Back in 2017, human rights lawyer Inibehe Effiong caused a stir when he accused former Akwa Ibom governor Godswill Akpabio of looting the state treasury on a scale that could fund neighbouring Ebonyi State for decades.
Twenty Years Late and Several Republics Short: On EJ, Atiku and Nigeria’s Habit of Reheating Cold Corruption by Lawson Akhigbe
In 1999, Olusegun Obasanjo and Atiku Abubakar rode into Aso Rock together, a presidential double act that Nigerians assumed would age like most political marriages: quietly, then not at all. They survived one term. They won a second in 2003. Then, somewhere in that second term, Obasanjo discovered a constitutional itch that the 1999 Constitution's two term, eight year ceiling on the presidency simply would not scratch. He wanted a third term. Atiku, nursing a presidential ambition of his own and possessed of the inconvenient habit of reading the Constitution literally, said so publicly. The friendship ended there.
The Union Jack Won’t Fix Britain: Farage, Braverman and the Politics of National Nostalgia by Lawson Akhigbe
When a political movement cannot quite explain where Britain should go, it apparently finds comfort in explaining where Britain used to be.
A Trillion-Dollar Economy, But Whose Nigeria? By Lawson Akhigbe
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his APC government have proclaimed an ambition to build a one-trillion-dollar Nigerian economy.
The Holy Trinity of Loyalty: How Uromi’s New Chairman Said the Quiet Part Out Loud by Lawson Akhigbe
There is a peculiar brand of honesty that only slips out when an official forgets to read the democratic script. Usually, freshly inaugurated politicians feel obliged to rehearse the standard civic pieties muttering something about service delivery, the rule of law, or the sovereign will of the people. But every once in a while, the system produces a moment of pure, unvarnished clarity.

