Category: Business Day

Algeria beat host Morocco 3-2 on penalties following a 1-1 draw in regulation time to lift the bronze medal and secure a first-ever TotalEnergies CAF Women’s Africa Cup of Nations podium finish in Rabat on Saturday night.

This was the second meeting between the two North African sides after Morocco’s narrow victory in the group stages of the competition.

The hosts started brightly and came close to opening the scoring in the 17th minute when Ibtissam Jraidi’s first-time effort struck the crossbar.

Morocco eventually found the breakthrough nine minutes later. Kautar Azraf showed impressive technique to eliminate her marker before using her left foot to find the far corner and put the hosts ahead.

Azraf almost doubled Morocco’s advantage soon afterwards with a volley, but the effort bounced awkwardly and lost direction before being cleared to safety.

Jraidi had another opportunity in the 63rd minute when she was sent through on goal, but failed to make a clean connection with her effort.

Algeria returned from the break better organized, probing the Moroccan defence and creating a series of opportunities.

In the 77th minute, a perfectly weighted ball found captain Marine Dafeur in a promising position, but she was unable to direct her effort towards goal.

Three minutes later, Lina Boussaha came close with a well-struck volley that sailed narrowly over the crossbar.

The pressure finally paid off in the 83rd minute after Melissa Bethi produced a brilliant through ball for Boussaha, who showed composure to tuck the ball past the goalkeeper and level the contest at 1-1.

Neither side could find a winner before the final whistle, sending the match to a penalty shootout.

The National Sugar Development Council (NSDC) is repositioning Nigeria’s sugar sector as one of the country’s most compelling industrial investment opportunities.

This, the NSDC said is anchored on a $1 billion EPC-plus-finance partnership with SINOMACH of China, a N10 billion Sugar Project Acceleration Fund established with the Bank of Industry (BoI), and a significantly strengthened accountability regime under the Backward Integration Programme (BIP).

Kamar Bakrin, executive secretary/CEO, National Sugar Development Council outlined the Council’s execution agenda when he received members of the Abuja Chapter of the Chartered Institute of Directors (CIoD) on a courtesy visit to the NSDC headquarters in Abuja on Thursday.

Nigeria consumes about 1.8 million metric tonnes of sugar annually, with an estimated $1billion flowing each year to foreign producers.

Bakrin said the Council views this not as a deficit to be lamented, but as a ready-made domestic market waiting to be recaptured by Nigerian producers – value that the Nigeria Sugar Master Plan (NSMP) 2.0 is designed to retain within the national economy in the form of jobs, rural incomes, foreign exchange savings and industrial capacity.

He noted that the sector’s historical challenge has never been an absence of policy, but the discipline of delivery – a challenge the Council is now confronting directly.

‘We don’t lack policy. What we have struggled with is world-class execution,’ Bakrin said, stressing that the gap is not a farming problem but a governance problem – and therefore one that serious, well-run institutions can fix.

He described NSMP 2.0 as an ‘acceleration mandate’: a deliberate compression of Nigeria’s path to self-sufficiency, targeting the delivery of about two million metric tonnes of locally produced sugar.

Bakrin said the Council’s ambition extends well beyond substituting imports. Sugarcane, he noted, is one of the most generous crops in existence – yielding sugar, ethanol, animal feed and electricity – and NSMP 2.0 is structured to capture that full value chain.

‘We have been blessed with a crop that is one of the most generous God has ever made. From sugarcane you can get sugar, you can get ethanol, you can get animal feed, you can produce power. Our job is to build a bio-industrial ecosystem around it – this is not just about producing a commodity,’ he said.

On enforcement, Bakrin said the Backward Integration Programme has been rebuilt around four principles – qualify, reward, verify and enforce – designed to give both government and investors confidence that quota privileges are matched by real production on the ground.

Companies seeking import quotas must now demonstrate genuine commitment to backward integration, while major refiners are required to provide audited production commitments tied to their quotas, with clear consequences for shortfalls. The Council is deploying satellite imagery alongside field inspections to independently verify activity at every site – replacing self-reporting with objective, data-driven oversight.

Bakrin said the Council’s diagnosis of the sector’s financing challenge is that capital is available – what has been missing is a pipeline of bankable projects capable of absorbing it. The Council’s response is to industrialise project preparation itself.

The N10 billion Sugar Project Acceleration Fund, established with the Bank of Industry, will finance feasibility studies and project preparation, converting greenfield sites into investment-ready packages. These packages will in turn feed the $1 billion EPC-plus-finance agreement signed with SINOMACH of China, which provides a ready channel for construction and financing once projects are prepared.

The Council is complementing this with structured engagement with Afreximbank and a partnership with the Nigeria Governors’ Forum to fast-track the development of sugar estates across the country.

Bakrin highlighted the Sugarcane Outgrower Development Programme (SODP) as a deliberate strategy to make smallholder farmers co-owners of the sector’s growth.

Under NSMP 2.0, every sugar estate is required to reserve land for outgrowers and to invest part of its capital in host communities – through social infrastructure, employment and physical infrastructure – making rural prosperity a design requirement of the programme rather than an afterthought.

Drawing on the Council’s recent engagements with Brazilian authorities and other leading sugar-producing nations, Bakrin said the defining lesson from Brazil’s success was institutional, not agronomic.

‘Brazil did not win by planting better cane. They won by building institutions that compounded productivity for years, for decades,’ he said.

The Council, he added, is applying that same discipline to itself – developing Standard Operating Procedures across all its critical supporting functions using Six Sigma methodology, one of the world’s most exacting process-improvement systems, to build standardised, repeatable and effective processes that will endure beyond the tenure of any individual, including the Chief Executive.

‘I hold a very strong conviction that the difference between the countries that industrialised and those that did not rarely has to do with the quality of their plants. It is the quality of their institutions,’ the Executive Secretary emphasised.

Bakrin invited the Chartered Institute of Directors to play an active role in the emerging sugar economy – strengthening board governance across sugar estates, mills and outgrower companies, and contributing to the policy dialogue and consistency needed to attract patient, long-term capital.

He assured the Institute that the Council’s doors remain open for partnership in support of national development.

Earlier, the leader of the CIoD delegation, Fatima Nana Mede, commended the Council’s leadership on the visible reforms it is spearheading in the sugar industry and the momentum toward self-sufficiency. She affirmed the Institute’s readiness to collaborate with the Council in all areas of mutual interest as part of its contribution to the advancement of the sector.

