Apart from General Sani Abacha, I have met one-on-one with every Nigerian leader since 1992, from General Ibrahim Babangida. However, I have only participated in one televised live group media chat with former President Olusegun Obasanjo. If you have met Obasanjo before – whether for an interview or anything else – you might agree that he’s a handful and more. You never know what to expect with Obasanjo, especially when he is in his lair. I narrowly missed being punched by the former president during an untelevised interview in his Library in the Villa in 2004 for asking why his…

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others,” George Orwell famously wrote in Animal Farm, his allegory of Stalinism. But Orwell’s maxim could just as easily apply to the sovereign-debt crisis in Africa. Low-income African countries have the smallest share of global public debt but are more likely to be in debt distress or at high risk of it. This paradox reflects a dysfunctional international financial system. Unlike advanced economies, which have highly developed local-currency bond markets, African countries are subject to prohibitively high interest ratesand often cannot borrow from international investors in their own currency…