Nigeria is Africa’s largest economy and the continent’s biggest oil producer. Despite these, Nigeria remains the poverty capital of the world, because nearly half of the population lives in extreme poverty. Since the return of democracy in 1999, successive Administrations continue to adopt the same set of policies to combat this scourge known as poverty. It would be recalled that President Olusegun Obasanjo led administration negotiated debt forgiveness for the country and one of the conditions stipulated by our creditors was for the entire debt forgiven and related interests to be spent on pro-poor projects. This led to the setting-up…

Not surprisingly, American billionaires have dismissed recent wealth-tax proposals as an affront to the entrepreneurial spirit to which they attribute their massive wealth. But the ultra-rich never would have their great wealth without legal subsidies from the state and reliable enforcement by the courts. Economic inequality has moved to the top of the political agenda in many countries, including free-market poster children like the United States and the United Kingdom. The issue is mobilizing the left and causing headaches on the right, where wealth has long been viewed as worthy of celebration, not as demanding justification. But today’s concentrations of…

In yet another incident that must rank as one of the most troubling use of executive power to put democracy in abeyance since the restless return to civil rule in 1999, operatives of Department of State Service (DSS) invaded Federal High Court, Abuja, on December 6, wrestled and re-arrested Mr Omoyele Sowore, publisher of Sahara Reporters, throwing the court into pandemonium and forcing the presiding judge, Mrs Ijeoma Ojukwu, to exit the courtroom quickly. Following on the heels of the invasion of the National Assembly on two occasions during President Muhammadu Buhari’s first term of office, that act signalled the…

This president is not Sani Abacha who expired fighting some ragtag civilians called NADECO. He is also not Ibrahim Babangida who was forced to step aside before his appointed time. Perhaps one of the few strengths the three share is their taste for beautiful women (look at their wives). They all also love power as much as they do their adorable partners. And that appears to be where the similarity ends. IBB and Abacha are/were strongmen but they call(ed) this man ‘BOSS.’ And he is in fact, in name and in deed, their boss. Did Abacha not earnestly seek to…