Editorial
Nigeria cannot credibly pursue suicide prevention while retaining laws that threaten people who survive suicide attempts with imprisonment. The contradiction is particularly difficult to defend when the country already has a National Mental Health Act, a National Mental Health Policy and a National Suicide Prevention Strategic Framework. The problem is no longer simply whether policymakers ...
Editorial
The treatment of more than 87,000 children for acute malnutrition in Katsina State within eight months points to a public health crisis that Nigeria must tackle at its roots. Although the figure represents a decline from the corresponding period in 2025, the number of children requiring care remains alarming. The persistence of such a high ...
Editorial
The decision by the Catholic Diocese of Gboko to suspend activities at its institutions in Ihugh, Vandeikya Local Government Area of Benue State, is a troubling indictment of the security conditions under which communities are expected to live and essential services are supposed to operate. When a church is compelled to withdraw its priests, teachers ...
Editorial
When large-scale infrastructure projects are unveiled in Nigeria, they are routinely packaged as monuments of engineering vision, yet, nothing drains the already fragile reservoir of public trust quite like the opaque, sudden shifts in how these mega-projects are executed or most times abandoned. The growing controversy surrounding the alleged diversion of the Lagos coastal road ...
Editorial
The Federal Government’s decision to offer temporary relief on petrol prices has reopened a difficult question in Nigeria’s economic reform programme. How can the government cushion the effects of rising fuel costs without recreating the fiscal burdens it sought to eliminate through subsidy removal? The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC) introduced a discount of ...
Editorial
Nigeria is mourning another devastating loss of military personnel. But beyond the condolences, lowered flags and official assurances, the Nigerian Air Force aircraft crash in Ondo State demands questions that the country can no longer afford to postpone. An ATR-42 aircraft, NAF 931, crashed in the Igbokoda area of Ilaje Local Government Area on Monday ...
Editorial
The tragic crash of a Nigerian Air Force transport aircraft in the swampy terrain of Ondo State claiming the lives of 25 military personnel and flight crew plunges the nation into a familiar, painful mourning. Flags flying at half-mast and expressions of sorrow from state capitals to Aso Rock offer necessary solace, but they do ...
Editorial
For too long, the discourse surrounding national security in Nigeria has been bogged down by the stark contrast between the gravity of the sacrifices made by our men and women in uniform and the modest realities of their economic welfare. Soldiers, sailors, and airmen standing in the line of fire face relentless dangers across varied ...
Editorial
The abduction of 20 prospective National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members in Imo State is more than another grim entry in Nigeria’s expanding catalogue of kidnappings. It is an indictment of a state that is asking young Nigerians to serve the nation while failing to guarantee their most basic right, the right to travel and ...
Editorial
The landing of the presidential aircraft at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport carrying President Bola Ahmed Tinubu back from an extended European sojourn marks more than just the end of a four-week vacation. Arriving in Lagos ahead of Nigeria's 66th Independence Anniversary, the President’s choice of entry point and the timing of his return carry ...
Editorial
The discourse surrounding the prolonged absence of the President and persistent questions regarding his health touches nerve amongst Nigerians. Citizens and political opposition are entirely justified in demanding transparency. In a constitutional democracy, leadership accountability is non-negotiable, the people have an absolute right to know the well-being and whereabouts of the leader they elected and ...
Editorial
Nigeria’s latest illegal mining figures should force a serious rethink of how the country governs its mineral wealth. Between March 2024 and August 2026, Mining Marshals identified 374 illegal mining sites across 17 states, according to the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake. Of these, 108 sites have been cleared, while 743 suspects have ...
Editorial
For the average Nigerian, the daily commute or the simple act of keeping the home and business running through a generator has long ceased to be a matter of routine, it is an endurance test. In an economy where pump prices already squeeze every household budget to its absolute limit, the realization that retail filling ...
Editorial
Nigeria’s downstream petroleum market is entering a stage where the quality of regulation may matter as much as the quantity of investment flowing into it. The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) has proposed 138 regulations across 23 parts to tackle anti-competitive practices in the midstream and downstream petroleum sectors. The proposed Midstream ...
Editorial
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s prolonged absence from Nigeria has become too consequential to be treated simply as another presidential holiday or another episode of political controversy. The President left Nigeria on August 30 for what the Presidency described as a three-week working vacation in Europe. He spent the first part of the trip in London ...
