Letters

After months of campaigns, political tension, accusations, counteraccusations, intense competition and muscle-flexing, the much-talked-about governorship election in Osun State was held on Saturday, with a winner, in the person of Governor Ademola Adeleke of the Accord Party, emerging on Sunday. Irrespective of the next step his rivals, who are expectedly not happy with the outcome, […]

There are elections that produce winners, and there are elections that produce messages. The Osun State governorship election of August 15, 2026, belongs to the second category. When the Independent National Electoral Commission finally declared Governor Ademola Adeleke of the Accord Party the winner, with 511,067 votes against the All Progressives Congress candidate, Bola Oyebamiji, […]

Lecturer made her uncomfortable; supervisor asking to see her after hours, a hint that her academic future depends on becoming more accommodatingThe silence of the ivory tower has a particular sound. I have learned to recognize it in the hesitant knock on my office door. A student stands there holding a project file, starting with […]

In the theatre of power, some scripts never age. Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince, written five centuries ago, remains the definitive manual for understanding political ambition, betrayal, and survival. Its principles find fertile ground in Nigeria’s contemporary political drama, where the fallout between President Bola Tinubu and former Kaduna Governor Nasir El-Rufai offers a masterclass in […]

The recently concluded Delta State Economic and Investment Summit has attracted widespread attention within and outside the state. Bringing together policymakers, development experts, business leaders, investors and development partners to deliberate on the future of Delta State’s economy is, in principle, a commendable initiative. Every responsible government has an obligation to create platforms that stimulate […]

Some Nigerians commit the delusional sin of believing that once a state institution has the word “independent” prefixed to its name, it is, indeed, independent. They believe that critical state agencies created by statute or the Constitution to ensure security and law and order, to guarantee justice and rule of law, to safeguard electoral integrity […]

In concluding my piece here two weeks ago on the Osun State governorship election that is scheduled to hold on Saturday this week, I had suggested that Governor Ademola Nurudeen Jackson Adeleke had successfully skirted around the political landmine represented by the federal might that could have been deployed against him to threaten his chances […]

The history of Osun State is built on the sweat of hard work, deep wisdom and honest leadership. For years, our home has worn a badge of honour as a land of brilliant thinkers, disciplined public servants and proud traditions. Yet, for nearly four frustrating years, the state has been subjected to a style of […]

The Yoruba axiom, bi a ba fi owo ra ibo, a fi owo gba ijoba – he who buys a mandate with silver will surely recover his investment with gold – is not merely a moral injunction. It is the algebra of Nigerian politics, a grim arithmetic in which democracy is reduced to transaction. As […]

Twenty years after the Nigerian Senate buried the third term agenda, Olusegun Obasanjo is still fighting the war he lost in 2006. This past week alone, at a fireside conversation in Lagos, he declared that choosing Atiku Abubakar as his running mate in 1999 was the biggest mistake of his presidency. Days earlier he resurrected […]

The argument for former President Goodluck Jonathan’s return to Nigeria’s presidential race in 2027 rests on a deceptively simple proposition: that a former president with national name recognition, governing experience and a reputation for conceding defeat peacefully could provide the Peoples Democratic Party with the political oxygen it desperately needs. But when the proposition is […]

Nasir El-Rufai now stands charged on 10 counts before a court that will decide whether the former Kaduna State governor answers for one of the more detailed corruption case files to reach trial in recent years. These remain allegations, not proven facts, and El-Rufai is entitled to the presumption of innocence until the court says […]