Visitors sit before the Benin plaques exhibit at the British Museum in London. (David Cliff/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images) The bronze plaques from his birthplace looked strange at the British Museum.Enotie Ogbebor, a visiting artist, knew they were cultural treasures. West African sculptors had crafted them over six centuries to tell the history of Benin, a kingdom …
The Press Went Up the Hill… and Rolled Back Down by Lawson Akhigbe
The press has been climbing Mt. Trump for so long that you’d think CNN would at least apply for a mountaineering licence. Every few months, they scale a new peak with the same breathless excitement: “This is it! The big expose! The moment democracy finally unclogs its arteries!” And every time, Trump—like a political cockroach …
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Legislative Abdication: When Our Lawmakers Forsake the Constitution for the Echoes of the Barracks by Lawson Akhigbe
The Nigerian constitution, for all its perceived flaws, embodies a profound spirit: that of a federating pact, intended to decentralise power and anchor the political process in the will of the people, from the ground up. This foundational principle is most evident in the meticulous processes it outlines for the most significant acts of political …
The Disillusionment of a Citizen
I was a Nigerian from birth. My roots stretch across the soils of the North, where my earliest memories were shaped, and where my father once fought to keep this country united. In his time, the dream of One Nigeria burned bright — imperfect but hopeful. He believed, like many of his generation, that the …
The Old Coups, the New Chorus, and Nigeria’s Eternal Game of Selective Outrage By Lawson Akhigbe
Kanu Nigeria’s political history has a strange, almost theatrical habit of repeating itself—often with new actors but the same tired script. Back in January 1966, young military officers staged a coup that shook the country to its foundations. The bulk of the federal politicians killed happened, incidentally, to be from the North and West. This …

