Nigeria in Pieces
When Sir James Goldsmith in his book, The Trap, predicted in the mid-1990s that the nation called Nigeria will disintegrate in a similar manner to...
“Everybody Wants Change but Nobody Wants to Change”?
Accepting failed leadership as a good thing is surprisingly very well-accommodated in Nigeria. “Excuses” are the most valued tools in the hands of Nigerian leaders, their...
Devalued Naira or Devalued Republic?
Nigeria is still in its “supposed” anti-corruption mode from a governance perspective, but the current state of the economy is not going to permit its...
Native Politics: Okija Shrine and Ngige
Native Politics: Okija Shrine and Ngige A familiar political face in Nigeria is gubernatocrat Chris Ngige. He is now a minister in the government of...
Youth Leader Murders: The Blind Side of Anti-Corruption
While Nigeria was being firmly gripped by the ostensible “showbiz” of anti-corruption promoted by the new Nigerian government before and after the 2015 elections, many...
Another Deadline, Another Dead End: Boko Haram’s Turn
Nigeria has had many deadlines foist upon its public through its chiefs governmental agencies as a show of commitment or as a precursor to a...
Why “Anti-Corruption” is a Great Election Gimmick in Nigeria
Nigeria since independence in 1960 has had six democratically elected executives, the most recent being Muhammadu Buhari. The country has also had seven military heads of...
Buhari: Prince of Thieves
Buhari: Prince of Thieves President Buhari has searched and decided. The Department of State Services (DSS) has done its screening and clearing of candidates. Furthermore,...
The North–South West Election Alliance in Tatters
The South West has now been, rightfully or wrongfully, disaffected by President Muhammadu Buhari and his “Northern Bloc”. The unholy alliance between the North and...
When Proper Democratic Process Fails Us: The Saraki Crisis
The “Saraki crisis” is making Nigerians and some foreign spectators of the three arms of government to rethink their understanding of the design and processes...
Will Bombing Big Thieves Do the Trick?
Will Bombing Big Thieves Do the Trick? Nations cannot bomb crimes out of existence as the Government of Nigeria seems to think and practice. When...
Privatise the Government of Nigeria!
Privatise the Government of Nigeria (GON)! It is amazing to hear that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation’s refineries are to be sold. Why? Because of...
Solo Mansion Communities in Nigeria
Solo Mansion Communities in Nigeria Development in Nigeria is a narrow focus on brick, mortar and tarmac constructions with imported technology gadgets thrown in. The...
The Blind Side of Anti-Corruption: What We May Not See
Nigeria appears to be definitively on track for major national and state anti-corruption initiatives; where the track will lead to nobody knows. The time and...
Gubernatocracy in Nigeria is Taking Big Blows
It is the case that 15% (i.e. 16 out 109) of all senators are ex-governors. This is part of Nigeria’s gubernatocracy. Gubernatocracy, the rule of...
Nigeria’s Brown Envelope Journalists
Nigeria’s Brown Envelope Journalists: A documentary on corruption in Nigerian journalism. Narrated and produced by Nic Muirhead; featuring journalists, Nicholas Ibekwe and Kadaria Ahmed; political...
Why is James Ibori Not on the Ministerial List of Gubernatocrats?
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The Important Lesson from #FasholaGate: Faceless, Nameless and Objectless
Usually, corruption scandals in Nigeria are typically “nameless” and “faceless” after the fact. The best’ name and face’ a member of public or even a...
Empowerment: Euphemism for Corruption
Empowerment: Euphemism for Corruption The word and context of “empowerment” has come to take on in interestingly corrupt or perverse meaning of its own in...
Buhari’s House and the “Pacts” that Hold It Together
President Muhammadu Buhari has a political “house” he heads and it is the recently emerged All Progressives Congress (APC). New houses either collapse or withstand...
Is APC the House of Refuge for the Corrupt?
The All Progressives Congress (APC) is the political party which the current President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari leads. President Buhari was...
Probe: Nigerian Electric Power
Probe: Nigerian Electric Power Will the Probe of the Nigerian Electric Power Sector from 1999 to 2015 Succeed? The Senate probe into the management or...
Constant Electricity in Nigeria?
Constant Electricity in Nigeria is Very Risky Business There is a lot of chit-chat that one of the ”ministerless” wonders of the Buhari administration’s electricity...
