There is a peculiar magic trick the United States performs on the international stage. With one hand, it builds institutions, blesses them with lofty language, and sells them as guardians of order. With the other hand, it discredits, undermines, and threatens to demolish the very same institutions—usually when they stop obeying Washington’s GPS. Gaza is …
The Nigerian political system exhibits a strong focus on the mechanics of winning elections, often through transactional and sometimes destructive means. · Transactional Politics and "Political Marketplaces": Nigerian elections have been described as functioning like political marketplaces, where power is treated as a commodity to be bought, sold, and fought over. Elite deal-making and backroom …
Continue reading "The Mastery of Election-Winning in Nigeria by Lawson Akhigbe"
England has always had a remarkable talent for exporting its problems — and then pretending they were never homegrown in the first place. A few centuries ago, when the jails were full and the gallows couldn’t keep up, Britain had a brilliant idea: ship the criminals somewhere sunny. Thus, Australia was born — not from …
Continue reading "England’s Selective Memory: From Convict Ships to Culture Wars By Lawson Akhigbe"
Write about your first computer. That old MS-DOS command prompt. Unfortunately, I can't remember the specific name or make of the computer, just that it had a dark screen and then switched to Windows 3, and things just snowballed from there.
There is something profoundly un-British about the current political and legal sojourn being embarked upon by sections of the UK right. Britain, the land of habeas corpus, the rule of law, and stiff-upper-lip proceduralism, is now flirting with the idea that international law is an optional extra—like heated seats in a base-model Ford Fiesta. Nice …
Centre for Nigeria Progress 