So, are we the Turning Point Generation? By Chude Jideonwo
Every now and again I miss those heady days. The raw mix of hope, naivety, time, energy, no-baggage, freshness, ignorance and arrogance that fuels the action that often causes big changes; changes that the wise, who have tried before, tell you won’t’ work out, and the cynical wonder: why bother? I remember how excited I […]
Finally, The Hour is Upon Us – What Now?
The 20th century Russian politician Vladmir Lenin once famously remarked: “There are decades where nothing happens; there are weeks where decades happen.” The past seven day period in Nigeria has been one of those proverbial decade-weeks, with at least three major local and international stories emerging with seismic implications for the country’s future. First, we heard […]
Social Development or Social Destruction? Hajiya Safiya Umar and FCT Social Development Secretariat (SDS) – Akubeze Okocha
On 16th April 2019, 19 children were allegedly abducted from their church in Jiwa, Gwagwa, a small community in the forgotten suburbs of Abuja, by officials of the Social Development Secretariat (SDS), a department of the Federal Capital Development Authority, (FCDA). The children were held in the Unity Orphanage Home and Youth Support Centre in […]
What Lagos Can Learn About Housing the Majority Population from Tokyo – Rebecca E. Roberts
The ongoing debate about the rapid forced and illegal evictions of poor people from their places of habitation in Lagos should primarily also be about the housing shortage mostly affecting the majority population (the poor) in Lagos. Housing deficits are not unique to Lagos, most major cities around the world both in the Global North […]
Nigeria’s loss is Ghana’s gain
By positioning itself as open for business and diaspora, Ghana is seizing the opportunities that Nigeria is missing. Many first and second-generation West Africans, living in Europe or elsewhere, fly home to celebrate the holidays with their extended families. Airlines, like British Airways (BA), make a killing on this route by offering return tickets to […]
The Second Quadrannium of Gambrach: Armoured Tekuns & Angry Yetis
In the ninth month of the second quadrannium of Gambrach, the spirit of rubberstampia descended with great heaviness upon the wardens of senatii and junior senatii – Sers Nar Wal and Jar-Jar Beer Miller – and in unison they proclaimed, “We are nothing but inkpads in the hands of rubberstampia. Our constituents did not send […]
What Makes A Country Developed?
Written by Oluseun Onigbinde and was published on BusinessDay on Wednesday, January 29th, 2020 In the past one year, I have lived in the US and also hopped around 27 countries, from Guinea to Finland. These travels have left me with questions around development: what does it mean for a country to be developed? What […]
What does your driving say about your leadership style? – Adun Okupe
I was trying to hold a conversation with my new driver just the other day, trying to move a little bit beyond the usual instructions of we need to go here, we need to go there, drive carefully, drive slowly, make sure you indicate with the trafficator where you want to, make sure you give […]
Unlikely Partners: The Nigerian Edition
I made a promise to read Unlikely Partners, Julian Gewirtz’s book on Chinese reformers, and the role of Western economists in China’s rapid development, before the end of 2019. This is part of my current fixation on China and India, two countries that have delivered serious body blows to global poverty. If you haven’t read […]
Is Nigeria a nation that CAN work with her current formation?
Over 400 Ethnic groups who don’t all love and trust one another. There’s a lot of HISTORY in the mistrust. Religious people who don’t really know their foreign gods. So, they mix religion and their own culture. Foreign education without domestication. We had our own ways of passing on trade and business that ensured there […]