By Abubakar Bukola Saraki

(Text of the presentation at the 2026 edition of the Pastor Poju Oyemade-inspired ‘Platform Nigeria’ by the former Senate President in Lagos on June 12, 2026)

I want to begin not with an argument, but with a date. June 12. For a long time, this was a date the Nigerian state preferred to forget — deliberately left off the calendar of national memory. And yet the people would not let it die. Year after year, citizens kept faith with its meaning: the day in 1993 when Nigerians of every tongue, every faith, and every region walked to the polls and spoke with one astonishing voice. That mandate was annulled. Lives were lost defending it. A man went to prison for it and never came home. But the idea survived. And today we stand on Democracy Day, which exists only because ordinary Nigerians refused to surrender their belief in the ballot.

I open here deliberately, because everything I will say in this hall flows from a single truth: democracy in Nigeria was never handed to us. It was fought for. And what is fought for must be cherished, protected, and built upon — or it slips away. My subject is the institution I had the honour to lead between 2015 and 2019 — the National Assembly, and in particular the Senate of the Federal Republic. I want to make a case that is often drowned out by the noise of our politics: that the legislature, for all its imperfections and for all the ridicule it sometimes attracts, is the load-bearing wall of our democracy. Remove it, weaken it, hollow it out, and the whole structure comes down.

I will make this case under three headings: First, how the legislature secures democratic stability. Second, how it strengthens governance. And third, how it drives national development. Three pillars of one promise — the promise of Nigeria.

THE LEGISLATURE AS GUARANTOR OF DEMOCRATIC STABILITY

Let me start with a confession about how our democracy is often misunderstood. When Nigerians think of power, they think of one office: the President. The presidency dominates our imagination so completely that we sometimes speak as though the government is the President — as though the National Assembly is a nuisance to be managed and the courts an obstacle to be circumvented. But the framers of our constitution understood something profound: the greatest danger to a free people is not a weak government, but an unchecked government — power that answers to no one, authority that cannot be questioned. So the framers did something deliberate, even inconvenient. They split power into three and made the arms of government depend on one another. They built friction into the system, on purpose. That friction is not dysfunction. That friction is freedom.

The legislature is where that principle lives most fully. It is the arm of government closest to the people and furthest from a single will. One President — but four hundred and sixty-nine legislators in the National Assembly, one hundred and nine Senators and three hundred and sixty Representatives, each sent there not by appointment, not by patronage, but by the direct vote of a constituency. When you stand in that chamber, you do not represent yourself. You carry the hopes and the grievances of hundreds of thousands of Nigerians who will never set foot in Abuja, but whose lives are decided there.

Here is what democratic stability actually requires: that disagreement has somewhere to go. In societies without functioning legislatures, conflict has nowhere to be resolved except on the streets, in the barracks, or through the barrel of a gun. The parliament is the arena where a divided country can argue without breaking — where North and South, farmer and herder, labour and capital, Muslims and Christians can contest their differences in words and in votes rather than in violence.

But let me tell you what I learned in those four years. A legislature that cannot say “no” is not a legislature at all. A legislature which simply receives executive proposals, approves them without scrutiny, and goes home has not fulfilled its constitutional mandate. It has merely performed a ceremonial function. It is an echo. Also, a democracy made only of echoes is one election away from becoming something else entirely. The independence of the National Assembly is not rebellion against the government of the day. It is the very thing that makes a government legitimate, because a mandate that is never tested is a mandate no one can trust.

This is the deepest service the legislature renders to stability: we absorb the shocks. When citizens are angry, they have representatives to petition. When a community feels abandoned, a senator can raise its name on the floor. When a policy threatens to ignite a region, there is a chamber where it can be debated, amended, and softened before it ever becomes law. The legislature is the pressure valve of the Republic. Block it, and the pressure does not disappear — it finds another, far more dangerous, way out.

And so, on this June 12, the lesson is plain. We did not lose democracy in 1993 because the people failed. We lost it because the institutions that should have defended the people’s verdict were too weak to do so. The remedy is not less politics. It is stronger institutions — and at the centre of those institutions stands the legislature. When we speak of national stability, the conversation turns quickly to the military, the police, and the security services. Physical security matters enormously. I have been to Maiduguri; I have sat with displaced families and looked into the eyes of people who have lost everything. I know what insecurity does to a nation. But physical security alone cannot create stability. The most heavily policed societies can still be profoundly unstable — fractured by inequality, corroded by impunity, hollowed out by lost trust.

Political tension does not vanish when you suppress it; it accumulates, and when it can no longer be contained it finds expression in ways far more destructive than any parliamentary debate. A society where grievances cannot find legitimate expression in its institutions will eventually express them in its streets — and, in the worst cases, through violence and extremism. The legislature is the one institution built to let those grievances be aired and resolved before they explode.

LEGISLATURE AND THE STRENGTHENING OF GOVERNANCE

Let me turn to my second pillar: governance. If democratic stability is about whether power is checked, governance is about how well power is used — and here too the legislature’s work is constant, unglamorous, and indispensable. People imagine that lawmaking is the whole of the job. It is not even half of it. The constitution gives the National Assembly three great instruments of governance, and most Nigerians have never been told plainly what their parliament does on their behalf.

The first instrument is the power of the purse. The constitution is unambiguous: no money may be withdrawn from the public funds of the Federation except in the manner prescribed by the National Assembly, and the President must lay before us the estimates of revenue and expenditure each year. No Appropriation comes into force unless we pass it. Think about what that means. Every road, every hospital, every soldier’s salary, every kobo spent in your name must first pass through your representatives. When we examine the budget line by line, we are not performing a ritual — we are deciding what this country values and what it can afford, and defending your money from waste and from theft.

However, the executive has often found it easy to set a wrong narrative in the public space against the legislature about the process of passing the annual budget. An example is the annual claim that the legislature is “padding the budget.” Even late President Muhammadu Buhari went on TV to accuse the legislature of ‘padding the budget’. How can the legitimate maker of a document be accused of forging it? The legislature is the only body constitutionally charged with producing the budget; the executive merely proposes. If an executive will not share its priorities, the 469 members still have a duty to ensure the needs of constituents are met. It is like accusing the organisers of The Platform of forging their own programme because my preferred speaking slot did not make the final schedule.

A lot of the time, the executive wants to feel comfortable violating the constitutional provision prohibiting it from spending money without legislative approval. It may be relevant to mention the case of how in early 2018, the Buhari administration paid $496 million to purchase 12 units of A-29 Super Tucano aircraft from the US government for the purpose of combating terrorism and insurgency, without the expenditure being provided for in the budget. Though the intention and purpose were good, the action was illegal, a violation of the law. It is the same way many agencies have continued to spend money outside the budget, a gross violation of the law.

That power of the purse extends, under the Fiscal Responsibility Act, to borrowing, which the National Assembly must approve. Let me be direct about what this means. When our country borrows — from international institutions, bilateral lenders, or the bond markets — that is not government money. It is the obligation of every Nigerian alive today, and of their children, and of their children’s children, who have no voice in the decision being made. A legislature that approves borrowing without interrogating the terms, the purpose, the rate of return, and the debt-service burden is mortgaging the future of generations who cannot speak for themselves. It was the reason the 8th Senate under my leadership rejected the plan to borrow $29.96 billion by the Buhari administration in September 2016. We rejected the plan because it was not accompanied by any breakdown or explanation on how the funds would be spent or what projects it was to be used to finance. My colleagues and I believed it was a massive loan that would further plunge Nigeria into a bottomless debt pit.

The second instrument is oversight. The constitution empowers each House to investigate the conduct of any authority administering the laws we enact, and the expenditure of any department charged with carrying them out, and to summon persons and documents. I have heard oversight described as harassment of the executive. I reject that completely. Oversight is the constitutional mechanism by which the people, through their representatives, hold power to account — and without accountability there is no trust. Passing a law is the beginning, not the end; the harder question is whether it is obeyed and whether public money is doing what it was sent to do. I will say candidly that oversight is where our system is still weakest: committees can be captured, hearings can become theatre. But where it works — and it does work — it is the difference between an agency that serves the public and one that serves itself. You remember when the 8th Senate invited the then Comptroller General of Customs, Col. Ahmadu Alli (retired) to appear before it to explain the policy by the Customs to query and demand duties from vehicles and goods that are already in use within the country. He simply ignored the invitation. A flagrant violation of the law.

The third instrument is the confirmation of executive appointees. The most senior appointments in this country — ministers, justices, heads of critical agencies — do not take effect on the President’s word alone; they come before the Senate. That screening is a check on patronage, a moment to ask whether a person is fit to hold power over us. The case of the former acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Magu, comes to mind: the 8th Senate declined to confirm him on the strength of a security report from the DSS — another agency of the very president who had nominated him. The Constitution does not require the Senate to explain why it refuses to confirm a nominee. Just as it does not require a President to explain why he is nominating a person for an office. The discretion to confirm or not is ours, and exercising it is not lawlessness — it is the law. The discretion to nominate is also that of the President. Ignorance of that role has too often led citizens to aid the executive in undermining the legislature. In the 8th Senate, we confirmed over 97 per cent of the executive’s nominees. The one or two who failed did so on the merits and on the security reports before us, amid a serious blackmail campaign against the institution and its leadership.

The Magu case became personally costly for me. The man in question took it very personally. He refused to understand that it was a decision of the Senate and in line with our constitutional powers, As a result, he waged a war of attrition against me and subjected me to the type of inquisition, harassment, humiliation, and court trial that no Senate President before and after me has experienced. And governance, properly understood, means responsiveness. A parliament that does not listen is just an expensive building. In our four years, the 8th Senate treated and resolved more citizen petitions than any Senate in the history of this Republic — ordinary Nigerians, wronged or ignored, who finally had somewhere to bring their case.

I remember the case of Police Corporal Celestine Williams who was dismissed in 1996 without any form of trial based on the powers conferred on the police by Decree 17 of 1984. Our committee on ethics, privileges and public petition reviewed his petition and held that such a power conferred on the police by Decree 17 was inconsistent with democratic rule. His dismissal was subsequently reversed and the police reabsorbed the Corporal based on our recommendation. That is what governance feels like from the ground: not a grand theory, but a widow whose pension was restored, a community whose complaint was finally heard.

So, when you next hear someone dismiss the legislature as a place where nothing happens, particularly about what the framers of the Constitution designed it for, ask them a simple question. Who guards the treasury? Who calls power to account? Who stands between the citizen and the silence of an unaccountable state? In every functioning democracy on this earth, the answer is the same. The parliament. Your parliament. That the legislature may not be doing perfectly well today does not mean the roles created for it are not needed or vital or that the institution cannot be made to discharge those roles efficiently.

LEGISLATURE AND NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

I come now to my third pillar, and the one I care about most deeply: development. There is a tired idea in our country that development is the work of the executive alone — that the President builds the roads and the legislature merely talks. I want to retire that idea this morning, because it is not only wrong, it is dangerous. Roads and bridges are visible. But the architecture that makes roads and bridges and factories and jobs possible is law — and law is the work of the legislature.

Consider how the legislature once saved this country from systemic collapse. When the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua fell gravely ill and left no letter transmitting power to his deputy as the law required, the nation became rudderless and leaderless. The National Assembly stepped in with the Doctrine of Necessity, enabling the Vice President to step into the saddle as Acting President even where the constitution made no explicit provision. That intervention calmed frayed nerves, doused tension, and set the ship of state back on course.

When the 8th Senate was inaugurated in 2015, this country was sliding into recession. Oil prices had collapsed, investment was fleeing, and we decided the legislature would not stand on the sidelines. We would legislate our way toward recovery — sitting with economists, the business community, and experts to ask one hard question: what laws are strangling enterprise, what laws are outdated and are no longer in sync with global best practices, and which new ones would set it free? This type of initiative has never been done before. Out of that came a deliberate reform agenda — the National Assembly ������Ƶ Environment Roundtable, NASSBER — a partnership between the legislature, the private sector, academia, the Nigerian Bar Association, and our development partners. It led to the enactment of forty-eight laws meant to change the face of the business sector.

We passed laws to make it possible for ordinary Nigerians and small businesses to access credit — the Secured Transactions in Movable Assets law and the Credit Reporting law — so that a trader’s inventory or a farmer’s equipment could finally serve as collateral, instead of credit being locked away for the privileged few. We advanced the most significant overhaul of company law in nearly three decades, to make it easier and cheaper to start and run a business. These were not headlines, but they moved Nigeria up the global ease-of-doing-business rankings, and behind every place we climbed were real entrepreneurs who found one fewer wall in their path.

I remember an engagement with traders from Aba — shoe manufacturers, textile producers, food processors who had built real businesses against formidable odds. Their message was simple: give us a market where we can sell our goods. They also wanted the government to buy what they make. That led the 8th Senate to review the Public Procurement law with what we called “Made in Nigeria” provisions — ensuring that what can be produced or provided by Nigerians is not needlessly sourced from abroad. We tried to exemplify this aim when I personally promoted the Innoson Vehicles brand. I got one of their cars and put it in my official convoy as Senate President and sought to encourage our security agencies to patronise the company. I am happy today that the Innoson Motors brand is doing very well in the Nigerian and West African market.

We did not stop at the economy, because development is not only about money — it is about who gets to share in the future of this nation. We passed a law to end discrimination against persons with disabilities — to say, as a Republic, that a citizen in a wheelchair is no less a citizen, with a right to dignity, to access, and to a place in our common life.

We passed the Sexual Harassment in Tertiary Educational Institutions (Prohibition) Bill to protect young women and make our campuses safer. And when Monica Osagie, a Master of ������Ƶ Administration student of the OAU, Ile-Ife, was subjected to harassment by her lecturer who demanded sex to raise her grade, we raised a motion in the chamber to ensure that the law which we passed a year earlier was put in action against the lecturer involved. The lecturer, Prof. Richard Akindele was eventually jailed. Again, in 2017, when the cases of people who sustained gunshot wounds but died because they were refused treatment by the hospitals became rampant, we passed the law prohibiting hospitals from refusing to treat such patients. This was why my colleagues and I felt so sad and outraged that despite the law, a youth corps member, Linda Igweatu who was accidentally shot by the police on the night of July 4th, 2018 reportedly died because she was denied treatment by a public hospital.

