By Olusegu Adeniyi

On his 66th birthday in February this year, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai walked into the Abuja headquarters of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in response to an invitation. He remains in captivity as Nigeria marks its own 66th independence anniversary today. But his travails are with the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC). The commission has not only barred the media from covering the three cases for which it has arraigned the former Governor of Kaduna State, he is also being treated more as a convict than as a detainee.

Before I continue, it is important to make a declaration from the outset on what this column is not about. It is not a plea for immunity. Neither is it a verdict on the ICPC allegations against El-Rufai. I have read the report of the Kaduna State House of Assembly. Those are specific and serious allegations for which their former governor has already pleaded not guilty and is entitled to his day in court. Nor will I defend what El-Rufai said on ARISE Television that “someone” he knows had tapped the telephone of the National Security Adviser (NSA), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, and he had listened in on some conversation. So, for me, the question is not whether El-Rufai should be tried. The problem is how that trial has unfolded and what that says about the rule of law in Nigeria. I stated this much in May this year,
, and nothing seems to have changed.

Consider the sequence. On 12 February, security operatives attempted to arrest El-Rufai at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, on his return from Egypt. His passport was reportedly seized. On 16 February, the Department of State Services (DSS) filed cybercrime charges against him at the Federal High Court, Abuja. That same day, El-Rufai honoured the EFCC invitation. At about 8pm on 18 February, the EFCC granted him administrative bail. He did not make it beyond the premises. Armed operatives waiting at the commission headquarters took him away, and before the night was over, the ICPC announced that El-Rufai was in its custody “in connection with investigations”. On 1 April, only days after he had been let out on compassionate grounds to bury his mother, DSS operatives took custody of him again.

Today El-Rufai faces four separate criminal trials in Kaduna and Abuja; three corruption cases filed by the ICPC and the wiretapping case by the DSS. Each, taken alone, may be defensible. Taken together, they look less like a prosecution than a relay race in which the baton is the defendant who, as I once surmised, is essentially being ‘roundtripped’ by three state agencies. Then there is the issue of bail. On 14 April, Justice Rilwan Aikawa of the Federal High Court, Kaduna, admitted El-Rufai to bail in the sum of N200 million with two sureties in like sum. One must be a Kaduna resident whose property must have a verified Certificate of Occupancy. The other must be a respected elder certified by the elders’ council. El-Rufai must also surrender his passport, report to the ICPC on the first Monday of every month and live at a named residence. The judge herself described the terms as “strict and extensive.” A week later, Justice Darius Khobo of the Kaduna State High Court refused El-Rufai bail outright. He cited the gravity of the nine-count charge and fears of interference with investigations, and held that the interests of justice were best served by keeping El-Rufai available for “an accelerated trial”.

In the Abuja case, Justice Joyce Abdulmalik’s bail conditions included a surety who is a federal civil servant not below Grade Level 17 and resident in either Maitama or Asokoro. That surety must also deposit the original Certificate of Occupancy of a landed property with the court and furnish three months’ evidence of salary authenticated by a bank manager. The defendant must also produce a letter of attestation from the chairman of the Kaduna State Traditional Council and two other members. That council, by the way, was constituted by El-Rufai’s successor, Governor Uba Sani! Which chief or emir would risk his royal stool (and all the attendant goodies) for a man that has already been indicted by the State House of Assembly and is, to put it mildly, not in the good books of the incumbent governor?

When El-Rufai’s lawyers returned in June to say that the directors they approached did not own houses in those Abuja Districts, the judge declined to vary the terms, insisting that such civil servants exist. The Judge evidently knows a lot about Abuja! Meanwhile, the law on this is not ambiguous. Section 165(1) of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015 provides that where bail is granted, the conditions shall not be excessive. This has been affirmed by the Supreme Court which held that the principal function of bail is simply to secure the attendance of the defendant at trial. Even the five suspects arrested near a British air base used by American bombers on an alleged terror case that has drawn global attention were released on bail within a few days!

Let us now consider the arithmetic. Section 12 of the Cybercrimes Act provides, upon conviction for unlawful interception, a fine not exceeding N5 million or two years’ imprisonment, or both. The DSS closed its case in June after calling two witnesses. The court will rule on his no-case submission on 26 October. By then El-Rufai will have spent more than eight months in custody, convicted of nothing, on a charge that carries a maximum of two years!

Let me also make this clear: Judges rule on the applications before them, and each of these conditions may be defended on its own terms. But one court has refused bail outright, and two others have set conditions that have proved impossible to meet. The outcome is the same: a man whom Section 36(5) of our Constitution presumes innocent is being punished before judgement. When citizens can be detained in perpetuity simply by filing cases in different courts and before different Judges, the judiciary becomes, wittingly or unwittingly, mere tools for untoward practices.

It gets even worse. In June, a family member said that a doctor at the National Hospital, Abuja, had expressed concern that El-Rufai could be developing a serious medical condition. After a court-approved medical visit on 7 July, the ICPC accused him (El-Rufai) of using the occasion to meet political associates and arrested his personal physician, Professor Bello Abubakar, for allegedly making false statements. In August, El-Rufai filed a N10 billion fundamental rights suit alleging that his wife and son had been barred from visiting him. The ICPC insists that it has met its obligations, and that access to detainees is governed by certain regulations. I am in no position to adjudicate those claims. But when the doctor who attends to a detainee becomes a suspect himself, every physician in Nigeria has received a message.

What makes all this even more interesting is that El-Rufai is not an ordinary Nigerian. He was the Director General of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) for more than three years, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory for four years and Governor of Kaduna State for eight. He is wealthy enough to retain a team of Senior Advocates of Nigeria. His son, Bello, sits in the House of Representatives. If a man with his means can spend 227 days in custody on allegations yet to be proven, we can only imagine what would happen to the ordinary citizen who steps on some big toes.

As it would happen, El-Rufai, of all people, should know the answer. The leader of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria, Sheikh Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, and his wife, Zeenat, were held in defiance of a December 2016 order of the Federal High Court, Abuja, that they be released. The Kaduna State Government under El-Rufai then prosecuted them for culpable homicide. On 28 July 2021, Justice Gideon Kurada upheld their no-case submission and freed them. Within two days, Kaduna State announced fresh charges with El-Rufai deploying every extra-legal trick to keep the El-Zakazakys behind bars. I recall this episode not to gloat or justify the whataboutery that El-Rufai’s opponents use to dismiss the call for justice. I recall it because it proves conclusively that the instruments of state have neither memory nor loyalty. They serve whoever holds them, and they are always, eventually, held by someone else. El-Rufai must have gotten the memo by now.

President Bola Tinubu needs no lecture as to what happens when the apparatus of state is turned against a critic. His years in exile during the dictatorship of the late General Sani Abacha are part of the democratic story that will be on full display this afternoon in Lagos at the premier of the documentary, MKO, produced and directed by my friend, Ose Oyamendan. But let’s be fair; this is not Tinubu’s call: This perversion of bail is a problem within the purview of the National Judicial Council (NJC) that appears to be looking away while the judiciary is being rubbished. Even if the Judges who have granted El-Rufai bail vary the conditions, he still has a case before a Judge who outrightly refused him bail!

Meanwhile, it is obvious that the ICPC is determined to keep El-Rufai in detention till ‘kingdom come’. The commission initially obtained a 14-day remand order, under oath, to charge him to court within the duration of that order. That order expired without charges being filed. So, the ICPC went to secure another remand warrant in rather controversial circumstances. In the interval, the ICPC claimed in court documents to have recovered wiretapping equipment from El-Rufai’s residence. While the Constitution grants a right to silence, the ICPC treated El-Rufai’s assertion of that constitutional right as evidence of non-cooperation and publicised the same as one of their justifications for keeping him in custody.

In a reflection titled ‘My Relationships and the Aftermath’, released last weekend, El-Rufai wrote about the silence of his friends and those he once supported. He said he bears no resentment towards them.ĚýI understand that silence; fear is a rational response for most politicians in a season like this. But silence is also how these things become normalized. The precedent being set in this case will not end with El-Rufai. It will be available to the next government, against the next political opponent. That political opponent may have no Senior Advocate on retainer: only a charge sheet, bail conditions nobody can meet, and a long wait for ruling in different courts.

That the judiciary is part of a process by which a citizen has been turned into a political ping-pong ball by prosecutors using the process of arraignment and bail application to orchestrate perpetual detention raises serious questions. The offences for which El-Rufai has been arraigned are bailable and many others facing similar charges are now Senatorial candidates of various political parties, plotting their way to the red chambers where they will join fellow travellers to make laws for the rest of us. On a day such as this, people who hold the levers of power in Nigeria should understand that as a citizen, El-Rufai is entitled to fair treatment by our courts and state institutions.

The context may be more personal but I believe we can adapt the words of the late South African President Nelson Mandela to argue that the freedom of a country and that of its citizens are intertwined. At 66, Nigeria should be old enough to understand that a state that can weaponise the judiciary and security apparatus against one of its most powerful citizens would have no qualms crushing its weakest. That explains why I believe that whatever one may think of Nasir El-Rufai [and I have had my disagreements with him over the years], we should all be interested in his case.

I wish Nigerians a Happy Independence Anniversary.

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle,Ěý@OlusegunverdictĚýand onĚýwww.olusegunadeniyi.com

Olusegun Adeniyi

In October 2023, Nigeria won its case against Process & Industrial Developments (P&ID) Limited which had been seeking enforcement of a fraudulent $11 billion judgement debt in its favour. The Commercial Courts of England and Wales affirmed the claim by the federal government lawyer, Mark Howard, that the company obtained the contract “by telling repeated lies and paying bribes to officials.” But Justice Robin Knowles also said something instructive about the political/business environment in Nigeria. “This case has also, sadly, brought together a combination of examples of what some individuals will do for money. Driven by greed and prepared to use corruption; giving no thought to what their enrichment would mean in terms of harm for others,” Justice Knowles said before defining the ‘others’ he was referring to. “Others that in the present case include the people of Nigeria, already let down in so many ways over the history of this matter by a number of individuals in politics and administration whose duty it was to serve them and protect them.”  

Last week, an International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) tribunal in Paris dismissed the $2.35 billion compensation claim against Nigeria made by Sunrise Power and Transmission Company Limited (SPTCL). The company’s promoter, Mr Leno Adesanya, according to the ICC tribunal, had masterminded a “corrupt deal” with some public officials and private individuals to scam his country. While I have no time to read the entire 619-page judgement, flipping through the pages is revealing enough. As I wrote in the past, what some of these businesspeople do is target a thriving sector, procure some civil/public servants (not only with cash but also ‘bedroom services’ as former presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, revealed in his Monday column, How and Why Sunrise, Leno Lost in Paris – ĚÇĐÄĘÓĆľLIVE), get them to sign some dubious ‘contracts’ that are skewed against Nigeria and when they fail (as they are designed to), approach the courts for enforcement. That’s how many idle billionaires have been created in the country. Ěý

If there is anything that the failed P&ID and SPTCL scandals have exposed, it is that in the Nigerian deep state, public sector corruption is most often enabled by private sector operators. That explains why Nigeria has over the years paid billions of Dollars on spurious judgement debts. These high rollers are quite aware that the incentives for corruption and related crimes are high because it is a low-risk, high-reward enterprise. But perhaps more importantly, even in instances where such dirty deals blow open, private sector kingpins most often go unpunished. Afterall, a former Minister of Power, Mr Saleh Mamman is currently serving a 75-year jail term for laundering $24.7 million and ÂŁ18.5 million in a scandal associated with these same power projects.

I have always believed that any serious interrogation of corruption in Nigeria must look at the role of the private sector. An X user who goes by the name ‘Arthur of Camelot’ recently shared a story which I find instructive because the character involved could be the son of one of those businessmen who point fingers simply because they don’t hold public offices even when they contribute a lot to the corruption in the system: “My friend was going on about ‘if Nigeria was working, this would happen and that will happen’ and another friend interjected saying, ‘bros, if Naija dey work, your papa go dey prison by now’…that put a dampener on festivities and we started separating a fight.”

Meanwhile, one of the interesting aspects of the Paris judgement on the SPTCL scandal is the issue of business culture in Nigeria. It reads like an intellectual engagement between a witness brought by Adesanya, Prof Sope Williams (described an anti-corruption expert) and my friend, Ebenezer Obadare, a senior fellow for Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in the United States, who testified for Nigeria. This is the way the tribunal framed their exchanges: “The Tribunal fully appreciates that the thrust of Prof. Williams’ evidence is that the facts underlying Nigeria’s corruption allegations should be considered against the background of the specific Nigerian cultural context, while the essence of Dr. Obadare’s evidence is that Nigerian culture cannot be used to justify the alleged acts of bribery and corruption.”

I find the arguments of both Williams and Obadare quite fascinating, but there is also a context to it that many may not even be aware of. It is a notorious fact that many Nigerian businesspeople tell their foreign collaborators that securing contracts in Nigeria involves bribery. And in the process, they sully the image of our country. Interestingly, that ‘culture’ matter also surfaced in the $182 million Halliburton bribery scandal. French court papers revealed how British lawyer, Mr Jeffrey Tesler, served as the conduit between Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR and the officials responsible for approving the $6 billion turnkey contract for the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) project in Bonny, Rivers State. Following his conviction in 2015, Tesler also made allusion to this ‘cultural’ thing that Adesanya’s witness was trying to sell in Paris. “There is no day when I do not regret my weakness of character. I allowed myself to accept standards of behaviour in a BUSINESS CULTURE (emphasis mine) which can never be justified. I accepted the system of corruption that existed in Nigeria,” Tesler lamented. “I turned a blind eye to what was happening, and I am guilty of the offences charged.”

Now that another multibillion-dollar scam against Nigeria has been foiled abroad, there are certain lessons we should not ignore. One, we must change the ‘culture’ by which some Nigerian business people believe it is okay to dupe their country or pay bribe to secure contract. Two, we must put in place a well-articulated National Arbitration Policy that makes it difficult for those who devise these crooked schemes. Three, all pending arbitrations against Nigeria should be thoroughly reviewed and seriously challenged, if they are suspicious. Four, we must institute measures to ensure that Nigerian public officials who sign contracts on behalf of the rest of us are not those who would sell the country cheap. Tying Nigeria to scandalous obligations is the kind of action that would normally attract capital punishment for erring public officials in some countries! 

Finally, the anti-corruption measures must be strong enough to bring to justice corrupt private sector actors. Until authorities in the country begin to expose and prosecute these traitors, they won’t desist from their nefarious activities. But beyond that, we must also begin to build a new culture of ethics in both the private and public sectors in Nigeria.

Death and the 37 Miners

In February this year, a police officer attached to a joint Mining Marshals patrol was killed by artisanal miners at a site linked to Millennium Metals Mining Company in Katcha Local Government in Niger State. The Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Mr Oladele Alake, who set up the Mining Marshals, vowed then that offenders would face “the full wrath of the law,” and the federal government indeed responded by strengthening the unit’s operational capacity. Seven months after one avoidable death hardened a crackdown, 37 young men were arrested for engaging in ‘illegal mining’ in the same state. They died in circumstances that can only be described as very cruel.

Last weekend, the Northern Senators Forum issued a strong statement on the miners’ deaths. While they may have overstated their case with allusion to what happened at Auschwitz (the largest concentration camp operated by Nazi Germany during World War II) I agree with them that history “has taught humanity how horrifying confinement can become when helpless people are deprived of dignity and treated as though their lives have no value.” Stripped of all pretensions, we all know that those young men died not because of the ‘crime’ they committed but rather because of their social status.

Meanwhile, this has been a brutal year for artisanal miners in Nigeria. In February, a gas leak at an illegal site in Zurak, Wase Local Government Area of Plateau State, killed 37 people and hospitalised 20 others. In August, an abandoned tin pit collapsed at Kassa, Barkin Ladi Local Government Area of the same Plateau State, killing seven. And on the very day the dead were still being counted in Niger State, more than 20 miners, among them, women and children, were reportedly buried alive at Mayo Kam in Taraba State’s Bali Local Government Area. Add these together, and a pattern emerges: Desperate miners are dying in droves, sometimes killed by the ground they dig, and now, unforgivably, killed by the state that claims to regulate them.

I am aware that the Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo (who remains one of the bright lights of the current administration), has moved quickly to suspend the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) Niger State Commandant Siyaka Aniviye, who made a reckless statement after the tragedy. Tunji-Ojo has also constituted a ten-member independent committee to investigate the deaths. But to the extent that this is yet another episode in a declining national psyche that treats human lives as no more than mere statistics, I won’t be surprised if nothing comes out of the investigation. We have been on this road several times before. On Saturday 15th March 2014, for instance, more than half a million jobless university graduates were herded to stadia and other venues across the nation to write aptitude tests for about 4500 openings in the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS). And because of overcrowding and shoddy arrangement, there were stampedes leading to the death of 19 people, including expectant women. It was a tragedy aided by a combination of desperation and impunity.

Drexel Nigeria Limited to which the contract was outsourced had asked each of the candidates to pay N850 as “application charges” and N150 as “transaction charges” making a total of N1,000 to be eligible to apply for a job in a government agency in their own country. Because all that concerned these ‘consultants’ was the money involved, there was no real plan for these applicants. Nobody perhaps captured that tragedy as succinctly as Dr Mohammed Hakeem, a brother to one of the deceased. A lecturer at Federal Polytechnic, Nasarawa State at the time, Hakeem said his late sister, who had previously been defrauded of N150,000 while seeking the same job, died for nothing: “I make bold to say that the (job) slots for which my sister has been used as a sacrificial lamb had been allocated to those that matter in Nigeria.”

Following that tragedy, an investigation was ordered by the federal government. But as usual, nobody was held accountable. Five years later, the Minister of Interior who hired the consultants that presided over the death of those innocent Nigerians was elected to the Senate. And he has since then—following reelection in 2023—been making laws for the rest of us!

So, what should accountability actually require on this current tragedy? First, Nigerians deserve to read the pathologists’ findings themselves so as to ascertain what exactly happened. Second, if negligence is established, in the size of the cell to which the miners were camped, the hours it took to notice them dying of suffocation, or the conditions of the arrests themselves, the consequence must go beyond reassignment. And it must reach not only Commandant Aniviye but whoever sets detention capacity and medical provisioning across NSCDC facilities nationwide, since Minna is unlikely to be the only cell with such problems of poor ventilation and overcrowding.

Third, families of the deceased deserve more than condolences. There must be a prompt, dignified release of their dead, and some form of restitution that acknowledges the state’s role in this tragedy. And fourth, because a raid-and-detain posture toward mostly poor artisanal miners has now become fatal, Alake may need to keep his own counsel on the issue. When a gold mine collapsed in Sudan’s West Kordofan two weeks ago, Alake, who is currently the chairman of the Africa Minerals Strategy Group, declared that “human life must always supersede resource extraction.” Reacting to a collapse that killed more than a hundred miners in the Central African Republic some weeks earlier, Alake said much the same, warning that such tragedies must not become statistics the continent mourns today and forgets tomorrow. Now, his charity must begin at home. Everything must be done to help these poor Nigerians not to continue dying (including from health hazards) while chasing a living.

On the immediate issue of 37 miners who lost their lives in Niger State, we must ensure that those whose commission or omission led to the tragedy are held to account. Only then can we reclaim our collective humanity as a nation. 

Aig-Imoukhuede at 60

For almost a decade (until I left in April 2024), I was a member of the Leadership Advisory Board of the African Institute for Governance (AIG). Chaired by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, it is a subsidiary of the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation promoted by Access Bank co-founder and current chairman, Mr Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede. The Not-for-profit, private sector-led AIG started in 2014 with the annual award of scholarships to six high-potential public sector leaders (Grade Level 13 and above) from Nigeria and Ghana to study at the Oxford University Balvatnik School of Government. Then it collaborated with the Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF) to organise locally designed executive training programmes for participants in Lagos and Abuja. With the overall aim of building the capacity of civil servants across the continent but focusing more on Nigeria, the foundation has extended its reach beyond government ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) to academic institutions, civil society and private sector entities.

Over the years, Aig-Imoukhuede and his wife, Ofovwe have committed tremendous financial resources as well as their time and energy to the idea of transforming the public bureaucracy in Nigeria for efficient service delivery. It is a profound national service. As he therefore joins the Sexagenarian Club today at 60, I can only wish Aig-Imoukhuede a happy birthday, long life and good health.

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on www.olusegunadeniyi.com   

By Olusegun Adeniyi

Having built a system that encourages ‘success’ at any cost, it is no surprise that increasing numbers of students (at all levels of education in Nigeria) are being led to believe that cheating pays. So prevalent is the menace of examination malpractice that many of the post-primary students I have interacted with in recent years keep telling me: ‘Everybody is doing it’. Of course, I am well aware that not everybody is doing it but we should nonetheless be concerned by the recent revelation of the Education Minister, Dr Tunji Alausa, regarding the ‘mind boggling’ leakages of National Examinations Council (NECO) questions in recent years.

During the 2025 examination period, which he described as the hardest period of his life, Alausa said his colleague, the Minister of State, Prof. Suwaiba Ahmad, repeatedly sent him leaked questions obtained from students ahead of the examination. “I would wake up to her text. She would send questions to me… She would say, ‘I just got this question.’ It could be English or Chemistry. I would send it to the HNO (Head of National Office at NECO) and ask, ‘HNO, is this correct?’ And the answer I got was, ‘Unfortunately, that’s the question we’re doing today.’”

The challenge, according to Alausa, began years ago with an interesting codename. And a brief digression may be important here. Professor Ibrahim Dantani Wushishi was first appointed the Registrar/Chief Executive of NECO in July 2021 by the late President Muhammadu Buhari. He was retained by President Bola Tinubu. Members of the syndicate involved in examination malpractices have turned this illustrious name (Wushishi) into a slang for their nefarious activities. Seeking to obtain the questions ahead of NECO Examinations has become ‘Going to Wushishi’ but only the initiated understood. “I didn’t know that ‘Wushishi’ meant going to the dark website”, Alausa confessed while further revealing that examination malpractices have become both systemic and endemic and that tackling the challenge would require the collaboration of all stakeholders. “Any child can be bad,” he said. “But when we have an ecosystem where parents, schools, teachers, invigilators and principals are in full connivance, the students are the smallest players. The people who should put the deterrents in place are the ones involved…”

We must commend both Alausa and Ahmad for confronting this menace head on. I have heard a lot of good things about the duo. The fact that they work together seamlessly without the usual friction you see in most ministries is in itself testimony to the fact that their focus is to serve the public good. But the challenge they confront on this issue is an old one and will require the support of all stakeholders. We must understand that examination malpractice not only undermines fairness and equal opportunity but it also raises questions about the integrity of the qualifications we all parade while portending a great danger to the quality of human capital in our country.

From my findings, a monumental scandal about examination malpractice in Nigeria blew open about five years ago at the tertiary level. But somehow, it escaped public attention. Following admission racketeering involving a private university in Ibadan and IJMB results verification exercise which revealed that only six of the results of 148 Direct Entry candidates sent to a famous federal university in the North were found to be genuine, the Federal Ministry of Education early in 2021 collaborated with the security agencies to institute a sting operation. Codenamed ‘Operation Y’, according to sources, the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC), the Department of State Services (DSS) and Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) were involved in the exercise which eventually revealed “organised cheating rings, candidate impersonation, and payment schemes for live questions and answers,” to game examinations in Nigeria.

The investigation at the instance of the then Education Minister, Mallam Adamu Adamu, was restricted to IJMB examination and the role of ‘tutorial centres’ by the universities. And the 315-page report (which I have read) of the Joint Universities Preliminary Examinations Board (JUPED) chaired by the then Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos, Professor Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, is damning. Working with then JAMB Registrar, Prof Ishaq Oloyede who was concerned about the integrity of examinations through which students entered universities and had raised internal alarm, Adamu tasked the committee to conduct a forensic audit of answer scripts during the 2021 JUPEB Conference Marking exercise.

Findings from the forensic audit made chilling revelations: Identical answers and handwriting in multiple scripts of different candidates, use of mobile phones and digital watches in the examination halls and scripts with answers from WhatsApp or smuggled notes, etc. “Unlicensed and unqualified tutorial centres have hijacked IJMB and JUPEB programmes. These centres recruit students, conduct coaching, and facilitate widespread examination malpractices, often with the tacit approval of affiliated universities chasing revenue,” according to the report which also revealed massive forgery. “For example, according to Professor Yahuza Bello (immediate past VC) of Bayero University, Kano, 95% of IJMB qualifications presented by candidates who applied to BUK in 2020 were found to be fake during the verification exercise conducted by the University.”

The report made several recommendations, including that examination centres install high-quality CCTV to be permanently monitored and prevent the use of mobile phones and other electronic devices by deploying “metal detectors to screen candidates before entering into the examination venues in all Centres; and use of Signal Blockers/Network Jammers at all Centres during examinations.” Also recommended is a system of administering various customised versions of the questions in all the examinations to make cheating difficult for students. “There should be full biometric capture of all ten fingerprints at registration to curb impersonation.”

Although 42 candidates were arrested—with their names listed against the examination offences each committed—there is no record that anyone of them was ever brought to trial. But the report, which I understand is currently being implemented by Alausa, also proposed the establishment of a centralised database of all examination candidates to ensure that each is tied to a unique identifier e.g. National Identification Number (NIN). “This would mean that a candidate can be identified at every level of examination across his/her educational journey.”

However, while these reforms are helpful for the integrity of examinations in Nigeria, the concern is the way young children are being exposed to fraudulent practices so early in their lives by those who ordinarily should guide them in the right direction. There are reports that some private schools have adopted the philosophy of ‘heaven helps only those who help themselves’ by appointing what they call ‘Exam Officer’ whose duty basically is to ‘liaise’ with invigilators during examinations. The reason for it is because when parents pick schools for their children, they look at their ‘WAEC records’. Meanwhile, the JUPEB report illustrates this challenge by stating that “corruption and organised examination-fraud syndicates are being supervised by a gang of owners of tutorial schools under the aegis of the Association of Tutorial School Owners (ATSO). Agents set up WhatsApp groups through which sensitive relevant information is transmitted to Candidates.” That precisely is what we are dealing with at the post-primary level.

In July 2019, I used the comment thread on X (then Twitter) to illustrate a moral wilderness that has contributed to examination malpractices in Nigeria. It all started from a simple tweet by someone evidently looking for sympathy and perhaps another job: “I lost my teaching job today (32K) where I teach (Maths and F/Maths), because I refused to assist the students in the exams hall (during NECO) having taught them very well…” What followed was a deluge of negative comments. “You should have helped them, you put yourself into this (situation),” one respondent wrote before the next one came with a sharp rebuke: “If I had a good job waiting, I won’t employ you for this tweet.” Then there was this ‘do-gooder’ who shared his experience: “I remember my Account teacher also refused to do this for our WAEC then, and I ended up teaching the whole students offering that subject that day.”

Of course, not all the critical commentators were unsympathetic going by this response laced with a dose of ‘realism’ about the environment under which the teacher was operating: “Sorry about that but it’s your fault…it’s not a bad option assisting students. We are in Nigeria.” That familiar refrain was further amplified by the next respondent: “Are you a good teacher when your students fail? I got my current job through the help of a parent I taught the ward some years back…the ward is in FUNAAB (Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta) now doing fine. My dear, don’t let us deceive ourselves, you should have pushed…” For the benefit of readers who may not understand what ‘pushing’ means, the next person minced no word: “You should have just assisted them. Now, what have you gained? African teachers are terrible and just love to see students fail exams.” The last response before I stopped following the thread was the crisp title of the piece I wrote at the time: ‘Na you fuck up!’

Despite the stiff penalties in the Examination Malpractices Act, 2004 for erring candidates, dubious invigilators and teachers, as well as desperate parents and school proprietors who help to compromise the integrity of academic examinations, I am not aware that anybody has ever been brought to justice on this malaise. Yet, what should trouble us most about Alausa’s revelation is not that a man’s surname has been curdled into a slang for examination malpractices, but rather that an entire generation grew up fluent in that fraudulent shorthand. In the JUPED Report earlier referenced, it is stated that Nigeria “has a duty to monitor and checkmate the menace of exam malpractices for it is capable of compounding the myriads of problems, particularly corruption, which is ravaging the country despite numerous efforts of the government to combat it.” And understatement!

As an aside, I did my National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Primary Assignment at the then Zungeru College of Advanced Studies (ZUCAS) which has since become Niger State Polytechnic. At the time (1989/90 session), the Corpers’ Residence (where we were accommodated) was in Wushishi. To now hear a sinister interpretation of ‘Going to Wushishi’ sullies the good memories of the one year I spent in that town where General Ibrahim Babangida and another famous retired General hail from. But the most worrying aspect of this tragedy is that for every culprit caught while attempting to ‘Wushishi’ their way to ‘success’ through unearned academic grades, numerous others have escaped: Protected by parents, proprietors and teachers for whom only the end justifies the means and a society that has long confused certificates with competence.

Bello Mandiya’s Passing

For some inexplicable reason, hardly a week passes without me having to be at the Muslim section of the Gudu Cemetery in Abuja for a burial ceremony. But none of my recent experiences was as sobering as Tuesday’s when Waziri Adio and I had to witness the burial of our dear friend and brother, Senator Bello Mandiya. Three weeks ago, Mandiya visited my office (‘just to say hello’, as we say in Nigeria) and spent more than an hour before he left. There was no premonition that it would be our last encounter.

A graduate of Mass Communication from the University of Lagos where he met mutual friends, including Lanre Issa-Onilu (who was also at the burial on Tuesday), Bolaji Abdullahi, Ose Oyamendan, Shina Badaru, Simon Kolawole, Wale Adebanwi, Waziri and many others, Mandiya was a frequent visitor to ĚÇĐÄĘÓĆľ Lagos head office in the early years and that was where I first met him. He would later join politics, starting out in 2003 as a legislative aide, then acting Chief of Staff to then House of Representatives Speaker, Rt. Hon. Aminu Bello Masari. Between 2015 and 2019, Mandiya served as Chief of Staff to the same Masari as Governor of Katsina State. And then in 2019, he was elected as a Senator for Katsina South. Mandiya, of course, didn’t return to the Senate in 2023.

An intensely private, self-effacing and affable man who lived a simple life, Mandiya was always available for friends whenever they needed him. Sadly, it was at his burial that many had to show up for him on Tuesday. May God grant Mandiya eternal life and may He comfort his bereaved family.

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on www.olusegunadeniyi.com

Olusegun Adeniyi

Perhaps accepting that, at 80, the 2027 general election may be his last bid for Aso Rock, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar is throwing everything—including the kitchen sink—at the incumbent President Bola Tinubu. The expression is familiar in football: a team, desperate for an equaliser or winning goal, commits every available player to the attack. From retaining lawyers in the United States to investigate Tinubu, to pursuing cases in Abuja seeking his disqualification, and granting interviews in which he portrays his former friend and associate as being as old as Methuselah, Atiku has injected new energy into a contest that, given the opposition’s divisions, was beginning to resemble a coronation. So far, however, only one of Atiku’s blows appears to have landed decisively: his criticism of the administration’s handling of fuel subsidy—and it is a heavy one.

Whatever one may think of Atiku’s policy alternatives—and I intend, at another time, to examine his curious mixture of upstream, downstream, production and fuel subsidy proposition—the Tinubu administration has serious questions to answer. Why have the removal of fuel subsidy and unification of the naira exchange rate made life considerably harder for ordinary Nigerians while foreign borrowing has continued to rise? Those of us with no dog in this fight can only reach for our popcorn and a chilled bottle of Coke—no other drink will do—and watch the drama unfold. But now that the poor have entered the campaign conversation, with Atiku presenting their welfare as the motivation for his positions on fuel subsidy, student loans and border control, it is worth examining one of the forces that continues to deepen poverty in Nigeria.

With an annual growth rate of 2.6 percent, Nigeria’s population is expanding faster than its resources and productive capacity. The country also records one of the highest annual population increases in the world. More troubling is the persistence of cultural values and belief systems that encourage people to have children for whom neither their families nor society has made adequate provision. This demographic time bomb demands serious attention, especially during a campaign season in which politicians have suddenly remembered the welfare of poor Nigerians.

In recent years, I have written several columns and engaged many people on Nigeria’s population challenge. My most recent exchange was with the Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation, Mr Tanimu Yakubu. The discussion began on the ‘PUMY Collective’, a chat group comprising former principal aides, associates and immediate family members of the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, including the former First Lady, Hajiya Turai. The forum is primarily social—we recently visited Ambassador Habu Habib and Mr Matt Aikhionbare, who lost their adult sons barely a week apart—but it also provides an occasional space for reflecting on the values and ideas associated with our late principal. During one such discussion earlier this year, Yakubu, who served as Chief Economic Adviser to President Yar’Adua, shared a paper on population. He and I subsequently continued the conversation outside the forum.

I had intended to address the subject in July, during the World Population Day 2026, whose theme was “Realizing the hopes and aspirations of young people—today and for the future.” But, as so often happens in Nigeria, the idea was overtaken by more immediate events. Now that the campaign season is upon us and every presidential candidate professes concern for the poor, Yakubu’s argument deserves renewed attention. His paper, titled ‘Demography, Destiny and Disorder: A Malthusian-Ricardian Reply to Nigeria’s Population Question’, begins with what he describes as a striking demographic contrast. “At independence in 1960, Nigeria’s population was 45,053,782, while the United Kingdom’s population was 52,400,000. By 2024, Nigeria had risen to 232,679,478, while the United Kingdom stood at 69,226,000,” Yakubu wrote. “That comparison captures the scale of Nigeria’s demographic rupture: not merely population growth, but population growth without a sufficiently rapid transformation of productivity, cities, skills, farms, health systems, policing and formal employment.”

While population, according to Yakubu, can show the scale of the burden or opportunity, it is the GDP per capita that reveals the extent to which that population is converted into economic value. “In 1960, Nigeria’s GDP per capita was US$93.14, compared with US$1,397.59 for the United Kingdom. By 2024, Nigeria stood at US$1,084.16, while the United Kingdom stood at US$53,246.37,” he wrote to explain our dilemma. “In relative terms, the United Kingdom moved from about 15 times Nigeria’s income per head in 1960 to about 49 times in 2024. This is the deeper economic warning: the divergence is not merely between population counts, but between population pressure and productivity per person.”

