Public Affairs Analyst

  With the funding support of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism, in collaboration with the MacArthur Foundation, Umar Audu, a reporter with the Daily Nigerian newspaper carried out a sting operation to ascertain the veracity of fake degree mill in Benin Republic. According to the story published in the December 30, 2023 edition of the newspaper, Audu, in December 2022, reached out to a racketeering syndicate that specialises in selling the infamous degree certificates from the neighbouring countries to willing buyers at an ‘affordable rate.’ The agent, however, gave him the option of ‘studying’ for a year or month, but he opted for the month option. His choice of mass communication from any ‘university’ in Cotonou was premised on the fact he could easily sail through the screening as he had knowledge of the course. The agent gave the reporter the breakdown of the amount to pay, which included tuition fees, an evaluation letter, a resident permit, immigration st...

  The heart-warming news broke on Friday, January 12, 2024. The tale is that $18.5bn Dangote Refinery and Petrochemical Company, which was commissioned on Monday, May 22, 2023, has finally commenced production seven months after it was inaugurated with pomp and circumstance in Lagos. Recall that during the commissioning exercise, former Central Bank of Nigeria governor, Godwin Emefiele, said inter alia, that in ensuring the successful completion of the project, the CBN provided over N125bn to cover the domestic currency requirements of the venture, while also ensuring the availability of foreign exchange to pay for the importation of some of the machinery. He projected that the Dangote refinery could earn Nigeria foreign exchange savings of between $25bn and $30bn yearly, stressing that the impact of the savings would be directly reflected in Nigeria’s foreign exchange reserves by reducing the pressure on the country’s balance of payments. Given the processing capacity of 650,000...

  On January 9, 2024, President Bola Tinubu announced the reduction of his cost of travel by 60 per cent. The Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Ajuri Ngelale, revealed this while briefing State House correspondents at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. Ngelale said the directive applied to the offices of the President, Vice President, First Lady, wife of the Vice President and all ministries, departments and agencies. Ngelale was quoted as saying, “President Bola Tinubu has approved that anywhere he travels within this country he will no longer accept or allow huge security delegations to be following him from Abuja, which attracts massive bills with respect to estacode and duty allowances from now on.   He has approved a massive cost-cutting exercise that will cut across the entire Federal Government of Nigeria and the Offices of the President himself, the Vice President and the Office of the First Lady. It will be conducted in the following fashion. On i...

Former President Muhammadu Buhari created the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development on August 21, 2019. However, after President Bola Tinubu took over in May 2023, the name was changed to the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation. Prior to this, the National Emergency Management Agency, National Social Investment Office, North-East Development Commission, National Commission for Refugees, and National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, which are agencies under the ministry, were either under the Office of the Vice President or in other ministries. Out of all the agencies under the ministries, the National Social Investment Office is the cynosure of all eyes and the one most enmeshed in controversies. The National Social Investment Programme was established in 2016 as a social safety net to care for the poor and needy. The seed fund then was N500bn. It was the biggest welfarist programme in Af...

  “For the new year to yield all its good benefits to us as individuals and collectively as a people we must be prepared to play our part. The job of building a prosperous nation is not the job of the President, governors, ministers, lawmakers and government officials alone. Our destinies are connected as members of this household of Nigeria. Our language, creed, ethnicity and religious beliefs even when they are not the same should never make us work at cross purposes. In this new year, let us resolve that as joint heirs to the Nigerian commonwealth, we will work for the peace, progress and stability of our country.” President Bola Tinubu in his national broadcast on January 1, 2024 Welcome to 2024 fellow compatriots. Happy New Year! The holidays are over and it’s time to roll up the sleeves and set to work. Two significant acts of President Bola Tinubu are already generating hoopla. They are his new year national broadcast, and the signing into law of the Federal Government’s...

It’s about 96 hours to the end of 2023. A lot of remarkable things happened in the outgoing year. The popular axiom says charity begins at home. Let me start the chronicle with a hearty congratulatory message to Punch newspaper which clocked half a century of publication this year.  I am at present reading “Our PUNCH Years”, a book edited by veteran journalist, Lekan Otufodunrin. It was an eyewitness account of 38 former staffers of the newspaper. The book offered a great insight to the topsy-turvy challenges of newspaper publishing in Nigeria. I have been contributing to The PUNCH for 28 years. My first article in this newspaper was, “Saving our universities” published on Friday, November 3, 1995. I became a columnist with this medium in October 2012. Happy golden jubilee to The PUNCH, the most widely read newspaper in Nigeria! 2023 is a peculiar year for Nigeria. The country has two presidents, two sets of governors, two sets of House of Representatives members, two sets of sen...

  On Monday, December 18, 2023, a signed agreement to resolve the lingering political crisis in Rivers State surfaced in the media. It was an eight-point resolution reached at the end of about three hours meeting held at the Presidential Villa between the camps of Rivers State governor, Siminalaye Fubara, and that of his estranged godfather, Nyesom Wike. This was the second time the President is mediating in the brewing local political crisis in the oil-rich Niger Delta state. Some political watchers said the president shouldn’t have mediated while others believe that Fubara was handed the short end of the stick. Before examining the content of the signed truce, let me attempt a chronicle of the political development that brought about this presidential intervention. On the night of Sunday, October 29, 2023, there was an inferno at the Rivers State House of Assembly complex due to explosives purportedly ignited by unknown arsonists; by the dawn of Monday, October 30, the majority...