Senior Nigerian public officers are notoriously parsimonious with their recall once out of office. From among their club memoirs are unusual, especially, from those with any sense of lingering shelf-life. It’s easy to speculate as to why this is so. In a country ruled by whim, risk aversion is prudent when you are out of power. By remaining quiet or [...]
Chidi Anselm Odinkalu
ON THE GO
In the middle of the 2nd World War in 1941, the Johannesburg Star published an editorial which accused Hendrik Verwoerd of “falsifying war news in Germany’s favour.” Verwoerd was the editor of Die Transvaler, the mouthpiece of the Broederbond. Born originally in Amsterdam to Dutch parents in 1901, Verwoerd migrated with his parents to South Africa in 1902, receiving his [...]
Every election cycle in Nigeria has three seasons. The campaign season belongs to the parties, the politicians and their godfathers. This is followed by the voting season, during which the security agencies and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) hold sway. Thereafter, matters shift to the courts for the dispute resolution season, which belongs to the lawyers (mostly Senior Advocates [...]
Nigeria is a country defined by hierarchies in which everyone is expected to fit neatly into a box. These hierarchies are many and multi-dimensional. They vary in both shape and size and we have signature tunes for sign-posting them. You know a generational put-down when it’s uttered. When you hear, “Am I your mate?” or “your time will come”, it [...]
It was sometime in late 1991. Uniformed soldiers were still in power in Nigeria. Somewhere in Orlu, in the then Imo State, kinsmen called a meeting with a rather curious agenda. They were worried that one of their sons, a young lawyer, was wasting his talents on opposing military rule and taking government to court, when soldiers wielded power through [...]
Nigeria’s laws, institutions and processes are, for the most part and with some exception, defined by two inherent flaws. One is the flaw of the time warp and the other is the flaw of institutional cross-dressing.Let’s begin with the time warp. Many of the essential norms and institutions that still govern the country that now exists as a democracy have [...]
“Bandits” have emerged as the new bogeyman for insecurity in Nigeria, joining a long (and still growing list) that includes Boko Haram, cultists, herdsmen, kidnappers and militants. In different parts of the North-West, from Birnin-Gwari in Kaduna to Tsafe in Zamfara, Bandits are offered as the trope for an intolerable carnage, and the inexplicable haplessness of a federal government that [...]
“The manifestation of the wind of thought is not knowledge; it is the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And this, at the rare moments when the stakes are on the table, may indeed prevent catastrophes, at least for the self” - Hannah ArendtShortly after 07:00 hours, Lucy (real name protected), received a code on her hand-held device [...]
As a wilful leadership of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) prepared in July 2018 to confection the most disgraceful leadership transition in the association’s history, the man who built a reputation over more than half a century as the conscience of the Bar took his leave of earthly proceedings. Olatunji Fortunatus Gomez, who died on 18 July 2018, was a [...]
Around 28 July 2018, eligible members of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) should vote to elect a new leadership for another two years in a ballot that has become mired in hydra-headed scandals redolent of the kind of heavily rigged elections for which Nigeria is a global prize winner. It will be too much to describe all the scandals associated [...]
When he ran to be Nigeria’s president for the fourth time in 2014, Muhammadu Buhari pleaded that he was a converted democrat. Since Nigerians granted him his wish in 2015, he appears to have found it difficult either to show off the new livery of a converted democrat or to shake off his old habits as a humorless dictator. In [...]
Twenty-five years after the military nullified the outcome of Nigeria’s democratic elections of June 12, 1993, the country, today led by another soldier from the past, marches into the future with its gaze firmly fixed backwards. Now as then, the country needs a committed civic coalition to show up and reclaim a space increasingly constrained by a regime that shows casual [...]
The question of how the legal profession in Nigeria deals with the challenges of renewing its values and preparing for the challenges of a difficult future for the Bar is likely to be at the heart of the contest for a new leadership of the NBA to be elected in 2018. Despite its best efforts – or may be because [...]
Education may, at last, be receiving some attention in Nigeria. In Kaduna state, Governor Nasir el-Rufai is wielding the broom of his ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), against teachers in a controversial proposal to sweep away an estimated 22,000 of them who’re apparently unfit for the vocation. The supply line for competent replacements on this scale is unclear.President Muhammadu Buhari’s [...]
Three weeks after the African Union decided on 30 January 2017 to readmit it following a 33-year absence, Morocco, which until then enjoyed the status of a sovereign Observer, announced on 24 February that it had applied to join the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). In Monrovia, Liberia, on 5 June, the Summit meeting of the 51st [...]
Nigeria’s National Assembly (NASS), for long on the defensive over allegations of chronic institutional opacity, appears to have found a way to turn attack into defence. Its device of choice is the NGO Regulatory Bill, which is presently in committee in the House of Representatives. Flipping around the script, the NASS is accusing Nigeria’s voluntary sector of being a den [...]
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