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Opinion

Wednesday, 17 July 2019 05:28

What’s driving populism? - Dani Rodrik

Is it culture or economics? That question frames much of the debate about contemporary populism. Are Donald Trump’s presidency, Brexit, and the rise of right-wing nativist political parties in continental Europe the consequence of a deepening rift in values between social conservatives and social liberals, with the former having thrown their support behind xenophobic, ethno-nationalist, authoritarian politicians? Or do they reflect many voters’ economic anxiety and insecurity, fueled by financial crises, austerity, and globalization? Much depends on the answer. If authoritarian populism is rooted in economics, then the appropriate remedy is a populism of another kind – targeting economic injustice…

Tuesday, 16 July 2019 04:33

Why you gain nothing from ethnic or religious bias - Pat Utomi

I'm a Christian from Niger Delta, but most of the things I've ever achieved occurred through the help of non-Christians and non-Niger Deltans. 1. I was actually looking for a way to get a banking license for a wealthy Nigerian; so I approached one Fulani prince whom I've never met before. After telling him my mission, he told me that I should register my own bank instead of being another person's agent for registering banks. I was shocked, wondering how an ordinary me will be able to afford the process of owning a bank. The Fulani prince told me that…

Monday, 15 July 2019 05:01

As herdsmen become ‘the only criminals in Nigeria’ - Charles Kaye Okoye

Fasoranti's daughter... The first person that broke her death to the press was Yinka Odumakin. "She was killed by SUSPECTED herdsmen." Yinka Odumakin says an eye-witness told him. What does Yinka do after informing the press? He picks up the same phone and calls his good friend and brother, Femi-Fani Kayode, to tell him that the Fulani herdsmen had done it again. This time, even, to a daughter of a prominent elder. Fani-Kayode quickly calls the Aare Ona Kakanfo of Yorubaland (the defender of the Yorubaland), Gani Adams, who himself is out of the country and pleads with him to…

Monday, 15 July 2019 04:57

The art of wait and see - Keyu Jin

Following yet another "truce" between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Sino-American negotiations over trade, technology, and related issues appear to be back on. But those hoping for a respite in the escalating rivalry should not hold their breath. Those now hoping for an eventual trade deal between China and the United States should not hold their breath. Contrary to what US President Donald Trump seems to think, the Chinese have not reached their wits’ end, and will not suddenly accede to his demands. A successful negotiation usually requires that each side understand the other’s perspective. One…

Sunday, 14 July 2019 05:43

Fasoranti and rise of Nigeria’s un-Nigerian President - Festus Adedayo

The killing on Friday of the daughter of Mr Reuben Fasoranti, 94-year old leader of Afenifere, a pan-Yoruba group, may yet be throwing up two apparent equations in a post-Fulani herdsmen-sympathetic Nigerian leadership which may begin in 2023. The first is that, President Muhammadu Buhari may be the last Nigerian president. We will get so riled as a people by this daily bloodshed inflicted on us by an evading army of bloodthirsty Fulani nomads, sauced by Buhari’s obvious unpretentious Fulani leader leadership of Nigeria, that the hurt regions will demand, with a baffling stubbornness, their right to go their different…

Saturday, 13 July 2019 05:04

Who speaks for the Yoruba in the killing fields of Nigeria today? - Femi Aribisala

Bola Tinubu, Yemi Osinbajo and other APC opportunists can no longer speak for the Yorubas in Nigeria. President Buhari cares for his people. But although he is president of Nigeria, his people are not the people of Nigeria. His people are the Fulanis in particular, and Northern Nigerians in general. That is the token of a “good politician.” A good politician promotes the interests of his people. But what happens to members of the president’s party who are neither Fulani nor Northern Nigerians? Can they also care for their people as the president does for his, and at the same…

Thursday, 11 July 2019 05:07

El-Rufai’s ‘two-country’ lie - Abimbola Adelakun

On Saturday, Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai, spoke at Northern Youth Summit organised to deliberate on developing northern Nigeria. He painted a picture of Nigeria’s defective growth and development. El-Rufai said two countries presently inhabit the womb of Nigeria and while northern Nigeria ranks the same as war-torn Afghanistan, southern Nigeria is “developing.” His speech was full of other ethnic-tinged howlers, and curiously, that was where he stopped. He did not get to the part where he reflected on the role the elite like him played in the fate of the North. Truly, the worst-hit states in almost all the…

