Mind, Body and Country by Njideka Maduka

Last Thursday, we had a conversation on Breakfast Diary with Dr. Paul Alaje, Chief Economist and Partner at SPM Professionals, and one thing he said has stayed with me since: fuel subsidy wasn't Nigeria's real problem, it was a symptom of a deeper one. We were reacting to President Tinubu's Independence Day speech, in which the President pointed to delayed subsidy removal and exchange rate unification as some of the difficult decisions that had held Nigeria back for years. Dr. Alaje pushed back on that framing. In his view, the deeper issue is low productivity, and until Nigeria fixes that, cheaper petrol or a stable exchange rate alone won't deliver the prosperity we're being promised.  He made a strong case for reliable electricity, good roads and rail infrastructure as the real foundations for growth, and he was just as firm about the need for Nigeria to earn more from outside oil. I've shared the excerpt above. If it gets you thinking the way it got me think...

By Njideka Maduka   P art of our radio conversation today was centred on what should be the focus of the campaign for the 2027 general election, particularly for the presidential candidates. As we know, the 2027 election campaign season started last Wednesday, August 19. My position was that, outside security, the economy should be our biggest focus as far as the 2027 election is concerned. Thankfully, the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, Atiku Abubakar, has already started that conversation. Now, what's Atiku bringing? Atiku has proposed a return to fuel subsidy. His proposal is to replace the old import-subsidy model with a targeted, capped and independently audited production subsidy for domestic refiners, with the stated aim of lowering petrol prices while encouraging local refining. He has said this would be on a temporary basis. It's not every day that a politician backtracks on an earlier position, especially on an important issue like this...

B y Njideka Maduka Broadcast Journalist I didn’t plan to write a memorandum on Nigeria’s National Policing Bill today. Honestly, I didn’t. A few weeks ago, during one of our paper review sessions on radio, my team and I discussed the proposed National Policing Bill and mentioned that the Presidential Working Group on the Bill, chaired by the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, had invited Nigerians to make submissions. We talked about it, as we have done with several issues surrounding the proposed reform of policing in Nigeria. But I did not immediately think, “I should write a memorandum.” Then this morning, August 13, 2026, I saw the story again in the newspapers. And there it was: 5 p.m. was the deadline for public submissions. While discussing the story on air, I suddenly said to myself: “I think I should contribute.” And that was how it started. After the programme, I began putting my thoughts together. Initially, I thought it would be straightforward. I would sim...

Mrs. Rachael Alamu recounts 56 days in captivity with her pupils.  By Njideka Maduka   There are interviews that report the news, and there are interviews that preserve history.  For 56 days, the forest became a classroom without walls, a shelter without a roof, and a prison without certainty. Mrs. Rachael Alamu, Principal of Community High School, Esiele, lived through that ordeal alongside her pupils after they were abducted in Oyo State by terrorists. In this interview granted few days after their rescue, she speaks with remarkable composure about fear, faith, survival, the resilience of the children, and the hope that kept them going. Among the many striking moments in the interview, one sentence captures the faith that sustained them through those difficult days: "We survived because we believed people were praying for us." Below is the interview transcript. REPORTER: Now you've taken us through some of your journey while you were in there. How was the exper...

By Njideka Maduka  The anyhowness is just too much. You need to see or hear it to believe it. Vanguard newspaper reported this morning that the All Progressives Congress (APC) has replaced 26 candidates who emerged from the party's recent primaries with other candidates. One of the biggest casualties is former Benue State Governor, Gabriel Suswam. According to the report, the development is linked to what it described as "the battle for the control of Benue State between the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator George Akume, and Governor Hyacinth Alia." So, Suswam was sacrificed to please Akume, a top APC leader told Vanguard. The report also suggested that part of the decision was aimed at returning greater control of the party structures in the states to the governors.  Recall that President Bola Tinubu had earlier given the governors of the APC in the different states power to be in charge of primaries in their respective states. Now, having conducted...

Making Sense of the News | Commentary  When a National Conversation Caught My Attention I never thought I would pen any thoughts on the controversy generated by First Lady Oluremi Tinubu's comments encouraging women to venture into businesses such as frying akara or making kuli-kuli. I even said as much during our radio programme yesterday morning. Partly because I never really had an opinion on the matter. I'm not entirely sure why. Either the topic didn't interest me enough, or perhaps I came into the debate rather late, after the conversation had already been shaped by different shades of opinion in the public space. Had I watched the original video before social media took over with its interpretations, I might have arrived at my own conclusions much earlier. But here I am, putting my thoughts together. Interestingly, what finally pushed me to write was a video I stumbled upon on Facebook after our programme. It echoed, in part, what I had already expressed on air ...