From Accra to Cape Town images of Nollywood, Nigeria’s popular movie footprint, are a common staple in homes across the continent as are the sights and sounds of its pop icons who are also amongst Africa’s biggest. When politics is on the menu, however, it does not appear that the rest of the continent has the same appetite for what Nigeria has to offer as it does for the country’s jollof rice, its captivating movies or perhaps the Afrobeat of superstar, Burna Boy. Between February and March 2023, Nigeria held its general elections; the seventh since 1999 when the country…

The death, on Sunday, 26th March, 2023, of Oladipupo Diya, brought memories, fond or otherwise, flooding our memory, chief of which must be the coup, real or concocted, that Diya and other Generals were alleged to have been implicated in, on 21 December, 1997, aimed at toppling the vile dictator, Sani Abacha. In all, 26 civilians and soldiers were accused of treason, the majority of them Yoruba; they faced the death penalty if found guilty. Dragged before a kangaroo military tribunal and deemed guilty even before the trial had begun, six of the accused, including Diya, were handed the death…

Now that Nigeria’s next census date has been officially confirmed, I am curious if the exercise will provide a different picture of our population distribution or merely validate the status quo. Anyone who has been a Nigerian for long enough already knows that the national population is a continuation of the politics of power by another means. Virtually every census in modern Nigeria has been vigorously challenged for its statistical accuracy and, of course, its ideological agenda. Far more than serving the purposes of efficient national planning—the officially touted reasons for holding them—censuses in underdeveloped societies like ours use purported…

There are many still in shock about February 25th and March 18 elections. This is understandable. In the week before the 20th of February it appeared the Obidient movement had pulled off a miracle and already made good of the first part of the first promise of the Obi/Datti manifesto: To unite and secure Nigeria. From Sokoto to Sagbama, Lagos to the lungus of Borno the youth of Nigeria were gyrating to the same beat of the president we need. Were we finally close to the words of our first national anthem, “though tribe and tongue may differ, in brotherhood…