Oratory: When a Voice Becomes a Bridge to the Sky by Lawson Akhigbe

Rev J Jackson What links Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama? Not inheritance. Not patronage. Not the comfortable cushion of establishment approval. It was the voice. Not merely sound waves projected from disciplined diaphragms, but rhetoric as architecture — words arranged with moral symmetry, cadence deployed like a drumline, pauses used as …

The Return of the Crown: Billionaires and the New Absolutism by Lawson Akhigbe

From time immemorial, societies have wrestled with power. Kings once ruled by divine right, their word indistinguishable from law. The only real constraint was conscience—if they possessed one. As even Donald Trump recently suggested in a moment of candour about executive power, a ruler’s restraint may lie chiefly in the mind of the ruler himself. …

Governance in the Dark: When Witches Run the Arms of Government by Lawson Akhigbe

As a journalist and researcher attempting to document the activities of the Nigerian government, I have come to a disturbing conclusion: we are not being governed by the Constitution, but by witchcraft. Not the theatrical kind. The administrative kind. The kind where rules exist—somewhere—but not where citizens can see them. If you have ever tried …

Oshiomhole: From radical to rascal by Adelakun Adunni Abimbola

What struck me about the recent viral video of Adams Oshiomhole caressing the feet of a young woman on a chartered jet is that this man still dons an outfit reminiscent of his radical socialist days. As a labour leader, he wore khaki as a sartorial expression of repudiating capitalist excess, a symbol of his …