Self-liberation is critical to both personal and national development, writes MONDAY PHILIPS EKPE

Most commentaries on the country’s 66 years of political emancipation from her erstwhile British imperial lords so far have been lamentable in tone and diction. Quite understandably. Expressions of various shades depict Nigeria as an organism that has refused or failed to respond positively to all the developmental stimuli at its disposal and has, therefore, remained stunted for decades. Other viewpoints centre around the need to be more patient with her as the hurdles which exist now are a necessary part of nation-building. United States of America is frequently used to illustrate the tough road to enduring greatness. The US is what it has become after two and half centuries!

Meaning that those who are always eager to send our nation to the guillotine should kindly do a rethink. To be fair, citizens who have increasingly grown sceptical and cynical about Nigeria and whatever is left of her prospects are not necessarily less patriotic than those determined to forge on with their faith in a bright future. No matter how far apart the two sides may have gone, they must come to terms with what the true catalyst for transformation is. The change agent resides in the soul, in the very chamber that hosts mindsets, attitudes and will. These are attributes of bona fide human beings, not items to be bestowed by politicians.

Nigerians are known for enduring and surviving hard conditions, situations that would push citizens of other countries to the streets in wild protests against their own governments. It isn’t clear whether that’s a virtue or vice. But should sitting still and complaining in the face of deprivation and mediocre living be regarded as merits? If indeed the Nigerian masses don’t seem to be able to rise to the occasion as obtainable elsewhere, it would be unfair to simply dismiss them as cowards. Call it whatever it is. Even resilience has its own limits and many Nigerians have since arrived there. Elasticity doesn’t suggest any capacity for endless stretching. Snapping always occurs when the breaking point is reached. The frustrations with the Nigerian system, the recklessness and self-centredness of the political elite and an overriding premonition that things may just not get better in our own lifetime appear to have conspired to force many people onto the paths of helplessness and hopelessness.

No one gets to those edges in one day. It happens gradually. Slowly but certainly, people have watched the nation’s indices of individual and corporate wellbeing deteriorate. Take the marking of our Independence Day itself, for instance. My early life reminiscences still have robust images of October First. March pasts involving the armed forces, police, paramilitary services, educational institutions, boys’ scouts, girls’ guides, boys’ and girls’ brigades and others did not only add colour to the day’s grandeur. They were all unanimous in celebrating the strides and dignity of a country attempting to shed her dependent past and take on a more progressive and free status. No state or local government capital then was excluded from those glorious shows.

The ceremonies these days, where and when they’re staged, have lost their bite substantially. The slide began when governments started announcing sober anniversaries for reasons ranging from dwindling fortunes to insecurity. But even if the Independence Day celebration or lack of it needn’t elicit any elevated discourse, its symbolism shouldn’t be ignored either. Here’s why. Freedom indicates an earlier existence of bondage. Bound by the shackles of colonialism, the lands so conquered sought to liberate themselves. In our own case, the skin colour of the colonists didn’t help matters. We thought that wresting power from them and domiciling same amongst us would guarantee our happiness and prosperity.         

Even if 66 years aren’t enough to justify any negative stance on Nigeria’s chances of entering the comity of successful countries, it’s apparent that having whites rule us wasn’t our only headache. Since October 1, 1960, several aspects of our national life have been experiencing a downward movement. Yes, varying degrees of successes have been recorded on the way. Consensus exists, however, that the country hasn’t yet achieved a reasonable level of the utilisation of its potentialities. Finger-pointing in this regard moves disproportionately towards the ruling class. Not without justifications, though. The truism that everything rises and falls with leadership subsists here too.

But stopping the argument there misses the point altogether. Our leaders are neither from Mars nor Guinea Bissau, the country whose national football team, The Dromedaries, currently ranked 132 by FIFA, humiliated the Super Eagles of Nigeria (26th in FIFA ranking) by 3-0 some days ago. They originate from our midst. So, when political office holders misbehave, as they often do, and the rest of us sit still like frozen quantities, we all – preys and predators alike – become victims of different kinds. One set is denied the basic necessities of existence. And the other is diminished in ways that aren’t captured in dollars and naira but lethal nonetheless. It’s time to interrogate the essence of our personal liberty, for, no true progress can occur outside its awareness and utility.

Some thinkers here on the transformative energies of independence. Franklin D Roosevelt: “True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.” Nigerians can relate with this, having endured tyrannies of diverse colours and shameful poverty profiles.

Stephen Covey: “Every human has four endowments – self-awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change.” The rich endowment of Nigerian citizens isn’t in doubt locally and globally. Marshalling this towards attaining more noble heights remains challenging, however.

Maya Angelou: “Independence is a heady draught, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.” Surely, freeing our own minds, like good wine, tastes wow! But many Nigerian youths especially are currently addicted to slavish substances, sadly. 

Virginia Woolf: “The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.” The surest route to fulfilment is a freed mind. It’s indispensable to real growth. But most Nigerians may have been too overwhelmed with visceral, mundane wants to bother about lofty goals. This unravelling tragedy must be halted. 

Dr Ekpe is a member of ������Ƶ Editorial Board

X: @monday_ekpe2

The Advocate

By Onikepo Braithwaite

Onikepo.braithwaite@thisdaylive.com

Introduction 

I wonder whether there’s any country in the world, where they do as much constitutional debating as Nigerians do! Every week, it’s a new section of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended)(the Constitution) that is considered; yet, beyond these debates, there are never any tangible outcomes. Instead, where it is obvious that there are vacuums in the Constitution that require filling, or provisions that should be amended or redrawn, they are left without being addressed, while the State and citizens in practical terms, observe the Constitution in the breach and sometimes run with the wrong interpretation of the grundnorm. 

Debate is not a substitute, for compliance or constitutional amendment. Many a time, we even rely on convention in constitutional matters, instead of the Constitution itself. But, Section 1(1) & (3) of the Constitution is clear that the Constitution is supreme and binding, and any law that is inconsistent with it, is void to the extent of its inconsistency. The decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Adegbenro v Akintola [1963] AC 614 which overturned the majority decision of the Federal Supreme Court, also made it clear that where there is a written Constitution, its provisions override convention. This case concerned the interpretation of the Western Region Constitution, vis-à-vis the process of removal of the Premier of Western Region.

Last week, in one way or the other, Section 145 of the Constitution, concerning the transmission of power to the Vice President during the temporary absence of the President, was a serious  subject of debate. 

Matters Arising 

1) Debate Within the Debate: Simultaneous Travel of President and Vice President 

Within the Section 145 debate as to whether President Bola Tinubu, GCFR should have transmitted power to Vice President Kashim Shettima, GCON when he proceeded on vacation, is the argument as to whether both President and Vice President should travel out of the country at the same time. I will consider the debate within the debate first, because the response is straightforward. There is nothing in the Constitution, that prohibits the President and Vice President from being out of the country simultaneously. 

Could it simply be an informal practice, that may have  developed during the military era? Whatever the reason for this informal practice, it was maintained during the Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Jonathan administrations, and was broken under President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, when there were two overlaps in 2019 and 2022, when he and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, GCON, SAN, were out of the country simultaneously. The two not travelling out of the country simultaneously, is an informal practice that doesn’t have the force of law. But, today, the opposition seems to be making a big deal, out of President Tinubu and Vice President Shettima’s simultaneous travels out of the country – in reality, it goes to no issue. 

2) Section 145 of the Constitution 

Section 145(1) of the Constitution provides that when the President is 1) going on vacation or 2) is unable to perform the functions of his office, he shall transmit a written declaration to the National Assembly (NASS) to that effect, and until he transmits a written declaration to the contrary, the Vice President shall perform the functions of President as Acting President. This simply means that the President is bound to formally inform NASS when he is either going on vacation or unable to perform the functions of his office, whichever is applicable. See the case of Onochie & Ors v Odogwu & Ors (2006) LPELR-2689(SC) per Ikechi Francis Ogbuagu, JSC where the Supreme Court held inter alia that: “The word “Shall”….Its use in a statute or rules of court, makes it mandatory that the rule or provision must be observed”.

It appears that people have misinterpreted Section 145(1) of the Constitution, to mean that the written declaration is one in which the President must state that he is transferring power to the Vice President to perform his functions as Acting President, in his absence. No. The words of Section 145(1) of the Constitution, are precise and unambiguous, and do not result in absurdity or doubt. The literal interpretation of the provision, which suffices, is that the President informs NASS that he’s going on holiday or is incapacitated. The role of the Vice President as Acting President that arises therefrom is self-executory, upon the issuance of the written declaration. See the case of Awolowo v Shagari (1979) LPELR-653(SC) per Andrews Otutu Obaseki, JSC on statutory interpretation. 

Section 145(2) thereof however, provides that if the President fails to write the written declaration within 21 days, by a resolution of a simple majority of votes of both Houses of NASS, the Vice President shall be mandated by the Legislature to act as President, until the President transmits a letter to NASS that he’s resuming. See Onochie & Ors v Odogwu & Ors (Supra). 

Our Columnist, Stephen Kola-Balogun – ‘My Brief by SKB’ and my humble self, had a hot argument on Section 145(2). He submitted that, it is arguable that Section 145(2) of the Constitution implies that the President and Vice President not be absent from Nigeria simultaneously for more than 21 days; that in the event that NASS had to exercise its Section 145(2) function, the Vice President should be present in Nigeria. He argued that, both being away simultaneously, defeats the essence and purpose of that sub-section. I disagree. Since nothing in the Constitution provides that the Presidential functions can only be exercised when the President or Vice President is physically in Nigeria, and Section 145(1) only requires the President to write a written declaration when he’s proceeding on vacation or unable to perform his Presidential functions, and not when he’s travelling out on an official trip, why will the absence of a Vice President if on an official assignment outside the country, bar such a Vice President from assuming the functions of Acting President by virtue of Section 145, should the need arise? 

The Presidency had announced that President Tinubu was going on a three week vacation, as part of his annual leave. In the same announcement, the trip was also referred to as a ‘working vacation’. Section 145 of the Constitution doesn’t recognise a working vacation; it recognises a vacation simpliciter, or a situation in which the President is unable to perform his official functions. In President Tinubu’s case, the duty to write the written declaration, arose when he proceeded on vacation. The 21 day window of Section 145(2) of the Constitution, arises only when there’s a failure to carry out the Section 145(1) duty within 21 days. 

But, Section 145(2) is now interpreted to mean that the President need not write the written declaration, if the trip is for less than 21 days. If this were so, why didn’t  Section 145(1) state that unequivocally? However, the decision in Suit No. FHC/L/CS/763/2019 Inibehe Effiong v President, Federal Republic of Nigeria & Anor delivered on January 31, 2020 per A. O. Faji, J, supports the position that the President does not violate the Constitution, by travelling out of the country for a short vacation or private visit of less than 21 days, without formally writing a written declaration to that effect to NASS.

Though the Constitution doesn’t provide that the President must be physically present in Nigeria at all times to exercise his office, and there has been ample evidence in the media to show Nigerians that President Tinubu isn’t incapacitated, but, to the extent that he went on vacation, for over 21 days too, and didn’t write the written declaration, by virtue of Section 145(2) of the Constitution, the burden then shifted to NASS to do the needful, which they failed to do, leaving a vacuum of over a week.