Somewhere in Johannesburg, Lagos, or Nairobi tonight, a graduate is folding a certificate into a drawer and walking out to sell recharge cards on the street. He did everything right. The system kept its promise to teach him. It broke its promise to employ him profitably. Multiply him by tens of millions, and you do not have a youth unemployment crisis. You have a curriculum catastrophe. Curriculum is a nation’s engine and its operating system at once – get the engine wrong, and the car never leaves the driveway; get the operating system wrong, and every application built on top of it – jobs, industries, GDP – crashes.

The China shockwave

Between 2021 and 2025, China’s Ministry of Education revoked 12,200 undergraduate programmes and introduced 10,200 new ones – over 30 per cent of the national curriculum rewritten in five years. Dead: arts, humanities, foreign languages, traditional management. Resurrected: artificial intelligence, embodied intelligence, robotics, semiconductors, and agricultural automation. Over that window, China’s economy grew from $14.7 trillion to $19.5 trillion. Africa, with a comparable population, moved from $2.7 trillion to $2.82 trillion – essentially standing still. The difference is not luck; it is curriculum, treated as economic infrastructure in one place and ceremonial tradition in the other.

South Africa’s youth unemployment hit 60.9 percent in early 2026. In Nigeria, over 80 per cent of ’employed’ graduates are trapped in low-productivity informal work no degree prepared them for. The jobs are not missing – the WEF projects 170 million new global roles by 2030, and Deloitte estimates the semiconductor industry alone needs over one million additional skilled workers by 2030. Our youth are not perishing for lack of jobs. They are perishing for lack of relevant skill.

The diaspora mirror

And lest anyone blame Africa’s economy alone, follow the graduate abroad. Land him in Toronto, London, or Houston – remove every excuse about local jobs – and the pattern repeats. Indian and Chinese graduates arrive in the same cities and, within a generation, are disproportionately the ones opening businesses: Indian Americans alone now own roughly 60% of the hotels in the United States, among the highest rates of business formation of any immigrant group in the West. African graduates, trained in the same universities the diaspora produces, too often arrive with degrees built for job-seeking, not wealth creation – and end up driving for Uber or staffing care homes, not owning the platforms or the facilities. This is not a verdict on the graduate’s ability. It is a verdict on what his curriculum trained him to become: an employee, not an owner. Twenty years in a classroom should not conclude with a steering wheel and a ride-share app. That is not a diaspora failure. It is a colonial curriculum, still teaching Africans to seek a master’s payroll instead of building their own.

The three-tier fix

Tier 1 – the technical core: AI, semiconductors, embedded systems, robotics, new materials, and biotechnology – the hard infrastructure of the coming economy.

Tier 2 – the human operating system: critical thinking, complex problem-solving, communication, creativity, collaboration, leadership, and entrepreneurship – mandatory for every student, every discipline.

Tier 3 – the Taipei model: academia must stop designing curricula in isolation. Taiwan builds courses the way Taipei Tech and TSMC build them – jointly, reviewed annually, with industry empowered to kill any course that has stopped producing value.

The call

To governments: stop funding the ceremony. Treat the curriculum as infrastructure. If a programme keeps producing unemployed graduates, revoke its accreditation. To universities: open your gates. Co-author your courses with industry every year, or keep training for an economy that no longer exists. And to parents, you are partially responsible for the depression most youths are suffering from today: Stop sending your children to study DEAD DEGREES!

The Phd reckoning

The reform must reach the summit of the academic pyramid, because the crisis is not only undergraduate – it is at its most absurd at the doctoral level. Africa is producing PhDs by the thousands, many parading titles that add zero value to society: theories defended before five examiners and then buried, never touching a farm, a factory, a hospital, or a policy desk. China does not confer its highest degree this way. No African university should either. From today, no doctoral topic should be approved unless it is bound, in writing, to producing or innovating something the nation can point to – a technology built, a yield increased, a disease addressed, a system fixed. A PhD must be a contract with the nation, not a private meditation rewarded with a title. If it cannot name what it produced, it should not be conferred.

WELCOME TO THE CHIP CIVILISATION

Every smartphone, every fighter jet, and every AI model runs on semiconductors – and Africa is absent from that table. New Horizons Africa Group is changing that. This academic season, we launch Africa’s first Semiconductor Knowledge Transfer Program, in direct partnership with Taiwan – the home of the modern chip, the birthplace of TSMC, and the island that turned technical education into a national security asset. African undergraduates will train in semiconductor design, engineering, and fabrication, with the opportunity of an internship inside a semiconductor factory in Taiwan, before they even graduate – taught by the ecosystem that actually builds the world’s chips. Not a theory of semiconductors. The thing itself, transferred directly from source to soil. The verdict has been written: Africa must kill the dead degrees, or the dead degrees will kill Africa.

We are pulling up a chair to the table – and bringing the tools to build at it.

PREPARING HUMANS FOR SPACE

One more frontier deserves the same honesty. Humanity is moving toward becoming a multi-planetary species – SpaceX alone has poured over a decade and tens of billions of dollars into that goal. Whether it arrives in one decade or three matters less than this: the skills for it – closed-loop life support, off-world energy, autonomous robotics – are being built right now, in curricula from Beijing to Austin. Not one African university has asked what it will take to keep a human alive on another world. A continent that cannot enter that conversation has already conceded the century before it begins. The hour is late. The inertia is unaffordable.

Universities are factories of human capital, and no sane factory manufactures without first securing a market. China builds its curriculum backward from the job – she treats curriculum as a means and employment as the end. Africa builds its curriculum forward from tradition and calls the certificate itself the end.

Or are you still wondering why Africa’s curriculum produces 60 percent youth unemployment?

Nigeria’s headline inflation rate eased slightly to 15.43 percent in July 2026, from 15.91 percent recorded in June, even as food inflation rose to 20.31 percent from 17.52 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) report has shown.

According to the report published on Monday, the July headline inflation rate was also lower than the 24.94 percent recorded in July 2025.

The Bureau attributed the rise in food inflation to changes in the average prices of crayfish, fresh pepper, fresh onions, fresh carrots, rice, water yam, fresh tomatoes, garri, plantain, beef, eggs, guinea corn, ginger and plantain flour, among others.

BusinessDay’s analysis of the report showed that food inflation on a year-on-year basis was highest in Adamawa at 51.36 percent, followed by Katsina at 30.84 percent and Zamfara at 30.65 percent. Borno, at -0.31 percent, Nasarawa at 6.88 percent and Kebbi at 12.50 percent recorded the slowest rises in food inflation.

