By now, you have probably seen Seyi, the president’s son, at presidential meetings and functions where he, ideally, has no business. Remember, his father had to ban him from attending the weekly meetings of the Federal Executive Council, saying his access was “undue.” Undeterred, Seyi still showed up at the swearing-in ceremony of Kudirat Kekere-Ekun as the Chief Justice of Nigeria. While his meddlesomeness has spurred some people to wonder if he has any other job besides being “daddy’s boy,” I have also wondered if he is just another self-unaware member of the Nigerian political class or is intentionally shaming…

Restructuring agitators currently pushing for regionalism, as opposed to the 2014 Confab Resolutions of "States as federating units", are either ignorant of the history of regionalism, driven by prebendalist or internal colonialistic or separatist motives. This will set Nigeria back in the quest for representative democracy for every one of its 371 ethnicities regardless of size, without which the country will continue to be destabilized and unable to act as a nation. Some actually see regionalism as a step towards the fulfilment of their separatist dreams to opt out of Nigeria. The British used regionalism to put a knife to…

Multilateralism has fallen on hard times lately, especially at the United Nations. The UN Security Council couldn’t stop Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, ceasefires in Gaza and Lebanon remain elusive, and subsequent COP summits have failed to spur enough concrete action to meet global climate targets. Not only are the UN’s own Sustainable Development Goals off-track; in many cases, progress toward meeting them has reversed. The UN’s foundational commitments to peace, security, and cooperation feel very foreign at a time when multiple wars are raging, protectionism is on the rise, and the world is splitting into rival blocs. But despite this…

In 1982, on the foothills of the road to Nigeria’s 1983 general elections, it was quite clear that the ruling National Party of Nigeria (NPN) had no plans to declare a vacancy in any significant political office around the country. Instead, they seemed bent on consolidating power in order to avoid a remake of the judicial nail-biter that yielded the presidency to Shehu Shagari in 1979. The essential party positions featured a stellar cast. Adisa Akinloye, the party chairman, was a veteran lawyer with political experience predating Nigeria’s independence. The energetic Suleiman Takuma ran the party secretariat and Trade Minister,…