-By Abdul Mahmud Fresh political whispers drifting through news salons and media columns suggest that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is quietly weighing alternative running mates ahead of the 2027 presidential election. The names most frequently mentioned are not obscure. They are prominent northern Christian figures with national visibility and symbolic weight. Former Speaker of the … [Read more…]
-By Abdul Mahmud Dr. Bashir Kurfi, a former scholar in Public Administration at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and a man who refuses to bow to orthodoxy, recently observed that the southern elites should protest against the northern elites for bearing the cost of their irresponsibility. It is a bold assertion, persuasive precisely because it … [Read more…]
-By Abdul Mahmud This new year scarcely requires a seer to reveal its gravity. It stands as a decisive threshold for both Nigeria’s political class and the country itself. As the final full year before the 2027 general election, it unfolds within an atmosphere markedly defined not by open contestation but by cooptation, not by … [Read more…]
-By Abdul Mahmud The decision of the Adamawa State Governor, Rt. Hon Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri CON, to grant pardon to Sunday Jackson marks a moment of relief in a country weighed down by grief and exhaustion. The announcement, framed as part of the Christmas and New Year commemorations, carries moral weight far beyond seasonal goodwill. … [Read more…]
-By Abdul Mahmud Editor’s Note: Shortly after PACESETTER received this week’s column for publication yesterday, Sunday, December 21, 2025, the abducted students were released. We have gone ahead to publish this piece for historical and academic purposes. Four weeks ago, students of a Catholic school in Papiri in Niger State were seized along with their … [Read more…]
The photograph released by Amnesty International Nigeria of Mary Talmon, one of the women shot dead during a protest in Adamawa, confronts our country with a tragedy that demands collective introspection, if not accountability. The organisation posted her image on its X handle while calling for an impartial investigation into what it described as the … [Read more…]
-By Abdul Mahmud Nigeria has finally plunged into the depths of morass. Deep and troubling depths, difficult to climb out. The new list of ambassadorial nominees tells a familiar story. It is the story of a country that refuses to rise. A country that recycles its worst. A country that decorates failure and calls it … [Read more…]
-By Abdul Mahmud Contemporary Nigeria feels like a country pulling against itself. Every day brings shock and surprises. Every night brings deeper worries. The country moves, but it moves without directions. It is not collapse, yet it is not order. It is something in between. Something that drags Nigerians down and wears them out. It … [Read more…]
-By Abdul Mahmud Another week has opened in Nigeria with blood on the ground and fear in the air. The country wakes up each morning to new tragedies. Each day closes with fresh accounts of death, kidnappings, and retreats. Nigeria is living inside a vortex of violence. Nothing breaks it. Nothing interrupts it. The state … [Read more…]
There are times when ideas become prisons. When ideology blinds those who hold it. When conviction turns into a wall that shuts out reality. This is what has happened to some of the comrades on the Nigerian Left. They have chosen to see the world only through the prism of anti-imperialism. So much so that … [Read more…]
-By Abdul Mahmud Nigeria has finally plunged into the depths of morass. Deep and troubling depths, difficult to climb out. The new list of ambassadorial nominees tells a familiar story. It is the story of a country that refuses to rise. A country that recycles its worst. A country that decorates failure and calls it … [Read more…]
-By Abdul Mahmud There is a strange affliction that festers in our land. It is the compulsive habit of adorning the ordinary with grandiose labels, of dressing the barely local in the borrowed robes of the global and international. Here, words are stardust sprinkled on names, banners, and signboards to confer false importance. The humblest … [Read more…]