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Oprah, Oz and Phil by Lawson Akhigbe

There is a particular kind of American alchemy in which a Black woman from rural Mississippi, daughter of a maid, builds the most trusted media empire in the country on a diet of empathy, self help and the gospel of "live your best life," and then spends two decades unknowingly running a finishing school for men who would go on to embarrass her politics. Oprah Winfrey did not set out to produce Donald Trump's health czar and a cable news also ran who rides shotgun on ICE raids. She set out to help people cry productively on daytime television. The nursery was warm. What hatched from it was not.

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Two-Tier Policing: When Open Faces Become Terrorism and Balaclavas Become Civic Duty by Lawson Akhigbe

First, the Palestine Action episode. These were people who did not bother with balaclavas or the theatrical anonymity so beloved of the modern political cosplay set. They targeted warehouses and facilities linked to the supply of arms to the Israeli military. The Labour government, with the practised solemnity of a government discovering its inner authoritarian, reached for the terrorism laws. Proscription followed. Arrests followed. Jail terms followed. Even the barristers who dared to represent them found themselves in the crosshairs. The message was clear: damage property in the service of a cause the government finds inconvenient, and you will be treated as the domestic equivalent of Al-Qaeda, complete with the full legal theatre that accompanies such a designation.

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The Oil Curse Was Drafted Into Law: How Nigeria’s Petroleum Laws Turned National Wealth into Private Fortunes by Lawson Akhigbe with HistoricCapital

Dan Etete For decades Nigerians have been told that corruption in the oil industry is the product of weak institutions, bad leadership and poor governance. That explanation has become so familiar that many accept it without question. Yet the deeper problem may not be governance failure alone. The more troubling possibility is that parts of …

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Driving Benin City to Kaduna at age 18

What’s the most spontaneous thing you’ve ever done? And not knowing how to get from point A to point B before general application and use of SatNav. Asking for directions on way again before banditry and kidnapping. Approximately 602 kilometers (388 miles) between the two cities. All of this just to buy and eat ram Suya. …

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