To demonstrate our empathy and concern as well as calm frayed nerves over the incident, I put a phone call through to the victim’s sister and commiserated with the family. I assured them that the culprit would face the wrath of the law. The Senate also adopted a motion which mandated the chairman of its committee on Senate to follow up and ensure the police give justice to the victim, her family, and the general public. The aforementioned laws were part of those we enacted in response to specific problems confronting Nigerians. And — perhaps the achievement closest to my heart — we changed the constitution itself to open the doors of leadership to the young. The “Not Too Young To Run” reform reduced the age barriers that had locked an entire generation out of the offices of this country.

In a nation where the median age is barely eighteen, we told our young people: this Republic is not a property you inherit when your elders are finished with it. It is yours now. Run for it. As a result of that our constitutional amendment, we now have Honourable members of the House of Representatives who were elected while they were in their 20s. Hon. Ibrahim Bello Mohammed representing Birnin Kebbi/Kalgo/Bunaze Federal Constituency was elected at the age of 26 and Hon. Akarachi Etinosa Amadi representing Mbatoli/Ikeduru Federal constituency was elected when he was 29.

Another area where the 8th Senate made profound intervention was in the review of the law governing the petroleum industry. For two decades, our petroleum sector ran on a legal framework built for a different era — the Petroleum Act of 1969. Several attempts were made, without success, to amend the law. The executive would not introduce a bill to fix it. So, the Senate did, working with all stakeholders to produce a modern, representative law. The Petroleum Industry Governance Bill passed the 8th Senate but never received presidential assent. In 2021, the Petroleum Industry Act was signed into law — and many of the core propositions we had developed through years of careful work resurfaced in it, substantially intact. I take instruction: serious legislative work is never wasted, even when it is temporarily blocked. Ideas that find legislative form enter the public domain, shape the conversation, and eventually find their moment. That work was not a failure — it was an investment whose return was deferred, not denied. The same was true of the electoral reforms we fought for and saw denied assent.

AN HONEST RECKONING

I would be unworthy of this platform if I stood here and pretended the legislature is without fault. It is not. And the surest way to weaken an institution is to refuse to look at it honestly. Our parliament is too often seen — and sometimes rightly seen — as distant from the people it serves. Its proceedings can feel opaque. Its members can appear more attentive to the executive who controls resources than to the constituents who control votes. Oversight can curdle into theatre. And the constant turnover of members means hard-won expertise walks out the door every four years, leaving each new chamber to relearn the same lessons.

These are real failings. But notice — every one of them is an argument for a stronger legislature, not a weaker one. The answer to a parliament too dependent on the executive is more independence, not less. The answer to opaque proceedings is more openness. The answer to a captured committee is a more empowered, better-resourced one. We do not cure the sickness of an institution by starving it. We cure it by demanding more of it — and more of ourselves as citizens.

Because here is the truth that ties it all together: a legislature is only ever as strong as the citizens who hold it to account. People who do not know what their parliament does cannot defend it when it is attacked, reward it when it is brave, or punish it when it betrays them. The single greatest reform we could make to the National Assembly would cost the government nothing — a citizenry that watches, that asks, and that votes on legislative records, not just presidential personalities.

Let me be honest about my own experience, because it goes to the heart of this. The 8th Senate was not a rubber stamp. We did not see our role as applauding whatever came from the other end of the bridge. There were moments of real tension with the executive — uncomfortable, costly, and personal. I will not pretend otherwise.

I remember vividly August 7, 2018, when the National Assembly Complex was invaded by hooded, heavily armed security agents enforcing an unlawful order to remove me as Senate President. My offence? The executive believed my leadership of the 8th Senate was not sufficiently submissive, and that my emergence was against the wishes of the establishment. The sanctity of the legislature was violated by agents of the executive, and democracy was placed under extreme strain — for the simple reason that some refused to accept that the legislature is an independent arm of government, not an appendage of the executive.

RECOMMENDATIONS ON THE WAY FORWARD

After these submissions, let me propose that we all take cognisance of the following:

(a) The electorate has a role to play in making the legislature a bastion for development, stability, and national security. Democracy cannot flourish where people do not understand how the constitution works — and that they too have a duty to defend the sanctity of the law-making institution.

(b) The electorate must consciously elect the most capable and dedicated people to the legislature. Too often a member who sponsors not a single bill in four years is returned again and again, while vibrant, hardworking legislators are voted out.

(c) Our legislators lack the research and data capacity to perform at their best. I recall, in the 7th Senate, sponsoring a motion on corruption in the fuel-subsidy regime: I had to engage researchers at home and abroad — some going as far as Liverpool — to obtain shipping records on the movement of supposed fuel cargoes. The records existed, but extracting and analysing them required resources few legislators command. That capacity gap is something we must urgently address.

(d) We must address the issue of electoral reform. This should never wait till the eve of an election before it is put in place. Without a credible law that curbs rigging and manipulation and encourages good leadership, the men and women who reach the legislature will not always represent our first eleven.

(e) We must end vote-buying. A good candidate cannot always match the money required to buy votes or party tickets, and a legislature chosen that way cannot be our best. Getting the finest into the legislature demands deliberate, conscious effort.

(f) We must also examine ourselves. A citizenry that disregards the law in its private dealings cannot expect to produce a law-respecting legislature. We have too often made law-breaking a habit — and with that mindset, little else can go right.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen. Let me bring us back to where we began — to June 12. We are here today, as free citizens of a democratic Republic, because a generation before us decided that their voice, expressed through a vote, was worth defending against the full weight of an unaccountable state. They did not have strong institutions to protect their mandate. That mandate was stolen precisely because the structures that should have stood firm were too fragile to bear the weight. Perhaps it is pertinent to raise this question: If there is a repeat of the annulment of an election, what do we think will happen? Are we as citizens ready to resist such an undemocratic action? Are our institutions – executive, legislature, courts, and electoral body strong enough to frustrate such undemocratic action? This is a question that we need to devote a great day like June 12 to settle.

Our task — the task of this generation, the task of everyone in this hall — is to make sure that can never happen again. Not with slogans, and not with anger alone, but by building institutions strong enough to outlast any strongman, and by insisting that the legislature — your legislature — be independent, transparent, capable, and close to the people.

To my fellow public servants: let us retire the lie that strong legislatures and strong nations are enemies. They are the same thing. There has never been a stable, prosperous, free country anywhere on this earth built on a weak parliament. Not one. Let me reiterate my position that the only difference between a democratic rule and military rule is the presence of a parliament. And this applies to governments across the world. This is another clear indication of how important a legislature is as an institution of governance.

And to every Nigerian: democracy is not a building in Abuja. It is not a single election, or a single office, or a single person. It is a living thing that must be tended every single day — by the laws we pass, by the power we check, by the development we build, and above all by the vigilance we never lay down.

The legislature did not make this democracy alone. The people did, in 1993, with their feet and their faith. But it is the legislature — strong, independent, and answerable to you — that will keep it standing long after all of us have left the stage. That is the promise of Nigeria. It is worth our work. It is worth our courage. And it is, as June 12 reminds us every year, more than worth our defence.

In conclusion: a strong legislature promotes transparency. A transparent government inspires public trust. Public trust strengthens democratic legitimacy. And democratic legitimacy produces stability.

Thank you. God bless you, and God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

By Olusegun Adeniyi

(Text of my presentation at the 2026 edition of ‘Platform Nigeria’ organised by Senior Pastor of the Covenant Nation, Pastor Poju Oyemade, in Lagos on June 12)

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen. Before I go to the substance of my presentation, I want to briefly report how Pastor Poju has tormented my life for many years. But most especially in the last 13 months. It all started on 26 May 2025 when he sent me the English premier league tables for 2022/2023, 2023/2024 and 2024/2025 seasons where Arsenal came second on all occasions. Pastor Poju then added this caption: ‘Official: Arsenal have completed a treble.’ A month later on 20 June, he forwarded a poster with the inscription: ‘Premier league should resume fast. I saw some Arsenal fans laughing yesterday.’

With Liverpool spending a record £446 million in the 2025 summer transfer window, including a British record £125 million Deadline Day deal for Alexander Isak, just after winning the premiership, the harassment between June and September last year was indescribable. Of course, most of the messages dwelt on how Liverpool would stroll to the 2025/2026 premiership title. For instance, on 21 September, Pastor Poju forwarded to me the league table with a crisp message: ‘Liverpool now 5 points clear.’ But since God pass man, as they say on the street, Liverpool lost two matches in quick succession. Then Pastor Poju suddenly remembered his calling. Here goes his message of 4 October 2025: ‘Micah 7: 8: Rejoice not against me, o mine enemy. When I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me’. After that Bible passage, Pastor Poju then added a line: ‘I felt I should drop this here.’

To be fair, this was by no means a one-way harassment. On 27 November last year, with Liverpool losing one match after another, I forwarded the cartoon of a man inside a pharmacy with the attendant saying, “I am sorry Sir, but to get anti-depressant pills, you need a proper prescription. Simply showing your Liverpool season ticket is not enough.” But Pastor Poju got his revenge on 26 January this year after Manchester United secured their lucky break at the Emirates. He forwarded a message that had this dialogue: “Someone asked me, ‘why do football players earn more than doctors?’ I replied: ‘Can a doctor save 8 billion people in 3 seconds?’ He said No. I said, ‘well, Cunha did it in the EPL against Arsenal. He saved the world from noise pollution and now everywhere is quiet.’

From the moment Arsenal lost the Carabao Cup final on 23 March to the serial defeats in April that saw Manchester City momentarily sitting atop the league table, Pastor Poju was brutal in his messages. But then, on 11th May after the nail-biting win over West Ham that put Arsenal on the verge of winning the premiership, I also forwarded to him this message: “Before the 83rd minute, I was hit by anxiety. After that goal, I cried. After the equaliser, I had a heart attack. After the win, I was celebrating inside the ambulance. Right now, I am driving the ambulance driver to the hospital because he had a heart attack too. He is a Manchester City supporter.’

I could have said that imaginary driver is a Liverpool supporter. But then. I am a generous man…

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, I have shared all this not only to entertain, but also because that exchange with Pastor Poju captures something I find genuinely instructive. Here is a very busy man who shepherds a big flock and has spent the last two decades building ‘Platform Nigeria’ into one of the most consequential intellectual and civic spaces on this continent. Yet he found time, week after week, to torment an Arsenal supporter with league tables, Bible verses, posters and cartoons. That says something about Pastor Poju. Whether he is curating a conversation about Nigeria’s future or sending me a meme about football at midnight, the man is fully present. But there is even a bigger issue here.

Pastor Poju and I do not support the same football club. We probably never will, unless he wants to be a Gunner. But across one premiership league season of rivalry, not once did either of us walk away from the conversation. We sharpened each other, made each other laugh, and kept faith with the idea that the other person, however misguided about their football team, was worth engaging. That is the disposition that nation-building demands, and precisely what this platform has modelled for us, year after year. Platform Nigeria was built on a simple but radical premise that Nigerians of different persuasions, generations, and convictions could sit in the same room, disagree sharply, and still leave richer for the encounter.

The lesson from football is that rivalry, when it is honest and accompanied by mutual respect, deepens relationships. Liverpool and Arsenal supporters may never see eye to eye. But they share a language, passion, and common investment in something larger than themselves. That is the wager of Platform Nigeria, that our differences, far from being liabilities, are the very raw material from which a serious nation can be forged, if only we have the courage and the courtesy to keep talking. What Pastor Poju has created here is not a venue for consensus. It is a venue for encounter. And Nigeria owes him a debt of gratitude for it.

For the record, this is my 9th time speaking on ‘Platform Nigeria’. And I cannot but thank Mrs Toyin Oyemade who I understand influences my being invited again and again because she enjoys my cow stories. Unfortunately, I have no cow tales to share today. But in the few minutes I have left I would like to talk briefly about a haunting silence spreading across democracies. It is the silence of citizens turning their backs on the very process meant to give them voice. And nowhere does this echo more ominously than in Nigeria.  

The 2023 presidential election recorded a voter turnout of just 26.72 percent, the lowest in Nigeria’s electoral history. Out of 93.47 million registered voters, only 24.9 million showed up to vote. More starkly still, the mandate of the winning candidate on which an anthem has been invented, flows from less than 10 percent of Nigeria’s electorate. The numbers indeed tell a story of progressive deterioration.

In 2003, the high-water mark of our post-military participatory energy, Nigeria recorded 69 percent turnout. By 2011, it had fallen to 53.7 percent. In 2015, it dropped further to 43.7 percent. Then to 34.75 percent in 2019. And three years ago, 26.72 percent. The trajectory is unmistakable. With each election cycle, more Nigerians are choosing not to choose. Meanwhile, this problem is associated with all our elections and not just the presidential. For instance, the last Ondo State Gubernatorial election in 2024 recorded a voter turn out of just 25 percent. 

Yes, our politicians have been quick to celebrate their victories, and issue acceptance speeches about mandates and democratic legitimacy. But there is a question they must now confront: What does it mean to govern with the consent of so few? Each election cycle, we witness the familiar theatre, rallies packed with “supporters” whose transport and feeding have been arranged, town halls filled with party faithful who were mobilized, and on election day itself, what we are inundated with are reports of voters being cajoled, induced, or in some cases, coerced to polling units.

To understand the magnitude of our crisis, let’s consider the global context. The University of Essex in the United Kingdom conducted what researchers described as the most extensive cross-national study of voter turnout to date, analysing all post-1945 democratic elections across 116 countries. Their finding was unambiguous: global average turnout has dropped from above 77 percent in the late 1960s to below 67 percent after 2010.

The findings from that research published in the journal, World Politics, deserve to be read slowly: “As democracy has expanded across countries, electoral participation has declined.” But even in countries facing democratic challenges, participation remains substantially higher than ours. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average stands at 65 percent. average stands at 65 percent. Nigeria’s 27 percent represents the worst turnout in Africa.

