The greatest casualty of this failure has been grassroots democracy.
Nigeria’s Failed Democratic Laboratory: How Governors Cripple Local Government and Representative Democracy by Lawson Akhigbe
Edo State Moribund Local Governments — The Glorified Cashier by Lawson Akhigbe
The narrative above is replicated across the 774 local governments in Nigeria. The Supreme Court judgment on Local Government financial autonomy remains iced over in practice. State governors continue to treat local councils as administrative subsidiaries rather than an autonomous arm of government.
The Tape-Measure Doctrine: When Governance Becomes Site Theatre by Lawson Akhigbe
The optical message broadcast to the public is one of relentless vigilance, a leader ensuring the masses are not shortchanged. The institutional reality, however, is that governance has vacated the cabinet room and wandered into the realm of amateur site supervision.
The NGO Trap: How a $1 Trillion Industry Learned to Love African Poverty by Lawson Akhigbe
Somewhere in a glass-and-steel conference centre in Geneva, a distinguished panel is convening to discuss Africa's poverty crisis. The room costs £18,000 a day to hire. The keynote speaker flew business class from Washington. The catered lunch is exceptional. The conference proceedings will produce, in due course, a forty-seven page report recommending as the 1994 report did, as the 2003 report did, as the 2011 report did, more aid. Africa, meanwhile, remains poor.
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.
Centre for Nigeria Progress 