BOOK REVIEW: Inside Yakubu Gowon’s “My Life of Duty and Allegiance”, By Mathew Hassan Kukah

The reader will be right to expect that this book will be the biography to end all biographies and accounts of Nigeria’s chequered history through three coups and a civil war. If you are expecting any revelations from declassified documents, private papers and notes, the reader might be disappointed. The reasons is that, from the beginning, the author confesses that: I want to emphasise that I am telling my story without access to my crucial personal records since many important documents taken from my desk after my removal in July 1975 were discarded by those who succeeded me. Other documents that survived were destroyed by two fire incidents in Bakori and Kaduna(xxi). Yet, none of this diminishes the book which obviously was written straight from whatever he could remember.

When the Family Becomes the Coroner: Has Nigeria Turned Cause of Death into a Matter of Opinion By Lawson Akhigbe

On 23 August, I wrote on this platform about the danger of treating the law as an optional accessory in suspicious deaths. I asked a simple question: when a Nigerian dies suddenly and in circumstances requiring investigation, who decides how that death occurred? The family, or the law?

When Laws Become Optional: Suspicious Deaths, Colonial Legacies, and the Dignity Deficit in Nigeria by Lawson Akhigbe

The difference between the United Kingdom and Nigeria is not primarily in the letter of the law. It is in the general application and consistent enforcement of that law. This divergence reveals a deeper reality about how the Nigerian state relates to its citizens.

UPDATE: Security Failures, Inside Moles, and the Death of a Terrorist Kingpin

The 2021 terrorist invasion of the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) which Farooq Kperogi rightly labeled an unprecedented humiliation gradually unraveled through subsequent military and intelligence investigations. The findings confirmed the public's worst fears: the nation's premier military university was undermined by severe operational negligence and internal compromise.

Accountability Is Not a Presidential Favour by Lawson Akhigbe

The response by the President's Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to Cardinal John Onaiyekan's television interview reveals a troubling misunderstanding of constitutional democracy. It also exposes a growing tendency within this administration to confuse criticism with disloyalty and accountability with discourtesy.