Niger Delta Clean-Up for Profiteers?
Niger Delta Clean-Up for Profiteers? It has been announced by the Buhari Administration that the heinous cumulative oil pollution in the Niger Delta will be...
Wole Soyinka and Traditional Forgiveness?
Wole Soyinka and Traditional Forgiveness? After innumerable citizens indigenous to Lagos and the South-West region in Nigeria roundly criticised traditional ruler Rilwan Akiolu, the Oba...
Wole Soyinka and Democratic Forgiveness?
Wole Soyinka and Democratic Forgiveness? In a very revealing and dramatic recent Guardian interview conducted by correspondent David Smith http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/29/wole-soyinka-interview-nigeria-corruption-goodluck-jonathan. Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka lamented the process of...
Wole Soyinka and Military Forgiveness? 2
Wole Soyinka and Military Forgiveness? 2 I must confess I have been keenly waiting for the next Wole Soyinka “moment.” Well, no matter how long...
Nuclear Power in Nigeria? Another Crazy ‘Pole Vault’
Nuclear Power in Nigeria? Another Crazy ‘Pole Vault’ For many years the Government of Nigeria seems to be managed by a class of “capability pole...
Nigeria After the 2015 Elections
Change: Nigeria After the 2015 Elections by Grimot Nane -Two Lectures – Master of Ceremony – Jide Lanlehin; at the Feast of Barracuda held by...
Oba Akiolu and King Zwelithini
Oba Akiolu and King Zwelithini: Different Persons, Different Subjects I am shocked crapious that certain people are making strong and equivalent comparisons between Oba Akiolu...
Violence in Mandelaland: Why?
Violence in Mandelaland: Why? ‘Mandelaland’, the land of Nelson Mandela, a Xhosa, is the Republic of South Africa. Mandeland is very far from being Mandela-like...
Are Leaders or Followers to Blame for Corruption?
.Are Leaders or Followers to Blame for Corruption? Grimot Nane Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Studies Corruption is unsatisfactorily defined as the “misuse of...
Nigeria’s “Tale of Two Election Day Silences”
There was considerable peace and “silence” during the 2015 Nigerian general elections yesterday. It was good news that apart from the “I am above the...
Thieving: Incumbency in Elections
Thieving: Incumbency in Elections One would wonder why the power of incumbency of presidents and governors in Nigeria,elsewhere in Africa and other places in the...
Nigeria: Globalisation Democracy and the Possibility of a Coup d’etat
The United State of America is the chief exporter of “globalisation democracy” that has seen nations around the globe both encouraged and bullied into taking...
Kneel Down Democracy
Kneel Down Democracy In the above photo we can see kneeling before the First Lady of Akwa Ibom State, Mrs Ekaette Akpabio, the usually imposing...
Postponement of Elections: Achebe
Postponement of Elections: Achebe Chinua Achebe was ostracised by the Western academy for his truthful but hard to swallow comments on two European intellectual sacred...
Nigeria’s Big Thieves and Small Thieves
Nigeria’s Big Thieves and Small Thieves. “We hang the petty thieves & appoint the great ones to public office” – Aesop. Was Aesop not discussing...
Owners of Nigeria Technostructure
Owners of Nigeria Technostructure In Nigeria there exists a non-market non-governmental extortionist technostructure that is nameless but for the purpose of convenience we shall call...
Nigeria Tested by Choice: Buhari or Jonathan or No One?
The 2015 elections in Nigeria are about Muhammadu Buhari of APC and Goodluck Jonathan of PDP. Those who are not voting will be voting for...
Bishop Kukah Also Embraces Semi-Primitivity
Bishop Kukah Also Embraces Semi-Primitivity Bishop Matthew Kukah has a lot to say about Nigeria and often has very interesting things to say. In an...
Election2015: Eternal Baby Syndrome
Election2015: Eternal Baby Syndrome In the course of researching corruption and misgovernance in Nigeria it is not too hard to observe public servants and politicians....
Sanusi: Last Man Standing
Sanusi: Last Man Standing in Soludo’s Great Debate The recent bombshell released in the media by Charles Soludo is on his evaluation of the 2015...
To Be or Not To Be Political: It’s Mostly Corruption
In Nigeria, politics is where all the easy money is; parvenu opportunities, rent-seeking, corrupt practices, patronage benefits, prebendal incomes, ‘settlements’, blackmail etc. Many organisations that...
