Reporting News and opinions
Governor Ademola Adeleke of Osun State was re-elected for a second term in the 15 August governorship contest. It was an off-cycle election like no other before it, in the build-up, with its eerie elements of tension, violence and resultant deaths.
My mind raced back to British jurist, Lord Denning who famously declared in 1964: “Justice has no place in darkness or secrecy. When a judge sits on a case, he himself is on trial… If he is suspicious, biased, or unfair, then the judge is the one who is condemned in the eyes of public opinion.” But these words of wisdom seem not to have any meaning to Justice Lifu, shockingly, a former lecturer of Public and International Law, University of Ibadan. For me, what was more distressing was that despite the uproar, Justice Lifu seemed oblivious of the damage he had done to the body polity, the judiciary and his thirty five years post-call to bar history.
Just weeks ago, Keir Starmer announced his resignation, making him the seventh Prime Minister to be chewed up and spat out by the British political machine in ten years. It turns out that whether you approach Brexit with right-wing bravado or Labour's "sensible manager" energy, objective reality remains entirely undefeated.
Reform UK has now taken that quiet administrative habit and turned it into an actual policy platform, delivered at a press conference rather than buried in a PDF. Deputy leader Richard Tice has confirmed the party will prioritise British-born workers under 35 for social housing, alongside military veterans and married couples with children, should Reform enter government. The pitch comes wrapped in an infrastructure promise, 50,000 affordable homes a year, financed, the party insists, without new taxes or borrowing, which is the political equivalent of promising a birthday cake that requires no oven, no flour and no birthday.
There is a saying, long attributed to the fog and frustration of Anglo-Irish relations, that goes roughly as follows: anyone who claims to have an answer to the Irish Question has clearly not understood the question. The precise origin of the quip is itself disputed, a fitting irony for an observation about irresolvability. Some give it to Benjamin Disraeli, that most theatrical of Victorian prime ministers.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 