Tag: Corruption

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The Five Fingers of a Leprosy Hand: From Abacha’s Ambition to Tinubu’s Politics of Political Capture By Lawson Akhigbe

Nigeria has seen this political movie before. The costumes have changed, the actors have acquired new titles, and the language of justification has become more sophisticated. But beneath the democratic vocabulary lies a familiar ambition: the concentration of political power in the hands of one man, the weakening of opposition, and the conversion of a multiparty democracy into a political arrangement in which everybody is expected to agree with the president.

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A Bankrupt State, a Billionaire’s IPO and a Very Quiet Appropriation Bill by Lawson Akhigbe

Every so often a state government invents a policy so novel that the law has not yet had time to catch up with it. Zamfara has done this and, with admirable efficiency, skipped the part where anyone checks whether the law would permit it.

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When Journalists Become Political Courtiers and Interviews Become Political Theatre By Lawson Akhigbe

A democracy does not always die at the barrel of a gun. Sometimes, it dies beneath television studio lights, while journalists entrusted with holding power accountable sit silently as politicians explain why nobody can hold them accountable.

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The Fire Brigade That Lit the Fire: Shettima and the Great Implosion That Never Was by Lawson Akhigbe

In 2015 the APC unseated the PDP and has governed Nigeria ever since. That is eleven years, which in political terms is not so much a tenure as a tenancy with squatter's rights. Mr Tinubu spent the first eight as the party's national leader, with Osinbajo, reportedly his nominee, installed as vice president. Since 2023 he has been president, with Kashim Shettima beside him. Whoever invented the phrase "continuity of government" clearly never imagined it applied this literally.

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Who Really Owns Nigeria’s Ports? The Gate Nobody Can Enter by Historic Capital

Look at the last thing you bought: the rice, the paracetamol, the charger in your pocket. Before it reached your hand, at least six different people were paid. Not one of their names was on your receipt. You paid every single one of them, and you never knew who they were.

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