In the grand theatre of Nigerian public life, where contracts are signed with the solemnity of wedding vows and then abandoned with the enthusiasm of a jilted lover, few dramas have rivalled the Federal Republic of Nigeria v Process & Industrial Developments Ltd saga. The 2020 English High Court decision ([2020] EWHC 2379 (Comm)) was merely the intermission. The full production, complete with bribes, perjury and a near-$11 billion bill, only reached its denouement years later. Yet that September 2020 judgment by Sir Ross Cranston remains the pivotal moment when Nigeria was allowed, against all the usual arbitration orthodoxy of finality and speed, to drag the whole rotten affair into the light.
Shares for the Many, Not the Few: What Dangote’s IPO Owes to Margaret Thatcher, and What It Might Teach Her Country by Lawson Akhigbe
The theory behind all of it, gas, telecoms, water, rail, was called popular capitalism, and it rested on a wager: that if enough ordinary Britons held shares directly, they would develop a stake, literal and psychological, in the fiscal health of the nation. Capitalism would stop being something done to people and start being something done by them.
DANGOTE REFINERY IPO: WHAT ₦525 REALLY MEANS BEFORE YOU SUBSCRIBE
Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals FZE is offering 4.1 billion new ordinary shares at ₦525 each. The minimum subscription is 10 shares, costing ₦5,250.
Austerity: Britain’s Longest-Running Political Fancy Dress by Lawson Akhigbe
There is an old British habit that refuses to die. When the public finances look awkward, someone reaches for the national costume box, pulls out the Union Jack, and declares that the only patriotic course is to ask the people with the least to tighten their belts a little more. The word of the hour is always “austerity.” The justification is always necessity. The result is almost always the same.
From Governor Akpabio to Senate President Akpabio via Ministry of Niger Delta: When the Niger Delta’s Biggest Enemy remain in Government by Lawson Akhigbe
Back in 2017, human rights lawyer Inibehe Effiong caused a stir when he accused former Akwa Ibom governor Godswill Akpabio of looting the state treasury on a scale that could fund neighbouring Ebonyi State for decades.