Yakubu, of course, is not against our growing numbers. “Population is power when it is educated, healthy, skilled, productively employed, spatially planned and institutionally governed. But population becomes pressure when it outruns food, jobs, schools, clinics, housing, policing, land administration and the moral imagination of the state.” Since that happens to be where we are today as a country, Yakubu enjoins us to heed Malthus’ warning that “when population expands faster than the productive base, nature and society begin to impose brutal corrections: hunger, disease, violence, migration, crowding, criminality and social breakdown.” Those ‘corrections’ are now evident, and Yakubu highlights them: “Violence has entered the economics of food. Abductions for ransom have become a tax on movement, farming, schooling and trade. The result is a harsh Malthusian-Ricardian fusion: mouths multiply, productive land retreats, and insecurity begins to determine what the nation eats.”

Drawing on the experiences of China, India and other countries that have confronted similar pressures, Yakubu’s paper is not merely a lament; it also offers prescriptions. He places girls’ education, maternal health, child survival, reproductive-health information, and women’s economic agency at the centre of development policy. He also advocates an agricultural revolution, anticipatory urban planning, formalisation of the informal economy, recovery of the forests, and the urgent pursuit of labour-intensive industrialisation. “Nigeria must manage demography as seriously as it manages debt, oil, inflation and exchange rates. Population is the largest macroeconomic variable in the country, yet too often it is treated as a census quarrel or a donor subject.”, he concluded while making other suggestions.

However, as insightful as Yakubu’s paper is, it does not fully confront the relationship between poverty, parental responsibility and the circumstances into which many Nigerian children are born. Although the subject requires more rigorous empirical study, the children most likely to be out of school, inadequately cared for or left to survive on the streets generally come from severely disadvantaged households. By contrast, educated and relatively comfortable families increasingly limit family size to the number of children they believe they can support. Indeed, the cost of raising children partly explains why migration (the ‘Japa Syndrome’) has become such an important consideration for upwardly mobile young Nigerian families.

This should not be misconstrued as an argument for poor people to be denied their reproductive rights. As the son of a village carpenter, I appreciate Zina Jayne’s observation that humanity has been immeasurably enriched by people born to low-income parents—presidents, athletes, writers, inventors, musicians and business leaders among them. The essential issue is responsibility, not social class. Our parents may have been poor, but they understood the value of education and made extraordinary sacrifices to secure it for their children. Many also practised family planning, including through traditional methods. That sense of obligation to the future of every child appears absent in today’s Nigeria.

There is an ominous warning in a 2009 report that Nigerian authorities never paid attention to and which I have referenced here several times. Titled, ‘Nigeria-The Next Generation,’ and coordinated by David Bloom, Harvard Professor of Economics and Demography, the report predicted that by 2030 Nigeria would be one of the few countries in the world with an abundance of young people at a period most others would be left with aging populations. “Nigeria is at a crossroads: one path offers a huge demographic dividend, with tremendous opportunity for widespread economic and human progress, while the other path leaves Nigeria descending into quicksand.” With the right policies, the report concluded, Nigeria could easily become one of the world’s leading economies; and with wrong choices, our young citizens would “become an increasingly disruptive force”.

We are already experiencing the consequences, notwithstanding the warnings of a few traditional rulers who recognised the danger early. In September 2019, the Emir of Anka in Zamfara State, Alhaji Attahiru Ahmed, cautioned low-income earners against marrying more wives than they could support. Two years earlier, the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, had advanced a similar argument, only to be attacked by those who invoked religion to excuse parental irresponsibility. Sanusi’s point was straightforward: men unable to maintain one household but who marry several wives often have more children than they can adequately support, transferring the consequences of their choices to the children and society.

In my interventions on the immigration policies of some Western countries, I have often referred to Garrett Hardin’s controversial 1974 essay, ‘Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor’, to explain the underlying dilemma. At the centre of Hardin’s thesis was the relationship between finite resources and uncontrolled population growth. He divided the world, somewhat crudely, into comparatively rich and desperately poor nations and represented each rich nation as a lifeboat with limited capacity, surrounded by people seeking admission or a share of its resources. “Metaphorically, each rich nation can be seen as a lifeboat full of comparatively rich people. In the ocean outside each lifeboat swim the poor of the world, who would like to get in, or at least to share some of the wealth. What should the lifeboat passengers do?”, he asked.

This was the way Hardin answered his own question: “So here we sit, say 50 people in our lifeboat. To be generous, let us assume it has room for 10 more, making a total capacity of 60. Suppose the 50 of us in the lifeboat see 100 others swimming in the water outside, begging for admission to our boat or for handouts. We have several options: we may be tempted to try to live by the Christian ideal of being ‘our brother’s keeper,’ or by the Marxist ideal of ‘to each according to his needs.’ Since the needs of all in the water are the same, and since they can all be seen as ‘our brothers,’ we could take them all into our boat, making a total of 150 in a boat designed for 60. The boat swamps, everyone drowns. Complete justice, complete catastrophe.”

After examining different scenarios, Hardin now confronted the problem: “The harsh ethics of the lifeboat become harsher when we consider the reproductive differences between rich and poor. A wise and competent government saves out of the production of the good years in anticipation of bad years to come. Joseph taught this policy to Pharaoh in Egypt more than 2,000 years ago. Yet the great majority of the governments in the world today do not follow such a policy. They lack either the wisdom or the competence, or both…Year by year the ratio becomes worse, as the fast-reproducing poor outnumber the slow-reproducing rich…”
In a recent article, Where Do the Children Go Now? – ĚÇĐÄĘÓĆľLIVE, drawing on personal experience, I examined the low priority that Nigeria accords primary education and argued that vulnerable children require a coherent framework of support. But experience has also taught me that the crisis of out-of-school children cannot be addressed through education spending alone. It requires a three-pronged response. First, Nigeria must invest heavily in primary education, remove children from the streets and provide them with the foundational learning necessary to secure a meaningful future. Second, religious and traditional authorities must lead a sustained campaign for responsible parenthood and family formation. Third, politicians must support that effort by abandoning the convenient fiction that Nigeria possesses limitless wealth—a claim that encourages expectations the state cannot possibly meet.
Nigeria’s leadership failures are undeniable, but citizens must also recognise that sustainable development requires population growth to remain broadly consistent with the country’s capacity to educate, employ, house and protect its people. Therefore, now that campaigning for the 2027 general election has begun and every presidential candidate professes concern for the poor, population policy should be brought to the centre of the national debate. It should trouble every critical stakeholder that one of the few things Nigeria appears able to produce in ever-increasing abundance is children, while its capacity to secure their future continues to diminish. Changing that trajectory will require a credible and enforceable population policy, supported by education, healthcare, social protection and carefully designed incentives. That conversation can no longer be postponed!

Why not Mike Emenalo?

Whether they were pushed (as many of us suspect) or they actually jumped, the resignation of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) president, Ibrahim Gusau and several executive committee members, has presented a golden opportunity to reform football administration in Nigeria. And it is an opportunity President Tinubu must not waste. A few weeks ago, while in Nigeria to prepare for the premier of his movie ‘MKO’ on Ist October in Lagos, Hollywood filmmaker, Ose Oyamendan and I had spirited conversations on our football. He suggested, and I agreed with him, that the best person who can possibly help reform our football is Mike Emenalo, easily one of the biggest names in the world when it comes to elite football club management. Before going into film, Ose was one of the most notable sports journalists in Nigeria who also anchored what was then Africa’s biggest sports show, MASTERSPORTS.
The pertinent question here is: Can we afford Emenalo who is currently Director of Football for the Saudi Arabia Pro League, the same position he held in the English Premiership club, Chelsea and French Ligue 1 club, AS Monaco? I doubt. But as a former Super Eagles player, I am sure that if the president calls him, Emenalo can be persuaded to come home to help change the narrative of our football with his expertise, experience and exposure. That, for me, is the surest way to go. Otherwise, we will soon be back to the same old problem!

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on www.olusegunadeniyi.com

Olusegun Adeniyi

While campaigning for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) presidential ticket in the recently concluded 2011 general election, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar came up with what I considered the most fundamental statement I have heard from any Nigerian politician on how to redirect our economy and put public finance on the path of sustainability. He pledged that if elected president, his medium-term (a four-year period) strategy would be to ensure that recurrent expenditure was financed fully with non-oil revenue while every kobo earned from oil revenue would be devoted to investment in infrastructure, security, education and health.

 
Highlighting his plan, Atiku said: “Oil revenue is highly volatile and exhaustible. We must have a plan to wisely use it to build capacity for the future—invest in infrastructure and in the people—and not consume it today. We would also encourage all state governments to set an agenda and timeline within which they would no longer depend on oil revenue for recurrent expenditure. Our regional governments did not get oil revenue but massively developed the country. We must return to the responsible path. The FGN would develop an incentive system (grants-in-aid) to encourage states which are succeeding in making the transition. This agenda is fundamental to motivating all tiers of government to develop the non-oil sectors of the economy and hence diversify the economy.”

Although I was not in the country at the period Atiku made the proposition, I thought it would set the agenda for the electioneering campaign. I imagined that the media and other political contenders would take on Atiku and in the process create the basis for fighting the election on a contestation of ideas. That never happened. Now that the elections are over, I believe we should reopen the debate which is central to the future of our country…

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After one year away on a Fellows Programme in the United States, following the death of my principal, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, I returned to Nigeria in June 2011. By then President Goodluck Jonathan had assumed office. And on 29th September of that year, I wrote the foregoing in a column titled, ‘The Atiku Abubakar Formula…1’. It was the beginning of what I planned to be a long series. Unfortunately, after the second part, published a week later on 6th October 2011, I started getting feedback from people in government that I had already launched the 2015 presidential campaign for Atiku! Since that was not my intention, I discontinued the idea.

However, it is noteworthy that at every election season, Atiku always brought out critical national issue for engagement, and we must commend him for it. Before and after the 2015 election, for instance, Atiku canvassed the idea of restructuring the country. “…there is indeed too much concentration of power and resources at the centre. And it is stifling our march to true greatness as a nation and threatening our unity because of all the abuses, inefficiencies, corruption and reactive tensions that it has been generating,” Atiku said in August 2012 while canvassing a  review of the structure of the Nigerian federation, preferably along the basis of the current six geopolitical zones as regions and the states as provinces. Four years later in 2016, Atiku reignited the issue: “The call for restructuring is even more relevant today in light of the governance and economic challenges facing us…addressing the flaws in our federation will help us address some of those very economic and security challenges facing this country.”

I have recalled the foregoing against the background of Atiku’s latest pledge to restore fuel subsidy if elected president next year. A politician with his worldview does not suddenly become an apostle of fuel subsidy in the name of helping the poor. But for the first time since raising campaign issues, Atiku now finds one that resonates with many Nigerians. That his new position contradicts what he has earlier stood for is reflected in the fact that even his spokesman tried an extrapolation of ‘removing subsidy and reinstating it again’. Atiku, of course, has doubled down on an idea that is becoming increasingly popular with many Nigerians.

Before I continue, let me reiterate my position on fuel subsidy on which I have written dozens of columns, including once illustrating my point with a story from The Other Room, “Lend Me One from Tomorrow’s”. I have also done a series on a study commissioned in 2008 by the late President Yar’Adua on ‘subsidies and tariffs in Nigeria’ in five critical sectors: Electricity, Petroleum, Education, Health and Agriculture. The main objectives were to determine the effectiveness of subsidies in these sectors, examine the need or otherwise for continuity and finally, suggest the framework for a gradual elimination with the overall aim of improving the general welfare of Nigerians. The report was submitted shortly before Yar’Adua fell ill in 2009 and the rest, as they say, is history.

When on assuming office on 29 May 2023, Tinubu removed fuel subsidy, I endorsed the idea. That position has not changed. But those attacking Atiku also miss the point. As the late Mario Cuomo reminded us, “you campaign in poetry and govern in prose”. From the late President Muhammadu Buhari to Tinubu himself, weaponizing the emotional issues around fuel subsidy removal have become a secure route to Aso Rock. That, I guess, is what Atiku is also doing, and I consider it as no more than sheer hypocrisy for anybody in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) or the current administration to blame him. Atiku is only playing them at their game, no matter the pretenses to the contrary, and Nigerians are paying attention to him.

Many of us can still remember that while running for president in 2011, the late Buhari criticised former President Goodluck Jonathan’s proposal to end fuel subsidy, calling it a fraudulent policy. â€œWho is subsidising who? If anybody told me about subsidy, he is a fraud…the day I have to talk about it, I will invite a petroleum economist to come and tell me who is subsidising Nigerians,” Buhari said while promising to bring down the cost of petrol if elected president. Despite that rhetoric, not only did fuel subsidy payments continue under Buhari but the eight years he spent in office between 2015 and 2023 actually witnessed the highest amount of money expended on it with the figure put at approximately $25 billion (about N35 trillion). And fuel price went up by more than 100 percent under him!

Meanwhile, as perhaps the foremost opposition leader in Nigeria in January 2012, Tinubu had released a strongly worded statement to counter then President Jonathan’s attempt to remove fuel subsidy. Titled, ‘Removal of Oil Subsidy: President Jonathan Breaks Social Contract with the People,’ Tinubu said the Jonathan administration was tossing the people into the depths of the midnight sea. “Government would have us believe that every hardship it manufactures for the people to endure is a good thing. This is a lie. The hardships they thrust upon the poor often bear no other purpose than to keep them poor. This is such a time,” Tinubu wrote. “I am not calling President Jonathan an evil man. I do not believe he is perverse. However, the economic ideas controlling him are so misguided that they have a perverse impact. Because he is a slave to wrong-headed economics, the people will become enslaved to greater misery. This crisis will bear his name and will be his legacy.”

In a way, Atiku is now taking Tinubu at his word. While unveiling details of his proposed Atiku Economic Recovery Plan (AERP) 2027 last week, the opposition African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate argued that the current administration has failed to adequately account for the financial gains from the removal of the petrol subsidy hence the need for a new intervention. He also made a case about caring for the poor as opposed to helping the rich, which he accuses the Tinubu government of doing: “The government can protect a multibillion-dollar oil investment from risk, yet it says protecting the Nigerian worker from crushing hardship is bad economics. It can bend policy to make every barrel of crude more profitable, but tells a struggling mother that making the litre of petrol she needs to take her children to school more affordable is irresponsible.”

Whatever may be his motivation, not a few Nigerians are delighted that Atiku is hitting Tinubu where it hurts because while the removal of fuel subsidy may have brought more money into government coffers, it has only worsened the plight of the ordinary citizens. More money to the federation account has also encouraged irresponsible behaviour at all levels of government even when most Nigerians are finding life difficult. Yet, to the extent that the decision to end fuel subsidy regime and merge the exchange rates was never going to be cost-free, I had warned this government not to continue with the template of the past.

In my 5 July 2023 column, ‘My Convoy is Longer Than Yours,’ just about five weeks after Tinubu’s inauguration, I used his long convoys and that of the senate president, Godswill Akpabio, that were then trending on social media as a metaphor for profligacy and abuse of public resources that should have no place when millions of Nigerians were going through harrowing times. “It is important for President Tinubu and his handlers not to misread the public mood. That he has used his honeymoon period to strike when the iron is still hot on two critical policy issues may have earned him momentary applause on decisive leadership,” I wrote at a period. “But there are no predictable outcomes for those choices in an environment where several variables are beyond his control. So, there is a need for caution. Not hubris!”

The president obviously paid no attention to the idea of shared sacrifice. The situation is worse in many of the states where the jumbo funds that now come in from FAAC allocations are frittered. After appointing 4,800 special assistants without any specific functions to perform beyond just draining public resources, Governor Lucky Okpebholo of Edo State said it was part of efforts to deepen the participation of APC members in his administration. But Edo is not alone in this recklessness. Despite aggregate revenues to subnational governments increasing from N4.84 trillion in 2022 to N15.53 trillion in 2025, according to the latest report by the Seun Onigbinde-led BudgIT, that has not translated into improved welfare for the people and development of critical infrastructure in many of the 36 states.

Now, let me make something clear. Unlike Atiku, I would never advocate reinstating fuel subsidy even if it were possible. I also know that it is practically impossible to put the subsidy genie back in the bottle given our fiscal situation as a country. But for many of us, the idea of removing fuel subsidy was never to make more money available for irresponsible governance. It is to eliminate waste and corruption and correct the distortions that impede macroeconomic stability in the country. Therefore, the question Atiku is asking—which many other stakeholders are also asking—remains pertinent: Where are the gains of fuel subsidy removal?

For decades, fuel subsidy was the most tangible expression of the Nigerian social contract. Where the state failed to deliver on roads, power, security, or other public services, cheap petrol stood in as a dividend to citizens—the single point at which government presence was felt as a relief rather than as a demand. Yes, it was an inefficient contract and a corrupt one, but the benefits tricked down to the ordinary people. While removing it may have plugged the fiscal leaks; it also cancelled the previous ‘social contract’ to the people without offering an equivalent replacement. That perhaps explains why the sentiment beneath Atiku’s new position is one most Nigerians share, including those who believe the ADC presidential candidate is being driven by political opportunism.

Here is the point the Tinubu handlers fail to understand and demonizing Atiku would not wish it away: A reform is vindicated not by the reported receipts it generates, but by what those receipts translate to in people’s welfare. Therefore, until the gains of the current government reforms arrive at the household, in transport fares, in food prices, and in the cost of keeping small businesses open, fuel subsidy removal will potentially carry a huge political cost for the incumbent president and party in power. That, I believe, is the wager behind Atiku’s subsidy card. And, as we inch towards the 2027 general election, it is a potent one!

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Olusegun Adeniyi

The biggest losers in the Osun State gubernatorial election are the All Progressives Congress (APC) National Chairman, Prof. Nentawe Yilwatda and the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Mr Adegboyega Oyetola. For Yilwatda, his 276-member campaign council of “political heavyweights” was crushed by the dancing feet of Governor Ademola Adeleke. Despite boasting that the contest would end like “a trailer facing a Keke (bicycle)”, he was humbled by Osun voters. Had Yillwatda listened to his ownSpecial Adviser on Media and Strategy, Abimbola Tooki, he would have known that Oyetola and his proxy candidate, Mr Bola Oyebamiji (a respected professional in his own right) were no match for the ‘Ajobiewe’ of Ede. But now that the election has been lost and won, we should all be worried by what transpired in Osun State.

By the conventional indicators Nigeria uses to evaluate electoral success, the process appeared to have delivered. Votes were cast and properly counted. And the winner was determined by daybreak. But the more consequential question is what the election required in human, institutional, and material terms, and whether the Nigerian state is prepared to account for those costs. The first cost is measured in lives. Let’s begin with the dead. On 12 August, three days before the election, Ayegbo Oluwadele was shot near a family compound in Esa-Oke, Obokun Local Government Area. On 6 July, Timilehin Oni, a 19-year-old who would have been participating in his first governorship election, was shot dead in Ijebu-Jesa. These deaths were not isolated incidents; they formed part of a wider pattern of election-related violence reported across a state where a serving Senator introduced a new refrain, ‘Pi pa ni o’ which literally translates into a license to kill political opponents.

How many lives were lost to the election? Here we arrive at the first scandal. The Kimpact Development Initiative recorded 73 election-related incidents and 29 deaths. YIAGA Africa’s Samson Itodo placed the death toll above 35. The Nigeria Police Force reported at least 30 politically motivated killings, while the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development recorded 18. The APC reported ten members killed; the Accord Party reported fifteen. The disparity reveals a serious weakness in Nigeria’s capacity to document electoral violence. The country can record electoral outcomes with extraordinary precision while failing to establish, with comparable certainty, how many citizens died in the same electoral process. Votes are subjected to meticulous enumeration while deaths are reduced to competing estimates.

No one should pretend that this was a crime by one political party. Members of the two major political camps were among the dead, while both have faced allegations of mobilizing or arming young people for political purposes.

Let’s now consider what it took to hold the ring. For a single electoral day in a single state, approximately 25,310 security personnel were deployed: 15,000 police officers, 10,210 personnel from the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), and over 100 Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) operatives. A Deputy Inspector-General of Police was deployed to coordinate operations while 30 Police Commissioners were assigned across the state’s 30 local government areas. Helicopters and drones were used for surveillance. The Army restricted movement into and within the state from midnight, with exemptions for essential services and voters.

Even if we ignore the enormous financial cost involved at a period most Nigerians struggle to eke out a living, the scale of this deployment amounted to roughly seven security personnel for every polling unit and approximately one security officer for every 40 votes eventually cast. Meanwhile, farmers in several states face insecurity on routes to their fields; and travellers along major corridors remain exposed to kidnapping and other forms of violence. The issue is therefore not the availability of state capacity to address the challenge of insecurity. It is about the allocation of that capacity. Osun demonstrated what the Nigerian state can accomplish when political stakes are sufficiently high. The unresolved question is why comparable urgency is not consistently applied to the protection of citizens outside electoral periods.

Then there was the ‘migration’. In the final week of the campaign, senior political figures from across the federation converged in Osogbo. No fewer than six APC Governors were in Osun State with their retinue of aides. The senate president and his deputy were also on ground along with numerous National Assembly members. These actors exercised considerable influence over the campaign environment, despite the fact that none was an eligible voter in Osun State. But here is the lesson of it all: The full weight of the APC federal might was placed on one side of a scale, and the scale did not move: the margin of victory, 66,252 votes, was more than twice the 28,344 by which the same man won in 2022!

And then the money. Reports from across the state put the going rate at between N20,000 and N50,000 for a vote, with agents of both leading parties named. Consider what that means. In a state where roughly 1.9 million people live in multidimensional poverty and nearly 297,000 children of primary school age are not in any classroom, the highest out-of-school rate in the entire South-West, the ballots for who governs for the next four years were battered. This is not intended to diminish the legitimacy of the mandate but rather to place it within its social context. A functioning electoral democracy requires citizens to participate without being induced, political actors to compete within established rules, and the state to protect citizens without selectively concentrating security capacity around political events.

Now to the crux of the matter. The APC National Chairman told us three weeks ago what Osun gubernatorial election represents. It was, in his own framing, a ‘rehearsal’ for the 2027 general election. I took Yilwatda at his word in this column exactly two weeks ago, Osun Polls as Tinubu’s Litmus Test – ĚÇĐÄĘÓĆľLIVE.  And I take him at his word now. We have seen the ‘rehearsal’. Twenty-nine dead, or thirty-five, or eighteen, we still cannot say. Scores of others injured. Twenty-five thousand security personnel deployed. Votes traded openly like a commodity. For the 2027 general election, we do not want to see a repeat of such ‘rehearsal.’

The ballot box was invented so that the transfer of power could be settled by counting votes rather than breaking heads. That was the entire bargain of democracy. In Osun State, we ran both systems at once. We counted the votes and we broke the heads. Yet, until the political class can be persuaded that the first makes the second unnecessary, we are conducting a census of who is willing to die for other men’s ambition. And then holding a vote afterwards to make it official. A democracy that compels citizens to count the body bags after counting the votes is imperiled.

Beyond Frank Omenka’s Moonlight Tales

I cannot count the number of people who have forwarded to me the interview granted by Colonel Frank Omenka, where he made copious references to me. In the first part, he said: “There are many approaches to interrogation. It depends on the condition. I didn’t touch anybody with the ones I used. There’s this boy, Olusegun Adeniyi. He’s a pressman like you people. When I took over the Security Group, I think he had been invited before I took over. But he came. I looked at him. I said, such a small boy. He came there because he was arrested for being a courier for one Cornelius Adebayo or something. I said, don’t do this. This is not good. When he left, what did he do? He wrote a book, saying that I was hostile to him. Yes, people are mad because they suffered.”

In another part, he said: “When Olusegun Adeniyi was released, I begged him not to do anything that had to do with being a courier or a drug peddler, carrying cocaine or something. Don’t put yourself in trouble. I said, go. Come back tomorrow by 10 o’clock. Ask him. As he was about to go, I just said, just one minute. Please come back. Don’t put us in trouble. In any case, if you don’t come back, we are going to arrest this person. I gave a name that we had done a job on before. He sat down in my office, sweating.  I said, no, you can just go. Tomorrow, come back around 10 A.M. The next day, he came back before 10. The person whose name I gave I think must be the wife, or the girlfriend then.  He sat down. So, he came early. He wasn’t detained. Ask him whether he was detained in my office.” In yet another part of the interview, Omenka again made allusion to me: “This other boy, Adeniyi, I think he was doing courier job for, not NADECO per se, but for the agitators.”

My encounter with Omenka happened 30 years ago when I was living with Second Republic Kwara State Governor, Chief Cornelius Olatunji Adebayo (who died last year) in his rented three-bedroom flat in Surulere, Lagos. I was then an Assistant Editor at Sunday Concord with Mr Tunji Bello (currently the Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission),Ěýas the Editor. A prominent NADECO member, Adebayo—who later served as a Minister under President Olusegun Obasanjo—had been arrested along with the late Chief Anthony Enahoro, and detained first in Abuja and then later in Calabar Prison for eight months. A few weeks after regaining freedom, Adebayo was forewarned that Abacha’s gunmen were after him, so he fled the country to Cote D’Ivoire before he eventually ended up in Canada where he took up asylum. It was while in Abidjan that his Personal Assistant, the late Mr Jonathan Olalere Laiyemo, visited him. On the way back to Nigeria, Laiyemo was arrested at the Seme border by security people who found all the letters he (Adebayo) wrote to NADECO/Afenifere colleagues (Chiefs Abraham Adesanya, Ayo Adebanjo and Olaniwun Ajayi, who are now of blessed memories) and family members, including me. I was also to deliver the other letters. That was how I entered Omenka’s frame.

However, contrary to Omenka’s claim, I have never shared my DMI experience in any of my books. But it is true that he neither hit me nor did I see him or any of his men physically assault anybody throughout the period I was at their office. Eight years ago, on the 20^th anniversary of the death of General Sani Abacha, and one year to the 2019 general election in which the late President Muhammadu Buhari was seeking a second term, I used that memorable encounter with Omenka to make a critical point. That point is as valid today as it was eight years ago:

…As an assistant editor at Sunday Concord, I was arrested around 3am in October 1996 by truckloads of soldiers who were shocked to see a “small boy” and became sympathetic the moment they realized I was a journalist (they told me they thought I was a ‘419’ kingpin since no reason was given them for the arrest). Dumped at the DMI dungeon in Apapa at that ungodly time of the day, I did not get to meet the much-dreaded DMI Director, Col Frank Omenka until around 5pm to endure verbal abuse, bullying and threats in the name of interrogation that lasted five days. While I will tell my story if I live long enough to write a biography, I can never forget that, right in my presence, a man was hurled into the room to whom Omenka threatened: “I will detain you here tonight and organise some boys to go and rape your wife at home.”

After the distraught man had been dragged away, Omenka now turned to me. “I will let you go home tonight but you must come back tomorrow with everything you have ever written, including your latest piece where you compared General Abacha with Idi Amin. Meanwhile, greet your wife for me.” When I replied that I was not married, he countered: “I know that already. But you have a fiancĂŠe who is undergoing her youth service in Ogun State.” Seeing how shocked I was, Omenka pressed his advantage. “I know everything about you. You are a lucky boy because my instruction before I left office yesterday was that my men should arrest and dump you in the underground cell for two months before bringing you to me but when I came this morning and I saw you asleep on the sofa, I had pity on you. But don’t push your luck because, as you must be aware, I stammer and I am already provoked. Since you are a small boy, maybe I can still mend you. And if I cannot, I will make your mother to weep over you…”

NOTE: In that same column of eight years ago, ’20 Years after Abacha: Lest we Forget,’ this was my conclusion:

Given the internal contradictions that have led to convulsions within the ruling APC, the orgy of violence in certain theatres across the country and the manner in which institutions of state are now being used to fight personal battles, there are genuine reasons to be apprehensive as democracy loses its meaning when mob passion or crude coercion overwhelms the rule of law and public decency. Yet, if there is any lesson we must learn from the Abacha era, it is that when the security and law enforcement institutions become extensions of the political agenda of the incumbent and the political elite cannot see beyond its narrow interests, the society can never advance or be peaceful.

As we therefore approach the 2019 general election, with the security agencies preoccupied with regime protection, at a time a cult of personality has effectively been built around the president by an uncritical mob, the answer to the question Abacha posed to our system (before the divine intervention of 8^th June 1988) lies in the people not letting down their guards. Eternal vigilance, as the old saying goes, is the price of liberty!

ENDNOTE: I wrote the foregoing on 7^th June 2018, and I hope some people would still get the message as they plot their ‘rehearsals’ for the 2027 general election. To Colonel Frank Omenka, please accept my sympathy. This ‘small boy’ has since moved on with his life. But no matter how hard you try, you cannot rewrite history!

You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on www.olusegunadeniyi.com

Olusegun Adeniyi

In October 2002, when it became obvious that then Vice President Atiku Abubakar was moving towards running against his principal, President Olusegun Obasanjo for the People Democratic Party (PDP) ticket, I wrote a column titled, ‘Before Atiku Takes a Dangerous Gamble’. It was both a warning and a counsel that has turned out to be prescient. For the past two decades, at every election season, Atiku has had to confront the ‘Obasanjo Factor’ in his presidential bid. At a recent public event in Lagos, the former president was asked about his greatest mistake in office. He replied that choosing Atiku as his running mate in 1999 was his most regrettable decision.

Not surprisingly, the African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate has responded by reminding the public that he (Atiku) supported Obasanjo financially after his release from prison in 1998. “When he eventually regained his freedom, he had little to his name. I received him, clothed him, ensured he was properly cared for and extended every support necessary for him to regain his footing,” Atiku stated while claiming that the campaign of calumny was because he thwarted Obasanjo’s ‘Third Term’ agenda.

Since data from the United Nations Population Fund reveals that between 60 to 63 percent of our population is under the age of 25, it means that most of our citizens were not even born during one of the most consequential political feuds in recent Nigerian history. So, before I conclude, I want to take the readers down memory lane by recalling excerpts from that column of 24 years ago against the background of the never-ending spat between the two old men.

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…From all available reports, Atiku is either contemplating the idea of challenging Obasanjo for the ruling PDP presidential ticket or he is being goaded into doing so by some political do-gooders. While there is no crime in a politician nursing an ambition, Atiku versus Obasanjo as a presidential contest is not going to be a tea party. It will be messy, dirty and at the end, nobody is going to win. That is why we must intervene before it happens.

 

Assuming Atiku throws his hat into the ring, then we will have on our hands a presidential aspirant who is not in the race because he has a better vision of Nigeria but rather someone who is running out of grudge, essentially to prove a point to some ‘enforcers’ who imagine that only them know how to plot other peoples’ political downfall. Only a few weeks ago, this same Atiku gleefully told the nation that if he were to choose between being President of Nigeria and being VP under Obasanjo, he would choose the latter. If he now joins the presidential race, it would mean he was either telling a monumental lie then, (in which case we may find it difficult to ever trust him) or he no longer believes in what he said at the period, hence people will still ask: what has changed? We will come to this later.

Anybody with an understanding of what is going on in Abuja cannot but see how the power struggle between Atiku and Works and Housing Minister, Chief Tony Anenih, has put Obasanjo in a sort of quandary. Now, Atiku is in a situation in which he is being blamed for the problem the President invited upon himself by his disregard for the National Assembly until the lawmakers decided to fight back. Whatever his misgivings, however, I believe Atiku should count the cost of what could become the first in history of such a political misadventure.

Since we always cite the United States as example in matters like this, and given that our democracy—even though a caricature of the real thing—is patterned after theirs, I have done extensive research to ascertain whether in their history, a sitting Vice President ever challenged his boss for the presidential ticket of their party. I did not find any. And to be doubly sure, on Monday, I sought the assistance of the Public Affairs Department of the United States Information Service (USIS) and their two-day research also did not throw up any such example. I must express my appreciation to Mr Femi Omowunmi who, despite his tight schedules, took time out to help me. The closest we have to this kind of situation is France where Prime Ministers often run against their Presidents and we all know the system is completely different and, in any case, the two office holders in that country are usually from opposing political parties.

But all these are even immaterial. Given our environment, a confrontation between Obasanjo and Atiku will throw up a lot of ethno-religious issues which may tear apart the fabric of the nation, especially at this point. Already, we see a lot of desperation from Obasanjo and we know how dangerous a desperate man could become. In his most recent syndicated interview in six Sunday newspapers, the President read from the portion of a document where he alleged that in February 1999 some Northern leaders wanted him to sign that he would protect ‘Northern interest’ with some specific ‘juicy’ Ministries like Petroleum and Defence reserved for people from the region. He said the document intended making a figurehead of him and anybody who signed was doomed because the real power wielder would be the Vice President. I don’t know why the President had to personally read a document that ought to have been leaked without any trace to him assuming he was well advised. But not only did Obasanjo read extracts from the said document, he did it in a manner that suggests the whole “interview session” was arranged just for him to publicize “the Northern Agenda for power” in 1999.

Meanwhile, it would be easy for someone to conclude that the President was whipping up ethnic sentiment yet I don’t think that is the case even when that is the impression created. I recall vividly that during my Easter Monday breakfast meeting with him last year (16 April 2001), Obasanjo said some Yoruba elders also met him and were asking for his ‘ Yoruba agenda’ and he told them he did not know of any Yoruba agenda but rather Nigerian agenda. And I could see how angry he was by such a parochial idea even when I was not a member of the team that visited him. The same man is now being projected by the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC), an organisation which he had actually pronounced banned, as their man whose “hair must not be touched” as if Ghali Na’Abba is interested in the hair on Obasanjo’s head!

Of course, I know it could be annoying the way some northern leaders are carrying on about a nebulous agreement they allegedly made Obasanjo sign which we now know to be untrue. But it will nonetheless be sad if the president allows the political pressure of the moment to push him into becoming a Yoruba candidate. That will be the real tragedy. But in all these, I sympathize with Atiku. Anybody who has been deputy anything will understand what I am talking about. I was a deputy editor before at ĚÇĐÄĘÓĆľ and a few people in the newsroom treated me with suspicion because I was seen as ‘too ambitious’. The belief was that I was hungry to be elevated hence my editor should be careful lest I tripped him. But Eni-B (Eniola Bello) knew there was no banana peel under his table (apology to Dr. Chuba Okadigbo) so he trusted me and I gave him my loyalty.

In retrospect, assuming Eni-B believed the rumour mongers and had tried to undermine me, I doubt if I would have remained loyal to him. That, I guess, is what happened to Atiku but I still believe all the problems can be sorted out. Afterall, we have seen a situation in which politicians fight bitter primaries only to end up running on the same ticket. It happened with President Ronald Reagan and Mr. George Bush. The latter ended up being the VP for eight years before he secured his own turn. And here in Nigeria, the late Chief M.K.O. Abiola and Ambassador Baba Gana Kingibe fought the Social Democratic Party (SDP) primaries in 1993 before running together. All these go to show that Obasanjo and Atiku can still iron out their differences to move forward if they are both prepared to be honest and open towards each other.

