Tag: elections

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Anambra’s Local Government Law 2024: The Art of Obeying the Supreme Court While Ignoring It Completely by Lawson Akhigbe

In the grand theatre of Nigerian federalism, few performances are more impressive than watching a state government loudly applaud a Supreme Court judgment while simultaneously rewriting the script so the money still ends up in the same old pockets. Anambra’s Local Government Administration Law of 2024 is that performance, complete with standing ovation from the Governor’s Lodge and polite confusion from anyone who actually read the judgment.

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The 3pm Call: America’s Midterm Test of Judgment

It was 2008. The country was being asked to choose a president, and Clinton’s famous campaign advertisement presented the image of sleeping children, a ringing telephone in the White House and a question: Who do you want answering the phone?

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Was there a ledger to square: Britain’s rule in Nigeria by Lawson Akhigbe

The late Sam Mbakwe, first civilian governor of Imo State and a man whose impatience with mediocrity remains legendary, once declared that he would gladly invite the British back to rule Nigeria for another fifty years. Other politicians have echoed the sentiment over the decades, usually after another round of epileptic power, collapsed roads, or the discovery that the latest “transformation agenda” had transformed mainly the bank balances of its authors. The quip is usually delivered with a sigh, half-joke, half-confession: better the colonial taskmaster who at least kept the trains roughly on time than the indigenous ones who treat the national timetable as optional reading.

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David Cameron: The Prime Minister Who Kept Proving Enoch Powell Right

Enoch Powell famously observed that “all political careers end in failure.” Whether one agrees with the man or not, the aphorism has endured because politics is an unforgiving profession. Few modern British politicians illustrate it more vividly than David Cameron.

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The Mirage Government: How Nigeria Governs Without Knowing What It Knows by Lawson Akhigbe

It issues pronouncements, launches programmes, commissions projects, publishes budgets, announces reforms and produces an endless supply of political speeches. Ministers hold press conferences. Governors commission flyovers. Presidents announce ambitious economic transformations. Political parties publish manifestos promising a better Nigeria.

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