Political Notes

President Bola Tinubu’s extraordinary intervention in the freezing of an Osun State Government account by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has brought into sharp relief a question that has increasingly shadowed his presidency: who exactly acts in the President’s name, and how much of what is done around him carries his prior knowledge and approval? […]

The post Can Tinubu dvice Governors On What He Controls? By Emmanuel Aziken appeared first on Vanguard News.

Politics is often less about the event itself than about the timing of the event. A document released today may have been written weeks earlier, but when it surfaces at a politically sensitive moment, it immediately acquires a meaning far beyond its contents. That is the context in which the recent exchange involving President Bola Tinubu, former […]

The post Trump’s Letter, Atiku’s Lobbyists and old American stories about Tinubu, by Emmanuel Aziken appeared first on Vanguard News.

It was not merely the accident at Chappaquiddick that destroyed Senator Ted Kennedy’s lifelong ambition of becoming President of the United States. It was Mary. Mary Jo Kopechne. She was the young woman who died after Kennedy’s car plunged from a narrow bridge on Chappaquiddick Island in July 1969. Kennedy escaped from the submerged vehicle, but he […]

The post Umahi: How Mary, not Habila, destroyed a powerful senator, by Emmanuel Aziken appeared first on Vanguard News.

For an institution that makes laws for more than 200 million Nigerians, this is dangerous. A legislature that cannot convincingly account for its own documents cannot credibly demand accountability from ministries, departments, agencies or ordinary citizens. The latest controversy came from the Senate over the report that led to the suspension of Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan. Senator Adams […]

The post National Assembly’s dirty papers, by Emmanuel Aziken appeared first on Vanguard News.

The political troubles now trailing Lagos lawmaker and Nollywood actor, Desmond Elliot, may appear on the surface like a local Surulere power tussle. But beneath the noise is a deeper revelation about the way President Bola Tinubu has managed his political empire for decades, particularly in Lagos, where his authority has rested on a careful balance […]

The post Desmond Elliot exposes Tinubu, by Emmanuel Aziken appeared first on Vanguard News.

Perhaps the most consequential political reform contained in the Electoral Act 2026 is not in the general election itself, but in the process that comes before it: the nomination of candidates by political parties  Under the new framework, the familiar route of indirect primaries, otherwise known as delegate elections, has been removed from the legal options available […]

The post Consensus Or Coronation? The new conspiracy against party democracy, by Emmanuel Aziken appeared first on Vanguard News.

The failed attempt by Senate President Godswill Akpabio to amend the Senate Standing Rules was, from the outset, interpreted in many political circles as an act of self-preservation. The proposed amendment, which sought to restrict eligibility for principal offices to ranking senators from the immediate past assemblies, would effectively have shut the door against the return of […]

The post Inside Akpabio’s failed survival strategy, by Emmanuel Aziken appeared first on Vanguard News.

Senate President Godswill Akpabio has again stepped into the eye of the storm, not so much for what he said as for what his words now represent in a country increasingly impatient with the language of power. His latest assertion he is praying that insurgency in Nigeria will end in 2026 has reopened a familiar debate: the […]

The post As Akpabio turns to prayer, by Emmanuel Aziken appeared first on Vanguard News.