The standard explanations for low turnout of voters are logistical failures, insecurity, distance to polling units, restrictions of movement on election day, and voter suppression. Yes, insufficient voter education, fear of violence, inadequate understanding of the electoral process and orchestrated mischief to keep voters away all play roles. But at its core, Nigeria’s voter apathy crisis is about trust, or rather, the catastrophic erosion of trust. Therefore, the uncomfortable truth our political class must face is this: The democracy we practice does not impact enough Nigerians to make them care about voting.

Following the Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC) election in February this year, I wrote a column, ‘In Defence of Abuja’s (Non)Voters’ which resonated with many people. With 65,676 votes recorded for all the candidates, out of 837,338 registered voters, it meant that just about 8 percent of AMAC residents who registered to vote bothered to exercise their franchise. In that intervention, I warned that nobody should downplay the challenge of voter apathy and the dire implications of a pervasive lack of interest to participate in our elections. From disillusionment with the performance of public officials to the growing perception that their votes may not count, there are justifiable reasons why many Nigerians are staying away from the polling booth at election time. And such electoral indifference bodes ill for our democracy. 

The Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) has identified trust and turnout as the biggest stories of the 2023 elections. Citizens no longer trust that their votes will count or most devastatingly, that it matters who wins, according to CDD. What should terrify our political class is that when three-quarters of registered voters see no point in participating, we do not have a democracy in any meaningful sense. This deliberate disengagement impacts not just electoral outcomes but also the entire system. In a research paper, ‘Voter Turnout Problems: Government by SOME of the People’, Douglas J. Amy, a Professor Emeritus of Politics at Mount Holyoke College in the United States, contends that low turnout undermines majority rule, fair representation and policy responsiveness which are key aspects of a democracy. 

At this point, it may be important to say that low turnout of voters based on public dissatisfaction with the ruling class is not peculiar to Nigeria. On 1st November 2021 in South Africa, the people of Phungulelweni community shut down the voting station in Ward 13 of Ntabankulu Local Municipality in protest over lack of access to drinking water and bad roads. The people said it was no longer worth their trouble to vote because elected public officials don’t care about them.

At the end, from 55% voters’ turnout in 2016 in the municipality, only 2% voted in 2021! Two years later, in December 2023, a survey on voter-behaviour in the country was released by the Human Science Research Council (HRSC). In one of their findings, young South Africans say they boycott elections because they believe that voting makes no difference in their material condition. 

This may be the time to also interrogate why registered voters in Nigeria are losing interest in voting. Not with the aim of devising better mobilization strategies or more effective inducements, but with genuine curiosity about why citizens have concluded that their participation does not matter. I must admit that increased voter turnout cannot in and of itself guarantee a people-friendly government. But to restore voter confidence and participation, Nigerians must begin to see that those elected to public offices work for them. Because eventually, perhaps sooner than we think, this mass disengagement will have consequences.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, there is no way we can talk about turn out of voters without highlighting the wonders of Nigerian political environment. The low voter turnout that we witness in our general elections conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is never reflected in the primaries of the political parties. The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the leading opposition African Democratic Congress (ADC) recently conducted their primaries in preparation for the 2027 general election.

From a membership register of 12,643,316, APC was able to record 11,069,756 votes, which represents 87.5% turn out while from a register of 3,113,599 members, 2,527,977 voters were also accredited for the ADC, representing a turnout of 81.2%. But we all know what is going on. Or don’t we? 

Let me also use this opportunity to express my disappointment with the current opposition in our country whose members are busy tearing one another apart on social media. I am sure many Nigerians are aware that come next week Saturday, a gubernatorial election will hold in Ekiti State. What many may be unaware of is that there will also be six bye-elections on that same day: Four Senatorial elections with one each in Ondo, Rivers, Nasarawa and Enugu. There will also be a House of Assembly election in Kebbi and a House of Representatives election in Kano. Now, here is the issue. The last day for parties to submit their membership registers to INEC was 10 May 2026. Primaries for the bye-elections were conducted almost two weeks later from 22 to 26 May, according to the timetable published by the commission. Yet, the ADC and NDC are not fielding candidates in any of these bye-elections holding next week in five geopolitical zones in the country! If those who seek to displace the people in power do not even have the presence of mind to put their members on the ballot in crucial elections, what then is the guarantee that they would be different if they get to government?

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen. Now, let me speak to those who would say, ‘my vote is just one, what does it matter if I vote or not?’ Well, history teaches that every vote matters. From the Dakota Legislative District 12 election in the United States to that of an Exeter Member of Parliament in the UK to the Zanzibar district of Chake-Chake, dozens of crucial elections have been decided by a single vote. But perhaps the most interesting case happened in an Indian legislative election in Rajasthan State in 2008. According to the declared result, C. P. Joshi secured 62,215 votes while his victorious opponent, Kalyan Singh Chouhan, got 62,216 votes. But here is the real story: While the wife, mother, and personal driver of the defeated Joshi reportedly failed to vote, Chouchan’s wife was said to have voted at two different polling stations. Someone must conduct a DNA test on that woman to ascertain where she truly comes from!

The essence of those examples is to disprove the notion that one vote cannot make a significant difference. In 2016, the MIT Election Lab did a report which revealed that between 1976 and 2021, hundreds of key elections in the United States were decided by just a handful of votes. In Nigeria, we have also seen a number of close electoral contests. In 2019, for instance, then incumbent Governor Aminu Tambuwal secured a second term in Sokoto State by a margin of 342 votes which is just the size of an average polling unit. So, by refusing to vote, you are also indirectly making a choice because you are ceding to other people the responsibility to decide who governs you.

As an aside, as I speak, several schoolchildren and their teachers, seized from their classrooms in some communities in Oyo State about a month agio remain in the hands of their captors somewhere in the forest. One of those teachers, Michael Oyedokun, will not be coming home; his abductors beheaded him. Dozens of Borno State school children are also in captivity. I am not sure that the Democracy Day we commemorate today would mean anything to the families of those victims and thousands of others across the country who are currently negotiating ransom for the release of their loved ones. As we all pray for the quick release of those victims, we can only hope that authorities in the country will find a lasting solution to the growing security challenge.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, the import of the foregoing is that democracy, for all its flaws and frustrations, remains the only system that gives ordinary citizens a say in who governs them. The right to make that choice is therefore not a gift granted by politicians. It is one of the hardest-won freedoms in human history. Generations of Nigerians fought, marched, bled, and died to establish the principle that the people would determine who sits in Aso Rock, state government houses and in all the legislative chambers whether they are green or red. That is the essence of the Democracy Day that we celebrate today. President Bola Tinubu captured that very well in his broadcast this morning.

Therefore, to abandon that obligation is to ignore the sacrifices of so many compatriots with unintended consequences. Indeed, the same Essex study earlier referenced reveals that low voter turnout leads to socio-economically distorted participation, biased public policies, and fertile ground for clientelism and patronage politics that drove people away in the first place. In other words, low turnout and broken government feed each other in an accelerating spiral.  

The beauty of democracy is not that it produces perfect leaders. Its beauty is that it gives citizens a mechanism to remove imperfect ones. That mechanism only works if the citizens use it. Therefore, as we approach the 2027 general election, the choice before Nigerians is stark. We can continue to celebrate ever-narrower ‘victories’ based on the votes of an ever-shrinking fraction of the electorate. Or we can acknowledge that we are in a crisis by doing the difficult work of rebuilding trust, making elections credible and delivering on tangible improvements in the lives of ordinary Nigerians.

This then brings me to the story of a lawmaker seeking re-election as a member of his state House of Assembly. While on a campaign tour in a poor community within his constituency, he asked people in the crowd to name their two most pressing problems. The first man he called said the roof of the primary school in the community had been blown away by rain. “That should not be a problem,” the lawmaker replied. “I know the governor is devoting a lot of money to education in the supplementary budget that will be sent to the House next week,” he added as he brought out his phone for a long conversation with someone the crowd suspected could only be the governor. Especially when the Honourable member ended the conversation with ‘Thank you very much, Your Excellency’. He then explained to the people that the governor has assured him that he would construct a new primary school for the community. “Now what is the next pressing problem?” he asked. A young man was called and he said: “We hope you can help us so that we can also be making calls like you. There’s no mobile network coverage in this village.”

Pastor Poju, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, for me, the question is not whether Nigerians want to vote. The registration numbers prove they do. The question is whether they believe their votes matter. And until we can answer that question affirmatively, and citizens can see a clear line between their ballot and a better life, the silence at the polls will only grow louder. Yet, history shows that when people give up on the ballot, they find other ways to make their voices heard. And those ways are rarely peaceful or orderly.

Thank you very much for listening and Happy Democracy Day!

·

*Slams N20m cost against plaintiff

By Alex Enumah in Abuja

The Federal High Court in Abuja, has declared that former President Goodluck Jonathan is eligible to contest in the 2027 general elections.

Justice Peter Lifu made the declaration while delivering judgment in a suit seeking to bar Jonathan from participating in future presidential election, because he had taken the oath of office twice as president.

However, Justice Lifu in his judgment dismissed the suit on the grounds of being an abuse of court process.

According to Lifu, the suit was a waste of the court’s precious time because both the Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal have already resolved the eligibility of Jonathan.

“I am bound by the above decision of the Court of Appeal and this court, I have no more to add”, Lifu said.

Meanwhile, he slammed a cost of N20 million against the plaintiff in favour of Jonathan and N1 million in favour of the Attorney-General of the Federation.

Details later.

….More strikes to come, Hegseth U.S Secretary of War warns

By Chiemelie Ezeobi

The Federal Government has confirmed that coordinated security cooperation with international partners, including the United States, has resulted in precision air strikes on terrorist targets in the North West of Nigeria.
The operations are part of ongoing efforts to tackle persistent terrorism and violent extremism across the country.

In a statement confirming the earlier tweet by U.S president, Donald Trump, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Spokesperson Kimiebi Imomotimi Ebienfa, said: “Nigerian authorities remain engaged in structured security cooperation with international partners, including the United States of America, in addressing the persistent threat of terrorism and violent extremism.

“This has led to precision hits on terrorist targets in Nigeria by air strikes in the North West.”

The Ministry emphasised that the collaboration includes intelligence sharing, strategic coordination, and other forms of support conducted in line with international law, mutual respect for Nigeria’s sovereignty, and commitments to regional and global security.

“Terrorist violence in any form whether directed at Christians, Muslims, or other communities remains an affront to Nigeria’s values and to international peace and security,” the statement said, highlighting the government’s zero tolerance for attacks on civilians.

All counter-terrorism operations, the Ministry added, prioritise civilian protection, national unity, and the rights and dignity of all citizens.

It also noted that “the Federal Government continues to work closely with its partners through established diplomatic and security channels to weaken terrorist networks, disrupt their financing and logistics, and prevent cross-border threats, while strengthening Nigeria’s own security institutions and intelligence capabilities.”

Meanwhile, U.S Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, who commented on the air strikes and the timing of the operation said more strikes are to come.

He tweeted, “The President was clear last month: the killing of innocent Christians in Nigeria (and elsewhere) must end. The @DeptofWar is always ready, so ISIS found out tonight — on Christmas. More to come… Grateful for Nigerian government support & cooperation. Merry Christmas!”

By Chiemelie Ezeobi

United States President Donald J. Trump today said that U.S. forces carried out a military strike against ISIS targets in Northwest Nigeria over their incessant attacks on Christians.

In a statement posted on his verified social media account on Christmas night, Trump said the action was taken on his direct orders as Commander in Chief.

The message read thus: “Tonight, at my direction as Commander in Chief, the United States launched a powerful and deadly strike against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians, at levels not seen for many years, and even Centuries!

“ I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was.

“The Department of War executed numerous perfect strikes, as only the United States is capable of doing.

“Under my leadership, our Country will not allow Radical Islamic Terrorism to prosper. May God Bless our Military, and MERRY CHRISTMAS to all, including the dead Terrorists, of which there will be many more if their slaughter of Christians continues.”

As of the time of filing this report, there has been no independent confirmation from the Nigerian government, or international security agencies regarding the strikes or their location.

By Olusegun Adeniyi

I was at the Afreximbank event in Abuja last Saturday when Mr Tony Elumelu and Dr. George Elombi put pen to paper on what turned out to be a historic $750 million financing agreement for Heirs Energies. As I watched the ceremony unfold, I could not help but reflect on entrepreneurs who complain about the absence of funding for “serious businesses” in Nigeria. “The money is not there,” they would insist with the certitude of someone who had tried every door and found them all locked. Well, here was $750 million, real money being committed to an African enterprise by an African financial institution. It was a calculated investment in a company that has demonstrated performance, governance, and the kind of vision that transforms industries.

The numbers tell their own story. When Heirs Energies took over Oil Mining Lease (OML) 17 from Shell, Total, and Eni, production stood at 25,000 barrels of oil per day. Today, it exceeds 50,000 barrels. The plan, according to Samuel Nwanze, the company’s CFO, is to hit 100,000 barrels daily within three years while ramping up gas production to 250 million cubic metres. These are not pie-in-the-sky projections, but targets backed by proven operational capacity and the kind of discipline that makes financiers comfortable parting with serious money.

At the ceremony, Elumelu was characteristically candid about the journey. He spoke about the delays his company faced under President Muhammadu Buhari when acquiring OML 17. The Buhai administration stalled his efforts on grounds that the asset was “too large for private sector ownership.” The irony, as he also noted, was that Shell itself is a private sector entity. Those delays, Elumelu said, came at significant financial cost. Yet Heirs Energies never defaulted on its obligations, even while battling the severe oil theft that has become an unfortunate feature of Nigeria’s energy sector.

Elumelu was effusive in his praise for Afreximbank, which he described as “the most impactful and catalytic financial institution in Africa.” He spoke about trust, performance, and the discipline required to sustain partnerships with institutions that put their money where transformative projects exist. “When financial institutions support you,” he said, “the least you owe them is to perform.” It is a simple truth that should resonate with every aspiring entrepreneur: access to capital is one thing; the credibility to deploy it effectively is quite another.

