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.
Nigeria
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58 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.
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.
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.
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.
Ballooning budgets and the urgent need to restructure Nigeria’s security architecture
Pouring endless funds into an unoptimised framework is not a long-term strategy. It has become critically urgent to fundamentally restructure our security apparatus.
Taxation Follows Economic Activity
Imagine a farmer who painstakingly installs the most sophisticated irrigation system, yet never plants a single seed.
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.
Why dual citizenship should be restricted for public office holders
A public official should be legally and physically bound to the nation s/he is serving. The knowledge that one cannot simply escape to a second home in the event of legal scrutiny serves as a powerful deterrent against malpractice.
Kaiama: Anatomy Of A Preventable Tragedy
Kaiama Local Government Area in Kwara State has once again become the epicentre of national grief.
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.
When national pride becomes an expensive illusion
When Aliko Dangote recently declared that Ajaokuta Steel Complex will never work, his words provoked anger across the country, particularly in Kogi where the plant sits like an abandoned monument.
Nigeria's urgent call for electronic voting: A path to prudence and accountability
Beyond the numbers, the most compelling argument for electronic voting lies in its potential to transform the political culture and compel leaders to perform.
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.
Beyond bullets: Forging security through economics and diplomacy
The fixation on military solutions, while sometimes necessary in the short term, risks treating the symptoms rather than the underlying disease. We are about 14 years into insurgency and decades in terms of other security challenges.
Nigeria’s asset recovery puzzle: Why does clarity remain elusive?
It should be stated that while anti-corruption efforts should focus on entrenching preventive mechanism, Nigeria’s asset recovery efforts hold immense potential if recovered loot are properly channeled.
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.
The death of conscience
The modern world prides itself on civilization, on the idea that we have transcended the barbarity of our ancestors, yet, every now and then, a brutal spectacle unfolds that reminds us just how thin the veil of civility truly is.
Nigeria’s economy: Between hope and uncertainty
Nigeria’s economy is at a crossroads. The past year has been a whirlwind of policy adjustments, market turbulence, and shifting investor sentiment.
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.
What Stops Policies From Succeeding?
In Nigeria, public policies frequently miss the mark, leaving their intended beneficiaries wondering where the promised benefits went.
Can Inclusive Management Resolve Lake Chad’s Resource Conflicts?
The International Forum on the Development of the Lake Chad Basin, held in N’Djamena, Chad, from November 5-7, 2024, was a critical juncture in the dialogue surrounding the region’s future.
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.
Where are the benefits of increased FAAC allocations in our states?
So far in the year, states have received N379.41 billion, N366.950 billion, N398.689 billion and N403 billion as statutory allocations from FAAC for January, February, March and April respectively, amounting to a total of N1.548 trillion disbursement to…
Border security reforms: Time for drastic measures
The consolidation effort laid out should be actively pursued to bolster national security, but its execution must be efficient and strategic.
Powering Nigeria’s future: A paradigm shift post-retreat
In the aftermath of a well-attended power sector retreat organized by the Ministry of Power, the landscape of Nigeria’s electricity industry stands at a crucial crossroads.
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…
Drug Addiction in Nigeria: An Evolving Epidemic that needs new Solutions
Social and technological advancement are inevitably intertwined for the advancement of human development.
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.
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.
In search of a driver: Nigeria and paralysis, despite analyses
As I listened to all the speakers, one thing was clear, as usual: that all our problems are well documented and analysed. I also think that all the varieties of solutions are well documented.
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.
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.
Women’s Inclusion is a Prerequisite for Electoral Transparency
Despite accounting for nearly half of the voting population (47% in the 2019 general election), with figures from the Osun state general election stating that they constituted 52.76% of the voters, women’s political participation over the years has been marred by several factors, with violence against women before,.
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.
Nigeria’s Justice System and the Fight Against Corruption: Revisiting the Issue of Perpetual Injunction
On the 23rd of March, 2007, Honorable Justice Ibrahim Nyaure Buba delivered an unprecedented judgment in the history of the judiciary.
Moneybags Politics and Nigeria’s ‘Rule of Money’ Democracy
When Nigeria transited to democracy and embraced the presidential system of government in 1999, it marked the transfer of sovereignty from authoritarian leaders to the people.
“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.
Hobson's Choice: To Pay Or Not To Pay?
It’s difficult for a parent not to respond when asked for ransom for a kidnapped offspring, or even relative.
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.