France’s ongoing uprising is not simply a contest between demonstrators and police. It is a crisis of representation, revealing what happens when citizens believe that institutions hear their complaints only after streets become ungovernable.
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.
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.
Two weeks ago, this column began by arguing that Nigeria’s policy conversation – especially in the subnational – must move closer to lived reality.
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.
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 has entered another season when politics acquires the grammar of salvation. Banners multiply, motorcades thicken, slogans become policy substitutes, and every candidate discovers that the country can be repaired overnight.
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.
A multi-dimensional assessment of the governance, fiscal accountability, procurement systems and human rights compliance of the Ministry of Defence finds structural reform proceeding alongside persistent weaknesses in financial transparency, procurement integrity and personnel administration.
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.
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.
My vote will go to the candidate who commits to delivering at least 70 per cent of the following blueprint reform within a strict five-year tenure.
Pouring endless funds into an unoptimised framework is not a long-term strategy. It has become critically urgent to fundamentally restructure our security apparatus.
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.
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.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) stands at the very heart of Nigeria’s enduring system of corruption. It is not merely a referee that occasionally misses a foul; it has become the primary enabler of public sector corruption.
Kaiama Local Government Area in Kwara State has once again become the epicentre of national grief.
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.
The Nigerian Local Government Integrity Index is not just a report; it is a call to conscience.
Beyond the numbers, the most compelling argument for electronic voting lies in its potential to transform the political culture and compel leaders to perform.
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.
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 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.
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?
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.
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).
It is often said that institutions reflect the values and visions of those who design and manage them.
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…
The success of LG reform will not be determined in courtrooms or boardrooms — it will be won or lost in communities. Citizens must evolve from passive victims of misgovernance to active auditors of their local institutions.
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 is at a crossroads. The past year has been a whirlwind of policy adjustments, market turbulence, and shifting investor sentiment.
On December 31, 2024, Nnamdi Obasi, Senior Adviser on Nigeria at the International Crisis Group, shared an important report with me via email.
Simplifying bureaucratic procedures, and boosting operational efficiency could make a Nigerian adaptation of DOGE highly impactful. Such an approach could revolutionise security, bolster the economy, and improve governance.
The ethical dilemma centres on the expectation of achieving quality education when public officers are relocating their children and families abroad. This issue extends beyond education to encompass healthcare as well.
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.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is undergoing a troubling economic narrative that has taken an unexpected turn.
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.
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.
On February 26, 2024, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR directed the implementation of the Stehpen Oronsaye report after 12 years.
Until the impact of corruption outweighs concerns around national interest, countries are unlikely to take serious measures on it. So what do we do?
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…
The consolidation effort laid out should be actively pursued to bolster national security, but its execution must be efficient and strategic.
A critical aspect that appears to elude the administration’s grasp is the imperative of waste reduction and relentless battle against corruption.
Social and technological advancement are inevitably intertwined for the advancement of human development.
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.
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.
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.
Nigeria’s legislatures need to create legislation to supersede the 1999 Constitution’s provisions on security.
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,.
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.
Across major cities, fuel queues continue to bite harder, and the multiplied effects on the ordinary citizen are better imagined, as quality manhour continue to be wasted.
Nigeria has been grappling with what the executives and legislatures describe as “security challenges” since 1999.
The National Security Summit Report is Nigeria’s latest addition to its dearth of documents on “security” and/or “national security”.
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 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.