Elombi, for his part, emphasized that Afreximbank’s confidence in Heirs Energies was built on demonstrated leadership, governance, and asset quality. This transaction, he added, aligns with the bank’s mandate to support African champions driving sustainable economic transformation. And there lies the key point: African institutions have the capacity and the willingness to back African enterprises. What they require are bankable projects led by credible teams. In fact, I was stunned when Elombi openly prompted the President & Group CEO of Transnational Corporation Plc (Transcorp), Dr. Owen Omogiafo, to come up with ideas that would help expand their business across the continent, promising the finance. “Whoa!” exclaimed an excited Elumelu while beaming with smiles. But bank executives don’t play Father Christmas with money. They must have seen value in their relationship with the businesses championed by Elumelu who said that, as a matter of principle, he prefers to source funds outside the United Bank for Africa (UBA) which he chairs.

I may have become a broken gramophone on this issue but I will not stop saying that what Nigeria needs are more risk-takers, men and women willing to bet big on the country’s potential rather than seek safety in trading, real estate speculation, or the easy money of import dependency. In this same country, some of us can still remember a young man who had access to the authorities in the oil and gas industry yet rather than invest, he spent all the time and money buying yacht and ferrying supermodels around the world.

What Elumelu and his team have done with Heirs Energies is instructive. They identified a critical sector, acquired strategic assets, navigated regulatory complexities, and built operational excellence. The $750 million Afreximbank facility is validation that when you get these fundamentals right, the money will come. The broader lesson extends beyond Nigeria. Across Africa, we hear lamentations about the absence of capital for meaningful development. Yet Afreximbank alone has assets exceeding $40 billion. Add to that the African Development Bank, the continent’s sovereign wealth funds, pension assets, and private capital pools, and the picture becomes clear: Africa has money. What Africa needs urgently are more entrepreneurs with the audacity to dream big, the competence to execute, and the integrity to sustain investor confidence.

As Elumelu put it at the ceremony, “This is Africa financing Africa’s future.” It is a powerful statement, one that challenges the narrative of perpetual dependence on Western capital. But for this narrative to become reality, we need our governments to create enabling environments. The regulatory delays Heirs Energies faced should never have happened. When private sector players demonstrate capacity, government should facilitate, not frustrate.

As I left the venue, I thought about entrepreneurs who insist the money is not there. Perhaps the real question is whether they have a project compelling enough to attract it. The Heirs Energies-Afreximbank deal proves that when African entrepreneurs bring bankable mega projects to the table, African capital will back them. The finance is there. What we need are more people willing to take the risk.

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

A major fire outbreak on Christmas Eve gutted parts of the 25-storey Great Nigeria Insurance House located on Martins Street, Lagos Island, destroying property worth millions of naira.

The fire, which broke out at about 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, caused panic among occupants and nearby residents, who reportedly scampered for safety. As of press time, no loss of life had been recorded.

Officials of the Lagos State Fire and Rescue Service, alongside other emergency responders, were on ground battling the raging inferno. The Controller General of the Lagos State Fire and Rescue Service, Margaret Adeseye, confirmed the incident, stating that firefighters responded promptly after receiving a distress call.

“Upon receipt of the distress call at 16:41 hours, firefighters arrived on scene at 16:53 hours to curtail the raging fire,” Adeseye said. “The incident occurred at The Great Nigeria Insurance House, Martins Street, Lagos Island.”

She explained that the fire originated on the fifth floor of the 25-storey building and spread downwards from that level. As at the time of reporting, the blaze had affected up to the fifth floor.

The building is primarily used for warehouse storage and the sale of clothing materials, with some corporate offices and a few shops also operating within the premises.

“There has been no record of casualty as firefighting continues at the time of this report,” Adeseye added.

•Says exercise of such powers subject to judicial review to prevent arbitrariness, abuse  

•Strikes out PDP governors’ suit challenging emergency rule in Rivers  

•Verdict an evil wind against democracy, opposition party declares

“Outside a validly declared state of emergency, the president possesses no power whatsoever to interfere with state executive or legislative institutions”

Chuks Okocha and Alex Enumah in Abuja

The Supreme Court, yesterday, stated that Section 305 of the Constitution did not confer power on the president to temporarily dissolve executive and legislative institutions of a state during emergency rule.

Alluding to the deliberate silence of the constitution on the spirit of the section 305, the Supreme Court added that the exercise of such powers remained subject to judicial review to prevent arbitrariness and abuse.

The apex court, which delivered judgement in a suit by Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) states against the declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State by President Bola Tinubu, however, struck out the suit.

Tinubu had in March, citing threat to peace in Rivers State, declared a state of emergency, and, subsequently, suspended Governor Siminalayi Fubara, his deputy, as well as the entire Rivers State House of Assembly members for six months.

Tinubu, in addition, appointed a retired naval chief, Ibok-Ete Ibas, as sole administrator for the state, for the period of the emergency, which lasted six months.

While the emergency was in force, 11 PDP governors had through their states’ Attorneys-General approached the apex court to challenge the powers of the president to suspend elected public office holders, such as the governor of Rivers State and the state lawmakers.

The plaintiffs, in arguing their case, pointed out that they were not denying the president’s power to proclaim a state of emergency, but were challenging “the extent to which the proclamation can be made to affect the offices of the governor, deputy governor, and the State House of Assembly”.

Justice Mohammed Idris, who delivered the lead judgement and went into the merit of the suit, pointed out, “By virtue of sections 4-7 of the constitution, governmental powers divided among the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary, and distributed across the Federal, State, and Local Government tiers.

“No arm or tier of government is constitutionally superior to another, and none may lawfully usurp the powers expressly vested in another.”

While stating that Section 305 of the Nigerian Constitution was clear in its grant of power to proclaim a state of emergency, Idris remarked that the section was silent on the precise content of the “extraordinary measures” that might follow.

He said, “This silence is intentional. Emergencies are inherently situational, varying in scope, intensity, and threat. The constitution, therefore, entrusts the president with discretion to determine the measures required to restore peace and security, subject always to constitutional limits, proportionality, legislative oversight, and judicial review.”

The majority judgement cited the apex court decisions in the declaration of emergencies in 2004 and 2006 in Plateau and Ekiti states, respectively, and that of 2013 in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe states, to show that emergency powers were not governed by a rigid formula.

It added that the constitutionally permissible response depended on the magnitude of the threat, the functionality of state institutions, and the necessity of intervention to restore constitutional order.

Idris added, “Nevertheless, the President’s discretion under Section 305 is not unfettered. Emergency measures must be temporary, corrective, and proportionate. They must be directed towards restoring constitutional governance, not extinguishing it. Any permanent displacement or abrogation of democratically elected institutions would constitute a constitutional aberration.

“Outside a validly declared state of emergency, the president possesses no power whatsoever to interfere with State executive or legislative institutions.

“On the whole, a proclamation of a state of emergency is constitutionally valid where it is issued under Section 305 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended), approved by not less than two-thirds majority of all the members of each House of the National Assembly in accordance with their Standing Orders, and implemented through measures that are temporary, proportionate, and directed at restoring constitutional order.

“The exercise of such powers remains subject to judicial review to prevent arbitrariness or abuse.

“Having clarified these constitutional principles, I reiterate that the instant suit failed to disclose any reasonable cause of action capable of invoking the original jurisdiction of this Court under Section 232 of the 1999 Constitution as amended.

“No justiciable dispute between the federation and any or all of the Plaintiffs’ states has been established.”

The apex court, in the split judgement of six-to-one, held that the court lacked the necessary jurisdiction to entertain the suit brought by the 11 PDP states, which were the plaintiffs in the matter.

According to the majority judgement, the plaintiffs could not establish any cause of action that would warrant the apex court to activate its original jurisdiction to hear the matter.

The apex court held that the court lacked the necessary jurisdiction to entertain the suit and subsequently struck it out.

Idris, who delivered the lead judgement, explained that the plaintiffs failed to show that there existed any actionable dispute between the plaintiffs and the federation to require the court to exercise its original jurisdiction.

According to the judgement, the emergency declaration was not declared in any of the states of the plaintiffs to clothe them with the necessary legal powers to initiate the suit, in the first place.

The apex court, in the majority judgement, having established that the plaintiffs lacked the necessary locus standi to challenge the action of the president in addition to the absence of a cause of action, proceeded to strike out the suit and subsequently dismissed it for want of jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, Justice Obande Ogbuinya, in a minority judgement, insisted that the president could not suspend elected public officials under a state of emergency.

According to Ogbuinya, although the president could declare a state of emergency, he could not use such power as a tool to suspend elected state officials, including governors, deputy governors, and members of legislature.

PDP: It’s an Evil Wind Against Democracy

Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) described the Supreme Court judgement as an evil wind against democracy and its principles.

PDP said though it had accepted the judgement, it was counterproductive to democracy and its principles.

The party said the judgement of the Supreme Court consciously promoted authoritarianism and entrenched tyranny.

In a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Comrade Ini Ememobong, PDP said, ‘’While we respect the authority of the apex court and recognise its finality within our jurisdiction, we are, nevertheless, compelled to draw attention to the grave dangers that can emanate from the interpretation of the reasoning in this judgement on the political landscape of our country.

‘’Our concern is anchored on the age-long principle of law that the express mention of one thing excludes others (expressio unius est exclusio alterius), and the clear constitutional position that no person or institution (other than the State House of Assembly or a court of law) is empowered to remove a governor from office, even temporarily, during the subsistence of a constitutional term.

‘’To hold otherwise is to create a pathway by which a President, with the active support of the National Assembly, can compel political alignment or compliance through the instrumentality of emergency powers in ways not envisaged by the constitution.

‘’We submit that the interpretation of this judgement has the potential to reverse the hard-won democratic gains by unwittingly making state governments completely subservient to the Federal Government, forcing them to seek to ‘connect to the centre’ by joining the ruling party, as we are already witnessing.”

The statement added, “‘More troubling is the fact that the logical extension of this reasoning based on the provision of Section 305(3)(c) ‘extraordinary measures to restore peace and security’ could, in the future, be interpreted to justify the suspension of other constitutional institutions, including the judiciary itself.

‘’We cannot reconcile how in a federation (not a unitary state) an elected President can be empowered to dismantle the democratic structures of a federating unit, sack elected officials and appoint leaders there, without consciously promoting authoritarianism and entrenching tyranny.”

PDP said, ‘’As a political party wholly committed to the protection and consolidation of democracy in Nigeria, we hereby call on the National Assembly to urgently initiate constitutional and legislative safeguards that clearly define and limit the scope of emergency powers of the president, to prevent imminent abuse and preserve Nigeria’s federation.

‘’We also urge Nigerians, civil society organisations, the media, and the international democratic community to remain vigilant in the defence of constitutionalism, federalism, and the sanctity of the electoral mandate.

‘’We remain hopeful that, at the next opportunity, the Supreme Court will have cause to extensively clarify the constitutional boundaries of emergency powers, in the overriding interest of justice, democracy, and the long-term stability of our Republic.”

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*Orders US department of war to prepare for possible action to completely wipe out Islamist terrorists in Nigeria

•⁠ ⁠Says US will stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria if killing of Christians continues

United States President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he has asked the US Department of War (Defence Department) to prepare for possible military action in Nigeria if the Nigerian government “continues to allow the killing of Christians.”

In a post on his Truth Social, Trump said the US government will also immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria if Christian killings continue.

“If the Nigerian Government continues to allow the killing of Christians, the U.S.A. will immediately stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria, and may very well go into that now disgraced country, “guns-a-blazing,” to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities. I am hereby instructing our Department of War to prepare for possible action. If we attack, it will be fast, vicious, and sweet, just like the terrorist thugs attack our CHERISHED Christians! WARNING: THE NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT BETTER MOVE FAST!”, the post read.
President Trump’s threat is coming barely 24 hours after he directed that Nigeria should be designated as a ‘Country of Particular Concern’ over claims of Christian genocide.
The countries of particular concern are the nations the US finds have engaged in severe violations of religious freedom.

In a post on Truth Social Friday, Trump had said: “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter. I am hereby making Nigeria a “COUNTRY OF PARTICULAR CONCERN.”

Nigeria’s President, Bola Tinubu, responded to the Christian genocide claim, declaring that Nigeria has constitutional guarantees to protect Nigerians of all faiths.

He also said his two and half year-old administration was opposed to religious persecution and will on no ground encourage it.

In a six-paragraph release earlier on Saturday, President Tinubu stated: “Nigeria stands firmly as a democracy governed by constitutional guarantees of religious liberty.

“Since 2023, our administration has maintained an open and active engagement with Christian and Muslim leaders alike and continues to address security challenges which affect citizens across faiths and regions.

“The characterisation of Nigeria as religiously intolerant does not reflect our national reality, nor does it take into consideration the consistent and sincere efforts of the government to safeguard freedom of religion and beliefs for all Nigerians.

“Religious freedom and tolerance have been a core tenet of our collective identity and shall always remain so. Nigeria opposes religious persecution and does not encourage it.
“Nigeria is a country with constitutional guarantees to protect citizens of all faiths.

“Our administration is committed to working with the United States government and the international community to deepen understanding and cooperation on protection of communities of all faiths.”

By Michael Olugbode in Abuja

United States President Donald Trump has announced Nigeria as a “country of particular concern” after claiming that Christianity faces a threat in the country.

The countries of particular concern are the list of nations the US finds have engaged in severe violations of religious freedom.

In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump said, “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians are being killed. Radical Islamists are responsible for this mass slaughter. I am hereby making Nigeria a “COUNTRY OF PARTICULAR CONCERN.”

“When Christians, or any such group, is slaughtered like is happening in Nigeria (3,100 versus 4,476 Worldwide), something must be done! I am asking Congressman Riley Moore, together with Chairman Tom Cole and the House Appropriations Committee, to immediately look into this matter, and report back to me.”

The US President continued that the United States “cannot stand by while such atrocities are happening in Nigeria, and numerous other Countries. We stand ready, willing, and able to save our Great Christian population around the World!”

The Country of Particular Concern list features Burma, People’s Republic of China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan, according to the State Department website.

The severe violations include “systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom,” including violations such as: (1) torture; (2) prolonged detention without charges; (3) forced disappearance; or (4) other flagrant denial of life, liberty, or security of persons, the state department said.

