Public Affairs Analyst

  Conflict, dispute, disagreement, quarrel are inevitable in life. In fact, they can be beneficial and transformational. There’s no family, organisation and indeed community where such does not exist. Experts in conflict management claimed that the main types of conflict are intrapersonal (within an individual), interpersonal (between two or more people), intragroup (within a group), and intergroup (between different groups).   The question is, how do we know a conflict is about to occur? Are there early warning signs that trouble is in the offing? When such signals or signs are picked up, do we simply dismiss them or respond promptly to prevent breakdown of law and order? Take for instance, in a family setting, when husband and wife start to argue, that’s a prelude to domestic violence as the situation may escalate to fisticuff if the argument becomes heated. To deescalate tension, one of the spouses should either keep quite or walk away. In a community, when rumor start to...

  For the umpteenth time, Nigeria is in the news for the wrong reasons. The abduction of 25 school children took place in Maga, Kebbi State, on November 17, 2025. Same day news filtered that Brigadier General M. Uba was killed over the weekend by Islamic State West Africa Province fighters after the terrorists reportedly intercepted and tracked his location along the Damboa–Biu axis in Borno State. Though insurgency and insecurity did not start under President Bola Tinubu’s administration, it has worsened if statistics is anything to go by. Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution says in section 14(2)(b) that the security and welfare of citizens shall be the primary purpose of government. Can we, in good conscience, affirm the presence of these two across the country? Before looking at current statistics on insecurity, let me bring you up to speed on the diary of mass abduction of school children in the last 11 years in Nigeria. According to online sources, timelines of abductions from 2014 ...

  Election is like planning for a wedding. It takes a long time but the actual wedding solemnisation takes just a day. So, the Independent National Electoral Commission gave a year notice of poll for the November 8, 2025 governorship election in Anambra. 13 activities were highlighted by INEC and 11 of those activities had actually been carried out before the new sheriff in town, Professor Joash Amupitan was inaugurated as the new chairman of the Commission. Some of the activities include continuous voters’ registration, procurement of sensitive and non-sensitive election materials, recruitment, training and deployment of poll workers, party primaries and candidate nomination, accreditation of poll agents, observers and journalists, voter education, campaigns, signing of peace accord and ultimately the voting, sorting, counting, announcement of results and declaration of winner. After 150 days of campaign and polling, last Saturday, the candidate of the All-Progressives Grand All...

  Since last Friday, October 31, 2025, when US President Donald Trump redesignated Nigeria as a country of particular concern, a sort of blacklist, I have been interviewed on the controversial listing by several media platforms.   Trust TV; LN247 Television; Galaxy Television; Citizen 93.7 FM, Abuja; Asaase Radio 99.5 FM, Accra, Ghana; Impact Business Radio 92.5, Ibadan; Channels Television and Pinnacle Daily   (online newspaper) have all sought my opinion on the issue. I am steadfast in my belief that while there may be concerns about persecution of the Christian minority in some states in Northern Nigeria, it cannot be categorised as a genocide. The dictionary definition of genocide is “the deliberate and systematic killing or persecution of a large number of people from a particular national or ethnic group to destroy that nation or group”. I am of the considered view that both Christians and Muslims have been victims of insecurity, particularly insurgency. While the...

  The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC ought to disqualify Anambra State governor, Prof. Chukwuma Soludo. Why? He’s gunning for third term as a governor.   Meanwhile our law only permits two terms for a governor. That’s on a lighter note anyway. Yes, he was former governor of Central Bank of Nigeria from 2004 to 2009, a position he was appointed to by former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Thus, he’s been elected as Anambra governor once and is eminently qualified to seek reelection. I foresee a victory for him on November 8, 2025 when he will be contesting to retain his governorship seat under the All-Progressives Grand Alliance. Soludo is a brilliant economist who graduated with a first class at the University of Nigeria Nsukka and became a Professor of Economics at the tender age of 38. His tenure as CBN governor was memorable as he successfully carried out bank consolidation exercise under which there was mergers and acquisition of money deposit banks leading...

  Monday, October 20, 2025 was the fifth anniversary of the #EndSARS protest that claimed scores of lives and humongous public and private assets.   In my column of October 28, 2020, I had observed that “The #EndSARS protests and their unsavoury aftermath are pointers to the trust deficit in government. When the protests began, they started off on the social media and escalated to street protests. Though the federal and state governments acted fast to calm frayed nerves by quickly acceding to the five initial requests of the #EndSARS protesters, the youths who participated in that epochal protests were not mollified because despite previous assurances, government had done little or nothing to assuage their fears and meet their demands. For example, they claimed that the dreaded SARS had been previously disbanded in 2017, 2018 and 2019 yet they continued to operate with impunity. Who then is fooling whom? As the saying goes, “if a man deceives me once, shame on him, if twice, s...