President Muhammadu Buhari reportedly declared in China, last Sunday, that he believes in the idea of free and fair elections, and that he is committed to this pillar of the democratic process. I don’t expect him to say anything otherwise. On the whole idea of free and fair elections, electoral integrity as it were, rests the political stability of our country and the legitimacy of democratic governments. Besides, President Buhari is a beneficiary of the framework of electoral integrity instituted by his predecessor in office. On account of the misgivings reported about the conduct of the 2007 general elections, President…

No policy is as self-defeating during recessionary times as the pursuit of a budget surplus for the purpose of containing public debt – austerity, for short. So, as the world approaches the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, it is appropriate to ask why austerity proved so popular with Western political elites following the financial sector’s implosion in 2008. The economic case against austerity is cut and dried: An economic downturn, by definition, implies shrinking private-sector expenditure. A government that cuts public spending in response to falling tax revenues inadvertently depresses national income (which is the sum of…

There has been a raging debate on what drove President Muhammadu Buhari or what the President drove to the Abuja venue of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA’s) 58th Annual General Conference on August 26, 2018. Don’t get me wrong: the President must have been driven to the event in a long convoy of SUVs, cossetted on all sides by security aides. However, the question at issue today is, was President Buhari driven to that event by the devil, patriotism or the demonism that is often the driving force of despots? If you break the flurry of arguments and analyses of…

President Muhammadu Buhari has been getting raps for asserting that his government would continue to place the nation’s security and national interests above the rule of law. He reportedly argued that the individual rights of suspected offenders would not be spared when national and public interests are threatened. According to him, “Rule of Law must be subject to the supremacy of the nation’s security and national interest”. Buhari claimed that his government took the position on the basis of subsisting decisions of the Supreme Court. He made the declaration while flagging off the 2018 Annual General Conference of the Nigerian…