#diligence — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #diligence, aggregated by home.social.
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How the Political Right Plans to Square the Circle at Charing Cross Hospital (Spoiler: They Don’t) by Lawson Akhigbe
Charing Cross Hospital sits in that peculiar West London sweet spot where the average house price has long since waved goodbye to the million-pound mark and is now busy collecting gold medals in the “how high can we go” Olympics. The surrounding streets are a parade of desirable postcodes, glossy estate agent boards, and the quiet confidence of people who regard a £1.2 million two-bed as a “starter home” if you squint hard enough and ignore the service charge. -
How the Political Right Plans to Square the Circle at Charing Cross Hospital (Spoiler: They Don’t) by Lawson Akhigbe
Charing Cross Hospital sits in that peculiar West London sweet spot where the average house price has long since waved goodbye to the million-pound mark and is now busy collecting gold medals in the “how high can we go” Olympics. The surrounding streets are a parade of desirable postcodes, glossy estate agent boards, and the quiet confidence of people who regard a £1.2 million two-bed as a “starter home” if you squint hard enough and ignore the service charge. -
How the Political Right Plans to Square the Circle at Charing Cross Hospital (Spoiler: They Don’t) by Lawson Akhigbe
Charing Cross Hospital sits in that peculiar West London sweet spot where the average house price has long since waved goodbye to the million-pound mark and is now busy collecting gold medals in the “how high can we go” Olympics. The surrounding streets are a parade of desirable postcodes, glossy estate agent boards, and the quiet confidence of people who regard a £1.2 million two-bed as a “starter home” if you squint hard enough and ignore the service charge. -
How the Political Right Plans to Square the Circle at Charing Cross Hospital (Spoiler: They Don’t) by Lawson Akhigbe
Charing Cross Hospital sits in that peculiar West London sweet spot where the average house price has long since waved goodbye to the million-pound mark and is now busy collecting gold medals in the “how high can we go” Olympics. The surrounding streets are a parade of desirable postcodes, glossy estate agent boards, and the quiet confidence of people who regard a £1.2 million two-bed as a “starter home” if you squint hard enough and ignore the service charge. -
How the Political Right Plans to Square the Circle at Charing Cross Hospital (Spoiler: They Don’t) by Lawson Akhigbe
Charing Cross Hospital sits in that peculiar West London sweet spot where the average house price has long since waved goodbye to the million-pound mark and is now busy collecting gold medals in the “how high can we go” Olympics. The surrounding streets are a parade of desirable postcodes, glossy estate agent boards, and the quiet confidence of people who regard a £1.2 million two-bed as a “starter home” if you squint hard enough and ignore the service charge. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
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. -
When “National Security” Becomes a Weapon Against Social Security by Lawson Akhigbe
There is an old British political habit which deserves rather more scrutiny than it usually receives: when governments want the public to accept an uncomfortable policy, they wrap it in the Union Jack and call it national security. -
When “National Security” Becomes a Weapon Against Social Security by Lawson Akhigbe
There is an old British political habit which deserves rather more scrutiny than it usually receives: when governments want the public to accept an uncomfortable policy, they wrap it in the Union Jack and call it national security. -
When “National Security” Becomes a Weapon Against Social Security by Lawson Akhigbe
There is an old British political habit which deserves rather more scrutiny than it usually receives: when governments want the public to accept an uncomfortable policy, they wrap it in the Union Jack and call it national security. -
When “National Security” Becomes a Weapon Against Social Security by Lawson Akhigbe
There is an old British political habit which deserves rather more scrutiny than it usually receives: when governments want the public to accept an uncomfortable policy, they wrap it in the Union Jack and call it national security. -
When “National Security” Becomes a Weapon Against Social Security by Lawson Akhigbe
There is an old British political habit which deserves rather more scrutiny than it usually receives: when governments want the public to accept an uncomfortable policy, they wrap it in the Union Jack and call it national security. -
Is David Cameron the Worst Thing to Happen to Modern Britain? By Lawson Akhigbe
Some political leaders leave office and quietly retreat into the background. Others spend their retirement writing memoirs that nobody reads and giving speeches that nobody remembers. -
Is David Cameron the Worst Thing to Happen to Modern Britain? By Lawson Akhigbe
Some political leaders leave office and quietly retreat into the background. Others spend their retirement writing memoirs that nobody reads and giving speeches that nobody remembers. -
Is David Cameron the Worst Thing to Happen to Modern Britain? By Lawson Akhigbe
Some political leaders leave office and quietly retreat into the background. Others spend their retirement writing memoirs that nobody reads and giving speeches that nobody remembers. -
Is David Cameron the Worst Thing to Happen to Modern Britain? By Lawson Akhigbe
