What You Do to the Dead, You Will Do to the Living: Still Disregarding Nigerian Bodies, Nearly a Decade On by Lawson Akhigbe
Remember Enya Egbe? The young medical student who fled his anatomy lab in tears after recognising the cadaver on the table as his friend Divine, bullet holes and all, the one they used to hit the clubs with? That 2017-ish horror story (the original piece landed amid the long shadow of such practices) was never just about one traumatised student or one unlucky night out. It was a mirror held up to a system that treats Nigerian bodies, living or dead, as disposable raw material. Fast-forward to 2026, and the reflection has barely fogged over. The disrespect remains the operating system.#culturalcritique — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #culturalcritique, aggregated by home.social.
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Why the Apostles of Awo Went to Dodan Barracks: A Case Study in Mistaking a Trojan Horse for a Taxi
Every faith has its parable of the believer who walks into the wrong building. For Awoism, a doctrine built on discipline, planning and a near-liturgical suspicion of the Nigerian military, the parable arrived in November 1993. General Sani Abacha forced Ernest Shonekan to resign on 17 November 1993 and took over as head of state, and within days the high priests of the progressive tradition were queuing for ministerial briefs. -
A Field Guide to Diplomatic Speak: A Translation Service for the Terminally Polite by Lawson Akhigbe
“Frank exchange of views” is the single most useful phrase in the diplomatic lexicon, precisely because everyone involved knows it is a lie and nobody involved will admit it. A former UK diplomat once put it plainly in a Language Log discussion: a frank exchange of views is just shouting. If the participants throw things at each other, it upgrades to a full and frank exchange of views. That is not satire. That is a professional’s working definition. -
Why thousands of West African children were privately fostered by white families By Wedaeli Chibelushi
From the 1950s to the 1970s, it was not at all uncommon for West African children and babies to be fostered via newspapers and childcare journals. The above advert was placed by a Nigerian mother looking for someone to care for her three-month-old. -
The Great Unchaining: How Gates, Jobs, and Musk Freed Us From Desks, Cameras, and Petrol While Leaving Us Philosophically Naked by Lawson Akhigbe
So far, so dazzling. We have been unchained from the desk, from the camera, from the petrol pump, and soon, apparently, from the steering wheel itself. Progress has been relentless, elegant, and profitable. -
66 Years After: Nigeria Still At The Crossroads by Leadership Newspapers Editorial
Nigeria turns 66 today, and the mood is not celebratory. Sixty-six years is long enough for a nation to have settled into itself. This one still feels suspended between promise and disappointment. -
NATIONS, TRIBES, AND THE GRAMMAR OF EMPIRE: On why the Scots get a parliament and the Yoruba get an anthropologist By Lawson Akhigbe
Scotland has a parliament, a flag, a football team that loses with tremendous dignity, and roughly the population of Lagos’s Ikeja Local Government Area. The Yoruba nation and I use the word advisedly has an empire’s worth of history, a written and oral constitutional tradition running from Ile-Ife through the Oyo Mesi and the Alaafin’s checks and balances, a diaspora spanning three continents, and something in the region of forty million native speakers. One of these is routinely described in the Financial Times as a nation debating its constitutional future. The other is routinely described, by the same publication, as a tribe engaged in an ethnic dispute. I invite the reader to spot the empirical difference. I have been looking for thirty years and have found only prejudice wearing a monocle. -
When Your Elected Officials Subcontract Their Jobs to Heaven by Lawson Akhigbe
When your elected officials subcontract their jobs to the celestial being, then you know you marked the wrong column -
The Monumental Ego: How Trump and Tinubu Turn Public Infrastructure Into Personal Billboards By Lawson Akhigbe
There was a time when nations had the decency to wait until a leader was safely six feet under or at the very least, out of office before plastering their name across state infrastructure. The unspoken rule of public memorials used to be simple: let history render its verdict first. If your legacy survived the passage of time without decaying into scandal, perhaps the state would name a secondary school or a modest bypass after you. -
Burnham’s Strategy: Manchesterism Meets the Politics of Looking Busy
Andy Burnham did not inherit a government so much as a stage set. After years of mayoral apprenticeship in Greater Manchester, he arrived in Downing Street with a ready-made philosophy called “Manchesterism” and a clear preference for the photographable over the structural. The high-street crackdown is not an aberration. It is the strategy in miniature. -
There are lies, damn lies, and then there is the eternal Home Office press release – updated for the age of Blue Labour, Tory one-upmanship and Reform UK’s five-year fantasy. By Lawson Akhigbe
Yet the political theatre continues as if the data never arrived. Immigration remains the ultimate litmus test, the issue on which every faction must prove its manhood by sounding harsher than the last. -
The Obituary of American Democracy Has Been Written So Many Times It Deserves Its Own Rest Home by Lawson Akhigbe
