Stories of godfathers and godsons falling out in Nigerian politics are tales as old as Nigeria’s democratic time; there is no new angle to them. They all follow the same plot: a monied godfather sponsors a godson to political power; godson gets into power and resents being kept on a puppet string; godson triggers a showdown; both godfather and godson disgrace themselves in public until someone either gives or both exhaust themselves. The latest of such public dramas, between the immediate former governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, and the stooge he thought he appointed to office, Siminalayi Fubara, has…

Nigeria is about to enter into a new phase in its history. Scarcity will soon become the word most commonly used by us starting from 2024. We already have scarcity of cash in banks, foreign exchange scarcity, rice scarcity and job scarcity is about to kick in with several multinational companies voting with their feet. Procter & Gamble, P&G, being the latest to shut its gates and send Nigerian hopes of rapid industrialisation crashing at the dawn of Renewed Hope. Unilever, formerly Lever Brothers Nigeria Limited, was the first company to establish large-scale manufacturing in Nigeria on April 11, 1923.…

When Francis Fukuyama published his famous 1989 essay, “The End of History?,” he captured the mood in many Western capitals at the time. Not everybody agreed with him that “the endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution” had been reached, but few could deny the resonance of his message. In anticipating “an unabashed victory” for “economic and political liberalism,” he was channeling both the emerging policymaking consensus and what had already become the standard approach in much of academia. This late twentieth-century consensus rested on two distinct but synergistic pillars: political liberalism and economic liberalism. In the political domain, democratic institutions had…

From high-level policy debates and political manifestos to everyday news coverage, anxiety about economic growth is everywhere. In Germany, the government’s latest budget identifies stronger growth as a top priority. In India, national leaders are eager to reclaim their country’s place as the world’s fastest-growing economy. In China, where the prospect of deflation looms, the government is undoubtedly worried about hitting its 5% growth target for the year. In the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, has vowed to secure the highest sustained growth in the G7 if given power, and the ruling Conservatives express…