On a month-on-month basis, July 2026 food inflation was highest in Adamawa at 17.02 percent, Lagos at 13.48 percent and Borno at 13.26 percent, while Jigawa at -3.60 percent, Kebbi at -3.67 percent and Bauchi at -1.85 percent recorded the lowest rates.

The NBS stated that the month-on-month headline inflation rate in July 2026 was 1.57 percent, representing a 0.09 percentage point decline from the 1.66 percent recorded in June.

At the divisional level, the three major contributors to headline inflation were food and non-alcoholic beverages, restaurants and accommodation services, and transport.

The least contributors were recreation, sport and culture; alcoholic beverages, tobacco and narcotics; and insurance and financial services.

Core inflation, which excludes the prices of volatile agricultural produce and energy, stood at 14.97 percent in July 2026 on a year-on-year basis.

On a month-on-month basis, core inflation was 0.15 percent in July 2026, down by 1.51 percentage points compared to June 2026.

On a year-on-year basis, the urban inflation rate in July 2026 was 16.12 percent. On a month-on-month basis, the urban inflation rate was 1.90 percent in July 2026, down by 0.23 percentage points from 2.13 percent recorded in June.

The rural inflation rate stood at 13.77 percent in July 2026 on a year-on-year basis. On a month-on-month basis, rural inflation rose to 0.78 percent, up by 0.25 percentage points from 0.52 percent in June.

The NBS report showed that the all-items inflation rate on a year-on-year basis was highest in Adamawa at 33.03 percent, Yobe at 25.21 percent and Anambra at 23.99 percent.

Nasarawa at 7.86 percent, Kebbi at 9.12 percent and Borno at 9.12 percent recorded the lowest increases in headline inflation on a year-on-year basis.

On a month-on-month basis, July 2026 recorded the highest headline inflation increases in Adamawa at 12.48 percent, Anambra at 9.95 percent and Delta at 9.54 percent.

Niger at -5.86 percent, Enugu at -5.71 percent and Kebbi at -4.89 percent recorded the lowest month-on-month inflation rates, according to the report.

There are moments in history when humanity develops a technology so powerful that the question is no longer simply what the technology can do, but what the technology may ultimately do to humanity itself.

The Industrial Revolution was one such moment. Artificial intelligence is undoubtedly another.

It is therefore highly significant that Pope Leo XIV has chosen artificial intelligence as the subject of his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. The document was signed on May 15, 2026, exactly 135 years after Pope Leo XIII issued his famous social encyclical Rerum Novarum, and was formally presented at the Vatican on May 25, 2026.

The symbolism is deliberate. In 1891, Pope Leo XIII confronted the social consequences of the Industrial Revolution: factories, mass urbanisation, poor working conditions, widening inequality and the growing power of industrial capital. In 2026, Pope Leo XIV argues that humanity faces another transformation of comparable magnitude, perhaps even greater, because artificial intelligence is already influencing decisions that affect economic activity, employment, communication, education, security and even warfare.

The Pope is not calling for humanity to reject artificial intelligence. Quite the contrary. His argument is more profound. Technology must remain the servant of humanity and must never become its master.

The central question raised by Magnifica Humanitas is not whether artificial intelligence is good or bad. It is unequivocal that AI is a tool in the hands of humans. Hence, on a personal note, I have always advocated Responsible Human In The Loop (RHITL).

The real question is, what kind of society will human beings build with it?

AI can diagnose diseases, detect fraud, predict equipment failure, accelerate scientific discovery, improve agricultural productivity, automate repetitive work, enhance financial inclusion and transform education.

But the same technology can also facilitate mass surveillance, manipulate elections, create deepfakes, automate discrimination, displace millions of workers, concentrate economic power and enable weapons systems capable of making life-and-death decisions at machine speed, scope and scale: what I usually refer to in my lectures and training sessions as the 3S of AI.

That is why Pope Leo XIV places human dignity at the centre of the AI debate. This clearly resonates with UNESCO’s AI Readiness Assessment Methodology framework and guidelines on the ethical and responsible use of AI.

His message can be reduced to one fundamental principle: human beings must never become mere inputs into an algorithm.

A human being is more than data. More than a credit score. More than a medical record. More than a consumer profile. More than a productivity statistic. More than a biometric identity. And certainly more than an algorithmic prediction.

The encyclical insists that every human person possesses an intrinsic dignity that cannot be measured by intelligence, economic productivity, social usefulness or technological efficiency.

That distinction could become one of the defining moral principles of the AI age.

Artificial Intelligence is not human intelligence

One of the greatest conceptual errors of our generation may be the assumption that because a machine can perform intellectual tasks better than humans, it therefore possesses something equivalent to human intelligence.

AI can calculate faster than us. It can remember more information than us. It can identify patterns hidden within billions of data points. It can analyse documents, generate computer code, compose music and imitate human conversation. But intelligence alone does not define humanity.

Humans possess conscience, empathy, compassion, moral responsibility, relationships, vulnerability, forgiveness, hope, faith and love.

Machines calculate probabilities. Human beings make moral judgements.

Machines optimise outcomes. Humans must decide which outcomes are worth pursuing.

Machines can learn from errors. Human beings can transform mistakes into repentance, wisdom, forgiveness and personal growth.

This distinction becomes particularly important as increasingly sophisticated AI systems are described using human language such as ‘reasoning’, ‘thinking’, ‘understanding’ and ‘agents’.

We must never confuse simulation of human intelligence with humanity itself.

The new concentration of power

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of Magnifica Humanitas is its recognition that artificial intelligence is creating unprecedented concentrations of power.

The world’s most advanced AI systems require enormous quantities of data, specialised semiconductor chips, electricity, data centres, highly trained researchers and huge amounts of capital.

Consequently, a relatively small number of technology companies possess capabilities that were once the exclusive domain of powerful states. In his January 2026 message for World Communications Day, Pope Leo XIV observed that behind the enormous invisible technological forces affecting modern communication lie only a handful of companies.

This should concern governments everywhere.

And Africa in particular.

If artificial intelligence becomes the principal infrastructure of the twenty-first-century economy, countries that do not possess their own AI capacity risk becoming permanently dependent upon foreign technology providers.

Africa must therefore think seriously about:

AI compute infrastructure

Data centres

Sovereign datasets

Large African language models

Cybersecurity infrastructure

AI research capabilities

Talent development

Reliable electricity

Cloud infrastructure

Otherwise, we may wake up one day to discover that the algorithms determining our financial systems, healthcare priorities, education, employment and security were developed thousands of kilometres away by people who may know little about African societies.