But no matter the problem between them today, Atiku should also not forget that he was picked as running mate by Obasanjo in 1999 against the run of play. Yet today, he has become the most powerful number two man since the late Tunde Idiagbon because Obasanjo gave him so much latitude to run the show on the economic front. We all remember that in 1999, Obasanjo stuck by Atiku even at the risk of losing the support of prominent Northerners who felt dissatisfied with the choice. At that period, the Big Boys were Professor Jubril Aminu, Alhaji Adamu Ciroma, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur and Alhaji Abubakar Rimi. Today, I know many people whose only grouse with Obasanjo is the privatisation of public enterprises which is Atiku’s forte. Not a few would swear that the billboards dotting the landscape which proclaim that “when the nation privatizes, the people benefit” should actually read, “when the nation privatizes, Atiku benefits”. The Vice President is himself aware of this negative perception about him which he has denied several times.

I have serious disagreements with Obasanjo’s methods, especially regarding the way he has put himself in the hands of a notorious political undertaker, his disposition towards National Assembly and his seeming contempt for public opinion. But the ball is now in his court. He has to show that he can forgive and forget. Again, the President should be firm with his Ministers, however important some of them may consider themselves to be in their own eyes. They should respect the Vice President as their boss. All of them! If anyone advises the president to use Atiku and dump him later, I bet that we may just have seen the end of a battle and perhaps the beginning of the war. A very dangerous war. In the interest of peace, the two of them should settle whatever may be the problem between them. And if they don’t have any, they should call their aides to order.

Enough is enough!

ENDNOTE: I wrote the foregoing in October 2002. Three months later, precisely on 4 January 2003, Atiku threw a bombshell at the PDP national convention in Abuja. Just as the voting was about to start, an interview he granted to BBC Hausa Service was aired, saying he was still considering his options. And they were three: One, to run for the PDP presidential ticket; two, to team up with the Second Republic Vice President Alex Ekwueme (now of blessed memory) and three, maintain the status quo by aligning with Obasanjo. He eventually settled for the last option but by then the damage was done. What that says clearly is that the problem between Obasanjo and Atiku did not emanate from ‘Third Term’, it was about Second Term with all the ‘Mandela Option’ machinations at the time.

Indeed, following the open declaration of war between Obasanjo and his VP in 2006, Simon Kolawole and I had a memorable encounter with Atiku that I will include in my memoir should I ever write one. Most unfortunate is that we may never know the real cost of that fight between a president and his deputy to Nigeria at a period we had a divided government. In his controversial three-part memoir, ‘My Watch’, Obasanjo said because he “could not succumb to the distraction, diversion and malevolence of an ambitious but unwise deputy,” he had to plant moles in Atiku’s office for most of the time they spent together in government. And it is obvious both are still very suspicious of each other.

If there is anything I have learnt about power politics in Nigeria, it is that forgiveness is a rare commodity. Our politicians preserve grievances and often turn personal conflicts into public issues. Some animosities even date as far back as the First Republic. The central themes are always betrayal and gratitude, loyalty and its absence. Obasanjo is 89, and Atiku will turn 80 this November. If ever there was a time for these two elder statesmen to reconcile and resolve a dispute older than most Nigerians, it is now. But whatever may have transpired between them during their time in office, and however they interpret that history, it remains a personal matter and should not become a national issue, especially in the 2027 general election campaigns.

When old personal animosities overshadow political discourse, debate about policies and national priorities is pushed aside. If personal disputes dictate alliances and split institutions, they risk weakening the foundation of democracy and stalling progress for those who deserve leaders focused on the public good. Therefore, a longstanding personal grudge should not prevent any candidate from presenting his case to voters. If Atiku has earned a sixth chance to seek the presidency, the 2027 election should be decided by voters assessing his record and vision for Nigeria. Not by the judgment of his former principal about decisions made two decades ago.

For younger Nigerians, there are also lessons to learn. Understanding the roots and recurrence of such rivalries offers them an opportunity to ask how they might encourage more transparent, issue-based politics, and how they themselves can break this vicious cycle by refusing to allow age-old personal grudges to dictate their future.

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on 

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By Olusegun Adeniyi

In the build-up to 2003 when the then incumbent Governor Olusegun Osoba was seeking re-election on the platform of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and then incumbent President Olusegun Obasanjo was also seeking re-election on the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) platform, the political slogan in Ogun State was â€˜Segun L’oke, Segun Ni’sale’. The idea was for voters in the state to adopt a ‘bipartisan’ approach in exercising their franchise. Since the parties were arranged on the ballot paper in alphabetical order, voters were enjoined to ‘look up’ by voting AD during the governorship election and ‘look down’ (for PDP) while casting their ballot in the presidency. For the locals, the slogan was also translated as retaining one Segun at the top (in Abuja) and another Segun at home (in Abeokuta). As it would happen, it was only the Segun in Abuja who prevailed while the Segun in Abeokuta lost out. And the latter has always blamed the former for what he considered an act of betrayal.

While I do not want to dabble into the brouhaha between the two respected Egba Octogenarians, it is evident that political deals are always fraught with risks. It is indeed instructive that of all the six AD Governors in the Southwest at the time, the only one who won re-election was a certain Bola Tinubu in Lagos State whose own slogan was ‘Jeun Soke’. Crudely translated, it means only voters who ‘look up’ for the AD (without ‘looking down’ for any other party) were guaranteed reward. I recall that episode against the background of the upcoming Osun State gubernatorial election that is already throwing up a lot of controversy.

Apparently believing the mantra that one good turn deserves another, Governor Ademola Adeleke has publicly endorsed Tinubu for a second term ahead of his own re-election next week. “Our own son, father and leader”, according to Adeleke, deserves the support of Osun electorate, despite knowing fully well that the president will not be on the ballot until next year. “I am the governor of the ancestral birthplace of Mr. President. How can I have my own in the saddle and think twice before embracing him? I need no persuasion to act as I have declared repeatedly, our endorsement of Mr President.”

That open declaration of support means nothing to some APC supremos who seem to be going for broke and I fear they may have sold a self-serving idea to the president that the ruling party needs Osun for his re-election next year. “We must win Osun and nothing will stop us,” the APC National Chairman, Prof. Nentawe Yilwatda, boasted last week at the inauguration of the 276-member campaign council headed by Governor Hope Uzodimma of Imo State. “These are political heavyweights; it is like a trailer facing a Keke (bicycle). I do not know how the political party standing against us in Osun can withstand the strength of these people who are going there to mobilise and win the election,” Yilwatda declared rather exuberantly, before stating the reason for his seeming desperation. “This is the last election that will hold before the general election. This will be a litmus test. This will be our practising ground. This will be our rehearsal of the machinery we’re going to prepare for 2027.”

It is remarkable that just a few weeks ago in June, Yilwatda’sSpecial Adviser on Media and Strategy, Abimbola Tooki published what he said was his assessment of the chances of his party in the gubernatorial elections in Ekiti and Osun States.He predicted that APC would win Ekiti easily (as it turned out to be); but Osun would prove difficult for the party. Writing on how he visited Osun State and the journalist in him could not resist conducting an informal field assessment, Tooki wrote, “…rather than relying solely on elite political conversations, I sought the opinions of ordinary voters whose ballots ultimately determine electoral outcomes. Over (a) few days, I boarded more than 20 commercial motorcycles and engaged the riders in conversations about the coming election.” Then Tooki delivered his bombshell: “The responses were striking. Approximately 16 of them openly declared their intention to vote for Governor Ademola Adeleke.” If Yilwatda’s own spokesman could make such an open deduction that the incumbent will most likely win—and he also explained his reasons—where then is the party’s confidence coming from?

There is even a larger issue here. The Osun State gubernatorial election, according to Yilwatda, will be a “rehearsal of the machinery we’re going to prepare for 2027.” That phrase raises an important question. A rehearsal is a practice session for a larger performance. So, what exactly is being rehearsed in Osun State? The answer matters to every Nigerian who cares about the future of our democracy. It should matter especially to Tinubu whose administration will ultimately be judged by the standard under which these elections are conducted. While the president has a right to support his party’s gubernatorial candidate in Osun State, he has even a bigger responsibility for law and order in the country.

For months, the Osun Commissioner of Police, Mr Ibrahim Gotan, has been at the centre of accusations from opposition parties and civil society groups who see him more as an APC enforcer than a man whose primary duty is to ensure law and order in the state. And yesterday, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) entered the fray by placing a ‘Post-No-Debit’ on the Osun State Government Statutory Allocation account. “We are supposed to be in a democracy, where the rule of law must always prevail,” Adeleke said in a statement that questions both the legality and timing of the EFCC action. “We will not accept a situation where federal agencies trample on the constitutional rights of subnational governments.” But the EFCC explained last night that the action was part of its preventive mandate, and taken in public interest, to halt recent suspicious “transfers of funds into different corporate entities.”

Meanwhile, following growing public pressure, the Inspector-General of Police, Olatunji Disu has deployed a new officer, Samuel Erale Etaifo, to superintend the election security for the Osun polls. That is a concession of sorts and an admission of a lack of trust in Gotan’s neutrality. But read the fine print: the same police statement announcing Etaifo’s deployment also noted that Gotan “will remain the substantive head” of the Osun Command, receiving “administrative and operational support” from the new arrival. For those who had called for Gotan’s redeployment, this arrangement is unlikely to resolve the underlying concerns. Where confidence in institutional neutrality has already been weakened, partial administrative adjustments rarely provide sufficient reassurance.

But we must also be fair to Gotan. For more than two decades, Osun State gubernatorial elections have become the stage on which Nigeria’s electoral institutions are usually tested. That the pattern keeps recurring at every election cycle in the same state suggests the problem is not just about one troublesome police commissioner. Nigerians with long memories will recall the electoral tribunal battles of 2007 and 2014, as well as the dramatic collation disputes of 2018 between former Governor Adegboyega Oyetola (the current Minister for Blue Economy) and Adeleke on which I wrote . And then we had another protracted contest between Oyetola and Adeleke in 2022 in which the latter prevailed. What is remarkable in all these elections is that the current president was a bit part actor in the drama—first, as National Leader of the Action Congress (AC) and later, that of the APC.

It is noteworthy that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) appears to have done its own homework ahead of the Osun gubernatorial polls. The Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mrs Oluwatoyin Babalola, has spent recent weeks running radio jingles and partnering with civil society groups, traditional rulers and transport unions for a credible election next week Saturday. But all of that work comes to nothing if voters conclude, rightly or wrongly, that the police personnel standing at their polling units answer to a political party rather than to the law.

This then brings me back to Yilwatda’s words. The APC national chairman is entitled to want his party’s gubernatorial candidate, Mr Bola Oyebamiji, to win in Osun. And there is nothing improper in the APC deploying governors, ministers, National Assembly leadership and the full weight of its national structure behind Oyebamiji. But the ruling party should also understand the implications of getting this “rehearsal” wrong. In his Democracy Day broadcast in June, speaking directly on Ekiti and Osun, the president urged INEC, security agencies and all parties to keep the elections “peaceful and credible.” Those were his own words. The question Osun now puts to him, with barely nine days to go, is whether his party intends to be held to that declaration.

I do not believe Tinubu is trying to manipulate Osun State gubernatorial election in his party’s favour and it would be unfair to suggest that. And to be honest, the president doesn’t have much riding on this election, as it would most likely have no bearing on how Osun people vote next year. But there is an old saying that the morning shows the day. The Osun election at the tail end of the current season of off-cycle governorship polls, and the very start of serious positioning for 2027, is that morning. Since his own party’s national chairman has publicly framed what happens next week Saturday as an important precursor to 2027, that inevitably places additional responsibility on the president to ensure that the election is beyond reproach.

What the president must understand is that if this election ends up with allegations of intimidation and lingering doubts about institutional neutrality, it will inevitably influence public expectations of what lies ahead. Yet it doesn’t have to go that way. The next few days can still be deployed to reinforce the political neutrality of security agencies, strengthen public confidence in presidential leadership and demonstrate that electoral competition will be governed by the rule of law and public decency. Doing so will go beyond improving the credibility of one governorship election. It will establish the democratic precedent upon which the legitimacy of the 2027 general election will ultimately rest.

Rackets. Not Budgets!

Ever since the Presidential Foreign Investment Promotion Council (PFIPC) scandal involving Mr Adeniyi Adeyemi broke, there have been a focus on the annual budget of the federal government, especially given the N1.3 billion allocated to an agency that has been declared as fake. While Nigerians are being regaled with sordid tales from the House of Representatives ad hoc committee probe, many people have called for a reform of the budgeting process. I won’t hold my breath on that. I am almost certain that at the end of the day, nothing will be done because too many people in both the executive and legislature benefit from the current opaque budgeting regime. I made that clear in my column of 13 October 2022, titled, ‘When Budget Becomes Racket’. Below are a few excerpts from the piece.

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Last Friday, President Muhammadu Buhari presented the 2023 Appropriation bill to the National Assembly. It is his last and final one in office. The estimated expenditure for the 2023 fiscal year is N19.7 trillion with a proposed deficit of N10.78 trillion, representing 4.78 per cent of the estimated Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This is above the 3 percent per cent threshold set by the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007. While I leave experts to continue their dissection, it may be important to look back before we leap forward. That way, we will understand that we don’t do budget in Nigeria. We simply share money.   

In the 2022 budget, for instance, the federal government featured a line item for the office of ‘Retired National Assembly Clerks and Permanent Secretaries’ where over N581 million was allocated contrary to the Pension Reform Act 2004 (as amended in 2014). Ordinarily, these are/were career civil servants who for 30 to 35 years have been contributing to their pension account. Suddenly, they exit the scheme and begin to enjoy full life benefit at public expense. But who can blame them in a country where a governor who had served five months was deemed to have occupied office illegally by the Supreme Court but awarded an annual pension of a hundred million Naira?  

Meanwhile, in the service wide provision of N1.93 trillion in the 2022 budget, ‘Monitoring of Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS)’ has a provision of N1 billion. Despite that jumbo sum of money, these ‘monitors’ could still allow the Accountant General of the Federation to ‘misapply’ N108 billion without detection!   

Looking at the capital component of the 2022 budget, several programmes are captured under capital projects. A good example is the ‘Annual National Local Government Summit’—an ‘ongoing’ capital project in the Ministry of Special Duties—although one can say that the sum of N10.029 million budgeted for it is small potato. The ‘National Veterinary Infrastructure and Abbattoirs/Slaughter Houses Development Programme’ is also captured as capital project in the sum of N310 million under the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.  

In some cases, the budget provisions do not make any sense. For instance, in the Michael Imoudu Institute of Labour Studies under the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, the sums of N19 million, N14.25 million and N107.75 million were budgeted for the construction of office building, residential building and provision of electricity respectively. The question then is, what type of office can N19 million build or what kind of residential building can be executed with N14.25 million in today’s Nigeria? Such ridiculous provisions are replicated in virtually all the MDAs.  

Under the Ministry of Works, several ongoing projects are allocated ridiculously low amounts. The construction and rehabilitation of Lokoja-Obajana-Kabba-Ilorin Road, described as ongoing, has a provision of N3.35 million. Yes, N3.35 million! Meanwhile, allocating equal funds to projects without regard to their scope, complexity and level of completion raises serious questions. The same amount of N208 million was allocated to both ongoing and new roads in Kano, Enugu, Kwara States with only N13.4 million for rehabilitation of Lafia-Obi-Awe-Tunga Road in Nasarawa State. All new projects in Akwa Ibom, Delta, Cross River, Kwara States also have equal provision of N50 million Naira each. What kind of new road can N50 million deliver?  

I can go on and on to list numerous aspects of the ongoing 2022 budget that make little sense. But I believe my point is made. Ordinarily, a national budget should reflect the federal government’s fiscal and monetary policies that are targeted at economic development. That is not the case in Nigeria. Indeed, if the main objective of a budget is to reduce inequalities by mobilising and allocating resources for investment in the public sector, then what we operationalize annually in Nigeria is more of a racket than a budget!   

ENDNOTE: I wrote the foregoing four years ago and it is just one of the more than a dozen columns I have done on what we call budget in Nigeria. As I concluded in one of them in November 2017, “given that the dire economic situation has pushed the nation in the direction of an aggressive tax drive, which is where we ought to have started in the first place, the authorities should also be aware that such monies are meant to fund critical infrastructure and social services, not pay for the indulgence of public servants who continue to live large at the expense of poor citizens.”

I am almost certain that by the time the 2027 budget is out, we will still be talking about the same issues. In Nigeria, we hardly learn from any experience!

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on www.olusegunadeniyi.com   

By Olusegun Adeniyi

The Ambassador of Sweden to Nigeria, Her Excellency Anna Westerholm, was the special guest of honour at the graduation ceremony (Kindergarten 2 and Primary 5 pupils) of my wife’s Not Forgotten Initiative (NFI) School last Thursday in Abuja. “When I visited this school (last December), what stayed with me was not just the privilege of reading a book together with you. What stayed with me was the curiosity I saw in your eyes,” she told the pupils to whom she had shared the story of the fictional Swedish girl Pippi Longstocking in Nigerian Pidgin just a few months ago. “I remember your laughter, your confidence, and how eager you were to participate, ask questions, and share your thoughts…I want to encourage you to hold on to those qualities.”

Sadly, holding on to those qualities is what is now at threat. Not because the children do not want to continue learning but because there is now a challenge beyond them. And here is the brief: Some years ago, as the NFI School began to outgrow its modest structures my wife approached a neighbour whose husband owned the adjoining plot, asking whether she could use part of it. A few days later, apparently having obtained the consent of her husband, the woman gave the permission. No paperwork or conditions. Just one mother looking at other people’s children and deciding they deserved more room than they had. We accepted the gesture with gratitude and built two classrooms, a library, computer room, ‘cinema room’, kitchen and store. Always conscious that we were beneficiaries of another family’s generosity.

Three years ago, her husband passed away. Out of respect for a family that has been generous, I will not put the name down in this column. But then, death has a way of rearranging property, understanding and, sometimes, old acts of kindness. The people that are now responsible for the man’s estate have asked that we return the portion of land onto which the NFI School expanded back to them today, 30th July 2026. I want to be fair to this family, because fairness is owed. Nothing in this column should be read as a grievance against people exercising their right to a property that belongs to them. And I will not in any way question the considerations behind their request. But the reality is simply that, after years of serving dozens of vulnerable children, those classrooms will now come down.

Currently, we have 128 pupils in NFI primary school, 14 students in Federal Government Girls Colleges (FGGC) Bwari, 12 students in Federal Technical College (FTC) Orozo and seven in some Abuja private secondary schools through a partnership arrangement. All these children are on free education. The NFI School also has 14 teachers and five support staff. As my wife said last Thursday at the graduation ceremony, the stories of these children have been rewritten because some people believe in them. “Many of our children first arrived unable to read or write in English. Some spoke only Hausa. Many had never experienced structured learning,” my wife reminded the audience last Thursday. “Today they read confidently. They communicate effectively. They think critically. They dream boldly. Most importantly, they now have the confidence to compete successfully with other children anywhere in Nigeria.”

Incidentally, this is not the first time the NFI School’s hold on its own ground has felt uncertain. Five years ago, in this same column, I wrote about the very first classrooms my wife built on an empty plot. That plot, oddly, has never given us a moment’s trouble. The wider story of how we got here is one I have told before, /2021/04/01/amatala-and-other-unforgotten-children/ and earlier in the year, that story was amplified by my colleague, Simon Kolawole in his column, /2026/02/08/left-behind-but-not-forgotten/ But for the benefit of readers meeting NFI for the first time, let me summarise the story.

In December 2018, my wife turned a plea from a struggling mother who wanted her son in school and had nowhere left to turn, into two classrooms on an empty land nobody appeared to be using. Fourteen children came. Then more arrived, the way need tends to multiply once word travels through a community that someone is finally listening. A second classroom followed, then a third, eventually seven, staffed by teachers we hired one at a time as the numbers made it unavoidable. What began as an act of neighbourliness became, almost without our noticing, an institution: free lessons, one-meal-a-day, free uniforms, and scholarships. With the total commitment of my wife, the education the children are given is also structured, rigorous and transformational. That is why they keep passing Common Entrance examinations to secure admissions into highly competitive secondary schools.

Yet these are children whose parents live at the margins of society. Some of them were, years ago, children nobody expected to ever sit before a blackboard. Children who, along with their siblings and parents, fought a daily war against hunger. The NFI School has taught these children to imagine a life larger than the one they were born into. Take that away, even partially, and picture what moves in to fill the space.

Over the years, these children have had more than classroom education. They have been exposed to the kind of opportunities some of us never even had while their age. They undertake regular excursions to important places in Abuja. Through Ms Ibilola (Otegbade) Essien, some of them attended UNICEF programmes and twice met and took photographs with former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. To fire their imaginations, they have also received several prominent people in their classrooms. From Seyi Adekunle (VODI) to Hollywood filmmaker, Ose Oyamendan to Senators (Bello Mandiya, Tolu Odebiyi et al) to Ambassador Lot Egopija to chartered accountant, Gbenga Badejo to former Sports Minister and current ADC National Publicity Secretary, Malam Bolaji Abdullahi, to (now retired) federal permanent secretary, Dr Yakubu Kofarmata to the former Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) acting Executive Secretary, Hajiya Zaliha’u Ahmed and many others. Former Education Minister, Mrs Oby Ezekwesili celebrated her 60th birthday with them. MacArthur Foundation Director, Dr Kole Shettima regularly buys for them (and their parents) clothes. And my wife’s biggest supporter, Ms Koyinsola Olukoya makes it a point of duty to take food and all kinds of goodies to those that are now in FGGC and FTC on their visiting days! Sadly, three people who have been with us on this journey right from the beginning are now of blessed memory: Mr Ferdinand Agu, Pastor Theo Martins and my cousin, Dr Olawale Banmore.

We allow prominent people into the classrooms to share their stories to encourage them that where they are coming from is not what matters but the future that is before them with education. At the ceremony last Thursday, we were joined by some of the people who frequent the school: the Executive Director, Pro-health International, Dr Iko Ibanga, publisher of Abuja Enquirer, Mr Dan Akpovwa, Baze University Vice Chancellor, Professor Biodun Adeniyi, Executive Commissioner (Operations), Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC), Mr Louis Odion, former ADC to the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Brigadier General Mustapha Onoyiveta (rtd) and wife, Hassana. Dr Ngozi Azodoh, Dr Kole Shettima, Mrs Dupe Ogundimu, Mr Yinka Medupin, Patrick and Amaka Uzoma and several others also joined us.

Where do we go from here? I will not pretend to have an answer. For now, I don’t. But years of watching my wife run this project have taught me that Nigeria’s most vulnerable children are rarely failed by a shortage of good intentions. They are failed by the absence of infrastructure behind those intentions. While I may not know where these children go from here, I know where they came from and that too many of them had already known more abandonment than any child should. After everything we have watched them become, we cannot accept that this should be where their story turns back on itself. So, for the first time, I am not ashamed to ask for help on how to secure a structure that properly accommodates those children in a school they can call their own. I have for years been reluctant to go this route. And I probably wouldn’t, had the idea of quietly helping a few children not turned into what is now a rather huge project.

However, I am certain that the education of the NFI School children will not be stopped as a result of this temporary setback. My confidence stems from the fact that we have too many hand-lifters for that to happen. Every Thursday without fail, the children are treated to delicacies from Metro Bakery and Restaurant courtesy of Mrs Sandra Adio. They have had executive (volunteer) teachers, among them Mrs Funke Abegunde who retired recently from American International School. And childhood education specialists, Mrs Stella Uzu and Mrs Tosin Afolayan. The promoters and encouragers include former AIT Managing Director, Dr (Mrs) Oluwatosin Dokpesi, the Exective Director, Funtaj International School, Mrs Funke Ibrahim, Chairman of Phase3 Telecoms, Mr Stanley Jegede and wife, Mosunmola, the COO of the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre, Mr Babatunde Ahmadu, my big sister, Mrs Maryam Uwais and my social media ‘English teacher’, Mrs Hadiza El-Rufai, as well as the FCCPC Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr Tunji Bello. Gving.ng, Abuja Runs Club, Father George Ehusani, Mrs Fatima Wali-Abdurrahman, Mrs Fatima Modupe, Mr Tunde Adetoba, Mr Bolaji Adebiyi, Ms Chinelo Anohu, Mr Afolabi Ajimoti, Mrs Yoyinsola Makanjuola, Mr Edo Ukpong, Mrs Naomi Emmanuel, Ms Ify Malo, Pastors Dayo Kayode and Lanre Oduola and their wives are among other numerous NFI School supporters. Indeed, the list of the people who have helped us, one way or another, on this journey is long. I highlighted a few in the 2021 column earlier referenced, including the role my friend Folorunsho (Foli) Coker played on the feeding idea. Our three children have also played tremendous roles while I cannot count the number of shipments of instructional materials from my US-based brother-in-law, Segun Salami.

But I must make this quick point here. I am well aware that there are countless versions of the NFI schools scattered across Nigeria, sustained by people with far fewer resources than my wife and I have had. I suspect that many of them are only one notice away from finding themselves exactly where we are today. That something as essential as a school for vulnerable children should depend on chance rather than on any coherent framework says a lot about a country that has yet to decide whether educating its poorest children is a shared public obligation or a private act of charity. But if there is one thing eight years of watching my wife run this school has taught me, it is that Nigeria’s out-of-school children crisis has never really been a problem of resources.

With little more than an empty plot and an obstinate refusal to accept that these children were beyond saving, my wife has taken boys and girls who should have been hawking on the streets and put them behind school desks instead. She did not wait for a government programme or a donor intervention. Yes, my wife does all the purchases, including of foodstuff and runs the kitchen that feeds the children, to save cost. But if one woman, working with modest means, could prove that this is possible, then I find it difficult to accept that governments, with their budgets, institutions and constitutional responsibilities, cannot do the same on a far greater scale.

My wife’s experience has also convinced me that we have fundamentally misunderstood where Nigeria’s education crisis began. We have become obsessed with the roof while neglecting the foundation. Our debates revolve around universities, ASUU strikes, graduate unemployment and global rankings, as though the deficiencies we see at the tertiary level somehow originate there. They do not. They begin in the primary school classroom, where too many children spend their formative years without qualified teachers, textbooks, classrooms or even the assurance that learning matters. By the time they reach our universities, for those who make it that far, the damage has already been done.

We lament graduates who cannot communicate clearly, analyse problems or think critically, yet these are not failures of higher education alone. They are the accumulated consequences of years of neglect at the most important stage of learning. The Bible poses the question with characteristic economy: “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psalm 11:3). That, to my mind, is the question before us. We can continue repairing the roof of our education system, introducing one reform after another at the tertiary level, but until we return to the foundation, we should not be surprised that the house refuses to stand.

When Doctors Become Content Creators

On Tuesday in Abuja, at the invitation of the Registrar and Chief Executive of the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN), Prof Fatima Kyari, I was the guest speaker at the induction ceremony for foreign-trained medical (238) and dental (12) graduates who were successful at the MDCN assessment, conducted at the University College Hospital (UCH) Ibadan last month. Asked to speak on the ‘Use and Abuse of Social Media in Medical and Dental Practice’, below is my presentation.

Let me begin by congratulating every man and woman before me today who has earned the right to be inducted into the register of medical and dental practitioners in Nigeria. For me, this is a big deal. You trained far from home, in systems and cultures that are not your own. And you have returned to answer a call that many people your age is running away from. In a season when the standing conversation in every Nigerian household with a young doctor or dentist is about which direction the next flight out is headed, your presence here, seeking to be counted among practitioners licensed to serve Nigeria, deserves a national gratitude.

Having been asked to speak on the use and abuse of social media in medical and dental practice, I want to begin by stating the obvious: social media is neither a friend nor an enemy of the medical/dental profession or of any profession for that matter. It is an instrument, and like every instrument in the history of medicine, from the scalpel to the syringe, its value depends entirely on the hand that holds it and the discipline that guides that hand. Used well, it is a stethoscope that extends beyond your consulting room. Used carelessly, it is a scalpel that cuts the wrong way.

You have come home at a very critical period. The workforce crisis in our health sector is not a secret to anyone in this hall. The doctor-to-patient ratio hovers close to one physician for every five thousand people, against a World Health Organization (WHO) benchmark of one to six hundred. I am sure that every one of you being inducted today has already lived some version of that gap, whether as the overworked houseman or through the experience of a relative who could not reach a specialist in time. But here is the positive: Social media, and the digital platforms built on it are already narrowing some of that gap in small but real ways. For instance, a well-run public health page can do more for antenatal care-seeking in a single well-crafted post than a decade of poorly funded jingles. A dentist deploying Pidgin, Hausa, Igbo or Yoruba on Tik Tok, to explain why a decaying tooth needs a clinic and not a chisel from the roadside, can save more smiles than a thousand posters in health centres that nobody visits. But every gift of this kind arrives with its own shadow.

In a December 2013 journal article on the United States Library of Medicine website titled ‘Dangers and opportunities for social media in medicine’, three medical practitioners, Daniel George, Liza Rovniak and Jennifer Kraschnewski made it clear that in the age that we are in, medical and dental practitioners cannot avoid the social media. “…a growing majority of modern patients – particularly those with chronic conditions – are seeking out SM and other online sources to acquire health information, connect with others affected by similar conditions, and play a more active role in their healthcare decisions,” they wrote 13 years ago. One can only imagine the situation today. But they also added that these same tools “have introduced profound questions about confidentiality, informed consent, public/private boundaries, professionalism, and other issues of ethical import for health professionals.”

This then leads me to the few tips I want to leave with you this morning on what you should avoid in your usage of social media, because induction day is exactly the moment to hear them, before habits harden into instinct. The first and gravest is the casual surrender of patient confidentiality. A striking wound, rare deformity, dramatic delivery, and successful surgery. All these can make compelling content, and the temptation to share them, even with faces blurred or for ‘education,’ is real. But somewhere in the oath you are about to take is a promise about confidentiality that predates Hippocrates himself. Social media has not repealed that promise; it has only multiplied the ways of breaking it, and the speed at which a breach now travels. So, always bear this in mind: That patient’s body and story belong first to the patient, not to your followers on social media platforms.

The second abuse is the collapse of the boundary between the consulting room and the comment section of an online publication. Diagnosing and prescribing from a WhatsApp group chat or X thread, arguing a clinical case in the replies of a viral post etc. are ordinarily ‘harmless’. But no matter the temptation, you must always bear this in mind: Each of these actions blurs a line that exists to protect the patient as much as the medical practitioner, and each becomes considerably harder to defend the day something goes wrong.

The third is what I might call reputational contagion. Medicine and dentistry, unlike many other professions, are trusted as a collective. A single practitioner’s poor judgement online can cause a huge reputational damage not only for them but also for the entire profession. A callous joke about a patient’s condition, a video that trades a patient’s dignity for views, or a public feud with a colleague conducted for an audience. All these rarely stay contained to that one account. They become, unfairly but predictably, evidence in the case some members of the public are always building against the entire medical and dental professions.

For dentists in particular, I would add a caution about a trend I have watched grow globally: cosmetic procedures; veneers, instant whitening, dramatic ‘smile makeovers’ and many of those in-vogue procedures that are marketed with more attention to camera angles and background music than to clinical efficacy. Yes, aesthetic dentistry is a legitimate and growing field. But aesthetic dentistry practised as influencer marketing, ahead of proper assessment, is not.

None of what I have said thus far is theoretical. Around the world, regulators have had to strike practitioners off their registers over judgement exercised on social media. And there are many examples to cite: a surgeon who kept sharing patients’ procedures for engagement despite repeated warnings, until his licence and reputation both gave way under a dozen lawsuits; an online personality who built a following of hundreds of thousands by posing as a licensed doctor dispensing advice on cancer and fertility, only to be convicted of impersonation. These, of course, are extreme cases, and I do not for a moment suggest that anyone in this hall is destined for such a tragic professional fate. But then, every extreme case begins with a smaller, more forgivable-seeming decision. Currently circulating online is a Tik Tok video of a young female doctor taking camera around the wards of a private hospital that employed her and behaving like the star of a reality show before posting the content after resignation. That’s how they all begin. The extreme cases are what happens when nobody says no to these small ones. Yes, I am aware that it is more financially rewarding to chase clout than to save lives but the latter is what you have chosen and it is more ennobling. Please stay on your lane.

You are fortunate in one respect. You arrive this job at a time your regulator has already prescribed the rules of engagement, regarding the use of social media. In October last year, the MDCN issued a formal guidance on social media and responsible online conduct. I recommend it to every one of you as required reading, alongside the Code of Medical Ethics itself. Its logic is simple, and to my mind unimpeachable: the standards of honesty, accuracy, confidentiality and accountability that govern you in a ward or a surgery do not switch off when you switch on your phone. The Council also left practitioners with one warning worth committing to memory: Your responsibility for what you post online does not expire when you delete it. A private post can turn public. A deleted post can resurface as a screenshot years later. The internet, unlike memory, rarely forgets on command.

Let me leave you, then, with a number of habits I would urge you to carry from this hall into your practice. First, if you consider it of public interest to post anything about a patient, ask for their consent. If the answer is no, the story stays untold. Second, not every provocation or viral claim you disagree with deserves a response, especially if they do not directly concern you or the institution you represent. Third, build a name, not only a following, which as we all know can be bought, gamed, or lost overnight to an algorithm’s whim. What endures is the reputation that makes a stranger say, “ask that dentist, I hear he or she is thorough and honest.” That kind of reputation is built offline, and it is the only currency that lasts. Fourth, extend to your colleagues online the same courtesy you would extend across a hospital corridor. Disagree, if you must, with the science or the judgement of another practitioner. But do not attempt anything that would take away their dignity. Lastly, use whatever reach you build for something larger than yourself.

Before I take my seat, it is perhaps important to also look at another side of this malaise. Increasingly, medical practitioners are also becoming targets. No fewer than 30 resident doctors were assaulted across Nigeria within the last year, according to the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) which has cited 21 assault cases. Only five of the cases have made it to court and only one assailant has been convicted. I am almost certain that most of these cases can be traced to a pattern of public harassment and trial-by-hashtag that some of your colleagues have faced online, often before facts are established, and sometimes long after they have been settled in the practitioner’s favour. A profession that polices itself honestly, through its proper disciplinary channels, should not also have to submit to this sort of barbarism.

That is perhaps why I must make this final point. You are entering this profession at a moment when public trust in our national institutions is thin and hard-won. And you have spent years, far from home, earning the letters that will now follow your names. Carry the white coat’s obligations into every space you occupy, including the small, bright one in your pocket that never quite switches off. But please do not let a single careless post undo, in a moment, what years of discipline have helped you to build.

