Twenty years, one argument.

Across two decades of columns, Akinnaso returns again and again to one question: can Nigeria's federation be made to work for ordinary citizens? These essays trace his arguments for restructuring, his critiques of executive overreach, and his careful, often impatient, reading of every election cycle.

• 2026Awujale throne: Olisa, kingmakers nominate five princes, send names to governor
• 2026Ekiti 2026: No credible alternative to Oyebanji — APC National Secretary
• 2026The domestication of democracy in Nigeria
• 2026Jimoh Ibrahim: Before we blow our tops

As an educator and anthropologist of literacy, Akinnaso treats education as the deepest infrastructure of any nation. These pieces move between policy critique, classroom realities, and the universities he has spent his life inside.

• 2026Inaugural lecture: Duke Okoro uses chemistry to decode petroleum pollution
• 2026Ondo South Senatorial Seat: The case for Oladunni Odu
• 2026Excessive oversight and bureaucratic delays
• 2026Reflections on developments in polytechnic education

Language is never neutral in Akinnaso's writing. Whether arguing for the place of Nigerian languages in schooling or recovering Yoruba thought, he insists culture is the ground on which every other reform stands.

• 2025Time and culture
• 2024What Orunmila wanted me to do to my new car
• 2024Memories of my father
• 2018Akinwumi Isola: A giant in his own right

These essays examine how religion shapes Nigerian public life — from the politics of pilgrimage to the rise of pentecostal power — and what a genuinely plural society would require of its believers.

• 2026Obi: Trump of Africa
• 2025Nigeria: Two coups in two weeks
• 2025Ethnicity and religion as Nigeria’s albatrosses
• 2024The story of cattle in religion and the economy

Akinnaso's security writing refuses easy framing. He tracks Boko Haram, herder-farmer violence, and state response with a steady eye on the human toll and the institutional failures behind it.

• 2026The consolidation of democracy in Nigeria
• 2025Lessons from Delta’s century of flight (2)
• 2025Lessons from Delta’s century of flight (1)
• 2025The semiotics of Pate’s red letter

Behind every policy debate, Akinnaso looks for the household: who pays, who benefits, and what kind of country these choices are quietly building.

• 2026Dangote’s Olokola Free Trade Zone signals new era of industrial growth, jobs, says Ondo APC chieftain
• 2026The truth about Tinubu’s economic reforms
• 2025The Northern question in Nigeria
• 2025Time for the government to retail information

A recurring motif: Nigeria's problems are less of resources than of leadership. These essays profile leaders, dissect scandals, and argue for an ethic of public service the country still struggles to build.

• 2025Adamolekun reflects on governance, development
• 2024When last did you hear from your Governor?
• 2024Governors, EFCC and the Supreme Court
• 2024How accountable is your state governor?

Akinnaso writes the dead well. These remembrances of teachers, colleagues, and public figures double as a moral history of post-independence Nigeria.

• 2026Political heavyweights storm Ibadan for Adedibu's 18th remembrance anniversary

When Akinnaso looks abroad, he is usually looking back at Nigeria — comparing, borrowing, warning. These essays place the country in a wider conversation about democracy, race, and development.

• 2025Breeds of chickens and egg prices across the globe
• 2018A tale of two Presidents: Trump and Buhari
• 2018The fires in Trump’s fury
• 2017‘No Man’s Land’: Oladele’s Libya tale