AI sovereignty should therefore become part of African economic sovereignty.

Who owns our data?

Data is the crude oil of artificial intelligence.

Without data, modern AI systems cannot learn.

Yet billions of human beings generate extraordinary volumes of data every day through mobile phones, bank transactions, social media, hospitals, schools, internet searches, transportation systems and government databases.

Who owns this data? Who profits from it?

Who determines how it is used?

These questions will become increasingly important.

The encyclical challenges the assumption that data produced through collective human activity should automatically become the commercial property of organisations capable of collecting it. It raises concerns about technological monopolies and the concentration of digital resources.

This has enormous implications for governments, corporations and individuals.

Your face is data. Your voice is data. Your medical history is data. Your purchasing habits are data. Your movements are data. Your financial behaviour is data. Even your relationships may become data.

The AI revolution will therefore require a new social contract concerning information.

The future of work

The workplace may be where artificial intelligence becomes most immediately disruptive.

AI will undoubtedly improve productivity. It will automate thousands of tasks. It will create entirely new industries.

But it will also eliminate certain categories of employment.

The mistake would be to frame this simply as an efficiency question. Corporate leaders cannot merely ask, ‘How many employees can AI replace?’

They must also ask:

‘What happens to those employees?’

‘What new skills will they require?’

‘What responsibilities does the corporation have toward workers whose jobs are transformed?’

‘What happens to society if technological productivity rises while employment opportunities decline?’

The Pope argues that technological development should enhance rather than diminish the dignity of work, and he warns against excessive surveillance and the reduction of workers to rigid machine-directed tasks.

For companies, this means that AI transformation must be accompanied by reskilling, retraining and workforce transition programmes.

Human capital must not become collateral damage in the race for automation.

AI governance is now a board responsibility

This is where the encyclical becomes particularly relevant to corporate Nigeria.

Artificial intelligence can no longer be treated merely as an information technology project. It is now a corporate governance issue.

Boards of Directors must understand the AI systems operating within their organisations. They should know:

What data is being used?

Where is that data stored?

Which AI models are being deployed?

Who supplied the models?

What decisions are being automated?

Are those systems explainable?

Could they discriminate?

Can humans override their decisions?

What cybersecurity vulnerabilities exist?

Who bears responsibility when something goes wrong?

The Pope’s message to an international conference on Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and Corporate Governance in June 2025 already emphasised the responsibility of business leaders to ensure that AI development respects human dignity and contributes to the common good.

Magnifica Humanitas develops this principle much further.

Boards cannot outsource responsibility for artificial intelligence to chief technology officers. Nor can management simply say, ‘The algorithm made the decision.’

Algorithms do not possess fiduciary duties.

Human beings do.

One of the great misconceptions about artificial intelligence is that computers are naturally objective. They are not.

AI systems learn from historical data. If historical data reflects social prejudice, discrimination or inequality, AI can reproduce those biases at an enormous scale.

Imagine an AI system determining:

who receives a bank loan;

who obtains insurance;

who qualifies for employment;

who receives medical treatment;

who receives a government benefit; or

even who becomes the subject of a security investigation.

If the system is biased, discrimination can become invisible because it appears to have been produced by mathematics rather than human judgement.

This is why high-impact AI decisions must retain meaningful human oversight.

Human-in-the-loop governance is not merely a technical safeguard. It is a moral requirement.

AI, deepfakes and the crisis of truth

Another profound and dangerous trend identified by Pope Leo XIV concerns truth itself.

Artificial intelligence can now generate photographs of events that never occurred, videos of people saying things they never said, voices belonging to people who never spoke, news reports describing events that never happened, academic papers written without research and entire online personalities that do not exist.

In his 2026 World Communications Day message, Pope Leo warned that systems capable of simulating human faces, voices, knowledge and relationships can penetrate deeply into the human information environment.

We are therefore entering a world where the problem may no longer simply be misinformation.

The greater danger may be universal distrust.

If citizens begin assuming that every photograph might be fake, every recording manipulated and every document fabricated, the foundations of democratic society become fragile.

Truth is therefore becoming an infrastructure that society must consciously protect.

Education must change

AI will fundamentally change education.

Already, students can generate essays, solve mathematics problems, write computer programmes, code and summarise textbooks within seconds.

Traditional educational systems built largely around memorisation and examination will increasingly struggle.

Pope Leo has acknowledged this challenge directly, noting in June 2026 that widespread AI use makes student assessment more difficult and requires educators to adapt creatively.

The future of education must therefore place greater emphasis on capabilities that machines cannot easily replace:

critical thinking, curiosity, judgement, creativity, character, collaboration, ethical reasoning and the ability to ask intelligent questions.

AI should make education better. It should not make thinking unnecessary.

AI and warfare

Perhaps nowhere is the moral challenge more frightening than warfare.

AI systems can identify targets, navigate drones, analyse battlefield intelligence and accelerate military decision-making.

Pope Leo XIV has repeatedly warned that artificial intelligence must never absolve human beings of responsibility for decisions, particularly in warfare. Speaking at Sapienza University in Rome shortly before issuing the encyclical, he warned that AI must not worsen the tragedy of conflicts or remove human responsibility from military choices.

The danger of autonomous weapons is obvious. If machines become capable of selecting and attacking human targets without meaningful human intervention, humanity crosses an extraordinary moral boundary.

Someone must remain responsible.

Someone must be capable of saying: No.

Africa cannot remain a spectator

For Africa, the implications of Magnifica Humanitas are particularly important.

AI presents extraordinary opportunities. It could help overcome shortages of doctors through diagnostic systems, improve agricultural yields, extend banking services, detect corruption, improve tax administration, enhance electricity-grid management, modernise public services, transform education and improve national security.

But Africa must avoid becoming merely the source of raw data and the consumer of foreign AI products.

The continent must participate in building the technologies shaping its future.

African governments should therefore begin treating AI infrastructure, compute capacity, cybersecurity, data governance and AI talent as national strategic assets.

Our universities must produce not only AI engineers but also philosophers, lawyers, economists, ethicists and public-policy experts capable of shaping the governance of intelligent machines.

These are some of the concerns that I, through GenAI Learning Concepts Ltd, have been drawing the attention of both the public and private sectors through my AI training, seminars and webinars.

