Nigeria’s 2026 Budget: Another Ritual or Economic Plan?
By Marcel Okeke When, on Friday, December 19, 2025—twelve days to end of the year—President Bola Ahmed Tinubu presented the 2026 Appropriation Bill to a joint session of the National…
Category: Opinion
Nigeria, Trump And The US
by: Reuben Abati Nigeria seems to be making some progress in our engagement with the United States, against the background of the Trump administration’s re-designation of Nigeria as a Country…
How I dealt with Buhari’s cabal
By Solomon Dalung (Former Minister) Since former President Muhammadu Buhari left office in 2023 and following his passing this year, there has been a deliberate and coordinated effort by some…
The Politics of Posthumous Truth
By Oluwafemi Popoola Nigeria has a thriving afterlife economy. Its raw material is the silence of departed powerful men. Its finished products are motives, conspiracies, and convenient truths. It is…
The Death Of Truth: How Fear Has Kept A Nation In Chains
By Professor Usman Umar, Keffi *** Socrates was one of the greatest thinkers of his time. Yet, he was not beyond correction. His student, Plato, saw flaws in his ideas…
President Tinubu, Minister Wale Edun and Nigeria’s Fiscal Profile: The Truth and the Lies
By Marcel Okeke The truth, they say, is constant: in the face of outright falsehood, half-truths, propaganda and prevarications, the truth will always stand out. This is why a country…
Supreme Court, Rivers And The State of Emergency
By: Reuben Abati Yesterday, December 15, the Supreme Court of Nigeria struck out the suit filed by 11 Governors of states controlled by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) challenging the…
Senator Ekong Sampson’s scholarship scheme
By ETIM ETIM At a time many Akwa Ibom students are having problems supporting themselves in schools, Senator Ekong Sampson recently disbursed N100 million to over 500 students in his…
Tinubu’s New Tax Regime as Sovereignty for Sale
By Farooq A. Kperogi For weeks, I deliberately avoided commenting on the sweeping new tax regime the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration plans to roll out next year. It’s not because…
PEBEC and Nigeria’s Business Climate Competitiveness Awards: What Message?
By Marcel Okeke On Tuesday, December 2, 2025, a body known as the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) held its 2025 Awards and Gala Night at the State House…
Tinubu’s Benin Republic Expedition
By Reuben Abati In the early hours of Sunday, December 7, 2025, there was the shocking news of a military intervention in the Republic of Benin, led by one Lieutenant…
The Tragedy of Brilliance
By Babafemi Ojudu I spent more than an hour this morning listening to Edmund Obilo’s interview with Col. Victor Banjo’s daughter, Prof. Oluyinka Omigbodun. As she narrated her father’s life…
Lavish celebrations, savings and development
By ETIM ETIM In the last few months, there have been several eye-popping and lavish celebrations in Akwa Ibom State to mark a wedding or death. These festivities lend credence…
Why is Matawalle Still a Defense Minister?
By Farooq A. Kperogi Even the severest critics of the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration admit that the last few days have seen what appear (at least on the surface) to…
Tight Monetary Stance: Is the CBN Not Stifling the Economy?
By Marcel Okeke The decision of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) after its meeting on Tuesday, November 25, 2025, to retain the benchmark…
IPI and Akwa Ibom State
By ETIM ETIM The International Press Institute (IPI) is a global organization that champions press freedom and promotes quality journalism. Founded in 1950, the IPI has members from over 120…
Tinubu’s Ambassadors
by Reuben Abati No one should be surprised at the level of controversy that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s ambassadorial list of 35 nominees, whose names have been sent to the…
Prof. Mahmood Yakubu’s Ambassadorial Nomination: A Step Too Soon, Too Close, and Too Damaging
By Mohammed Santuraki President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has nominated Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, the immediate past Chairman of INEC, for an ambassadorial position—barely two years after he supervised the very election…
December 1: A Date with Destiny
By Chijioke Amu-Nnadi December 1, 2025 is a Monday, the beginning of the first week of the last month of the year. For Pastor Umo Eno, the governor of Akwa…
The Drama Of Abductions And Impunity
By Reuben Abati Clearly, the most compelling, and confusing development in Nigeria in recent times is the recurring spate of abductions, the reign of impunity and the apparent failure of…
Michael Bush’s friendly fire
By ETIM ETIM I read Michael Bush’s article in The Sun newspaper of Monday, November 24, titled ‘’Just a little friendly fire’’, and it was immediately clear to me that…
Staggering, Like a Giant Robbed of Its Spine
By Babafemi Ojudu There was a time when this country walked tall — not because it was without problems, but because it possessed the will, the confidence, and the inner…
Nigeria’s Return to the 2014 Nightmare
By Farooq A. Kperogi The events and atmospherics of the past few days in Nigeria feel eerily and frighteningly familiar. They are redolent of the disabling instability and helplessness (and…
PDP Crisis and National Stability
by Reuben Abati The crisis in the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) came to a head over the weekend that just passed, November 15 -16 when a group of PDP elders,…
Donald Trump’s Threat: What Collateral Damage to Nigerian Economy?