Editorial
The controversy over the Minister of Power, Joseph Tegbe’s, recent comment about Nigerians asking him to “slow down” because their freezers were freezing has generated more heat than the minister may have intended. Yet, beyond the colourful phrasing, the substance of his remarks deserves a more measured reading. Tegbe was speaking at the commissioning of ...
Editorial
This past week has offered a striking juxtaposition of forward-looking economic triumph and solemn historical reflection for Nigeria’s maritime sector. From the halls of Washington to the ports of Lagos, the nation is witnessing both the hard-earned rewards of institutional reform and the poignant farewell to one of the founding architects of its modern port ...
Editorial
The image of Desmond Elliot on his knees before Femi Gbajabiamila will probably outlive the immediate political quarrel that produced it. It is an arresting picture, partly because of the stature of the two men and partly because of what the gesture says about Nigerian politics. Elliot, an actor who crossed into elective politics and ...
Editorial
The death of more than 30 people in Odigbo Local Government Area of Ondo State, following the consumption of suspected unsafe herbal and locally brewed alcoholic preparations, is a grave public-health warning that Nigeria cannot afford to treat as another isolated community tragedy. The incident has already claimed dozens of lives, left about 50 youths ...
Editorial
The rescue of 17 children by the Oyo State Police Command has exposed a criminal enterprise so disturbing that the immediate relief of recovering the victims must be accompanied by a much deeper question: how has the buying and selling of children become sufficiently organised to operate across several states? The police say seven suspects ...
Editorial
The rescue of 17 children by the Oyo State Police Command has exposed a criminal enterprise so disturbing that the immediate relief of recovering the victims must be accompanied by a much deeper question: how has the buying and selling of children become sufficiently organised to operate across several states? The police say seven suspects ...
Editorial
Few spectacles in Nigeria’s politics are as disorienting as the speed with which yesterday’s messiahs become today’s pariahs in the eyes of their own acolytes. When ideological convictions are treated as disposable costumes tailored only for the immediate election cycle, public trust becomes the first casualty. An example of this disturbing pattern emerged recently with ...
Editorial
Campaign seasons inevitably arrive dressed in high-decibel fanfare: stadium rallies, choreographed motorcades, and manifestos thick with poetic ambition. Aspirants promise to revive moribund economies, overhaul dilapidated power grids, tame stubborn inflation, and restore security to embattled communities. Yet beneath the crescendo of political sloganeering lies a conspicuous void. Electors know intimately what is broken, and ...
Editorial
The Osun State Government and the Osun State House of Assembly owe the people a clear explanation for the proposed alteration of the tenure rules governing the Vice-Chancellor of Osun State University. A law that expressly limits the Vice-Chancellor's tenure to five years and excludes reappointment should not be altered casually, especially when the proposed ...
Editorial
Uber's departure from Nigeria after 12 years should concern policymakers far beyond the inconvenience it will cause passengers and drivers. A global company that helped transform urban transportation in the country is shutting down its operations after reviewing its business, and although Uber has declined to disclose the precise reasons for the decision, the circumstances ...
Editorial
The planned withdrawal of about 200 United States military personnel from Nigeria should force Abuja to confront an uncomfortable question: how long can a country of more than 230 million people continue to depend on foreign military capability to confront threats within its own territory? Nigeria’s Defence Headquarters has moved quickly to reassure the public ...
Editorial
For decades, Nigeria’s official response to escalating poverty has relied heavily on the machinery of temporary social safety nets, from conditional cash transfers and subsidized grain distributions to emergency palliative stipends. While short-term humanitarian relief can cushion vulnerable households against acute economic shocks, treating cash handouts as a substantive national strategy is an exercise in ...
Editorial
When building a campaign team, politicians naturally seek people who bring money, technical skill and the ability to win elections. From a purely practical political standpoint, bringing Dr. Zacch Adedeji and Dr. Betta Edu into President Bola Tinubu’s campaign apparatus makes sense. One understands finance and the other knows how to mobilize people on the ...
Editorial
Nigeria has barely entered the formal campaign season for the 2027 elections, yet one figure already says much about the kind of political contest the country is preparing for: N571 billion. That is the combined campaign expenditure ceiling available to the 19 presidential and 127 governorship candidates currently counted in the race under the Electoral ...
Editorial
In the immediate aftermath of any fiercely contested poll, the true measure of leadership lies not in triumphalism, but in the capacity to heal a fractured electorate. Governor Ademola Adeleke took a commendable step in this direction upon receiving his Certificate of Return by establishing a ₦500 million Election Violence Victims Endowment Fund. Acknowledging that ...