AI must be human-centred

In May 2026, the Vatican also established an Inter-Dicasterial Commission on Artificial Intelligence, specifically recognising both AI’s extraordinary potential and its possible consequences for human dignity and integral development.

That action is important.

The Catholic Church is not standing outside the technological revolution condemning it.

It is entering the discussion.

The message is neither ‘Stop Artificial Intelligence’ nor

Nor: ‘Allow artificial intelligence to develop without restraint.’

It is something much wiser:

Develop AI, but keep humanity and human agency at the centre.

And perhaps that should become the governing philosophy of the AI age, in line with the UNESCO RAM on AI ethics.

Every bank deploying artificial intelligence should ask it.

Every government should ask it.

Every technology company should ask it.

Every university should ask it.

Every Board of Directors should ask it.

Every AI developer should ask it.

Not merely:

Can we build it?

But:

Should we build it?

Not merely:

Will it increase efficiency?

But:

Will it increase human flourishing?

Not merely:

Can machines perform this decision?

But:

Should human beings surrender this decision to machines?

Pope Leo XIV’s Magnifica Humanitas may eventually be remembered as one of the great social documents of the Artificial Intelligence era.

Just as Rerum Novarum helped the world think morally about industrial capitalism more than a century ago, Magnifica Humanitas challenges the twenty-first century to think morally about intelligent machines.

Artificial intelligence may become the most consequential technology mankind has ever created.

But no matter how intelligent our machines become, humanity must remain in command.

For ultimately, technological progress should never be measured simply by how powerful our machines become.

It should be measured by whether those machines help us create a world that is more just, more compassionate, more peaceful and, above all, more human.

The European Commission has approved pound 2.3 million in emergency humanitarian funding for Nigeria, Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR) and Chad to support efforts to contain an ongoing cholera outbreak across West and Central Africa.

The funding, announced on Monday, is aimed at strengthening outbreak response, improving access to essential healthcare, expanding water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions, and protecting communities considered most vulnerable to the disease.

The intervention follows growing concern over the spread of cholera across the African continent.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), more than 61,000 cholera cases were reported across the WHO African Region during the first five months of 2026.

Nigeria will receive the largest share of the European Union’s emergency allocation, with pound 1.5 million earmarked for the country’s response to the outbreak.

The funding will be used to increase the number of emergency intervention teams deployed to affected areas and provide essential medical supplies, including cholera treatment kits.

It will also support water, sanitation and hygiene measures, including the treatment of public water points and household water supplies, in an effort to reduce the risk of further transmission.

The EU said part of the Nigerian allocation would be used to intensify epidemiological surveillance, particularly in areas that are difficult to access, while strengthening case management, risk communication and community sensitisation.

According to the Commission, Cameroon will receive pound 100,000 to support efforts to contain the outbreak and improve the management of cholera cases in affected communities.

It noted that the funding will facilitate the deployment of additional staff for humanitarian partners working on the ground, provide essential medicines and support the establishment of additional cholera treatment units and oral rehydration points in some of the worst-affected villages.

‘The Central African Republic will receive pound 500,000, which will be used to scale up cholera case management and vaccination, alongside expanded water, sanitation and hygiene interventions.

‘The allocation will also strengthen risk communication and community engagement, surveillance and case detection, while supporting dignified and safe burials for victims of the disease.

‘In Chad, pound 200,000 will be deployed to help break the chain of cholera transmission by improving access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene facilities.

‘The funding will also support communities in surveillance activities and the management of suspected and confirmed cases’, the statement noted.

Hadja Lahbib, Commissioner for Preparedness and Crisis Management, said cholera remained a preventable and treatable disease but could become deadly when communities lacked access to safe water and healthcare.

‘Cholera is preventable and treatable. Yet it still threatens lives when people lack something as basic as safe water and healthcare,’ Lahbib said.

She said the new funding reflected Europe’s commitment to supporting vulnerable communities despite increasing humanitarian needs and declining resources.

‘At a time when humanitarian needs are growing and resources are shrinking, Europe is not looking away.

‘This emergency funding will help our partners act quickly, contain the outbreaks and protect the communities most at risk,’ she added.

Cholera is an acute diarrhoeal infection caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. It is transmitted primarily through the consumption of food or water contaminated with the bacteria, with transmission more likely in areas where access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene is inadequate.

While many infected people may experience mild or moderate symptoms, severe cases can result in rapid and significant loss of body fluids, leading to dehydration, shock and death if treatment is not provided promptly.

The EU said the risk posed by cholera is substantially lower in Europe, where the disease is not common, adding that the likelihood of transmission from imported cases remains low.

Aile Power is targeting Nigerian businesses with Panora Smart Wireless Camera, an AI-powered surveillance solution designed to provide security monitoring without the wiring and installation requirements associated with traditional CCTV systems.

Faith Jerry, Founder and CEO of Aile Power, said the product was developed with the everyday realities of Nigerian businesses in mind. ‘Many business owners want reliable security, but the cost, time and disruption of installing a full wired CCTV system hold them back. Panora was built to remove those barriers so that monitoring becomes something they can set up and manage themselves.’

The company is positioning the product as an option for small and medium-sized businesses that need to monitor offices, shops, warehouses, car parks and other business premises while keeping installation and maintenance requirements low.

Traditional CCTV systems often require wired cameras, cabling, a digital video recorder and professional installation. Once installed, moving cameras or expanding coverage can also require technical support and additional costs.

Panora uses a battery-powered camera that connects to Wi-Fi and allows users to access live footage, recorded clips and security alerts through the VicoHome Smart Home Camera application on iOS and Android devices.

The camera comes with a magnetic mount, allowing users to move it between locations without reinstalling fixed wiring. This can be useful for businesses with changing layouts, temporary locations or multiple areas that require monitoring.

The system also uses artificial intelligence to identify different types of activity. It can distinguish between people, vehicles and packages and send alerts when a relevant event is detected.

For a business monitoring a stockroom entrance after working hours, for example, the system can notify the owner when human activity is detected. Businesses with loading areas or car parks can also use vehicle detection to monitor activity around their premises.

This reduces the need to continuously watch recorded footage and allows business owners to focus on events that require attention.

Panora also includes two-way audio, allowing users to communicate with people near the camera through the application. A business owner away from the premises can therefore view activity and communicate with staff or visitors remotely.

The wireless design is also intended to reduce the work involved in installing surveillance equipment. Unlike wired systems that require cables to connect cameras to recording equipment, Panora can be positioned without fixed camera wiring.