Every generation seems to produce its own undertakers, its own mourners and its own carefully worded obituary announcing that the republic is finally approaching the end. -
Same Shit, Different Hat: A Timeless Fashion Statement in Political Extremism by Lawson Akhigbe
Ah, the internet has done it again. While the rest of us are busy arguing over pineapple on pizza or whether socks with sandals constitute a war crime, some genius has distilled centuries of ideological garbage into one glorious, four-panel roast. Behold the meme that slaps you harder than your uncle at Thanksgiving: "Same Shit, Different Hat." -
The Curious Case of the Missing Shepherds by Lawson Akhigbe
There is a peculiar habit that appears with remarkable frequency in American and British political commentary. Whenever an issue is said to concern black communities, a familiar chorus emerges from television studios, newspaper columns and social media platforms.https://lawakhigbe.com/2026/09/11/the-curious-case-of-the-missing-shepherds-by-lawson-akhigbe/
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Austerity: Britain’s Longest-Running Political Fancy Dress by Lawson Akhigbe
There is an old British habit that refuses to die. When the public finances look awkward, someone reaches for the national costume box, pulls out the Union Jack, and declares that the only patriotic course is to ask the people with the least to tighten their belts a little more. The word of the hour is always “austerity.” The justification is always necessity. The result is almost always the same. -
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The Union Jack Won’t Fix Britain: Farage, Braverman and the Politics of National Nostalgia by Lawson Akhigbe
When a political movement cannot quite explain where Britain should go, it apparently finds comfort in explaining where Britain used to be. -
The Cane, the Conference, and the Curious Case of Self-Sabotage by Lawson Akhigbe
Behold the main character of British politics in 2026: a white, elderly gentleman, clearly leaning on a sturdy wooden cane for support, accredited badge swinging proudly from his neck at the Reform UK conference. Mouth open in mid-roar, eyes locked in righteous fury, he has somehow decided that the greatest threat to civilisation in that moment is a young woman holding a handbag. The crowd of fellow pensioners and patriots looks on with varying degrees of encouragement. Somewhere in the background, the usual sea of white hair and earnest lanyards nods along -
ANDY BURNHAM MUST GIVE BRITAIN AN IDEOLOGY, NOT ANOTHER MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT’S POWERPOINT by Lawson Akhigbe
There was something important about Andy Burnham's intervention at Prime Minister's Questions. Not simply because of what he said, but because of what it appeared to recognise: Britain has not merely been badly governed. Britain has been travelling in the wrong ideological direction for decades. -
The Ghost Who Keeps Signing by Lawson Akhigbe
The Land Use Act of 1978 vested radical title to land in the state governor. Customary authorities were meant to operate within that framework, not around it. Yet when the formal system becomes a source of frustration rather than facilitation, human ingenuity finds other routes. Enter the late Oba. His name carries historical weight. The palace, however, maintains no functional modern archive capable of systematic verification. Oral history is the dominant method, and most of the original participants are no longer available for cross-examination. The result is a paper trail that is difficult to audit and easy to exploit.https://lawakhigbe.com/2026/08/29/the-ghost-who-keeps-signing-by-lawson-akhigbe/
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Reform UK’s Brexit immigration impact
Reform UK’s perspective on Brexit and immigration is central to its identity: Brexit was meant to deliver control over borders and lower overall migration, but post-2016 (especially post-2021) governments primarily Conservative, failed to use that control effectively, leading to a non-EU migration surge that the party labels the “Boriswave.” Reform argues this undermined the Brexit promise, strained public services, housing, wages, and cultural cohesion, and necessitates far tougher policies.https://lawakhigbe.com/2026/08/28/reform-uks-brexit-immigration-impact/
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Reform UK and others – Immigration Policy Compared
Reform UK’s immigration policies stand out as the most restrictive among major UK parties, emphasizing a sharp reduction in both legal and illegal migration, prioritisation of British citizens, and radical enforcement measures. They position immigration as a core driver of housing shortages, NHS strain, wage suppression, cultural change, and public service overload.https://lawakhigbe.com/2026/08/28/reform-uk-and-others-immigration-policy-compared/
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The Marriage That Left No Paper Trail: On Proving Customary Law Marriage in Nigeria by Lawson Akhigbe
Nigerian law has always been more comfortable with paper than with people. A statutory marriage produces a certificate, a registrar, a stamp, a bureaucratic afterlife. A customary marriage produces witnesses, memory, and decades later, when the deceased’s estate is being carved up by relatives who suddenly remember every obligation of kinship a courtroom full of people arguing about who exactly was standing where when the kola nut was broken. -
Dissolution Of Customary Marriages