By virtue of Section 15(2) & (3) of the Interpretation Act 1964 (IA), President Tinubu who travelled on August 30th, should have transmitted the declaration immediately, but by September 21, 2026 this hadn’t been done – the count excludes the day he travelled and starts on Monday, August 31st (Section 15(2)(a) of the IA) and would have ended on a Sunday, September 20 which by virtue of Section 15(5) of the IA is a holiday and therefore, extended to the next day, Monday, September 21 (Section 15(3) of the IA), after which the buck appears to have left President Tinubu’s table (having failed or neglected to comply with Section 145(1) of the Constitution) to NASS’s table for compliance with Section 145(2) of the Constitution, to mandate Vice President Shettima to act as President. But, if the Presidency was acting based on the decision in Inibehe Effiong v President, Federal Republic of Nigeria & Anor (Supra), there would be no need to write the written declaration till Monday September 21st, 2026. 

While President Buhari wrote letters of transmission, sometimes even when he was embarking on short trips, such as a five day vacation in February 2016 and the London ear infection trip in June 2016, he didn’t always do so for other short vacation trips. President Buhari embarked on two long trips in 2017, in January for 50 days and in May for a record 103 days. President Buhari’s May 2017 letter, stated that Vice President Osinbajo “would coordinate the activities of government”. That was adequate.

The present Section 145 is a 2010 alteration of the Constitution. The old Section 145 of the Constitution provided thus: “Whenever the President transmits to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives a written declaration that he is proceeding on vacation or that he is otherwise unable to discharge the functions of his office, until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary such functions shall be discharged by the Vice-President as Acting President”. In NBA v President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua Judgement delivered on 29/1/2010 per Dan Abutu. CJ of the Federal High Court, the court held that the old Section 145 created no mandatory duty to submit a written declaration to NASS, that the power to transmit was discretionary not mandatory, and so the court couldn’t order Vice President Jonathan to act. PresidentYar’Adua had travelled to Saudi Arabia on November 23, 2009, a trip that lasted for 78 days. 

On February 9, 2010, NASS under David Mark and Dimeji Bankole as Senate President and Speaker, House of Representatives respectively, invoked the doctrine of necessity and recognised Vice President Jonathan as Acting President. They relied in part, on President Yar’Adua’s BBC short telephone interview of January 12, 2010, where he stated thus: “At the moment I am undergoing treatment, and I’m getting better from the treatment. I hope that very soon there will be tremendous progress, which will allow me to get back home… As soon as my doctors discharge me, I will return to Nigeria to resume my duties”. This statement clearly evinced the fact that, President Yar’Adua was off duty. President Yar’Adua returned to Nigeria on February 24, 2010 and subsequently, died on May 5, 2010, after which Jonathan became President under Section 146 of the Constitution.

It appears that unlike the proactiveness shown by the David Mark/Dimeji Bankole-led NASS, NASS under the present leadership decided to breach Section 145(2) of the Constitution, which has given the Legislature the power to check and correct the inaction of the President in this regard. 

Conclusion 

Section 145 does not invite a debate; Section 145(1) of the Constitution imposes a duty on the President, the moment he proceeds on vacation. While Inibehe Effiong v President, Federal Republic of Nigeria & Anor (Supra) which hasn’t been set aside, may have given the President a reason not write his written declaration of vacation until the 21st day, nothing excuses NASS for not taking action after 21 days. Section 145(2) imposes a duty on NASS, when the President leaves his duty undone for 21 days. Neither was performed. Late President Yar’Adua, GCFR, fell into a hole that the Constitution then had. The 2010 alteration gave NASS, the tool to fill it. This Assembly left the tool unused. A court may declare the breach. It will not do for members, what Section 145(2) of the Constitution requires them to do themselves. Debate is easy. Compliance is what the grundnorm requires.

Bola A. Akinterinwa

In Nigeria, there are two competing schools of thought on ‘Nigeria’s foreign policy behavior towards the General Debate of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). One school attaches great importance to the usefulness of the UN debate as a tool for the promotion of global peace and security, and particularly to its role in peaceful resolution of crises and conflicts. To a great extent, the arguments of this school cannot be faulted. If we recall the statement of Nigeria’s Prime Minister, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, on October 7, 1960 at the UN, Nigeria’s belief in international organisations as a means of furthering Nigeria’s foreign policy objectives was strong. Prime Minister Balewa showed Nigeria’s preparedness to maintain ties with old friends and the British Commonwealth but refused to routinely align with rigid power blocs. More importantly, he said Nigeria not only desired friendly relations with all nations and active participation in the work of the UN, but also said Africa must not be allowed to become a battle ground for external ideological struggles. Since 1960 to date, Nigeria has always been actively engaged in the activities of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), particularly in the area of UN Peace Support Operations.

The position of the other school of thought does not necessarily negate the arguments of the first school. It only says that the conduct and management of international affairs at the UN emphasizes national protectionism to the detriment of global collective interests; that there are deliberately adopted institutional obstacles over which the non-Nuclear Weapons States have no control. We belong to this school of thought. We strongly believe that the UNGA is nothing more than an instrument of great power politics. The UN preaches democracy that it does not allow within the UN itself. There was the time the United States accounted for almost 50% of UN budget and voluntary contributions. By the time it was becoming difficult for the United States to control the UN, the Washingtonian authorities began to reduce their contributions to what it is today: about 22%. It is against this background that the attendance and non-attendance of Nigerian leader, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT) since 2024, and particularly the 81st UNGA, should be discussed and understood.

Presidential Attendance and Speeches

As noted above, if we admit that the UNGA is nothing more than an instrument of great power politics, then the issue of whether to attend the annual summit rituals and participate in the one-week General Debate cannot but be largely a resultant of whether there is something to gain from it. The situation can be likened to Nigeria’s foreign policy concentricism and beneficial concentricism. 

Professor Ibrahim Agboola Gambari, a diplomatist per excellence, scholar, and international functionary, has it that the need for effectiveness in foreign policy implementation requires dividing the entire global environment into spheres of priority. In this regard, he divided the world into four concentric circles in which the innermost is not Nigeria, as often wrongly referred to by some scholars, but Nigeria and contiguous immediate neighbours. In his thinking, the security of Nigeria is largely intertwined with that of the neighbours. Any situation of unrest or crisis in the neighbourhood should be considered as happening in Nigeria and should therefore be quickly nipped in the bud. The second concentric circle is the rest of West Africa, while the third concentric circle is the whole of Africa minus West Africa. The whole world minus Africa is the fourth and the outermost circle. The categorization of the world into four foreign policy operational areas does not imply that foreign policy actions do not cut across the different concentric circles. 

Without whiff of doubt, Ambassador Oluyemi Adeniji agreed with Professor Gambari but noted the need to underscore what gains are there for Nigerians in each concentric circle. He sees Professor Gambari’s postulation as constructive but which still has to be made beneficial. This is what Ambassador Adeniji’s Constructive and Beneficial Concentricism is all about. When this illustration is factored into the relevance or irrelevance of the UNGA Debate, and whether PBAT should have attended the UNGA, the question remains what is there for Nigeria, through PBAT, to gain or to lose? There are many things to gain and there are nothing to be lost that has the potential to compromise Nigeria’s national sovereignty.

For me, the UNGA is nothing more than an instrument of politics and oppression by the powerful countries. For the weak countries, the UNGA is a platform for debate, not in the sense of arguing for and against, but for declarations that are only self-pleasing. The UNGA is for easing self-made tension and complaining about poor governance and reporting one another for possible sympathy. Most unfortunately, attendance can be quite significant if a President scheduled to speak has a controversial issue. When a President scheduled to speak is perceived to be an enemy, delegations can refuse to attend of even walk out when the delivery of a speech is still on. It is against this background that we should ask why Nigeria’s numero uno, PBAT, attended the 2023 UNGA and has refused to attend in person since then. Was the 2023 session he attended not worth the while? Were there threats to his life? 

Let us begin with PBAT’s address at the General Debate of the 78th Session of UNGA on 20th September, 2023. PBAT, as diplomatic tradition requires, first congratulated the UNGA President on his election, his predecessor, His Excellency, Mr. Csaba Korosi, for his able stewardship of the Assembly, and the Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, for his work seeking to forge solutions to humanity’s common challenges. 

PBAT drew attention to what he considered as Nigeria’s and African challenges. As he put it then: ‘Many proclamations have been made, yet our troubles remain close at hand. Failures in good governance have hindered Africa. But broken promises, unfair treatment and outright exploitation from abroad have also exacted a heavy toll on our ability to progress.

Given this long history, if this year’s theme is to mean anything at all, it must mean something special and particular to Africa.’ The implications of this short quotation are significant. First is that there have always been proclamation that have not removed the recidivist African problems. Secondly, good governance has not only been playing host to failures, the failures have also been hindering Africa’s progress. Thirdly, and perhaps more disturbingly, PBAT said there were broken promises, unfair treatment and outright exploitation from abroad.

 This statement was a manifestation of PBAT’s major concerns. What did he ask for? What should the UNGA be prepared to do in addressing PBAT’s concerns? PBAT told the UNGA that ‘today and for several decades, Africa has been asking for the same level of political commitment and devotion of resource that described the Marshall Plan. We realize that underlying conditions and causes of the economic challenges facing today’s Africa are significantly different from those of post-war Europe.’ When Europeans had industrialo-economic challenges following end of World War II, the Marshall Plan was introduced to assist. But what type of help should be given to Africa? 

In PBAT’s view, ‘we are not asking for identical programs and actions. What we seek is an equally firm commitment to partnership. We seek enhanced international cooperation with African nations to achieve the 2030 agenda and Sustainable Development Goals.’ It is against this background and the need for global solidarity that PBAT also made a five-point submission ‘if the whole exercise of the 78th UNGA theme was to be meaningful in terms of impact. 

First, as PBAT explained it, ‘if this year’s theme is to have any impact at all, global institutions, other nations and their private sector actors must see African development as a priority, not just for Africa but in their interests as well.’ Second, ‘we must affirm democratic governance as the best guarantor of the sovereign will and well-being of the people. Military coups are wrong, as is any tilted civilian political arrangement that perpetuates injustice.’ Thirdly, the West African ‘entire region is locked in protracted battle against violent extremists. In the turmoil, a dark channel of inhumane commerce has been formed. Along the route, everything is for sale. Men, woman and children are seen as chattel. Yet, thousands risk the Sahara’s hot sand and the Mediterranean’s cold depths in search of a better life. At the same time, mercenaries and extremists with their lethal weapons and vile ideologies invade our region from the north.’ This harmful traffic undermines the peace and stability of an entire region.’ 

PBAT reminded the international community that ‘the fourth important aspect of global trust and solidarity is to secure the continent’s mineral rich areas from pilfering and conflict. Many such areas have become catacombs of misery and exploitation. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has suffered this for decades, despite the strong UN presence there. The world economy owes the DRC much but gives her very little.’ And fifthly, ‘climate change severely impacts Nigeria and Africa. Northern Nigeria is hounded by desert encroachment on once arable land. Our south is pounded by the rising tide of coastal flooding and erosion. In the middle, the rainy season brings floods that kill and displace multitudes… African nations will fight climate change but must do so on our own terms. To achieve the needed popular consensus, this campaign must accord with overall economic efforts.’

The concluding points of PBAT clearly points to why he might have not shown much interest in participating in the UNGA General Debate. As pointed out by PBAT, to keep faith with the tenets of this world body and the theme of this year’s Assembly, the poverty of nations must end. The pillage of one nation’s resources by the overreach of firms and people of stronger nations must end. The will of the people must be respected. This beauty, generous and forgiving planet must be protected.’ As for Africa, we seek to be neither appendage nor patron. We do not wish to replace old shackles with new ones. Instead, we hope to walk the rich African soil and live under the magnificent African sky free of the wrongs of the past and clear of their associated encumbrances. We desire a prosperous, vibrant democratic living space for our people.’

