One of the most damaging consequences of colonialism is not simply the wealth that was taken from Africa. It is the intellectual architecture that continues to shape how Africans understand their own continent and how the rest of the world understands it. Africa is routinely presented as a place of...
The reaction to the third Russia-Africa Summit in Moscow has exposed an attitude that Africa should have outgrown long ago: the belief that African governments must justify their diplomatic relationships to European capitals. Nearly 50 African countries attended the gathering on October 28 and 29, w...
There is nothing inherently wrong with a president undertaking a religious pilgrimage. The problem arises when the language of prayer and national renewal appears increasingly detached from the daily realities of citizens struggling with electricity shortages, economic pressure and declining confide...
Duplicate identities, suspicious photographs and disputed polling-unit figures have placed Nigeria's electoral register under public scrutiny. INEC says its cleanup is ongoing, but Nigerians need evidence that the problems are being identified and corrected.
Nigeria's Independent National Electora...
Paris is threatening sanctions over alleged Russian influence operations in Cameroon and the Republic of the Congo, but its outrage raises a more fundamental question: why does France continue to treat the preservation of its African influence as a strategic entitlement?
France’s Foreign Minister,...
A ruling party can ask citizens to make sacrifices. What it cannot reasonably demand is endless public patience while its own political machinery celebrates luxury, distributes expensive vehicles to loyalists and offers millions of struggling people another lecture about economic reform. When sacrif...
In 2023, Bola Tinubu warned Nigerians that Peter Obi would keep saving their money until they went hungry. Today, with poverty widespread, food insecurity persistent, and corruption remaining a serious governance challenge, the question is whether Tinubu's own record can withstand the standard he us...
It was floated recently in a discussion in an online group where someone living in Europe remarked that, on the surface, it appeared to be about food security but, on closer examination, revealed a much deeper problem in how the world understands Africa. The argument was that Africa has enormous amo...
Nigeria has launched a new national digital postcode system today, October 1, 2026, with an ambition that is considerably larger than the traditional idea of a postcode. The National Digital Alphanumeric Postcode System, operated by the Nigerian Postal Service, is designed to give every addressable...
On October 1, 1960, Nigeria became an independent and sovereign country. Sixty-six years later, the anniversary arrives with the familiar ceremonies, speeches about resilience, patriotic messages, and declarations about a prosperous future. The Federal Government has designated October 1, 2026 as th...
There is something deeply depressing about watching Nigeria repeatedly discover that it possesses enormous natural resources and then immediately begin looking for a foreign power to help us decide what to do with them. The latest example is the mineral investment framework signed by Nigeria's Minis...
Africa has spent decades demanding a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, and the African Union has a clear position. Under the Ezulwini Consensus and the Sirte Declaration, Africa wants at least two permanent seats with all the privileges of permanent membership, including the vet...
The Russia-Ukraine war was supposed to be a European conflict. Yet increasingly, the confrontation between Moscow and Kyiv is appearing thousands of kilometres away from the Ukrainian battlefield, including in Africa. The most significant confirmed example is Mali.
In July 2024, Tuareg separatist...
Nigeria's next general election will be more than a contest between candidates. It will also test whether Nigerians believe their votes can actually determine political outcomes.
That question has become more urgent following recent comments by FCT Minister Nyesom Wike about the role political pow...
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is once again absent from the United Nations General Assembly, and this time the absence is particularly difficult to ignore because it is the third consecutive year that Vice President Kashim Shettima has represented him at the gathering. Shettima represented Nigeria in...
For decades Africans were taught to celebrate independence days with flags, parades, speeches and national anthems while the deeper machinery of control remained firmly intact behind the curtains of diplomacy, banking systems, military agreements, foreign corporations, intelligence networks and pupp...
For years Nigerians avoided using the phrase “failed state” when discussing their country because the term sounded too extreme, too insulting and too final. It belonged to places people watched on television with pity and distance, countries consumed by civil war, famine, militia rule and institutio...
There is something deeply troubling about a government spending roughly N21 billion to complete an official residence for the Vice President, commissioning it with great ceremony, and then leaving the building unused for nearly two years. The residence for Vice President Kashim Shettima was commissi...
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, much of the Western world expected a swift and unified response from Africa, particularly from the African Union, whose founding principles emphasise territorial integrity, respect for borders, and the peaceful resolution of disputes, yet what followed w...
There was a time when travelling across Nigeria could be an adventure rather than an act of calculation.
In a recent reflection, Nigerian lawyer Abdul Mahmud recalled a five-week road journey he undertook in 1998 with his girlfriend, travelling from Lagos through Benin, Warri, Port Harcourt, Aba,...
South Africa has a real problem right now, and it has a fake problem layered on top of it, and the two are getting mixed together so often that most people online cannot tell where one ends and the other begins.
The real problem is xenophobic violence. It is documented, it is recent, and it has al...
Civilisations announce themselves through what they build and through what they leave behind. The Egyptians built the pyramids of Giza and left behind an architectural civilisation that humanity has spent five thousand years attempting to comprehend. The Romans paved roads that still run beneath the...
There is a question that no government official in Abuja will answer honestly, because the honest answer is too damning to survive in the morning newspapers. The question is this: if the rate at which Nigerians are being kidnapped and killed continues to climb at its current trajectory, and if the s...
