State of the Nation with Olu Fasan

Over the past several years, especially during presidential election seasons, a war of words usually breaks out between former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Atiku Abubakar, his vice-president. Obasanjo always fires the first salvo, presenting Atiku as the devil incarnate. But Atiku never shies away from responding in kind. The self-indulgent, long-running feud is frustratingly irritating because its […]

The post Obasanjo-Atiku’s ding-dong battle: Who is fooling who? By Olu Fasan appeared first on Vanguard News.

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 and […]

The post Fake independence: So, Tinubu can tell EFCC what to do! By Olu Fasan appeared first on Vanguard News.

There is a shocking paradox, a bewildering moral hypocrisy, at the heart of President Bola Tinubu’s leadership. On the one hand, he is actively prosecuting previous public officers for corrupt practices, claiming to have secured over 7,000 convictions since he came to power three years ago. Yet, on the other hand, he presides over a moral […]

The post ‘Fake’ agency: Tinubu’s amoral rule breeds impunity, abuse of power! By Olu Fasan appeared first on Vanguard News.

Twice in recent presidential election cycles, Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria’s former one-term president, allowed speculations to spread like wildfire that he would seek the presidency again. But twice, without as much as a whimper, the speculations fizzled out into thin air like a puff of wind. Recently, Jonathan issued an angry rebuttal to an allegation that he […]

The post Goodluck Jonathan: Nigeria’s most cowardly politician! By Olu Fasan appeared first on Vanguard News.

Recently, two weeks ago to be precise, I found myself in an ambush, facing something akin to a Spanish Inquisition. I had attended the wedding of a friend’s daughter in London. There I met some old Nigerian friends, some based in Nigeria, who I hadn’t seen for several years. We exchanged pleasantries and banters. Then, one […]

The post Is Tinubu Nigeria’s saviour? Some genuinely think so! By Olu Fasan appeared first on Vanguard News.

The decision of President Muhammadu Buhari to name June 12 as Nigeria’s “Democracy Day” was motivated by self-serving politics, not principled conviction. Before he became president in 2015, Buhari never once publicly condemned the annulment of the June 12, 1993, presidential election. However, in 2018, as he prepared to seek re-election the following year and faced […]

The post June 12: Nigeria’s annual ritual of glorifying a sham ‘democracy’, by Olu Fasan appeared first on Vanguard News.

Lord Palmerston, a 19th-century British Prime Minister, famously coined the saying: “There are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests.” He was talking about relations between nations. However, Nigerian politicians have unashamedly hijacked the maxim to justify their utterly unprincipled,chameleonic behaviour. Nigeria is a country where politicians go to bed saying one thing and […]

The post From presidential candidate to running mate: Kwankwaso’s strategic calculations, by Olu Fasan appeared first on Vanguard News.

By now, everyone knows President Bola Tinubu’s approach to capturing power. In his own words, it is: “At all costs, fight for it, grab it, snatch it and run with it”. That was how he put it at a pre-election event in London in December 2022. Many would swear that he deployed this buccaneering strategy to […]

The post Re-election bid: Why is Tinubu scared of winning fair and square? By Olu Fasan appeared first on Vanguard News.

Hardly anyone should shed tears for the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and the African Democratic Congress, ADC. Both parties are guilty of what lawyers call contributory negligence, being part-architects of their own misfortune. Their internal contradictions, genetic predispositions and inherent inability to cohere are simply being exploited by their ruthless enemy, the ruling All Progressives Congress, […]

The post 2027: INEC, the judiciary can cripple Nigeria’s wobbly democracy, by Olu Fasan appeared first on Vanguard News.

Recently, after the mass killing in Jos, Plateau State, President Bola Tinubu said he was not elected “to comfort and create widows and widowers”. Yet since he became president barely three years ago, his administration has overseen the creation of thousands of widows, widowers and orphans whose husbands, wives and parents were killed in terrorist attacks. […]

The post Recurring bloodbaths: Nigeria is too fragile, too fractured to be safe, by Olu Fasan appeared first on Vanguard News.