beyond Decentralising the Police
SECURITY or that which SECURE in all of its forms was the single most important item, on the governance agenda of most Nigerians in 1999, when they drove the military back to the barracks and returned power to civil rule system.
“Security” and Deepening Einstein Insanity of Nigeria’s Legislatures and Executives
Nigeria has been grappling with what the executives and legislatures describe as “security challenges” since 1999.
Takes from the National Security Summit Report (NSSR), 2021
The National Security Summit Report is Nigeria’s latest addition to its dearth of documents on “security” and/or “national security”.
The Making of Another Fruitless Search in the Special Committee on National Security Call for Memoranda
The Special House Committee on National Security should not waste the time of Nigerians with their Deja Vu call for memoranda. They should withdraw the call and apologize to Nigerians.
The Call by Legislature for the Executive to Declare State of Emergency on “Security” is Tantamount to Abdicating Its Responsibility
The National Assembly owed Nigerians the debt of asking and answering the question: what is security, whose security, what is a security issue and how can security be achieved.