State of the Nation with Olu Fasan

Last week, on October 7, the London School of Economics, LSE, hosted the UK launch of my book In The National Interest: The Road to Nigeria’s Political, Economic and Social Transformation. Two LSE faculties—the Department of International Relations and the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa—collaborated to organise the book launch, which included a public lecture. […]

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Peter Obi is an enigma. A philosophy graduate, yet he is not a philosopher. A politician, yet he lacks the political skills to navigate the collegial world of politics. A presidential candidate, yet he hates the constraints of party politics, behaving as if he’s an independent candidate in a country that doesn’t permit independent candidacy. […]

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Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), is adopting a kitchen-sink approach to next year’s presidential race. A “kitchen-sink approach” involves throwing everything at a problem regardless of what works or doesn’t. That’s precisely what Atiku is doing by promising to tackle every conceivable vexed issue if he becomes president next […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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.