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The Oputa Panel’s report remains one of Nigeria’s most thorough official indictments of its own recent past and one of its most thoroughly ignored. After receiving more than 10,000 petitions and hearing only about 150 of them in public, the commission delivered a seven-volume catalogue of institutional failure that still reads like a national audit of impunity.
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Remember six months ago when the Edo State government decided it was moonlight-and-magic time for law enforcement? With the flourish of a decree and a fanfare that probably woke up the entire length of Akpakpava Road, officials announced that every single business in Benin City must install closed-circuit television (CCTV).
In the grand, time-tested tradition of civil service not just in Nigeria, but anywhere pretending to run a functional democracy there exists a quiet, unsexy principle: neutrality. The civil service is supposed to be the engine room that keeps running regardless of who holds the steering wheel. Red, blue, green, or APC, the bureaucracy stays …
There are moments in Nigerian history when the past does not merely knock on the door. It walks into the sitting room, sits down and starts talking. I recently went back to the broadcast that announced the military coup which overthrew the government of President Shehu Shagari on 31 December 1983. The speech was delivered …