Once again, congratulations to every inductee gathered here today. Use social media platforms wisely, and welcome home. Nigeria needed you before you left, and needs you even more now that you have returned.

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on    

Olusegun Adeniyi

I moderated a ‘fireside chat’ with former President Olusegun Obasanjo at the 70th birthday ceremony of Professor Bart Nnaji last Friday in Enugu. Nnaji is easily one of Nigeria’s foremost thinkers. But beyond the glitz and glamour at the occasion, the real highlight of his birthday was the competition he had set in motion ahead of the big day. Having noticed that the tribe of palm wine tappers were fast disappearing from his village, Nnaji—who loves the local alcoholic drink derived straight from nature—dared those bold enough to solve a problem that most of us have accepted for generations: How do we get wine out of the palm tree without putting a man’s life in the balance? 

It is one of those almost too ordinary dilemmas until you stop to think about it. Before palm wine reaches a calabash or bottle, somebody has almost certainly gone up a tree that can tower thirty, forty, or even sixty feet tall, with nothing more than a rope, bare feet, and suicidal nerve. It is a vocation that has injured and killed tappers for as long as anyone can remember. And it is also one that is going extinct. But having spent most of his career life in the laboratory, solving big problems, Nnaji has looked at this palm wine conundrum the way an engineer looks at everything: a design failure waiting for a fix. Why should harvesting palm wine still require a man struggling to defy the law of gravity?

In May this year, the ‘Bart Nnaji Innovation Challenge’ asked Nigeria’s engineers and backyard inventors for one thing: “Design a safe way to harvest palm wine without climbing trees. If you have an idea that blends creativity, engineering, practical thinking, and real-world impact, this is your shot.” By the time the winners were announced in Enugu last Friday, the competition had already made its point. Two men (Anthony Mbadiwe and Stephen Awotundun) shared the grand prize of N10 million, while a woman (Favour Ojowundu) received the runner-up award of N2 million. According to the Dean Emeritus, Graduate School of Engineering and Management at the USA Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT), Dayton, Ohio, Professor Adedeji Badiru, who chaired the committee, there were 393 entries. Meanwhile, it is quite evident that Nnaji, like all modern thinkers, is not just interested in the theory of extracting palm wine without stress, there is a rewarding catch somewhere. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

Chaired by President Obasanjo, other notable Nigerians at Nnaji’s birthday celebration included the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, who delivered the keynote speech that highlighted what Nnaji had to go through with the Aba power project and his own intervention, first as First Bank Managing Director and later as Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor. Also in attendance were former Anambra State Governor, Mr Peter Obi as well as the Governor of Enugu, Mr Peter Mbah and his Abia counterpart, Dr Alex Otti. My friends, Tonye Cole and C. Don Adunuba were also among hundreds of other distinguished personalities from the business community, politics and the academia, including Dr Okey Ndibe, who reviewed the book, ‘Bart Nnaji: The Challenge of Facing the Future’, authored by Uzor Maxim Uzoatu. And the documentary, put together by Nnaji’s wife, Agatha, (a head turner in her days as Director of Sales for Abuja Sheraton Hotels in the early nineties when I was a young reporter), was simply brilliant. “In the laboratory, everything is logical,” Nnaji said while explaining engineering. “If your mathematics is correct, the machine works.” But Nigeria, as I surmised in my interesting conversation with President Obasanjo at the session, does not work that way! And the trajectory of Nnaji’s company provides an eloquent testimony to that.

In his appreciation remarks, Nnaji alluded to the story of Red Bull as an inspiration for trying to “transform a traditional, high-risk practice” of palm wine tapping “into a safer, smarter, and more scalable enterprise.”  That is not surprising. In her piece, ‘The Electrifying Story Behind Red Bull: A Global Phenomenon Rooted in an Unexpected Past’, freelance writer and content creator, Katie Wilde described how the energy drink came about as “a tale rooted in an entirely different culture, a unique blend of serendipity and marketing genius.”

It all started in 1982 when, during a trip to Thailand, an Austrian businessman, Dietrich Mateschitz, reportedly tried a local drink called ‘Krating Daeng’ after he was told it would revitalise him. A marketing executive for a German toothpaste company at the time, Mateschitz was astonished by the efficacy of the drink. Having seen a huge business potential, Mateschitz approached the proprietor, Chaleo Yoovidhya (son of Chinese immigrants) with the idea of adapting and marketing the drink to a global audience. Two years later, a deal was reached for a repackaged product with each partner holding a 49% stake and the remaining 2% reserved for Chaleo’s son, Chalerm. That’s how Red Bull was born with Mateschitz, deploying his marketing skills—as founding CEO—for what is now a multi-billion-dollar company.

In Nigeria, many talk endlessly about innovation, but increasingly in the language of apps, venture capital and technology hubs. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Those industries have transformed lives and created opportunities. Yet somewhere along the way, we have come to equate innovation almost exclusively with what happens on a screen. The country’s oldest problems remain just as deserving of ingenuity. The man who climbs a palm tree every morning is no less worthy of innovation than the customer waiting for a faster payment app. That perhaps explains why the palm wine tapping challenge feels so consistent with Nnaji’s life’s work.

A world-renowned scientist, Nnaji earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from St John’s University, New York before proceeding to the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and University for his Masters and PhD in Engineering. Nnaji then followed up with a Post Doctorate Certificate in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). That was decades before AI became the defining trend! At the faculty of engineering, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where Nnaji began his teaching career, he founded and became the first Director of the Automation and Robotics Laboratory. At age 36 in 1992, Nnaji became a full Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. In constituting the Interim National Government in 1993, General Ibrahim Babangida appointed Nnaji to man the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology. While he took a leave of absence to return home, the moment the late General Sani Abacha seized power after just three months, Nnaji returned to his job in the United States.

At the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where he, in 1996, became the ALCOA Foundation Distinguished Professor of Engineering and subsequently, the William Kepler Whiteford Professor of Engineering, Nnaji was the Founding Director of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for e-Design. In 2000, he founded Geometric Power Limited that would become Nigeria’s first privately-owned power development company. Under President Goodluck Jonathan in 2010, Nnaji served as Special Adviser and Chairman of the Presidential Task Force on Power. He became Minister of Power in 2011, but resigned a year later. Among many awards, Nnaji is a Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) winner.

Meanwhile, the palm wine challenge initiated by Nnaji may be small in scale, but it springs from the same instinct that defines his scholarship: Identify a neglected problem, refuse to accept it as inevitable, and then set about solving it. The Aba Integrated Power Project also began with an apparently simple question: How could one industrial city enjoy reliable electricity? Solving that problem demanded years of technical expertise and persistence against bureaucratic resistance. What eventually emerged has transformed the power supply in Aba and reshaped assumptions about what private enterprise could achieve in Nigeria’s electricity sector.

I raise the Aba story deliberately, because it is also a caution. Nnaji’s power project worked, eventually, but took the better part of two decades, three changes of government, and more legal and bureaucratic sabotage than any Nigerian should have to survive. In case Nnaji intends to push the envelope on palm wine, I hope he is spared a repeat of such ordeals. If the three young winners who shared his N12 million prize purse can find a way to bring Nigeria’s palm wine tappers down to solid ground, they will have demonstrated that the country’s greatest breakthroughs may yet come from paying serious attention to the ordinary problems we have lived with for far too long.

On a recent podcast, former Leicester City Football Club striker, Jamie Vardy narrated how his Nigerian teammates, Wilfred Ndidi and Kelechi Iheanacho would get knocks during matches, travel home and return with big tubs of ‘juju cream’ that worked for them. But the so-called ‘juju cream’, according to Ndidi, was the traditional shea butter (locally known as â€˜Ori’). Many of us who grew up in the village can attest to the efficacy of ‘Ori’ as a soothing balm. And it’s from a tree (‘Igi Emi’ in Yoruba) that is everywhere in many of our rural communities. I highlight this because Nigeria is blessed with an abundance of natural resources waiting for critical thinkers who can make something of them. After resolving Nnaji an entire city’s power supply challenge, Nnaji is now trying to replicate that success with a rope, a tree, and the men who still climb it.

As a nation, we confront both large and small challenges with a superstitious mindset. We also explain away even the simplest of these challenges as an act of the divine, and above human intervention. And we remain enslaved to irrational traditions: leave the palm wine tappers alone. Drink the wine and pour libation to the gods. Ask no questions! In contrast, what Nnaji teaches is the spirit of enquiry, experimentation, observation and inference to solve common problems. This is the critical distinction that stands out in the technologically advanced societies as opposed to those still trapped in primitive and archaic solutions.

Unfortunately, Nnaji’s experience of more than a quarter century trying to power a city and the hurdles he has had to overcome in the process says a great deal about our country. The lesson: Only the innovations that can make people instantly rich as in Fintech stand a chance of finding patronage and support from the authorities and our banks. That is perhaps also the only place where our religion of instant wealth and the miracle of science find a convergence. But it is not the way we will grow as a society. With the Aba power solution, Nnaji has demonstrated that scientific boldness can only thrive where innovation meets significant demand and economic opportunity. Will Nnaji also do that with palm wine?

I won’t bet against him!

FIFA World Cup and Our Football Shame!

Even before the 2026 World Cup final was played between Argentina and Spain last Sunday, many countries had already started preparing for the next edition in 2030. Germany has appointed the charismatic former Liverpool FC Manager, Jurgen Klopp as the national coach while in France, the iconic Zinedine Zidane is taking over from Didier Deschamps. The Italian Football Federation is also said to have opened discussions with former Manchester City manager, Pep Guardiola, generally regarded as the best in the business. What all these demonstrate is the importance most countries attach to international tournaments. Unfortunately, we cannot say the same thing about our football administration—even after missing the last two editions of the World Cup.

What’s most worrying is that we’ve hardly learnt any lesson from our experience. On 13 June 2013, a day after the 2014 World Cup Qualifier in Namibia, the Super Eagles players refused to board their scheduled flight to Brazil for the FIFA Confederations Cup on grounds that the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) offered to pay them $5,000 (as against $10,000) each as bonus for their victory over Kenya, in an earlier World Cup Qualifier and $2,500 (as against $5,000) for the draw against Namibia. With that, the players went on strike in Namibia, insisting they would not travel to Brazil unless the NFF paid each of them $15,000 for the two games. Yet as the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) winner, Nigeria was the continent’s sole representative at the FIFA Confederations tournament. Following the international embarrassment, the presidency intervened, but the players arrived late in Brazil and performed woefully at the tournament.

That ugly episode prompted the then National Sports Commission (NSC) Chairman/Minister, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, to set up a committee to investigate the Bonus Row in Namibia. And he appointed me to chair it. Incidentally, the secretary of my committee, Mallam Shehu Dikko, is now the NSC Chairman/Minister. Other members included Bashorun Akin Osuntokun who never played the game but brought in his experience and wise counsel; Hon. Abdulkadir Nasir whose insight from the perspective of the legislature was very useful; Onochie Anibeze, a consummate sports reporter with vast knowledge of the game; Garba Lawal, a level-headed former International who remains a role model for younger players and Aisha Falode, a respected journalist who has also been involved in sports administration at the national level.

The interactive sessions we held with many stakeholders, including a number of the players themselves, provided an inkling into the challenges of football administration in Nigeria. That such protests over ‘Bonus’ continue to recur, including during preparations for the 2025 AFCON and the April 2026 World Cup qualifiers match against Gabon in Morocco (which ended in defeat), indicate that nothing has changed.

The 2030 FIFA World Cup qualifiers are expected to start in the second half of 2027. If we fail to begin the planning now, then we are already planning for another failure!

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By Olusegun Adeniyi

The idea of decentralising the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) and Nigeria Correctional Service (NCS) by moving the two items from the Exclusive List of the constitution to the Concurrent List started under the late President Muhammadu Buhari. But perhaps because of the urgency of the moment, it has received greater impetus under the administration of President Bola Tinubu who is even pushing the envelope further. And for six hours last Thursday in Abuja, critical stakeholders in our country gathered to discuss the proposed idea of creating ‘state police’ at a session convened by ĚÇĐÄĘÓĆľ/ARISE Television chairman, Prince Nduka Obiagbena. While the contributions were insightful, it was Governor Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra State who flagged the real elephant in the room: the revenue allocation formula. “If we are devolving powers, we must also devolve resources,” Soludo said in the course of his intervention. 

Considering that the National Assembly is yet to come up with a final bill on ‘state police’, my comment will have to wait, but the issue of funding is crucial; and it cannot work the way some of the lawmakers envision it. Any paternalistic approach that gives Abuja a say in how each state funds its police in the name of ‘guardrails’ would defeat the whole essence of devolving powers. But I would rather hold my powder on this issue until we see the final bill. Meanwhile, since we inhabit a country where everything revolves around the ‘national cake’ which I once surmised no one is interested in baking, ‘Revenue allocation formula’ refers to the methods by which all the money that accrue to the federation account (which used to be basically rent from oil) is shared between the constituent units: federal, state and local governments in Nigeria.

It all started in precolonial Nigeria in 1946 when Sir Arthur Richard established the first Revenue Allocation Commission, headed by Sydney Phillipson. The 1952 constitution that followed their work came up with the allocation formula that has provided a guide for subsequent regimes. I recently found an interesting April/June 1996 Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) publication online. Titled, ‘Fiscal Federalism: Revenue Allocation for Economic Development in Nigeria’, it was authored by a Mr T.O. Okunrounmu, then Deputy Director, Fiscal Analysis Division, Research Department of CBN, Lagos. The study, as he wrote, “evaluates the historical development of revenue allocation systems, principles and formulas adopted in Nigeria between 1946 when the regional administration and political units were established, and 1979 when the military temporarily withdrew for a civilian regime.”

While Okunrounmu’s thesis provides insights into the political economy of the revenue sharing formula at different epochs, it is also evident that nothing much has changed in terms of resource allocation between the federal government and other constituent units in the last half century. In 1980, for instance, the federal government received 55%, States 34%, local governments, 8%, special funds, 2.5%, and FCT, 2.5%. While the federal government and local government retained its 55% and 10% respectively in 1987, that for the states was reduced to 32.5%. But aside a special fund of 2.5%, two new components were introduced: Development of mineral producing areas (1.5%) and general ecology (1%). From the 1990 arrangement to that of 1993 and 1995, the federal government merely created new components whenever it ‘reduced’ its share from the pool, with no tangible increase in the allocations for both the states and local governments.

By ending the wasteful regime of subsidy in the downstream sector of the petroleum industry and unifying the foreign exchange market, more revenues now accrue to all tiers under the current administration, at least in nominal volume. But when you factor in the purchasing power and foreign exchange rates, the quantum, in real term, is not that much, even when the power dynamics are changing. With the power sector reform that has ceded the control and regulation of electricity markets, states can now generate, transmit, and distribute electricity to address their needs. The federal government has also embraced the decentralization of rail networks, enabling states to pursue localized transit projects and public-private partnerships. 

Overall, the Tinubu administration is actively promoting legislative and constitutional efforts aimed at devolving more powers to the 36 states and ultimately to the 774 local governments as well. But, as Soludo quite rightly pointed out, when you devolve all these powers to make the federal government leaner and the states fatter, the former cannot continue to hold on to the enormous resources that have encouraged some smart people to be establishing ‘fake’ agencies for themselves! Going by the current revenue sharing formula, the federal government receives 52.68%, the 36 States receive 26.72%, and the 774 local governments receive 20.60%. In practical terms, that boils down to an average of 0.7% of all federally collected revenue for each state!

Therefore, if we must restore the principle of a federal constitution, and that seems to be the agenda of Tinubu, then there is an urgent need to also match the functional responsibilities of each tier with the requisite resources. And the only way that can be done is to rethink the current revenue sharing formula which is no longer fit for purpose. Incidentally, as Lagos State Governor between 1999 and 2007, Tinubu was strident in canvassing the idea of shifting the balance of revenue allocation in favour of the states and local governments. He also made it a campaign issue while seeking the presidency.

In his 80-page manifesto, ‘Renewed Hope 2023 – Action Plan for a Better Nigeria’ released shortly after he became the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate in July 2022, Tinubu argued that much powers and resources have been concentrated at the federal level hence the urgent necessity for a review. “More funds should be allocated to the States and Local Governments so that they can better address local concerns and fulfil their expanded constitutional obligations to the people,” according to Tinubu, who wagered that “state governments are closer to the people and must be more responsive to local needs and aspirations.” If elected, Tinubu promised to “embark on a review of the federation revenue allocation system to recalibrate the division of funds amongst the three tiers of Government: Federal, State and Local.”

Now Tinubu must walk his talk!

Yes, I am aware of the fears being expressed about ceding more powers and resources to the governors, and they are genuine. In my 1st October 2017 Platform Nigeria presentation, ‘A Nation on the Edge: Which Way Nigeria?’, I raised this same fear that many are expressing: “As things stand in Nigeria today, accountability diminishes as you move from the centre to the other units: states and local governments. For instance, no president in Nigeria can get away with half of what governors do, almost as of right, in their states where there are neither checks nor balances,” I told the audience. “The speakers of the state houses of assembly are more or less errand boys who serve and are removed at the pleasure of governors. The logical result is that the promise of good governance embedded in the theory of decentralization that many Nigerians now clamour for will still be delivered in the breach if there is no change in the behaviour of the political actors.”

While we will come back to this conversation, and it is very important that we do, the reality of the moment is that the federal government cannot continue to devolve more powers to the states and still hold on to the lion’s share of the nation’s financial resources. That is not federalism!

Still on the ‘Gbaja-Adeyemi’ Moment

The embattled Director General of the ‘fictitious’ Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, Prince Adeniyi Adeyemi, has been taken into custody. But shortly before his arrest, Adeyemi had doubled down on his allegationsagainst the Chief of Staff to the President, Mr Femi Gbajabiamila. President Tinubu, as I wrote last week, has a decision to make on how his office is being dragged into the mud on this scandal. It is also important that Adeyemi be given all his rights under the law. But in my column last week which dwelt on the critical issues, I made it clear that anybody with sufficient clout, or ‘smart’ enough to know how Abuja works, can get any amount they want into our budget. I find it rather surprising that some readers would interpret that to mean ‘trivialising’ the N1.3 billion budgetary allocation for a ‘fake’ agency. That is perhaps because they have not followed my previous writings on our national budgets, which I also referenced in the same piece. In that regard, I want to rehash the opening paragraphs from my 28 November 2013 column, ‘The Illusion of Budget Performance’, which was based on my personal experience to highlight this problem before I conclude with the summation of a friend:

It was just about three weeks after I assumed office as Spokesman to the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in 2007 when I received a memo from the office of the Permanent Secretary, State House; seeking the input of my department for the 2008 budget that was under preparation. Because both the Deputy Director and the Assistant Director for Information in my office were people I knew way back from my days as a State House Correspondent, I always deferred to their experience and wise counsel. For that reason, it was easy for me to learn very fast about how government works. The explanation for the memo was that I had the power to initiate project(s) that would be accommodated in the national budget.

At that period, I really had no idea on what my budgetary input should be, and it took two other reminders for me to come up with one. Having been in Katsina with the president about three times by then, the idea I had was to build a presidential media centre in the state capital that would also include broadcasting facilities so that in the event that we were there and the president needed to address the nation, we would not have to rush back to Abuja. I left the details concerning the project and subsequent follow up with the State House budget office to my staff and I forgot about it. But several months later, in May 2008, I received a visitor in my office who turned out to be a contractor. His mission was simple: to see how he could handle the building of the presidential media centre in Katsina that was already in the 2008 Appropriation Act under my department!

My discussion with the contractor was as interesting as it was sad for it revealed a lot; not only about the (mis)management of public expenditure, but also about what we call budgets in our country. However, by then, it had dawned on me that for some inexplicable reasons, the late president preferred returning back to Abuja same day whenever we went to Katsina. Only on rare occasions did we spend more than a day. Besides, I was dealing with a principal who actually hated making any broadcast because, as he would say rather cynically, “this is not America”. So I had decided not to build what would amount to a wasteful monument in Katsina even though there was monetary provision for it in the budget.

Perhaps because of that experience, I paid more attention to the “envelope system” on which our annual national budget revolves; and I learned several lessons about the culture of waste that we have institutionalized. That experience also made me to realize that all this talk about percentages of budget performance (or implementation) is utterly meaningless. For instance, that I didn’t undertake to build a media centre in Katsina quite naturally necessitated returning the money to the treasury by December 2008 but that could only have reflected negatively on “budget performance” that is predicated essentially on the amount of money spent from the entire sum appropriated for the fiscal year.

But what is even more interesting is that with the way our budget works, I could easily have proposed hosting “the first annual conference of African presidential spokesmen” (you find many of such conferences in the budget) so I could spend hundreds of millions of Naira buying vehicles. Or I could have located the presidential media centre in my village in Kwara State and say it would be for the training of journalists who cover State House! In Nigeria, you can rationalise anything and that explains how public officials locate projects in their villages even when such decisions make no real sense…

ENDNOTE: I wrote the foregoing 13 years ago and nothing seems to have changed since then. But we cannot continue to run our country this way. To restore the integrity of the Nigerian State and its institutions, as I argued last week, we need structural reforms that include strengthening budget scrutiny and ensuring that no individual or office is too big to escape accountability. But last Thursday, as he does almost every week, founder and chairman of Proshare, (a leading financial information hub in Nigeria), Olufemi Awoyemi, mni, sent the message below, which I believe sums up everything I was saying in that column: “Dear Segun, here is my take on your column of this morning and I will keep it short: The first scam often does no more than open the way. The greater danger lies in the second and third level deception that normally follows. But none is worse than a cover-up by any party involved. Someone is always going to snitch or get greedy. Responsible institutions carry a duty to understand the weaknesses that allowed the first deception and to take deliberate steps to close them. Every system has gaps, and some people will exploit them for as long as those gaps remain. They must be identified and their advantage taken away. In the end, greed and fear tend to deliver only a temporary advantage, and they often lead those who rely on them to their own undoing.”

 Let those who have ears…

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle,Ěý@OlusegunverdictĚýand onĚýwww.olusegunadeniyi.com

Olusegun Adeniyi

According to investigation by Nigerian Presidency, this man (with photo of Prince Adeniyi Matthew) created a fake government agency called Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, appointed himself as Director General, secured office space at the Federal Secretariat in Abuja, opened multiple Central Bank accounts, got N1,302,978,784 (that’s almost a million dollar) allocation in the 2026 budget, summoned ambassadors to meetings, held strategic sessions with ministers, and even represented Nigeria at international conferences. Nigeria is a different country!!

My powerful Ghanaian friend, Mustapha Sanah (HRH Dalun-Lan Tapha Muhammadu II) forwarded the foregoing message to me last Friday before adding his own terse line: “Above is circulating widely on WhatsApp in Ghana. Is it a credible tale?” I responded with one word: ‘Yes!’ Apparently shocked, he also replied with one word: ‘Wow!’ 

Based on my little experience from another life, I would have located this scandal in the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (OSGF). But it is the Chief of Staff to the President, Mr Femi Gbajabiamila, who Adeyemi has named as an accomplice while accusing the presidency of shrouding the entire saga in “a cloud of public misrepresentation, institutional denial, and deliberate attempts to silence legitimate questions that concern a matter of public interest.”

That serious questions are being asked about the integrity of Nigerian institutions and the credibility of systems designed for oversight in our country is no longer in doubt. A man publicly declared a ‘scammer’ by the federal government was able to access the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to open TSA accounts, secure a government domain account from the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), receive a waiver from the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF) to employ 300 staff members, and get the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation (OAGF) to second three senior officials to his ‘office’. He also had a tete-a-tete with the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), secured office space at the Federal Secretariat, held sessions with the House of Representatives Deputy Speaker, hosted ambassadors and performed many other ‘official’ functions at home and abroad. Most of these events happened after he had reportedly been flagged, which points to the fact that Adeyemi did not act alone.

There are many layers to this controversy but I will restrict myself to just four. The first is the immediate issue regarding the allegation against Gbajabiamila. This is no longer about the credibility of Adeyemi, whatever anybody may think about him. It is now about the credibility of the presidency that should be, like Caesar’s wife, above reproach. So, on that score, President Tinubu has a decision to make.

The second issue is about a job racketeering ring that sells public appointment slots in Abuja—from the ‘juicy’ political offices to regular jobs. This, of course, predates the Tinubu administration. A former desk officer at the Federal Character Commission (FCC), Haruna Kolo, once told an ad hoc committee of the House of Representatives that he indeed fronted for a former Chairperson, Ms Muheeba Dankaka, to sell employment slots. Although Dankaka denied the allegation, she similarly accused other commissioners of selling jobs. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) confirmed this emblem of shame in its report that 32 per cent of Nigerians who secured jobs in the public service in 2019 claimed to have paid a bribe. The submission, according to then UNODC Country Representative, Dr Oliver Stolpe, was not based on mere perception but rather on empirical findings backed by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). In fact, Stolpe co-signed the 92-page report titled, ‘Corruption in Nigeria: Patterns and Trends’, with the then NBS Statistician General, Dr Yemi Kale.

Meanwhile, during the August 2023 scandal involving the dropping of a ministerial nominee, Ms Maryam Shetty, then All Progressives Congress (APC) National Chairman and former Kano State Governor, Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje, said something very revealing: “The president asked whether I had nominated Shetty. I said no. He asked how then her name appeared on the list. I told him I had no idea whatsoever.” Although I defended Shetty at the time because I believed (and still do) that she was unjustly treated, I made this point: If the president knew nothing about his own ministerial nominee, you begin to wonder how many names got on the list behind his back, which then raises questions about the credibility of such appointments.

The third issue is about how Adeyemi succeeded in getting an allocation of N1.3 billion into the 2026 budget which was assented to by President Tinubu in April. With my little knowledge of how Abuja works, this scam doesn’t require much rigour. That’s why I have written more than a dozen columns on the need to reform the budgeting process in Nigeria. Notable are â€˜Ningi and the Underground Budget’, ‘The Illusion of Budget Performance’, ‘Budget War and Dysfunctional Envelope System’, ‘Buhari and the Budget Palaver’, ‘Nigeria’s 2016 Zero Budget!’ and â€˜Of Government and Budget Blues’. The kernel of these interventions has always been to underscore the fact that what we call budget in Nigeria is essentially the sharing of money. I have also repeatedly referenced a Twitter thread by ‘Laolu Samuel-Biyi who once concluded: “If you want to keep hope alive in Nigeria, don’t look at the budget”. Bottomline: Adeyemi is not the first Nigerian to write his way into our budget and will definitely not be the last until we do something about it.

Now to the fourth issue of establishing a ‘fictitious’ agency. Anybody who has read the report of the Presidential Committee on the Restructuring and Rationalisation of the Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies will not be surprised by this scandal. Chaired by former Head of Service, Mr Steve Oronsaye, the committee (established in August 2011 by former President Goodluck Jonathan) identified 541 federal government agencies, 50 of which had no enabling laws! The report also identified 55 agencies that were not under the supervision of any ministry and many of them, according to the committee, “receive more budgetary allocations for personnel than they require because that component of their budget is usually inflated”. Interestingly, dozens of such federal agencies have been added since the Oronsaye Report was submitted in April 2012.

I have always believed there are many agencies that started as ‘one-man business’ before they found their way into the public record. For instance, until March 2017, most Nigerians (including this reporter) were under the impression that a paramilitary organisation going by the name ‘Peace Corps of Nigeria (PCN)’ was an organ of the federal government given the visibility of its men and their offices in all the 36 states. Then in March 2017, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) filed a 90-count criminal charge against Mr Dickson Akoh who, as it turned out, founded the youth organisation as an NGO on 10 July 1998. Akoh, the ‘National Commandant’ and PCN trustees were accused of money laundering and obtaining money under false pretense. More curious still, this development came after both chambers of the National Assembly had already passed the bill for formal recognition of PCN as a government agency!

Although the late President Muhammadu Buhari refused assent on grounds of duplication of security agencies, then deputy senate president, Ike Ekweremadu, had in plenary enjoined his colleagues not to lend support to the organisation. “A lot of people have been deceived. The Senate should not be a stamp for fraud,” Ekweremadu warned. But it was the contribution of the then Minority Leader, Godswill Akpabio (the current Senate President), that was the most brutal: “…Youth have been taken advantage of and people have lost money, millions of Naira and then someone brings a law to legitimise what we know is a fraud,” Akpabio said. “Some of them are Field Marshals and they have not gone to any war. Many of them are Lieutenant-Generals. I have seen some saluting as Brigadier-Generals. I have seen them in public occasions where the youth use their clothes to clean the seats for the Commandant-General. This thing is 419. We cannot make a law for an individual to collect millions of Naira.”

Today, the Federal Government has many cases in court against Akoh who was arrested last December by the EFCC and arraigned over alleged misappropriation of N60 million. But PCN is still very much in business going by the information on its website: “…Recognising the impact of its work, the Federal Government of Nigeria signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Corps to support and validate its operations nationwide…” The hyperlink then leads readers to a report of 18th July 2025 on the same website: “The Honourable Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Senator Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, signed on behalf of the Federal Government, while the National Commandant of the Peace Corps of Nigeria, Dr Dickson Akoh, signed on behalf of the organisation.” The statement added: “This MoU represents the Federal Government’s formal recognition of the Peace Corps of Nigeria as a vital partner in advancing key national development priorities particularly in peacebuilding, civic education, volunteerism, and youth engagement…”

If the EFCC is prosecuting an organisation for fraud and a Federal Government ministry is reportedly signing an MoU with its proprietor, it stands to reason that there is a disconnect somewhere. We cannot continue to run our government like this! And that is why Tinubu must not waste this moment. Yes, I am aware that the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) has been directed to investigate the Adeyemi/Gbajabiamila issue but apparently the presidency still doesn’t understand that there is a difference between a scandal and a mirror, and Nigeria has just been handed the latter. The greatest mistake would be to reduce this affair to a contest of narratives between two individuals. What has been exposed is a deeper institutional malaise.

Long after recriminations between a sitting Chief of Staff and a man now on trial for allegedly forging the presidency’s own letterhead may have faded from memory, one question will remain: How does a fake agency find its way into a signed Appropriation Act, operate for the better part of a year undetected by any internal safeguard, and be exposed only because a rival agency complained of an overlap in its own turf?

Mr President, this is not a crisis to be managed until it passes. It is a mandate handed to you fully formed. In order to fix what allowed this to happen in the first place, we must strengthen budget scrutiny, insist that every appropriation is tied to a verifiable legal entity, and ensure that no office is too big to escape institutional checks. Therefore, to restore the integrity of the Nigerian State and its institutions, we need structural reforms, beginning with an audit of all federal agencies, their mandates and how they originated so that we can begin to separate the wheat from the chaff.

A presidency that emerges from this affair having tightened its own house will have gained far more than it lost. One that waits for the news cycle to pass will have wasted a lesson that was written into the nation’s own budget book.

The Many Lives of Muhammadu Buhari

The man who first informed the world of the passing of President Muhammadu Buhari has just co-edited a comprehensive testimonial to his life: ‘Tributes and Condolences in Honour of Muhammadu Buhari’. Compiled by former presidential spokesman, Mallam Garba Shehu and former National Intelligence Agency (NIA) Director-General, Ahmed Rufai Abubakar, the book is a fitting tribute to the leader the duo served and, by their own account, believed in. That the volume will be publicly presented on Monday to mark the one-year anniversary of Buhari’s death lends added poignancy to the occasion.

A senior colleague who has always treated me like a beloved aburo, Shehu brought an advanced copy of the book to my office two weeks ago. Nearly a thousand pages, the volume is vast and intentionally so. Assembled in the collection are condolence messages, tributes, editorial obituaries, and reflections from heads of state, governors, senators, military commanders, diplomats, and journalists from across the world. From former and sitting African Presidents to political and business leaders on the continent and beyond, the expression of sorrow is deep and genuine. But it would be disingenuous to suggest that this publication settles the debates surrounding Buhari’s legacy.

Upon his passage last year, I argued that any serious assessment of the Buhari Years in office should resist both canonisation and condemnation. That remains my position. Besides, the tributes in the collection may have been unedited but they were carefully selected. Which means that readers who are seeking a comprehensive reckoning regarding the Buhari presidency will necessarily have to look elsewhere. But then, to expect otherwise would be to misunderstand the nature of a publication designed essentially to memorialise.

However, what the book succeeds in doing, and does exceptionally well, is to preserve the texture of a public life in the words of those who encountered it most closely: the men and women who served Buhari, depended on his judgement and admired his convictions as well as outsiders who had their views over his handling of our national security, economic decisions and others issues whose effects outlive his stewardship. In his own tribute included in the collection, Shehu writes that Buhari was “drawn to public service, discipline, and patriotism, and the unity of Nigeria as one nation and one idea.”  Whether regarded as his greatest virtue, his principal limitation, or some complex fusion of both, that conviction runs through the pages.

Long after passions have cooled and partisan certainties have faded, records such as this will remain indispensable for understanding not only who the man Muhammadu Buhari was, but also the many ways in which Nigerians and the wider world choose to remember him. One year after his passing, ‘Tributes and Condolences in Honour of Muhammadu Buhari’ stands as an archival intervention for which I commend both Mallam Garba Shehu and Sardaunan Katsina, Ambassador Abubakar. In a country where historical narratives are frequently revised as quickly as they are formed, the preservation of contemporaneous voices is itself a public service.

 Many Thanks, SHPC!

On the day I resumed as spokesman to the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in June 2007, a few members of the State House Correspondents gathered to present me my old (1993 to 1995) ‘Red Card’ (the official villa accreditation which came in red colour during the military era). Although it was done in a lighter mood, I saw the gesture as a way of reminding me of my background. And throughout my tenure, I treated the correspondents as colleagues. Over the years, I have also been regularly invited to speak at their events. Last Thursday, at the Inaugural Dinner of what is now known as the State House Press Corps (SPHC), I was honoured with an award along with Messrs Felix Onuoha, Nicholas Okechukwu and the late Ladan Abubakar, each of whom covered the Villa for more than 25 years. This is therefore to express my appreciation to their Chairman, Dr Anule Emmanuel and the entire SHPC for the honour.

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on    

Olusegun Adeniyi

A new report, ‘The Shadow Owners,’ published by the Alliance forĚýEconomic Research and Ethics Limited (AERE) has confirmed how the worsening insecurity in our country is being fuelled by powerful forces that are linked to illegal mining that is now effectively a multi-billion dollars organised crime. Last November, ‘Daily Trust’ published a similar report of how gold from Zamfara is being bartered for guns that fuel the violence across the Northwest. “We exchange the gold for weapons. We give them the gold and they bring us the guns,” a notorious bandit leader by name Kachala Mati reportedly told ‘Daily Trust’ through an intermediary. “Sometimes we sell it here; sometimes we send it to Dubai.”