The special watch list countries are Algeria, Azerbaijan, the Central African Republic, Comoros, and Vietnam.

Apart from countries, the US also has a list of entities that are of particular concern. These are al Qa’ida affiliate Al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Houthis, ISIS-Sahel (formerly known as ISIS-Greater Sahara), ISIS-West Africa, al Qa’ida affiliate Jamaat Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin, and the Taliban.

The Appeal Court sitting in Abuja has appointed the Chief Registrar of the Court of Appeal, in liaison with the Admiralty Marshal to take charge, possession and to secure any cargo of crude oil on board FPSO Tamara Tokoni against expropriation, waste, dissipation and or fraudulent disposition by any of the parties (FBN & GHL) pending the hearing and determination of a suit before the trial court and or court of arbitration in the case between the First Bank of Nigeria and General Hydrocarbons Limited and Others.

A three-man panel led by Justice Polycap Tema Kwahar while allowing the appeal filed by First Bank said the interest of justice in the case demanded that the res be preserved pending the determination of the case still pending at the High Court and before an arbitration panel.

The court also issued an order “directing the sale of the cargo of crude oil on board FPSO Tamara Tokoni upon the storage tanks on board FSPO Tamara Tokoni becoming full and to pay the proceeds of each sale into a single interest yielding escrow account in the name of the Chief Registrar of the Court of Appeal pending the hearing of the suit before the trial court and or before the court of arbitration.”

The FPSO has crude oil belonging to GHL, Conoil/ NNPCL.

First Bank claimed that GHL owed it $225.8 million debt.

However, GHL strongly denies, the claim saying FBN severally breached the 2021 Subrogation Agreement and no payment is due.

In the Appeal, GHL accused FBN of abusing an Ex Parte freezing orders when it selectively released part of the crude in the FPSO to Conoil and NNPC but the Court of Appeal has now stopped all that giving all possession and control of all crude in the FPSO to the Chief Registrar assisted by the Admiralty Marshall of the Court of Appeal.

The family of the former Nigeria president Muhammadu Buhari has announced his passing

By Olusegun Adeniyi

Armed with a ventilated plastic crate, each of the 600 young men and women (all wearing hijab uniforms) competed furiously penultimate Friday afternoon at the GBFoods in Ngaski, Kebbi State. As they harvested tomatoes and I watched the workers (each of whom would be paid according to the number of crates they filled by the end of the day), I could see the opportunities for empowerment through agriculture that we have failed to harness in Nigeria. But first, what took me to the farm that also has a tomato paste factory?

On my way from China last October through Qatar Airlines, I met a young man at the airport in Doha who introduced himself to me as Tokunbo Aderibigbe, a media/communication manager for GBFoods. After the usual exchanges, Tokunbo said he would like me to see what they are doing with tomatoes at their agro-processing farm in Kebbi State. While I agreed to the idea, I said that for security reasons, my visit would have to coincide with whenever a government delegation visited the farm. So, when Tokunbo informed me two weeks ago that the Minister of State for Trade and Investment, John Enoh, was visiting their farm in Kebbi, I signed on to the trip. And I was impressed with what I saw.

Spanning 1,500 hectares, the farm boasts a 620-metric-tonnes-per-day processing plant that generates hundreds of direct jobs, which the company plans to double in the next expansion phase. By focusing on local production, GBFoods and Tomato Jos, another leading company in the sector, are playing a key role in the reduction of our dependence on imported tomato paste. But much more importantly is how they are empowering smallholder farmers and creating employment opportunities for local people in the communities where they operate. On average, the number of casual workers engaged on the farm daily is put at about 1,200. Although one could see a heavy-duty tomato harvester machine on the farm, they chose to use the local people so that the community could own the project and in turn protect the farm—a very wise decision that has paid off.

Nigeria is reputed as the second-largest producer of tomatoes in Africa after Egypt and the 13th-largest in the world. But with only about 2.3 million metric tons of tomatoes annually, our country still depends on the importation of tomato paste, largely due to post-harvest losses and the number of inadequate processing facilities. Meanwhile, the trip to GBFoods in Kebbi from Abuja took us on a 50-minute flight to the airstrip in Kontagora, Niger State, before a punishing four-hour journey that should ordinarily take no more than one and a half hours if the road were good. The MD of GBFoods, Vincent Egbe with whom I rode, explained the seasonal nature of tomato planting which also requires a specific climatic belt for it to grow and thrive. While the yield at their farm in Spain is 100 metric tonnes per hectare, for Nigerian farmers who rely on rudimentary methods, the yield is 5 metric tonnes per hectare. At their mechanised farm in Kebbi, they have already achieved 78 metric tonnes per hectare.

Tomato cultivation, as Egbe told me, requires a high level of sophistication. “It is an emotional plant that requires the right nutrients while the amount of water and fertilizer must be measured. The first 30 days determine the yield. Most Nigerian farmers plant directly in the absence of nursery (green house),” said Egbe who took me through the processes. “90 percent of tomato is water, so every seedling requires 180 litres of water minimum, and that is a challenge in our country. Four or five states in the north have the water but only three have other ingredients.”

In its August 2017 report, ‘Tomatonomics – Examining Nigeria’s La Tomatina Prospects’, Augusto&Co, a research and credit rating agency, wrote that despite “the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) ranking tomatoes as the vegetable with the highest priority in Nigeria, the annual import bill on tomato is close to $100 million, as over 750,000 tonnes is lost yearly to wastages.” The situation has since improved with some policy initiatives by the federal government. For instance, the National Tomato Policy (2022 – 2026) was designed to cut down on post-harvest losses and curb the import of tomato concentrates by increasing imports tariff from 5 percent to 50 percent and an additional $1500 levy per metric Tonnes. But there are challenges.

At a round table last October to enhance tomato productivity and reduce post-harvest losses, the National Tomato Grower’s Processors and Marketers Association of Nigeria, (NATPAN) president, Abdullahi Ringim, said the non-enforcement of ‘tomato levy’ has created a funding gap in the sector. He noted that some of the major inflationary costs of fresh tomatoes include the impact of pests and increased cost of transportation, among others. When you add insecurity in farming communities, high tariffs on machinery and spares, regulatory bottlenecks etc., one can understand the challenges faced by investors in the sector.

Despite these challenges, Enoh commended the efforts of GBFoods given what he saw and experienced. But the trip was quite revealing in other respects.  On the tarmac in Abuja, as we were boarding, I noticed the man in the cockpit who was clad in kaftan. “Is that not Bala?” I asked to which I got an instant response from Tokunbo, “Yes, that is Senator Bala Ibn Na’Allah.” Until 2023, Na’Allah represented Kebbi South Senatorial seat and was the Deputy Majority leader in the 8th Senate. Incidentally, GB Foods is in his constituency. “Bala, is this your hustle now?” I asked the moment I entered the aircraft and in typical Nigerian fashion, Na’Allah replied with a question, “Is it not a legitimate hustle?”

Na’Allah’s story in the aviation sector started about two decades ago when his second son, now a captain, was then studying at Cape flying school, South Africa. The young man challenged the family at a breakfast table to go and learn how to fly if they considered it an easy vocation. As Na’Allah once told me, they took up the challenge and he secured admission at the Nigerian College of Aviation, Zaria while his late eldest son, Abdulkareem, went to Phoenix Aviation in Florida. His last daughter, Aisha, who was by his side in the cockpit on our trip two weeks ago, studied at the Aviation College, Ilorin and later in Florida. That was how they built a family of pilots. So smooth was our flight and flawless the landing that when we arrived back in Abuja, there was a spontaneous applause for the Na’Allahs from all of us. The message Bala Ibn Na’Allah, who is also a lawyer, sends to many of his colleagues is that politics should be a vocation. Not something on which to build their lives.

But back to GBFoods. I believe that the federal government should assist such enterprises with special agricultural subsidies to reduce the cost of fertilizers, pesticides and other farm inputs. Addressing the challenge of regulatory bottlenecks that impede most businesses in Nigeria is equally important. We should also encourage other stakeholders to enter the sector. Interestingly, the Executive Secretary/Chief Executive Officer of the National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA), Cornelius Oluwasegun Adebayo, has been sharing with me his vision of farm clusters across the country and with what I saw at the GBFoods in Kebbi, I believe we can use agriculture to address the challenge of poverty, food insecurity and youth unemployment in Nigeria.

Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja

The family of Late Chief Moshood Kashimawo Abiola, the winner of the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential election, has said that it would respond to the memoir of former Military President, Gen. Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida (rtd), after looking at the confirmation of facts and the public response.

Son of the Late MKO Abiola, Mr Kola Abiola, made this known in a statement issued on Sunday, where he wondered why it took Gen Babangida 32 years to confirm what the whole world knew all along that Abiola won the 1993 presidential election.

He said that since the book launch, there had been calls for a response from him as the head of the family.

Mr. Abiola said: “As at June 1993, many were unborn, toddlers or teenagers with limited first-hand knowledge, let alone understanding of the facts surrounding June 12.

“The colossal tragedy that unfolded thereafter that unifies us, resurfaced as a result of the book launch.

“Furthermore, the June 12 election goes beyond MKO and family. There were so many other families directly affected and lives lost as a result of the annulment, not to mention the profound impact on the unity and economic development of our great country, Nigeria, to date.

“As such, it is necessary that as a family, we take more than just a cursory look into the confirmation of known facts, but also the public’s response.

“For these reasons and the preservation of history, I and many members of the family have decided to take a bit more time before giving a substantive response.

“Personally, having been an active participant in the campaign, the election and the subsequent struggle to protect the mandate, I wonder whether the question Nigerians should ask themselves is whether the country has learned any lessons from the tragic June 12 annulment. Frankly, I am not sure.”

The trial and criminalisation of free speech

Dele Farotimi, a prominent Nigerian human rights lawyer and activist, embodies resilience in the face of systemic oppression.

Known for his bold critiques of governance and social injustice, he was targeted with threats, lawsuits, and public vilification aimed at silencing his voice, which culminated to his gestapo-styled arrest on December 3, 2024, by the Ekiti State Police Command, afterwhich he was detained for 21 days over alleged defamation tied to his book Nigeria and Its Criminal Justice System.

Farotimi’s ordeal exposed the weaponisation of the legal system against dissent. Despite harsh detention conditions and stringent bail terms, including a N30 million bond and media restrictions, his unwavering stance on governance and social justice in the shrinking space for free speech in Nigeria and his enduring commitment to truth and accountability, puts him on the radar.

Union Bank of Nigeria has announced the launch of the fourth edition of its Save and Win Palli Promo, which will run from December 2024 to May 2025.

A statement issued by the bank said the campaign offers customers the chance to win over ₦131 million in cash prizes, Motorcycles, Tricycles, Fuel Vouchers, and a star prize of ₦5 million to be handed out to three lucky winners at the grand finale in May.

“Open to new and existing customers, the Save and Win Palli Promo requires participants to save a minimum of ₦10,000 monthly to qualify for draws. Monthly winners can receive ₦100,000, while quarterly draws will reward lucky savers with Motorcycles, Tricycles, and other exciting prizes. Customers who save in multiples of ₦10,000 will increase their chances of winning”, it stated.

Since its inception in 2021, the Save and Win Palli Promo has rewarded close to 2000 customers with various prizes, including household appliances, cash gifts, and a GAC SUV. The initiative underscores Union Bank’s commitment to supporting Nigerians during challenging economic times by promoting a sustainable savings culture.

Speaking on the campaign’s launch, Vivian Imoh-Ita, Union Bank’s Head of Retail Banking and Digital, stated, “The Save and Win Palli Promo has consistently improved the lives of our customers by encouraging financial stability and rewarding loyalty. This fourth edition reaffirms our commitment to enabling inclusive growth and positively impacting communities.”

The statement stated that winners will be selected through a transparent, electronically generated process supervised by regulatory authorities. It also said new customers can join the promo by downloading the UnionMobile app to open an account or visiting any Union Bank branch.

Noting that Union Bank’s Save and Win Palli Promo continues to reflect the bank’s dedication to fostering financial inclusion, transforming lives, and empowering customers to achieve their financial goals, it added that existing customers can reactivate accounts by calling the Contact Centre or visiting a branch.

Big Ten Records has announced the release of Odogwu, the latest single from their talented artist, BigzIQ. Known for his captivating blend of Afrobeat rhythms and modern melodies, BigzIQ has established himself as one of the most promising rising stars in the music industry.

Born Miracle Aina Simileoluwa Isaac, BigzIQ has been gaining recognition for his unique sound and storytelling. Hailing from Kwara State, Nigeria, and raised in Ilorin, his passion for music began early and was nurtured in his church’s youth choir. Since officially starting his music career in 2018, BigzIQ has consistently worked to refine his artistry, earning him a loyal fanbase.

The single Odogwu, featuring Zadok, is a vibrant and heartfelt Afrobeat track that celebrates the transformation and support in a person’s life, whether from loved ones or mentors, that makes overcoming challenges possible. The song’s upbeat tempo and inspiring lyrics make it a sure vibe for anyone looking to celebrate life and its victories.
“This track is about recognizing the extraordinary impact that support and transformation can have in our lives,” said BigzIQ. “It’s a song for everyone who has faced challenges and come out stronger with the help of those who stood by them.”

Produced by the exceptional young talent Greamar, Odogwu carries the energy and sound that BigzIQ is known for, combined with Zadok’s dynamic vocal delivery. Together, they’ve created a masterpiece that’s sure to resonate with listeners across the globe.

With this release, BigzIQ is making a bold statement in the Afrobeats scene and his fans can expect more to come from this talented artist as he continues to push boundaries and share his story through music.