By Marcel Okeke Since Friday, October 31, 2025, when President Donald Trump of the United States of America designated Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), there has been…
Congratulations, Minister Wike
By Muiz Banire I am sure that Nigerians will be wondering why I am extending the congratulatory message to the Minister in the light of what transpired between him and…
Cry aloud against genocide in Nigeria
By Ahmed Aminu Yusuf aaramatuyusuf@yahoo.com Fulani terrorism against indigenous Nigeria has been progressively worsening since 2014, when Fulani terrorists from all over West and Central Africa infiltrated to destabilize the…
The Slow Degeneration of Decorum
By Babafemi Ojudu We have truly degenerated in Nigeria. Can you imagine a Shehu Shagari as minister in the First Republic behaving this way? Or a Richard Akinjide in the…
Reuben Abati’s birthday book launch
By ETIM ETIM Very few Nigerian journalists would be able to attract such an eminent crowd for their event like the one that assembled at the Nigerian Institute of International…
Nigeria’s Life Expectancy as World’s Lowest
By Marcel Okeke A very noxious and worrisome media report about Nigeria came into public space recently, but appeared overshadowed and subdued by a deluge of other news and information…
Trump, Christian Genocide, and Terrorism in Nigeria
By Farooq A. Kperogi Nigeria’s online and offline discursive arenas have been suffused with frenetic, impassioned, and intensely heightened dialogic exchanges in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s designation of…
Nigeria’s Crisis Runs Deeper Than Just A War On Christians
By James Barnett In less than 48 hours, President Donald Trump went from announcing that he would designate Nigeria a “country of particular concern,” a State Department label that admonishes…
Donald Trump’s threat: Matters arising
By ETIM ETIM Less than a week after President Donald Trump issued his weekend ‘’guns-a-blazing’’ threats to bomb terrorist locations in Nigeria, Senator Ted Cruz has vowed to release names…
Donald Trump ’s Plan To De-Stabilise Nigeria
By Reuben Abati I have chosen the provocative title of this piece deliberately knowing that some of the more patriotic elements among us in Nigeria would scream that it is…
LOSS OF LIVES OR LOSS OF SOVEREIGNTY: which is worse?
Prof Lawrence ETIM The debate over Nigeria’s unending wave of insecurity raises a veritable moral and political question: Which is worse – the loss of lives or the loss of…
Donald Trump’s threats, Tinubu’s dilemma
By ETIM ETIM On January 29, 2014, Bola Ahmed Tinubu sent out a tweet that read: ‘’The slaughtering of Christian Worshippers is strongly condemnable. It calls to question the competence…
The Coup That Dare Not Speak Its Name
By Farooq A. Kperogi I was initially disinclined to write about the alleged attempted coup to dislodge President Bola Ahmed Tinubu from power because the Defence Headquarters (DHQ) has publicly…
With AI, We’re Now Fully in Baudrillard’s Hyperreality
By Farooq Kperogi It seems our world is inexorably moving in the direction of replacing the authentic with the synthetic. Increasingly, the lines between the real and the imitation, the…
Biya, Okpebholo And The New Service Chiefs
by Reuben Abati “They say President Paul Biya has been declared winner of the Presidential election in Cameroon. The man has been in power since 1982. At 92, he is…
Halal Economy: Tomorrow’s Celebration May Plant Tomorrow’s Crisis
By Citizen Bolaji O. Akinyemi This is an advisory note to a nation in despair, led by men who carry on as if nothing is wrong, when the hope they…
Nigeria’s Poor Ranking on Global Poverty, Hunger Scale
By Marcel Okeke In what looks like an irony, Nigeria is being ranked among countries with the largest number of hungry and poor people in the world at a time…
Sowore And The Nnamdi Kanu Protest
by Reuben Abati Yesterday was October 20, the fifth anniversary of the Lekki Toll Gate Massacre, aftermath of the #EndSARS youth protest in Lagos. Scores of young persons were reportedly…
CBN, AI and effective monetary policy management
By ETIM ETIM At an event at London School of Economics recently, CBN Governor Yemi Cardoso announced that the bank has integrated AI into its monetary policy framework for macroeconomic…
Maryam Sanda and Tinubu’s Crisis of Clemency
By Farooq A. Kperogi President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, like his predecessors, has the constitutional right to grant clemency. He draws this right from Section 175 of the 1999 Constitution, which…
The Satanic Strategist
By Aoiri Obaigbo Forget IBB, the so-called evil genius. He should wear shorts, grab a backpack, and enroll in Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s coven. Because in the grand chessboard of Nigerian…
Tinubu’s controversial clemency
By ETIM ETIM It’s almost certain that every presidential decision will draw a controversy, but President Tinubu’s clemency to 175 prisoners, most of whom were convicted drug dealers, murderers and…
Amupitan: New Broom At INEC
By Reuben Abati Last week, October 7, the announcement was made of the exit of Professor Mahmoud Yakubu, Chair of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), 2015 – 2025, and…
New INEC Boss and Tinubu’s Visibilization of Northern Yorubas
By Farooq A. Kperogi Everyone who is familiar with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s unabashed Yorubacentricism expected him to appoint a Yoruba person to succeed Professor Mahmood Yakubu as INEC chairman.…
Economic Outlook: Nigeria’s Optimism Vs World Bank’s Pessimism
By Marcel Okeke About 30 months into President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s 48-month tenure, one of the Bretton Woods institutions—The World Bank—has begun to sing discordant tunes with Nigeria in respect…
UNN, Geoffrey Nnaji and a question of honour
By ETIM ETIM It is a huge relief that Geoffrey Uchechukwu Nnaji has resigned as Minister of Innovation, Science & Technology in disgrace after years of being embroiled in allegations…