Immediarely preceding this piece are the summaries for the Nigerian Presidential election results for 2007, 2011 and 2015. In the absence of pertinent data, politics in Nigeria is often reduced to tall tales and decorated half-truths. Bola Tinubu's ventilations at Abeokuta fully exemplified this. While Tinubu was arrogantly boasting at Abeokuta, lost on him was the irony that Buhari was not the only one who had suffered defeat in previous Presidential elections. In 2007, Buhari very significantly outperformed the combination of Tinubu and Atiku. In fact, despite the fact that Buhari spent very little money, Buhari garnered over 6 million…

Russia’s attack on Ukraine is coming to resemble many previous geopolitical crises. Throughout history, episodes that initially seemed like temporary disruptions have become prolonged affairs. What start out as short confrontations very often result in a seemingly endless morass. The most famous case of such a crisis is World War I, which George F. Kennan accurately described as the “great seminal catastrophe” of the twentieth century. The sheer scale of the mobilization in August 1914 fostered a widespread belief that the conflict could not last long – that it “would be over by Christmas.” But what followed was a war…