Public Affairs Analyst

In the next 72 hours, it will be a goodbye to the Year 2021. A lot has happened in the outgoing year. Governance in Nigeria remains a serious challenge. The global community spent another year battling the coronavirus pandemic with its attendant ripple effects on the economy, security, politics and governance. The good news is that vaccines were rapidly concocted across many laboratories to tackle this pandemic and news has it that about nine of such antidotes have been approved for human inoculation. As Nigeria gears up for the forthcoming 2023 general election, a lot of prep work has been going on. The political scene has been buzzing with lots of activities. At the level of the Independent National Electoral Commission, a lot of programmes and projects were carried out. Some of these were stand-alone while many others were preparatory to the 2023 general election. For instance, the electoral management body set the date and accomplished 14 different activities leading to the succe...

 “The high cost of governance and rising personnel budget in Nigeria is as a result of illegal recruitment, illegal and unilateral increase in wages and remuneration by some MDAs, indiscriminate local and international travels, unreasonable demands by some political appointee board members of MDAs without regard for extant circulars on cost management; procurement fraud, budget padding, etc,” – ICPC Chairman, Prof. Bolaji Owasanoye on November 30, 2021. In case you do not know, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission is one of the foremost anti-corruption agencies in Nigeria. Information garnered from its website says that the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act 2000 (Act 2000) brought a fresh and decisive perspective to the fight against corruption in the form of a holistic approach encompassing enforcement, prevention and educational measures. The Act brings under its purview all Nigerians, in the private and public sectors and eve...

  Security and welfare of citizens are the primary purposes of government so says section 14 (2) (b) of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria, as amended. This regime of the President, Major General Muhammdu Buhari (retd.), promised an onslaught against the monster called insecurity six years ago. Unfortunately, much as it tried, it has not succeeded. Should the verdict of history come today, the president and his lieutenants at the state and local government levels will definitely be rated very low. The truth is that Nigeria is faced with worsening insecurity on a daily basis. Let’s look a bit at statistics. According to 2020 Global Terrorism Index rating by a group known as Vision of Humanity, “Nigeria is the third country most impacted by terrorism. Yet, total deaths from terrorism in Nigeria fell to 1,245 in 2019, a 39% decrease from the prior year. Terror-related incidents also fell by 27%, marking the lowest level of terrorist violence in Nigeria since 2011. Boko Haram, Nigeria’...

  Ahead of the 2015 general elections, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), campaigned on the mantra of change and highlighted three pillars of attention if voted into office. These are economy, security and anti-corruption. Six years down the line, how well has the president fought corruption? If you ask the anti-graft agencies, they are likely to tell you that they are doing great and are winning the fight against corruption. On the other hand, average Nigerians and international rating agencies, such as Transparency International, are not convinced that the country is getting the upper hand in the war against graft. In this piece, I decided to focus on an area many Nigerians are not paying attention to. That is asset recovery and disposal by the anti-corruption agencies. Does the country have a comprehensive asset recovery register? The answer is No! Is there a standard operating procedure for the disposal of recovered stolen funds or assets? Doubtful. Yet there are several...