okey ndibe

One of the burdens of being a longtime commentator on issues Nigeriana is that people frequently search me out, via email, text messages, and phone calls to ask questions about…

Everything in and about Nigeria is in a waiting pattern. Everybody, Nigerians and foreigners alike, are waiting on President Muhammadu Buhari. This pattern is a profoundly sobering lesson. It is…

Whether Americans or Africans, my friends reacted in much the same way when I disclosed I was headed for Hargeysa, the capital of Somaliland, to participate in an international book…

By many, if not most, accounts, President Muhammadu Buhari’s visit to the United States was a major personal triumph and represented a significant turn in Nigeria-US relations. President Barack Obama,…

I recall a testy exchange in 2009 at the Westin Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island between a ranking member of the Nigerian House of Representatives and a US-based, Nigerian-born attorney.…

Last week was a particularly dispiriting time for forlorn Nigerians who continue to look to their government to deliver them from their woes. One of the reasons Nigerians dumped former…

Last week, I suggested that President Muhammadu Buhari has squandered a full month of his presidential tenure doing little. Many readers understood the spirit of the piece, which is, quite…

President Muhammadu Buhari is dangerously close to leaving Nigerians disillusioned. Forget about his failure (as at this writing) to announce his cabinet, bad as it is. For me, the deeper…

One of the joys of being a columnist is to occasionally receive a remarkably cogent response to one of my pieces. Sometimes, the response comes from a reader who agrees…

President Muhammadu Buhari’s inauguration last week was a mixed bag. On the plus side, the president gave an inaugural speech that—despite a few wrinkles—was tailored for the occasion. The speech…

I don’t know what’s going through President-elect Muhammadu Buhari’s mind at the moment, but his job—daunting to begin with—just got tougher. Nigeria is beset by one of the worst fuel…

My column last week, titled “Corruption and Buhari’s Perfect Storm,” provoked vigorous debate on social media. In addition, I received numerous emails from readers who wished to weigh in on…

President-elect Muhammadu Buhari will inherit something of a perfect political storm when he takes office in a few weeks. He ran a well-orchestrated campaign as an outsider, an agent of…

One of the special joys of my time in the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts was taking a fiction workshop with Tamas Aczel. It was during the spring…

In May 2000, the British Broadcasting Corporation asked me to contribute an online opinion piece that would x-ray the prospects for socio-economic progress on the African continent. The BBC’s commission…

Muhammadu Buhari’s triumph over Goodluck Jonathan in the March 28, 2015 presidential election has unleashed a fever of hope in Nigeria. Everywhere I turn, I encounter among Nigerians the sense…