By Azu Ishiekwene

Six months after his appointment as the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Joash Amupitan appears determined to beat the record of Professor Maurice Iwu as the most mistrusted electoral administrator yet. Iwu, a professor of Pharmacognosy (the study of medicinal plants), also had the distinction of managing Nigeria’s worst elections in 2007. On top of that, he gave science a bad name with the dubious claim that he had discovered the cure for Ebola. The last thing Amupitan wants is to upstage Iwu’s sordid reputation. His comments on social media are stalking him, and he must be wondering if his job is over even before it started.

* Corruption Is The Insurgent Within—Quiet, Persistent, And Deadly

By Senator Babafemi Ojudu

In less than six months, Nigeria has lost two generals on the battlefield—cut down in operations against what should, by all conventional reckoning, be a ragtag insurgent force. Alongside them, several colonels, officers, and countless other ranks have paid the ultimate price.

By Jude Ogechi Eze

Growing up, there was a nonfictional ballad story often told in our village. It goes that in the heydays of history in our land, there was a masquerade (Igele, which is one of the revered masked spirits in Obollo land), that fell in the marketplace during an Omabe festive outing. In our culture, like in many other native African settings, a fallen masquerade loses its mystique; the illusion is broken, and the man beneath the mask is exposed. Yet, in defiance of shame, the same masquerade returned the next market day, dancing even harder, as though the people had forgotten. But the elders, watching quietly, shook their heads and said, “A masquerade that has been unmasked dances only for itself.”

By Chuka Nnabuife

“Instead of giving a man fish, teach him how to fish.” That enduring idea sits at the heart of Anambra State’s social safety strategy, especially under the Solution Government of Governor Chukwuma Charles Soludo. The aim is clear: move people beyond palliatives and into lasting prosperity — turning need into capacity, and capacity into wealth. History shows that societies which invest in people’s abilities, rather than short-term relief, make deeper and more durable progress.

By Abubakar Usman

What is the message when a citizen’s petition to such an important body remains at preliminary evaluation stage after a year, during which the judge concerned was unresponsive for nine months?

By Bola Bolawole

Prussian war strategist, Carl von Clausewitz, defines war as the continuation of politics by other means. In other words, when diplomacy fails, nations resort to war to achieve the same objectives they had set out to achieve with diplomacy. Thus, war is not an end in itself but a means to an end. And like Niccolo Machiavelli posits in his political treatise, The Prince, the end justifies the means. Once the end or objective is achieved, then, the loss, destruction, dislocation, and terrible suffering that war brings become justified.