Mati, who reportedly controls several mining camps scattered across Anka, Kawaye and Dan-kamfani in Zamfara State, earns between N200 million and N300 million weekly from illicit gold mining, according to the report. The proceeds, he admitted to ‘Daily Trust’, are mostly channelled into buying firearms from suppliers operating along the Nigeria–Niger–Mali corridor. It is therefore little surprise that after the offices of President, Governor, Senator and House of Representatives, Minister, what some young Nigerians—especially those without education or skills—now desire is to be a Kachala. Some of them even maintain social media accounts!

While launching ‘Operation Puff Adder’ on 5 April 2019, then Inspector General of Police, Mr Mohammed Adamu confirmed that there is a “glaring nexus between the activities of armed bandits and illicit miners, with both mutually re-enforcing each other.” From ‘A society governed by rustlers’ to ‘Let’s kill all their men’ to ‘The Zamfara Killing Fields’ and ‘Criminal Cartels on the Loose’, this is also an issue that I have engaged several times on this page. In a 2018 column, ‘Beyond the Banditry in Zamfara’, I quoted a prominent northern politician with whom I spoke who said: “It is the criminal gangs behind illegal mining that supply most of the arms and they have godfathers among prominent people in Zamfara.”

Whether we want to admit it or not, a discernible gangster ethos now defines living and livelihoods in many of the communities where gold is mined as sundry criminal cartels carve empires for themselves. But these entrepreneurs of violence feel emboldened because they consider themselves above the law and in a way, they are. As the Daily Trust report reveals, this is a straightforward but deadly commerce. “Gold mined under armed supervision is stockpiled, smuggled through porous borders, and exchanged directly with gunrunners. These dealers supply automatic rifles, ammunition, and motorcycles used for raids on villages. When direct exchange is impossible, the gold is sold in regional black markets, with the cash used to purchase weapons from intermediaries in the Sahel.”

Over the years, there have been many crucial leads on the sources of insecurity in Nigeria. For instance, following a tip-off in July 2016, the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) arrested an obscure fruit seller under a bridge in Zaria, Kaduna State. Investigations later revealed the man to be a high-ranking Boko Haram operative who was coordinating their finance cell with others in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) by disbursing funds to various terror camps in Northeast Nigeria as well as Diffa, NigĂŠr Republic. The Zaria arrest eventually revealed a pattern of financial flows not only to Boko Haram field operatives but also to other criminal cartels, particularly those engaged in kidnappings for ransom.

Between 2015 and 2016, according to ONSA investigation, the sum of $782,000 was transferred from Dubai to Nigeria through Bureau De Change (BDC) operators to aid Boko Haram. This was what led to the April 2019 conviction in Dubai of six Nigerians, including a man identified as a government official whose name remains a mystery till today. But the Dubai security breakthrough helped to expose how some of the criminal networks operating in Nigeria had perfected a seamless method of laundering money through BDC operators. Once the money has been given to a BDC operator in Dubai, he contacts an associate in Nigeria who gives the same amount in cash to the coordinator. The coordinator then distributes the funds to members who incidentally have no direct contact with one another, in an elaborate scheme to cover their tracks. The same pattern was discovered for disbursement of ransom monies from kidnappings, especially those traced to illegal mining in Zamfara State.

A combination of porous borders, weak signal and technical intelligence and other associated issues have combined to make banditry the most lucrative enterprise for some criminals who are spreading their tentacles across the country. To his credit, the Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Mr Oladele Alake is not in denial about the challenge of the sector. He has consistently maintained that powerful forces sponsor most of the violence that now defines our country to secure and control mineral-rich territories. But with the proliferation of arms and hundreds of muscle men working as miners, authorities in the security sector must understand that we are dealing with a serious threat that is not only well organized but also well-funded. And the only way to dismantle this criminal network is to go after the illicit funding with which they procure their arms.

The Accountable Junkie

A video circulating online features a young man, Johnson Kpokpoola, with visibly damaged legs who recounts how he lost everything to drug use. Before he got hooked on drugs, Johnson had trained at a football academy in Akure, Ondo State, alongside peers with the same dream. One of those boys was Victor Boniface, a striker currently playing for Bundesliga club Werder Bremen, on loan from Bayer Leverkusen. While Boniface has made his name in European football and our national team, Super Eagles, Johnson now practically wastes away. By his own account, tramadol is the decisive factor.

The most notable aspect of the interview is not the misfortune itself, which is regrettably common, but Johnson’s explanation of its cause. He states directly that his years of dependence on tramadol, pentazocine, and codeine syrups led to his condition and details the physical consequences. “I dare not wear shorts anymore. Just look at my legs—one is bigger than the other. People see my leg and feel sorry for me because of the wound. They don’t know the wound was caused by drugs,” Johnson confessed. “I even lie to people about how it happened, and they give me money. I still use that money to buy the same injections again. Victor Boniface and I played together at the same academy.”

When the interviewer asked Johnson for proof, he produced a photograph of their time together at the Royal Gold South Academy, Akure. “I am addicted to pentazocine, promethazine and tramadol. I have been using tramadol for about 14 years now,” he said while confirming his helplessness. “Anyone who is addicted to tramadol will testify to what I’m saying. Sometimes when you take it, you don’t even think you have any problems. You don’t even think about food.”

Contrasting his life with that of Boniface while they were both hustling to make a career in football, Johnson said he had it easier. “From my house to the training ground was about a 10-minute walk. From the barracks where Boniface lived, it was about one hour and thirty minutes. He would trek there for training by 4 p.m., finish around 6 p.m., and then trek another one hour and thirty minutes back home. That’s why I am not surprised he made it in football.” On whether he has ever received help from Boniface, Johnson answered in the affirmative. “Even when he was in Norway, he sent me money many times. I also understand why he eventually neglected me. If you’re helping someone and you realise the person doesn’t seem to have any direction or isn’t trying to improve his life, you’ll eventually stop helping,” Johnson said. “I used to disturb him for money all the time, and most of the money I collected from him was used to buy drugs.”

Boniface has confirmed knowing Johnson whom he described as a good guy. In a hilarious post for which he is renown on social media, he added that the interview contained a ‘lie’ because he (Boniface) trekked for two hours from his house to the football field every day and another two hours to return home. Johnson, according to Boniface, ‘edited’ his trekking by 30 minutes on each leg of the journey!

The timing of this discussion is relevant. Last Friday, June 26 marked the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking with the theme, ‘World drug problem: persisting issues, new challenges, innovative responses.’ The most recent National Drug Use Survey estimates about 14.3 million Nigerians aged 15 to 64 use psychoactive substances, representing one in seven individuals and nearly three times the global average. The substances involved, such as tramadol, pentazocine, and codeine, are inexpensive and widely accessible, especially among young people. But more ominously, it is most prevalent among the criminals that now hold our country by the jugular.

Following the 2018 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) documentary, ‘Secrets of Nigeria’s illicit codeine trade revealed’, by Ms Ruona Meyer (nee Agbroko), the then Senate Leader, Ahmed Lawan (who later became Senate President) lent credence to the nexus between substance abuse and Boko Haram insurgency. “The information I got this morning is that 70% of this codeine that comes into Nigeria finds its way into Sambisa Forest,” Lawan said at the time. “We may even have some of our security agents who are under the influence of drugs.”   

While receiving the Sheikh Ahmed Gumi-led ‘Bandits Repentance Initiative’, then Governor (now a Senator) Aminu Tambuwal of Sokoto State shared a revealing anecdote. “A counterpart of mine, a serving governor, once narrated to me an incidence. He visited a hamlet and wanted to patronise the local women coming back from the market where they had gone to hawk dairy products, and one of them ran away. He asked what the problem was and was told that she (the woman who ran away) wasn’t carrying dairy products in her calabash but drugs,” Tambuwal recounted. “My colleague told me that much of the drugs used by the kidnappers and violent marauders get to them this way.”  

The National Law Drug Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) Chairman, Brigadier-General Buba Marwa (rtd), has done a lot in fighting the scourge. But as commendable as Marwa’s efforts are—and he truly deserves accolades—the challenge is rather overwhelming. Especially in a country where amphetamine-type stimulants and dangerous over-the counter (OTC) drugs are available on every street corner while syndicates adapt, and society continues to frame addiction as a moral failing rather than a problem to be solved.

Now, let’s go back to Johnson. An individual many might dismiss as a ‘junkie’ and destitute publicly accepted responsibility for the wrong choices that have landed him where he is today. In contrast, public officials frequently deflect blame: poor infrastructure is attributed to previous administrations, depleted treasuries to saboteurs, insecurity to ‘external forces’ etc. But we should not reduce Johnson’s experience to a simplistic moral lesson. When it comes to drug abuse, clinicians emphasize that recovery begins with acknowledging the problem, a step Johnson has taken publicly. Committing to a rehabilitation pathway and sticking to it is a more difficult challenge.

In many ways, Nigeria itself mirrors Johnson’s tragic struggle: a nation hooked on the narcotic of illicit financial flows from irregular mining and the violence it sustains. Just as Johnson admitted that tramadol robbed him of health, dignity, and opportunity, so too do the cartels and their patrons know that this addiction to blood‑gold robs the country of human development, stability, and prosperity. Yet, like Johnson, the State remains unable to break free without external help and a deliberate rehabilitation programme. Until Nigeria confronts this dependency with honesty and designs a firm pathway to recovery, it will continue to stagger between denial and decay, wasting away while others march forward.

Overall, one lesson I have taken from Johnson is that a person’s capacity for growth is inseparable from their willingness to face uncomfortable truths about themselves without hesitation. That for me is why Johnson deserves help. And if there are some genuine efforts to rehabilitate him, I am willing to offer my support. 

RIGHT OF REPLY: You’re Wrong on NDIC!

By Hawwau Gambo

Dear Mr Adeniyi,

In your column of 4 June 2026 titled, ‘Federal Republic of Waste’, you linked an alleged abandoned property at 67 Awolowo Road, Ikoyi, Lagos, to the defunct Credite Bank. The Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) wishes to clarify that the building in question was not owned by Credite Bank. Rather, it was a rented premises occupied by the defunct bank as its head office. Upon the revocation of the bank’s licence and the handover of the bank to the NDIC by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Corporation, in its capacity as the official liquidator, disposed of all the assets and chattels belonging to the bank in accordance with the liquidation process. However, being the property of a third party, the building was returned to its rightful owner and thus, did not form part of the bank’s assets available for disposal.

We therefore wish to assure your readers that the NDIC remains committed to transparency, accountability and the efficient management of the assets of failed banks in accordance with its statutory mandate. This clarification is necessary to correct the wrong impression inadvertently created in your column.

• Gambo is Head, Communication & Public Affairs Department at the NDIC

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on    

Olusegun Adeniyi

There is a detail buried in a press briefing in Kaduna last Thursday that I found rather troubling. It was offered by the former National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) Director General, Brigadier General Maharazu Tsiga (rtd). He was in the state to honour the memory of his late colleague, Major General Rabe Abubakar (rtd), who was abducted alongside his wife on 30 May 2026 in Katsina State but later died in captivity on 13 June. Tsiga had himself spent 56 harrowing days in the hands of bandits last year and in Kaduna, he shared a particular experience. While in captivity, according to Tsiga, he witnessed an early morning exchange in which a bandit leader, referred to as Kachala, received a phone call concerning the purchase of ammunition. Curious, Tsiga said he asked the bandit leader how such transactions were conducted and whether he could be involved. Tsiga was told, in clear terms, that being a retired officer, he was no use to bandits and that their business was with those who still occupy positions of authority.

That statement, if taken seriously, opens a window into the structure of Nigeria’s insecurity problem. It suggests that the machinery sustaining armed groups in parts of the country is not operating in isolation. It points to a network that extends beyond the forests and frontlines, into institutions and offices that are expected to uphold the law. But this is not the first time such insinuations have surfaced in public discourse. What is different here is the source—a retired general speaking from direct experience as a captive. This, of course, is not to malign our soldiers who daily make sacrifices to keep our nation secure; it is to admit that there are a few bad eggs within the system.

Over the years, Nigerians have asked difficult questions. How do criminal groups maintain access to sophisticated weapons? How do ransom payments move in such volumes without traceable consequences? How do these networks persist despite repeated military operations across affected regions? How come bandits invade some communities not long after troops leave? While Tsiga’s account does not answer these questions, it adds a disturbing layer that cannot be ignored. There is also the bitter irony to his revelation. Tsiga regained his freedom through contributions reportedly mobilised by colleagues, including many of the serving and retired officers who were with him in Kaduna last week. But the real concern is his confirmation of what many Nigerians have always whispered: there are insiders who trade in official arms and ammunitions with criminals.

On an issue like this, it may be important to add a caveat, especially because there are those who enjoy negative stories about our country. This is not a challenge peculiar to Nigeria. The only difference is about accountability. In other countries, when such criminal behaviour is detected—and there are always efforts to stay ahead of the criminals—culprits are brought to justice. On 30 March this year, for instance, a United States Marine was charged with stealing ammo and weapons, including a shoulder-fired missile system, and conspiring to sell them in his home state of Arizona. According to federal prosecutors, the officer used his position as a technical specialist at the School of Infantry West to steal at least one Javelin missile system, thousands of rounds of military-grade ammunition and other weapons-related material between February 2022 and November 2025.

While conducting ‘sting operations’ to detect such crimes and holding culprits accountable are the standard practice in most countries, that has not been the case in Nigeria and over the years, I have had to wade in on this vexatious issue with the most recent being ‘The Enemies Within’ (February 2020) and ‘An Army at Crossroads’ (May 2021). I wrote the latter following the arrest and parade by the Zamfara State Police Command of a notorious 30-year-old gun runner from Niger Republic, Shehu Ali Kachala. The suspect claimed he was importing the weapons into our country through the assistance of some unnamed Nigerian military personnel. He also said he had sold 450 rifles and 8000 live ammunitions to different criminal gangs in Zamfara, Kaduna, and Niger States. Two months earlier, the Zamfara State Government announced that a Nigerian soldier and his girlfriend were caught supplying ammunition and military uniforms to armed bandits. The soldier was reportedly arrested through community-driven intelligence. Up till now, we still do not know how the two cases were resolved.

In September 2016, General Lucky Irabor, (who later became the Chief of Defence Staff but at that period, Theatre Commander in Maiduguri) said some soldiers were selling arms and ammunition to Boko Haram in what he described as “a betrayal of the Nigerian people”, even though he gave no further details. In November 2017, a State Security Service (SSS) Director, Mr Godwin N. Eteng, made chilling revelations before a House of Representatives Joint Committee investigating the influx of small arms and light weapons into the country. “We had a situation where in one of the armouries belonging to one of the armed forces, many pistols just got missing with quantities of ammunition and all the pistols are new. In the armoury, no place was broken into, but the weapons were missing,” Eteng told the lawmakers.

In June 2019, the police command in Kaduna State arrested a Lance Corporal serving in one of the military units in Jaji Military Cantonment, allegedly for selling arms to kidnappers. A year later in 2020, the Conflict Armament Research (CAR), an international conflict research group, released a report that some of the weapons with which herdsmen and farmers fought were traced to “stockpiles of Nigerian defence and security forces”. Of the 148 different weapons discovered and analysed, according to the report, “Nigerian-manufactured small-calibre ammunition—including cartridges manufactured as recently as 2014—is the second-most prevalent type of ammunition in this data set.” It then concluded: “Four of the weapons in the data set were previously in service with Nigerian national defence and security forces. CAR has established this through formal tracing and the analysis of secondary marks applied to the weapons, which identify their users.” 

What the foregoing suggests is that we learnt no lesson from Niger Delta where militancy was sustained for several years, essentially due to arms and ammunitions that were procured from official armouries. Breaking that syndicate helped in no small measure to weaken the capacity of the militants before the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua came up with the amnesty deal. In my book, ‘Power, Politics and Death’, I detailed a report of the Board of Inquiry convened by then Chief of Army Staff, the late Lt. General Luka Yusuf, which investigated huge theft of arms at 1 Base Ordnance Depot (1BODK), in Kaduna. The report concluded that “some of the soldiers involved in the theft of weapons actually escorted the stolen arms in uniform to their destination in Niger Delta.” 

The investigation was itself spawned by allegation that an arms syndicate which involved some soldiers and officers of the Nigerian Army, had been breaking into the arms sheds in 1BODK, the Ordnance Sub Depot (OSD) in Jaji and the Ordnance Field Park (OFP) in Calabar to steal weapons. Some of the stolen arms and ammunition included among others, GPMGs, Sterling SMG, Bren LNG, AK 47 rifles, grenades, and rocket launchers, as well as several fragmentation jackets. At the end, about a dozen military officers were court-martialled and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment. 

As an aside, without understanding the context of the Niger Delta amnesty deal by my late principal, part of which I explained in my 2022 column, Tompolo and the Amnesty Deal  – ĚÇĐÄĘÓĆľLIVE, some Northern governors have been quick to offer all kinds of ‘amnesty’ packages to criminals. But even when Niger Delta militancy is completely different from the pure criminality that goes by the fanciful name of ‘banditry’, the Yar’Adua amnesty was preceded by a strong military offensive that left the militants with no option except they were prepared to die. The Niger Delta Amnesty deal was offered by the Nigerian State from a position of strength.

To address the current security challenges that we face as a nation, we need a firm resolve from the leadership, at all levels, and a coherent national policy. I stated this much in my column, ‘when the state kneels before the gun’, following the publicised meeting in Gemi Forest between chairman of Safana local government area in Katsina State, Abdullahi Sani Safana (alongside some traditional rulers) with bandits. If some government officials believe that offering ‘carrots’ to bandits is the solution while others believe in a law-and-order approach, the problem will continue to defy solution. Indeed, that approach has led to a situation in which many communities would rather deal directly with bandits for their survival with dire consequences.

Right now, about 50 residents from Magamin Diddi village in Maradun Local Government Area, Zamfara State, are in the hands of bandits. According to reports, following incessant attacks and desperate to access their farmlands during this raining season, these community elders went to the adjourning Muntsira forest to meet a bandit leader named Jammo. They have not returned home after more than two weeks. “They did not inform the authority before embarking on such dangerous step they have taken,” Zamfara State Governor, Dauda Lawal told BBC Hausa Service during the week. “They are on their own…who sent them to negotiate? It certainly was not the government. We have consistently stated that we do not support negotiations with terrorists.”

I plead with Governor Lawal not to abandon those Zamfara elders to their fate. If top government officials could go to these forests for meetings with bandit leaders, I don’t think the Zamfara elders should be criminalized for what turned out to be a desperate misadventure. But here is the bigger issue: If banditry has become so entrenched, it is not only because of those who carry arms in the forest. On Monday, the US designated a Nigerian national and three companies operating in the country as alleged facilitators of financial activities linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). That explains why Tsiga’s account of communication between abductors and external actors, especially references to procurement of ammunition, demands scrutiny. Who facilitates such access? Who benefits from its continuation? And why has it proven so difficult to dismantle these supply chains despite years of military operations?  

To answer those questions, what is required is not only operational response but structural interrogation of the ecosystem that sustains violence. The question Tsiga has raised albeit indirectly, is whether there exist, within the structure of state and society, actors who enable the persistence of armed violence for personal or political gain. And until that question is answered with courage and evidence, the country will continue to treat symptoms while ignoring the disease. It will also be difficult to rid our country of kidnappers, bandits, and sundry other criminal cartels.

The Angry Judge

There is hardly any aspect of our society that does not come with its own peculiarities, and our judicial system is no exception. One recurring challenge is the tendency by some lawyers—whether out of desperation, overzealousness, or poor judgment—to prolong litigation unnecessarily. Matters that have been concluded often find their way back into the courts through creative legal maneuvers. The situation becomes even more troubling when lawyers attempt to challenge decisions of the Supreme Court under the guise of seeking a review. In some instances, fresh proceedings are initiated at lower courts on matters that have already been conclusively settled by the apex court. Such conduct not only clogs the justice system but can also test the patience of judges who are expected to protect the finality and integrity of judicial decisions.

Yet, while such actions may understandably cause frustration, judges, in my view, must exercise restraints as frequent displays of anger can undermine the dignity of the courtroom and discourage those seeking justice. Yes, firmness is an essential judicial quality, but excessive hostility can also create an impression of bias, discourage open engagement, and ultimately weaken public confidence in the fairness of legal proceedings.

This issue came into sharp focus on Monday when a Justice of the Supreme Court reserved unusually harsh words for S.M. Danyaro, a lawyer who had filed what was described as one of the most “thoughtless and irresponsible applications” ever brought before the court. The apex court not only dismissed the application but also ordered Danyaro to personally pay N50 million in costs, describing the filing as “vexatious, abusive and unprofessional.”

Although Justice Jamilu Tukur delivered the lead ruling, it was the concurring judgment of Justice Chioma Nwosu-Iheme that attracted widespread attention. In expressing her displeasure, she described Danyaro as “juvenile” and suggested that his application was so lacking in merit that it was “bereft of commonsense,” while questioning whether he (Danyaro) deserved to be called a legal practitioner.

The case originated from a Supreme Court judgment delivered on 4 June 2025, which nullified a Kebbi State High Court decision reinstating Al-Mustapha Jokolo as the 19th Emir of Gwandu. While the Court of Appeal had upheld the reinstatement, the Supreme Court, by a narrow three-to-two majority, ruled that Jokolo had failed to comply with Section 5(4) of the Kebbi State Chiefs (Appointment and Deposition) Law. The provision requires an aggrieved party to first submit a formal complaint to the governor before commencing legal proceedings. It was this judgment that Danyaro sought to revisit through an application that ultimately drew the court’s ire. The controversy that followed has centred less on the legal outcome and more on the language used by Justice Nwosu-Iheme. Should judges openly display such emotions in their judgments?

We must admit that judges are entitled to feel frustration because they are human beings, not machines. This is more so when they are confronted with conducts that undermine the administration of justice. Almost on daily basis, Judges in Nigeria encounter frivolous applications, abuse of court processes, and actions that consume valuable judicial time and resources. In such circumstances, irritation may occasionally find expression in judicial language. However, why this is understandable, the judicial office, in my view, demands a higher level of restraint because judges do more than resolve disputes; they embody the impartiality, dignity, and authority of the law itself.

The language of a judgment often carries almost as much weight as the decision it contains. A ruling may be legally impeccable, yet its impact and public acceptance can be diminished if readers perceive it as driven by emotion rather than careful reasoning. This concern is not merely theoretical. In her paper, ‘Shame, Angry Judges and Social Media Effect’, Professor Maxine Goodman of the South Texas College of Law, Houston posed the question: “What is it about judges and anger?” She observed that there are countless examples of judges losing their tempers and lashing out at lawyers, litigants, and court personnel. According to Goodman, some judicial outbursts are triggered by provocation, while others arise from the pressures of emotionally charged cases. Occasionally, however, judges appear to lose their composure without any obvious cause. More importantly, Goodman notes that public perceptions of fairness are often shaped not by the outcome of a case but by how individuals are treated throughout the process. This means that even where a decision is legally sound, harsh or emotional language may create an impression of partiality and undermine confidence in the institution.

In the present case, few would seriously dispute the Supreme Court’s decision to dismiss Danyaro’s application and sanction him. The legal correctness of the ruling appears difficult to challenge. The real debate concerns the language employed in expressing that decision. Critics argue that such strong words risk overshadowing the legal reasoning and shifting public attention away from the issues at stake toward the temperament of the judge. Supporters, however, contend that a forceful judicial rebuke is sometimes necessary to discourage irresponsible litigation and uphold professional standards within the legal profession.

The challenge, therefore, lies in balancing judicial humanity with restraint. Judges must be free to condemn conducts that threaten the integrity of the legal system, but they should do so in a manner that preserves public confidence in their neutrality. Firmness does not require hostility, and strong criticism need not become personal. Ultimately, the controversy surrounding Justice Nwosu-Iheme’s remarks serves as a reminder that judicial temperament is an essential component of the administration of justice because the authority of the court rests not only on the correctness of their decisions but also on the measured and impartial manner in which those decisions are delivered. Therefore, a judge’s words should command respect because of the strength of their reasoning. Not on the intensity of the emotion behind them.

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle,Ěý@OlusegunverdictĚýand onĚýwww.olusegunadeniyi.com

Olusegun Adeniyi

In my column of 17 March 2021, ‘Kidnappings Incorporated!’, I shared the story of Nuhu Tanko, a gardener at the Shehu Musa Yar’Adua Centre in Abuja, whose two brothers were abducted on New Year’s Eve 2020 while on the road from Dakunu village in Chukum Local Government of Kaduna State. The masked abductors were more than 50 in number, all on motorcycles and armed with at least two guns each. In the Katarimape forest where the brothers were held along with three other captives, they were tied hand and foot, given a cup of water each day, and some scraps to share. Their families were told to produce ten million naira or prepare their graves. Following three weeks of negotiation, the sum of N450,000 was raised for each of the five victims, totalling N2.25 million. The ransom was dropped at a location in the forest as directed by the kidnappers. “It’s like bandits have taken over our village and the surrounding communities,” Immani Tanko recounted after regaining freedom. “They kidnap people, kill and rape women, even if the women are pregnant.” 

In that same column, I also shared the story of Mallam Iliya Gwaram who was in captivity at the time the abducted Jangebe schoolgirls in Zamfara State were brought to the kidnappers’ camp. He recognised his daughter but they had to pretend not knowing each other. He recounted his ordeal after the girls were eventually taken away: “I never cried in the whole of my life like I cried that day because I felt it was the last time I would see my daughter.” I also shared, in that column, the chilling report of the Zamfara State committee on banditry whose members included a retired Inspector General of Police. The pauperisation of local government, abandonment of political thugs after elections, collusion of rogue security officers with bandits, and the ease with which court orders freed arrested criminal kingpins were some of their findings. The committee recommended that ten military officers be court-martialled for what it called “dirty involvement in escalating the menace of armed banditry, mismanagement of recovered livestock, and unholy relationship with criminals.”

I chose to title that column ‘Kidnappings Incorporated’ because, even in 2021, the evidence was already clear: Abduction for ransom had ceased to be a crime of desperation. It had become an industry. Structured. Profitable. Scalable. And protected, including by those who were supposed to be fighting it. Sadly, what I described as an emerging industry five years ago has metastasised into a fully operational enterprise.

On 30 May 2026, armed bandits ambushed a vehicle on the Karaduwa–Matazu Road in Katsina State. Inside the vehicle were Major General Rabe Abubakar (rtd), who served as Director of Defence Information from 2015 to 2017, and his wife, Hajiya Amina Abubakar. Their driver was shot and barely escaped with his life. Two weeks into their captivity, the bandits released a video. It showed Abubakar, his wife with him, visibly frail, apparently injured in the leg, surrounded by armed men, while appealing directly to the Katsina State Government to meet the kidnappers’ demands: release three detained fighters and return livestock allegedly seized during military operations. It was one of the most humiliating images this country has been made to absorb in recent memory. At the end, the General died in captivity. Then the Katsina State Government informed the public that the late General died of “natural causes”.

When a man is kidnapped, held against his will, denied access to medical care, paraded before a camera to deliver his captors’ political ultimatum, and dies before the state can secure his release, calling that death “natural causes” is a moral evasion. Diabetes and hypertension may well have been part of the General’s medical history. But what created the conditions in which those ailments became fatal? Kidnapping. Captivity. Trauma. The systematic removal of access to whatever medications and care a 61-year-old man with such diagnoses would have required. Therefore, the bandits did not need a gun to finish the General. They simply placed him in an environment where his pre-existing conditions could do the work for them. And then comes the detail that should make every Nigerian stop and ask a very hard question. Within 48 hours of the announcement of the General’s death, troops located Hajiya Amina, engaged the bandits and rescued her. At least that is what Nigerians have been told.

Forty-eight hours!

The General was in that forest for two weeks. And yet the same help that could not reach him in 14 days reached his wife in two. I do not raise this point to diminish the bravery of the soldiers who conducted that operation, or to ignore the complexities of jungle rescue. I raise it because the Nigerian public deserves an honest accounting of what “concerted efforts” actually looked like in practice, and whether the urgency that characterised the rescue of Hajiya Amina was present from day one. And talking about accountability, in the plea video of the Abubakars from the forest, there were evidently other captives. What happened to them?

But let’s go back to the statement. If the Katsina State Government had said, ‘We are devastated by the death of a gallant officer. We will not rest until his wife is brought home alive,’ that would still have been inadequate. But it would at least have acknowledged that what occurred was a crime, not a medical episode. Instead, what we received was the administrative equivalent of a death certificate, as if an autopsy was performed on the corpse by bandits. But let us not allow the specific outrage of one lousy statement to distract us from the broader catastrophe that produced it. Because the death of Abubakar is not a stand-alone tragedy. It is a data point in a crisis that has been compounding for years.

In that 2021 column, I described kidnapping as an industry. Five years on, the industry has filed its returns, and they are staggering. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Crime Experience and Security Perception Survey 2024, between May 2023 and April 2024, an estimated 2.2 million Nigerians were abducted, and approximately 600,000 killed across the country with about N1.42 trillion paid in ransoms. Between July 2024 and June 2025, SBM Intelligence also recorded at least 4,722 kidnappings across 997 incidents nationwide. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project reported that Nigeria accounted for 58 percent of all abductions in West Africa between 2019 and 2023.

These are the statistics of a country that has, in large part, already ceded territory, economy, and daily life to organised criminal enterprise. No fewer than 140 police officers died from violent attacks, accidents, and other duty-related incidents within a one-year period in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) alone, the Inspector General of Police (IGP) Olatunji Disu, told Nigerians two weeks ago. And now, even retired army generals are no longer beyond the reach of kidnappers. In February 2025, former NYSC Director-General, Major General Maharazu Tsiga (rtd.) was abducted from his hometown in Bakori, Katsina State, alongside at least nine other civilians. Even traditional rulers are now abducted right in their palaces.

Five years ago, I highlighted the Zamfara State committee’s recommendations. I am not aware that anybody has addressed the systemic rot the committee identified—fake mobile subscriber registrations, release of criminal kingpins by compromised courts, and political abandonment of unemployed youth who had served as thugs. What I am aware of is that the industry has continued to expand across the country because the conditions that produced it were never dismantled.

Now, let me address one important issue here. There is an argument some will make that the insecurity crisis is the product of decades of government neglect, poverty, corruption etc. I do not dispute that argument which I have written about many times. But that argument cannot be allowed to become a comfortable alibi for the criminal. Because there are now operators in this enterprise who are not the product of poverty alone. They are the product of impunity. They have drawn the rational conclusion that abduction is a low-risk, high-reward business. The industry has attracted investment. It has attracted structure. It has attracted, according to multiple security analyses, the interest of opportunistic networks who see kidnapping for ransom as both a revenue stream and a political tool. That is the challenge we must confront as a country.

In January 2022, then Kaduna State Governor Nasir el-Rufai, advocated a radical solution to the menace. “I have always believed that we should carpet-bomb the forests; we can replant the trees after,” El Rufai said in what many considered a scary proposition at the time. “Let’s carpet-bomb the forests and bomb all of them. There will be collateral damage, but it’s better to wipe them out and get people back to our communities.” With the manner in which these criminals have converted the forests into ‘campuses’ for stolen school children, not a few people are beginning to think that something must give.

We must confront this existential threat, most especially to the education of our children. The script remains the same: the dawn raid on motor cycles by gunmen who herd innocent children into the bush, release of videos by the criminals, the promise that “no stone will be left unturned,” and then the national amnesia until the next set of school children is abducted. Amnesty International has documented at least 17 separate mass abductions from Nigerian schools since Chibok in April 2014, with no fewer than 1,700 children as victims. Other tallies run higher.

To end this menace, we must find the resolve and resources to dismantle the criminal enterprise entirely. And we must begin by clearing the forests of the violent ‘landlords’. Then we must follow the money, prosecute the collaborators, and refuse to negotiate on terms that make the next abduction more likely than the last. I understand the unbearable trauma of having loved ones held captive by some animals, and I will not stand in judgment over any family that does what it must to bring their abducted people back home. But as a matter of state policy, the ransom economy is the engine of this entire enterprise. Every payment is a business plan for the next abduction.

Now that these criminal gangs have opened a flank in the Southwest, President Bola Tinubu needs nobody to interpret for him the Yoruba adage I used for the late President Muhammadu Buhari when his state of Katsina was being taken over by bandits: ‘Ẹni tí yóò ya’ni l’áṣọ, t’ọrùn rẹ̀ lá á kọ́ wò’. Crudely translated, it means before you take seriously someone who promises to robe you in a beautiful apparel, you will first check out what the person is wearing!

As I have repeatedly argued on this page, the connecting thread for the variants of violence we are witnessing across Nigeria is the loss of what Max Weber described as “the legitimate use of physical force” to criminal cartels. Therefore, authorities (at all levels) must muster the requisite capacity and political will to effectively confront those who have made it their business to trouble the peace and security of Nigeria. 

Sandra Adio at 50

The CEO of Metro Bakery and Restaurant,Mrs Sandra Adio was 50 on Tuesday and she chose to mark the day with the children of my wife’s Not Forgotten Initiative (NFI) School which provides free and purpose-driven education (with one meal a day) to children from underserved communities in Abuja. For the past eight years, Metro has provided meals for the children (now about 140) once every week. Meanwhile, what I find remarkable about Sandra is the beautiful balance she strikes between being an exemplary wife and mother, and a formidable entrepreneur in her own right. She has been to my friend, Waziri Adio, a helpmate in the truest sense of the word and a worthy partner in building a home filled with love and values.

But Sandra is far more than what happens within her home. She is also a woman who dared to dream, and more importantly, dared to turn those dreams into reality. The Metro story is one I have had the privilege to witness from its humble beginnings. I remember that Saturday in December 2014, when I had the honour of offering the opening prayer at what was then just a small bakery. At the time, Metro had three staff members. Today, that number has grown to about 80 workers, creating in the process more than a hundred other indirect jobs. From a space where she baked bread in Lugbe, Sandra has built a thriving enterprise with three distinct arms in multiple locations: bakery, pastry line, and restaurant.

This happened because Sandra combined her God-given talent (learned at the feet of her enterprising late mother, Mrs. Kate Odigue) with training, hard work, and an openness to innovation. And she has built this impressive empire without losing herself. She remains warm, humble, and accessible.

