Tag: APC

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The Ghost Who Keeps Signing by Lawson Akhigbe

The Land Use Act of 1978 vested radical title to land in the state governor. Customary authorities were meant to operate within that framework, not around it. Yet when the formal system becomes a source of frustration rather than facilitation, human ingenuity finds other routes. Enter the late Oba. His name carries historical weight. The palace, however, maintains no functional modern archive capable of systematic verification. Oral history is the dominant method, and most of the original participants are no longer available for cross-examination. The result is a paper trail that is difficult to audit and easy to exploit.

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Edo State’s Land Reform Odyssey: From Land Grabbers to Digital Promises (and Back Again) by Lawson Akhigbe

In Edo State, land is never just dirt. It is history, inheritance, politics, and occasionally a full-contact sport. For years the system ran on a toxic mix of customary claims, Community Development Associations that behaved like private armies, multiple sales of the same plot, and a Certificate of Occupancy process so slow it could age a bottle of wine. Successive administrations have declared reform. The results have been a mixture of genuine progress, inherited messes, political score-settling, and the familiar Nigerian talent for turning every administrative problem into a morality play about fraud.

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Amupitan’s Yanga Wakes Trouble by Azu Ishiekwene

Six months after his appointment as the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Joash Amupitan appears determined to beat the record of Professor Maurice Iwu as the most mistrusted electoral administrator yet.

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EDITORIAL: Osun election, the rise of civic action, and 2027 by PREMIUM TIMES

Governor Ademola Adeleke of Osun State was re-elected for a second term in the 15 August governorship contest. It was an off-cycle election like no other before it, in the build-up, with its eerie elements of tension, violence and resultant deaths.

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Anarchism in judicial robes, by Owei Lakemfa

My mind raced back to British jurist, Lord Denning who famously declared in 1964: “Justice has no place in darkness or secrecy. When a judge sits on a case, he himself is on trial… If he is suspicious, biased, or unfair, then the judge is the one who is condemned in the eyes of public opinion.” But these words of wisdom seem not to have any meaning to Justice Lifu, shockingly, a former lecturer of Public and International Law, University of Ibadan. For me, what was more distressing was that despite the uproar, Justice Lifu seemed oblivious of the damage he    had done to the body polity, the judiciary and his thirty five years post-call to bar history.

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