Reporting News and opinions
Central to the indictment was the breathless lamentation over the demolition of the old Benin Central Hospital. Listening to the rhetoric, one would assume the facility was a pristine sanctuary of modern medicine arbitrarily flattened to make way for art.
Yesterday’s political victim can become tomorrow’s political kingmaker. Yesterday’s opposition politician can become tomorrow’s occupant of the very office controlled by the political establishment he once opposed.
We are told this is the silver bullet for our security paralysis. But as Nigeria stands on the precipice of altering Section 9 and dismantling Item 45 of the Exclusive Legislative List, we must ask: Are we solving a modern security crisis, or are we reawakening old ghosts that once broke the back of our democracy?
For the next century Lagos was the prize: capital of the Colony and Protectorate, then of independent Nigeria until Abuja stole the crown in 1991. Herbert Macaulay turned it into the cradle of Nigerian nationalism. The Action Group under Awolowo made it the Western Region’s intellectual and political headquarters. Meanwhile the federal government and the regions fought over whether Lagos belonged to the West or to everyone. Spoiler: everyone wanted a piece of the port, the money, and the prestige.
Governor Monday Okpebholo of Edo State is a man who, on the evidence of a recent photograph shaking hands with new Speaker of the Edo State House of Assembly Yekini Idiaye, appears to have mistaken the office of Chief Executive for a weekend errand run. A branded baseball cap. Clothing better suited to a beer parlour than a state formal meeting. Khaki trousers that suggest safari rather than sovereignty. This is not a man dressing down to meet the people. This is a man dressing as though the people are an inconvenience he is squeezing in between other appointments.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 