Centre for Nigeria Progress

There is something almost poetic about Nigeria’s infrastructure diplomacy: whichever direction we turn—East or West—we somehow arrive at the same destination. Only the accent changes; the terms do not. When Bola Ahmed Tinubu returned from the United Kingdom with a port development loan for Lagos, the official line sounded reassuringly modern: partnership, development, strategic investment. …

Continue reading "The Chains We Polish: East, West, and Nigeria’s Talent for Decorated Dependence"

Margaret Thatcher When the government of David Cameron rolled out Universal Credit under Iain Duncan Smith, it was presented as moral tidiness. Work would always pay. Complexity would vanish. The welfare state would be streamlined into a single, rational payment under the Welfare Reform Act 2012. The premise: if your wages fall short of survival, …

Continue reading "Universal Credit, Vanishing Employers, and the Immigrant Who Did It by Lawson Akhigbe"

There is an unwritten constitution in Nigerian politics, and it has proven more durable than the one printed on paper. Since our return to civil rule in 1999, a quiet but powerful understanding has guided who governs and when. It is not found in Chapter Two of the 1999 Constitution, but every serious player in …

Continue reading "The Spoiler and the Settlement: Why Atiku Abubakar is Tinubu’s Greatest Ally in 2027 by Lawson Akhigbe"

Britain is getting poorer. Not in the Dickensian, chimney-sweep sense. Not in the “send the children to the workhouse” melodrama. But in the steady, spreadsheet, Office-for-National-Statistics, wages-flatlining-while-bills-soar sense. And Britain is getting angrier. The pubs are louder. The comment sections are feral. The morning shows are one long sigh punctuated by someone blaming a migrant …

Continue reading "Britain Is Getting Poorer – And Shouting at the Mirror by Lawson Akhigbe"