Put interrogatively, is Nigeria or Africa free from the wrongs of the past? Has Africa stopped being an appendage and patron of the developed world? Has poverty being thrown into the garbage of history? The answers are no. One reason is that the UNGA is nothing more than a talking shop. Action is more often a subject of whims and caprices of the big powers. As a result, there is no big deal in giving undue values to an UNGA that is more compliant with big power politics.

UNGA as Instrument of Great Power Politics

The UNGA is designed to have a character of universality. However, the universality is necessarily neutralized by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) as a problematic. As such, the UNSC has become a primary instrument of power rivalry and geopolitical competition. Put differently, the UNSC has always been suffering from paralysis as a result of frequent use of veto power and shifting coalitions. When the UNSC Permanent Members cannot ensure their mandate of maintaining peace and security, the resultant power rivalry is often taken to the UNGA, the universal platform, in order to legitimize or have justifications for their unilateral actions. In other words, when the UNSC is paralyzed and found wanting, power is shifted to the UNGA where the major powers come up with different narratives and use the UNGA to isolate adversaries. The big powers, particularly the United States, China, and Russia, often lobby for the adoption of UNGA resolutions and support, even if the UNGA resolutions do not have a binding effect.  

In this regard, however, there is the factor of the Global South Counter-push, which is militating against the 1945 order. For instance, the clamour for expansion of the UNSC, which has been to no avail, is a manifestation of great power politics. The unending use of the right of veto to protect the national interest, but to the detriment of collective interest, is another expression of great power politics. Blunt refusal by some countries to pay UN assessed dues or using diplomacy to remove a Secretary-General that has the ‘effrontery’ to challenge the big powers cannot but be an expression of power politics. 

We noted earlier that whenever the UNSC is paralysed by a great power’s veto, rival powers often use the UNGA to set aside the deadlock and legitimise the coercive actions. The 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolutions was a good illustration of this point. The United States initiated the UNGA Resolution 377A which enabled the UNGA to recommend collective military measures when the Soviet Union was frequently boycotting or vetoing UNSC actions. In the same vein, when Russia vetoed UNSC resolutions condemning its invasion of Ukraine, the United States and its Western allies passed a number of resolutions, such as Resolution ES-11/1) to condemn Russia to ensure the diplomatic isolation of Russia at the global stage.

There is also no disputing the fact that the United States and EU countries often sponsor UNGA resolutions targeting the human rights records of geopolitical adversaries like Iran, North Korea, and Syria. In essence, UNGA has always been the main instrument used to decide which governments are seen as legitimate global actors. It is the UNGA that is used by the United States to lobby against the upgrading of the status of Palestine, but to no avail, as Palestine iss still given the ‘Non-Member Observer State’ status. There is nothing to suggest that foreign policy makers in Nigeria had not reckoned with these happenings. Sending an able Vice-President to UNGA General Debate cannot but be enough in the eyes of PBAT.

Vice-President Kashim Shettima stood in for PBAT at the 79th Session of the UNGA on 25th September 2024 in New York. He drew attention to the recidivist problems of Africa and the UN, underscoring the fact that the guiding pillars of the UN were under threat and that the UN was failing in its mandate. As he put it, ‘the United Nations stands for inclusiveness – anchored on the tripod of peace, sustainable development and human rights… Today, these pillars of our organisation are threatened. They risk being broken by the relentless pursuit of individual national priorities rather than the collective needs of the nations that are assembled here today. While commitment to multilateralism offers us the surest guarantee of global action to address the existential challenges we face, singularity and nationalism are undermining the aspirations towards the peaceful and collective resolution of such challenges.’

More importantly, he recalled that ‘from last year’s summit, and indeed from previous years, we have carried over the numerous challenges of terrorism, armed conflict, inequality, poverty, racial discrimination, human rights abuses, food crises, hunger, irregular migration, piracy, global pandemics, hyper-inflation, nuclear proliferation, grinding debt burden, climate change, and a host of other vexations. The continued manifestation of these challenges testifies to our failings rather than to any lofty achievements on our part. Billions of dollars are being committed to the prosecution of wars and the fanning of the embers of conflict.’ Can this not be a good reason for not wanting to be part of UN failings?

Nigeria’s and African problems are not different. Consequently, Vice-President Shettima could not but expect that ‘the adoption of the “Pact for the Future” will change the narrative, reposition economies and translate into concrete measures that provide solutions to the challenges faced by developing and least developed countries…’ He reiterated ‘the call by countries, especially of the global South, for reform of the international financial architecture and promotion of a rules-based, non-discriminatory, open, fair, inclusive, equitable and transparent multilateral trading system.’ His conclusion and hope that the ‘deliberations this year will result in solutions that would address our collective challenges and accelerate the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as the advancement of peace and human dignity for the sake of present and future generations.,’ simply reminds of policy action remissness of the UNGA.

Again, at the 80th UNGA on 24th September, 2025, the same issues of governance being a problem and also a solution, climate change as a driver of insecurity, global debt burden, summit of the future, need for UN reform, and particularly membership of the expansion of the UNSC, etc., were raised as usual. What was noteworthy was the impression given, consciously or otherwise, that PBAT was not much interested or that the statement was not for PBAT. For example, on the official letter-head of the statement, it is written ‘Statement Delivered by His Excellency, Kashim Shettima, GCON, Vice-President, Federal Republic of Nigeria during the General Debate of the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, New York.’ No reference was made to PBAT. The Vice-President spoke not as a representative but in his capacity as Vice-President. In the words of the Vice-President, ‘it is, therefore, with profound humility that I stand before you today, as Vice-President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, to renew this pledge on behalf of my country.’

Without any jot of doubt, he spoke authoritatively on how to strengthen the prospects for peace, development and human rights: ‘Madam President, I want to make four points today to outline how we can do this. One, Nigeria must have a permanent seat at the UN Security Council. This should take place as part of a wider process of institutional reform. Two, we need urgent action to promote sovereign debt relief and access to trade financing. Three, countries that host minerals must benefit from those minerals. And four, the digital divide must close. As our friend, the Secretary General, has said: ‘A.I. must stand for ‘Africa Included.’

Finally, as Vice-President Shettima put it at the ongoing 81st session on behalf of PBAT, ‘the persistence of conflict across the world recalls the purpose for which the United Nations was founded: to spare succeeding generations the devastation of war. We must therefore return to the founding principles of dialogue, mutual respect and collective responsibility. Nigeria stands by the Charter and its promise of a world in which diplomacy prevails over coercion, cooperation over isolation and international law over the arbitrary exercise of power.’ More importantly, ‘Nigeria demands, in accordance with the Ezulwini Consensus and the Sirte Declaration, at least two permanent seats for Africa, with all the rights and responsibilities of permanent membership, including the veto for as long as it exists, and five non-permanent seats in total. The authority to speak for humanity carries an obligation to represent it’.

Even if PBAT has been talking about the same issues every year, he cannot be faulted because the theme of every UNGA also revolves around the same problematic. In 2023, the theme of the 78th session was ‘re-building trust and reigniting global solidarity: Accelerating action on the 2030 Agenda and Its Sustainable Development Goals towards peace, prosperity, progress and sustainability for all.’ The 79th UNGA session in 2024 had as its theme ‘leaving no one behind: acting together for the advancement of peace, sustainable development and human dignity for present and future generations.’ In 2025, the 80th session had ‘better together: 80 years and more for peace, development and human rights.’ This year, 2026, it is “Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation: a United Nations that delivers for all.” All these themes underscore the need for multilateralism, maintenance of international peace and security, cooperation and interdependence. And true enough, the weak countries want multilateralism while the big powers are underscoring bilateralism. The weak countries want expansion of the UNSC and general UN reform but they do not have any institutional right to undo Articles 108 and 109 of the UN Charter which require the unanimity of purpose of the veto powers to be able to amend, review, revise, alter or modify the UN Charter. As such, the UNGA is a good platform for Africa’s hide and seek children game. With this type of situational reality at the UN, considering that the Vice-President has always represented well, and because Nigeria must not allow herself to be pushed around by countries that want to undermine Nigeria, especially in terms of a permanent seat for Nigeria, PBAT ought to be commended for staying above the political intrigues that presidential attendance and speeches entail. 

Femi Akintunde-Johnson

Aex Otti has said something in Abia that sounds almost subversive in Nigerian politics: “I don’t want to be a godfather.” More unusually, he says that after completing his tenure as governor, he intends to retire from active politics because younger Nigerians should have their turn. He also says he has no interest in the Senate. His larger argument is that once people experience good governance, they should become unwilling to return to the old order. These are certainly worthy sentiments. But Nigeria has heard many worthy sentiments from politicians before. The interesting question is whether we can finally escape the peculiar political culture in which the man who helps you become governor later expects to become the invisible governor.

 The Nigerian political godfather is not simply an elder statesman offering advice, an experienced politician mentoring a younger colleague, or a benefactor helping an ambitious aspirant find his feet. There is nothing inherently sinister about any of those things. The trouble begins when political assistance is treated as an investment requiring repayment from the public treasury, when electoral support becomes a private franchise, and when the elected office-holder is expected to remember that although the voters put him in Government House, somebody else believes he owns the key.

That is where the innocent-looking word “godfatherism” acquires its Nigerian sting. The godfather finances the campaign, deploys the political machinery, influences the nomination, helps secure the victory – and then expects the godson to understand that gratitude has a timetable. Appointments must reflect the patron’s interests. Contracts must not forget the benefactor. Political enemies must be dealt with. State resources may acquire new meanings. And the governor, who constitutionally answers to the people, discovers that another person is waiting for his monthly report.

The Fourth Republic has supplied an extraordinary catalogue of such arrangements. In Anambra, the Chris Uba-Chris Ngige saga became perhaps the most dramatic early illustration. Human Rights Watch documented a written agreement in which Ngige was expected to show loyalty to Uba and accept his influence over appointments and contracts. The relationship subsequently collapsed spectacularly; Ngige was abducted in 2003 in an attempt to force him from office, while the state descended into political violence and institutional disorder. The courts eventually overturned Ngige’s election and recognised Peter Obi as the rightful winner. That was not merely a quarrel between two politicians. It was a brutal demonstration of what happens when a private political bargain collides with a public office.

Oyo provided another lesson. Rashidi Ladoja’s relationship with Lamidi Adedibu, once a powerful political patron in Ibadan, deteriorated after Ladoja became governor in 2003. The quarrel culminated in an impeachment by lawmakers loyal to Adedibu in January 2006. Ladoja later returned to office after the courts nullified the impeachment. Again, the political argument was dressed in constitutional clothing, but beneath it lurked the familiar question: who really owned the mandate?

Kwara offered another variation through the long influence of the Saraki political establishment. Lagos subsequently supplied the Bola Tinubu-Akinwunmi Ambode rupture, with the incumbent governor losing his party’s governorship ticket in 2018 after an increasingly public disagreement with the political structure that had brought him to office. Anambra later produced the bitter Peter Obi-Willie Obiano relationship. Kano gave us Rabiu Kwankwaso and Abdullahi Ganduje, once mentor and protégé, eventually occupying opposite political trenches. The names change. The choreography remains remarkably familiar.

