There is a brutally efficient African proverb that cuts through political spin faster than a devaluation memo: When the wind blows, the chicken’s anus is exposed.
The High Wind and the Bare Hen: A Masterclass in Federal Disrobing by Lawson Akhigbe
The Monumental Ego: How Trump and Tinubu Turn Public Infrastructure Into Personal Billboards By Lawson Akhigbe
There was a time when nations had the decency to wait until a leader was safely six feet under or at the very least, out of office before plastering their name across state infrastructure. The unspoken rule of public memorials used to be simple: let history render its verdict first. If your legacy survived the passage of time without decaying into scandal, perhaps the state would name a secondary school or a modest bypass after you.
The Poverty We Do Not Count: Notes on a Nigerian Spirit in Recession by Lawson Akhigbe
Ghana, our garrulous neighbour and perennial older-sibling-by-comparison, is not a rich country. Its currency has had its own well-documented indignities. Its unemployment figures would not shame anyone into silence at a dinner party in Lagos. And yet Ghana has not produced, at scale, the particular species of moral vacancy that Nigeria now exports more reliably than crude oil. The difference is not GDP. It is something closer to what economists, in their limited vocabulary, have no line item for: a poverty of the spirit, and it is this poverty, not the one in the spreadsheets, that is bankrupting the country in ways no IMF facility can restructure.
Nigeria’s Failed Democratic Laboratory: How Governors Cripple Local Government and Representative Democracy by Lawson Akhigbe
The greatest casualty of this failure has been grassroots democracy.
Tinubu’s 3rd anniversary, Ogun deity and voodoo vote numbers by Festus Adedayo
Africa and indeed, the Third World in general, suffers the affliction of leaders and tautologos. It is an epidemic of leaders who act like the sexually infirm. For this species of infirm male, when queried on why they cannot insert into the right hole, they boast of possessing the capability to make multiple insertion of threads into the barely visible hole of the needle, even in the dark. Were Tinubu to be tautologous in delivery of democratic dividends, it would have been more desirable than repetition of needless words.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 