Reporting News and opinions
We had transgender for everybody, men in women's sports, crime ravaging our cities, and the whole world was laughing at us as a nation. But not anymore. Two years ago, our country was dead. Now, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world.
Which outdated technology do you miss the most, and why? Fixed landline phone. Not being contactable between points and travelling the trains and planes in solidarity peace.
Next in Abuja, four governments will do something that sounds, on paper, like a belated act of economic self-respect. Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire and Cameroon between them the source of roughly two-thirds of the cocoa that becomes the world's chocolate will sign the Abuja Declaration and stand up a Cocoa Value Addition Alliance, a coordinated attempt to stop shipping out raw beans and start capturing some of the value that currently accrues, almost entirely, to everyone else. Nigeria will additionally sign its own Cocoa Value Addition Accord, a domestic compact roping in governors, farmer groups, financiers and researchers into the project of turning bean into brand rather than bean into someone else's bar.
There is an old fable about a group of mice who came up with a brilliant plan to outsmart a predatory cat: simply tie a bell around its neck so they’d always hear it coming. The plan was flawless, right up until one wise mouse asked the killer question: "Who is going to bell the …
Of course not. Tompolo did not fly to Abuja; Abuja knows better than to disturb the peace of Oporoza. In Tompolo's case, the EFCC suddenly discovered a highly sophisticated, deeply sensitive legal tool known as prosecutorial discretion. This is the common-sense power of law enforcement to say: "Yes, technically a rule was broken, but pursuing this would be silly, counterproductive, or trivial."
Centre for Nigeria Progress 