At 50, I celebrate Sandra Adio’s legacy of excellence, entrepreneurial courage, and beautiful humanity. I celebrate a woman who proves that it is possible to be an excellent wife and mother while also building something significant outside the home. I celebrate a life that inspires, encourages, and shows others, especially young women, that with faith, hard work, and determination, anything is possible. Here is to you, ‘Madam Metro’, five decades of grace and grit. May your second half be even more remarkable than your first. And may you continue to be a blessing to your family, community, and all whose lives you touch.

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle,Ěý@OlusegunverdictĚýand onĚýwww.olusegunadeniyi.com

By Olusegun Adeniyi

Twelve days ago, at a private residence in Abuja, a faction of what remains of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gathered to affirm former President Goodluck Jonathan as its candidate for the 2027 presidential election. Even when Jonathan was nowhere near the bizarre proceedings, his name has since been sent to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and lavishly published as their presidential candidate. And without publicly accepting or declining the nomination, Jonathan has, in the most literal sense I can conjure, left other people to dance in his shoes.

Regular readers of this column will recognise the choreography, because I have written about it before. Twice, in fact. On 9 February 2011, in a piece titledĚý, I deployed Tunde Kelani’s film, ‘Agogo Eewo’ (The Gong of Taboo), to illustrate my point about a president and the men who claimed to have made him. ItĚýrecounts the allegory of a poor but gifted dancer who goes to a competition in borrowed shoes. The lenders, sensing their leverage, begin to distract and torment him in the middle of his performance. At the end, he does the only dignifiedĚýthing by kicking off the borrowed shoes and dancingĚýbarefoot. The crowd is so moved by this act of defiance that they begin, spontaneously, to offer him their own shoes. The moral, as I wrote then, is that a leader must choose between self-serving shoe lenders and the people,Ěýwhile the shoes that come with strings will inevitably be used to pull down the dancer.

I returned to that allegory in 2022, ahead of the last election, in a column,Ěý. The occasion was almost identical to the present one. Placard-carrying “supporters” had besieged the former president’s office, demanding that he declare for the 2023 race. And there were whispers, never quite denied, that the plan was for him to run on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC)—the very party that had spent the better part of a decade demonising him. I wrote then, quoting Franklin Roosevelt, that “in politics, nothing happens by accident; if it does, you can bet it was planned that way.” The placard-bearers, in other words, were not acting on their own initiative. At the end, Jonathan did not contest while the APC ticket, and ultimately the presidency, went to Bola Tinubu. The shoe lenders folded their banners and went home, and the republic moved on.

Today, as it was four years ago, Jonathan has not officially thrown his hat into the ring for 2027. All the talk remains, for now, speculation built around a ceremony he chose not to grace with his presence. But should Jonathan eventually decide to dance to the tune of the persuaders, his situation will be weaker than it was in 2022 when the prize on offer, however improbable, was at least the ticket of the ruling party. What is on offer now is not even the PDP that governed Nigeria for 16 unbroken years. It is a faction of the PDP—one bloc in a party that has split into warring camps.

What, then, are the realistic scenarios should Jonathan decide to accept the ‘nomination’? I see three, and not one of them ends well. The first is that he runs on the faction’s ticket and loses, as a divided party splitting its own vote must lose to an incumbent with the structure of government behind him. That outcome would convert a revered former president into a defeated also-ran, the spoiler whom some online people now uncharitably allege is being encouraged into the contest just to “divide the votes.” The second is that the courts could settle the constitutional question against him and end the adventure.

Section 137(3) of the 1999 Constitution (the Fourth Alteration signed into law on 11 June 2018 by the late President Muhammadu Buhari), provides that “a person who was sworn-in to complete the term for which another person was elected as President, shall not be elected to such office for more than a single term.” Jonathan was sworn in to complete the term of the late President Umaru Yar’Adua, and then won a term of his own in 2011. The argument that he is ineligible to contest again has been dismissed by the Federal High Court and the case is now at the Appeal Court. Nobody knows how that will end. Besides, the PDP faction offering him their tattered umbrella is also standing on shaky legal ground.

The third, and the one his persuaders are quietly praying for, is that Jonathan runs and wins. And it is this third scenario, paradoxically, that exposes the entire enterprise for what it is. We all know why a one-term candidate is attractive to the Jonathan persuaders. The next four years, the faction’s spokesman tells us, must be years of “healing, restoration, patience and nation building.” There is a further insult folded into this packaging, and it, too, is a recycled garment. The faction insists that Jonathan’s running is “not his ambition but a call from the people.” Translation: Jonathan will be nothing but a caretaker. They are therefore not offering him a presidency. They are offering him a lease, and a contested one at that, on a property they intend to repossess. Jonathan will be given a seat that can only be warmed, but never owned.

This then brings me, finally, to the only thing in this sordid affair that truly matters. And that is what the persuaders are most willing to spend: Jonathan’s legacy. We should be honest about what Jonathan’s standing today actually rests upon. It does not rest on the record of his administration, which Nigerians remember with the same mixture of affection and frustration they reserve for most of their leaders. It rests principally on a single moment. In the early afternoon of 31 March 2015, with the votes turning against him, then incumbent President Jonathan picked up a telephone, congratulated his opponent before the final declaration, and said the words that have followed him around the world ever since: that his ambition was not worth the blood of any Nigerian. That concession did for Jonathan what five years in power as president had not. It made him a global statesman. That precisely is why he is being invited to observe elections in other countries and mediate other people’s crises. Jonathan is, today, the patron saint of the graceful exit.

That reputation is what the 2027 shoe lenders are asking Jonathan to wager. And they are asking him to wager it not on a noble cause but on a doomed candidacy, advanced by a fragment of a collapsing party. There is something close to cruelty in this. The man who is celebrated worldwide for knowing when to leave is being tempted to claw his way back through the backdoor, his flag carried in by a proxy because, one suspects, some part of him already knows that these are not his shoes. I hope, for his sake and for ours, that Jonathan resists. Some legacies are best left as they were written, and that one was written well. 

Now, let me address the persuaders directly, as I have done before. If the call were truly from Nigerians, and not from a small circle of desperate politicians who see in this former president a convenient tool rather than a leader, it would not be staged in a borrowed living room with the principal absent. Finally, let me also address the former president, a man for whom I have tremendous respect right from our days together at the Villa (he as vice president; me as presidential spokesman) when he fondly addressed me by two pet names: ‘Media Guru’ and ‘Focus Nigeria’ (there’s a story behind that):

Your Excellency, the most presidential thing you can do in 2027 is what you ultimately did in 2023. And it is the same thing the barefoot dancer did in the parable earlier referenced: refuse the borrowed shoes. Decline the adventure, not by silence or the studied ambiguity of “I will consult,” but clearly, so that no one can use your name as a banner while you are looking the other way. Yes, Nigeria could use a healer and unifying figure right now as many people suggest when your name comes up. But a contested faction of a dying party is not the instrument of healing, and a campaign that ends in defeat or in court is not the vehicle of legacy. The dancer’s dignity lies precisely in his bare feet. So, please take this from someone who means well for you: Some shoes are not worth the wearing, however grand the names of those pressing them upon you. Your power, such as it remains, is moral, not electoral. It is the authority of the man who left well. Spend it on the country if you wish but please, do not let it be spent on you.

Abdulsalami Abubakar and the Abacha Loot Question

Former Head of State, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, will be 84 on Saturday. And he has decided to use the occasion for the public presentation of his autobiography, ‘Call of Duty’. Last Friday, I received his invitation along with an advance copy of the book which he autographed for me with kind words. Published by CableBooks, the book is quite insightful, as one would expect. But it is also evident that the General did not want to offend anybody, hence, even those to whom he imputed unsavoury roles and actions—like members of the ‘kitchen cabinet’ around the late General Sani Abacha—are not named.

But the book does contain very rich insights. The author addressed such issues as the military coups in Nigeria, including the ones that toppled both the First and Second Republics, and shared his civil war experience as a battalion commander. He also provides insights on the June 12 election fiasco and the aftermath, how he (Abubakar) was tricked to Aso Rock on the morning of 8 June 1998 on the pretext that he had been summoned by Abacha who, unknown to him, was already dead, the drama of being locked inside the Number One office from outside and how he later emerged as Head of State. Abubakar also narrates his own side regarding the death of Abiola, as well as the transition to civil rule that brought about the current dispensation.

In documenting his experience and observations of Nigerian politics, Abubakar concludes that it is the people who allow themselves to be used as pawns in the hands of politicians who may disagree in public but dine and wine together in private. He related stories from the First, Second and (aborted) Third Republics to back his position that “Nigerian politicians, irrespective of their parties or political camps are a tribe on their own. They know where they meet,” he explained. A most bizarre chapter 15 in the book, “My ‘Mad Friend’ in Enugu”, chronicles how he (Abubakar) struck an enduring friendship with a mentally challenged man on the streets of Enugu who became almost like a guardian angel.

Altogether, Abubakar has given readers an enjoyable story that is also well told. But one aspect of the book that may generate considerable interest is regarding what is now glibly called ‘Abacha loot’, which the London Economist once described as ‘a case of direct stealing’. It is also an issue on which I have written several columns. As I recall in a 2014 piece, on 13 July 1998, just about five weeks after he became Head of State, Abubakar had instituted the Special Investigation Panel (SIP) to establish “cases of swindled public funds and recover same back to the federal government coffers”. Within a matter of days, the panel had secured records from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) which revealed that between November 1994 and July 1998, Abacha had taken directly from the apex bank a staggering $2,263,520,497 in cash withdrawals, travelers cheques and telegraphic transfers, in the name of “security vote”.

For the first time, Abubakar has provided another angle to this heist because, as he said, the notion of Abacha as a thief was strange to him. He shared stories of how Abacha had demonstrated frugality in the management of funds belonging to the army. “When I was Chief of Defence Staff, Abacha would sometimes call me to his office for us to sit down and do proper costing before releasing money for the military. He hated waste. Sometimes he would bring out his calculator before releasing money for the purchase of equipment for the military. That was the Abacha I knew,” Abubakar wrote.

Explaining what he learnt about ‘Abacha loot’ after leaving office, Abubakar said he was told that his deceased predecessor took those monies out of the country in the event of sanctions on Nigeria by Western countries. “He was said to have been so advised by Colonel Muammar Ghadafi, the Libyan leader who faced heavy sanctions from the West. He reportedly advised Abacha that if Western powers froze Nigeria’s assets, his government would be stranded if he did not have funds abroad,” Abubakar wrote while also adding a caveat: “I honestly cannot confirm or deny these explanations. But I would be lying to say I thought of Abacha as a thief. Unfortunately, he didn’t put some of us into confidence on what he was doing. Perhaps it would have been a different story…”

Given the demographics of Nigeria, it is likely that more than 70 percent of our current population were not witnesses to the events recorded by General Abdulsalami Abubakar. That is why his memoir, and that of other military leaders of his generation, are significant historical assets. Whatever readers may make of their claims, what is not in doubt is that these memoirs provide context into some of the critical epochs and decisions that brought our country to its current trajectory.

Platform Nigeria

With the theme, ‘Governance, Democracy and National Security,’ the Pastor Poju Oyemade—inspired ‘platform Nigeria’ holds tomorrow in Lagos. Speakers include former Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki, erstwhile Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, Defence Minister, General Christopher Musa, lawyer and Human Rights activist, Mrs Ayo Obe, and security consultant and legal practitioner, Dr Charles Omole. I will also be speaking on a disturbing political trend in the country that I have titled, ‘The Silence at the Polls’. The programme will be live on Channels Television and many social media platforms.

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle,Ěý@OlusegunverdictĚýand onĚýĚýĚýĚý

By Olusegun Adeniyi

Born on 29 May 1926, former Senegalese President, Abdoulaye Wade turned 100 last Friday, making him the first West African leader in history to become a centenarian. But the remarkable story of Wade is not just about age. A long-time opposition leader, Wade ran for president four times in a period spanning 22 years, beginning in 1978, before he was finally elected in 2000 at age 74. He also spent 12 years in office before his third term gambit was upended in 2012. The moral of Wade’s story is that all talk about how many times former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has contested the presidency is quite irrelevant. But the battle Atiku currently faces goes beyond his failed presidential bids. The African Democratic Congress (ADC) that he plans to use as a vehicle for his ambition is unravelling in a manner that exposes the character of the current opposition politics in Nigeria.

Shortly before Atiku was declared the ADC presidential candidate last week, his two opponents, former Transportation Minister, Rotimi Amaechi and corporate giant, Mohammed Hayatudeen, released separate statements to condemn the process, alleging widespread malpractices. And just when Atiku thought he had doused that fire by visiting both Amaechi and Hayatudeen at their respective homes, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, went rogue. In a scathing statement dripping with personal insults, Lawal writes off Atiku as unworthy of the presidency while also suggesting that the incumbent President Bola Tinubu (whom he still derides) would be better to continue. In a subsequent interview on Channels, Lawal cast more aspersions on Atiku.

Before I continue, let me say something quickly. Given the few encounters I have had with Lawal, I am not surprised by the tone of his statement. He is a man without filter whose politics revolve around identity: Ethnic and religious. That much can be discerned even from his attack on Atiku. I will recall two encounters to make my point. The first was shortly after his appointment as SGF by the late President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015. Lawal met a group of senior journalists and media owners from the North for what was supposed to be a background briefing about the administration he was serving. He spent more time eulogising a certain Bola Tinubu and made uncomfortable statements about the Fulanis despite the fact that his principal was a Fulani man and there were many in the room. On the praises he heaped on Tinubu, Lawal threw a bombshell: “Why won’t I praise Tinubu? Do you think any of my northern brothers would recommend a Christian like me for the position?” Lawal then went on a monologue about what he considered ethno-religious marginalisation of people like him in the North and the more some of us tried to ‘help him’ stay on message, the more he doubled down in a manner that suggested he really didn’t care what anybody might feel.

The second encounter was in a lighter mood, but it also revealed Lawal’s mindset. In August last year, former Sokoto State Governor, Aminu Tambuwal was released by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) after being detained overnight. The next day, I was in Tambuwal’s house among many friends and political associates. Lawal, who also visited, dominated the discussion while joking that Tambuwal was released quickly because he is a Fulani man. “You spent just 24 hours with EFCC and they released you. In Nigeria, all animals are equal, but some are more equal than the others. Me, as a northern minority and Christian, I spent many days in detention…” Then looking in the direction of the former Imo State Governor, Hon Emeka Ihedioha, Lawal chuckled and said, “The day they catch our Nyamiri brother here, his own treatment will be special. He will spend at least a year in detention before they release him.”

In recent days, Atiku’s media minders have been responding to Lawal who, I am sure, enjoys the â€˜roforofo’ fight. But for me, the real issue is how the ADC that was launched last year with fanfare as a vehicle to take out the incumbent has quickly unraveled. And the implications for the 2027 general election are not good. We often say that politics should be dictated by issues rather than personalities, but ideally it should be a combination of the two. On that score, the handlers of Atiku should be concerned that he is gradually being perceived as the undermining factor in the opposition that is not founded on shared ideals. Even before Babachir Lawal’s eruption, the belated discovery that the ADC was essentially built around Atiku had led to the exit of Mr Peter Obi and Dr Rabiu Kwankwaso both of whom now jointly fly the flag of the National Democratic Congress (NDC). And there is nothing to suggest that Amaechi and Hayatudeen are fully onboard Atiku’s presidential aspiration.

Ordinarily, the value of an opposition platform goes beyond the sum of its parts because the essence is to galvanise a kind of momentum within the populace that change is possible. Such a psychological boost will help to dent the myth of incumbent invincibility. Unfortunately, not only is the current opposition splintered in different political parties, even within those platforms, there is no unity of purpose.

I spent my year (2010/2011 academic session) as a Fellow at the Harvard Weatherhead Centre for International Affairs researching presidential elections in Africa, especially where the incumbent is on the ballot. The pattern I established is that a fractionalised opposition is unhelpful, to put it mildly. Dr Issaka K. SouarĂŠ, a senior governance and mediation advisor at the Institute for Security Studies, Pretoria, South Africa, described most opposition leaders within the continent as ‘macro democrats’ and ‘micro autocrats’ who preach what they don’t internalise. “The reason for this is that they form parties to seek power for themselves rather than to contribute to the democratic process in the country,” SouarĂŠ wrote. “If their leadership of the opposition coalition were not assured, they would rather go it alone even if they know that neither they nor another leader would win in a solo act.” This, of course, is not the issue for today.

Last Friday marked 27 years of unbroken civil rule in Nigeria. That we continue electing people who make no real commitment to which they could be held accountable is not only telling, but the results are also all too evident across the country today. It is therefore no surprise that Babachir Lawal’s ‘love note’ to Atiku is the trending topic at a time most Nigerians are finding it difficult to put food on their table and school children and their parents are being abducted on streets of major cities. But now that Lawal has retreated to his farm in Adamawa State where we hope (and pray) he doesn’t encounter the real Kachallas, it is important we refocus the conversation to what truly matters. But such a task must begin with a reorientation of the very parties whose platforms are used by the political loose cannons to speak. Since it is cheaper and easier to descend to the gutter of ethnicity, religion and name calling, parties not founded on definable ideas and values cannot produce leaders who champion definite directions.

Meanwhile, I began this intervention on the premise that Atiku should not be derided on account of age or record of his failed presidential bids. However, I am also aware that this is probably the last shot of the former vice president who would be 80 in November. While I will come back to interrogate what drives his aspiration as well as that of other serious contenders, ADC must put its house in order for its candidates to be taken seriously at the polls. Interested readers can access my 2011 publication on the implication of fractionalised opposition when the incumbent is on the ballot: .

              Federal Republic of Waste

Three weeks ago, I received a call from Pastor (Mrs) Biodun Adebowale (Nee Sadiku) with whom I used to attend the Good Shepherds Pasture (GSP) of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Alagomeji in Lagos until life carried us in different directions. She was driving through Ikoyi when she passed a building she immediately recognized. It used to be the defunct Credite Bank headquarters. She had worked at the Idumota branch of the bank in the early nineties as a young woman. The Ikoyi structure remains there today, occupying prime real estate in one of the most expensive parts of Lagos, but in the peculiar condition many Nigerian institutions eventually enter: physically present, functionally absent. The Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) had long taken over the failed bank’s assets, and the building, by all appearances, had simply been left to negotiate its own arrangement with time.

Another property linked to the bank in Isolo sits in similar decline, according to Adebowale who sounded very pained. “Why can’t somebody do something with it?”, she asked me. I told her what I always tell people who ask such questions about Nigeria: it is complicated. Which is true. But it is also a kind of alibi. I have written before about what I called , the sprawling cemetery of Nigerian ambition where good ideas, public investments, and functioning institutions go to be buried without ceremony. The power plants that were commissioned but never powered. The water schemes that became monuments to inertia. The hospitals that exist on paper in a minister’s report but mere rubble on the ground. Nigeria has a particular genius for abandonment. We begin things with the fanfare of inauguration and then simply walk away, leaving the carcass for the next administration to either ignore or rebrand.

But the old Credite Bank building in Ikoyi is a slightly different category of failure, and it is worth being precise about the distinction. An abandoned road or an unfinished dam represents a project that was started but not completed. What Adebowale was describing is a prime asset that has been allowed to rot for three decades. Yet the numbers attached to this culture of abandonment are staggering. According to the Chartered Institute of Project Managers of Nigeria, the total value of abandoned projects in this country stands at N17 trillion. The Nigerian Institute of Quantity Surveyors has estimated that there are around 56,000 abandoned projects scattered across the federation. A committee convened under former President Goodluck Jonathan once found that approximately 63 per cent of projects initiated since independence had been abandoned. Sixty-three per cent. More than half a century of accumulated waste.

The more recent figures are no more comforting. BudgIT’s civic accountability platform, Tracka, tracked 2,760 capital projects across 30 states under the 2024 federal budget projects with a combined allocation of N2.26 trillion. Their findings: 28.8 per cent of those projects, valued at roughly N219 billion, were never executed despite funds being released. In Taraba State alone, despite federal allocations surging from N17.86 billion in 2023 to N56.1 billion in 2024, the state emerged as the country’s single largest concentration of abandoned federal projects in that budget cycle. Of 96 tracked projects, 29 were abandoned outright. In Benue, approximately 42 per cent of tracked projects were abandoned. The pattern is systemic; Nigeria spends heavily but plans poorly. And yet we continue the ritual of spending, abandoning, and moving on to the next inauguration ceremony with the bunting and speeches, until that, too, is left to the elements.

What is perverse about the Credite Bank situation, and about many of the failed financial institutions whose physical assets now sit idle across Nigerian cities, is that the NDIC has had legal custodianship of these properties for years, in some cases decades. The corporation has its mandate, and I do not dispute the legal complexity of resolving failed bank estates. Creditors must be satisfied, courts must be approached, and due process must be observed. I understand all of that. What I do not understand is why the process of legal resolution must also mean physical abandonment. There are instruments available: temporary concessions, caretaker arrangements, and revenue-generating tenancies that allow a property to remain functional while ownership disputes are resolved. These are standard practice in jurisdictions that take asset management seriously.

But taking asset management seriously would require something that has historically eluded our public administration: an institutional culture that treats continuity as a value. Every administration arrives with its own priorities, projects, and preferred contractors. What came before is, at best, inherited awkwardly; at worst, simply ignored. We do not have a national doctrine for completing other people’s work. What we have, is a national talent for starting fresh, and then, when the term ends or the funds run dry or the political winds shift, walking away from that, too.

The result is visible everywhere. The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), which exists specifically to develop the Niger Delta, has managed to abandon 1,587 projects in the very region it was created to serve. The Ajaokuta Steel Company, into which Nigeria has poured over $8 billion since 1978, remains unfinished; we now spend roughly $4 billion annually importing the steel we could have been producing ourselves. The Mambilla Power Project, conceived in 1972, is still being conceived. The Oyan Dam turbines, inaugurated in 1983, have still never generated a single unit of electricity.

A country cannot endlessly normalize this level of institutional waste without consequences. It also cannot afford to lose the expectation of accountability. Once citizens begin to expect abandonment, governance itself starts to lose meaning; it becomes a performance staged for its own sake. Yet, we have been performing this drama for so long that the audience has mostly stopped watching.

The old Credite Bank building in Ikoyi will probably still be standing for another decade, locked, fading, and indifferent to the governance failures it has survived. Its endurance is almost ironic. The structure has displayed more continuity than the institutions responsible for managing it. And perhaps that is the real tragedy of the republic of unfinished things: in Nigeria, buildings often remember their purpose longer than governments remember theirs.

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By Olusegun Adeniyi

The eight men in the conference room of the Government House glanced at one another as they waited for the Governor to join the meeting. Seeking the same ticket to the House of Representatives for Wahala federal constituency, they had been invited for a final meeting before the party primaries scheduled for the next day. Seated on the extreme left is Hon Jeunsoke Gbajue, easily the most prominent in the room and also the most popular in the constituency. He had served only one term at the beginning of the current dispensation before he fell out of favour with the then governor and was edged out. While in the House, Gbajue sponsored no bill and made no remarkable contribution to debates. But he was loved by his people because he built churches and mosques and bought wheelbarrows for a number of young men under his empowerment programme. 

Seated next to Gbajue is Dr Onimoya Amosu. Woe betides anybody who addresses him as Mr and not Dr Amosu. Even when nobody knows how the former Lagos panel beater acquired the title. Meanwhile, there are several stories about how he came into sudden wealth, including an insinuation that he was a godfather to kidnappers. But nobody has been able to pin anything on him. He is a heavy spender who enjoys the support of local political godfathers in the federal constituency he now seeks to represent at the National Assembly. Seated next to Amosu is a man popularly called ‘Engineer MIT’ but whose real name is Simon Efulefu. A charming politician who speaks with an American accent, ‘Engineer MIT’ likes to project himself as an intellectual and prefaces every statement with “When I was studying engineering at MIT”. That was how he earned the sobriquet with which his supporters hail him. However, the real story is that in the early nineties, Efulefu gained admission to the Maebashi Institute of Technology (MIT), a public university located in Maebashi, Gunma, Japan. After spending a decade without completing his study, Efulefu left for the United States where, according to ‘detractors’, he began doing odd jobs before he committed a crime and fled home to join politics.

Meanwhile, three hours after the meeting was supposed to have started, the aspirants were still waiting for the governor. Then, the SA to the governor on domestic affairs, Chief Garmoda Gabotari, a very pompous man who didn’t complete secondary school but was said to be related to the First Lady, walked in. “Oga said I should inform you that he will soon join you. He is having a zoom meeting with the White House. That is America. Can I get you people something to drink while you wait?” Only the two young men in the room requested for ‘soft drinks’ while others said they didn’t need anything. In their early thirties, these two young men eyeing the same ticket sat together chatting away.

One, Omorapala Mugu, is the son of the ruling party’s National Women Leader, a respected voice in the country in the campaign against the marginalisation of women, especially in the political space. Based on her gender activism, the governor had asked her to nominate a candidate for the federal constituency and was surprised when she submitted the name of her only son who spent five years to complete his Ordinary National Diploma (OND) in Marketing in the state polytechnics. Despite the fact that she has six daughters, two of whom are doctorate degree holders working in the private sector. Regarding the second young man in the room, there have been whispers about whether he comes from the constituency, which is interesting considering that his late father once represented the district in the Senate. The problem had to do with his date of birth. His father died in January 1991. But reports from his opponents claim he was born in November of that year with the insinuation that his late father’s Personal Assistant who is not from the state may be his real father. 

At this point, the incumbent member of the House of Representatives, Hon Suegbe Banza, whom they all seek to displace, entered, greeted them warmly and said, “Let me go and see the governor.” It was bad enough that he came late. More than five hours after they had all been seated. And that he was going to see the governor made them uncomfortable. Five minutes after Hon Banza went inside, the Chief of Protocol entered and said, “Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, please rise for His Excellency.” The governor entered with Hon Banza, greeted the people warmly and took his seat. “Gentlemen, we all agreed that the best way to settle this matter without rancour is by consensus. We all know it is God that gives power to whomever He wishes…”

As the governor was still talking, Gabotari (the SA who had came in earlier to ask for what they would drink) remerged, this time wearing a complete babariga. “The party’s caucus has decided that the candidate for Wahala Federal Constituency is Gabotari”, the governor declared. All the nine men in the room, including the incumbent Hon Banza were dazed by the announcement but the governor was already done. “Now, if you will excuse me, I am in a hurry to catch my flight to Dubai where I have a meeting tonight with some foreign investors…”

The foregoing, of course, is based on my imagination. But if the morning, as they say, shows the day, it would appear that Nigerians have already been shortchanged regarding the 2027 general election. In most states, the gubernatorial candidates and those for legislative seats (House of Assembly, House of Representatives and Senate) were practically imposed in the name of ‘consensus’ or ‘direct election’ in which the ‘returning officers’ adopted what Professor Jerry Gana once described as ‘monkey counting’—1, 2, 3, 9, 37, 98, 503 etc. Even in the smaller political parties, there is no candidate (for any of the offices) who one would say emerged through a competitive process. Yet, these people require the popular electorate to validate their aspiration on the basis of one man, one vote! 

As we have seen in recent days, when a ‘consensus’ emerges in Nigerian political parties, it is rarely the product of genuine consultation or the collective will of party members. More often, it is the result of backroom negotiations among a cabal of power brokers who have decided that the democratic process is too cumbersome, too unpredictable, and ultimately, too threatening to their interests. Aspirants who have mobilized support across the party structure are told to ‘step down’ in the interest of ‘party unity’. The script is familiar because it has been repeated so many times. And because we have normalized this subversion at the level of party primaries, we arrive at the general election with a choice between pre-selected surrogates.

The irony is instructive. The political parties that cannot organize credible primaries to select their standard-bearers are the same institutions expected to defend the sanctity of the general election. But the consequences of this manipulation extend far beyond the internal affairs of political parties. It is a given that when primaries are compromised, the choice before the electorate is no longer between competing visions or competent leadership, but between various degrees of imposition. This is why our elections, even when adjudged “free and fair” by international observers, often feel hollow. The fraud has already occurred upstream. By the time voters arrive at polling units, the real contest, the one that determines the quality of leadership on offer, has been settled in hotel rooms and private residences, far from the scrutiny of party members, let alone the general public. What remains is a ritualistic validation of decisions made by a select few.

In a democracy where political parties are the primary vehicles for accessing power, their internal processes cannot be divorced from the public interest. Therefore, when parties subvert their own rules to impose candidates, they are undermining the foundation of representative democracy. Besides, candidates who emerge through manipulated primaries often arrive at office beholden not to the electorate, but to the godfathers who facilitated their emergence. Governance becomes an exercise in settling political debts rather than delivering public goods. Accountability suffers because the candidate’s primary allegiance is to party kingmakers, not the citizens who voted. And so, the cycle continues. Compromised primaries produce compromised leadership, which in turn produces compromised governance.

If we are serious about deepening democracy in Nigeria, we must begin with the painful acknowledgment that the rot starts with party primaries. Electoral reforms that focus solely on the conduct of general elections will remain insufficient if we do not address the cancer of internal party democracy. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) can conduct the most transparent election, but if the candidates on the ballot are products of fraud and imposition, we will have succeeded only in perfecting the mechanics of a flawed process.

Democracy, as we have learned elsewhere, is not only about the freedom to vote. It is about the freedom to choose among candidates who emerge through transparent, competitive processes that reflect the will of the people. And until we come to terms with that reality, our elections will remain elaborate rituals that change very little. We will continue to marvel at the efficiency of our electoral process while wondering why the quality of leadership remains abysmal. The answer, uncomfortable as it may be, is that we are already complicit in the fraud, validating at the polls what was imposed in the primaries.

What is needed is a fundamental rethinking of how we regulate political parties. There must be enforceable standards for the conduct of primaries. And citizens, particularly party members, must be empowered to challenge impositions without fear of victimization. Until our political parties internalize this truth, we will remain trapped in a cycle where the promise of democracy is perpetually deferred.

El-Rufai and the Rule of Law

The only ‘defence’ you hear from officials of the current administration when you broach the issue of how critical state institutions and the courts are being weaponised to hold former Kaduna State Governor, Nasir el-Rufai perpetually in jail is whataboutery: ‘Did he not do the same to others?’ While one should not condone whatever el-Rufai may have done to others in the past—and he has a sordid record on that score with the El-Zakzaky saga a prime example—when those who superintend the temple of justice become tools for an individual to be recycled across courts by prosecutors who evidently just want to keep that person in custody, we are on a slippery slope as a nation.

At face value, El-Rufai has been granted bail in the sum of N100 million. But before he can perfect the bail, he must obtain a surety who resides in either the Maitama or Asokoro districts of Abuja who in turn must deposit the original Certificate of Occupancy of a landed property at the court registry. The surety must be a federal civil servant not below Grade Level 17 and must provide evidence of salary payments for at least three months, authenticated by a letter from the manager of a bank within the jurisdiction of the court. The court further ordered the surety to be deposed to an affidavit of means, enter into a bail bond, and submit a recent passport photograph to the court registry. The court also directed that a verification letter from the surety’s immediate department be submitted, alongside a tax clearance certificate covering the last six months. El-Rufai must also submit a letter of attestation from the Chairman of the Kaduna State Traditional Council.

Even if we ignore the absurdity of El-Rufai being ‘roundtripped’ by three federal agencies—the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), State Security Service (SSS) and the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC)—we should not close our eyes to the sinister role being played by the judiciary in his travails. Seven years ago, I had a rare opportunity to address this same issue at a gathering of Judges and senior lawyers, where I made my position very clear. I spoke at a dinner in honour of Justice Cecilia Mojisola Olatoregun, who had then just retired from federal high court in Lagos. In attendance that night was the Chief Judge of Federal High Court, Justice John Tosho. Other Justices also in attendance included Justices Binta Iyako, Mohammed Liman, Anwuli Chikere, Nnamdi Dimgba, Maureen Onyetenu, Adefunmilola Demi-Ajayi, Mobolaji Olubukola Olajuwon, Ayo Emmanuel, Rosemary Dugbo-Ogboghorie, Ibrahim Watila, Chuka Austine Obiozor, Iniekenme Nicholas Oweibo, Hadiza Rabiu Shagari and Toyin Bolaji Adegoke. There were, of course, many other Justices as well as senior lawyers like Dr Wale Babalakin, SAN, Mr Wole Olanipekun, SAN, Mr Mike Ozhekhome, SAN, Chief Bayo Ojo, SAN and Mrs Folake Solanke, SAN. 

I prefaced my presentation this way: “In Nigeria, there are several challenges that our men and women on the bench confront almost on a daily basis. So, I salute all our Judges who are seated here tonight. However, there is an issue that worries me and I want to seize this opportunity to highlight it: The attachment of stringent bail conditions that are most often designed to keep applicants in jail. That these conditions apply mostly to those being prosecuted by the government raises questions that touch on the integrity of the bench in Nigeria.” I then went further to argue that since Judges are supposed to be neutral arbiters in the settlement of disputes, I do not think it is right to be using bail applications to tip the scales of justice. “Except in exceptional cases, the courts should not be giving bail conditions that they know cannot be met. Since the essence of demanding a surety is to ensure that the defendant returns to court for the remainder of the criminal justice process, I believe that the eminent jurists seated here tonight should reflect on what bail has become in our country today…”

While interested readers can access my presentation of 8th November 2019 here, , the El-Rufai saga goes beyond the travails of one man to the core issue of rule of law and justice administration in Nigeria. I therefore urge the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Kudirat Kekere-Ekun to intervene on the matter. Our courts must not be seen as an instrument of injustice against any citizen—regardless of whether or not we like such individuals.

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle,Ěý@Olusegunverdictand onĚýwww.olusegunadeniyi.com

Olusegun Adeniyi

Following his capitulation, (Major Chukwuma) Nzeogwu was brought to Lagos and admitted at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) where I went to see him. I asked why they killed all senior officers in Lagos and Kaduna, and further asked, ‘do you realise the damage this has done to the esprit de corps of the army and the Nigerian armed forces?’ After I asked, ‘why did you kill Ademulegun?’, I realised I should not have bothered because the answer to the question was obvious. Everyone knew he was hostile to Ademulegun; they never agreed on several issues, especially because of what he termed the Brigade Commander’s romance with the Northern political leaders. I then asked: ‘What about Shodeinde, one of the most decent and gentle officers we had?’

