What is the Arab Spring? The successive wave of protests and demonstrations, which since Saturday, December 18, 2011, have seen governments in the Middle East and North African (MENA) region fall like ninepins? The democratisation, albeit bloody, of the state in that region? A qualified “Yes” to the former question, and a “Surely not” to the latter. At least not [...]

  It seems Africans in the Diaspora generally and Nigerians in particular have reached a saturation point where any public event which features high profile African guests or speakers especially public office holders, is regarded with a “so what”, “what’s new” and “haven’t we heard it all before” attitude. This much was somewhat palpable in the atmosphere at the Eirenicon-Africa [...]

I have always heard that Nigeria’s borders are porous, but I never quite grasped the magnitude of the “porousness” until I received these pictures below of the Nigeria-Niger border at Birnin Kuka. I kept thinking afterwards, of a word synonymous with, yet which would signify an extreme form of “porousness”, combined with the words ”Useless” “farce” “joke” and “ridiculous”  to capture this [...]

At around 01.30 am in the wee hours of Tuesday 13th March, while checking local Nigerian and global news as I usually do before heading to bed, I came across an article on the British daily’s website The Independent, titled “On the Trail of Boko Haram” by Andrew Stroehlein, the Communications Director of the International Crisis Group. Thinking it was one of those [...]

In the on-going debate on the need to restructure Nigeria economically and politically, the two terms of resource control and fiscal federalism have featured prominently as solutions. I think it is important to give a brief explanation of the two policy proposals: Resource control takes its roots in the oil-producing Niger Delta, where they have been advocating that the entire [...]

With tears streaming down his cheeks, Vladmir Putin outgoing Prime Minister and now President-elect of Russia declared with great conviction, that his victory in the just concluded presidential elections was the outcome of an “open and honest battle”. While his speech attracted cheers and ovation from many supporters, members of the opposition like prominent anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, claim that Putin shed [...]

  The popular adage “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” kept crossing my mind in the run-up to the just concluded London Conference on Somalia. I wondered why a gathering focusing on a Sub Saharan African country was to be hosted by the UK government in London, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to be precise. I thought of keeping [...]

Ever since the details of the 2012 budget were released, Nigerians have been treated to a lot of comedy and melodrama regarding the budget items. Besides the perennial lop-sidedness of our budgets with regard to the capital expenditure being less than the recurrent expenditure, a closer look has revealed that even some of the capital expenditure items are either bogus [...]

Escalating insecurity and public fear…sporadic policy creation…the glaring and widening gulf between the governing and governed… the appalling hurl of money at pressing national issues…the suspected lack of foresight…the near-death of hope…the trial of the resolute…the cry of the Nigerian heart…longing for a solution…a call for true national leadership. 52 years after independence, how can it be that the nation [...]

It is said that “a picture is worth a thousand words”. In the era of new media and youtube videos though, one could well say a video clip is worth a thousand photo albums, a few seconds of which could tell a compelling story better than any book, verbal explanation or detailed written analysis. This is very evident in the [...]