Is The Nation’s Democratic Whistle Still Trusted?

 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.

*Amupitan 

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.

Plagiarism: The Silent Crime That Robs Nations Of Ideas

 By Stephanie Shaakaa

The first time I saw my own words staring back at me under someone else’s name, I felt an ache I cannot quite describe. Every sentence, every metaphor, every night of reflection poured into that piece stolen. Not borrowed, not referenced, but taken whole.

Plagiarism is theft. I know, because my original article carefully researched, deeply thought through, and published in Vanguard Newspaper on August 23, 2025 was stolen, rebranded, and published in a business newspaper in Nigeria under the name of Udo Maryanne Okonjo, who even had the audacity to call it “Side-Chick Economics: The Hidden Billions of Secrecy (Part 1)”. Part 1! As though she intends to build an entire series on an idea that is not hers.

Rufai Oseni And The Courage To Ask Questions That Burn

 By Stephanie Shaakaa

There are journalists who report and there are journalists who interrogate reality. 

*Oseni

Rufai Oseni of Arise TV belongs to that rare, unbending category of truth-tellers who refuse to be hypnotized by power or intimidated by titles. He has mastered the art of peeling away official veneers and exposing the hollow core beneath the rhetoric that too often passes for governance in Nigeria.

Some journalists report events. Rufai Oseni dissects them.

He doesn’t just anchor the news he interrogates reality.

The Godfathers Who Own Nigeria

 By Stephanie Shaakaa 

Since 1999, Nigeria has called itself a democracy. Every four years, Africa’s most populous nation lines up to vote, and the rituals of elections are performed with fanfare. But beneath the ceremonies lies another truth. Nigeria wears the clothes of democracy but lives under the rule of godfathers.

We pretend to elect leaders, but what we really do is ratify the decisions of men who pull strings in the shadows. In Nigeria, ballots don’t choose, godfathers do.

This is the Godfather Economy. Politics here is not about ideas, competence, or vision. It is about who owes who, who kneels to who, and who dares not bite the hand that feeds.

Nigeria: Millions For 90 Minutes, Peanuts For 35 Years!

 By Stephanie Shaakaa

When a country rewards each Super Falcons player with N150 million and a three-bedroom house for a 90-minute football match, yet sends police and military pensioners who served 35 years home with N2–5 million, no housing, no healthcare, and a pension too small to feed a family, what we have is not just imbalance it’s a moral crisis. 

And just like that the  copy-paste generosity extended to the women’s basketball team. More cash, more houses, same hypocrisy. Meanwhile, the  heroes of this country from other sectors  rot in silence.