Reporting News and opinions
Every so often a state government invents a policy so novel that the law has not yet had time to catch up with it. Zamfara has done this and, with admirable efficiency, skipped the part where anyone checks whether the law would permit it.
If there is anyone who knows how the sausage of public perception gets made, it is Tina Brown. The legendary former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker has spent decades watching power players, monarchs, and media moguls manipulate the spotlight. At the recent Truth Tellers Summit, an event she founded to honor her …
A democracy does not always die at the barrel of a gun. Sometimes, it dies beneath television studio lights, while journalists entrusted with holding power accountable sit silently as politicians explain why nobody can hold them accountable.
In 2015 the APC unseated the PDP and has governed Nigeria ever since. That is eleven years, which in political terms is not so much a tenure as a tenancy with squatter's rights. Mr Tinubu spent the first eight as the party's national leader, with Osinbajo, reportedly his nominee, installed as vice president. Since 2023 he has been president, with Kashim Shettima beside him. Whoever invented the phrase "continuity of government" clearly never imagined it applied this literally.
“Frank exchange of views” is the single most useful phrase in the diplomatic lexicon, precisely because everyone involved knows it is a lie and nobody involved will admit it. A former UK diplomat once put it plainly in a Language Log discussion: a frank exchange of views is just shouting. If the participants throw things at each other, it upgrades to a full and frank exchange of views. That is not satire. That is a professional’s working definition.