And that is the troubling part. Nigeria seems to have perfected a political apprenticeship in which the student is expected eventually to become independent – but preferably not too independent. The godson is encouraged to grow wings, provided he does not actually attempt to fly away from the godfather’s compound.

The damage is more serious than the colourful quarrels suggest. When a governor spends political energy negotiating with the person who helped him into office, governance becomes hostage to an arrangement that was never part of the voter’s contract. Public appointments can become rewards for loyalty rather than instruments of competence. Projects may be abandoned because they belong to the previous political camp. Legislators may become weapons in factional warfare. Party structures become personal machines. And the electorate, which was supposedly sovereign, is left watching politicians fight over possession of the mandate it supposedly gave them.

Recent academic work on Nigeria’s Fourth Republic reaches much the same broad conclusion: patronage and godfatherism can weaken administrative effectiveness, encourage clientelism and distort decision-making when personal loyalty and elite interests displace institutional considerations. The problem, therefore, is not merely that godfathers are powerful. It is that political power becomes personalised, while institutions become progressively less important.

But is this Nigerian wickedness specially manufactured for our peculiar political entertainment? Not entirely.

Patron-client politics is hardly a Nigerian invention. Political patronage, factions, dynasties and political machines have appeared in many societies. The Philippines, for instance, has a long-established tradition of patron-client politics and powerful political families. Research on the country has documented how personal alliances, patronage networks and political dynasties can shape access to office and public resources. Comparative research has also examined patronage systems in Japan, Thailand and other political systems. The difference is not necessarily that other societies have no political godfathers; it is that stronger institutions can sometimes constrain how much personal patronage is allowed to commandeer public authority.

That distinction is crucial. Patronage thrives where institutions are weak, money is disproportionately powerful, political parties are personality-driven and citizens have limited means of enforcing accountability. Nigeria therefore cannot cure godfatherism simply by denouncing godfathers. The soil that produces them must also be examined.

And perhaps the most uncomfortable question is what happens when the godson becomes the godfather.

This is where the Nigerian cycle becomes almost comic, if its consequences were not so expensive. Yesterday’s political victim becomes tomorrow’s political patron. The man who once complained that somebody was controlling him eventually acquires candidates of his own. He discovers that political influence is a wonderful thing when exercised by oneself and an undemocratic abomination when exercised by somebody else.

So Otti’s declaration deserves neither applause nor dismissal. It should be treated as a proposition to be tested by conduct. If he completes his tenure and genuinely withdraws from active politics, declines the temptation to install a successor merely because that successor will remain beholden to him, and allows younger Nigerians to compete on their own merits, then he would have demonstrated something more valuable than a political speech: that power can actually be relinquished.

That is the real test of the godfather. Not whether he can make a governor. But whether, having made one, he can leave the governor alone.

 Nigeria has had enough political fathers who confuse mentorship with ownership. What the republic desperately needs are elders who can pass on experience without demanding possession, benefactors who can support candidates without purchasing governments, and politicians mature enough to understand that a democratic mandate is not an IOU.

The voters did not elect anybody’s godson. They elected a governor.

PAUL C NWABUIKWU contends that though popular, Omoyele Sowore is not viewed by the electorate as a serious candidate

Omoyele Sowore, eternal student activist and perennial presidential candidate, has been busy lately. Or maybe, a better way to put it is that he has been busier than usual because Sowore is always busy somewhere doing something controversial and headline grabbing. But as the elections approach, his frenetic pace is up by many notches. There is a sense that he may be approaching a crescendo, as he gets set for a third presidential run following his previous colourful but unimpressive efforts in 2019 and 2023.

In June, following a missed court appearance for a cybercrime case (Sowore was being prosecuted for calling President Tinubu a “criminal” among other choice words in online posts), Judge Muhammad Umar of the Federal High Court ordered him remanded in Kuje prison. But the ruling didn’t last. Sowore was released after loud protests led by his many friends and allies in civil society and the media.

In July, Sowore’s legal team fought to get the director-general of the Department of State Services (DSS) into the dock to answer questions on DSS’s demand for a retraction of his online posts against the president. Subsequent developments suggest that the agency may be having second thoughts about proceeding with the case, as their lawyers have been instructed to pause the prosecution of the cybercrime case.

It was not exactly an unexpected development. Sowore has made a career out of taking on the Nigerian state and emerging triumphant after a dramatic public battle. As many government bodies have found out over the years, battling the revolutionary one-man riot squad is not a tea party. His version of activist journalism (or journalistic activism) is a contact sport in which he participates with all the enthusiasm of a veteran WWE wrestling champion operating in a familiar ring.

He knows the terrain thoroughly and whether the opponent is the federal or state government, a security agency or a Big Man or Big Woman “oppressor”, Sowore can be counted on to inflict painful body slams, drop kicks and headlocks with his weapons of choice: controversial statements, robust allegations, contemptuous put-downs and articles in Sahara Reporters that bristle with that mix of populist posturing and in your face courage that define his public brand.

The locus of Sowore’s public interventions is shifting in the direction of the political as the election gets closer. But the strategy remains the same: find a popular cause, identify the oppressor responsible and scream his lungs out. All is fair in love and politics. So any opponent who can be attacked for political advantage is fair game.

Abubakar Atiku has been a recurring target recently. Sowore has repeatedly attacked the former vice president as a spent force who has nothing to offer the country. “Nigeria does not need another recycling of the same political elite” he says. But that didn’t stop Sowore from trying to steal Atiku’s thunder at the recent Nigerian Bar Association conference in Port Harcourt. After the former vice president’s declaration that he would end the current form of subsidy and implement a “targeted” version if elected president started gaining traction, Sowore accused Atiku of attempting to take credit for his idea and jumping on the anti-subsidy bandwagon that he (Sowore) has championed since 1989. Atiku, the government and the entire political establishment, he thundered, are all discredited beneficiaries of the corrupt system and totally lacking in credibility.

Peter Obi and his former running mate, Datti-Ahmed also received the Sowore treatment. He has dismissed them as “military apologists”, adding for good measure that Obi was an “Abacha boy”. For some reason, Sowore reserves some of his most scathing words for Obi. Perhaps the reason is that Obi has managed to achieve what Sowore’s revolutionary strategy has not managed to deliver for him over two electoral cycles: a dedicated base of mostly youthful supporters and a strong performance in the last presidential elections which saw Obi, then Labour Party candidate coming a strong third with over six million votes.

Curiously, Sowore has also dismissed Abia governor Alex Otti whose outstanding performance in office has earned him a nationwide profile as the MVP of governance at the state level as lacking in tangible achievements. Apparently, Abia people whose love for their governor has made an Otti victory in 2027 virtually a foregone conclusion are under a spell that only Sowore can see. It seems Sowore’s brand of radicalism, in true aluta tradition, is often an end in itself, deployed for applause and the adrenaline rush that comes from shaking the system, not changing it.

No doubt, Sowore has done some good bringing injustices to light and championing the rights of many poor Nigerians in a system in which the rule of law is often defined by its absence. But his story is a bit more complicated than a straightforward tale of a knight in shining armour waging a principled battle on behalf of the suffering masses. Some critics of his interventions in the public space have accused him of being an official agent with an unofficial mandate of taking the edge out of public anger by providing strategic distraction with his colourful and loquacious interventions. But this is a difficult case to sustain. Sowore has had more than his fair share of harassment and detentions by various security agencies in the course of his public advocacy over the years. It seems a rather steep price to pay if he really is an official operative hiding in plain sight.

Personally, I find the theory a difficult one to swallow despite longstanding misgivings about Sowore’s motives and mode of operation. And the idea that part of the disguise is for Sowore to insult the president regularly sounds quite far farfetched. Or perhaps my bandwidth for paranoia and conspiracy theorizing is simply not wide and deep enough.

But there’s something that is not in doubt: based on his electoral performance, Sowore, has been spectacularly unsuccessful in selling his RevolutionNow message to the Nigerian electorate. In 2023, his efforts were rewarded with a measly 14,608 votes across the nation. Some analysts, including Prof Farooq Kperogi have posited that Sowore is a victim of the structural gaps and many dysfunctionalities in the Nigerian political system. In his popular column last week, Kperogi argued that Sowore is disadvantaged on many fronts. First, as an outsider in Nigeria’s conservative, he lacks “symbolic capital”. Second, Sowore does not have a strong “primordial constituency” – religious, regional or ethnic – backing him. Finally, the respected media scholar identified a third factor hobbling Sowore’s ambition: his reputation for incorruptibility and his independent spirit.

I don’t know enough about Sowore to speak authoritatively about his outside-the-headline qualities but I suspect that Kperogi is being far too kind. There is, I believe, a far more banal and more accurate explanation for Sowore’s failure to make a dent on the electorate: his populist message may be superficially attractive but voters, including Sowore’s beloved masses, don’t consider him enough of a serious candidate to commit their votes to him. Voters are a lot more perceptive than many analysts give them credit for. The fact is that being an outsider is not enough. The electorate needs to know that you have something deeper and with more practical value beyond loud headlines and SUG theatrics.

Some of Sowore’s policy positions reflect this preoccupation with drama at the expense of substance. In 2019 he advocated for the country to legalize and export marijuana, starting with “Ondo weed” as a major source of revenue for economic transformation. Given the many other available economic assets and resources that the country has which remain unexplored, the “marijuana strategy” is not exactly a priority that should be taken seriously.

More recently in May this year, Sowore declared “If I become Nigeria’s president tomorrow, my minister of defence will be a drone”, adding that he would stop buying conventional fighter jets and invest in increasing the nation’s arsenal of unmanned aerial vehicles. It was a typical Sowore gambit – long on shock and short of practical value.

It is no surprise that Sowore’s popularity and his electability seem to have an inverse relationship. When loud style trumps substance, voters enjoy the entertainment but they can see through the act.

Nwabuikwu is a member of ������Ƶ Editorial Board

The Advocate

By Onikepo Braithwaite

Onikepo.braithwaite@thisdaylive.com

Introduction 

Last week, we reported this appeal as our Law Report – SC/481/2018 Ben Mene-Ejegi Esq v NBA & Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee (LPDC) Judgement delivered on 26/6/2026 per Mohammed Baba Idris, JSC; Obande Festus Ogbuinya & Habeeb Adewale Olumuyiwa Abiru JJSC Dissenting (Mene-Ejegi case or Mene-Ejegi). Because it had to do with the interpretation or application of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended)(the Constitution), a full court of seven Justices heard the appeal – see Sections 233(2)(b) & 234 thereof. This full court decision of the Supreme Court, though split 5:2, has put paid to the argument as to whether an appeal can lie directly from the LPDC to the Supreme Court. The law as it stands today, is that it cannot. The Apex Court relied on Section 233 of the Constitution which confers its appellate jurisdiction on it, and by virtue of Section 233(1) thereof, presently, appeals lie to the Supreme Court only from the Court of Appeal. 

The Majority Judgement and Rationale 

While the Majority decision of the Apex Court found Section 233(2) to be exhaustive in terms of its appellate jurisdiction, on the other hand, it also found that Section 240 of the Constitution shows that only the Court of Appeal was designed to receive statutory add-ons, that is, appeals from such “other tribunals as may be prescribed by an Act of the National Assembly” (NASS). The purport of this is that, while their Lordships found that the only way an appeal can lie to the Supreme Court is from the Court of Appeal, and NASS has no power to enact a statute adding any further appellate source to the Supreme Court, they accepted that Section 240 of the Constitution allows other tribunals not expressly named therein, to be given a right of appeal to the Court of Appeal by an Act of NASS. Section 12(7) of the Legal Practitioners Act (as amended) (LPA) which purported to send LPDC directions straight to the Supreme Court was accordingly, found to be inconsistent with Section 233(1) of the Constitution, and therefore, void to the extent of its inconsistency by virtue of Section 1(3) thereof. 

