Bolaji Ogundimu had only recently been appointed as my secretary when she put in an application for a housing loan. I had put aside a lump sum of money that could be borrowed by my staff interest-free. This was operated as a round-robin. As some pay back every month, new loans could be disbursed. However, Bolaji’s chances of getting a loan in the short term were slim because many others were in the queue before her. But then two “good Samaritans” came to see me. They insisted that Bolaji should be given a loan right away. What kind of favouritism…

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had barely finished announcing the result of last Saturday’s Edo governorship poll when I got a call to eat the humble pie. Adams Oshiomhole, the man I called a product vendor in my last article, had pulled off another big one! Why? I had no dog in the fight. But I got the drift. I had warned that given Oshiomhole’s reputation for campaigning for candidates for whom he often ended up apologising, voters could hardly ignore the warning label on his candidate, Monday Okpebholo, and that, at any rate, if it wasn’t that in…

Generals Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha, and Muhammadu Buhari are Nigeria’s most anti-democratic, anti-federalism, and anti-people rulers since independence. The addition to that roll is President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Obasanjo, as military head of state, standardised the tradition of wastage, the destruction of the public service, the pillaging of the economy, the mass killing of students, and the imposition of a anti-democracy and anti-federal constitution on Nigerians. With the exception of Abacha, these rulers oversaw the legalised plundering of Nigeria’s commonwealth in the guise of ‘privatisation’. They also handed over the country to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and…

The rising cost of living in Africa has triggered a wave of protests in recent months, underscoring the disproportionately higher economic and social costs of inflation on a continent with persistent widespread poverty and heightened vulnerability to global volatility. The world, it seems, is now living through a tale of two inflations. Initially, the current inflation cycle – a product of pandemic supply shocks and escalating geopolitical tensions – affected developed and developing countries alike. But inflationary pressures have become less synchronous over time. While price growth has fallen sharply in advanced economies, it remains stubbornly high – and, in…