When a customary marriage is dissolved in Nigeria, the distribution of property and assets does not follow the same rules as a statutory (court) marriage. While statutory marriages are governed by Section 72 of the “Matrimonial Causes Act (MCA)” which grants judges wide discretion to divide matrimonial properties equitably, customary marriages are governed strictly by “Native Law and Custom”, subject to constitutional tests of fairness.https://lawakhigbe.com/2026/08/27/dissolution-of-customary-marriages/
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Uzochukwu v. Uzochukwu Traditional Vs Statutory Dissolution of Marriage by Lawson Akhigbe
In Nigeria’s plural legal system, a marriage is meant to be dissolved in accordance with the law under which it was celebrated. -
Anarchism in judicial robes, by Owei Lakemfa
My mind raced back to British jurist, Lord Denning who famously declared in 1964: “Justice has no place in darkness or secrecy. When a judge sits on a case, he himself is on trial… If he is suspicious, biased, or unfair, then the judge is the one who is condemned in the eyes of public opinion.” But these words of wisdom seem not to have any meaning to Justice Lifu, shockingly, a former lecturer of Public and International Law, University of Ibadan. For me, what was more distressing was that despite the uproar, Justice Lifu seemed oblivious of the damage he had done to the body polity, the judiciary and his thirty five years post-call to bar history.https://lawakhigbe.com/2026/08/26/anarchism-in-judicial-robes-by-owei-lakemfa/
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When the Family Becomes the Coroner: Has Nigeria Turned Cause of Death into a Matter of Opinion By Lawson Akhigbe
On 23 August, I wrote on this platform about the danger of treating the law as an optional accessory in suspicious deaths. I asked a simple question: when a Nigerian dies suddenly and in circumstances requiring investigation, who decides how that death occurred? The family, or the law? -
Born Free, Housed First: Reform UK and the Return of the Birth Certificate as Political Document by Lawson Akhigbe
Reform UK has now taken that quiet administrative habit and turned it into an actual policy platform, delivered at a press conference rather than buried in a PDF. Deputy leader Richard Tice has confirmed the party will prioritise British-born workers under 35 for social housing, alongside military veterans and married couples with children, should Reform enter government. The pitch comes wrapped in an infrastructure promise, 50,000 affordable homes a year, financed, the party insists, without new taxes or borrowing, which is the political equivalent of promising a birthday cake that requires no oven, no flour and no birthday. -
Uncounted in Life, Unrecorded in Death: Nigeria’s Costly Dignity Deficit By Lawson Akhigbe
here is an old, bitter administrative joke in Nigeria that you are only formally counted twice: never when you arrive, and certainly not when you leave. In between, your existence is largely an unverified rumor negotiated between your creator, your luck, and whatever age declaration affidavit you paid a court clerk two thousand Naira to stamp. -
When Laws Become Optional: Suspicious Deaths, Colonial Legacies, and the Dignity Deficit in Nigeria by Lawson Akhigbe
The difference between the United Kingdom and Nigeria is not primarily in the letter of the law. It is in the general application and consistent enforcement of that law. This divergence reveals a deeper reality about how the Nigerian state relates to its citizens. -
The Inquisitor’s Gavel: Oshiomhole, MOWAA, and the High Cost of Political Spite by Lawson Akhigbe
Central to the indictment was the breathless lamentation over the demolition of the old Benin Central Hospital. Listening to the rhetoric, one would assume the facility was a pristine sanctuary of modern medicine arbitrarily flattened to make way for art. -
On the Sartorial Decline of the Nigerian Political Class: Monday Okpebholo, Yekini Idiaye, and the Wardrobe of Impunity By Lawson Akhigbe
Governor Monday Okpebholo of Edo State is a man who, on the evidence of a recent photograph shaking hands with new Speaker of the Edo State House of Assembly Yekini Idiaye, appears to have mistaken the office of Chief Executive for a weekend errand run. A branded baseball cap. Clothing better suited to a beer parlour than a state formal meeting. Khaki trousers that suggest safari rather than sovereignty. This is not a man dressing down to meet the people. This is a man dressing as though the people are an inconvenience he is squeezing in between other appointments. -
Kemi Badenoch’s maiden speech in the Commons
I am also burdened by the weight of expectation. You see, Madam Deputy Speaker, Saffron Walden has not had a maiden speech since Rab Butler’s in 1929. He held three of the great offices of state, but I am most proud that, as a Conservative Minister, he introduced the Education Act 1944, which gave every British child a statutory right to free secondary education.https://lawakhigbe.com/2026/08/19/kemi-badenochs-maiden-speech-in-the-commons/
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The Invisible Invasion: Britain’s Immigration Panic and the Arithmetic It Cannot Face By Lawson Akhigbe
Black people account for roughly four percent of the population of England and Wales. More of them are in the EastEnders cast than are arriving on the asylum route in any given year. Yet Britain has contrived to make this the defining political question of the age. We should talk about that.