By Olusegun Adeniyi

(Text of the review of Chris Anyanwu’s memoir, ‘Bold Leap’ at the public presentation in Abuja on Monday, 2 December 2024)

The array of eminent personalities gathered here this afternoon and the subject matter of the book we are about to present remind me of a story. A young man who had ‘Japaed’ abroad and was not doing so well decided to return home. Curious to know what his son planned to do with his life and what profession he was going to choose for his future, the father came up with an idea. After the driver had gone to pick up the boy at the airport, the father placed a bottle of whisky, a wad of dollar notes, a gun and a bible on the table in his son’s room. When his wife asked what he was doing, he explained his motive. “If he picks up the whiskey, it means he doesn’t want to do anything with his life. If he picks up the bible, then he will be a Pastor, which is good. If he picks up the dollars, he will be a businessman, which is even better. But if he picks up the gun, he is going into crime as a gangster.” The man said further that he had already installed a camera in the room and a monitor in their own room to watch. Not long after, the son arrived from the airport. And without him knowing, his parents were in their room, watching. As soon as he walked into his room, he noticed the four things on the table. First, he put the wad of dollars in his purse, then he put the gun in his back pocket. He picked up the whiskey, opened it and gulped everything down in one swig. Then he picked up the bible, opened it and started reading.

The father smiled and exclaimed, “and I didn’t see this coming!”

Confused, his wife asked, “you didn’t see what coming?”

The father replied: “Our son is going to be a politician!”

Mr Chairman, distinguished ladies and gentlemen, Senator Chris Anyanwu’s memoir, ‘Bold Leap’, provides a candid account of her journey to becoming one of Nigeria’s most influential female figures in media and politics. Written with warmth and grit, the book offers a rare peep into her personal struggles and triumphs, while also engaging readers with insights on socio-political challenges in the country, especially for women in male-dominated fields. Divided into three parts, ‘Bold Leap’ showcases Anyanwu’s relentless drive, making it a compelling narrative of resilience and empowerment. At the end, the reflections on her career in journalism and politics provide a valuable lesson for those who seek an understanding of the rewards and perils of advocating for change in Nigeria.

Maya Angelou, the late American memoirist and renowned poet once said, “A strong woman stands up for herself. A stronger woman stands up for everybody else”. By standing up for worthy causes, even at her personal expense, Anyanwu paid the ultimate price as one of four media practitioners who went to jail for plotting a coup with their pens during one of the most inglorious eras in Nigeria. But I am getting ahead of myself. ‘Bold Leap’ is a compelling memoir that captures the essence of Anyanwu’s life and work. Her story is an inspiring testament to the power of resilience, courage, and dedication to one’s values.

The book opens with a foreword by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who underscores the author’s courage and leadership. Anyanwu’s “single-mindedness, guts and rugged determination to leave her comfort zone of journalism, leap into the rough and tumble politics of Nigeria and make a success of it,” according to the former president, makes her a fitting role model with wonderful lessons and experiences that would serve younger generations of Nigerians. The foreword sets the tone for a memoir that not only chronicles Anyanwu’s personal experiences but also shines a light on issues of gender discrimination, media freedom, and governance at the highest levels in Nigeria.

The narrative begins with the author’s formative years and her pioneering media career before the foray into politics. The three-part structure allows readers to see her evolution over time and the circumstances that shaped her outlook and decisions at each moment.From a relatively young age, Anyanwu had been encouraged to embrace a strong work ethic and a commitment to societal duty. Appropriately titled ‘Whose Daughter Are You?’, the first chapter presents Anyanwu’s sense of identity while her reflection on the traumatic period of the Nigerian Civil War is indeed sobering. Her firsthand experiences must have instilled in her an acute understanding of the socio-political complexities of Nigeria.

Meanwhile,the coming-of-age period illustrates how Anyanwu’s independence and ambition emerged in response to the circumstances around her. The strong-willed personality, which would later become a hallmark of her career, is first evident here. Her university education in the United States gave her the much-needed preparation for the journalism she chose as a profession. At the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), Anyanwu quickly discovered the challenge of building a career in a still-developing media environment.

As a journalist, Anyanwu was known for her dedication to shedding light on issues that mattered to everyday Nigerians. Her reporting was fearless, and she quickly gained a reputation for integrity in a field that was often susceptible to political influence. Anyanwu not only covered the Senate for two years during the Second Republic but also wrote ‘The Law Makers, Federal Republic of Nigeria’ which has become the book of record for the National Assembly since 1982. It is also remarkable that NEWSLINE, a flagship programme she conceptualised and produced while at NTA before she left to work as Commissioner for Information, Youth, Sports, Culture and Social Welfare in Imo State, not only became a hit but has also endured.

As a state commissioner, Anyanwu experienced the layers of bureaucracy and resistance that come with a leadership position in government. The dedication to her role, despite societal biases against women in leadership, underscores her resilience and commitment to positive change. But following her tour of duty in Imo State, Anyanwureturned to the newsroom but with a determination to establish her own media platform.  The founding of The Sunday Magazine (TSM) represented a bold move for Anyanwu, providing her with a platform to address some of Nigeria’s most pressing issues, including political corruption and social injustice. TSM quickly gained prominence, setting a high standard for journalistic excellence in the magazine genre.

The rise of the late General Sani Abacha’s repressive regime made Anyanwu’s role as a media entrepreneur increasingly dangerous. She was arrested and tried for the 1995 ‘foiled coup’, following a publication in her magazine. Accused of being an “accessory after the fact of treason”, Anyanwu was sentenced to life imprisonment which was later reduced to 15 years. Like other survivors, Anyanwu only regained freedom after the death of Abacha. The narrative of her experience and that of others is a painful reminder of the price some people paid for the democracy we now enjoy in Nigeria.

Throughout her ordeal, Anyanwu’s spirit remained unbroken, and her resilience in the face of adversity is deeply moving. As a woman of courage and equanimity, she survived the mental, emotional and psychological trauma she passed through at Kirikiri, Jos, Gombe and Kaduna prisons. But despite the ordeals of her incarceration, Anyanwu did not lose sight of who she was. She read profusely while in Kaduna prison and began to write commentaries under assumed names on matters concerning them. Her hobbies turned to reading, writing, thinking and more writing. It was at the Kaduna prison that she conceived Hot FM, a radio station.

While in detention, Abacha’s government used the opportunity to strip Anyanwu of virtually all her assets. The then Minister of Works and Housing, General Abdulkareem Adisa seized her plot of land at Osborne Phase One, measuring 2,500 square metres and reallocated it to someone else. As it would turn out, two years later, Adisa (who is now of blessed memory) also became a victim of Abacha’s machinations when he was roped into the Oladipo Diya coup that got him sentenced to death.

Following her release, Anyanwu had to reintegrate into society and rebuild her life. She recalls the struggle of reconnecting with her family, drawing strength from these relationships as she embarked on her next professional venture. But she also recalls with sadness the fickleness of friendship in Nigeria, noting that the late Ms Onyeka Onwenu and Dr Eddy Iroh were the only people who reached out to her during her detention. Throughout the three years she was incarcerated, according to Anyanwu, no staff of TSM came to visit her nor wrote to encourage her.

In the concluding part, Anyanwu takes readers through the story ofher transition into politics, driven by a desire to create change from within the system. This section of the book presents an unfiltered look at the challenges women face in Nigerian politics, where traditional biases often obstruct their progress. Anyanwu opened the narrative with how she decided to run for the Senate, the obstacles she encountered along the way and how she eventually prevailed. Her experience highlights the unpredictability of Nigerian politics, and the resilience needed to endure setbacks. While Anyanwu may have had a relatively easy ride to the Senate, her decision to contest the governorship of her state met with stiff resistance. 

A particularly notable aspect of Anyanwu’s writing is her dedication to depicting the realities of Nigerian society, including its patriarchal nature and resistance to change. She does not shy away from addressing the cultural norms that hinder women in leadership, advocating instead for a society that values competence over tradition. Her experiences serve as a powerful call to action, urging readers to confront and dismantle these barriers. For instance, her narrative on ‘breaking the kolanut’ serves as a powerful reminder of the entrenched biases that hinder women’s progress in leadership not just in the Southeast but indeed all over the country. I consider it important to take a little bit from the book on this subject matter. This is Anyanwu at her brilliant best:

“Imo political leaders are wonderful people. They are very subtle, sometimes inscrutable. They never come out openly to shout: No, You Can’t or No You Won’t. They just keep smiling and rubbing their hands as they chew kola nuts. Perhaps, they had too much respect to do that. But it was a leader in Orlu, Nze I.M.O Umunnah, a very outspoken and direct man that suggested I give him the mandate to poll opinion among the state political class to discover what sort of leadership they wanted and if they were ready for a female Governor. I gave him the mandate. He went round for some weeks and came back with what I thought was a remarkable report.

The kernel of it was that they were more worried about certain inter-group prejudices and attitudes and wanted someone with more urbane attitude without insular hang-ups and native attitudes and in that, they rated me highly. But the problem remained the gender issue. Everywhere he went they asked him: ‘If we make a woman the Governor, Who Will Break the Kola?’ So, I said if kola is the issue, then let’s see what can be done about this nut that seems to be the embodiment of manhood in the state. I came up with the riposte: ‘I Will Appoint a Special Assistant for Kolanuts.’

It made people crack up in laughter wherever we went but that’s what happens when the serious business of governance is shackled by mundane considerations by a nut smaller than the size of a closed fist. At best what was required was a small administrative adjustment to ensure people’s sensitivities were properly respected. But it cannot be that on the basis of some ancient beliefs and custom, a whole gender that constitutes almost 57 percent of the population is being ruled out of leadership for all time. Kola nut should be given its place in ceremonies but the country’s constitution which recognizes all citizens irrespective of gender and guarantees their right to vote and be voted for should be seen as supreme. The role that the iron curtain plays against women running for governorship in Eastern Nigeria does not match the general advancement of the people in other measures of development.

Indeed, Anyanwu’s ‘Bold Leap’ is more than a personal memoir; it is a reflection on some of the obstacles that prevent Nigerian society from fully realizing its potential. Themes of resilience, gender equality, and freedom of expression are woven throughout her story, making it both an inspiring and thought-provoking read. Her ability to candidly recount her hardships, especially her imprisonment, adds authenticity to her narrative and makes her triumphs even more impressive.

As Francis Bacon once reminded us, “some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested”. ‘Bold Leap’ is one of the books young men and women, who want to make a bold statement not just in their personal lives, but the society at large, should chew and digest. Anyanwu was a brilliant journalist who went on to establish her own media platform. And in a male-dominated senatorial zone, she rose to become senator twice.  She even had the courage to vie for the number one position in the state. 

For readers interested in Nigerian history, politics, or gender issues, ‘Bold Leap’ offers both inspiration and a wealth of knowledge. Anyanwu’s journey from a journalist to a political leader underscores the importance of standing firm in one’s convictions, even in the face of adversity. Her life is a testament to the impact one individual can have on society, and her story is sure to resonate with readers around the world.

By Olusegun Adeniyi

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recently published a damning report on Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) testing trends in Nigeria based on findings by a leading DNA testing centre in Lagos. According to the report, 27 per cent of paternity tests conducted came back negative, indicating that more than one in four men tested are not the biological fathers of the children in question. Most of the tests (85.9 per cent), the report further reveals, were conducted for ‘Peace of Mind’, rather than legal motivations. “These findings offer a unique window into the changing dynamics of Nigerian families and society” said Elizabeth Digia, the operations manager at Smart DNA which conducted the survey. “The high rate of negative paternity tests and the surge in immigration-related testing are particularly noteworthy. They reflect broader societal trends that merit further discussion and research. The concentration of testing in Lagos also raises important questions about accessibility and awareness of DNA testing services across Nigeria.”

Four years ago, a Delta State High Court Judge claimed that DNA tests conducted on three children from his first marriage revealed that he is not their biological father. The Judge detailed how he first received an anonymous message questioning the fatherhood of the youngest. When that information proved to be true, DNA tests were extended to the others. The Judge further explained that his decision to address the press on the matter was “to prevent damaging speculations, half-truths and outright lies from persons who may want to cash in on the tragedy that has befallen” his home while leaving his ex-wife “and her boyfriend or boyfriends to their conscience”.

Following the publication, I wrote a column, ‘I am Not Your Father’. Although the DNA tests may have brought to light infidelities concealed for two decades, the real damage of that tragic saga, as I wrote back then, was to the innocent children who had become young adults. By publicly disowning them, the Judge conferred on them the ‘bastard’ stigma in a society where victims suffer consequences for the transgressions of others.

Ordinarily, DNA tests are used in forensic criminal investigations to match suspect(s) with evidence collected from crime scenes. They also help to determine victims of mass disasters, (for instance, an earthquake or plane crash) and now also for immigration purposes. While most countries have laws governing the use of DNA in paternity matters, Nigeria appears not to have any, leading to a gross abuse of this scientific method. In countries where DNA has become common, there are strict laws to protect the privacy and rights of the child whose paternity may be in question.

In the age in which we live, people must understand the limits of DNA, current trends in parenting and family dynamics as well as how nurture has literally supplanted nature. In the end, a child (whether biological or by adoption) brings us comfort and is a product of our love and care. In the United States, federal agencies that regulate genetic tests include the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). They are regulated and evaluated on three criteria, including how well the test predicts the presence or absence of a particular gene or genetic change and whether the tests consistently and accurately detect whether a specific genetic variant is present.

Considering the increasing popularity of DNA testing in Nigeria, we need to borrow from other countries by putting in place the requisite regulation that will address all salient issues in the sector.

By Sunday Ehigiator

Elder Statesman, Chief Emeka Anyaoku, has paid a heartfelt tribute to his fellow statesman and compatriot, President General of Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, who passed away recently.

In a condolence message, Anyaoku described Iwuanyanwu as a great Nigerian patriot who dedicated his life to promoting solidarity among the country’s diverse ethnic groups.

He recalled their recent collaboration at the funeral of Professor Ben Nwabueze in Atani in March 2024 and their joint effort, along with former President Olusegun Obasanjo, to convene a meeting of South East governors in Enugu to discuss regional development.

A short statement by him states, “I mourn the passing of Chief Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu Ahaejiagamba, an Igbo leader who was a great Nigerian patriot.

“Chief Iwuanyanwu was a committed advocate of solidarity among the various peoples across the Y-shaped Niger and Benue rivers of Nigeria.

