It’s been 31 years since a seismic event triggered by the June 12, 1993 election nearly brought Nigeria to its knees. The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), M.K.O Abiola, was on the cusp of a resounding victory when the military government of General Ibrahim Babangida interrupted and later annulled the election. That action sparked nationwide protests that ultimately consumed Babangida’s government and his successor, General Sani Abacha. It set the stage for a transition that,over Abiola’s dead body, produced Nigeria’s luckiest former military leader, Olusegun Obasanjo, as civilian president in 1999. Every May – and later June…

Each time a country goes through minimum wage negotiation, you can take it for granted that the argument to put politicians on that same salary scale will come up. It is a common argument, one that the Victorian Socialists Party in Australia included in their campaign promises. Granted, they were an upcoming party—the equivalent of the many political parties in Nigeria that exist through their press releases until elections are around the corner—and were unlikely to win anyway. Still, asking politicians to feel what they dish out is a universally resonant sentiment. In 1816, when the United States Congressmen voted…

Campus leftists in the West and nationalists in the global south never tire of pointing out the evils of imperialism. Yet few include the Soviet Union on their list of villains. This is odd: the Soviet empire stretched over 11 time zones, oppressing its vassal states so egregiously that all declared independence the moment they had the chance. Airbrushing this history makes it harder to understand the present, when the man with the world’s fourth-largest army is trying to reassemble a version of that empire, minus the Marxism. When Vladimir Putin described the liberation of the Soviet Union’s former subjects…

In a country and a season in which candour is not always seen as a virtue, those who make it the currency of their daily lives are either idolised, endangered or idolised into endangerment. On the Nigerian streets, a person who addresses issues of public significance with candour can be described as having “broken the table”. As a figure of speech, this usage is back-handed compliment for bucking a national habit of dressing up reality in a bodyguard of avoidance. Tables, however, can be useless without a chair or a bench. When the table gets scattered, the bench that accompanies…