Tuesday, 09 July 2019 05:09

Islam and religious imperialism - Tola Adeniyi

I was named Muhammadu Saheed on the 8th day of my birth. I was boarded in a Quran school at age 4 and graduated at age 10 with a talk-of-the-town Wolimat ceremony in Ago-Iwoye. I have also had the privilege of performing the Hadj in Mecca and Medina a number of times. My great grandfather, my grandfather and my father were ardent Muslims. It is therefore safe to conclude that I am not a stranger to Islam, the Holy Quran and the Hadith. King Henry 8th of Britain was not impressed with the choking command and controls in the affairs…

Tuesday, 09 July 2019 05:08

Herdsmen of Katsina - Lasisi Olagunju

From Geoffrey Chaucer to Robert Southey and to James Russel Lowell we learn, like all men who unleash chicken to pasture and forage, that chickens are like curses; they always come home to roost. Because the rains are heavy down South, herdsmen from Katsina State have moved their cows up North and are back home. Because they are back home and they need food for their cows, they are invading farms. Because they are invading farms, there was violence between farmers and herders last week in Katsina State. Herdsmen from Katsina attacked Katsina farmers and lives were lost. Because there…

Monday, 08 July 2019 05:02

The roots of our discontent - Tito Boeri

With industrialized countries beset by a political backlash against trade, technology, migration, and other hallmarks of the modern global economy, expert solutions are needed now more than ever. But until the experts themselves can reclaim the public’s trust, populists will continue to dictate the terms of policymaking. Every spring, the Trento Festival of Economicsconvenes some of the world’s leading economists to discuss the issues of the day in open dialogue with one another and the public. In the following interview, the festival’s director, Italian economist Tito Boeriof Bocconi University, and Raghuram G. Rajan, former Governor of the Reserve Bank of…

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Sunday, 07 July 2019 05:27

Munching sour Nigeria over delicious pounded yam - Festus Adedayo

Wednesday last week looked like a perfect day to escape from all the spirit-sagging, smelly stories oozing out of Nigeria. You could suffocate amid its hovering hail. Attacks against Muhammadu Buhari and his government’s proposal of a cattle colony for Fulani cattle tenderers in all the 36 states of the federation were clinical blows on such primitive, self-serving policy. Mr Wole Soyinka’s submission at the cusp of the debate, to me, was the most profound. How can a government value the lives of cows above its citizens’? How come the state under Buhari had never arraigned even a single one…

Sunday, 07 July 2019 05:25

Buhari is the single greatest danger to the Fulani - Farooq Kperogi

On the surface, it sounds counter-intuitive, even ridiculously counterfactual, to suggest that an unreflective Fulani supremacist like Muhammadu Buhari is the single greatest threat to members of his ethnic group. But it’s true. Here is why. Although I had always been aware of this fact, it was actually a Fulani person who caused me to develop a heightened consciousness of it. In a lengthy phone conversation last weekend, a cosmopolitan Nigerian of Fulani ethnicity shared with me his deep worries about the deepening animus toward the Fulani all over Nigeria. In his 1983 pamphlet titled The Trouble with Nigeria, Chinua…

Wednesday, 03 July 2019 04:57

Why policymakers should fear Libra - Kaushik Basu

It is currently unclear how popular Libra, Facebook's proposed new global cryptocurrency, might become, and what problems this may cause. But inflation – and policymakers’ reduced ability to control it – has to figure prominently on the list of possible risks. Facebook’s new global digital currency, Libra, which the company plans to launch as early as 2020, could transform the world. But no one – including the founders of this ambitious economic engineering project – can fully anticipate the currency’s possible ramifications. And monetary policymakers should be especially worried, because they may find it much harder to control unemployment and…

Tuesday, 02 July 2019 05:38

Buhari's Ruga insult - Lasisi Olagunju

On October 18, 1990, the United States, in a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), predicted the end of a country which was behaving almost as Nigeria is behaving now. It said, “Yugoslavia will cease to function as a federal state within a year, and will probably dissolve within two. Economic reform will not stave off the breakup. [...] A full-scale inter-republic war is unlikely, but serious intercommunal conflict will accompany the breakup and will continue afterward. The violence will be intractable and bitter. There is little the United States and its European allies can do to preserve Yugoslav unity.” That country…

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