“I participated with him in the obsequies of the late Professor Ben Nwabueze in Atani in March 2024 and along with former President Olusegun Obasanjo together with him convened a meeting of the five Governors of the South East zone in Enugu on 2 August to discuss the socio-economic development of the region (though his illness ultimately prevented him from attending the meeting). 

“He has left a legacy of admirable service in his profession of engineering and more importantly of a life that demonstrated true leadership of his and other peoples of our diverse country Nigeria.

“I pray that the Almighty will comfort his family and friends while his soul rests in perfect peace.”

By C. Don Adinuba

As Bart Nnaji, founder and chairman of the Geometric Power group, Nigeria’s only integrated electricity organization, turns 68 today (Saturday, July 13, 2024), one important lesson our countrymen and women can learn from him is the imperative of matchless optimism. Even when all hope is forlorn and all available evidence points to gloom and doom, Nnaji not only expects the best but also works passionately towards delivering superior performance. At a time when top Western multinationals are leaving Nigeria in droves, Nnaji is demonstrating unparalleled patriotism: he is leading General Electric of the United States, the world’s oldest and largest electricity equipment manufacturing company in the world, to build another power-generating firm in Aba, Abia State. If not for the Federal Government’s suspension of power purchase agreements (PPAs) some years ago, the plant would have been completed by now. This is a story for another day.

Indeed, only a person with Nnaji’s faith in Nigeria could insist, for a whole 20 years, on proceeding with the 188 Megawatt Geometric Power Plant in Aba and the Aba Power Electric Company to a positive conclusion, despite the spirited determination of top and powerful Federal Government officials between 2012 and 2015. These investments, the largest in the Southeast, are worth S800m. The fact that the Aba Independent Power Project was commissioned last February 26 is nothing short of a miracle. It is frequently difficult to comprehend what drives Nnaji’s optimism against all evidence and rationality. This is all the more so because, as the great American thinker, Francis Fukuyama, notes in The End of History and The Last Man, we live in a world where pessimists are considered profound and optimists are regarded as naïve, even when events eventually vindicate optimists.

The streak of boundless optimism has enabled Nnaji to record several significant attainments. He joined the University of Massachusetts in 1983 at the age of 26 and rose to Professor and Director of Automation and Robotics Laboratory almost within the twinkle of an eye. He was the first Black person to be become tenured full Professor of Engineering in the University. In 1996, the University of Pittsburgh named him Distinguished Professor of Engineering. No Black person by then had been named a Distinguished Professor in Engineering in American history. At St John’s University in New York, he made history in 1980 as the best graduating student in physics and mathematics. No black person had emerged as the best overall student in the institution which was then 120 years old.

An incident that occurred when he was in year five at Saint Patrick’s Secondary School Emene, Enugu, is worth recalling. During the inter-house sports competition, there were no persons to represent his house in two or three field and track events. He was the Deputy Senior Prefect, so he felt personally challenged. Though he had never participated in any sporting competition, he took up the gauntlet. Nnaji surprisingly took the first position in the long jump and triple jump, defeating star athletes representing East Central State in national competitions.

Nnaji was thus buoyed to represent his house in two other races, hurdles and 100 meters. He came first in each. By the time anyone could say, Bart, he had begun to represent East Central State, now comprising Abia, Anambra, Imo, Ebonyi, and Enugu states, in national competitions. In one of the events in 1975, he met, among other great sports icons, Emmanuel Okala of the famous Enugu Rangers Football Club who was to become Nigeria’s most legendary goalkeeper. They are still friends.

Nnaji joined the East Central State Sports Council, as Okala had done. He received scholarships to study in the United States for excellence in sports and academics. Though one of the scholarships came from Columbia University in New York, an Ivy League institution, Nnaji chose the one from St John’s University because of his devotion to the Catholic Church which owns the institution. Much as he would have accepted the offer from Columbia if he had known what he now knows about the rankings of the two New York universities, he is very proud of the ethics and values St John imbued in him, especially regarding working for the public good. Lest we forget, Nnaji’s records in the long jump and triple jump at St John’s remain unbeaten, and this is one of the considerations for his name to be in the university’s hall of fame.

To appreciate Nnaji’s philosophy that there is no mountain too high to climb, another incident is worth recalling. The immediate Catholic Archbishop of Owerri, Anthony Obinna, an outstanding scholar, approached Nnaji in 2016 with a proposal which the religious leader was fairly certain that the scientist would reject: to deliver a two-three-hour academic public lecture in central or standard Igbo to a large audience that would be broadcast live. Nnaji, who had never studied Igbo even for a day all his life, accepted the challenge with enthusiasm! And he delivered the lecture to an endless applause from a huge crowd on September 4, 2016.

Now, the third example of Nnaji walking successfully where angels fear to tread. The leadership of the National Electric Power Authority (NEPA) was in 2000 privately bemoaning the fact that there were no Nigerian organizations capable yet of competing with foreign firms in such things as building power plants, not to speak of building an emergency power plant within one year. NEPA was then constructing the Shiroro to Abuja 330KV Transmission Line and needed a plant to supply power to key places in Abuja like State House, the Central Bank of Nigeria headquarters, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) headquarters, the Federal Secretariat, and the entire Central ������Ƶ District. Nnaji, an industrial and mechanical engineering professor, led a small team of Nigerian engineers to take up the challenge. The 22MW Abuja Emergency Power Plant was commissioned by Vice President Atiku Abubakar in 2001, and its performance was to be rated excellent.

Impressed by this achievement, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the newly appointed Minister of Finance, and the visiting World Bank president, James Wolfonsohn, asked Nnaji in March 2003 if he could consider building a 50MW gas-fired plant to assist low, medium, and large manufacturing firms in Aba whose greatest impediment to full industrialization was poor electricity. He readily accepted. The size of the plant is now 188MW, and is embedded in a power distribution company that evacuates its electricity – Aba Power which is now the 12th DisCo in Nigeria. In addition, it has a 27-kilometre gas pipeline from Owaza in Ukwa West Local Government Area to the Osisioma Industrial Estate in Aba. The Geometric Power group boasts Nigeria’s most advanced power infrastructure, including its steel tubular poles that can withstand any earthquake and are found only in world-class cities like San Francisco and Tokyo that are natural disaster-prone.

Nigeria is grappling with its most difficult socioeconomic challenges, and local as well as international confidence in its capacity is at an all-time low. Nigerians need to learn at least two related things from Bart Nnaji, Commander of the Niger (CON) winner, Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM) laureate, Fellow of the Academy of Science (FAS), Fellow of the Academy of Engineering (FAEng), etc: faith in the Nigerian possibility and the value of boundless optimism. All Nigerians wish Nnaji many more years of good health, wisdom, and service to God and the country.

Adinuba, Anambra State Commissioner for Information and Public Enlightenment (2018-22), is a management and leadership researcher.

INTERVIEW

John Peters, former Chair of the Association of MBAs (an organisation that accredits Harvard, Stanford, Wharton and IMD), is a top leadership speaker and survivor par excellence. He will be among the three faculty members delivering the TEXEM programme, ‘Strategic Leadership Unleashed: Thriving In An Uncertain GLOCAL World’, scheduled for May 26 and 30 in Manchester. Other faculty members include Prof Rodria Laline (the inventor of the IP being used on all ATMs globally, former SVP for Oracle in Asia Pacific and Harvard, INSEAD and IMD professor), and Prof Paul Griffith (the world’s first professor of Management to lead a team to launch a rocket into space). In this interview, Peters shares insights on how leaders can win in these turbulent times.

As part of TEXEM’s ‘Strategic Leadership Unleashed: Thriving In An Uncertain Glocal World’, you will be one of the three faculty. How does understanding the importance of strategy in today’s business landscape contribute to effective leadership?

Understanding the importance of Strategic Leadership enables leaders to adopt a holistic approach to decision-making, balancing short-term objectives with long-term considerations, creating value for all stakeholders, and ensuring the resilience and longevity of their organisations.

Can you explain how pressure can be utilised as a catalyst for innovation in problem-solving within an organisation?

Pressure can be a powerful catalyst for innovation in problem-solving within an organisation by fostering urgency, resourcefulness, adaptive thinking, risk-taking, collaboration, learning, adaptation, and motivation among individuals and teams. When harnessed effectively, pressure can fuel creativity and drive positive change, leading to breakthrough solutions that propel the organisation forward.

What strategies can leaders employ to recognise crisis as an opportunity for transformation and organisational excellence?

Leaders can employ several strategies to recognise a crisis as an opportunity for transformation and organisational excellence.

Embrace a growth mindset: by reframing challenges as opportunities, leaders can inspire a culture of resilience and creativity within the organisation.

Stay agile and adaptive: by staying nimble and open to new possibilities, leaders can identify opportunities for transformation and guide the organisation towards excellence.

Encourage innovation: By fostering a culture of innovation, leaders can harness the collective intelligence of their workforce to overcome challenges and seize opportunities.

Focus on purpose and values: by anchoring decision-making and actions in core principles, leaders can ensure alignment and coherence across the organisation, guiding efforts towards transformative outcomes that uphold the organisation’s mission and vision.

Communicate transparently: transparent communication fosters trust, builds resilience, and encourages collective problem-solving, laying the foundation for organisational excellence.

Empower and support employees: By investing in employee well-being and development, leaders can foster a motivated and resilient workforce capable of driving transformation.

Learn from adversity: by embracing a mindset of continuous learning and improvement, leaders can leverage crises as catalysts for organisational excellence.

Lead by example: By embodying the values and behaviours they wish to see in others, leaders can inspire confidence, foster trust, and galvanise collective action towards transformative outcomes. By attending the forthcoming TEXEM programme you will be able to glean fresh insights into how to win in these volatile times.

How does fostering a culture of innovation contribute to Strategic Leadership, especially during turbulent times?

Fostering a culture of innovation is strategic for driving sustainable success, particularly in turbulent glocal economic landscapes. By encouraging creativity, adaptability, customer-centricity, and sustainability, organisations can better navigate challenges more effectively, differentiate themselves in the market, and create value for all stakeholders over the long term.

Why is ‘Strategic Leadership Unleashed: Thriving in An Uncertain Glocal World’ important for Nigerian Leaders in these turbulent times?

In these turbulent times, Nigerian leaders face a confluence of global and local challenges, necessitating a paradigm shift in leadership. ‘Strategic Leadership Unleashed: Thriving in An Uncertain Glocal World’ equips leaders with the agility and foresight to navigate complexity.

Through this framework, leaders can anticipate market shifts, harness global opportunities, and address local nuances adeptly. For instance, adept strategic leaders can leverage cross-cultural insights to expand operations internationally while remaining rooted in local values, thus fostering sustainable growth. A prime example of a company embodying these principles is Dangote Group, which, under the strategic leadership of Aliko Dangote, has successfully expanded its footprint globally while maintaining its Nigerian roots. These topics and more will be covered during the forthcoming TEXEM programme, which will be held in Manchester between May 26-30, 2024.

Could you discuss the role of organisational culture in gaining a competitive advantage amidst uncertainty and change?

Organisational culture plays a vital role in gaining a competitive advantage amidst uncertainty and change by influencing adaptability, innovation, resilience, customer-centricity, collaboration, leadership, and vision. Organisations with a culture of innovation are better positioned to drive continuous improvement and stay ahead of competitors in dynamic markets. An organisation with a culture of resilience can weather storms, bounce back from failures, and emerge stronger from challenges, gaining a competitive advantage over less resilient competitors. By aligning their culture with the needs and preferences of their target audience, organisations can gain a competitive advantage by delivering superior value and experiences that resonate with customers.

By fostering a culture that embraces these values and behaviours, organisations can navigate challenges more effectively, differentiate themselves from competitors, and position themselves for long-term success in dynamic environments. Finally, it is all about leadership. With a culture of trust, transparency, and accountability, leaders can gain the confidence of employees and other stakeholders, driving organisational success and gaining a competitive advantage in turbulent times.

What are some effective strategies for navigating uncertainty and developing a sustainable growth blueprint for an organisation?

Navigating uncertainty and developing a sustainable growth blueprint for an organisation requires a combination of strategic foresight, flexibility, and resilience. Here are some effective strategies to achieve this. They include scenario planning, agile strategy development, a focus on core competencies, diversification, and risk management. Others are investment in innovation and R&D, partnerships and collaborations, customer-centricity, continuous learning, and adaptation.

By implementing these strategies, organisations can confidently navigate uncertainty and develop a sustainable growth blueprint that positions them for success in dynamic and unpredictable environments.

Can you provide insights on how real organisations thrived amidst crises and how those lessons can be applied to other contexts?

Nigerian organisations have faced various crises and challenges over the years, and many have demonstrated resilience, innovation, and adaptability in navigating these turbulent times. Here are some insights from Nigerian organisations and how their experiences can offer lessons applicable to other contexts.

Dangote Group: One key strategy that has contributed to its resilience is diversification. The lesson here is the importance of diversification in building resilience and sustaining growth, particularly in volatile environments.

Another is Guaranty Trust Bank:  GTBank has leveraged technology to expand its reach and offer customers innovative financial products and services. The lesson here is the importance of embracing digital transformation and innovation to adapt to changing market conditions and meet customers’ evolving needs.

Lagos government: The Lagos State government has implemented various initiatives to address challenges such as traffic congestion, infrastructure deficits, and environmental degradation. The lesson here is the importance of proactive governance, strategic planning, and public-private partnerships in addressing complex challenges and driving sustainable development.

Overall, many Nigerian organisations have demonstrated resilience, innovation, and adaptability in navigating crises, uncertainties and challenges. The key lessons from their experiences include the importance of diversification, digital transformation, innovation, collaboration, and proactive governance in building resilience and sustaining growth in uncertain environments. These lessons can be applied to other contexts, particularly in emerging markets and developing economies facing similar challenges. The forthcoming TEXEM programme will inspire fresh insights into how to turn the glocal hurricane into tailwinds.

Can you provide insights into how Nigerian organisations thrived amidst crises and how those lessons can be applied to other contexts?

