AI’s Threat to Journalism, Scholarship, and Self-Expression
By Farooq A. Kperogi On June 16, the final day of my three-week visit to Nigeria, I met with my dear friend Malam Ali M. Ali, Managing Director of the…
Category: Opinion
Seeing Nigeria from My American Daughter’s Eyes
By Farooq A. Kperogi Sometimes, it takes the unburdened and free-spirited perceptions of outsiders, particularly children, to appreciate taken-for-granted cultural peculiarities. This fact came to the fore for me after…
Nigerian Economy: A Breeding Ground for Ponzi Schemes?
It has become very easy to blame patrons of Ponzi schemes (fraudulent investment scams) for their greed and ignorance. But, despite the general awareness creation about the dangers of those…
PDP: the plot thickens
By ETIM ETIM Those who are still in doubt about the fate of the PDP and why some of its elected officials are decamping to other parties should read a…
Leaving the PDP: the choice before Akwa Ibom people
By Assam E. Assam, SAN In the evolving political landscape of Akwa Ibom State, recent developments have reignited debates about party loyalty, political identity, and the future of governance in…
Federal Ministry of Agriculture, prayers and sudden death
By ETIM ETIM The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security brought an untold embarrassment and shame on Nigerians last week through an internal memo which summoned its senior staff…
Huge Foreign Portfolio Investment into Nigeria: At What Costs?
By Marcel Okeke In what looks like a propaganda blitz, several online and hardcopy publications have in recent times been carrying a report that Nigeria’s economy attracted huge foreign portfolio…
What next shall we name after Tinubu?
By ETIM ETIM FCT Minister Nyesome Wike spent a whopping N39 billion to renovate the International Conference Centre in Abuja and renamed it Bola Tinubu International Conference Center in continuation…
Sin No More, Sanwoolu
By Reuben Abati Nigerians woke up to the delightful news, Monday morning, that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, currently on Sallah vacation in Lagos, had decided, following entreaties from interested and…
A Covenant of Purpose: Governor Umo Eno’s Strategic Realignment and the National Imperative
By Aniekan Umanah It was a day when history and purpose converged, closing one chapter and opening another in bold, progressive print. On Friday, June 6, 2025, the Banquet Hall…
Leadership Lessons from AfDB’s Akinwumi Adesina
By FEMI ADESINA It is not the end. Not yet. But it was the beginning of the end. President of African Development Bank (AfDB), Nigeria’s Dr Akinwumi Adesina, was hosting…
Umo Eno’s defection: the excitement, anxiety and expectations
By ETIM ETIM The defection of Gov. Umo Eno of Akwa Ibom State from PDP to APC on Friday was not a surprise, after all. I first got wind wind…
‘Nigeria First’: Brainwave or Economic Blueprint?
By Marcel Okeke Apart from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s amorphous ‘Renewed Hope’ mantra, it looks obvious that there has not been any discernible overarching economic blueprint by his administration. This…
Bill Gates Pledges Wealth to Addressing Challenges in Africa
The Founder of Microsoft Corporation, Mr. Bill Gates, has pledged to devote his wealth to addressing challenges in Africa for the next 20 years. Gates made this pledge on Monday…
Mid-term, Coastal Road And Other Stories
by Reuben Abati “Omo, how you dey?” “I dey my dey oh. What’s up?” “How you take see this Baba Tinubu’s mid-term score card”? “My problem is that President Tinubu…
Why the Anti-Tinubu Coalition Isn’t Coalescing
By Farooq A. Kperogi There is supposed to be a formidable coalition of powerful regional and national political forces working to upstage President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in 2027. But this…
The Umo Eno interview
By ETIM ETIM I was one of the seven journalists invited to interview Gov. Umo Eno in Uyo on May 29 as part of his midterm anniversary activities. It was…
Nigeria’s shock therapy: Why President Tinubu should press on
View From Abroad Nigeria’s shock therapy: Why President Tinubu should press on By FT Editorial Board For years, Nigeria has been not so much a sleeping giant as a comatose…
Good bye, Ngugi wa Thiongo’o
By Yusuf Bangura I’m saddened to learn about Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s death—one of the greats of African literature. The Nobel prize eluded him, but he shaped the minds of many…
Octopus Wike And The PDP
By Reuben Abati Octopuses are considered by biologists to be very crafty, clever, cephalopods, who have multiple brains and three hearts, and can easily manoeuvre their ways around even the…
No One Has Ever Defeated Autocracy From the Sidelines
May 8, 2025 Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way and Daniel Ziblatt How will Americans know when we have lost our democracy? Authoritarianism is harder to recognize than it used to be. Most…
Capital Flight as a Drag on Nigeria’s Economic Development
Marcel Okeke Without any fear of contradiction, stocks trading (activity) on the floor of the Nigerian Exchange Group (NGX) in the first quarter 2025 resulted to a monumental capital flight…
Banks’ profits, charges and customers’ complaints
By ETIM ETIM Grumbling about banks’ profit is a favourite Nigerian pastime that gets louder and louder in the first quarter of the year when their financial performance for the…
Nigeria’s Export Boom and Economy Diversification Imperatives
By Marcel Okeke A recent report that Nigeria’s non-oil exports hit US$1.7 billion in the first quarter 2025, marking a significant increase of almost 25 per cent compared to the…
An Analysis of JAMB’s Crisis Communication Efforts
By Tony Onyima, Ph.D. The 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), sparked public outcry over widespread failures, leading to a rare…
INEC, Election Riggers and Twisted Narratives
By Anietie Ekong Lately, there has been an upsurge of politically motivated and unwarranted attacks on the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio using several guises camouflaged as serving public…
Defections And Threat Of One-Party State
by Reuben Abati When the latest wave of defections began in March 2025, marked by the high profile exit of Mallam Nasir El Rufai from the All Progressives Congress (APC),…
The New Pope is “Black,” Now What?
