The Niger river begins its 4,200 kilometre course in Guinea, runs up north through much of Mali, takes a sharp turn south into Niger Republic, narrowly avoiding Burkina Faso, runs along the border of Benin Republic, before entering Nigeria where it finally empties into the Atlantic Ocean through the oil rich Niger Delta.

As I’ve been saying, Nigerian social scientists have gone on strike. I’m thus left with no choice but to step into the gap and conduct social experiments from time to time.A few days ago, I decided to carry out one such exercise on my twitter followers.

Like any normal Thursday, the young man, an artisan, settled to his dinner in his living room with his friend and co-worker after a hard day’s work. They took off their shirts and plugged their phones to charge in a socket nearby.

It was when Henry Ford visited a meat packing (abattoir) factory in Chicago that the solution to his long running headache came to him. He saw meat come along on an overhead...

Nigeria has had very many dark days. A series of unfortunate events has meant that the country has never quite managed to live up to its potential. But one particularly terrible dark day - April 1, 1977 - stands out as the biggest economic disaster that has so far befallen Nigeria since independence.

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve read two different but unrelated books. One is China’s Great Wall of Debt by Dinny McMahon and the other is Fighting Corruption is Dangerous by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s former finance minister. Yet, as unrelated as the two books were, I found myself drawing some ....

President Buhari has declared his intention, as is his right, to run for a 2nd term. Unlike the last time when he ran on vague promises and against a hapless incumbent, this time there is a clear record by which Nigerians can take an objective measure of the man and his party.

How do you like your risk when you’re investing your money? In your quest for profit and returns, are you prepared to risk it all and take an...

It was former president Obasanjo who started this whole business of turning the nation’s foreign reserves into an achievement to be celebrated. When Obasanjo took office in May 1999, Nigeria’s foreign reserves were just under $5bn. By the time he left in May 2007, it was $43bn.

It is not breaking news that most of Nigeria’s states are financially bankrupt. Most governors today have been reduced to salary payment officers - they simply collect money from Abuja and hand it over to their ‘workers’ (and keep some for themselves). This type of arrangement guarantees that the future will be like the present…

What is the recipe for economic growth and development for a society or country? How do countries go from being poor to being rich? Is there a tried and tested formula to follow for a country like Nigeria so that we can save time and just hurry along to the desired destination

Reading a bit of Nigerian history recently, something struck me - much of what the country has lived through in the recent past looks a lot worse in retrospect.