There is a pertinent reason I have consistently advocated that we should refrain from initiating new road construction projects until we have thoroughly rehabilitated and maintained our existing road network.
Instead of undertaking new ventures and dualization projects that offer marginal benefits, our primary focus ought to be on repairing the critical roads already in place.
By Banji Ojewale
Ismail Babatunde Jose, described as the “legendary doyen of Nigerian journalism’’ (The Guardian of UK) and “the grandfather of Nigerian journalism’’ (British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC), was responsible for the emergence of a galaxy of talent in the industry in his generation.
He toiled on the raw aptitude of these young persons coming under his care and, with strategic precision, dropped himself into them, as it were, seeking those who would collect the baton and perpetuate his tradition of unyielding enterprise. They would continue the race resolutely and relentlessly, and refuse to let down cheering crowds and a mentor given to nothing but to see you turn in your best for the community of news consumers.
By Osikale A. Adetomiwa
The recent abduction of schoolchildren in Oyo State is a painful reminder that insecurity remains one of Nigeria’s most pressing challenges. Beyond the immediate trauma suffered by the victims and their families, the incident has once again raised serious concerns about the safety of students, teachers, and educational institutions across the country.
The reaction of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) was necessary and commendable. By speaking out forcefully against the attack, the union drew national attention to the dangers confronting schools and reminded both government and society that educational institutions should be sanctuaries of learning, not theatres of fear.
By Olu Fasan
The decision of President Muhammadu Buhari to name June 12 as Nigeria’s “Democracy Day” was motivated by self-serving politics, not principled conviction. Before he became president in 2015, Buhari never once publicly condemned the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election.
However, in 2018, as he prepared to seek re-election the following year and faced deepening unpopularity in the South-West, Buhari changed the annual “Democracy Day” from May 29 to June 12 to curry favour with the South-West, which had turned the annulment into an ethnic issue. Professor Wole Soyinka said at the time that Buhari took the decision “with an eye on electoral fortunes, undoubtedly.” He was right!
By Banji Ojewale
Vladimir Kuts was Russia’s unforgettable long-distance runner who, in a wildly combative career that lasted only three years in the 1950s, trashed the records for both the 5000 and 10000 metres in one single competition. He didn’t believe there was any limit to man created in the image of God. Any being with such Divine trappings couldn’t fail. They would strive to reinvent the wheel, march across dreaded territory and plunge wordsmiths into uncharted depths to attempt to capture their achievements.
Therefore, retiring from global athletics while still at his peak when there were no more challenges, Kuts worked as a coach in the Central Army Club in Moscow and declared his mission: to discover a boy who would run faster than himself. It was a tall call; nobody could match Kuts’ tenacity, iron will and speed in his day. For many, it was illogical and inconceivable that a mentee would align with his lionized mentor’s agenda to outdo the legend. But the Russian Spartan didn’t rubbish race records resting on rational thinking. Nor on public opinion. Or on emotions.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
No one left the auditorium of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs on Thursday, April 23, 2026, unsure of what Abia State Governor Dr Alex Otti said at the 2026 TheNiche Annual Lecture with the theme, “Governing the Economy: Choices, Trade-offs, and National Priorities.”
He spoke loud and clear. In a country where political leaders have mastered the mischievous art of speaking tongue-in-cheek; where judgements of even the Supreme Court are couched in obfuscating clichés and woolly phrases that muddy the waters rather than elucidate, that is a breath of fresh air.
His thesis was profound, the clarity of his hypothesis was refreshing, just as his candour was edifying. The message in his 4,875-word lecture was unambiguous, yet loud: Elections have consequences.
His opening salvo indicated his intention to be forthright: “There is no silver bullet for solving Nigeria’s myriads of economic challenges because economics is about cold, hard facts, not vanities. With high level of unemployment, especially amongst the youth population, rising incidence of poverty and growing sense of helplessness amongst our compatriots, it would be uncharitable to wish these unsettling realities away,” he said.
By Olu Fasan
To several Nigerians, Atiku Abubakar, a former vice president, should not run for president next year. Some cite age, others zoning. On the first, the general view is that, at 80 years old by the time of the next presidential election in January 2027, Atiku would be too old to run for president. On the second, many posit that the South, which currently holds the presidency, should be allowed to complete the conventional second term.
Thus, Atiku, being a Northerner, should respect the unwritten zoning rule, and desist from seeking the presidency next year. But while there are some merits in the age and zoning arguments, they are not the real obstacles to Atiku becoming Nigeria’s president next year if he decides to defy the zeitgeist and run for the presidency.
By Valentine Obienyem
Peter Obi’s political journey in Nigeria has, in many ways, come to resemble a quiet but persistent carrying of a cross - marked by endurance, conviction, and a deep commitment to principle in the face of resistance. From his emergence on the national stage to his current role as a leading voice in public discourse, he stands as the personification of a stoic political faith, proving that the cost of integrity is high, but the price of its absence is the slow decay of the soul of a nation.
That burden did not begin on the national stage, the Champion’s League; it can be traced to the local league, his tenure as governor of Anambra State, where Peter Obi first defined the principles that now shape his political identity. In a system often marked by political brigandage, he distinguished himself through fiscal discipline, transparency, adherence to due process, and a refusal to personalise public resources.
By Fred
Chukwuelobe
I am approaching this review from the perspective of a seasoned traveller. Having assessed over two decades of travel on more than ten major foreign carriers, this account is a candid reflection of my recent experience, measured against those global standards.
Between 2003 and 2026, I crossed the Atlantic and travelled extensively through the US, Europe, and the Middle East. Yet, for over twenty years, I never once flew a Nigerian flag carrier on a long-haul route.
