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.
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.
A Trillion-Dollar Economy, But Whose Nigeria? By Lawson Akhigbe
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his APC government have proclaimed an ambition to build a one-trillion-dollar Nigerian economy.
When the FCT Became a Personal Fiefdom: Wike, His Underlings, and the Quiet Death of Oversight by Lawson Akhigbe
This is not merely a personality clash. It is a blot on the democratic experiment. It reveals how thin the democratic impulse runs in the organs of government and the people who staff them. Effectively, the FCT is under non-democratic governance inside a country that still insists on calling itself a democracy. The Minister acts. The Senator is sidelined. The President remains serenely above the fray. The National Assembly discovers urgent business elsewhere. The circle is complete.
ANDY BURNHAM MUST GIVE BRITAIN AN IDEOLOGY, NOT ANOTHER MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT’S POWERPOINT by Lawson Akhigbe
There was something important about Andy Burnham's intervention at Prime Minister's Questions. Not simply because of what he said, but because of what it appeared to recognise: Britain has not merely been badly governed. Britain has been travelling in the wrong ideological direction for decades.

