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Nigeria’s urban rivers are sick. They carry sewage, industrial waste, and silt, turning seasonal rains into flash floods that destroy lives and property. From Lagos’s choked Odo-Iya Alaro to Ibadan’s notorious Ogunpa, the causes are no mystery: blocked drains, encroached floodplains, and unregulated pollution. Technology—sensors, dashboards, and reporting tools—can help. But it cannot solve a crisis that is fundamentally political. The real fix lies in rebuilding institutional capacity, confronting the interests that profit from the status quo, and treating urban rivers as public goods—not forgotten liabilities. The crisis is maintenance, not warnings Nigeria does not lack flood warnings. NIHSA and NiMet issue forecasts every year. The problem is what happens—or doesn’t happen—between the warning and the rain. Drains remain blocked because waste collection is erratic or non-existent. Buildings stay on floodplains because enforcement is weak or compromised. Rivers continue to receiv...
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From Digital Patches to a Digital Backbone: Rebooting Nigeria’s Civil Service for Delivery

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Nigeria’s civil service is often described as a colonial-era machine—hierarchical, slow, and built on the logic of the physical file. That description is true, but incomplete. The deeper crisis is that two decades of ambitious digitisation—from TSA and GIFMIS to procurement portals and “paperless” initiatives—have modernised parts of government without modernising delivery . Citizens still meet the same old wall: delays, opacity, discretion, and the quiet suggestion to “come back next week.” This is not a failure of technology. It is a failure of strategy and enforcement. Nigeria has been adding digital patches to a system whose core operating logic remains analogue: fragmented processes, unclear accountability, and weak consequences for non-compliance. Transparency International’s 2025 CPI score of 26/100 does not “prove” corruption has not changed, but it does underline how stubbornly poor integrity outcomes and perceptions remain—despite years of reforms. What Nigeria needs now...
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From Palm Oil to Personal Data: Nigeria’s Journey from Colonial Exploitation to AI Colonialism

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Nigeria’s story has always had a familiar rhythm: someone else maps the territory, names the resources, builds the pipelines, and sets the rules—while Nigerians pay the costs and receive a fraction of the value. Colonialism extracted land and crops. Neo-colonialism extracted oil and policy leverage. Now AI risks extracting something even more intimate: our data, our labour, and our right to shape technology on Nigerian terms. This is already visible in identity systems, cloud dependency, predatory algorithmic lending, outsourced “ghost work”, imported surveillance, and language erasure. AI colonialism is not coming. It’s here—and it’s evolving. Colonial Nigeria was engineered for extraction: rail lines to ports, cash crops to foreign markets, and administrative systems designed to control—not empower. Neo-colonialism modernised the same pattern: oil revenues flowing outward through multinational supply chains and imported expertise, while Nigeria carried pollution, volatility, and we...
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An AI-Era Safety Net for Nigeria’s Poorest

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What if the poorest households didn’t need “connections” or  “long legs ”  to access help—only a phone number and a fair system? Urban slum families are crushed by unstable income, unsafe water, disease outbreaks, and sudden displacement. This awful tragedy is a vicious circle - it repeats every month, every rainy season, every rent hike. The practical use of AI in Nigeria’s slums is not hype: it’s targeting support better, reducing leakage, and making essential services reachable—cash, sanitation, health, skills, and micro-jobs—through offline-first tools like USSD, agent networks, and community verification. Done right, tech can turn survival into momentum. How do you escape poverty when your “address” isn’t recognised, your work is informal, your landlord can evict you overnight, and your water source can make your child sick? How do you plan when every week brings a new shock—price spikes, clinic fees, flooding, demolition, or sudden unemployment? This is the daily calcul...
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Turn Every Phone Into a Drug Inspector to Stop Fake Drugs in Nigeria

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Who profits when a child’s fever doesn’t improve because the “medicine” was chalk? Who smiles when a pregnant woman’s antibiotics fail, and the infection returns stronger? Who sleeps well knowing they sold hope in a blister pack and called it business? Nigeria’s fake-drug crisis is not a one-off scandal—it is an ongoing national emergency that turns pharmacies and street stalls  into machines that play kalokalo with peoples’ lives. Families lose money, time, and sometimes lives, while public trust in healthcare quietly collapses. The answer is not only raids and slogans; it is traceability, verification, and data-driven enforcement that makes fake drugs impossible to move. So , who is responsible when treatment fails—not because the disease is stubborn, but because the drug was a lie? Who takes the blame when a parent does everything right—buys the tablets, follows the dosage—and still watches a child get weaker? Who refunds the hours lost, the wages missed, the transport money spe...
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INEC Online: Is Nigeria’s Democracy Front Door Actually Working?

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INEC’s website and digital portals are not just “information pages” — they are now part of the infrastructure of trust in Nigeria’s elections. INEC already runs multiple online services: voter verification, polling-unit locator, continuous voter registration workflows, election results links, and a mobile app. But the experience still feels fragmented, unevenly accessible, and not fully built for Nigeria’s realities — low-end phones, expensive data, unreliable networks, multiple languages, and intense misinformation during elections. This is an ongoing national challenge. With practical AI, stronger systems engineering, and home-grown expertise, INEC can turn its online presence into a truly inclusive, resilient, citizen-first platform. INEC’s web presence is “fit for purpose” in a narrow sense: it publishes official information and connects Nigerians to critical election services. The main INEC site prominently links to election updates, polling-unit information, voter verification, P...
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Fighting a 21st-Century Drug War with 20th-Century Tools: How AI Could Transform NDLEA’s Battle

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Nigeria’s drug crisis is an ongoing, fast-evolving national challenge. The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency operates daily under pressure from global drug syndicates, porous borders, rising domestic drug abuse, and severe resource constraints. This article explores how AI and modern IT can realistically strengthen NDLEA’s capacity, not as a silver bullet, but as a force multiplier in a system under strain. Nigeria now sits firmly within a globally networked drug economy. Recent seizures reported in the media—from cocaine concealed in export goods to methamphetamine labs hidden in residential areas—show how adaptive and technologically savvy trafficking networks have become. Encrypted messaging apps, mule networks spanning continents, and complex financial laundering chains mean NDLEA is often reacting rather than anticipating. This is not a failure of will, but a structural limitation. AI-driven risk profiling systems could shift the balance. By analysing cargo manifests, travel h...
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