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Impunity + Inefficiency + Insanity = Intractable Insecurity In Nigeria

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  My country has been in the global spotlight for the wrong reasons in recent times, as many Nigerians struggle to sleep with their two eyes closed, travel along our highways without panting in fear of possible kidnapping, congregate in their respective places of worship without trembling, or allow their children to go to school without fear of mass abduction. Albeit more prevalent in the northern region of Nigeria, insecurity is fast eroding our normalcy. From Kebbi to Niger, Kwara to Adama, Yobe to Borno, all 36 States and the FCT have each had an unfortunate share of Nigeria’s intractable insecurity over the last 15 years or so. I cannot but concur with the salient position advanced by the Senior Fellow and Director, Africa Program, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Oge Onubogu, at the public hearing held on Thursday, 20th November 2025, at the hallowed chambers of the United States Congress about the alleged genocide against Christians in our troubled country....
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Decamping From Clinical Medicine to Public Health: Nigeria's Intra-health sector Japa

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  The verb “decamp” is almost confined to political parlance among Nigerians, as it frequently adorns the headlines of media houses when they raise the alarm over the defection of politicians from one political party to another. It turns out, however, that major news outlets haven’t been led to investigate and create a sense of urgency on the need to control the cross-carpeting of a critical group of workers in one of the most essential non-political sectors of Nigeria’s landscape. Therefore, this article aims to shed light on a similar drift within Nigeria’s health sector, as well as the carrots being dangled by the receiving end (public health) that leave the donor entity (frontline clinical health) at the short end of the stick. I often hear colleagues in Nigeria tell me of their desire to exit clinical practice in search of “WHO-like jobs” (World Health Organization-type careers) that can take them around the world, attract them to conferences in beautiful hotels, earn fore...
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Quizzing your tribe & religion means Questioning our peace & unity

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  Happy 2025 Independence Day, fellow Nigerians. I had concluded this article a week ago and was searching for an appropriate image (not my usual picture) that would represent both its message and the significance of Nigeria’s Independence Day. Then, out of sheer coincidence, I stumbled on a message that read “I am a Nigerian. My tribe comes 2nd” at the back of a hooded white top of a fellow traveller at London Heathrow Airport en route Abuja on Friday, 26th September 2025. Gleefully, and like a man struck by love at first sight, I dashed to this torchbearer, who turned out to be Ambassador Otunba Adejare Adegbenro, to introduce myself and ask for his permission to take a picture - a request to which he passionately & humbly obliged before we exchanged contacts and boarded the plane to Nigeria. Of course, I had thought it fitting to dedicate my piece on Nigeria’s 65th Independence Day commemoration to discouraging a long-standing habit that unknowingly destroys our peace ...
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When Correction Is Left In The Hands Of Those Who Do Wrong

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  On Saturday, 30th August in Abuja, sometime between 14:30 and 15:150 hours, I was driving my car, returning from a nearby service station around Kaura Hotel and had just joined Oladipo Diya Road (Games Village-Gudu-Apo NEPA dual carriage way). I drove for less than 60 seconds to few metres before the traffic light at the junction of Kaura market and pulled over directly behind a slowly moving white-coloured Police patrol van conveying eight police officers to beckon on one of the roadside traders to replace my failing wiper blades. As three guys spontaneously wielded different windshield wipers and jostled in my direction in response to my earlier call, two police officers also ran towards my parked car to tell me “ Oga, we saw you beat the traffic light around American International School junction; so, you have to come down to talk or follow us to the station ”. Before I could say Jack Robinson, a female officer had reached for my passenger door in front, opened it and occupied...
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Electricity Subsidy of 4 Trillion Naira: Electrifying Sanity for 220 Million Nigerians

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  A close relative who recently relocated to the United Kingdom and resides in a region that is one-and-half-hours by road towards the East of the administrative & commercial capital, London, had conducted a self-audit of her power usage for me over the phone yesterday 31 st July 2025. For her two-bedroom apartment that has its kitchen-within-the living room setting, the last 30 days electricity bill (in summer – not a winter period where home heaters usually shoot up power consumption) amounted to £103 (one hundred and three British pounds). She could monitor it clearly on her home-installed meter. The three occupants of the modest house are 1 adult, 1 teenager adolescent and 1 pre-adolescent, who survive on 1 television, 1 plugged-in Wi-Fi device, 1 unit of a 4-phased electric cooker, 1 kitchen heat extractor, 4 mobile phones, 3 laptop computers, 14 light bulbs and 12 electric sockets. Assuredly, she reminded me that all these appliances do not connect to power at the same t...
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Nigeria Has 38 Healthcare Systems – Decentralization Is Their Lifeline

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  As I digested The Punch newspaper interview titled “ Nigeria Drifting into Unitarism, True federalism Way out”, which was   granted by   one of Nigeria’s legal icons and former President, Nigeria Bar Association, Chief Wole Olanipekun, OFR, CFR, SAN, and published on 25th June 2025, I couldn’t but mull over my book “DIAL 811: DEFT or DAFT?” published in 2022. Incidentally, I was privileged to have Chief Wole Olanipekun write the foreword of the book, which already pontificates our shared position on decentralization. Nevertheless, his recent media reflections bring this important conversation to the fore of national discourse in my professional sector - healthcare . It is worth noting that I coined “DIAL 811” as a relatable acronym for Decentralization Is A Lifeline for 811 federating units. When disaggregated, these 811 units are 36 States, 1 Federal Capital Territory and 774 Local Government Areas – all recognized by the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of ...
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The Food, The Hand, The Spoon: Assessing President Tinubu at Midterm

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  It was a tug of war between my intellectual and impartial faculties on one hand, and my political and parochial inclinations on the other hand to undertake a mid-tenure evaluation of the impact of the 4-year Presidential mandate officially handed to Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR on 29th May 2023. Over the past two weeks, the dailies have been awash with a flurry of self-declared scorecards such as the caption ascribed to Mr. President’s second anniversary speech by the Statehouse press team on 29th May 2025 - “ We have made undeniable progress ” - and some pre-anniversary briefings by his cabinet members. Going by the chant of his unapologetic double stroke of oil subsidy removal and foreign exchange unification, tax system reorganization, fiscal discipline and debt managements, President Bola Tinubu’s midterm speech reminded us of his administration’s unrepentant conviction that its daring economic reforms remain the silver bullet against Nigeria’s hyena-like financial adversa...
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