Ideas and agenda for economic growth and human development in sub-saharan Africa
It seems Saraki is trending on social media now. Will he attend his summon today by the CCB, or will he not? Why doesn’t he just go and clear his name? He should resign. He should go to jail. Abbla bla. If he resigns his senate presidency or even his senate membership as a…
The aftermath of the April 2015 presidential election has revealed as much about the psyche of the average Nigerian citizen as much as the events of the few months leading to it. As the election campaign wore on, we saw citizens, including previous friends and allies, engaged in war of words, most of which is…
Nigeria’s newly elected president stated recently that the government need to, as a matter of urgent necessity a “conditional cash transfer” programme by which those without jobs can be given a sum of N5,000 a month to help them to survive and meet their basic needs. Among other things, he stated that “if we have…
In the light of recent conversations and discussions I have had, I have been reflecting afresh on a few key issues today, so please indulge me. Like a house of hay built on shifting sand, and an edifice of stone set high on a rock, so is ambition made of two main types. One is…
Author: Paulo Freire Publisher: The Continuum Publishing Company Date: 1970 When Paulo Freire wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the world was in the middle of fierce ideological war. The iron curtain was firmly shut, and the fire of anti-colonial struggle was burning wildly in the countries of Africa and Latin America. Nine years earlier,…
A few days ago I was calling on citizens to reflect on what has turned out, unwittingly, to be a powerfully revolutionary statement from a bus conductor on the streets of Lagos. The fellow had angrily remonstrated with a passenger asking for “change” after paying his fares. Perhaps the passenger’s face was familiar, and…
Author: Hernando De Soto Transworld Publishers, 2000 276 pages “The hour of capitalism’s greatest triumph is its hour of crisis”. This is Hernando De Soto’s opening statement in what has now become a classic of property rights. He starts with a brief description of the “triumph” of capitalism and the end of the cold war….
Introduction The modern nation of Nigeria was born in 1960 amidst fanfare. As of then, forty six years had elapsed since the British amalgamation, in 1914, of the Northern and Southern Protectorates of Nigeria. The nationalist fathers fought a good fight, and it is instructive that diaspora students were at the heart of those nationalist…
Let me start with a story. One early morning in 2013, one of my professors at the Institute of African Studies, Professor Sola Olorunyomi called me to his office to show me an antique map of Africa which he wanted digitized at the Kenneth Dike Library in Ibadan. Together with Professor Olorunyomi, who himself had…
(2nd edition) Author: Michael E. Porter Publisher: Palgrave, New York, 1998 855 pages Unlike David Landes’ Wealth and Poverty of Nations, which was unashamedly an euro-centric take on the political history of development, and unlike Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, the award winning anthropological history of development weakened by its far reaching environmental determinism,…