The principle of expressio unius est exclusio alterius was applied, that is,  the express mention of one thing automatically excludes any other, which otherwise would have been included by implication – see Jegede & Anor v INEC & Ors (2021) LPELR-55481(SC) per Mohammed Lawal Garba, JSC; Shinkafi &  Anor v Yari & Ors (2016) LPELR-26050(SC) per John Inyang Okoro, JSC.  By virtue of Section 315(1) of the Constitution, the LPA is an existing law, and Section 12(5) thereof allowed for appeals from the Appeal Committee to the Supreme Court; yet, this appeal process was excluded from the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction laid out in Section 233(2) of the Constitution. 

The implication of the foregoing is that the only constitutionally contemplated path of an LPDC appeal to the Supreme Court, be it through the Appeal Committee or directly from the LPDC, would be through the Court of Appeal. That path, however, is not yet open. Section 240 is not self-executing. It permits NASS to prescribe the LPDC –or any successor appellate body –as a source of appeal to the Court of Appeal; it does not, by itself, vest that jurisdiction.

The older printed text of the LPA (the version reproduced as Cap L11 in the Laws of the Federation 2004) had sent a person aggrieved by an LPDC direction, first to the Appeal Committee of the Body of Benchers (Appeal Committee) within 28 days – see the old Sections 11(7) and 12(1) – and from that Committee onward to the Supreme Court – Section 12(5). In SC/278/2021 Nnamdi Osuji v LPDC & Incorporated Trustees of the NBA, Judgement delivered on 4/7/2025 per Mohammed Lawal Garba, JSC, the Supreme Court applied that compilation. It held that a direct appeal from the LPDC to the Supreme Court was incompetent, and that the aggrieved person must go to the Appeal Committee first. The Osuji decision had still assumed that, after the Appeal Committee, the Supreme Court remained the next port. 

The Mene-Ejegi decision, makes that assumption untenable. If Section 233 admits only the Court of Appeal as a feeder court, neither the LPDC nor the Appeal Committee can be given a statutory ticket directly to the Apex Court. It appears that, as things stand, either appeals will terminate at the Appeal Committee, or whether from the LPDC or Appeal Committee, a law must be enacted for such appeal to go to the Appeal Court, in order to then be able to get to the Supreme Court. The 1994 amendment to the LPA had in any event, deleted the Appeal Committee and substituted Section 12(7), allowing direct appeal from the LPDC to the Supreme Court. The Majority in  Mene-Ejegi has now voided Section 12(7). The honest present tense is therefore this: there is now no clearly living statutory appeal from an LPDC direction to any court. And, it appears that no Appeal Committee has been constituted, meaning that until such a time as the Appeal Committee is constituted or NASS acts, LPDC directions sit in a vacuum, with nowhere to go. 

Dissenting Opinions of Ogbuinya & Abiru JJSC

In their dissenting opinions, Ogbuinya and Abiru JJSC, preferred to follow the precedent laid down in Okike  v LPDC (2005) 3-4 SC 49, also a seven man Panel led by Mohammed Lawal Uwais, CJN. The Panel had unanimously held that Section 233(1) of the Constitution gives the Supreme Court exclusive jurisdiction over Court of Appeal decisions; it does not say the Court may hear only those appeals. In the absence of an express ouster, the Court would not readily strip itself of a jurisdiction it had long exercised in professional- discipline matters. 

For the dissenting Justices, the live question appeared to be which statute is extant, already answered in their view, by the Revised LPA and by the Okike decision. A later Panel they said, cannot raise constitutionality suo motu, overrule a full-court decision that was never challenged by the parties, and treat a mere difference of interpretive taste as a ground for departure. In Adegoke Motors Ltd v Adesanya & Anor (1989) LPELR-94(SC) per Chukwudifu Akunne Oputa, JSC, his Lordship repeated the famous words of US Supreme Court Justice, Robert H. Jackson in Brown v Allen: “We are final not because we are infallible; rather we are infallible because we are final”. Because no other court sits above the Supreme Court, departure from a previous decision is something that is done rarely, and it appears that the dissenting Justices in the Mene-Ejegi case didn’t believe that conditions for such departure had been met.  But, the Majority’s reply was that once the issue is jurisdiction, the Court may re-examine the Constitution itself, and that Okike left the Section 233/240 architecture unexamined. That is the real split: closed textual structure versus settled precedent plus a saved statutory right of appeal.

Pertinent Question: Is Professional Misconduct a Constitutional Event?

A pertinent question to ask here is, why the issue of the disbarment or discipline of a Lawyer for infamous conduct or professional misconduct, be one that should reach the Supreme Court, the highest court of the land, a policy court, as if it’s just a glorified appellate court? The Supreme Court is a court of doctrine; it decides hard cases where the law is unclear or where the Constitution is in issue. Does the issue of whether a Lawyer is disbarred or not, fit this bill? I think not. The full court sat in  Mene-Ejegi, not because of the subject-matter of his case, but because of the interpretation and application of Section 233(2)(b) of the Constitution vis-à-vis issues relating to the LPDC and whether appeals could lie therefrom to the Supreme Court. Infamous conduct, is not a constitutional event. Allowing such infamous conduct matters simpliciter to reach the Supreme Court from the LPDC or Appeal Committee, would open the floodgates of other professional bodies to do the same. With respect, this isn’t the role of the Supreme Court. 

Conclusion 

In AGF & Ors v Abubakar & Ors (2007) LPELR-3(SC) per Sunday Akinola Akintan, JSC, the Supreme Court held thus: “For the court to enact or write into the Constitution what its makers failed to insert would amount to the court enacting laws and as Lord Simmons described such an act “a naked usurpation of legislative functions under the thin disguise of interpretation….”. His Lordship went on to hold that if there are legislative gaps, such gaps must be filled by amendment. 

The mode of amending the Constitution is set out in Section 9 thereof; it cannot be done by any other means. For the purposes of amending Section 233(2) of the Constitution to expand the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, the process outlined in Section 9(2) thereof would have to be followed, that is, the amendment cannot be passed in either House of NASS unless it is supported by votes of at least two thirds of the members of the  House of NASS that proposed the amendment and approved by a resolution of Houses of Assembly of not less than two-thirds of all the States. 

It appears that this trite position must have impacted on the Majority decision in Mene-Ejegi; that even if such appeals had lain from the LPDC to the Supreme Court previously, there is actually no such provision permitting same in Section 233(2) of the Constitution, and a constitutional amendment would be required to be able to hear such appeals. After all, the Supreme Court is a creation of the Constitution. 

The Majority in Mene-Ejegi has answered the jurisdictional question. It has not answered the practical one. A Lawyer who is struck off, and who disputes LPDC’s direction, now has no clearly living statutory path into any court. Reconstituting the Appeal Committee does not, on the majority’s reading of Section 233 of the Constitution, reopen the Supreme Court. Direct restoration of the old Section 12(7) of the LPA route would require a Section 9(2) constitutional amendment of Section 233. The constitutionally available, and far less cumbersome, cure is the one Section 240 already contemplates: an Act of the National Assembly prescribing the LPDC – or any successor appellate body – as a source of appeal to the Court of Appeal. Until NASS does that work, the gap the Court identified remains a gap the Court cannot fill. As the Supreme Court itself said in AGF & Ors v Abubakar & Ors (Supra), writing into the Constitution what the makers omitted is not interpretation, it is legislation.

Bola A. Akinterinwa

The U.S. Airforce Secretary, Troy Meink, told the Air, Space and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, on September 14, 2026 that the United States had deployed space control weapons in Earth’s orbit. No information was given on the nature of the space control weapons. No information was given on when and how the weapons were deployed. However, the U.S. Airforce admitted that the deployed weapons use kinetic (physical) and non-Kinetic (electronic or signal disruption) methods to stop any threats. Put interrogatively, has the U.S. not put in the orbit nuclear weapons? If not, is the U.S. not preparing to do so? Since space control weapons are what the U.S. Airforce is talking about, could it be that the U.S. has put robotics in the outer-space contrarily to the prohibitions of international law? 

What is put in the orbit is not known, but the purpose of deploying such weapons in the outer space is made known. First, it is to protect American military forces from enemy attacks. Second, it is to avoid being taken unawares by China and Russia both of which the U.S. strongly believe are already building technology to disable American satellites. And thirdly, it is to deter enemies from attacking U.S. space networks by already showing readiness for any eventuality. It is against this background that Professor Akinwande Bolaji Akinyemi’s 288th Session of the ThruMYeyes, held on Thursday, September 17, 2026 took the issue with much concern (vide ).

Reacting to the development, Professor Akinyemi said, ‘I am afraid.’ Afraid of death as an octogenarian? Certainly not. Afraid apparently, because of the deleterious consequences for humanity if the weapons are nuclear-driven, if robotic engines, or weapons of mass destruction are put in the space and if such weapons, though targeted at the Chinese and Russians, inadvertently miss the arch enemies? What if nuclear weapons are dropped in Africa, Professor Akinyemi asked? There were no certain answers to this probability. This is one reason for investigating the launching of space control weapons in the outer space in the face of international law and why there is also the need to ask fresh questions about Nigeria’s outer-space programme.

MAGA and International Law 

MAGA is the acronym for ‘Make America Great Again.’ MAGA is the nickname for U.S. foreign policy under President Donald Trump. It is the nickname for disrespect of rule of law and international law. MAGA is a redefinition of ‘America First’ policy of President Trump. ‘America First,’ as a foreign policy, implies non-concession to the whims and caprices, other national interests, etc., of any other sovereign states in international relations. Consequently, it is a foreign policy implemented by manu militari. Making America Great Again does not allow for consultation or negotiation. It is generally implemented by imposition and sanctions in the event of rejection. It is by hook and crook. And most unfortunately, it is largely predicated on rejection of international law and world order and replacing them with American-defined by whatever is American and in the national interest.

President Trump came up with the idea of a Board of Peace under his chairmanship to supervise the day-to-day management of affairs in Gaza. He is ridiculously trying to replace the U.N. as if it is possible. He tried to replace trade rules with export controls. He put in place a coalition that polices the sea lanes. And true enough, Donald Trump also wants Saudi Arabia to assist in providing security escorts for shipping lines passing through the Strait of Hormuz expectedly in order to protect the ships against Iranian threats and attacks. Most unfortunately, President Trump did not carry Saudi Arabia along by first having the courtesy of informing Saudi Arabia and securing the consent of the country. This neglect pushed Saudi Arabia to take the bad end of the stick and to adopt a non-cooperative attitude. Instead of discussing gentlemanly with the Saudi authorities, Donald Trump threatened to delay supply military assistance. This is one of the manifestations of MAGA in Saudi Arabia.

Donald Trump wants to maintain international peace and security in his own mania, but he avoids discussing with partners that are needed to help. MAGA cannot succeed by simply issuing orders to other sovereign states, even to a banana republic so to say. This policy attitude cannot but create major obstacles to international peacemaking. How can he want the deployment of African troops to join Albania, Kosovo, Morocco and Kazakhstan and others in keeping the peace in Gaza but not carry Africa along in the preparative discussions? With this style of international administration, every United States foreign policy decision or announcement has always hardened the conduct and management of international relations, thereby frustrating efforts being made to maintain international peace and security. 

