It appears thatthe Nigerian masses are now being punisheddirelyforeliciting the EndSARS protest – a nationwide wide protest against police brutality cum injustice and misrule by the ruling class,which occurred some few weeks back. Supposing my sense of logical reasoning is failing me, someone then needs to give me a logicalreason behind the unprecedented and unchecked rise in prices of most commodities soon after the EndSARS protest ended. Without a doubt, every social upheaval leads to some sorts of distortionsin economic activities as postulatedin the displacement effect thesisby two eminent 20th century economists namely Peacock and Wiseman. In their thesis, Peacock…
Author: Stanley Duruibe
When the erstwhile Nigerian Finance Minister and World Bank Managing Director, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, was nominated to contest for the position of World Trade Organization’s, W.T.O., Director- General on June 9, 2020, the news of her nomination hit me with a combination of feelings of elation as well as apprehension. I was elated because I have always held her in high esteem, first, as my benefactor in an adjudged highly transparent Federal Government of Nigeria cum World Bank program which she spearheaded some years back and, secondly, due to her intellectual exposition in the areas of development economics, international…
It’s a good thing that Nigerian youths have finally woken up from their slumbers, and have begun changing the age-long narrative which holds that, “Nigerian youths are docile”. They have risen against the endless injustice and misrule by the hawks, buccaneers, and barbarians that had held sway in the leadership of Nigeria over the years! Indeed, this is evident in the widespread protests and online activism christened #ENDSARS which has spread to every nook and cranny of the nation like a wildfire in the harmattan. It should be noted that the precursor to these protests was a footage that began…
When the trending news of Justice Ishaq Bello, the only Nigerian nominee for election to the International Criminal Court, ICC, jury in 2020, surfaced in the mass media, several public pundits began to raise questions on the doctrine of Merit-Based Selection in the Nigerian context. Some of the issues raised bordered on nepotism and clannishness in the public appointment and recruitment processes in Nigeria – the two most excruciating banes of our national unity and national advancement. Premium Times of October 2, 2020, reported that President Muhammadu Buhari had in June, 2020 nominated Justice Ishaq Bello, the Chief Judge of…
“No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth”. Plato. As a recap, those few words below in quotation mark summed up the ‘Part 1’ of this treatise: “…In summary, the provision of a professional police force, an efficient legal system and a comprehensive and coordinated national database will be the turning point of reforms that will herald a new and prosperous Nigeria”. In the wee years of the fourth coming of democratic governance into Nigeria’s post-independence polity after successive years of different military juntas, I can still vividly recall the reservations and fears expressed by one of…
It is no longer news that Nigeria’s political and socio-economic realities are nothing to write home about. For this reason, the country has often been described in several quarters with various demeaning terms such as: failed state, poverty capital of the world, shithole, zoo, et al. Some of the notable reasons why such demeaning terms have often been used to describe the purported ‘giant of Africa’ are not far-fetched. Despite the enormous natural and human resources which the country has at its disposal, the poverty rate of the country has been rising astronomically with a reported more than 82 million…
Few months ago the mass media was inundated with the news of a certain Lance Corporal in the Nigerian Army, Martin Idakpini, who courageously surfaced online to criticize the service chiefs for the wave of insecurity in Nigeria. He berated the Chief of Army Staff for exhibiting lackadaisical attitude towards the incessant killings going on in the country as well as highlighted other burning issues bedevilling troops battling Boko-haram insurgents in the North-Eastern part of Nigeria, among which are low morale in the rank and file of the military, inadequate supplies of weapons and battle equipment, and poor welfare of…
As one of the members of the Students’ Union Executive back in the University, we had a “Machiavellian President” who happened to be a real ‘pain in the neck’ to all the members of the Executive and the Students’ Union. This unscrupulous President had a penchant for taking unilateral decisions, so also was he often found guilty of committing several financial infractions. During this period, we were frequently enmeshed in struggles aimed at checkmating his excesses without achieving much success mainly due to his Machiavellian tactics. Meanwhile, amongst us was a certain fellow whom we had always presumed to be…
