Rev J Jackson What links Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama? Not inheritance. Not patronage. Not the comfortable cushion of establishment approval. It was the voice. Not merely sound waves projected from disciplined diaphragms, but rhetoric as architecture — words arranged with moral symmetry, cadence deployed like a drumline, pauses used as …
Continue reading "Oratory: When a Voice Becomes a Bridge to the Sky by Lawson Akhigbe"
From time immemorial, societies have wrestled with power. Kings once ruled by divine right, their word indistinguishable from law. The only real constraint was conscience—if they possessed one. As even Donald Trump recently suggested in a moment of candour about executive power, a ruler’s restraint may lie chiefly in the mind of the ruler himself. …
Continue reading "The Return of the Crown: Billionaires and the New Absolutism by Lawson Akhigbe"
As a journalist and researcher attempting to document the activities of the Nigerian government, I have come to a disturbing conclusion: we are not being governed by the Constitution, but by witchcraft. Not the theatrical kind. The administrative kind. The kind where rules exist—somewhere—but not where citizens can see them. If you have ever tried …
Continue reading "Governance in the Dark: When Witches Run the Arms of Government by Lawson Akhigbe"
What struck me about the recent viral video of Adams Oshiomhole caressing the feet of a young woman on a chartered jet is that this man still dons an outfit reminiscent of his radical socialist days. As a labour leader, he wore khaki as a sartorial expression of repudiating capitalist excess, a symbol of his …
Continue reading "Oshiomhole: From radical to rascal by Adelakun Adunni Abimbola"
Nigeria is a country where the Constitution guarantees you the freedom to roam from Sokoto to Sagamu, from Bauchi to Benin, without police asking unnecessary questions—well, in theory. In practice, some Nigerians cannot travel from the front of their village to the back of it without risking an encounter with men who believe AK-47s are …
Centre for Nigeria Progress 