Placing dangerous weapons in the outer-space cannot but begin to generate great concerns about the future of Africa, and particularly raising questions on global peace and security. For instance, will there be peace in the world tomorrow? Can the world survive with the increasing U.S. disregard for rule of law or for international law? Not likely. China has warned the U.S. against paving the way for an arms race in the space. The Chinese have urged the United States ‘to stop expanding its military capabilities and preparing for war in the outer space’ (AFP quoted a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson as saying).

The explanation of the U.S. Space Force spokesperson is that ‘space control encapsulates the mission areas required to contest and control the space domain – employing kinetic and non-kinetic means to affect  adversary capabilities through disruption, degradation and even destruction, if necessary.’ Additionally, and more importantly too, the spokesperson said ‘these capabilities can be employed for offensive and defensive purposes at the direction of combatant.’ 

In this regard, what the Americans are saying is that U.S. military superiority cannot be challenged. As reported by , Victoria Samson, the Chief Director of Space Security and Stability for Secure World Foundation, has it that “Space Force doctrine describes ‘space control’ as having the outcome of space superiority, which they define as the ability to operate at the time and place of their choosing, while denying the same to an adversary.”

And as further reported by the BBC, ‘an expert on military uses of outer space noted that “precious little” was publicly known about the technology, and told the BBC there could be a ‘whole range of different weapons systems.’’ This is precisely what the outer space, internationally considered as terra nullius, appears to be playing host to. Is the orbit not being prepared for electronic warfare? Is the orbit the next theatre for radio jamming battle? Whatever is the case, the outer space is a common patrimony that should neither be nationalized nor used for any manner of weaponisation to the detriment of international peace and security. 

Without doubt, many are the agreements and declarations on how to use the outer space for peaceful and developmental purposes. There is, for example, the Declaration on International Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for the Benefit and in the Interest of All States, Taking into Particular Account the Needs of Developing Countries (Vide Official Records of the General Assembly, Fifty-first Session, Supplement No. 20 (A/51/20). There is also the Declaration of Legal Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space (See ).

In the same vein, the Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies desires in its Preamble ‘to prevent the Moon from becoming an area of international conflict.’ It provides for peaceful uses of the Moon and prohibits ‘any threat or use of force or any other hostile act or threat of hostile act on the Moon’. More important, ‘the establishment of military bases, installation and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military manoeuvres on the Moon shall be forbidden’ (See Article 3, paragraphs (1), (2), and (4).  

 Again, as provided in UNGA Resolution 1962 (XVIII), entitled “Declaration of Legal Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space,” which was unanimously adopted on 13 December, 1963, the ‘exploration and use of outer space should be carried on for the benefit of all peoples irrespective of the degree of their economic or scientific development’ (see the Preamble and Article 1). While Article II prohibits national appropriation by claim of sovereignty or by means of use or occupation, or by any other means, Article IV clearly outlaws the use of the outer space for war purposes. 

As provided, ‘States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner.’ And more prohibitively, Article IV stipulates further that ‘the Moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military manoeuvres on celestial bodies shall be forbidden.’ Additionally, UN Resolution 1884(XVIII) has also asked all ‘States to refrain from placing in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction or from installing such weapons on celestial bodies.’

From the foregoing, legal prohibitions on the use of the outer space for belligerent purposes abound. The use of the outer space for scientific, developmental, and peaceful purposes is not forbidden, it is what is generally provided for. What is prohibited is any exploration and use of the outer space for belligerent intentions. Most unexpectedly, however, it is the United States, the presumed and expected leading guarantor of global peace and security that is now leading in the violation of international law. The deployment into the outer space of U.S. Control Weapons is a flagrant violation of the Treaty on the Outer Space.

Revisiting Nigeria’s Outer Space Programme?

It is against the foregoing background that there is the need to investigate the need to revisit Nigeria’s Outer Space Programme. Explained differently, if we admit that the U.S. has flagrantly violated international law, but has ensured the protection of the national interest by so doing, what lesson should Nigeria learn from this example? This question is necessary because it is clearly stated in Nigeria’s 1999 Constitution that respect for international law and treaty obligation is one of Nigeria’s foreign policy objectives. Why should Nigeria respect a treaty obligation in the spirit of pacta sunt servanda when other countries are not respecting it?

The implication of U.S. disregard for international law is that its international responsibility can be called to question and this will be in consonance with the provision of Article VI of the Treaty, which stipulates that ‘States Parties to the treaty shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried on by government agencies or by non-governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in the present Treaty…’  

And by further inquiry and implication, should other sovereign states follow the example of the United States? What future is there for international law if joint violations of the rule of law are encouraged? Should the respect of international law be for one set of states?

As much as we admit that weaponising of the outer space by the U.S. appears to be consistent with President Trump’s dream of a ‘Golden Dome’ defence system, why should any country, like Nigeria, accept to sacrifice her own national interests at the altar of respect for international law while other states care less for the rule of law? 

And true enough again, the U.S. has hundreds of satellites used for surveillance and communication in the space. It was against the background of the need to protect its assets that the U.S. Space Force was established in 2019 with the mandate to protect the U.S. assets. If the national interest takes priority in the U.S. why is it wrong for any other country to also insist on the protection of its own national interest? What makes Iran and North Korea wrong in seeking to acquire nuclear capability by all means? And perhaps more disturbingly, if the acquisition of nuclear capability is already considered too risky for the maintenance of international security, why is the U.S. developing more sophisticated weapons? Why carry nuclear politics to the outer-space? It is at this juncture that investigating the place of Africa in all these strategic calculations and revisiting Nigeria’s outer space programme have become a desideratum.

The hypothetical take-off is that America, or more precisely, the United States, is gradually travelling on a boulevard of irreversible decline, regardless of its claim to the deployment of on orbit space control weapons. President Trump is making efforts tooth and nail to make Americans believe that they are still second to none. He never told them that MAGA is actually attracting more enemies for the good people of America. If truth be told, American declining status is directly and indirectly impacting on Africa in different ways, especially at the level of indecision. In fact, African scholars, particularly in Nigeria, are showing great concerns about the likely implications of President Donald Trump’s policy of ‘Make America Great Again’ by coercion.

Professor Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, of the University of Paris-Sorbonne, argued more than two decade ago that ‘Tout Empire Périra,’ meaning that ‘Every empire shall Perish.’ Tout Empire Périra’ is actually the title of one of his major publications after his Histoire Diplomatique from 1919. The book has posited that every hegemony that has a beginning cannot but also have an end. American power has a beginning and cannot but also have an end. Bsut Americans find it difficult to accept it with decency. Americans easily forget that the world order of balance of power has been thrown into the dustbin of history. 

Even the world order of bipolarity that later replaced it at the end of World War II has also similarly been thrown into the garbage of history thanks to the self-effacement of Soviet policies of glasnost and perestroika. As a result of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, bringing the Cold War to an end in 1989, the United States remains the only superpower in international relations (unipolar world). While World War II brought an end to great power politics and ushered in superpower politics, so has the end of the Cold War in 1989 ended bipolarity and ushered in unipolarity. As of today, unipolarity is again under threats as there are new centres of competing power, requiring Nigeria and Africa to adapt. 

In Nigeria, no seriousness of purpose has been shown in the development of space technology in spite of the professional competencies that abound. It is on record that Dr. Adigun Ade Abiodun is a Nigerian by ius sanguinis. He was the founder of the African Space Foundation and a registered Professional Engineer with the State of Washington in the U.S. He was a Senior Special Assistant to President Olusegun Okikiola Obasanjo on Space Science and Technology from February 2000 to May 2003. And perhaps more significantly, he was not only a Member of the College of Commissioners for the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), but was also the Chairman of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOUS) from June 2004 to June 2006.

When Dr. Abiodun was alive, to what extent was he listened to? Internationally, he was respected and listened to. How do we explain Nigeria’s inability to make progress in terms of space technology development when he was in the Public Service of Nigeria? Dr. Abiodun wrote his Chapter 2 on “Space Enterprise and Nigeria’s National Interest,” in Bola A. Akinterinwa, ed., Nigeria’s National Interests in a Globalising World: Further Reflections on Constructive and Beneficial Concentricism, Volume 2 on Foreign Policy Interests in the Innermost Circle, published by Bolytag International Publishers in 2007). Dr. Abiodun belongs to the Socrates school of thought according to which ‘Man must rise above the atmosphere and beyond, for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives,’ (vide p. 37 of the book). 

Put differently, when Professor Adebisi Arewa emphasized at the thruMYeyes 288th session the point that Nigeria’s problem has nothing to do with lack of professionals, he could not have been more correct. Nigeria’s problem is lack of political will. And without jot of doubt, this lack of interest was further buttressed by another revelation that, earlier in 2026, former Minister of External Affairs, and President of the Academy of International Affairs, Professor Akinwande Bolaji Akinyemi, CFR, similarly drew attention of the Federal Government to the need to consider the need for space technology development in anticipation of the challenges of nuclear rivalry in the outer space. There is nothing to suggest that Government is even looking in the direction of grandeur du Nigeria for which the developkent of space technology programme is required. In Nigeria, election is everything and anything political is said to be fair. This is most unfortunate. How will Africa be affected in the foreseeable future? What future has Africa as Professor Tunde Adeniran may want to ask in his current research on redefining Africa’s future?

From a deductive qualitative methodology, it can be posited that, if the U.S. Airforce Secretary, Troy Meink, had told the Air, Space and Cyber Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, on September 14, 2026 that the United States had deployed space control weapons in Earth’s orbit, the nature and type of the control measures cannot but be nuclearized robotics, especially that they were designed to be an anticipated deterrent and message for both China and Russia. Putting on orbit control weapons that will not be strong enough to deter is bad robotic diplomacy. In other words, the capacity of bombs deployed in the outer space must be stronger than the Little Man deployed in Hiroshima and the Fat Man dropped on Nagasaki. Many problems were identified at the 288th Session by Professor A. Bolaji Akinyemi’s ThruMYeyes. First problematic was being able to deploy on orbit control weapons but not being able to withdraw them if need be. Second is the possibility of a robot escaping from where it is logged up and it cannot be brought back because of lack of control over it? A third issue is who has responsibility to control the weapons in the space? Is it the UN or the US or the coalition of States? Another question is who is trustworthy? Can there be element of trust with Donald Trump’s admission of having sent on orbit space control weapons? Should there not be a national debate on this issue of robotic diplomacy? This was the question given to the Members of the Academy of International Affairs on the platform to begin to investigate by Professor Bolaji Akinyemi.

Femi Akintunde-Johnson

There is something almost perversely Nigerian about the way Olu Jacobs finally left us. For years, social media undertakers had been rehearsing his obituary. They killed him in 2020, resurrected him, killed him again in 2021, brought him back in 2022, and somehow kept the rumour industry sufficiently busy thereafter. His wife, Joke Silva, became an unwilling chief mourner at funerals that had not happened. Family photographs, public appearances and the occasional irritated clarification were repeatedly required to prove that the great actor was still among the living. Now, on Wednesday, 16 September, 2026, the announcement came from his son, Olusoji Jacobs: Olu Jacobs had died at 84. This time, there would be no correction. The curtain had finally fallen.

