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The latest potential outrage in Nigeria is the credible speculation that the two dominant parties, the All Progressive Congress, APC and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP are scheming to present Nigeria with the fait accompli of two northern moslems as their presidential candidates. Both are using the vaunted fanaticism of this subset of the Nigerian […]
Continue Reading“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it” –George Santayana History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce –Karl Marx “The only thing that we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.” –Georg Hegel The citations above have intermittently found resonance in Yoruba history. The perspective they […]
Continue ReadingTo begin with, it is not at all clear that the presidential election of February 2023 will hold as scheduled.This, in a manner of speaking, is a restatement of the ecclesiastical revelation of Pastor Enoch Adeboye to the effect that God has not told him that there will be a presidential election in Nigeria next […]
Continue ReadingIbadan is easily the most historically utilitarian Yoruba city. It is the fountain head of the social political transformation of Yorubaland and in certain respects Nigeria itself. Think of the iconic educational institutions like the first tertiary educational establishment in Nigeria, the University of Ibadan, the one time contender for the topmost secondary school in […]
Continue ReadingArguably the forthcoming presidential election in February 2023 is the most consequential election Nigeria is ever going to have.The circumstances leading to and surrounding the election are too grave and nation threatening that it can be safely concluded that Nigeria cannot live to survive a similar stress test. For that matter it is a moot […]
Continue Reading“It is interesting that close to the 20th anniversary of Ige’s death, Chief Bisi Akande, one of Ige’s closest collaborators released his robust autobiography, My Participations, to tell Ige’s side of the story, especially as it pertains to Afenifere. Anyone who has read Akande’s great book would know he has no kind words for those […]
Continue ReadingMy good friend, Akin Osuntokun is 60. He was actually 60 on November 24, but it is this week that friends and family are rolling out the drums to celebrate one of the finest persons that I know. On November 24, we had gathered at his residence, at the invitation of Ronke, his wife, and […]
Continue Reading“In recent years, many thousands of civilians have been killed in attacks led by Islamist Boko Haram and Fulani militias in northern and central-belt states. The underlying drivers of conflict are complex, yet targeted violence and the perpetration of atrocities against predominantly Christian communities suggest that religion and ideology play a key part” – The […]
Continue ReadingTheoretically, the prospects of the emergence of an Igbo as the President of Nigeria is challenged by the theory of social reproduction and the inertia of power. The theory propounds the argument that the ruling class tends to reproduce itself given its inherent strategic advantages of wealth, patronage, power of coercion and the propagation of […]
Continue ReadingI was always fascinated with the notion of a Kaduna Mafia or rather the Kaduna Mafia of my imagination. I imagined it as a pressure group that manages the Northern hegemony of Nigerian politics with discipline and enlightened self-interest, in a manner that is not inconsistent with the overall development of Nigeria. Conscious of this […]
Continue ReadingBy Nigerian standards, Northern Nigerian in particular, they don’t come more credible and enlightened as the 14th Emir of Kano, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi. He exemplifies the elite self-preservation obligation of enlightened self interest. I admit that this is a problematic endorsement given the controversy he engendered by the less than candid role he played in […]
Continue ReadingIn 2013, an indignant Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed wrote of a moving encounter he had with the Madiba, President Nelson Mandela in 2007.The subject matter of the encounter was appropriately Nigeria on which the two shared identical views. I will presently recall excerpts and lessons cited approvingly by Baba-Ahmed of what he correctly celebrated as a […]
Continue ReadingAs a Nigerian ideological statement, the prioritisation of the politics of consumption over the politics of development gathered momentum in the wake of the Action Group crisis and the supremacist struggle that ensued between the late Chiefs Obafemi Awolowo and Ladoke Akintola in the 1960s. Awolowo vacated office as Premier of the Western region in […]
Continue Reading“He came and he said, ‘I just annulled June 12.’ We both looked at each other and we looked at him, and said: why would you do that? And he said ‘you are too young to understand the intrigues of governance.’ And we said, but it is about you and your administration. And he said, […]
Continue Reading“We have been tuned to think it is constitutions (laws) that develop a society. Constitutions can NEVER take the place of visionary, competent and patriotic leadership”. “If rapid political progress is to be made in Nigeria, it is high time we were realistic in tackling its constitutional problems” –Simon Kolawole quoting Awolowo approvingly “In my […]
Continue Reading“I predict that every multi-lingual or multi-national country with a unitary constitution must either eventually have a federal constitution based on the principles which I have enunciated, or disintegrate, or be perennially afflicted with disharmony and instability” – Obafemi Awolowo The fundamental political argument of Nigeria today boils down to the contention between the political […]
Continue ReadingIn the past few weeks we have been treated to how degraded Nigeria has become, we have also witnessed the manifestation of a contrary trend. The latter was the retrieval and reassertion of the spirit of federalism by the Southern Governors Forum. Ordinarily, elected public officials do not deserve a special applause for doing the […]
Continue ReadingIn a recent characteristic demonstration of miscue and confusion within the presidency, (which sounded more like a confession of helplessness in articulating a plausible exit strategy for the Muhammadu Buhari presidency), Vice President Yemi Osinbajo unloaded on the Nigerian elite for keeping mute and fiddling while Nigeria literally burns. He lamented: “If the political elite […]
Continue ReadingIt is now a platitude to argue that Nigeria is lurching and gyrating in a debilitating state of anomie, of systemic crisis. The significance of this identification is that the numerous challenges we grapple with on a daily basis have increasingly become unamenable to an item by item resolution. Once validly identified as one, a […]
Continue ReadingAt the All Progressives Congress (APC) party membership registration exercise in Katsina a week ago, the president, Major General Muhammadu Buhari spoke thus: “The problem is that I will like especially the elite to please be reflective. When we came, where we were, the resources available from them and the condition of the infrastructure,” Buhari […]
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