Tag: attitude

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Wike’s political patronage history by Lawson Akhigbe

Nyesom Ezenwo Wike (born 1967), a Nigerian lawyer and politician from the Ikwerre ethnic group in Rivers State, exemplifies the dynamics of political patronage, godfatherism, loyalty, and power consolidation in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic. His career trajectory, from local government chairman to state governor and federal minister, highlights how personal networks, resource control (especially oil-derived revenues), strategic alliances, and public confrontations shape Nigerian politics.

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Britannia Waives the Rules: Reform UK Ltd and the Audacity of the Uncomplicatedly Delusional By Lawson Akhigbe

There is a particular kind of political confidence that is indistinguishable, to the untrained eye, from clinical detachment from reality. It is the confidence of a man who, having just won a hand at poker, concludes that the laws of probability no longer apply to him. It announces itself loudly, dresses in a flag, and mistakes the echo of its own voice for the applause of nations. Ladies and gentlemen, Reform UK Ltd has had a good week at the local elections, and the results are as instructive as they are alarming, not merely because Nigel Farage’s vehicle of nationalist ambition has won council seats, but because winning appears to have emboldened the party to say the quiet parts of its manifesto even louder, with the serene self-assurance of people who have never had to read a treaty.

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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.

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Government by Vibes: Governor Okpebholo’s London Roadshow and the Cost of Governing Without Institutions by Lawson Akhigbe

His administration, he argued, is practical rather than bureaucratic. It is interested in action, not process. The legacy programmes of his predecessor, Godwin Obaseki, have largely been dismantled. EdoBEST has gone. The Security Control Centre has gone. EdoGIS is going. Consultants have gone. Due process, one gathered, has become something to be viewed with suspicion rather than embraced as the machinery through which modern government functions.

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Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission (Oputa Panel)

The Human Rights Violations Investigation Commission, popularly known as the Oputa Panel, remains one of the most significant yet controversial attempts at transitional justice in Nigeria's history.

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