Reporting News and opinions
NIGERIA has a disturbing habit of allowing those in power to treat constitutional restraints as inconveniences rather than obligations. Once again, the country is confronted with questions over presidential absence, constitutional compliance and the willingness of its institutions to hold the powerful to account.
Adams Oshiomhole is that rare Nigerian political specimen who managed to climb from factory floor to labour presidency, state house, party chairmanship and the red chamber without the inconvenience of a published higher educational attainment. Self-taught, they say. One imagines him in some dimly lit corner of history, devouring political manuals by candlelight while the rest of his compatriots were busy collecting certificates that later proved about as useful as a raincoat in the Sahara.
There is a comfortable explanation for why Nigerian officials behave as though accountability is an imported eccentricity, like fondue or the metric system. The explanation runs roughly like this: Nigerians have an authoritarian political culture, inherited from precolonial kingship and reinforced by military rule, and this culture manufactures leaders who cannot be shamed because shame requires a moral vocabulary the culture never built.
The lone dissent came from Washington on a UN resolution over a map long criticized for making Africa look smaller than it is.
A "leaked" report has revealed that members of the governing body of London's Square Mile were "instrumental" in England's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.
