Reporting News and opinions
On 23 August, I wrote on this platform about the danger of treating the law as an optional accessory in suspicious deaths. I asked a simple question: when a Nigerian dies suddenly and in circumstances requiring investigation, who decides how that death occurred? The family, or the law?
Just weeks ago, Keir Starmer announced his resignation, making him the seventh Prime Minister to be chewed up and spat out by the British political machine in ten years. It turns out that whether you approach Brexit with right-wing bravado or Labour's "sensible manager" energy, objective reality remains entirely undefeated.
There is a saying, long attributed to the fog and frustration of Anglo-Irish relations, that goes roughly as follows: anyone who claims to have an answer to the Irish Question has clearly not understood the question. The precise origin of the quip is itself disputed, a fitting irony for an observation about irresolvability. Some give it to Benjamin Disraeli, that most theatrical of Victorian prime ministers.
There is something almost uniquely Nigerian about discovering that a government agency is fake after it has been given an office, treated as official, populated with officials, recognised by other parts of government and, in one case, even found its way into the national budget.
here is an old, bitter administrative joke in Nigeria that you are only formally counted twice: never when you arrive, and certainly not when you leave. In between, your existence is largely an unverified rumor negotiated between your creator, your luck, and whatever age declaration affidavit you paid a court clerk two thousand Naira to stamp.
