Category Archives: Politics

Politics, Naija, issues

Reforming Nigeria’s Asset Privatization Approach

I came across a post on X recently that sent me back to the troubled history of Nigeria’s privatization programme.

It reminded me of the 2003 NITEL-Pentascope scandal. NITEL, Nigeria’s state-owned telecommunications company, was not just another public enterprise. It was responsible for critical national infrastructure, including Nigeria’s access to the SAT-3 undersea cable, a major artery for international connectivity.

Yet NITEL was handed over to Pentascope, a Dutch firm that was barely a year old, reportedly had only eight employees, including the janitor, and had no serious experience managing a major telecommunications company.

Within a year, NITEL moved from a ₦15 billion profit to a ₦19 billion loss. More than 250,000 homes reportedly lost their phone lines. It was not a complex failure. It was a failure hiding in plain sight.

For me, Pentascope is not just a bad chapter in our telecoms history. It is the perfect lens through which to examine many of Nigeria’s privatization heartbreaks: ALSCON, Ajaokuta, Delta Steel, and the 2013 power sector unbundling.

In that same X thread, someone argued that Nigerians should simply “move on” from these failures. It reads like an innocuous statement from a frustrated citizen, but never a good idea. Moving on without understanding what went wrong is not closure. It is willfully inflicted amnesia, acting mature. Nations that forget their policy failures do not heal from them. They repeat them, and usually at a higher cost.

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Education, Health, issues, Politics, Spiritual

Courage Isn’t Enough

My dad often chastised me with potent words and phrases so weighty that I had to research their meaning. An example is a quote from William Shakespeare’s Henry IV, where the character Falstaff declares, “The better part of valour is discretion.” He would hammer those words into my consciousness whenever I displayed a passionate but narrow focus on accomplishing something, often at the expense of other important matters.

Dad thought of my teenage passions as unguided fervour, lacking the balancing virtue of wisdom. I disagreed most of the time, but now I have come to deeply appreciate what he meant. Looking back, I recognize the many near-tragedies that would have befallen me had it not been for the power of circumspection. Yes, valour (courage and bravery) has opened many doors for me, leading to numerous victories. But the better side of the story is that discretion taught me which battles to fight and how to win them.

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issues, Naija, Politics

Lagos State Needs a Digital Mirror to Build Its Future

I was born and baked in Lagos. My family’s Lagos story began in 1945 when my grandfather, a police officer, was transferred to Lagos. Nearly every member of my paternal family has called Campbell Street in Lagos Island, home. We’ve had front-row seats and sometimes backstage passes, to the ever-evolving drama of this megacity. One of us even became the chief of a well-known Lagos family house.

I earned my Lagos badge the gritty way: inhaled the pungent mix from clogged gutters, sang praises with scourges of mosquitoes, devoured asáró, Ewa Agayin and Agege “buredi” from street vendors, and played barefoot “monkey post” football in alleys. I watched from the sidelines at Campos Mini Stadium and witnessed the last of the “Agbepo” night-soil men on their ghostly rounds.

These lived experiences fascinated me and made me curious about how a megacity functions. What does it take to govern a place like Lagos? That curiosity deepened during my postgraduate studies when I audited a course titled “New York City Politics.” Then, I understood how cities use policy, planning, and emerging technologies to shape more livable urban environments. Courses like Leadership & Strategy by Doug Muzzio and Mapping for Policy by Deborah Balk were also central to my learning.

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