August 2016

Corruption

In Praise Of Mediocrity

I have been fortunate to have done quite a bit of overseas travel compacted over the summer months and coincident with the long holiday break in the school calendar.  As

Governance

Sitting On The Fence

  I wager that this critique about my muse might still have some validity today. I am often accused of not writing for the common man because I write about

Corruption

Losing Touch With The People

This piece has some resonance with the just concluded Ekiti elections. It is a cautionary tale that underscores the need for a tactile kind of empathy with the people. Recently,

Corruption

The Power of Words by Kaye Whiteman

  On my recent visit to Lagos I received at the hotel a brown envelope from my old friend Tunji Lardner, whose bulky frame has somehow found a way of

Corruption

Casting Stones

  In these two articles written in two parts, I examine my ongoing dilemma in confronting the moral relativism of the Nigerian society in which any and everything bad as

Corruption

Casting Stones 2

The Preface In Casting Stones 1, I bemoaned the moral relativism of the Nigeria of my youth. I look back now, some thirty years on, indeed a generation away on

Corruption

Casting Stones 3

So it turns out that there is a third part to this story after all. To properly put this into some historical context; there was indeed a time when Nigeria

Corruption

The Moon In the Man.

This was one of my literary flights of fancy. I was mercifully now preoccupied with Nigeria, just gazing at the moon and contemplating my navel. Annoyingly, man is no longer

Corruption

Through The Glass Darkly

  Lately I have been having this recurring vision that it is at once intriguing as it is disturbing. In the vision I am on the second floor a house,

Corruption

THOU SHALT NOT STEAL

I remember this piece with some fondness. It was the first of many ‘Preface to Cover’ essays I was to write for Newswatch magazine in its halcyon days of ground

Mr. Lardner holds a Bachelor degree in Philosophy from the University of Lagos, and over the last twenty-five years gathered wide international experience including serving as an Adjunct Professor, Centre for New Media at the Columbia University School of Journalism (1996-8) and as a Research Fellow, Freedom Forum Media Studies Centre (1992-3) also at Columbia University. Mr. Lardner was also a Reuter Scholar/Knight Fellow with the Department of Communications at Stanford University (1988-9). 

Mr. Lardner is an Internet savvy and globally recognized media and communications expert, having managed complex communications advisory services for various countries including Nigeria, as well as a sought after public policy analyst with a deep and broad understanding of the uses and impact of new information technologies and communications paradigms in the process of good governance in transiting democracies. He is a TED Fellow and the Executive Director of WANGONeT a technology-based non-profit he founded in 2000. He is currently sits on the board of Orun Energy, a promising business start-up focusing on providing alternative power for the Telecommunications sector in the developing world.