Bola Ahmed Tinubu: The Most Nigerian of Nigerian Presidents? By Lawson Akhigbe

In that sense, Tinubu may be regarded as the most “Nigerian” of Nigerian presidents—not necessarily as a compliment, but because he appears to encapsulate many of the contradictions, ambiguities and controversies that have long defined Nigerian politics.

Major Chip Hazard Goes to Washington: When Toy Soldiers Run the War Department by Lawson Akhigbe

Donald Trump’s return to the White House marked the triumph of image over expertise. Cabinet positions increasingly resembled casting decisions. Loyalty became more important than experience. Television skills became more valuable than administrative competence.

When Tactical Brilliance Meets Strategic Confusion: Washington’s Iran Problem by Lawson Akhigbe

But wars are not graded like Olympic gymnastics. There are no medals for technical execution if the end result leaves your opponent intact, emboldened, or—worse—adapted.

Crocodile Tears and Caliphate Dreams: The Selective Christianity of Washington’s Nigeria Policy By Lawson Akhigbe

Let it be said plainly: Christians are dying in Nigeria's Middle Belt and northeast, in numbers that shame a government which has spent a quarter-century treating internal security as a procurement racket rather than a constitutional duty. That much is not in serious dispute, whatever Abuja's spokesmen protest on television. But sincerity and self-interest are not mutually exclusive states, and it takes a special sort of credulity to receive Donald Trump's sudden solicitude for Black Christians in the Sahel as anything other than what it plainly is a foreign policy improvised from a domestic culture war, deployed by an administration whose relationship with racial minorities at home has rarely troubled itself with tenderness. One does not have to admire