Tinubu and Talon: Traitorous Tailors of Democracy? By Ugoji Egbujo, Before soldiers seized Cotonou’s state television station to declare Patrice Talon deposed, Benin’s democracy had already become a sham.  Talon entered office in 2016 bearing the hopes of the country’s poor. Benin’s democracy, then 25 years old, was stable but stagnant, yielding little prosperity. Talon pledged to […]

Lagos:  River Lekki, demolitions and the cost of shortsightedness, by Ugoji Egbujo, Lagos is a bustling coastal city, so its vulnerability to floods is natural. But with a culture of indiscriminate refuse disposal, haphazard building developments, and lousy town planning enforcement, Lagos is the cause of much of its own flooding woes. Often, governments come like […]

Standards are dead: Nigeria and the Fakery Epidemic, by Ugoji Egbujo, Good building materials are gone.  Everything is now fake—almost everything. The chronic decline took an acute turn after the COVID epidemic.  A  post-COVID nosedive. The naira started to plummet, prices soared. Surging costs of basic food began to drown the poor. People could no longer […]

Fubara’s Spirit: Fearful, fumbling and forgetful, by Ugoji Egbujo, This time last year, Governor Fubara said Rivers State had been liberated. People trooped to churches to thank God for setting them free. According to Fubara, the state, its people and resources, had been in the clutches of a rapacious and gluttonous politician. That fellow decided […]