Some political leaders leave office and quietly retreat into the background. Others spend their retirement writing memoirs that nobody reads and giving speeches that nobody remembers. -
Is David Cameron the Worst Thing to Happen to Modern Britain? By Lawson Akhigbe
Some political leaders leave office and quietly retreat into the background. Others spend their retirement writing memoirs that nobody reads and giving speeches that nobody remembers. -
The Tape-Measure Doctrine: When Governance Becomes Site Theatre by Lawson Akhigbe
The optical message broadcast to the public is one of relentless vigilance, a leader ensuring the masses are not shortchanged. The institutional reality, however, is that governance has vacated the cabinet room and wandered into the realm of amateur site supervision. -
The Tape-Measure Doctrine: When Governance Becomes Site Theatre by Lawson Akhigbe
The optical message broadcast to the public is one of relentless vigilance, a leader ensuring the masses are not shortchanged. The institutional reality, however, is that governance has vacated the cabinet room and wandered into the realm of amateur site supervision. -
The Tape-Measure Doctrine: When Governance Becomes Site Theatre by Lawson Akhigbe
The optical message broadcast to the public is one of relentless vigilance, a leader ensuring the masses are not shortchanged. The institutional reality, however, is that governance has vacated the cabinet room and wandered into the realm of amateur site supervision. -
The Tape-Measure Doctrine: When Governance Becomes Site Theatre by Lawson Akhigbe
The optical message broadcast to the public is one of relentless vigilance, a leader ensuring the masses are not shortchanged. The institutional reality, however, is that governance has vacated the cabinet room and wandered into the realm of amateur site supervision. -
The Tape-Measure Doctrine: When Governance Becomes Site Theatre by Lawson Akhigbe
The optical message broadcast to the public is one of relentless vigilance, a leader ensuring the masses are not shortchanged. The institutional reality, however, is that governance has vacated the cabinet room and wandered into the realm of amateur site supervision. -
State Police in Nigeria: Between Constitutional Necessity and Historical Fear by Lawson Akhigbe
Nigeria is once again standing at a constitutional crossroads. The growing insecurity across the federation, from banditry in the North-West, secessionist violence in the South-East, kidnapping in the South-South, farmer-herder clashes in the Middle Belt, and urban criminality in Lagos and Abuja, has pushed the debate over state police from intellectual seminars into the centre of national survival. -
The NGO Trap: How a $1 Trillion Industry Learned to Love African Poverty by Lawson Akhigbe
Somewhere in a glass-and-steel conference centre in Geneva, a distinguished panel is convening to discuss Africa's poverty crisis. The room costs £18,000 a day to hire. The keynote speaker flew business class from Washington. The catered lunch is exceptional. The conference proceedings will produce, in due course, a forty-seven page report recommending as the 1994 report did, as the 2003 report did, as the 2011 report did, more aid. Africa, meanwhile, remains poor. -
Twenty Years Late and Several Republics Short: On EJ, Atiku and Nigeria’s Habit of Reheating Cold Corruption by Lawson Akhigbe
In 1999, Olusegun Obasanjo and Atiku Abubakar rode into Aso Rock together, a presidential double act that Nigerians assumed would age like most political marriages: quietly, then not at all. They survived one term. They won a second in 2003. Then, somewhere in that second term, Obasanjo discovered a constitutional itch that the 1999 Constitution's two term, eight year ceiling on the presidency simply would not scratch. He wanted a third term. Atiku, nursing a presidential ambition of his own and possessed of the inconvenient habit of reading the Constitution literally, said so publicly. The friendship ended there. -
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. -
A Trillion-Dollar Economy, But Whose Nigeria? By Lawson Akhigbe
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his APC government have proclaimed an ambition to build a one-trillion-dollar Nigerian economy.https://lawakhigbe.com/2026/09/06/a-trillion-dollar-economy-but-whose-nigeria-by-lawson-akhigbe/
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The Safe Place for Bigotry and Crime by Lawson Akhigbe
It has no postcode. It does not appear on Google Maps. There are no street signs pointing towards it. Yet, whenever one of its inhabitants is caught saying something outrageous or doing something politically or legally questionable, suddenly we are told that the offending words or conduct belonged there.https://lawakhigbe.com/2026/09/05/the-safe-place-for-bigotry-and-crime-by-lawson-akhigbe/
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When the FCT Became a Personal Fiefdom: Wike, His Underlings, and the Quiet Death of Oversight by Lawson Akhigbe
This is not merely a personality clash. It is a blot on the democratic experiment. It reveals how thin the democratic impulse runs in the organs of government and the people who staff them. Effectively, the FCT is under non-democratic governance inside a country that still insists on calling itself a democracy. The Minister acts. The Senator is sidelined. The President remains serenely above the fray. The National Assembly discovers urgent business elsewhere. The circle is complete. -
Back to Basics, Rebranded: Burnham’s High Streets and the Politics of Looking Busy by Lawson Akhigbe