One is tempted to say that Nigeria’s social-media undertakers have finally been vindicated. But that would give a rather grotesque joke too much dignity. The real story is that a man who had been prematurely declared dead so many times had lived a life substantial enough to survive even the rumours about his death. And perhaps that is the most appropriate place to begin any tribute to Olu Jacobs: not with the fact that he has died, but with the astonishing amount of life, work, discipline and influence that he packed into his 84 years.

Oludotun Baiyewu Jacobs, MFR was not simply one of the familiar faces that became synonymous with Nollywood. Long before Nollywood acquired a name, a global audience or the confidence to call itself an industry, Jacobs had already acquired something rarer: professional pedigree. He trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and built an impressive career across British stage, television and film. His credits reached into productions associated with the BBC, the National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, Pinewood and major international film companies, including appearances in The Dogs of War (1980), Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend (1985) and Pirates (1986).

That background matters because it helps us understand what Olu Jacobs brought home. He did not return to Nigeria as an aspiring actor looking for his first break. He returned as a seasoned professional who had already experienced a theatre and screen culture in which craft mattered, preparation mattered and the actor was expected to know what he was doing. He brought that sensibility into an emerging Nigerian film industry that was still finding its feet. The result was not merely another successful acting career. It was a bridge between two worlds. And what a bridge he became.

 In Nigerian homes, Olu Jacobs could be a king, a patriarch, a chief, a professor, a businessman, a villain, a statesman or some imposing elder whose mere arrival in a scene seemed to change the temperature of the room. He had that rare screen authority that did not require shouting. The eyes did much of the work. The deliberate movements did some more. Then came that unmistakable voice – deep, measured, occasionally tremulous, but carrying the weight of a man who expected to be heard.

Some actors enter a scene. Olu Jacobs seemed to occupy it.

There was also something intriguingly restrained about his charisma. He could look severe without becoming theatrical, authoritative without appearing desperate for attention, humorous without becoming a clown. Even when the material around him was less than distinguished – and Nigerian cinema has never suffered from a shortage of less-than-distinguished material – Jacobs often seemed to be operating according to another standard. He understood that acting is not merely memorising lines and moving in front of a camera. It is presence, timing, interpretation and the ability to make another person’s words sound as though they belong to you.

That professional seriousness eventually found institutional expression. With Joke Silva, his wife and fellow distinguished actor, he helped build the Lufodo Group, which grew beyond production into distribution, consultancy and the Lufodo Academy of Performing Arts. The academy’s stated ambition was particularly revealing: to provide rigorous, practice-based training capable of raising the standard of stage, television and film production in Nigeria. In other words, the couple did not merely complain about the industry’s shortcomings; they created platforms through which another generation could be trained.

This may ultimately prove one of the more important parts of the Jacobs legacy. The easiest thing for an accomplished professional is to complain about the younger generation. The more useful thing is to teach it. Olu Jacobs and Joke Silva chose the latter. Lufodo’s continuing work in training and developing talent, including its later collaboration with Netflix to train Nigerian actors and writers, illustrates how an artistic career can evolve into institution-building.

And then there was Joke. For more than four decades, the two were partners in marriage, performance and enterprise. Their relationship became one of those rare Nigerian entertainment partnerships that survived the glare of public curiosity without being consumed by it. Joke was not merely “Mrs Olu Jacobs”; she was an accomplished actor in her own right. Olu was not merely “Joke Silva’s husband”. Together, they demonstrated what a creative partnership could become when talent, affection, professional respect and shared purpose were allowed to reinforce one another.

The irony is almost unbearable: at a time when the internet had repeatedly announced his death, the public was also witnessing the gradual withdrawal of a once extraordinarily active performer from the stage and screen. Illness had taken its toll, and Joke’s occasional public comments offered glimpses of the private burden behind the public legend. Yet even in those difficult years, there was dignity in the way the family managed his privacy and protected the man behind the celebrity.

Now the family has announced that the Lion of Lufodo has gone. Nigeria will, naturally, mourn him noisily. There will be tributes, photographs, old clips, quotations, reminiscences and perhaps the inevitable discovery by younger Nigerians that their parents had been watching Olu Jacobs long before many of them were born. There will be arguments over favourite films and favourite roles. There will be the usual social-media archaeology, with people digging up forgotten scenes and announcing, as though making a startling discovery, that “this man was a legend”.

But Olu Jacobs did not become a legend because social media eventually agreed to call him one. He became one because he did the work.

  He trained. He travelled. He performed. He returned. He acted. He directed. He produced. He taught. He built. He mentored. He partnered. He endured. And, for more than half a century, he kept contributing to the craft that had given him his voice and his place in our collective imagination. Lufodo records a career spanning roughly five decades across stage, film and radio, with more than 300 movies in Nigeria to his credit.

 So perhaps we should resist the temptation to make his death another performance. We have had enough premature ones already.

Let us simply acknowledge the man, the craft and the contribution. Olu Jacobs has finally left the stage. But unlike the rumours that repeatedly tried to bury him, his work will not require resurrection. The archive has already settled the matter.

FCT minister’s Rainbow Coalition is a hybrid political strategy that advances the president’s interests but can undermine some of the All Progressives Congress governors’ fortunes, writes BOLAJI ADEBIYI

The fireworks between the Federal Capital Territory Minister, Nyesom Wike, and the All Progressives Congress governors on Monday exploded a ticking time bomb. There has been no love lost between the APC leadership, its governors and the FCT minister. They have always expressed reservations about the cosy relationship between President Bola Tinubu and Wike, which they feel Wike, a member of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, has taken undue advantage of.

An early sign of trouble emerged last year when Siminalayi Fubara, the Rivers State governor and Wike’s protege, crossed the floor from the PDP to the APC and assumed leadership of the latter under the party’s policy that allocates state leadership to the governor. Wike, who controlled both the APC and PDP structures in the state, challenged Fubara’s leadership, arguing that Rivers State should be an exception to the rule.

If the party’s governors, under the auspices of the Progressives Governors’ Forum, anticipated the danger of the precedent Wike sought to set, they probably lacked the courage to challenge him openly. It was Basiru Ajibola, the APC national secretary, who mounted a feeble challenge. He told the FCT minister, in no uncertain terms, that he was a meddlesome interloper who could not dictate to a party hierarchy of which he was not a member.

However, Wike had his way: the party’s leadership not only conceded to him but also denied Fubara the right of first refusal to hoist the party’s flag in the impending 2027 governorship election. Not a few party leaders and political analysts believe the FCT was muscled through at the President’s behest, a move that reflected the confidence the President enjoyed in him despite his not being an APC member. 

Perhaps this is the clear and present danger the APC governors seek to avert. Wike’s publicly expressed support for President Tinubu’s second-term push has repeatedly helped him get away with murder. Otherwise, why would they object to collaborating with a coalition of forces to secure victory for their party’s candidate in a presidential election that promises to be a titanic fight against the backdrop of the widespread adverse effects of the prevailing economic reforms?

Meanwhile, Wike’s Rainbow Coalition makes strategic political sense, as it can counterbalance the opposition parties’ ongoing efforts to unite behind a single candidate to confront President Tinubu in 2027. Already, he has helped President Tinubu contain the PDP, which, without a doubt, remains the only opposition party with the nationwide structure to mount an effective challenge. With that behemoth under wraps, Wike proposes allying with other parties in key states to mobilise votes for President Tinubu. What is the problem with that?

The governors’ fear seems to be that Wike might seek concessions from President Tinubu in exchange for ceding some states to him. This fear is both real and logical, given what happened in his home state, Rivers, where the APC governorship candidacy was ceded to his ally, Emmanuel Chinda. Despite the crisis in the PDP, the minister’s faction has candidates vying for governorship and legislative positions in 26 of the 28 states where elections will be held next year.

This shows that, under Wike’s leadership, the PDP still has stronger organisational capacity than the other opposition parties, which are fielding candidates in only a dozen states. The African Democratic Congress, for instance, has gubernatorial candidates in only 18 states, while the National Democratic Congress is fielding candidates in 12 states. If the morning shows the day, the party with the leadership capacity to make a greater electoral impact should be clear. This suggests Wike can mobilise votes in at least 26 states. No one should take such a person for granted when facing strong contenders. Against this backdrop, Wike’s capacity to extract concessions appears more tangible than many imagined, particularly in APC states weakened by internal strife.

So, rather than seeking to cut Wike down to size or alienate him, it would be more strategic for the APC governors to accommodate him. Though this is a difficult proposition, they have little room to manoeuvre, as President Tinubu is unlikely to be intimidated into abandoning an ally with a proven capacity for electoral delivery. This is especially true because the presidential election precedes the governorship poll. Are the governors likely to ask the president to choose between them and the FCT minister? It is unlikely.   

While the Presidency and the APC have yet to respond officially to the governors’ concerns, initial comments from presidential campaign spokespersons suggest a cautious approach. Speaking on ARISE TV on Tuesday night, Ayobami Oyalowo saw no divergence between the governors and the FCT minister. “Both of them said they are backing the president. So, the devil is in the details,” he added, explaining that President Tinubu and the party leadership will intervene shortly to separate the fight. Ima Niboro, a former presidential spokesperson, echoed the sentiment, noting that both parties are working for the president.

It might not be that simple, though. President Tinubu will have to balance the combatants’ interests. On the one hand are the 31 APC governors, with enormous influence in their states. While some are seeking re-election, others want to install their proteges. Both believe a likely presidential deal with the FCT minister could jeopardise their interests. On the other hand, Wike is standing on the PDP platform with nationwide capacity to augment the president’s electoral fortune in an election that promises to be tight. Such augmentation is not likely to come at no cost.

Untangling this intricate nut may test President Tinubu’s famed political sagacity.

Adebiyi, a Fellow of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, writes from Abuja

Nigeria’s foremost political office seekers should elevate their quest, writes MONDAY PHILIPS EKPE

It’s not a surprise that our political leaders are fixated on oil matters. Ever before the present times when even their counterparts in advanced nations cannot afford to keep their minds away from the fuel pumps in their countries, they always found ways to weave election promises around the affordability and availability of petroleum products. Many political office holders around the world have paid dearly for not keeping energy costs within the reach of their average citizens. And, at various points, these combustible commodities have determined the presence or absence of tranquillity in many places. That the world literally runs on energy is, therefore, not an overstatement. 

But now, what obtains in Nigeria as it moves gradually towards the next general polls points to concerns that should be viewed outside the overall trajectory of a nation preoccupied with products which have defined much of its socio-political and economic history. Former Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon’s fabled gaffe in the 1970s that money wasn’t Nigeria’s problem but how to spend it was inspired solely by the petrodollar windfalls during his regime. He inadvertently verbalised what eventually became the unseen, metaphysical gadget that has continued to manipulate what we do with these superabundant natural resources. Several other countries with similar credentials have since utilised theirs to secure their own present and future but, sadly, we don’t seem set yet to get rid of the albatross anytime soon.

Rather than convert our huge endowments to enablers of perpetual prosperity for the people, the persons who have accessed political power have, over the years, succeeded largely in squandering the opportunities through lack of vision, incompetence and self-aggrandisement. And now that we’re in a season to hear what those who aspire to occupy the country’s driver’s seat intend to do differently, the signals aren’t coherent and convincing enough. Painfully!

The politics of oil subsidy removal has, perhaps not surprisingly, taken the centre-stage. The import of this swelling drama shouldn’t be lost on us. President Bola Tinubu’s May 29, 2023 declaration that “fuel subsidy is gone!” is, arguably, Nigeria’s punchiest, crudest inauguration speech statement ever. His critics sometimes describe it as “cruellest”. He most probably wanted to demonstrate his readiness to confront one of the nation’s stubborn monsters frontally. Instructively, virtually all his major opponents in the election that produced his victory were unanimous on their desire to drop what they saw as a massive leakage in the country’s challenged revenue base.