Nigerian organisations have faced various crises and challenges, including economic downturns, political instability, security concerns, and infrastructure limitations. Despite these obstacles, many Nigerian organisations have demonstrated resilience, adaptability, and innovation to thrive amidst crises. Here are some insights from Nigerian organisations and how those lessons can be applied to other contexts:

Resilience in adversity: Nigerian organisations have developed a strong sense of resilience stemming from navigating a volatile and unpredictable business environment. They have learned to adapt quickly to changing circumstances, finding creative solutions to overcome challenges and continue operating effectively despite constraints.

Innovation in resource constraints: Nigerian organisations have a history of innovating in resource-constrained environments. These innovations often involve leveraging technology, embracing frugal innovation principles, and fostering a culture of creativity and problem-solving. The ability to innovate in resource-constrained environments is a valuable lesson for organisations worldwide, demonstrating the importance of creativity, adaptability, and resourcefulness in driving sustainable growth.

Entrepreneurial spirit: Nigeria has a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem characterised by a diverse range of startups and SMEs operating across various sectors. These entrepreneurs demonstrate a strong entrepreneurial spirit, characterised by a willingness to take risks, experiment with new ideas, and persevere in the face of adversity. This entrepreneurial mindset fuels innovation, drives economic growth, and creates opportunities for job creation and wealth generation.

Community engagement and collaboration: Nigerian organisations often prioritise community engagement and collaboration as part of their business strategies. By engaging with stakeholders and fostering collaboration, organisations can build trust, enhance their reputation, and create shared value for all parties involved. This highlights the importance of stakeholder management, corporate social responsibility, and sustainable business practices in driving long-term success.

Adaptation to market dynamics: Nigerian organisations have learned to adapt quickly to changing market dynamics, whether due to economic fluctuations, regulatory changes, or shifts in consumer behaviour. This provides a valuable lesson for organisations in any context, emphasising the importance of agility, flexibility, and strategic foresight in navigating uncertainty and driving sustainable growth.

Given the myriad challenges Nigerian organisations are facing, why should executives attend this forthcoming TEXEM programme?

Attending the executive development programme on ‘Strategic Leadership Unleashed: Thriving In An Uncertain Glocal World’ will equip Nigerian executives with the knowledge, skills, and strategies needed to address the myriad challenges facing their organisations effectively.   The interactive programme will include navigating uncertainty, driving innovation, enhancing resilience, optimising resources, stakeholder engagement, and leadership development. Executives can lead their organisations to thrive in Nigeria’s dynamic and competitive business landscape by investing in their professional development. Furthermore, through this programme, participants will build enduring relationships that will support them in their professional and personal quest to optimise their impact.

How do you foresee participants implementing the techniques learned in your sessions to improve their organisational dynamics, especially in an uncertain glocal world?

The fundamental idea here is to look at new ideas, understand them, learn how to practice and master them and leave the workshop with the belief that the ideas are worth putting into practice and the determination to do the work to master them so that the ideas can be brought to bear on the leadership practice of each individual attendee. I am aware of the time and the emotional energy required to do this. Only the determined will succeed. Given that this programme will be leveraging TEXEM’s tested and proven methodology that has helped thousands of leaders to win by making learning engaging, stimulating, impactful, and beneficial, you can trust this programme will be very actionable for all participants.

Furthermore, the TEXEM methodology inspires among participants the determination required to build a better self, team, and organisation and then to try to build a better Nigeria. Thus, participants will be driven to continue to make the necessary efforts until they have mastered the tools and techniques to which they are introduced. When they are capable of being inspirers of implementers, they will then meet with success in the field, which will encourage them to persevere with applying theory to practice until they have developed an improved leadership practice for themselves. For more information about the forthcoming TEXEM programme, please email caroline.lucas@texem.co.uk or visit texem.co.uk

By Femi Fani-Kayode

35,000 innocent and defenceless Palestinians, including 15,000 children, have been targeted and killed in Gaza by Israel over the last 6 months yet it was only after seven western aid workers of the World Central Kitchen were tragically and callously targeted and murdered in cold blood by the Israeli Defence Force last week that western Governments and the Western media are beginning to recognise the fact that the Jewish state has turned into a monstrous and uncontrollable beast.

This begs the following questions. Does blood not flow through the veins of Arabs and Muslims in the same way that it flows through the veins of westerners and Christians? Is the blood of westerners redder than the blood of Arabs? Do Palestinian lives not matter? Are American, British, Australian and French lives more precious than the lives of Palestinian men, women and children?

How can one explain or wish away this glaring display of emotional selectivity, hypocrisy and double standards? Is it not racism in its most glaring and ugly form?

Is this not a case of psychological apartheid in motion and have the leaders of the West not developed a classic sociopathic and psychopathic disposition when it comes to the suffering of the Palestinians.

Even after 75 years of barbarous servitude and occupation followed by the mass murder and genocide that we are witnessing in Gaza today few notable western leaders give a damn and most of them have not only turned a blind eye to it but are also willing partners and complicit in the most graphic and barbaric expression of man’s inhumanity to man and sheer wickedness since the Nazi holocaust of World War 11.

Given this all-embracing endorsement and unconditional support that they enjoy is it any wonder that the Zionists believe that they have the divine right to give life and take it at will and at their pleasure?

Is it any wonder that the Jewish state believes that it can get away with mass murder and ethnic cleansing? Is it any wonder that the Zionists believe that they are divine beings with a divine purpose, the master race, God’s chosen people?

Is it any wonder that they believe that they are totally and completely above the law and untouchable given the unconditional support and tacit approval that they enjoy from NATO and the powers that be in the west?

Over the last six months western leaders have applauded Israel for slaughtering the Palestinians and destroying all their infrastructures yet they only started questioning their devilish collusion with what can only be described as unadulterated evil when seven of their own citizens who were doing charity work and helping to feed the starved and beleaguered children of Gaza were also butchered in a hail of precision rockets that brutally cut them down one after the other.

These same people did not shed a tear or say a word when Israeli jets mowed down hundreds of Palestinian civilians as they tried to grab food from aid trucks that came in from Egypt.

To them that did not matter and neither did they view it as an atrocity or describe it as a war crime or a crime against humanity because those that were murdered were “mainly Muslims and only Arabs”.

Is this fair? Can it be justified or defended? Is it not a perfidious display of double speak, double standards and devilry? Is it not a gratuitous insult to our collective humanity and a monumental shame? Are Arabs, Africans, Asians and the people of the “global South” not human beings too?

Again for the last few months western leaders stuck to their oars and stubbornly refused to acknowledge the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a wild and rabid dog that cannot be controlled and that no longer listens to its master.

They refused to accept the fact that he had become the proverbial falcon that was no longer prepared to listen to the falconer.

They refused to recognise the fact that the genocide in Gaza was not about religion but rather about the implementation of an insidious, sinister, religious and racist agenda and an unconciable attempt by a horrendous and deluded horde of callous, bitter and vengeful Zionist barbarians to decimate, displace and exterminate the Palestinian people and steal their land.

So drunk are Netanyahu and those around him on the blood of Palestinian children that not even American President Joe Biden, their biggest and greatest friend and ally, can control them.

Will the Zionists ever accept the fact that killing women, children, refugees, journalists, clerics, doctors, nurses, hospital workers, United Nations staff, the elderly, the disabled, the mentally challenged, the weak and other innocent and defenceless civilians in the name of world Jewry and the Israeli state is not only unacceptable but also an abomination and an affront to our collective humanity.

They say when a dog loses its mind and not only refuses to listen to its master but also turns on him and attempts to bite him one is constrained to put a bullet in its head and put it out of its misery.

Perhaps the same solution should be applied to the Zionist state. Perhaps it is time for it to be put down like a sick, dangerous and rabid old dog and removed from the face of the earth. I have said it before and I will say it again: in light of the events of the last six months Israel has lost her right to exist.

And if calling out Israel for the atrocities they are committing in Gaza and insisting on an immediate & unconditional ceasefire makes me anti-semitic then so be it.

As a matter of fact it is a badge and label that I would wear proudly. I do not believe that it is acceptable for the Jewish state to consistently break international humanitarian law and commit war crimes. If that makes me anti-semitic then so be it.

I do not believe that aid workers and journalists should be targetted and killed. If that makes me anti-Semitic then so be it.

I do not believe that it is right for Bibi Netanyahu to smirk and grin on national television as he tells the world how the 7 western aid workers were targetted and murdered in Gaza by his army. If that makes me anti-semitic then so be it.

I do not believe that it is right and proper for the Iranian Embassy in Damascus should be targetted and bombed by the Israeli Defence Force or that senior Iranian military commanders that were staying there should be murdered in cold blood. If that makes me anti-Semitic then so be it.

I do not think it is acceptable for Israel to bomb the city of Allepo in Syria and kill 42 people including defenceless civilians. If that makes me anti-semitic then so be it.

I do not believe that the Jews have a licence from God to kill innocent and defenceless civilians. If that makes me anti-semitic then so be it.

I do not believe that it is right for the western nations to continue to supply arms to Israel and to be complicit in and an enabler of genocide. If that makes me anti-semitic then so be it.

I do not believe that the Jews are the master race that have been specially chosen above others by God. If that makes me anti-semitic then so be it.

I do not believe that demolishing the Al Aqsa Mosque, sacrificing three red heifers where it presently stands & building the third Jewish Temple on exactly the same spot is just, right and proper. If that makes me anti-semitic then so be it.

I do not believe that the Jews and the State of Israel should exert so much influence over the affairs of the United States of America, the western democracies, International politics, world banking & finance & the Western media. If that makes me anti-semitic then so be it.

I do not believe that an attack on Israel, no matter how horrific, gives the Jewish state the right to wipe out, exterminate or drive into the desert or the sea the entire Palestinian race or kill every single man, woman and child in Gaza. If that makes me anti-semitic then so be it.

I do not believe that Zionism is of God & I consider the Zionists to be far worse and more insidious, cruel and unrelenting than Hitler’s Nazis. If that makes me anti-semitic then so be it.

I do not believe that Candace Owens should have been fired from the Daily Wire for criticising Israel & I do not believe that Ben Shapiro and Rabi Shmuly are human beings. If that makes me anti-semitic then so be it.

I do not believe that Bibi Netanyahu is sane & I do not believe that he is acting in the best interest of the Jews or the State of Israel. If that makes me anti-semitic then so be it.

I do not believe that South Africa & Ireland have done anything wrong by taking Israel to the International Court of Justice for crimes against humanity, war crimes, ethnic cleansing & genocide. If that makes me anti-semitic then so be it.

I do not believe that it is right for Israel to prevent food supplies from going into Gaza and for starving the people to death. If that makes me anti-semitic then so be it.

I do not believe that ALL MUSLIM countries should unite against Israel but rather I believe that ALL countries, whether Muslim, Christian, Hindu or anything else should unite against Israel. If that makes me anti-semitic then so be it.

I do not believe in ethnic cleansing and the elimination and extermination of an entire race of people as a formula for the resolution of international disputes and I wholeheartedly condemn the holocaust that is being inflicted on the people of Gaza. If that makes me anti-semitic so be it.

Finally I no longer believe that Israel has the right to exist & I believe that they forfeited that right when they chose to bathe in the blood of Palestinian women, drink the blood of Palestinian children & butcher the Palestinian people. If that makes me anti-semitic then so be it.

75 years ago God in His infinite mercy & wisdom gave the Jews a new beginning, a new country and restored them to their former glory.

This was a great blessing but they squandered it by orchestrating the Nakba, by refusing to share the land and live in peace with the Palestinians that they met there & by refusing to desist from treating them like animals, occupying their land & slaughtering them with impunity.

Sadly with their own hands they destroyed the great opportunity that God gave them & instead chose to visit the same unadulterated evil that the German Nazis once visited on them on the Palestinians.

If the truth be told, contrary to popular opinion, Israel is not a democracy but rather a vicious, heartless, bloodthirsty, parasitic, vampiric and blood-lusting apartheid state that applies one set of laws to the European Jewish colonial settlers that own and run it and another to everyone else.

To be an Arab, a Muslim or a Christian in Israel is hell and to be any of the above living in either Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq or anywhere else in the Middle East means that you could well be subjected to genocide, ethnic cleansing or mass murder by the Jewish state whenever they deem it fit.

It is for this reason that the entire civilised world is enraged with Israel and that every right-thinking person expresses the following words from the inner recesses of their souls and with every fiber of their being.

They proudly proclaim, “From The River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free!”

And despite the double standards of the leaders of the western democracies, so it shall be to the glory of the Living God!

• Fani-Kayode is a former Minister of Aviation

The 137 schoolchildren abducted by terrorists in Kaduna State on March 7 have regained their freedom, the state Governor, Senator Uba Sani, has announced.
Governor Sani disclosed this in a statement issued in the early hours of Sunday.
Terrorists had on March 7 invaded LGEA Primary School, Kuriga in Chikun Local Government Area of Kaduna State and abducted over 200 pupils and teachers immediately after the morning assembly session.
Governor Sani’s statement did not give details of how the schoolchildren regained their freedom.
The governor however  thanked President Bola Tinubu for ensuring that the children were released unharmed.
Governor Sani also thanked the National Security Adviser, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, for coordinating the strategies and operations of security agencies which resulted in the freedom of the children.
See Governor Sani’s full statement below:
In the name of Allah the Beneficient, the Most  Merciful, I wish to announce that our Kuriga school children have been released. 
Our special appreciation goes to our dear President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR for prioritizing the safety and security of Nigerians and particularly ensuring that the abducted Kuriga school children are released unharmed. While the school children were in captivity, I spoke with Mr. President several times. He shared our pains, comforted us and worked round the clock with us to ensure the safe return of the children.
Special mention must also be made of our dear brother, the National Security Adviser, Mal. Nuhu Ribadu for his exemplary leadership. I spent sleepless nights with Mal. Ribadu finetuning strategies and coordinating the operations of the security agencies, which eventually resulted in this successful outcome.
The Nigerian Army also deserves special commendation for showing that with courage, determination and commitment, criminal elements can be degraded and security restored in our communities.
We also thank all Nigerians who prayed fervently for the safe return of the school children. This is indeed a day of joy. We give Almighty Allah all the glory. 
Senator Uba Sani,
Governor, Kaduna State.
March 24th, 2024.