By Farooq A. Kperogi In the aftermath of Pope Francis’ death, many Africans on the continent and in the diaspora wondered if the Catholic Church would, for a change, elect…
Gov. Umo Eno’s half-term report card
By ETIM ETIM This month marks the half-term mark for Gov. Umo Eno and the other 27 state chief executives who took office in May 2023; and it is important…
President Tinubu: Anambra visit and the petals of inclusive leadership
By Fredrick Nwabufo In botanical terms, inclusive leadership is like a flower, in which beauty proceeds from the anatomy of each petal or the leaves of its corolla. It takes…
Aniefiok Festus Udott, August 9, 1961 – April 15, 2025
By ETIM ETIM It feels so surreal that I am writing Aniefiok’s eulogy. Ani and I were born in the same year –just four months apart; grew up in the…
Nigeria: Another Attempt at Import Substitution Strategy?
Marcel Okeke Nigeria’s Federal Executive Council (FEC) presided over by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the other day, approved a new initiative to revise and enforce procurement rules that prioritize Nigerian-made…
Let Senator Akpabio Focus: Enough of the Distractions
Destiny Young| 7/05/2025 Recent events in the Nigerian Senate have left many Nigerians both bewildered and concerned. The sexual harassment allegations levelled against Senate President Godswill Akpabio by Senator Natasha…
Per Capita GDP: The facts tell a different story
By Bayo Onanuga A few days ago, outgoing AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina claimed that Nigerians today are worse off than in 1960, basing his conclusion on figures that do not…
Natasha’s Ides of May and the Vindication of Akpabio
By Yusuf Alli The internet was abuzz the night of 2025 May Day, as a United States based activist, Dr Sandra Duru, with the moniker Prof Mgbeke made an expose`…
Open letter to the Administrator of Rivers State
By ETIM ETIM Dear Vice Admiral Ibokette Ibas You have been in office as the administrator of Rivers State for over a month, and I will like to draw your…
Nigeria’s Economic Growth: Projections, Realities and Fantasies
By Marcel Okeke Nigeria’s participation at the recent International Monetary Fund (IMF)/World Bank Group spring meetings in Washington D.C, exposed the country to the good, the bad, and the ugly…
Atiku, Not Tinubu, Is the Wrecking Ball
By Azu Ishiekwene There’s a concern that Nigeria could soon become a one-party state, not by law, like in China, but through subterfuge – or in legal terms, de facto…
The Silent Majesty of Ibom Hotel and Golf Resort
By: ‘dayo Adedayo There are places that whisper their greatness rather than shout it. The Ibom Hotel and Golf Resort, Uyo, tells a story akin to the most successful souls…
Gov Eno and the 2027 Political Calculations
By John Junior As Nigeria gradually shifts its gaze toward the 2027 general elections, political intrigues and realignments are beginning to emerge across the country. At the center of current…
The impending defection of Gov. Umo Eno to APC
By Celestine Mel If there were still flickers of uncertainty about the direction of Akwa Ibom’s political future, they were extinguished yesterday. At the Oruk Anam–Ukanafun Town Square outing, Governor…
CBEX Wealth Chasers, NDIC And The Fate Of Depositors
by Reuben Abati I was abroad when the CBEX scandal broke: somehow, I tend to be out of town when Nigerians get into very serious trouble but it has been…
The struggle to build Ibom Deep Sea Port
By ETIM ETIM Some twenty leaders of different political leanings and ethnic backgrounds in Akwa Ibom State have sent a passionate appeal to President Bola Tinubu reminding him of an…
In 2027, Tinubu Won’t Win; The Opposition Will Lose
By Farooq A. Kperogi If economic health, social vitality, and the raw pulse of public opinion were the only indicators relied upon to prognosticate the chances of President Bola Ahmed…
Can Nigeria Afford Another Failed Census?
By Marcel Okeke President Bola Ahmed Tinubu took a major step towards the realization of the proposed national population and housing census by inaugurating an eight-man high-level committee led by…
Pope Francis (1936 – 2025)
by Reuben Abati Pope Francis who died yesterday morning, April 21, at the age of 88 was a trailblazer in more than one respect and definitely one of the most…
The wages of presidential subterfuge
By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu On the evening of 5 April 2012, the prime-time bulletin on the television news of the Malawi Broacasting Corporation (MBC), announced to the country that the…
Democratic Republic of Congo: Contradictions, agony and implications for pan Africanism
By ETIM ETIM Although the rest of Africa seems to have forgotten about the crisis and wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), some scholars, intellectuals and thinkers from…
Plateau, Tsiga and Trump
Reuben Abati “My brother, you do not look cheerful at all.” “I am just overwhelmed by everything” “Any personal issues? I hope there is no trouble in paradise and that…
Akpabio’s supernatural powers
By ETIM ETIM Senator Godswill Akpabio has been in public service for over two decades, but it’s only recently that his supernatural powers have been brought to national attention. These…