This is the time of year when we moan about everything wrong with Nigeria. Quite often, we do so not necessarily from a place of spite but out of frustration and hopelessness. It’s true that the life of a nation is not necessarily measured in biological age. But most might agree that if potential, that hackneyed word so often ascribed to Nigeria, was a child, it should have come of age at 61. Yet, even by the most gracious of accounts, this Nigerian child is stunted, a problem offspring not only to its parents, but also an enigma, if not…

In the years gone by, 'hired' parents and 'borrowed' in-laws were a necessity for an urgent arrangement to fulfill “all righteousness” in the process of solemnising a marriage. It used to be a family affair in which people other than the biological parents of the intending spouse(s) were engaged or asked to represent the real parents in absentia. It is a practice that is common with orphans, those in the diaspora as well as those involved in disputed relationship which their parents disapproved of but they choose to go ahead to marry. Not much issues have been reported about the…

What you are about to read is an intervention on the ongoing battle over the Value Added Tax set in motion by the Rivers State governor, Nysom Wike. Scripted by two of Nigeria’s foremost Leftist ideologues, Jaye Gaskia and Toye Olorode, a retired professor of Botany, it throws light on the raging controversy while also proffering a way out of the financial crisis knocking on the country’s door. Known for their pro-poor, pro-people, and pro-masses polemics and activism, Gaskia and Olorode, in “Statements of facts about the Value Added Tax”, gave hard punches to the ruling class for running the…

As Trump rose to the presidency, one explanation that swept political science was the power of polarization, specifically a phenomenon known as affective polarization, but a keen group of scholars now suggests that this approach is inadequate. It would be hard to describe the state of political competition in America more accurately than as “a poisonous cocktail of othering, aversion and moralization” — the subtitle of an article, “Political Sectarianism in America,” published by 15 important scholars in Science magazine in November 2020, including Eli Finkel, Peter Ditto, Shanto Iyengar, Lilliana Mason, Brendan Nyhan and Linda Skitka. The Science essay…