The camera has an IP67 rating for protection against dust and water, allowing it to be used in outdoor areas such as building entrances, business perimeters and car parks.

Remote access through the VicoHome application also allows users to monitor their premises from outside the business location, providing access to live footage and alerts through an internet connection.

Aile Power is positioning Panora as part of its wider effort to expand access to AI-powered smart technology in Nigeria. The company is targeting a market that includes businesses looking for security systems that can be installed without major infrastructure work.

For small and medium-sized enterprises, the cost of installing, maintaining and modifying traditional surveillance systems can influence decisions about security coverage. Panora’s wireless design addresses the installation requirement while its AI features are intended to reduce the amount of footage users need to review.

The product gives businesses another option for physical security, combining wireless installation, remote monitoring, activity detection and two-way communication in one system.

As Nigerian businesses continue to review their security needs, Aile Power is seeking to position Panora as an alternative for companies that want surveillance coverage without the fixed infrastructure associated with conventional CCTV.

There is something we often miss when we talk about economic confidence. We tend to look first at inflation, exchange rates, foreign reserves, GDP growth, and investment flows. And rightly so. These indicators tell us something important about the health of an economy.

Extract:

‘People don’t experience policies as press releases. They experience them at petrol stations, markets, workplaces, banks, hospitals, schools and on the roads.’

But confidence is not built by numbers alone. It is also shaped by what people believe those numbers mean, and, perhaps more importantly, whether they believe what their leaders are telling them about the road ahead. This is where leadership communication becomes more than public relations.

When a government announces a major economic reform, citizens do not hear the announcement in isolation. Businesses interpret it through the cost of doing business. Investors interpret it through risk. Households interpret it through the price of food, transport and electricity. Young people interpret it through a more personal question: Will my future be better than my present?

The words may be the same. The experience is not. Nigeria’s recent economic reform journey offers a useful case study. Over the past three years, the country has undertaken significant reforms, including the removal of fuel subsidies, changes to the foreign-exchange regime and tighter monetary and fiscal policies. The International Monetary Fund says these reforms have improved macroeconomic stability, rebuilt external buffers and strengthened resilience. Investor confidence has also improved.

Those are important gains. But there is another side to the story. The same IMF assessment notes that conditions remain difficult for many Nigerians, with poverty, food insecurity and higher living costs continuing to weigh heavily on households.

So which story should Nigerians believe? The answer is: both can be true. An economy can become more stable at the macroeconomic level while households continue to struggle at the microeconomic level. And this is precisely where leadership communication is tested.

When the policy is right but the message falls short: Consider fuel subsidy reform.

There was a strong economic argument for ending a costly subsidy system. The World Bank has argued that subsidy reform could create fiscal space for development spending, while also stressing the need to protect vulnerable households from the immediate effects of higher fuel prices.

The policy rationale may therefore be clear. The communication challenge is harder. For government, the message may be about fiscal sustainability. For a commuter, it may be the cost of getting to work. For a small business owner, it may be transportation, energy costs, and the price of keeping the doors open. For a parent, it may simply be whether the monthly income can still cover food and school expenses.

This is why economic communication cannot stop at explaining why a reform is necessary. Leadership must also explain what happens next. What will improve? When? Who will be protected? What sacrifices are temporary? What should citizens watch for? These are not merely public-relations questions. They are questions of credibility.

The problem with announcing the destination without explaining the journey: The same principle applies to tax reform.

Government may say: ‘We need a stronger revenue base.’

A business may hear: ‘My operating costs may increase.’

A citizen may ask: ‘What will I get in return?’

That last question matters. People are generally more willing to accept difficult reforms when they understand the destination and can see evidence that the journey is being managed fairly. People don’t experience policies as press releases. They experience them at petrol stations, markets, workplaces, banks, hospitals, schools and on the roads.

That gap between the policy narrative and the lived narrative can become a serious credibility problem.

Investor confidence is not the same as citizen confidence: Perhaps the more interesting question for Nigeria is whether investor confidence and citizen confidence can move in different directions. The evidence suggests they can.

An international investor may be encouraged by stronger reserves, improved foreign-exchange market functioning and fiscal reforms. A Nigerian household may be asking a different question:

‘Can I afford my life?’ Both perspectives matter. A government that communicates only to investors risks losing citizens. A government that communicates only to citizens risks failing to reassure the markets that provide capital. Good economic leadership therefore requires something more sophisticated: a narrative that connects macroeconomic reform to everyday economic reality.

People need to understand not only that the economy is improving, but how that improvement will eventually reach them.

Words must meet evidence: This is where leadership communication deserves a rethink. The problem is not necessarily that governments communicate too much. Often, they communicate too little about the things people actually want to understand.

There is a tendency to announce achievements rather than explain trade-offs; to celebrate milestones rather than acknowledge uncertainty; and to present reforms as destinations rather than journeys. But credibility is rarely built by pretending that difficult things are easy.

A leader who says, ‘This reform will be painful. Here is why we are doing it, here is who will bear the greatest burden, here is how we intend to protect them, and here is how you can hold us accountable,’ may ultimately build more trust than one who promises that everything will quickly become better.

Honesty does not weaken economic communication. It can strengthen it. Communication should not be the final stage of policymaking. It should be part of policymaking.

What should leaders do differently? First, communicate the trade-offs, not just the benefits. Every serious economic reform has winners, losers, costs, and uncertainties. Saying so does not make leadership weaker. It makes the communication more credible.

Second, connect national indicators to household realities. If inflation is falling, explain what that should mean for businesses and households. If investment is rising, explain how that translates into jobs, productivity and opportunity. Third, make timelines part of the message.

People can tolerate uncertainty better when they understand what is known, what is not known and when the next review will happen.

Finally, listen. Communication is not simply the transmission of information from government to citizens. It is a feedback system. The strongest leaders do not only speak. They pay attention to what comes back.

The narrative test: Nigeria does not lack economic announcements. What we need is greater confidence that announcements, policies and lived experiences are telling the same story. That is the real test of leadership communication. Not whether a speech sounds reassuring. Not whether a headline is positive.

Not whether a press statement is beautifully written. But whether, over time, the evidence catches up with the promise. Economic confidence is ultimately an act of belief.

Investors must believe the rules will hold. Businesses must believe they can plan. Citizens must believe that sacrifice has a purpose. And young people must believe that the future their leaders describe is one they have a realistic chance of participating in.

