Reporting News and opinions
In the fevered theatre of the 2024 United States presidential election, Donald Trump delivered one of those lines that would be dismissed as parody if it were not uttered in earnest. At a presidential debate, he alleged that Haitians in Springfield were eating the pets—dogs and even swans—of local residents. It was the sort of …
Continue reading "When the Voter Becomes the Enemy: A Far-Right Habit by Lawson Akhigbe"
What gives you direction in life? Not today, move on.
IBB Nigeria’s military dictatorships from the mid-1980s to late 1990s entrenched grand corruption as a structural feature of governance, contributing to the country’s estimated $400 billion+ losses to graft since independence. General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (IBB, ruled 1985–1993) and General Sani Abacha (ruled 1993–1998) exemplify distinct yet overlapping models of plunder. Babangida’s era is often …
There is a peculiar kind of public official who arrives in high office not as a destination earned through demonstrated competence, but as a man who simply wandered into a room he was not supposed to be in and sat down before anyone could stop him. Monday Okpebholo, Governor of Edo State, is that man. …
Continue reading "The Pocket Money Governor: A Study in Magnificent Mediocrity by Lawson Akhigbe"
Bill Maher and Jon Stewart represent two prominent trajectories in American political comedy over the past three decades. Both rose to prominence in the 1990s and early 2000s as sharp, irreverent voices skewering power, hypocrisy, and media spin—Maher through Politically Incorrect and later Real Time with Bill Maher, Stewart via The Daily Show. Yet their …
Continue reading "Bill Maher and Jon Stewart by Lawson Akhigbe"
Centre for Nigeria Progress 