At that point, Nzeogwu visibly became truly angry but not with me. He was quite upset with his other colleagues in Lagos, his co-conspirators in the South, especially (Major Emmanuel) Ifeajuna and others at the core of the planning. He said there was no such plan for a one-sided execution, that is, killing of the officers from the North. I was not too convinced, but he sounded quite sincere and it truly sounded like he was double-crossed by his colleagues. I then made him realise, just in case he didn’t know, the enormity of the problem they had created. I said: ‘Do you realise what you have done? You’ve taught other people what they could do, and it could go against anybody or group in the future’…My well-known position remains that Nzeogwu was ‘a misguided but gallant soldier with principles’, which was a primary reason I ordered that he be buried with full military honours after he died in battle during the civil war…

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The foregoing is an excerpt from the 855-page memoir/autobiography of former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon. I obtained a copy of ‘My Life of Duty and Allegiance’ on Monday evening and by Tuesday afternoon I had completed the reading of what is, without doubt, a very important account of our national history. Having for decades said he would not write a memoir so as not to ‘open old wounds’, Gowon admitted at the presentation on Tuesday that he changed his mind to “preserve institutional memory through a truthful documentation of my experience.” He also responded to people he said have peddled misinformation about him. The people to whom Gowon ‘replied’ include Alexander Madiebor, Murtala Muhammed, Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida, Godwin Daboh, Chinua Achebe and of course, those he described as ‘Biafra propagandists’ like the late Frederick Forsyth, Uche Chukwumerije and Cyprian Ekwensi.

It is clear from Gowon’s book, as it is with most accounts of that era, that the crisis of Nigeria started from the 15 January 1966 military coup and the selection of military and civilian targets for execution by the planners. That coup led to the countercoup of July the same year and the train of events that culminated in a three-year civil war. Gowon began by recalling the 1964 jostle in the military for succession to the then departing British head of the army and the role he played at the time. Four men were in competition: Brigadier Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, NA 3; Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun, NA 4; Brigadier Babafemi Ogundipe, NA 6 and Brigadier Zakariya Maimalari (the only Sandhurst trained officer), NA 8. “In my position as Adjunct General, my counsel was sought on who I thought was best suited for the office. I was lucky in the sense that Alhaji Muhammed Ribadu, the Minister of Defence at the time, had high regard for me. He asked the Permanent Secretary, Mr Abdulaziz Atta, to sound me out. I gave him my honest assessment of all the officers under consideration. With me, Ademulegun’s highly temperamental disposition knocked him off. Ogundipe, I felt, would have command-and-control issues. Although I believed Maimalari was very capable as an officer, I was more favourably disposed to having Ironsi appointed as GOC because he was a good officer and given the situation at hand, it made a lot of sense to respect seniority within the officer’s corps so as not to create any bad blood amongst us. Ironsi matched my inclinations. I recommended him.”

However, Gowon’s faith in Ironsi began to shake on 15th January 1966 after the first military coup that took out many northern leaders and military officers. The story of how one of the plotters saved his (Gowon’s) life for an intervention he once did regarding foreign posting is quite revealing, but the lopsidedness of the killings was an issue. “All the officers affected happened to have come from the same school—Barewa College and from the same region—the North and of the rank of Lt Col and above. All were the most senior officers from the North and were believed to be loyal to the country’s leadership and Maimalari.” Meanwhile, seven months earlier in May 1965, Gowon had gone on a military training at the Joint Services Staff College (JSSC) in Latimer, UK and, as he recalled, returned to Nigeria on 13th January, “hours before a catastrophic occurrence which changed the history of Nigeria and the story of my life.”

On 14 January 1966, a day after Gowon returned to Lagos, a party had been organized by Maimalari with many officers, including Ironsi, in attendance. Gowon did not spend much time at the party before leaving. Not long after, the same Ironsi was at Ikeja Cantonment rallying troops in a manner that would later arouse Gowon’s curiousity, if not suspicion. â€œThe harvest of deaths yielded answers to some of the questions that had bothered my mind a few hours earlier. I instantly recalled I had asked Martin Adamu why it was the GOC, Ironsi, and not the Brigade Commander, Maimalari, that arrived at the barracks in Ikeja immediately after the H-Hour the coup planners struck. It now seemed clear to me that the GOC, General Ironsi, must have known what was happening and what happened to the Prime Minister, the Finance Minister, Chief Festus Okotie Eboh, and Brigadier General Maimalari who had all been killed.”

It was not only Ironsi’s sudden appearance in Ikeja that worried Gowon but what transpired between them earlier at the same party, as he (Gowon) was leaving with his girlfriend. “Ironsi’s statement to Edith (Ike but later, Okongwu) and me when we took our leave from him at the party a few hours earlier came back to me. On our way out, he had said to us, ‘Have a nice time; you never know tomorrow.’ Of course, I knew that the GOC’s remark was vulgar but, given my state of mind then, I had easily waved it aside. However, in the situation that we were in before dawn and with what happened, Ironsi’s reference to ‘tomorrow’ suddenly took on a new meaning.”

After highlighting the circumstances under which Ironsi became Head of State, Gowon detailed the misgivings within the military of some actions taken by their C-in-C, especially when the report of the investigative panel revealed that the January 15 coup “bore heavy ‘Igbo’ stamp because no officer from the North was involved and no Yoruba officers, apart from Major Wale Ademoyega were named as primary accomplishes.” The details of the second coup, how he (Gowon) tried to save Ironsi and the roles played by the actors are quite revealing. So is how he was made the Head of State (at age 31 and a bachelor) against his wish and the disagreements with Ojukwu which eventually led to the civil war. Gowon’s recollection of the civil war is insightful but also measured. The roles of the UK, United States, France and Soviet Union are also documented.

Gowon’s conclusion is that Biafra lasted as long as it did basically due to a well-oiled propaganda machine which, as he argues, continues till today. “Although the war ended more than half a century ago, remnants of Biafran propaganda still pop up in a lot of literature purveyed by writers from Eastern Nigeria, especially by the late Chinua Achebe. His stories were easily digestible because they appeared so palatable, yet they were so far away from the truth,” Gowon wrote. “Later day writers, too, have rehashed some of these stories in enchanting prose that made pretensions to speaking truth about war-time Nigeria too subjective and well-off mark. God knows if we had behaved in the way some crude leaders did or if we had acted like some other countries would have done, there would have been no talk of reconciliation or keeping the country together. In the end, to parody the writer, Chinua Achebe, there really would have been no country.”

In January 2013, I started what I thought would be a long series, , following my encounter with the late Rev Moses Iloh, who headed the Red Cross in Biafra. Given the responses I received after publishing the first part, I knew I was embarking on a dangerous mission. Former Nigeria Bar Association (NBA) President, Mr Olisa Agbakoba, SAN did not take kindly toĚýIloh’s account of how his car was seized by the late Justice Geoffery Ubaka Agbakoba, a former Chief Justice of the defunct East Central State, who happened to be Olisa Agbakoba’s father. I ended the second part, , with a terse line: “IĚýam done withĚýBiafra.”

Apart from governance and the reforms initiated, Gowon also recounted the circumstances surrounding the coup that topped his administration and the Dimka-led coup against Murtala Muhammed to which he was linked. But it is in how he was toppled that Gowon gives himself away. “The coup that terminated our administration made me more aware of the fickleness of human nature…it is not my style to want to expose people, especially close friends, who might have betrayed my trust. Instead, I leave them to the pangs of their conscience.” But Gowon did not leave some of them, especially two, to their conscience. He took his pound of flesh, albeit in a subtle manner. Both are now of blessed memory: Joe Garba and Abdullahi Mohammed who were Colonels at the time. The former was Commander of the Federal Guards Unit while the latter (who would later be Chief of Staff to both Presidents Obasanjo and the late Umaru Musa Yar’Adua) was the Director of Military Intelligence.

Gowon also did a character reference on many of our famous retired Generals since they all, at one time or another, served under him. There were many references to Obasanjo whom Gowon said would never willingly agree to be number two to anybody—not even to himself, Obasanjo! But it is the portrait of the late Murtala Muhammed whom Gowon described a “temperamental, contentious and highly impulsive individual” that I find most interesting. He was Murtala’s senior at Barewa College. “Many a time in school, he would pick fights with some of his colleagues, especially Hamza Zayyad who would later chair Nigeria’s Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE). Both would typically injure each other before reporting to the school’s dispensary where I was in charge.” But that did not prevent Murtala from fighting Zayyad or somebody else the next day!

Despite their differences, Gowon also attested to Ojukwu’s sense of humour, citing a particular one to make his point. In June 1968, the then British Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Lord Malcolm Shepherd, visited Gowon in Lagos and Ojukwu in Enugu. Displeased with the report the minister took back to London, Ojukwu reportedly retorted, ‘Certainly, this Lord is not my Shepherd!’ Gowon remarked: “Even in anger, Ojukwu still maintained some of his edgy humour as he played on the title of the life and peer, The Lord Shepherd.”

Gowon ruled for nine years and it was under his administration that Nigeria started to reap the oil windfall. The current generation of Nigerians will marvel at a story told by Gowon on the day he received a call from then Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Dr Clement Isong, a Harvard-trained economist, seeking appointment on an emergency situation. Having cancelled all his appointment to see Isong, Gowon said he was surprised to see the CBN Governor walk in with excitement. “Governor, what was so important that you could not tell me on the red line? And why are you looking so happy with yourself?” Gowon reportedly asked, especially considering that he had been worried. “My question did not erase the smile on his (Isong’s) face. Instead, he sounded far happier than I had thought when he began to explain the purpose of his earlier call. ‘Sir, I have come to tell you that we’ve got so much money and I do not know what to do with it?’”

I leave readers to find out the interaction that followed at period when Nigeria had more money than sense. But let me drop this from Gowon: “Indeed, this was at a time the World Bank came to borrow money from our government to finance industrial developments in some developing countries. We obliged the World Bank on the condition that there would be no delays in repayment whenever we needed our money to finance various obligations on our national development plans.”

I know what usually follows whenever I write on a book like this. For that reason, I called Dotun Eyinade yesterday to ask whether they have copies of Gowon’s book and he assured me they do. So, whoever wants to read the book should contact RovingHeights Bookstores.

In his review at the presentation on Tuesday, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto, Mathew Hassan Kukah broke down the book into five key themes: The Three Coups; Times of Trials and Tribulations; Truth and Redemption; Victoria Gowon: Wife, Shield, Diplomat and Chief Security Officer and Nigeria: Who Next, What Next? But as insightful as Kukah’s take, is, it still doesn’t capture the whole essence of the book.

However, whatever one makes of Gowon’s account, and there will be contestations, as there should be with any memoir that touches on such defining moments in our national history, it is a reminder that the past is never really past in Nigeria. The ghosts of 1966 and the civil war continue to haunt our present, shaping how we see ourselves and one another more than half a century later. That Gowon, now in his nineties, finally decided to put pen to paper suggests he understood that silence, however well-intentioned, is not always golden, and sometimes, the old wounds must be reopened, examined, and properly dressed if they are ever to heal. Whether ‘My Life of Duty and Allegiance’ will contribute to that healing or add another layer to our contested narratives remains to be seen. But the conversation it provokes is important, especially at a time when the centrifugal forces threatening our union seem stronger than the bonds holding us together.

Now, COYG!

I understand that the United Nations (UN) General Assembly is working on a resolution to declare the coming Sunday, May 24 ‘Arsenal Day’, although there are also suggestions that it should be May 19 when Manchester City ‘bottled’ the little hope we gave them. What I don’t understand is why President Bola Tinubu has not declared a national holiday to celebrate our beloved team. In fact, we need three days. For 22 years, we were bullied, harassed, mocked, caricatured, intimidated and tormented. But this is our revenge season. And we will be unsparing. Pastor Poju Oyemade of the Covenant Nation—a fan of the FORMER Champions whose players continue to ‘Walk Alone’—may have donned Arsenal jersey yesterday but nobody can ‘bribe’ us with such gestures. But first, let’s conclude the business in Budapest. Come On You Gunners!

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle,Ěý@OlusegunverdictĚýand onĚýwww.olusegunadeniyi.com

Olusegun Adeniyi

Despite Standing Rules practically exempting him from serving as a principal officer in the 8th Senate, the name of a certain Godswill Akpabio was announced in plenary as Minority Leader on 28th July 2015. Having left office as Akwa Ibom State Governor just a few weeks before, Akpabio had been nominated by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the position. But Kabir Marafa, then an All Progressives Congress (APC) Senator from Zamfara State, challenged the decision on grounds that Akpabio was not qualified to be a principal officer in the chamber as a first-time senator, especially when the PDP had many returning (ranking) senators who could fill the position.

Although Marafa cited the requisite provisions of the Senate Standing Rules to back his claim, he was immediately countered by then Deputy Senate President, Ike Ekweremadu, who insisted that it was an internal affair of the PDP and none of his (Marafa’s) business as an APC member. “If the ranking senators cannot take the position for any reason, then the next level of ranking senators can be considered,” Ekweremadu argued, while explaining that Akpabio was the only candidate the PDP would nominate for the office. In using his gavel to end the debate, then Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki told Marafa that since the PDP senators were not complaining, he (Marafa) should “stop crying more than the bereaved.”

Of course, we all remember that three years later, precisely on 7 August 2018, Akpabio resigned his position as Minority Leader, joined the ruling APC and was subsequently ‘rewarded’ with a cabinet appointment by the late President Muhammadu Buhari. But having learnt enough (from his own experience) on how the Senate Standing Rules could easily be manipulated to achieve a predetermined end, it came as no surprise that Akpabio would ram through a controversial rule that legislates for his future ambition. In the coming 11th Senate, according to the ‘Akpabio Law’, nobody can be Senate President “unless he has been elected and served as a Senator for at least two full terms of eight years, one of which shall immediately precede such election.”

Barely 48 hours after the controversial session ended, Senate Leader, Opeyemi Bamidele came with another amendment to the amendment because they had put the cart before the horse. “Election of the officers will have to take place, as it had always been, before the swearing-in of senators,” Opeyemi said in explaining how they breached section 52 of the 1999 Constitution while enacting the ‘Akpabio Law’. Of course, the ‘minor error’ was immediately corrected and the new rule still stands but Senator Adams Oshiomhole, who had opposed the whole shenanigan, put something on record. “I believe the average age in this Senate is over 40, and so we don’t have an excuse for youthful exuberance,” Oshiomhole said while criticising the underhand manner the amendment was imposed without debate such that basic errors were made in the process. He then amplified his misgivings on ARISE Television during the week: “You don’t make laws either for yourself or against specific individuals that you fear will come.”

The new rule is reportedly targeted at the current Imo State Governor, Chief Hope Uzodimma, who represented Imo West Senatorial District from 2011 to 2019. Beyond his position in the APC hierarchy as Chair of their Governors Forum, Uzodimma understands how the game is played in the Senate chamber where, as of today, he has spent more time than Akpabio. And Uzodimma is a politician you ignore to your own peril. As an aside, the battle for the Imo West Senatorial ticket promises to be intriguing. Uzodimma will battle former Governor Rochas Okorocha (who had also spent 2019 to 2023 in the Senate) and the incumbent Osita Izunaso who had similarly been in the Senate between 2007 and 2011 before the current session. Interestingly, Uzodimma’s gubernatorial tenure ends in January 2028 so by contesting for Senate in the 2027 general election, all kinds of cold calculations, including getting a ‘placeholder’ to warm a critical public office for him, are being designed. “My dear people of Imo West Senatorial District have once again called upon me to serve, and I have accepted the noble call with humility, sincerity of purpose, and unwavering commitment to the collective advancement of our people,” Uzodimma posted on his X handle after the screening by his party last weekend.

Since no law bars him from contesting the Senate even as a serving governor, Uzodimma is in a prime position to eat his cake and still have it. If he loses the senatorial election, he remains the Governor of Imo State. If he wins the election and the Senate Presidency gambit fails, he can still refuse to be sworn in as an ‘ordinary’ Senator and return to Imo. Should that happen, the seat will be declared vacant. And knowing Nigeria, the subsequent by-election can even be delayed until Uzodimma leaves office in January 2028 so he can contest again. I have looked at all the permutations on this Imo West Senatorial District matter vis-à-vis the ambition of Uzodimma and none of them is about the public good. But then, which politician is making strategic personal calculations in promotion of the public good?

Meanwhile, Akpabio may have gotten away with his new rules but if I understand how power works in Abuja, he is wasting his time. It would take no more than a few minutes to have those rules changed again the moment it becomes clear that Aso Rock prefers somebody else for the senate presidency next year. Afterall, if it were left to the Senators, Abdulaziz Yari and not Akpabio would be holding the Senate gavel today. But there are issues with the senate rules-change that we should not gloss over. When such an important institution shuns accountability to prioritise self-serving legislation that weakens public trust and undermines the rule of law, we have a problem. 

It may not have been his intention but Oshiomhole touched on something fundamental in his admonition to colleagues on ‘youthful exuberance’: It is about the kind of maturity expected of the Senate. I once referenced an interesting article on the website of the Dirksen Congressional Centre written by Betty K. Koed, an associate historian at the United States Senate Historical Office. It highlights why the Senate is a critical legislative institution:

It is said that on his return from France after the framers had completed the U.S. Constitution, creating two houses of Congress, Thomas Jefferson called George Washington to account for having agreed to a second chamber. â€œOf what use is the Senate?” Jefferson asked Washington, as he stood before the fire with a cup of tea in his hand. As he asked the question, Jefferson poured some of the tea into his saucer, swirled it around a bit, and then poured it back into the teacup.

“You have answered your own question,” Washington replied.

“What do you mean?” Jefferson asked.

“Why did you pour the tea into your saucer?”

“To cool it,” said Jefferson.

“Just so,” said Washington, “that is why we created the Senate. The Senate is the saucer into which we pour legislation to cool.”

Although smaller in number, the Senate is the most important legislative institution which plays unique roles in federal systems. Such critical roles include the confirmation of executive/judicial appointments, removal of presidents, and in crucial national security moments, declaration of wars.Such an institution should not be a place where rules are rigged by presiding officers for self-serving ends. Therefore, the senators who conceived the ‘Akpabio Law’ may say they have the power to do what they did, but by not weighing the moral implications of their action, they have done incalculable injury to the institution.

The primary role of the legislature is to pass laws for good governance and the protection of the rights and interests of citizens. But with such a cynical rules-change, according to a Prof. Brown Imasuen, Akpabio and his cohort have effectively neutered the democratic essence of the legislature. “Leadership positions in the Senate are not mere ceremonial perches; they determine committee chairmanships, legislative priorities, budgetary allocations, and the vigour of oversight,” Imasuen wrote to explain the implications of treating power as an inheritance. “When these positions are pre-ordained for a select clique, many of whom, like Akpabio, have accumulated more scandals than achievements, the entire legislative machinery becomes an extension of personal empires rather than a servant of the people.”

To Imasuen whose trending online piece, ‘Akpabio’s Brazen Rape of Legislative Democracy,’ hits the nail on the head, the rules-change gambit exposes the rot at the core of our current democratic experiment. “A legislature that cannot even manage its own succession without descending into self-serving chicanery has no moral authority to lecture the executive or the judiciary. It becomes complicit in the national failure,” Imasuen wrote and I concur. “The developmental paralysis indicated by youth unemployment, brain drain, crumbling education and health systems, and pervasive insecurity stems fundamentally from this elite consensus that public office is a private estate, rules are malleable, and the people are expendable.”

I honestly don’t know what else to add!

Congratulations, Linda Ejiofor-Suleiman

Linda Ejiofor-Suleiman made history at the 12th Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards (AMVCA) last week. She won both ‘Best Lead Actress’ for her role in ‘The Serpent’s Gift’ and ‘Best Supporting Actress’ for her role in ‘The Herd’. I cannot think of anybody more deserving of these honours. Linda is that rare combination of a young woman who blends talent with beauty, brain, and character—a thoroughbred professional whose inner strength is as admiring as her outer charm and grace.

The story of my friendship with Linda and her husband, Ibrahim, is quite an interesting one. Ten years ago, at the instance of Pastor (Dr) Evaristus Azodoh, The Everlasting Arms Parish (TEAP) of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) initiated an annual teens career conference, with the aim of bringing accomplished Nigerians (at home and in the Diaspora) to inspire young people. Although a Christian programme, it is open to youth of all religious backgrounds—mostly undergraduates—from Abuja and environs and it is usually a big event with food, drinks, and music. 

In the first edition held in 2016 with the theme, ‘Your Life, Your Future: Not a Laughing Matter’, the lead speaker was Mr Atunyota Alleluya Akpobome, popularly known as Ali Baba. Other speakers were then Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Deputy Governor, Dr Serah Alade, former Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) chair, Mrs Ifueko Omoigui-Okauru and the then Director General of PENCOM, Ms Chinelo Anohu. The theme for the second edition in 2017 was ‘Life is a Stage’ with foremost Nollywood actor, Mr Richard Mofe Damijo (RMD) as the anchor person. Other speakers included wife of then Vice President, Mrs Dolapo Osinbajo and wife of the late former Kaduna State Deputy Governor, Mrs Charity Shekari. 

Considering the ease with which I secured the commitments of these two great thespians (Ali Baba and RMD) who came all the way from Lagos without demanding any money, I took it for granted that Nigerian movie/comedy/music stars are so public-spirited that they would seize opportunities to inspire young people. I have since learnt my lessons the hard way!

Subsequent efforts to invite other movie stars or musicians (including those in the Gospel genre) were met with ‘please talk to my manager’, ‘find out from my agent how much’ and all such demands. Some of the few with whom I had phone conversations even spoke to me as though they were talking to their houseboy. And then the fencing and all sorts of pranks from some that I even know personally. At the end, I came to the inescapable conclusion that even though they remain the biggest names in their crafts, Ali Baba and RMD (our own Amitabh Bachchan) were outliers. They just happen to be wonderful people.

So, when in planning the 2022 edition a number of teenagers suggested Linda’s name to headline the conference, I simply told them to forget it. I didn’t want to waste my time chasing another prima donna. It took a ‘why don’t you just try?’ plea from my wife for me to send a message to Linda after securing her email address. And then I got a pleasant surprise. After about a week, she sent this reply: “It will be an honour to be able to interact with the young people, alongside such illustrious members of the society. I will do all that I can to keep my calendar clear on the 20th August, to fly into Abuja on the day and return to Lagos on the 21st. I do not require an honorarium, as it is a charity cause. However, I do not travel alone, and would require identical logistics planned for my husband, who usually travels with me when my manager is unavailable. Kindly let me know if this works for you.”

With her husband by her side, the teenagers were able to ask Linda questions about the intersection between career and family, especially for young couples. And before they left for Lagos, I hosted them to lunch in our house. With teenagers, and friends joining us, it was a fitting climax to an amazing weekend. I still recall her parting words to the teenagers after sharing the story of her career trajectory. “Leaders are not immune to failure, just that their attitude to failure is different. They take time to reflect on what they did wrong and work on it. Leaders are focused people with vision, who are willing to ask questions,” she said while admonishing the teenagers never to forget the God factor in whatever they do. “He alone perfects all our plans.” 

Over the past four years, I have found Linda to be even sweeter than she is on screen. And her husband, Ibrahim, is now my beloved aburo. Therefore, while winning two awards at the AMVCA may be a big deal, this is just the beginning for Linda. The Academy (Oscar) Awards will come.

Abuja Roads as ‘Cow Lanes’

On his X (formerly Twitter) handle on Monday, respected expert in governance and institutional reforms, @Dr Joe Abah listed six pressing issues that should engage the attention of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, Nyesom Wike. Topping his list is the manner in which cows have taken over Abuja roads, including highways. There is hardly any driver on Abuja roads who would not be frustrated with having to contend every day with what once described by Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, as ‘cattle imperialism’ under the late President Muhammadu Buhari when a political dimension was introduced to the menace. Unfortunately, the situation is now worse.

In my last column on it five years ago, , I shared a family experience of the day I arrived home from office to meet a crowd of people, including policemen whose facility in butchering I later witnessed. Incidentally, insights shared in that column about managing ethic relations will also serve the power holders of today. But as I recalled, a cow had strayed into the small shed built for the PHCN transformer beside my house and was electrocuted immediately. The young Fulani shepherd was reportedly running to help the cow before he was restrained by the crowd that had gathered. “I shudder to imagine what would have happened to my family if the boy (who could not be more than 12 years old) had been electrocuted,” I wrote. “That is the sort of security problem created when Nigeria is turned into a grazing field.”

Now that Abuja roads have been practically taken over by cattle, I hope the FCT Minister will find a solution to this problem that has refused to go away.

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on    

Olusegun Adeniyi

A crispy social media post is doing the rounds on WhatsApp. It begins with the story of Alhaji Aliko Dangote’s recent call for urgent investment in the power sector, stressing that Nigeria must design, fabricate and build what it consumes to achieve true economic independence. “We must build (the) power grids. I keep repeating, we must build it,” Dangote said at the induction ceremony of the Nigerian Academy of Engineering Fellows in Lagos, where he also confirmed that he elected to supply his own electricity rather than take from the national grid. “Together, let us engineer a Nigeria that works not just for some, but for everyone.” One Misbahu Abubakar then added the line that sums up his post: “He is begging them now, but once Dangote builds the power grid, foolish people will start shouting Monopoly.”

The interesting thing is that such a proposition is actually not farfetched. A 17th June 2024 report in BUSINESSDAY newspaper highlighted how it took Nigeria 11 years to add just 760 megawatts of power to the national grid while Dangote was able to generate about 1,500 megawatts of electricity for his businesses in a shorter time. “The challenge of the power sector has not entirely been the scarcity of funds; several trillions of naira have been pumped into that industry,” Charles Akinbobola, a senior energy analyst at Sofidam Capital was quoted to have said in the report. “The sector has been plagued by the shortcomings of its managers”.

Like he did with cement and then refineries, Dangote sees opportunities where others see challenges. And as I have had to explain to those who accuse me of bias in his favour (which I do not deny), the challenge of entrepreneurship in Nigeria is because we have a very few risk takers like him. Most of the people who have also had Dangote’s opportunities have either wasted theirs or bartered them for cheap wealth with which they feed their vanity. Besides, I know many people who were so sure Dangote would not successfully complete his refinery and that it would sink him. But he took the big gamble and after more than a decade facing different odds, he is now reaping enormous rewards.

We must all recall that the licensing process for refineries was liberalised by the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration and to date, no fewer than 70 such licences have been issued but only few have bothered to put in any investment. In fact, on 17 February 2018 in Bayelsa State, at the foundation laying ceremony for the establishment of Azikel Refinery (one of the 22 licences given by the late President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015), Obasanjo publicly lamented that none of the 18 licenses he approved during his tenure performed. “During my tenure, I gave 18 licenses but none were actualized; Nigerians should follow the good step to move the nation forward,” he said.

Even the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) management that has expended billions of dollars (trillions of Naira) on endless turn around maintenance (TAM) of the federal government-owned refineries is now only talking about signing a curious Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on a potential Technical Equity Partnership (TEP) with Chinese companies. That precisely is why I aligned myself with the position of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) on a recent World Bank recommendation that Nigeria should sustain the importation of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) to stabilise fuel supply.

Although a few people jumped at the idea (before the World Bank deleted the statement from its website), apparently thinking it would hurt the ‘monopolist’, the CPPE had described it as deeply troubling and fundamentally misaligned with Nigeria’s current economic realities and reform trajectory. â€œAt a time when the country is making measurable progress in restoring macroeconomic stability—evidenced by improving foreign reserves, moderating inflation, a more stable exchange rate regime, and growing capacity for the export of refined petroleum products—the policy priority should be to consolidate these gains, not undermine them,” according to the CPPE Director General, Muda Yusuf. 

Let me also make something clear here. In the dog-eat-dog business climate, especially in a country like ours, I cannot pretend that a man like Dangote would not rub some of his competitors the wrong way. But I remain firmly convinced that the creation of indigenous ‘monopolies is inevitable for any national economy that wants to achieve global competitiveness. For instance, no one can think of the growth and prosperity of the United States without DuPont, Rockefeller, Ford and others. Nor can we imagine the growth of South Korea without the conscious cultivation of Samsung, Goldster and Hyundai.

For me, Dangote has achieved the unusual. He has demonstrated the possibility of a productive Nigerian capitalism and its extension to the rest of Africa. With the Iranian closure of the strait of Hormuz, he has even made Nigeria part of the global conversation in the supply of Jet fuel from his refinery. And with the way he has boycotted the grid to provide electricity for all his mega projects, Dangote has also proved that power supply is not rocket science. I hope we don’t create a situation in which he dabbles into the sector and then we begin to shout ‘Monopoly’!

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on 

Olusegun Adeniyi

I am not much into movies but there are some I can watch numerous times without being bored. Two stand out: ‘The Godfather’ and ‘Titanic’. In the latter, the scene I consider most memorable is where the captain informs the ship owner that they had hit an iceberg. “From this moment, no matter what we do, the Titanic will founder,” the captain said rather solemnly. But the message was lost on the ship owner. Having put so much faith in his own propaganda, he retorted: “But this ship cannot sink.” Without missing a beat, the captain responded: “She is made of iron, Sir. I assure you she can. And she will. It is a mathematical certainty.” 

I recall the foregoing as a warning against the background of the shenanigans that daily emerge from our courts. If Nigerians come to regard the judiciary as an extension of the political arena and the institution loses its credibility in the process, then we shall have arrived at a destination from which there is no easy return. That destination is anarchy.

I have written several columns about the corrosive effects of this state of affairs and the danger posed by some Judges
. But what is unfolding across our judiciary right now deserves special attention, because it threatens the very foundation upon which our democracy rests. Ordinarily, the law court should stand as the ultimate guardian of the rule of law. But in Nigeria today, the law court is fast becoming a convenient tool in the hands of desperate politicians who are ever out to secure an advantage, however unjust.

When Nigerian politicians go to court these days, they do not file suits to seek justice. They file them to create confusion, buy time, destabilise opponents, and manufacture legitimacy through judicial pronouncement rather than popular mandate. Forum shopping, the practice of filing identical or related cases in different courts to secure a favourable ruling, has become so routine that it barely raises eyebrows. Yet when courts of coordinate jurisdiction issue contradictory orders on the same matter, as has happened repeatedly in the crises engulfing the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP), citizens are left unsure as to which faction to recognize and what authority to respect. This is the raw material for anarchy.

In the past few weeks alone, many of our political parties have been reduced to courtroom exhibits. Their internal affairs have been litigated with such frequency and ferocity that politicians now spend more time before judges than before voters. For instance, the ADC has been trapped in a carousel of conflicting court orders over its leadership since the moment former Senate President David Mark assumed the party’s chairmanship. One court says Mark is in charge; another says he is not. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has swung like a pendulum, removing names from its portal one week and restoring them the next, all in obedience to whichever judicial directive happens to be most recent.

Section 83 of the Electoral Act 2026 was supposed to address at least part of this problem. It stipulates, in clear terms, that “no court in Nigeria shall entertain jurisdiction over any suit or matter pertaining to the internal affairs of a political party.” The provision was designed precisely to prevent the kind of judicial overreach we are witnessing. Yet barely months after the law’s passage, courts are already entertaining suits that plainly fall within the prohibition. Lawyers are filing them. Judges are granting them. And the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), which should be the profession’s conscience, has been left to issue statements that carry moral authority but no enforcement power.

In a most recent decision, the Supreme Court attempted to draw a principled line: Courts should generally refrain from interfering in internal party affairs. But with a proviso: Intervention is justified where the dispute involves legal rights arising from statutory compliance. That is a reasonable distinction in theory. In practice, however, it has become a loophole through which every ambitious politician drives a convoy of suits. Any dispute, however, trivially internal, can be dressed up as a question of statutory compliance or constitutional interpretation. And once the suit is filed, the damage is done. Interim orders are sought, parallel proceedings are initiated, and the party in question is thrown into paralysis.

What we are witnessing in Nigeria today has been aptly described as a shift from “ballot democracy” to “bench democracy”—a situation in which political outcomes are increasingly determined not by the votes of citizens but by the rulings of judges, often procured through dubious means. This is dangerous for reasons that go beyond the immediate chaos it produces. When elections can be overturned, party structures dismantled, and leadership installed through litigation rather than a democratic process, voters lose faith in the entire system. If your vote can be negated by a court order secured in a jurisdiction you have never heard of, by a litigant you have never met, why bother voting at all? This is how democracies die, through the slow, deliberate hollowing out of institutions by the very elites who swear to uphold them. Some of us have watched this movie before.

Considering that we live in a country where collective amnesia has become an ideology, let me offer a refresher here. Although Nigerians believed at the time (and rightly so) that General Ibrahim Babangida was only looking for a convenient excuse by blaming the judiciary for the presidential election annulment 33 years ago, many observers also knew he had a point. I once shared my experience of what happened on 16th June 1993 and its worth rehashing. On that day, I was at the defunct National Electoral Commission (NEC) headquarters in Abuja with Mr. Sam Omatseye—then at Concord Press but now Chairman of The Nation’s editorial Board. It was Omatseye’s birthday and we were in a very buoyant mood as the results of the presidential election were coming in with our boss, the late Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola, leading by a comfortable margin. Then we got a shocker: The NEC Chairman, Professor Humphrey Nwosu announced the suspension of the results in deference to an injunction from an Abuja High Court.

With this development, I quickly rushed to the office to call the Social Democratic Party (SDP) Presidential running mate, Ambassador Babagana Kingibe, who had asked me to provide him updates regarding the official results. When I told him that NEC had just issued a statement suspending the result, he asked that I come to Transcorp (then NICON-NOGA) Hilton where I met him with a number of SDP Governors. Immediately I handed the statement to Kingibe, one of the governors put a call to an official in his state whom he directed to go and meet a particular Judge: “Tell him to give you an injunction compelling NEC to release the result. Once you have the paper, call me.”

Hardly had this particular governor concluded his ‘business’ when his colleagues took a cue as they also called officials in their states to secure court injunctions. Each had the name of a specific judge to meet. By nightfall, there were as many as four court injunctions from different states—all compelling NEC to continue to announce the presidential results. Even though I was not a lawyer (I am still not one), I knew what was happening could not be right but as to be expected, the media celebrated the several injunctions compelling Nwosu’s NEC to release the results while excoriating the late Justice Bassey Ikpeme for her equally dubious injunction.

Whenever I reflect on what happened that day, I marvel at the way we find it convenient to rationalise, even justify, the wrongs that align with our expectations. There is a reason the courts are called “the temple of justice.” Temples are sacred spaces. They are not (or at least should not be) marketplaces where power is bartered. When Judges trade injunctions the way hungry lecturers trade ‘handouts’, as I once surmised, society is endangered. And when politicians turn the court of law into a commercial centre, it is profaned, and with it, the very idea of justice. 

The judiciary exists to advance the public good, protect the rights of citizens, and uphold the rule of law. Not to provide cover for the ambitions of a political class that has largely exhausted its claim to public trust. If we cannot restore this understanding, and the courts continue to be weaponised by those who should be restrained by them, we are building a house on sand. And when the rains come, as they inevitably will, we shall have no shelter.