RE: Collapse of Nigeria’s Power Privatisation
RE: Collapse of Nigeria’s Power Privatisation http://eyoekpo.com/post/101658521484/the-imminent-collapse-of-nigerias-power-privatisation I found Timi Soleye’s piece in the Financial Times interesting. The Financial Times and its editors would have...
A Response to “#30PercentOrNothing”
http://opinionriver.com/30percentornothing/ “Be bold for the children of everybody and look well! It will improve our judging tomorrow” – Dan Bearman in Therefore Be Bold (by...
End of Oil, Beginning of Prosperity: Nigeria
End of Oil, Beginning of Prosperity: Nigeria One inexplicable phenomenon among Nigerians is their response to the news that Nigeria’s oil is facing a demise...
Botswana: An African Model for Progress
Botswana: An African Model for Progress – A Replay http://gbengaaborowa.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/botswana-an-african-model-for-progress-and-prosperity/#more-134 Botswana, a prosperous African nation (population: 2 million), is a place I worked a long...
A Nation without Institutions: Elected Politician Orders the Beating of a Judge
When a governor-elect for one of the states in Nigeria can openly slap, then instruct his thugs beat up and chase a sitting judge out...
Must Nigerians Defend Illegal Arms Dealers?
We cannot reduce malfeasance to party politics or party propaganda alone in Nigeria or any nation on the planet, anonymous and faceless special interests play...
A New Kind of Thanks: To Goodluck Jonathan
After the the image-shattering debacle of the #BringBackJonathan2015 campaign, a new kind of thanks to a national leader has emerged. Many people especially the sycophants, spokesmen...
Goodluck Jonathan & the Ontology of the African
Can Africans in power ever get it right? They can but choose not to for reasons of venality and mediocrity and sometimes sheer stupidity. I...
The Ontology of the African
The Ontology of the African Someone genuinely dismayed that some sincere African intellectuals say nothing about the derisory status of the African among other human...
The Lion and The Jewel: Soyinka’s Most Enduring Work?
The Lion and The Jewel: Soyinka’s Most Enduring Work? Today is the 80th birthday of Wole Soyinka. I may not be a fan of his...
We Let Africa Down Badly
We Let Africa Down Badly An Open Letter to African Academics, Scholars and Intellectuals Dear Colleagues, Upon reviewing the current upheavals in North Africa and...
Corruption: One and a Half Questions
Since the widely preferred mode of organisation (partial or encompassing) for our “globalised political economy” in both public and private spheres is corruption, how are...
Nigeria: The Empire That Never Was… Will It Ever Be?
Nigeria: The Empire That Never Was… Will It Ever Be? Sir John Glubb’s enduring claim to fame, perhaps among other things, is an essay. His...
A Metaphor: Ending Corruption in Nigeria
A Metaphor: Ending Corruption in Nigeria In 2001, a high-ranking military officer, a commodore, reluctantly offered me a literary metaphor for solving the problem of...
Corruption in Nigeria: Is it Curable? Part Three
The Owners of Nigeria Technostructure In Nigeria, there exists a non-market non-governmental extortionist technostructure that is nameless, but for convenience, we shall call it the...
Corruption in Nigeria: Is It Curable? Part Two
Contrary Institutions: A Brief Description Why is it that institutional reform as touted by the international and local anti-corruption industries always fails in tackling the...
Wikileaks: The Hard Lesson So Far
Wikileaks: The Hard Lesson So Far “Financial asphyxiation” or some synonym is going to be a buzz word that will be popular with politicians (silently)...
Wikileaks Leaks – So Very Ordinary?
Wikileaks Leaks – So Very Ordinary? If Wikileaks has leaked nothing of the confidential and classified information relating to the workings, conditions and decisions of...
Resisting Ecocide: Crimes and Rents
t is interesting to know that the Niger Delta is listed third out of ten hotspots of ecocide in Polly Higgins’ Eradicating Ecocide. I have...
Corruption in Nigeria: Is It Curable? Part One
Corruption in Nigeria: Is It Curable? Part One The Nigerian nation might not be a failed state but it is certainly by all ostensible standards...
Educating a Shell Worker
Educating a Shell Worker Ever since ex-President Obosanjo threw the gauntlet to Nigerians in general in to prove the acts of corruption of General Babangida...