That changed when Air Peace launched its direct Lagos–London service. Naturally, the question became: could another homegrown airline truly compete on one of the world’s most demanding aviation corridors considering that previous efforts could not be sustained. On April 18, 2026, I put this to the test and only time will tell.
I boarded Air Peace Flight P4-7578, a Boeing 777-300 service from Lagos to London Gatwick (LGW). While I initially considered flying via Abuja to Heathrow, I opted for Gatwick, confident in its ease of onward ground connections.
By Dele Sobowale
“In every community, there is a class of people profoundly dangerous to the rest. I don’t mean the criminals. For them we have punitive sanctions. I mean the leaders. Invariably, the most dangerous people seek power” – Saul Bellow, 1915-2005, VANGUARD BOOK OF QUOTATIONS, VBQ, p 124.
Newspapers headlines were grim a day before the Eid-el-Fitr 2026. The end of Ramadan, to which all faithful people looked forward, joyfully, in the past, has now become threatening and mournful all over Nigeria. Apparently, no place is spared the fear of violence on the days of celebrations declared by government. It was never like this. Hope for relief is fading faster with each new assault by terrorists. Increasingly, there is despair about governments’ ability to provide security to citizens who, in many communities, have surrendered sovereignty to the bandits by paying the levies imposed.
The aircraft scheduled for this service made two landing attempts in Ibadan but had to return to Abuja due to adverse weather conditions at the time.
By Stephanie Shaakaa
Is INEC actually independent? In Nigeria today, this is not a question of law, it is a question of life or death for democracy. Because when citizens begin to doubt the hands that blow the nation’s democratic whistle, every vote, every promise, every election is already suspect before it begins. Trust is the true ballot. Without it, even the cleanest election is hollow.
In every democracy, the whistle is more than an instrument of order. It is the sound of fairness itself. The moment citizens begin to suspect that it no longer blows by the rulebook, the game changes long before the final score is announced. Every controversial call, every silence, is filtered through suspicion rather than principle. Trust does not collapse in one instant. It leaks away, decision by decision.
By Ochereome Nnanna
For me, the legacy of the late President Muhammadu Buhari remains the most profound failure of Nigerian leadership. It was a tenure defined by a litany of institutional abuses. Chief among these was Operation Safe Corridor (OPSC).
By Olu Fasan
Recently, after the mass killing in Jos, Plateau State, President Bola Tinubu said he was not elected “to comfort and create widows and widowers”. Yet since he became president barely three years ago, his administration has overseen the creation of thousands of widows, widowers and orphans whose husbands, wives and parents were killed in terrorist attacks.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Electoral umpires in Nigeria have a long history of dalliance with academics so much so that it has almost become a rule for a professor, the discipline notwithstanding, to be appointed chairman. Granted, some non-academics sometimes find themselves in the saddle, but that is more of an exception.
So, the 1959 federal election, which preceded independence, and was strictly the business of the departing colonial overlord – Britain – was conducted by the Electoral Commission of Nigeria, ECN, which was inaugurated in 1958 and headed by a British, Ronald Edward Wraith.
After independence in October 1960, the Tafawa Balewa-led government set up the Federal Electoral Commission, FEDECO, which replaced the ECN and in 1964 appointed Mr Eya Esua as the chairman. Though not a professor, Esua, nevertheless, was a reputed teacher.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
It was Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, the French critic, journalist, and novelist, who, in 1849, coined what has become an enduring proverb: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose – the more things change, the more they stay the same. In matters of governance and power in Nigeria – military or civilian – nothing can be truer.
As editor of the Sunday Diet newspaper, I was in Maiduguri in April 1998, yes the selfsame Borno State capital that has become a killing field, to cover the national convention of the Grassroots Democratic Movement, GDM. Borno was the home state of Alhaji Gambo Lawan, the national chairman of the GDM, one of the five political associations that included the United Nigeria Congress Party, UNCP; Congress for National Consensus, CNC; Democratic Party of Nigeria, DPN; and the National Centre Party of Nigeria, NCPN, formally approved by the electoral umpire – National Election Commission of Nigeria, NECON – in September 1996 for the politics of that era.
By Sulaiman Salawudeen
There comes a time in the life of a people when they must confront unsavoury truths about their own existence and ask themselves whether what they call a country actually really exists beyond and is anything more than just a hollow shell! Nigeria, continuously touted as Giant of Africa, has become a phantom, mere geographical expression without substance, a tragic experiment that has failed its citizens so egregiously that many are compelled to declare: Nigeria is nowhere anymore!
To such, what is seen is just vast expanse of land where millions of people are trapped in survivalist struggles, condemned to navigate daily horrors of insecurity, corruption, and economic strangulation. The very essence of a functioning country has evaporated, amidst the din and flurry of errors that collude to reduce modest hopes to tall dreams, and basic pursuits to unreachable imaginings!
By Osilama E. Osilama
Nigeria today faces a troubling economic paradox. Prices rise quickly when economic conditions worsen, yet they rarely decline when those conditions improve. This phenomenon—experienced daily by millions of Nigerians has quietly evolved into one of the most dangerous distortions in the country’s economic structure.
Though
I am not an economist, it increasingly appears that Nigeria operates what could
be described as a “one-way economy,” where prices move easily upward but almost
never downward. The implications of this pattern are profound, particularly for
the housing sector and the survival of the Nigerian middle class.
If Nigeria must build a fair and functional economy, government must confront the economics of pricing through deliberate policy reforms and, if necessary, a strong executive bill supported by legislation.