Dangote and the Power Sector

A crispy social media post is doing the rounds on WhatsApp. It begins with the story of Alhaji Aliko Dangote’s recent call for urgent investment in the power sector, stressing that Nigeria must design, fabricate and build what it consumes to achieve true economic independence. “We must build (the) power grids. I keep repeating, we must build it,” Dangote said at the induction ceremony of the Nigerian Academy of Engineering Fellows in Lagos, where he also confirmed that he elected to supply his own electricity rather than take from the national grid. “Together, let us engineer a Nigeria that works not just for some, but for everyone.” One Misbahu Abubakar then added the line that sums up his post: “He is begging them now, but once Dangote builds the power grid, foolish people will start shouting Monopoly.”

The interesting thing is that such a proposition is actually not farfetched. A 17th June 2024 report in BUSINESSDAY newspaper highlighted how it took Nigeria 11 years to add just 760 megawatts of power to the national grid while Dangote was able to generate about 1,500 megawatts of electricity for his businesses in a shorter time. “The challenge of the power sector has not entirely been the scarcity of funds; several trillions of naira have been pumped into that industry,” Charles Akinbobola, a senior energy analyst at Sofidam Capital was quoted to have said in the report. “The sector has been plagued by the shortcomings of its managers”.

Like he did with cement and then refineries, Dangote sees opportunities where others see challenges. And as I have had to explain to those who accuse me of bias in his favour (which I do not deny), the challenge of entrepreneurship in Nigeria is because we have a very few risk takers like him. Most of the people who have also had Dangote’s opportunities have either wasted theirs or bartered them for cheap wealth with which they feed their vanity. Besides, I know many people who were so sure Dangote would not successfully complete his refinery and that it would sink him. But he took the big gamble and after more than a decade facing different odds, he is now reaping enormous rewards.

We must all recall that the licensing process for refineries was liberalised by the President Olusegun Obasanjo administration and to date, no fewer than 70 such licences have been issued but only few have bothered to put in any investment. In fact, on 17 February 2018 in Bayelsa State, at the foundation laying ceremony for the establishment of Azikel Refinery (one of the 22 licences given by the late President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015), Obasanjo publicly lamented that none of the 18 licenses he approved during his tenure performed. “During my tenure, I gave 18 licenses but none were actualized; Nigerians should follow the good step to move the nation forward,” he said.

Even the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) management that has expended billions of dollars (trillions of Naira) on endless turn around maintenance (TAM) of the federal government-owned refineries is now only talking about signing a curious Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on a potential Technical Equity Partnership (TEP) with Chinese companies. That precisely is why I aligned myself with the position of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) on a recent World Bank recommendation that Nigeria should sustain the importation of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) to stabilise fuel supply.

Although a few people jumped at the idea (before the World Bank deleted the statement from its website), apparently thinking it would hurt the ‘monopolist’, the CPPE had described it as deeply troubling and fundamentally misaligned with Nigeria’s current economic realities and reform trajectory. â€œAt a time when the country is making measurable progress in restoring macroeconomic stability—evidenced by improving foreign reserves, moderating inflation, a more stable exchange rate regime, and growing capacity for the export of refined petroleum products—the policy priority should be to consolidate these gains, not undermine them,” according to the CPPE Director General, Muda Yusuf. 

Let me also make something clear here. In the dog-eat-dog business climate, especially in a country like ours, I cannot pretend that a man like Dangote would not rub some of his competitors the wrong way. But I remain firmly convinced that the creation of indigenous ‘monopolies is inevitable for any national economy that wants to achieve global competitiveness. For instance, no one can think of the growth and prosperity of the United States without DuPont, Rockefeller, Ford and others. Nor can we imagine the growth of South Korea without the conscious cultivation of Samsung, Goldster and Hyundai.

For me, Dangote has achieved the unusual. He has demonstrated the possibility of a productive Nigerian capitalism and its extension to the rest of Africa. With the Iranian closure of the strait of Hormuz, he has even made Nigeria part of the global conversation in the supply of Jet fuel from his refinery. And with the way he has boycotted the grid to provide electricity for all his mega projects, Dangote has also proved that power supply is not rocket science. I hope we don’t create a situation in which he dabbles into the sector and then we begin to shout ‘Monopoly’!

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on 

By Olusegun Adeniyi

With Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State invoking ‘Operation Wet ẹ’ at the Ibadan gathering of the ‘Participating Opposition Parties in Nigeria’ (we can also help them by adding the acronym, POPN), Nigerians do not need anyone to tell them that another desperate season is already upon us. Makinde warned the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) not to play pranks with the 2027 general election. But as reckless as his statement may be, what I find interesting is that the ‘rig and roast’ apostles of yesterday are now worried that others are pledging to deploy the same ‘petrol protocol’ against their own government. The armour bearer, as the Yoruba people would say, never likes anybody to come within his vicinity with a matchet in hand! 

Just 12 years ago, during his investiture as Chancellor of the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomosho, Oyo State, a certain Bola Tinubu threatened the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan with fire and brimstone. “They are already planning to rig the elections but be ready to protect your votes; nobody serves you freedom a la carte. It is going to be rig and roast,” Tinubu (who is now our president) had declared in June 2014 ahead of the gubernatorial elections in Ekiti and Osun States that preceded the 2015 general election. “We are prepared not to go to court but to drive you out. We will not take it anymore. If you mess up in Ekiti and Osun states, you will see our reactions. For every action, there must be a reaction.”

Having studied the psychology of Nigerian voters, politicians who seek to ‘rescue’ our country at every election season always campaign on threats against those they seek to displace rather than offer hope to the people. For instance, beyond Makinde’s declaration, the POPN statement signed by my brother, Bolaji Abdullahi, is all about scaremongering and the self-deceiving pledge to field only one presidential candidate against Tinubu next year. As an aside, I heaved a sigh of relief last night when I learnt the Supreme Court will deliver judgment today in a pending appeal on the leadership (ownership) crisis in the main opposition African Democratic Congress (ADC).

When the case was heard expeditiously by the apex court on 22 April, expectations were that the judgment would follow immediately, considering the urgency. The delay, especially for a court that can rule and explain later, has already created unhelpful speculations. Who wins or loses on this matter is not my business but to withhold judgment for more days under the current political circumstance would have been very damaging not only for the judiciary in Nigeria but also for our democracy and the rule of law. Meanwhile, as we enter the election season, the focus of this column will be increasingly political in the coming weeks. My main concern today is that rather than campaign on issues that advance the public good, the stock-in-trade of our politicians is usually to embark on all kinds of gimmickry. Though some are more subtle than others.

The Zamfara State government recently sponsored the mass wedding of over 100 couples drawn from what officials describe as “vulnerable groups” across 14 local councils. Not to be outdone, the Kano State government has announced that it is also finalising arrangements for a mass wedding of 1,500 couples under its social welfare initiative, quaintly branded ‘Auren Gata’. For those counting, that is 1,600 couples whose marriages are being bankrolled by government in these two states. And if you add the 1,000 couples that Katsina is also preparing to wed, we are looking at over 2,600 state-sponsored marriages across just three states in the North-West. The timing of this ‘programme’ as we approach the election season suggests that it is a vote-catching gambit. But this is an issue with far-reaching implications that we ignore to our peril.

Now, let me be clear. I have nothing against marriage. It is a beautiful institution. But when governments that cannot generate the revenue to pay their workers’ salaries begin to appropriate public money to pay dowries for those who, by their own admission, cannot fend for themselves, we must pause and ask what exactly we are doing as a country. What is the logic? How can a man who cannot afford to pay his own bride price of N200,000 somehow going to be able to raise a family? Or a woman who needs N50,000 from the government to start ‘small-scale trading’ in her matrimonial home is now equipped for the responsibilities of wifehood and, inevitably, motherhood?

But it is the distribution of the money that truly tells the story. In Zamfara, each groom received N200,000 for dowry payments, while each bride got N50,000 for what the government calls ‘empowerment’. Let us do the arithmetic. That is N250,000 per couple. Of this amount, N200,000, a full 80 percent, goes to the ceremony itself. The ‘empowerment’ component, the part that is supposed to give these young people a fighting chance at economic survival, is a mere N50,000. That is 20 percent. If you wanted a metaphor for how government works in this country, you could not design a better one. Eighty percent recurrent, 20 percent capital. Eighty percent consumption, 20 percent investment. Eighty percent pageantry, 20 percent productivity. It is the Nigerian budget philosophy in microcosm: Spend lavishly on what is consumed today, and throw crumbs at what might build tomorrow.

This is not a new phenomenon, of course. The Kano State government under Abdullahi Ganduje spent over N300 million on a similar mass wedding for 1,500 couples back in 2019. That initiative was also described as a social welfare programme aimed at “reducing the problems associated with the high number of unmarried youth.” What happened to those 1,500 couples? How many of those marriages survived? How many of those brides ended up as statistics in the divorce courts or, worse, in the cycle of poverty they were supposedly being rescued from? And what about the children produced from such unions? Nobody tracks these outcomes because the programme was about optics, and governors playing Father Christmas with public funds, while the real problems of governance go unaddressed.

Let us talk about those real problems, beginning with the fiscal elephant in the room: Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Kano State, with its five major markets and a population of over 13 million, generated N37.38 billion in IGR in 2023. In fact, the entire North-West zone, all seven states combined, generated N206 billion in IGR in 2023. Zamfara’s situation is even more dire. The state generated just N22.16 billion in IGR in 2023, up from a dismal N6.51 billion the previous year. Its 2024 figure was approximately N25.5 billion. Meanwhile, Zamfara budgeted N546 billion in expenditure for 2025, with only N32 billion expected from IGR. That is barely 5.8 percent of its budget. The state cannot even pay its workers’ salaries from what it generates internally. Its budgeted personnel cost of N58.3 billion is nearly double its IGR target. The same applies to Kano, where the budgeted personnel expenditure of N150.9 billion far exceeds the IGR target of N85.8 billion.

So, what are these states spending? Monthly allocations from the Federation Account of course. These are states that are essentially wards of the federation, surviving on handouts from the centre.  And yet they find the resources to sponsor mass weddings. The priorities could not be more perverse. Meanwhile, the hundreds of millions of Naira being expended on this programme could have been invested in vocational training centres, small business incubators, agricultural mechanisation, or any number of productive ventures that might give these young people a real shot at self-sufficiency. Instead, we are paying for their weddings.

The entire thing tells the story of a country where productivity is not even part of the conversation. ​This, as I once argued, perhaps explains why the metaphors with which we conceptualize Nigeria relate to opportunistic and irresponsible consumption: sharing formula, allocation, national cake, etc.But how can wedding ceremony be a solution to poverty, unemployment, and social dislocation? A marriage does not feed, create jobs or build skills for anybody. What marriage does, in the absence of economic capacity, is multiply the number of mouths to feed.

The Governor of Zamfara, Dauda Lawal, who served as “father” to each groom at the ceremony, urged the brides to “be obedient to their husbands.” With all due respect, what these young people need is not a lecture on matrimonial obedience. What they need are skills, an economy that works and a government that invests in their productive capacity. A governor that pays for your wedding but cannot provide you with a means of livelihood has not done you a favour. He has merely set a trap. In the case of Kano, the revenue service has acknowledged that its five international markets and massive commercial potential should be generating at least N300 billion per annum in internal revenue. But they are generating barely a quarter of that. Rather than channel energy and resources into closing that gap, building the administrative capacity to collect taxes, and creating the economic conditions that generate taxable activity, the priority is to sponsor mass weddings.

I know some people will try and turn this into another ethnic issue but they will be missing the point completely. This is about the misplaced priorities that now define governance in Nigeria. If a young man cannot afford a bride price of N200,000, the answer is not for the government to pay it for him. The answer is for the government to create the conditions under which he can earn it himself. You do not solve the problem of poverty by subsidising its symptoms. You solve it by attacking its causes.

In 2009, there was a report on Nigeria sponsored by the British Council and coordinated by David Bloom, Harvard Professor of Economics and Demography on the diversity of our population. Some of the warnings in the research, on which several academics and Nigerian professionals at home and in the Diaspora collaborated, are already with us: “Cities that are increasingly unable to cope with the pressures placed on them; ethnic and religious conflict and radicalisation; and a political system discredited by its failure to improve lives.” Titled ‘Nigeria-The Next Generation’, the report predicted that by 2030, Nigeria will be one of the few countries in the world with an abundance of young people in which case youth, not oil, will be the country’s most valuable resource. The same report, however, warned that “if Nigeria fails to collect its demographic dividend, the seriousness of the country’s predicament should not be underestimated. Its prospects will be bleak and could be catastrophic.”

We are already seeing this in the collapse of the educational system and the security crisis that has turned vast expanse of our country into a theatre of violent insurgency and banditry. Therefore, organising periodic wedding ceremonies for ‘vulnerable’ young people may earn momentary applause and win votes for the governors concerned but they are creating long-term harm to our society. I hope they understand that.

Assassins in Police Uniform

That those saddled with the responsibility of protecting Nigerians are beginning to behave like assassins is a troubling challenge the Acting Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mr Muhammad Adamu has decided to confront. Henceforth, electro-muscular disruption technology known as taser will replace the use of firearms for routine patrols, arrest duties and other low-risk operations. This, according to Adamu, is a “strategic approach towards reducing incidents of fatalities associated with misappropriation of lethal weapons by the Police as first line of response to any threat.”

I am almost certain the order will soon be frustrated and rescinded. But that it was made at all is a commendable gesture, given the recent spike in the number of extra judicial killings by policemen. “Lagos State has recorded four incidents of misuse of firearms which have resulted in extrajudicial killings of young citizens of this country and injury to others” said Adamu who added that it is “worrisome that two of these incidents occurred within the last two weeks. Aside negating our professional calling, extrajudicial acts of any description or level by any police personnel is an unacceptable anomaly that creates distrust and disdain between the citizens and the police and widens the trust gap between them.”

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I wrote the foregoing seven years ago in my 18th April 2019 column, , where I catalogued several cases of extrajudicial execution by some rogue personnel of the police. Despite the pledge by then IGP Adamu who is now seeking the APC gubernatorial ticket for Nasarawa State that seems more like a pie in the sky, nothing has changed. Last Sunday in Effurun, Delta State, a 28-year-old music artist, Oghenemine Mena was summarily executed by a policeman who has now been arrested. The details are too gory to be recounted here.

That this is a familiar tragedy is why we should all be concerned. Incidentally, even before the ‘EndSARS’ protest of October 2020, I had written several columns on this menace. In a memorable one, , I recounted the ordeal, captured in a trending video, of a young man who had been shot by the police and dumped in a Toyota Hilux: “…Sensing that his life is ebbing away, he makes a desperate plea: ‘Let me talk to my father before I die’. It is met with a stern ‘God punish your father!’ by one policeman and a cacophony of curses and abuses from bystanders…”

While I commiserate with the family of Mena and join in the demand for justice, authorities in the country must use this case to send a strong message. When policemen can routinely supervise the extra judicial killing of innocent citizens they are paid to protect, the net result is a collective descent into a Hobbesian jungle where life is nasty, brutish and short. I know those who would argue that we are already there!

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By Olusegun Adeniyi

The Owode Onirin saga is one that should trouble every Nigerian who still believes in the possibility of justice, especially for the ordinary citizens. On 27th August 2025, a day the traders of that sprawling motor spare parts market now call ‘Black Wednesday’, six men were shot dead in broad daylight during the enforcement of a disputed land claim. The police officers who pulled the triggers were brought all the way from Nasarawa State by a property developer, one Abiodun Ariori, who was acting as agent for a Lagos family claiming ownership of the land. What has followed since that bloody day is a study in institutional cynicism.

The then Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Moshood Olohundare Jimoh, did what any responsible police chief should do. He ordered an investigation, following which four police officers (Inspectors Musa Bala and Ahmed Abass, and Corporals Ibrahim Kasimu and Ibrahim Garba) were arrested and dismissed from service. After completing their probe, the police also obtained autopsy reports from the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital and ballistic examination findings from the Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID). Both reportedly linked the suspects to the killings. “This matter has not been swept under the carpet. Nobody can stop us from ensuring that justice is done,” Jimoh told the media last month, shortly before he was elevated to the position of an Assistant Inspector General of Police.

Then the Lagos State Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) entered the picture. And everything fell apart. According to a legal advice dated 3rd March 2026 signed by the DPP, Babajide Martins, there was no prima facie case against any of the suspects. The officers, in the judgment of Martins, acted in self-defence. The DPP then took the extraordinary step of blaming the police for failing to provide forensic evidence; autopsy reports, ballistic analysis, and firearm examination necessary to sustain charges. On that basis, all charges of felony and involuntary manslaughter under the Criminal Law of Lagos State were withdrawn. The suspects walked free!

Now, this is where the matter gets interesting. In a letter dated 5th March 2026, the officer in charge of the State Criminal Investigation Department, DCP Dayo Akinbisehin wrote back to the DPP, insisting that pieces of evidence were submitted. And they were compelling enough to secure conviction of the suspects at trial. He urged the DPP to reconsider his decision. But Martins, who was on Monday elevated to the position of Permanent Secretary (Director, State Counsel) by Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, ignored the counsel in what has become an extraordinary situation: the police pushing for the prosecution of their own dismissed officers, and the state’s chief prosecutor blocking the path to court. In the long history of police-state relations in Nigeria, this is a rare inversion of roles, and it tells us something about how powerful the interest being protected must be.

The DPP’s finding that the officers were “attacked by a mob” conveniently erases the circumstances under which the violence erupted in the first place: armed police personnel, imported all the way from Nasarawa state, descended on a Lagos market to enforce a contested land claim. The traders resisted. And they were killed for it. What manner of self-defence ends with six traders dead and several others injured?

The Centre for Human and Socio-Economic Rights has called for the removal of Lagos State Attorney General, Lawal Pedro, SAN, alleging that his office emboldened the lawlessness that led to the massacre. Ariori’s own lawyer has publicly stated that the land dispute was discussed at a stakeholders’ meeting chaired by Pedro, who reportedly told the traders that their allocation letters did not amount to legal ownership. If this is true, it raises serious questions about the impartiality of the ministry of justice on this matter.

Meanwhile, the six men (Bamidele Dare Mufutau, Adebayo Adewale Mathew, Adeoye Taiye, Abraham Idowu Temilola, Akinboye Oluwaseyi Olamilekan, and Akeem Aderemi Adeoye) whose bodies had been held at the mortuary for months were finally laid to rest two weeks ago in Ikorodu where the grief was compounded by rage. Morufat Oyedeji, sister to one of the victims, said her brother was just trying to make a living when he was brutally mowed down. Bamidele Arewa, a widow with two young children, pleaded with the government not to let her husband’s death be in vain. These are not abstract appeals. They are the cries of people who have lost everything and now confront a system that seems determined to pretend nothing happened.

Credit must go to Mr Femi Falana, SAN, who has refused to let this matter die. Falana’s response to the DPP’s decision was measured but firm: his legal team would submit additional evidence, and civil suits for compensation would follow. “The issue of the unlawful killing of the six unarmed traders will be pursued to its logical conclusion in the interest of justice,” he said. But even as we commend Falana, the larger indictment remains. The handling of this case sends a dangerous message: that land is worth more than life in Lagos, and the machinery of justice in the state can be deployed to insulate the powerful from accountability.

If the DPP’s legal advice is allowed to stand unchallenged, it will become a template for impunity. Every land grabber in Lagos State will know that with the right lawyer and contacts, murder can be dressed up as self-defence and forensic evidence can be made to disappear between one government office and another. It is also worth noting that the police, for all their well-documented failings in Nigeria, have on this occasion stood firmly on the side of justice. CP Jimoh (as he then was) did not equivocate. The SCID did not back down. They dismissed the officers, completed a credible investigation, and challenged the DPP’s decision in writing. This is the kind of institutional integrity we demand of the police every day. When they deliver it, they deserve our acknowledgement, and support.

The irony is bitter: the institution we spend so much time criticising for extrajudicial violence is the one insisting on accountability, while the institution charged with upholding the law is the one shielding some alleged killers. If Governor Sanwo-Olu believes in the rule of law, and not the rule of land, he must take personal interest in this matter.

Of course, many of us are aware that Lagos has always had violent land grabbers. Two cases illustrate this challenge. The first is that of Ejigbadero, a rich, powerful and well-connected Lagos Chief who committed murder over a piece of land in Alimosho and was ultimately held accountable by the court. He paid the supreme penalty for his crime. That was in this same Nigeria in 1975 under the military. For young Nigerians who may not have heard about the Ejigbadero case, I leave them with the account by master story teller, Olanrewaju Akinsola, SAN, aka, Onigegewura:

However, in another case, also in Lagos during the military, justice was perverted. On 25th March 1977, the late MKO Abiola acquired 400 acres of farmland in Ayobo which was registered on Page 24 in Volume 1620 in the Lagos Land Registry, as belonging to Radio Communication of Nigeria (RCN) and Abiola Farms, both subsidiary companies of the same man. Following Abiola’s incarceration during the ‘June 12’ struggle, some land grabbers started to encroach on the property. With that, Abiola Farms Limited appointed Alhaji Lamidi Bisiriyu as caretaker/agent for supervision and management of the farmland. Let me take the rest of the story from my recent book which chronicled events in that infamous era, ‘THE GHOST OF JUNE 12’:

…At about 11 am. on 7 March 1995, Lamidi Bisiriyu, his three sons, Kazeem Bisiriyu, Musiliu Bisiriyu and Waidi Bisiriyu as well as one Olu Owonikoko, Dr. G.O. Oyediji and other staff, had gone to the farm with a tractor to prepare for the new planting season. As the work was going on, some people, armed with arrows, knives, cutlasses and cudgels invaded the farm. They clobbered Bisiriyu to death, severely wounded Owonikoko, and several other farm hands. The attackers also burnt a bulldozer worth about N30 million. Fortunately, some staff members who managed to escape the mayhem, alerted Policemen at the Idimu Police Station and one of the assailants was nabbed about three kilometres from the crime scene while trying to escape. Two others were later arrested.

After detailed investigations, the three suspects were charged to court for murder on 7 July 1995 and the case file sent to the Lagos State Director of Public Prosecutions, (DPP). For several months, nothing happened, despite repeated visits to the DPP by the aggrieved Abiola Farm management. Then on Thursday, 11 January 1996, there was a bizarre twist to the story. An Igbosere Magistrate Court quashed the charges against the accused people saying they had no case to answer.

In arriving at that decision, Chief Magistrate Abiola Oyefesobi relied on a legal advice from the DPP tendered in Court by prosecuting Police Inspector Albert Ebhota. In the advice dated 4 January 1996, DPP Bayo Manuwa said the accused persons committed no offence by killing Alhaji Lamidi Bisiriyu because they were defending their property. His words: “This incident arising from a dispute over land, it is my view that the suspects were exercising their right to the defence of their properties. In such a situation, a man is entitled even to kill in defence of his property. The learned authors of ARCHBOLD 29th Edition Page 892 to 894 states as follows: ‘But in defence of a man’s house, the owner or his family may kill a trespasser who forcibly dispossess him of it, in the same manner as he might by law kill in self-defence a man who attacks him personally; with this distinction however, that in defending his house, he need not retreat as in other cases of self-defence, for that would be giving up his house to his adversaries…’

“In the circumstances therefore, it is my considered view that the suspects were legally entitled to take all available steps in defence of their properties even if such steps resulted in the death of another. I therefore do not intend to prosecute any of the suspects with any offence and the holding charge against them should forthwith be dropped”.

There is a way in which the Lagos DPP advice of 1996 echoes that of the present case. There is also a way in which we can relate what happened at Abiola Farms 30 years ago to the Owode Onirin massacre of last year. Both raises a deeper question on whether the institutions of Lagos State exist to serve all citizens or only those who can afford legal cover, and if justice in Nigeria is a right or a privilege. The traders of Owode Onirin already know the answer. It is the rest of us that should be paying attention.

Remembering Olawale Banmore

When my cousin, Dr Olawale Banmore, (until his death the Managing Director of Staco Insurance) received his prostate cancer diagnosis in 2019, some close friends expected him to retreat from public life and focus solely on treatment and recovery. Instead, Wale did something extraordinary: he enrolled in a doctoral programme and threw himself into researching an issue that had long troubled him about the pervasive mistrust between Nigerians and their insurance providers. And he completed the manuscript knowing he might not see its impact.

Based on Wale’s conviction that ideas outlive us, many of his friends, led by Biodun Ladepo, Wale Jegede, as well as Taiwo and Yinka Oni have rallied to publish the book. It will be publicly presented next Tuesday in Lagos at a ceremony to be chaired by Mr Mohammed Kari, Wazirin Bauchi and former Commissioner for Insurance/CEO of NAICOM. The keynote speaker is no other than Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola, SAN, while Dr Reuben Abati, FNAL will be the book reviewer.

It is indeed remarkable that even as he underwent treatment, Wale remained consumed by a singular question: why does Nigeria’s insurance industry, operating in Africa’s largest economy, remain a sleeping giant? His answer, meticulously documented in the book, ‘The Claims Advantage: How Smart Insurance Firms Win and Keep Customers’, is both simple and profound: trust is earned at the claims counter. Not at the sales desk.

At the end, Wale’s book is both an academic treatise on insurance claims management as well as a testament to the indomitable spirit of a man who refused to let illness define his final chapter OLAWALE BANMORE: WHEN DEATH COMES CALLING – ĚÇĐÄĘÓĆľLIVE. The book will be his legacy.

Shola Oshunkeye @70

A reporter with special eyes for human interest stories, it is difficult to believe that Mr Shola Oshunkeye has joined the Septuagenarian Club. A role model for many of us, Oshunkeye is what most people would describe as a ‘perfect gentleman’. I wish him long life and good health.

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on www.olusegunadeniyi.com   

By Olusegun Adeniyi

For weeks now, the African Democratic Congress (ADC) has been embroiled in a leadership crisis that, on the surface, appears to be a routine internal dispute. With a (former) Deputy National Chairman, Nafiu Bala Gombe as agent provocateur, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has unwittingly entered the fray in a manner that has put the current most consequential opposition platform in the country in administrative limbo at the most critical phase of the electoral cycle. By alluding to the Zamfara State APC gubernatorial misadventure of 2019, INEC Chairman, Joash Amupitan, SAN, does not help himself.

Respected legal practitioner Femi Falana, SAN, has accused INEC of conniving with the courts and senior lawyers to plot a situation in which only the incumbent president could be eligible to contest next year. “The INEC, headed by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, issued a statement that based on the intervention of the court, ‘ADC, we shall no longer recognise you.’ And if a political party is not recognised, its members are not contesting election.” In making that assertion, Falana also recognised that there is no difference between the politicians in power and those now out to ‘rescue Nigeria’ from them. So, he made an important caveat: “We are making these analyses not because APC, PDP, ADC are better (than one another); they are birds of the same feather. But the Nigerian people must be allowed to choose among their oppressors who would govern them.”

That precisely is the point. At the bottom of the current shenanigans is a regrettable failure to cultivate a truly democratic culture. That is in itself no surprise. Most of our political actors are a mixed bag of operatives who have hardly succeeded in any other meaningful venture. It is then expected that this inchoate army of desperados will stop at nothing to game elections, regardless of the platform they now tout. In the end, the transactional ethos of our society has been allowed to overrun the national political leadership selection process and the way we are governed. But for the health of our democracy, those who superintend critical institutions, including the judiciary and INEC, must be circumspect lest they throw the nation into a serious crisis.

Let me state upfront that on this matter, I hold no brief for any political party. I also believe that INEC has a duty to act within the boundaries of the law. If the electoral commission’s reading of the recent Court of Appeal’s directive was made in good faith, we cannot fault that. But here is where the matter becomes troubling. The timing of INEC’s action comes just days before the ADC’s congresses that had been scheduled to begin today. And with its national convention slated for 14 April, INEC position creates a political effect that transcends any legal technicality. It effectively freezes the organisational machinery of the main opposition party ahead of the 2027 general election.

This must be concerning for every Nigerian, regardless of partisan affiliation. Even supporters of the All Progressives Congress (APC) ought to recognise that a governing party without serious opposition is one that is not accountable to the people. And without such accountability, the people are the real losers. Perhaps I should put it more bluntly: A ballot paper that offers only one serious option is not a choice. It is a formality. And when elections become formalities, the social contract between government and the people begins to unravel. Besides, when the game board is tilted beyond a certain angle, even the winners eventually fall. Let us not pretend about what is going on. There can be no credible election in 2027 without a credible opposition platform that provides an alternative choice to the Nigerian electorate. 

President Bola Tinubu has publicly denied any intention to turn Nigeria into a one-party state. I take the President at his word. But democracies are not judged solely by the declarations of their leaders. They are judged by the conditions that critical institutions create. By needlessly putting itself in the middle of the ADC crisis, INEC has created doubts about its neutrality. And when the most visible opposition coalition is immobilised at a decisive political moment, the burden of proof shifts. It is therefore no longer sufficient to say there is no plan to suppress opposition. What is required is demonstrable action to ensure that the political space remains open, that institutions act with strict neutrality, and that the courts resolve political disputes without the paralysing side effect of removing an opposition platform from the electoral conversation. 

I have seen enough of Nigerian political history to know that the deliberate weakening of opposition is never a strategy that serves anyone in the long run. Those who orchestrated the destruction of the old Alliance for Democracy (AD) and the All-Nigeria People’s Party (ANPP) in the early 2000s imagined that a dominant Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) would serve their interests forever. That cold calculation has blown up in their faces. Some of those people are now carrying their pot bellies all over the streets of Abuja to do ‘Aluta’ at INEC headquarters. But here is the lesson: Nigerians will always seek a vehicle for dissent. If you destroy the one they have, they will build another, or they will express their frustration through channels that no ballot box can contain.

Meanwhile, what we call opposition parties in Nigeria, as currently represented by the ADC and PDP, are not only weak and uncoordinated, but many of their leaders also seem highly compromised. But then, beyond occasional soundbites and empty slogans, there is nothing to differentiate between the existing political parties and that explains why members criss-cross from one to the other. Yet, the ability of the opposition to challenge the policies and programmes of the incumbent government is integral to representative democracy. However, we must also be honest about the opposition’s own failings. The big wigs who congregated in the ADC did not perform their due diligence before acquiring the platform from some smart political contractors.

When the coalition was announced in July 2025, many of us noted the inherent fragility of a platform built on the convergence of large egos and divergent ambitions. And the lack of seriousness is still very much evident. Many Nigerians are still waiting for the drama that is bound to come after the emergence of their presidential candidate whom some of us can easily predict. Therefore, the Nafiu Bala challenge, whatever its merits or motivations, has merely exploited vulnerabilities that are already present in the party’s hastily constructed architecture. If the ADC coalition is to survive, its principals must demonstrate that they can manage internal disagreement and work together after the predictable outcome of their primaries. But the greater challenge still lies with the current administration and the ruling APC.

History teaches us that the most dangerous threats to democracy arrive through the quiet accumulation of administrative decisions that collectively drain the oxygen from political competition. Nigeria has walked this road before. In the First Republic, the deliberate destruction of opposition in the Western Region helped set the stage for military intervention. It was not much different in the Second Republic. In the Third Republic, the annulment of June 12 election demonstrated what happens when political choices are voided by those who fear the outcome. The road to 2027 is therefore about far more than who wins the presidency. It is about whether Nigeria remains committed to the principle that power can be contested fairly, openly, and without fear.

On that score, we may sympathise with INEC, given the bad behaviour of the political class, made worse by our judicial environment. Increasingly, our elections are no longer determined through votes cast by citizens at polling units but by courtroom decisions. At a consultative meeting held with stakeholders in Lokoja on 12th November 2019, former INEC chairman, Prof Mahmood Yakubu lamented: “…I must admit that the plethora of court cases and conflicting judgements delivered on the eve of elections in Nigeria are stressful to the commission and costly to the nation.”

The current crisis may yet find resolution. The courts may untangle the competing claims, and the ADC may regain its organisational footing. But the alarm has already been raised, and it would be reckless to ignore it. This issue goes beyond partisanship. When the opposition is stifled, it is not just one party that loses, it is the entire country that pays the price. For, in the end, a democracy without choice is no democracy at all. It is the architecture of one, with the soul removed.

Therefore, the immediate priority is clear. INEC must find a path that resolves its legal obligations without creating a situation where no credible opposition party can contest the presidential election next year. The courts must act with urgency on substantive suits involving the internal affairs of political parties, recognising that the clock of the electoral calendar waits for no one. And the ruling APC, if it truly believes in democratic competition as it claims, should resist the temptation to fish in the troubled waters of opposition dysfunction. They must understand that what is won without contest is won without legitimacy. And what is held without legitimacy is held on borrowed time. A word, as the old saying goes, is enough for the wise.

The ‘Strait of Hormuz’ in Nigeria

Last Sunday, I received a rather interesting prayerful message that is uniquely Nigerian: “On this Easter morning, may the ‘Strait of Hormuz’ in your life be declared open and remain permanently open.” I stared at my phone for a full minute, caught between amusement and admiration. Only in our country can a geopolitical chokepoint between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula become a prayer point. We are, without question, the most creatively prayerful people on earth. Give us any crisis, a shipping lane blockade, currency float, fuel queue, and we will fashion from it a night vigil declaration.

Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz should concern us beyond the comedy. The current tensions around that narrow waterway are, in very large measure, a product of President Donald Trump’s own making. When you tear up a nuclear agreement, impose maximum pressure sanctions, and then act surprised when Iran threatens to shut down the channel through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil transits daily, you have manufactured a crisis. Trump picked a fight, escalated it, and now wants sympathy because the consequences showed up on schedule.

That, unfortunately, is a pattern we know all too well in Nigeria. We are world-class architects of our own misfortunes. And when anyone points out the obvious that we created the very problems we are crying about, the national reflex is not reflection. It is denial. Or deflection. Or, better still, another prayer point. So, the next time someone sends you a prayer message built around the latest local or international crisis, please have a good laugh. But after you laugh, ask yourself pertinent questions: what are the ‘Straits of Hormuz’ that we, as a nation, have blocked with our own hands? And are we willing to do the difficult, unglamorous, entirely unspiritual work of unblocking them?

I do not mock prayers. I am a person of faith myself. But faith without works, as the scriptures remind us, is dead. You cannot block your own strait, through corruption, incompetence, and sheer refusal to plan, and then ask God to open it. Even the Almighty expects us to at least stop drilling holes in our own boat before we cry out for rescue.

• You can follow me on my X (formerly Twitter) handle, @Olusegunverdict and on www.olusegunadeniyi.com