Leadership therefore has a responsibility that goes beyond managing perception. It must manage expectations honestly, explain difficult choices clearly, and build a credible bridge between today’s sacrifice and tomorrow’s promise.

Because when leadership speaks, people are not merely listening to the words. They are listening for a reason to believe. And that is where the narrative truly matters.

As Nigerian households increasingly embrace technology to simplify everyday living, laundry care is evolving beyond a routine household chore into a smarter, more efficient home experience.

From busy professionals navigating demanding schedules to growing families seeking greater convenience, consumers are looking for washing solutions that save time, reduce effort, and deliver better care for their clothes.

While TwinTub washing machines remain a familiar feature in many Nigerian homes because of their affordability and practicality, consumer expectations are changing. Increasing awareness of convenience, hygiene, fabric care, and energy efficiency is driving interest in solutions that offer more than basic washing performance. Today’s consumers are seeking appliances that simplify household routines while supporting a more modern lifestyle.

Responding to these changing needs, LG Electronics offers a portfolio of TwinTub, Top Load, and Front Load washing machines designed to suit different household requirements. Developed with advanced washing technologies, the range delivers powerful cleaning performance while helping users improve efficiency, protect fabrics, and enjoy greater convenience in their daily lives.

For consumers considering an upgrade from traditional laundry methods, LG Top Load washing machines are designed to handle the demands of modern households, offering larger load handling, intuitive controls, and efficient washing performance that simplify everyday laundry care.

At the premium end of the range, LG Front Load washing machines deliver advanced laundry care through enhanced washing performance, improved water and energy efficiency, and superior fabric protection. Their intelligent washing systems are designed to provide thorough cleaning while helping garments maintain their quality over time, making them an increasingly attractive option for consumers seeking long-term value and convenience.

Oktae Kim, general manager, Home Appliances Solutions, LG Electronics West Africa, modern laundry solutions should do more than simply wash clothes. They should help families reclaim valuable time and make everyday life easier.

‘Modern families are looking for solutions that help them spend less time on household chores and more time on the moments that matter most,’ he said.

Kim further said: ‘At LG, our approach to laundry innovation combines advanced technology with consumer education and community engagement. Through our Free Laundry Centres, our partnership with Aspira Nigeria Limited, makers of VIVA-Matic Detergent, and the LG Laundry Masterclass organised in collaboration with Clean Ace Dry Cleaners, we are helping consumers make informed decisions about garment care while enjoying a more convenient laundry experience. These initiatives reflect our commitment to making laundry easier, more efficient, and more rewarding for Nigerian households.’

Beyond convenience, hygiene has become an increasingly important consideration for many consumers. Families are paying closer attention to how effectively their clothes and household fabrics are cleaned, particularly as awareness around health and wellness continues to grow. This has increased demand for washing solutions that deliver deeper cleaning performance while supporting proper fabric care.

As smart living continues to shape purchasing decisions across Nigeria, household appliances are increasingly being evaluated based on their ability to combine performance, efficiency, and convenience. Features that support improved hygiene, fabric care, and resource management are becoming important considerations for consumers seeking practical solutions for modern living.

Against this backdrop, consumer education and access to innovative technologies are playing an important role in shaping the future of laundry care. Through its range of washing solutions and consumer-focused initiatives, LG is helping Nigerian households embrace smarter approaches to laundry while supporting greater convenience, efficiency, and confidence in garment care.

Transforming Nigeria’s Socio-Economic Development arrives at a critical juncture in the nation’s history and has been widely recognised as a work of considerable intellectual weight and practical relevance. The book’s launch in Lagos drew an impressive gathering of diplomats, legal luminaries, academics, and industry leaders. Major General Ike Nwachukwu (rtd), former Minister of Foreign Affairs, delivered the keynote address, described the volume as ‘reference material for policymakers,’ and committed to supplying copies to military libraries and other national institutions. Former Minister of External Affairs, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, hailed Ojumu’s ‘extraordinary intellectual bandwidth’ and marvelled at the rare feat of presenting three comprehensive volumes simultaneously.

Professor Eghosa Osaghae, Director-General of the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), characterised the work as ‘a masterclass in public intellectualism.’ He commended Ojumu’s ‘fearless, passionate, and blunt writing style’ and noted that the author confronts difficult modern realities with unflinching honesty. Most significantly, Osaghae observed that Ojumu is ‘not just a jack of all trades; he is also a master of all trades,’ writing with ‘the authority of the master.’

The book’s scope is ambitious. Across three volumes, Ojumu addresses corporate governance, jurisprudence, foreign policy, and autobiography, handling each subject with remarkable dexterity. Transforming Nigeria’s Socio-Economic Development does not confine itself to narrow economic prescriptions; it situates policy within a broader legal, historical, and geopolitical framework. The volume comprises 39 essays: Part One (National Development) contains 30 chapters, while Part Two focuses on economics in nine chapters.

Synopsis

The book is a collection of policy essays addressing Nigeria’s persistent socio-economic constraints-over-reliance on oil, weak institutions, infrastructure deficits, human-capital gaps, governance shortfalls, and the need for structural transformation. Consistent with Ojumu’s established approach, it adopts a pragmatic, interdisciplinary lens that links economics, law, governance, leadership, and technology. The themes echo those in his prior work and columns: the limits of ‘trickle-down’ approaches, the role of public-private partnerships, digital inclusion, sectoral contributions to GDP (including insurance and related areas), corporate and public-sector accountability, meritocracy versus partisanship in statecraft, and concrete options for diversification, revenue mobilisation, and inclusive growth.

The author presents jurisprudence and sound policy design as practical tools for development, not as abstract exercises, offering actionable perspectives for executives, legislators, the judiciary, and private-sector leaders. The volume forms part of a broader intellectual project that provides strategic blueprints for navigating national and global complexities, with Nigeria-Africa’s most populous country and a major economy-as the central case study.

Review: The Case for State Police

The challenge of topicality undergirds this book’s decision to include three essays on state police: ‘State Police: Upending the Tyranny of Inertia,’ ‘State Police in Nigeria? Now,’ and ‘State Police in Nigeria: Dispelling the Paranoia.’ These essays become central to the volume’s policy force. As this review is written, the Presidential Working Group on the National Policing Bill has announced an extension of the deadline for submission of memoranda and position papers to 21 August 2026-underscoring the continuing national relevance of the debate.

Ojumu’s three essays strongly advocate decentralising policing in Nigeria through the establishment of state police as a necessary reform to address systemic insecurity, overcome institutional inertia, and improve effectiveness within the federal system.

