Author: Kehinde Bamigbetan
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Local Government Is Not Small Government — It Is the Whole Government, Up Close
Nigeria is fond of hierarchies. We speak of the Federal Government as the “top”, the state as the “middle”, the local government as the “bottom”. This vocabulary is not just inaccurate — it is actively harmful. It has convinced two generations of our brightest citizens that the local government is where careers go to die.…
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Why Every Cabinet Needs at Least One Journalist in the Room
When I was appointed Commissioner for Information and Strategy in Lagos State, one of my quieter contributions to cabinet deliberations was to ask, at seemingly random moments, a single question: “How will this look on the front page of PUNCH tomorrow?” At first, some of my colleagues found the question annoying. By the end of…
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A Letter to the Young Journalist
Dear Adaeze, Congratulations on the byline. I remember mine — a short piece for Broad Street Ventures in 1988, buried on page seven, about a labour dispute at a printing press in Yaba. Nobody read it. I read it fourteen times. You asked me, in your careful email, what I wish I had known when…
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Ile-Ife at Dusk: On Being a Son of the Cradle
There is a way the light falls on the Ooni’s palace in the late afternoon — a slanted, honey-coloured light that seems to remember older centuries — that I have never seen replicated anywhere else in the world. I grew up in that light. It is the light I carry with me into every editorial…
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The Solid Minerals Question: Why Nigeria’s Next Boom Will Not Be Crude
Nigeria’s economic history is a study in dependency. From groundnut pyramids to cocoa hills to crude oil terminals, we have built our fortunes on a single commodity at a time — and watched each empire collapse when the global price turned. The Honourable Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dr. Dele Alake, is quietly assembling a…
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The Newsroom Is Not Dying — It Is Being Rebuilt in the Suburbs
There is a myth, popular in the marbled offices of Ikoyi and Victoria Island, that Nigerian journalism is dying. I want to submit, respectfully, that Nigerian journalism is not dying. Lagos elite journalism is contracting. Abuja beltway journalism is calcifying. But in the alleys of Ejigbo, in the fabric stalls of Isolo, in the mechanic…
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Syndicalism at the Grassroots: How 21 Trade Associations Rewrote Ejigbo
The Professionals and Marketers Association (PMA) was not born in a boardroom. It was born in the back of a bricklayer’s shed on Isolo Road, over roasted plantain and a shared frustration: everyone in Ejigbo was paying the local government, but nobody in Ejigbo was talking to the local government. I had returned from my…
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Beyond the Briefing Room: What I Learned Serving Two Governors
When Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu first summoned me to Alausa in 2003, I arrived with the confidence of a journalist who had covered governance for over a decade. I had, by then, been Sub-Editor at The Guardian, Deputy News Editor at Vanguard, and Group Political Editor at Concord Press. I had interviewed presidents, dissected budgets,…
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Welcome to My Notebook
For most of my working life, I have carried a small notebook. Not the one my editors saw. Not the one that produced the byline. The other one — the private one — into which I copied the details that did not fit the story: the way a widow’s hand shook when she signed the…