John Major's government never intended "Back to Basics" to become a punchline. Launched in 1993 as a pitch for moral and civic renewal, family values, personal responsibility, respect for the old certainties, it was retail politics in the purest sense: cheap to announce, easy to photograph, and entirely disconnected from the actual machinery of governing a mid-sized post-imperial economy adjusting to the ERM's wreckage. Section 28 sat quietly in the background as inherited scaffolding for this mood music, and the Education Act 1993's sex-education clauses supplied a fresh, deniable coat of paint. None of it required legislative heavy lifting. All of it signalled seriousness to an audience that wanted reassurance more than reform. The scheme collapsed, memorably, when half the cabinet turned out to be failing the basics they were instructed to return to. -
Did You Tell Them to Rescue the Kidnapped? Nigeria’s Politicians, Generals and the Confusion Between Policy and Operations by Lawson Akhigbe
There are some moments in political history that survive long after the politicians involved have left office. Not because of a great speech. Not because of a great policy. But because somebody asked a very simple question and refused to let it escape through the nearest political fire exit. -
Nigerian Lawyers in Political Careers: A Historical, Structural, and Contemporary Analysis
The intersection of law and politics in Nigeria is profound and longstanding. Lawyers have disproportionately shaped the country’s political landscape, from pre-independence nationalism to post-1999 democratic governance. Legal training emphasizing advocacy, constitutional interpretation, negotiation, evidence-based reasoning, and oratory equips practitioners exceptionally well for political roles. This pattern reflects both the profession’s prestige and Nigeria’s constitutional emphasis on legal expertise in governance. -
May You Live in Interesting Times: The Era of the Unshakeable Political Disruptor by Lawson Akhigbe
If you had told a political scientist thirty years ago that a lineup featuring Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, and Bola Ahmed Tinubu would simultaneously dictate the fortunes, policies, and discourse of major world democracies, they would have recommended you take a quiet walk and a cold shower. Yet here we are, sitting in the front row of a geopolitical comedy-drama where the plot is made up and the rules don't seem to matter. -
When the Living Governor’s Pen Meets the Dead Monarch’s Signature: Nigeria’s Land Use Act Versus Britain’s 1925 Registration Revolution by Lawson Akhigbe
In 1925, while Britain was still recovering from one war and quietly preparing for the next, its legislators decided that land law had become an expensive medieval farce. The result was a cluster of statutes, most notably the Land Registration Act 1925, working in tandem with the Law of Property Act 1925, that performed a quiet but decisive act of administrative hygiene. They did not nationalise the soil. They did not turn every landowner into a tenant of the state. They simply made the register the master of the title, and the process of dealing with land a matter of bureaucracy rather than political favour or ancestral archaeology. -
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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Edo State’s Land Reform Odyssey: From Land Grabbers to Digital Promises (and Back Again) by Lawson Akhigbe
In Edo State, land is never just dirt. It is history, inheritance, politics, and occasionally a full-contact sport. For years the system ran on a toxic mix of customary claims, Community Development Associations that behaved like private armies, multiple sales of the same plot, and a Certificate of Occupancy process so slow it could age a bottle of wine. Successive administrations have declared reform. The results have been a mixture of genuine progress, inherited messes, political score-settling, and the familiar Nigerian talent for turning every administrative problem into a morality play about fraud. -
Amupitan’s Yanga Wakes Trouble by Azu Ishiekwene
Six months after his appointment as the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Joash Amupitan appears determined to beat the record of Professor Maurice Iwu as the most mistrusted electoral administrator yet.https://lawakhigbe.com/2026/08/28/amupitans-yanga-wakes-trouble-by-azu-ishiekwene/
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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. -
EDITORIAL: Osun election, the rise of civic action, and 2027 by PREMIUM TIMES
Governor Ademola Adeleke of Osun State was re-elected for a second term in the 15 August governorship contest. It was an off-cycle election like no other before it, in the build-up, with its eerie elements of tension, violence and resultant deaths. -
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? -
Ten Years After the Circus: Brexit and the Undefeated Champ Called Reality
Just weeks ago, Keir Starmer announced his resignation, making him the seventh Prime Minister to be chewed up and spat out by the British political machine in ten years. It turns out that whether you approach Brexit with right-wing bravado or Labour's "sensible manager" energy, objective reality remains entirely undefeated. -
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 Tragedy of Victory Reviewers: Alfred Ilenre
The Tragedy of Victory is a book written by Brigadier General Alabi Isama, providing the inside knowledge and information about the separatist war in Nigeria from 1967- 1970https://lawakhigbe.com/2026/08/23/the-tragedy-of-victory-reviewers-alfred-ilenre/