Workshop

In his famous critique of Kwameh Nkrumah's leadership style, Ali Mazrui described Nkrumah's shapeshifting nature as one who democratically begun and ended in despotism by appropriating and amassing powers of the state to himself and implementing obnoxious laws and policies, especially against figures perceived as threat. In what seemed as Nkrumah's metamorphosis, Buhari deceptively rode on to the throne rooms through the vehicle and gains of democracy and in no time unveiled his autocratic tenets.  The word 'deception' may be clipped or replaced with another that best characterizes Buhari's chequered figure. In any case, he has never hidden his true tendencies. The facts were in existence; his actions portrayed a dictator with no or little regards to rule of law and due process and in the search for progressive leadership, Nigerians went blindfolded and voted massively for 'change'. As expected, the change ought to transform our socio-econom...

Nigeria as we know today emanated from a colonial structure which saw the amalgamation of several diverse tribes and entities - a concortion of culture, they say. However, whether or not this historical trajectory left some colonial vestiges, our aim in this piece is not to pontificate on such story, but to interrogate decisively why the country is still very much underdeveloped even after many years of independence, and where in history Nigeria got it wrong. For the sake of those who are not familiar with the term colonialism , we start by attempting a short definition of the concept. Colonialism is defined as a socio-political and economic phenomenon where stronger nations with advance technological and military capacity; explore, conquer, settle and exploit weaker Nations. Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Gambia et al are products of this categorization as they have one time in past been governed as colonial entities. Talks about independence began in most African countries...