Core Theses

Insecurity, Ojumu argues, has rendered the unitary Nigeria Police Force (NPF) model unsustainable. Section 214 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) creates a monopoly: ‘there shall be a police force for Nigeria… and… no other police force shall be established.’ He regards this provision as unfit for purpose amid terrorism, mass kidnappings, and related threats. Concrete 2024 incidents-killings of Civilian JTF personnel in Maiduguri, a lecturer in Ogun State, army officers in Delta, school abductions in Sokoto and Kaduna, and attacks on police stations-are cited alongside broader data on terrorism-linked kidnappings and large ransom payments. The argument is straightforward: repeating the same centralised command-and-control structure while expecting different results is irrational.

‘State Police in Nigeria? Now!’ calls for immediate legislative action rather than further delay. The scale and complexity of the threats are framed as existential; continuing the status quo is described as retrogressive. Devolution is presented as bringing policing closer to communities, thereby improving local intelligence and responsiveness, while federal agencies (the Armed Forces, DSS, EFCC, Customs, Immigration, NSCDC, and others) continue to play collaborative roles. No claim is made that state police is a panacea.

‘State Police: Upending the Tyranny of Inertia’ targets the political and institutional resistance that has preserved the post-1966 centralised model despite earlier regional and local policing experience after independence. The ‘tyranny of inertia’ framing treats defence of the status quo as a barrier that must be overcome through political will, constitutional amendment (removing police from the Exclusive Legislative List), recruitment and training scale-up, and appropriate incentives. Historical maturity is asserted: independence in 1960, prior devolved policing until 1966, decades of civilian rule interspersed with military periods, and survival of the civil war.

‘State Police in Nigeria: Dispelling the Paranoia’ systematically rebuts three principal objections:

1. Immaturity. Nigeria is not a ‘nanny-state.’ It has operated democratic institutions for substantial periods and previously ran a more decentralised policing model.

2. Governor abuse / ‘demigod’ risk. Governors do not have absolute power. Constitutional checks exist (impeachment under sections 143 and 188, with historical precedents such as Balarabe Musa, Alamieyeseigha, and Nyako). The current unitary model is imperfect, as cases of corruption and misconduct demonstrate. Safeguards and oversight can be designed.

3. Funding. Many states face fiscal pressure, but this is treated as a solvable design issue rather than a fatal flaw-through optimising internally generated revenue, public-private partnerships and security trust funds, and technology. Lagos is cited as an exemplar of PPP and technology-enabled approaches. Artificial intelligence, robotics, and modern tools are proposed to improve efficiency.

Ojumu offers comparative evidence: the United States-the source of Nigeria’s presidential system-operates multi-tier policing, and other federations succeed with devolution. He presents crime-index data (World Population Review 2024 figures cited for Australia ˜46.7, UK ˜46.9, USA ˜49.2 versus Nigeria ˜65.8) to suggest that the centralised model underperforms relative to decentralised peers. The recommendation is pragmatic legislative action by the National Assembly, together with improvements in recruitment, training, incentives, and retention.

Critical Interrogation

Strengths of the thesis. The security diagnosis is empirically grounded in well-documented patterns of kidnapping, banditry, and terrorism that a single national force of limited effective frontline strength (relative to population) has struggled to contain. Local knowledge and faster response times are standard advantages claimed for subnational policing in federal systems. Nigeria’s size, diversity, and existing informal state-backed outfits (for example, Amotekun and various vigilante or community formations) already demonstrate de facto decentralisation in a legal grey zone. The inertia critique correctly identifies decades of constitutional and political blockage. Checks-and-balances arguments and the Lagos funding and technology example reasonably counter absolutist fears. Framing reform as complementary rather than zero-sum with federal agencies is realistic.

Weaknesses and open questions.

Abuse and politicisation risks remain significant. Historical regional police forces in the First Republic acquired partisan reputations. Even with formal impeachment powers and proposed commissions or oversight bodies, weak institutions, elite capture, and electoral incentives could lead to selective enforcement, harassment of opponents, or ethnic bias. Designing robust, independent mechanisms for appointment, discipline, and inter-force coordination is harder in practice than on paper; recent national debates (2025-2026 constitutional amendment efforts) repeatedly return to precisely these safeguard questions.

Funding and capacity are not merely ‘red herrings.’ Many states already struggle with salaries, pensions, and basic services. Scaling professional forces requires sustained revenue, training infrastructure, equipment, and cultural change. Technology and public-private partnerships help but do not automatically resolve fiscal federalism or human-capital gaps. Crime-rate comparisons, while directionally useful, are imperfect owing to differing reporting standards, socioeconomic confounders, and definitions of ‘crime.’

Implementation sequencing and transition costs. Creating dual or multi-tier structures raises risks of command conflicts, intelligence-sharing failures, duplication, and potential gaps during transition. The essays prioritise the case for change over detailed operational blueprints.

Root causes beyond architecture. Insecurity is also driven by poverty, youth unemployment, governance failures, arms proliferation, and justice-system weaknesses. Policing reform is necessary but insufficient without parallel economic and social measures.

Evidence base. The essays rely on recent incident lists, secondary intelligence estimates, and selective international indices. Stronger longitudinal evaluation of what has worked (or failed) in Nigerian state-level security initiatives would strengthen the causal claim that formal state police will deliver better outcomes.

Overall Assessment

Ojumu’s theses correctly identify the unitary model’s performance shortfalls and the costs of prolonged inertia, and they offer coherent rebuttals to the most common objections. The urgency and ‘dispel the paranoia’ framings are rhetorically effective and align with recent constitutional and policy movements towards dual federal-state structures. However, the arguments under-specify the institutional design details required to minimise politicisation and to ensure sustainable financing and professional standards. Success depends less on the abstract principle of devolution than on the quality of the enabling laws, oversight bodies, inter-agency protocols, recruitment and vetting, and complementary governance reforms. The essays make a strong case that the status quo is untenable; they leave the harder engineering of a workable dual system for subsequent work.

The many essays in the book offer various lenses for the policy buff. Standout essays include ‘NYSC’s Relevance and Heightened Insecurity in Nigeria’, ‘Recalibrating Nigeria’s Education Policy for the 21st Century’ and ‘Strategic Options for Nigeria’s Nuclear Development’.

Overall, the book continues Ojumu’s contribution as a bridge between legal-professional insight and development discourse, offering policymakers and informed readers a coherent set of perspectives on transforming Nigeria’s socio-economic trajectory.