When Shell Companies, Bribes and Billion-Dollar Fantasies Meet Nigerian Bureaucracy: Lessons from P&ID (and a Cheer for Mambilla) by Lawson Akhigbe

In the grand theatre of Nigerian public life, where contracts are signed with the solemnity of wedding vows and then abandoned with the enthusiasm of a jilted lover, few dramas have rivalled the Federal Republic of Nigeria v Process & Industrial Developments Ltd saga. The 2020 English High Court decision ([2020] EWHC 2379 (Comm)) was merely the intermission. The full production, complete with bribes, perjury and a near-$11 billion bill, only reached its denouement years later. Yet that September 2020 judgment by Sir Ross Cranston remains the pivotal moment when Nigeria was allowed, against all the usual arbitration orthodoxy of finality and speed, to drag the whole rotten affair into the light.

Carry On Terror Far Right Edition by Lawson Akhigbe

Every crisis deserves a prompt, and the far right is nothing if not punctual. Five men were arrested early on a Sunday near RAF Fairford, the Gloucestershire base from which US B-1 bombers have flown missions against Iran, after a local farmer noticed three white vans heading towards it. Bomb disposal robots trundled about the woods, and dozens of villagers were bundled out of their homes. Nigel Farage, meanwhile, had already left the building, intellectually speaking.

Kemi Badenoch and the economy: a plan stuck in the Tory comfort zone by The Guardian Editorial

To outlast a prime minister always counts as some kind of achievement for an opposition leader, although Kemi Badenoch cannot claim credit for Sir Keir Starmer’s downfall. Sir Keir’s wounds were mostly self-inflicted. To the extent that opposition pressure was involved, it was electoral threats from Reform UK and the Green party that stoked Labour party frustration to a regicidal pitch. The Tory leader’s role was largely as a spectator.

Fuel’s Gold: Why Governor Monday Okpebholo Thinks Your Empty Wallet is a Luxury Vacation by Lawson Akhigbe

Gather round, petrol-pump poets and economic visionaries, because Governor Monday Okpebholo has unlocked a geopolitical cheat code that will leave Nobel Prize-winning economists weeping into their calculators.

The American Constitution Was Never Designed for a President Who Treats Congress as Optional By Lawson Akhigbe

The framers of the United States Constitution expected conflict. They expected ambition. They expected rivalry between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.