Tag: History

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Edo State Political History: A Theatre of Comrades, Godfathers, and Suspended Dreams by Lawson Akhigbe

Ah, Edo State, the ancient kingdom of Benin, where bronze casters once made art that still makes the British Museum sweat, and modern politicians make drama that makes Nollywood blush. If Nigerian politics is a never-ending telenovela, Edo is the season where everyone keeps switching wigs, parties, and loyalties faster than a market woman dodging rain. Let’s stroll through this glorious chaos, shall we?

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THE TALE OF ONE HALF: ROCHAS OKOROCHA AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF PERFORMANCE By Lawson Akhigbe

There is a particular Nigerian genius for building things that mean nothing, and calling it a legacy. Rochas Okorocha, who governed Imo State from 2011 to 2019 as though the office were a stage and the electorate a captive audience, remains the finest living exhibit of this genius. Eight years after he last held power, and years after the last echo of "Rochas the Liberator" faded from campaign jingles, his name now surfaces mostly in courtrooms, in denial statements issued by aides nobody asked for comment, and in the occasional bronze figure still standing in Owerri, weathering slowly in the rain like the promises that built it.

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NATIONS, TRIBES, AND THE GRAMMAR OF EMPIRE: On why the Scots get a parliament and the Yoruba get an anthropologist By Lawson Akhigbe

Scotland has a parliament, a flag, a football team that loses with tremendous dignity, and roughly the population of Lagos’s Ikeja Local Government Area. The Yoruba nation and I use the word advisedly has an empire’s worth of history, a written and oral constitutional tradition running from Ile-Ife through the Oyo Mesi and the Alaafin’s checks and balances, a diaspora spanning three continents, and something in the region of forty million native speakers. One of these is routinely described in the Financial Times as a nation debating its constitutional future. The other is routinely described, by the same publication, as a tribe engaged in an ethnic dispute. I invite the reader to spot the empirical difference. I have been looking for thirty years and have found only prejudice wearing a monocle.

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Is Nigeria’s Destiny Already Written? By Lawson Akhigbe

At moments of peak frustration, one is tempted to conclude that Nigeria has become a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah; a place so committed to self-destruction that even the gods have abandoned any rescue plan and are simply waiting for the final chapter.

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Looted weapons from Libya found with Nigerian extremists – UN

The UN’s top disarmament official expressed regret that weapons continued to fuel violence in communities long after wars ended, causing devastation across once peaceful communities.

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