The sorrows and tears that pronouncement and the naira floatation which followed it have brought upon the citizenry certainly motivated the Presidential Candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, to announce his plan to re-introduce the subsidy if elected next year. When reminded that it was a total reversal of his initial policy stand, the vow was modified to mean that the subvention would be for production, not downstream operations. But then, somersault is not strange to politics, especially in climes where being accountable to the populace is not a requirement for electoral victories. The ADC strongman knows both the game and his environment and he expects the people to be adequately moved by their perennial penury to want to vote out Tinubu.

The president’s other major challenger, Mr Peter Obi of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), has taken a more measured position on oil. He won’t jettison the prevailing order but would pursue a more transparent, responsive and responsible governance. He has – in his drawer – people-oriented economic programmes that would promote the reduction of hardship. One image Obi has managed to acquire over time is prudence. It would take more than rhetoric, though, to convince Nigerians that he can raise national leadership above the levels that successive heads of government have attained.

Not to sound alarmist, the stakes are getting higher without commensurate prospects. The shortage of original ideas about how to run the country in ways that give genuine hope to the people is on full display, unfortunately. The fact that voters are stuck with the same frontrunners in the last presidential election further dampens the morale, if not psyche, of many Nigerians. Only God knows what the man in the saddle truly thinks of the outcomes of the reforms he has imposed on the people. The preachments that the present sufferings will ultimately be instrumental to limitless enjoyment hereafter sound increasingly hollow. Paraded strides of foreign reserves improvements and stability in foreign exchange mean little or nothing to someone whose spending capability has drained away from him substantially. A stable local currency remains a fallacy, a hoax to whoever has any respectable memory to recall the rates only four years ago.

Quite intriguingly, Tinubu, Abubakar and Obi – the gentlemen pronounced winner, first runner-up, and second runner-up in that order by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in 2023 – are still here as the leading contestants, hoping to grab majority votes. Luckily for them, the mass media are treating them accordingly. Ranked fourth is Dr Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso who ran on the ticket of the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP) but is now in NDC as Obi’s vice-presidential candidate. We’re still saddled with the same ambitious, relentless politicians, you see.

As expected, the opposition figures in particular have started their campaigns with fuel issues – low hanging fruits that touch the very souls of the nation’s teeming poor. They would slash the costs into the ground, bla, bla, bla! There’s hardly any new thing the government can say about the subject now that the price of petrol has moved beyond one dollar per litre. It’s been trying to ascribe a chunk of the growing success of Dangote Refinery to its fiscal ingenuity. Well, good luck.

At this point, our political power seekers should, in God’s name, step out of the over-travelled road of dishing out empty and half-baked pledges to the despondent masses. They should also avoid messy, oily, smear fights. Accusations of the president’s cloudy certificates and drug dealings, Abubakar’s alleged shady businesses, and doubts about Obi’s university degree, among others – most of which are time-worn – are not likely to move Nigerians to any consequential actions, anyway. They’re too used to being ruled by self-centred, devious persons to be bothered by the purported stains on the current crop of campaigners. We can only appeal to Tinubu and co to show us how they can think outside the box and lead their fellow countrymen and women to a desirable destination.                 

Dr Ekpe is a member of ������Ƶ Editorial Board

X: @monday_ekpe2

The Advocate

By Onikepo Braithwaite

Onikepo.braithwaite@thisdaylive.com

In 2018, I wrote a piece in which I referred to Nigeria as a ‘dysfunctional, fragile, crisis State’. Some of the reasons that I gave for this assertion were “weak and failing institutions, poor infrastructure, insecurity and internal violence (Boko Haram, Robbers and Herdsmen), poverty, hunger and suffering of majority of Nigerians, greedy elite, political shenanigans, high level of corruption and it’s siblings – tribalism, nepotism etc”. The aforementioned reasons that I enumerated, are all intertwined with the failure of successive governments to fulfil the primary purpose of government, that is, the security and welfare of the people and the Fundamental Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy – see Section 14(2)(b) & Chapter II of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended)(the Constitution). In 2020, in another piece, I referred to an article I read in the Financial Times of London of 22/12/20 titled “Nigeria is at the risk of becoming a Failed State”. The Fund for Peace Fragile States Index uses some of the indices that I outlined above, to measure the extent of the fragility of a State. 

This deterioration didn’t/doesn’t occur in one day – it is a process. What looks sudden, is almost always the last visible stage of a longer erosion. The warning signs – elite predation, loss of territorial control, collapsing services, hardening group grievances, flight of talent (‘Japa’ Syndrome), are visible years before any single dramatic day. 

As a people, Nigerians are not students of History; we forget the past and are usually quick to blame our problems on the here and now. Presently, all the blame of Nigeria’s woes is on the shoulders of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, because as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the buck stops at his table. But, virtually every person now treated as a serious contender for the Presidency or Vice Presidency in 2027, has already held high executive and/or legislative office in this Fourth Republic. Certainly, that the Tinubu administration is very much part of the mess Nigeria is in today, is indisputable – it cannot be absolved, because many of the ills of the past are still thriving today. But, be that as it may, can the other candidates truly distance themselves from what Nigeria has become today? Particularly when many of them were part of the same political family, at one time or the other?

Insecurity/Kidnapping 

Just as ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’, the deterioration of a State can take decades. For instance, insecurity in Nigeria, namely kidnapping – it’s first modern wave occurred in June 1999, when two Shell foreign Helicopter Pilots were abducted in Bayelsa State – a group that identified itself as ‘Enough is Enough’, claimed responsibility. 

In the 2000s, kidnapping took a commercial turn, in the South South and South East. Boko Haram’s kidnap of the Chibok Girls in April 2014, changed the scale of the crime and marked the turning point of its spread to the North. Then there was the Dapchi Girls in 2018, and the rest is history – kidnapping and insecurity continued to escalate. 

One of the reasons that late President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR was chosen over President Goodluck Jonathan, GCFR and elected into office, was because Nigerians believed that being a former military General, he would perform better as far as security is concerned, that kidnapping and insecurity generally would be curbed or reduced to a bare minimum. On the contrary, insecurity thrived during the Buhari administration, and the number of IDP Camps increased. So, why are we behaving as if Nigeria only started suffering from insecurity last year?

Today, kidnapping is no longer done for a warped ideological agenda or ransom alone; it has branched out to other criminal ventures such as, kidnapping for organ harvesting, rituals and even child trafficking. Recently, I watched a videoclip of a Policewoman and spokesperson of FCT Police Command, SP Josephine Adeh, in which two women, Blessing John and Rose Daniel were displayed (their faces were not shown). Allegedly, they had abducted four children in the FCT in 2025, a set of twins and two others. Two of the children were recovered, while the other two had been sold in Port Harcourt for N1.5 million each – child trafficking. What struck me about the story was that though they were arrested and charged to court, only Rose appeared to have been remanded, and she was released four months later. Needless to say, by 2026, they were back to their old tricks, and were arrested again, in the process of trying to abduct a four year old girl. It is obvious that the short ‘vacation’ in prison wasn’t enough to deter and reform them, as they went straight back into abducting children when Rose regained her freedom. 

SP Adeh said Blessing and Rose had served their term. After only four months? How is this possible? Was she mistaken? In the FCT, kidnapping and child trafficking are usually prosecuted under a mix of the Penal Code Act (PCA), Child’s Rights Act 2003 (CRA); Trafficking in Persons (Prohibition) Enforcement and Administration Act 2015 (NAPTIP Act), and the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022 (TPPA), depending on the facts of the case. Nevertheless, whichever law, abduction is a felony attracting anything from seven year’s imprisonment to the death sentence (when the kidnapping results in the death of the abductee), while child trafficking is also a serious offence. For example, Section 27 of the CRA prescribes a punishment of 7-10 years depending on the circumstances, for abducting a child, while Section 30 prescribes 10 years imprisonment upon conviction for child trafficking. See Nwokocha v State (2019) LPELR-47075(CA) per Uchechukwu Onyemenam, JCA. A weak State is not one that lacks a statute book. It is one that cannot make the statute book bite.

If Blessing and Rose were charged under the CRA or the NAPTIP Act, those offences are ordinarily bailable. That a repeat child-trafficking allegation produced a short remand and a return to the same trade, is the point. Lack of accountability, is one of the hallmarks of a weak State. 

Economy

When oil prices crashed in the 1980s, Nigeria experienced an economic downturn. With the IMF-backed Structural Adjustment Programme, growth returned in the late 1980s. Under the regime of General Sani Abacha however, the deterioration of institutions deepened, sanctions bit, investment fled, and inflation spiked (it reached around 70% in the mid-1990s). Poverty deepened. One often-cited estimate is that, the share of people on less than $1 a day rose from about 36% in 1970 (just over 20 million people with a population of approximately 56 million), to about 70% by 2000 (over 88 million people with a population of approximately 127 million). By the  inception of civil rule, according to the estimates, majority of Nigerians were living on less than a $1 a day! 

While the economy appeared to fare better between 2000 and 2014, so much so that Nigeria looked like Africa’s largest economy, there were missed opportunities. Buffers were not rebuilt, and by 2014, the Excess Crude Account established by President Olusegun Obasanjo, GCFR,  was being drawn down; oil theft and sabotage resulted in a decrease in oil production; fuel subsidy costs rose and poverty stayed high. Between mid-2014 to early 2016, Brent crude fell from $112 p.b. toward $30 p.b.  

Between 2015 and 2016, Nigeria suffered its first recession, in about a quarter of a century. The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic hit the world, and Nigeria suffered another recession, also because of a slump in oil prices. The ‘removal’ of the fuel subsidy and the foreign exchange correction in 2023, brought more hardship on Nigerians. The truth is that, Nigeria’s economy started to decline in the 1970s when oil displaced the old non-oil production base, instead of existing side by side and complementing it, and conjuncturally, in mid-2014, when the last high-growth oil cycle ended and was not replaced. Corruption which also didn’t start today, but has only escalated over the years (see Sections 15(5) & 16 of the Constitution), hasn’t helped matters. 

Fragility Needn’t be Destiny

Fragility doesn’t have to be a death sentence. Crossing from weakness to failure or success, is a decision, it is based on choices. A State can stay weak without collapsing, and it can also recover, even though the process of recovery is difficult. Just as deterioration doesn’t occur in one day, so also recovery doesn’t happen magically, it cannot happen in one fell swoop with a singular reform. It is cumulative. And, anybody that claims that it can, is being economical with the truth.

Therefore, as we go into the next cycle of elections, we must not only ‘shine our eyes’, but open our ears properly to listen to candidates and their manifestos. The bitter truth is that, anybody, including the incumbent, who promises an immediate reversal in our circumstances, is deceiving us. Instead of raining abuses and digging up dirt on each other (as if any of them has a pristine record), Nigerians want to see candidates show us their practical recovery plans for the country, beyond sloganeering. 

Pertinent Campaign Questions 

How do they plan to stop organised killing and break the business of violence? How do they plan to reset the fiscal and monetary floor? How do they plan to chase out illegal miners and their local collaborators, and harness our resources for the benefit of Nigeria and Nigerians? What will be done to make government accountable? What will be done to enhance the independence of the Judiciary and uphold the rule of law? What will be done in the area of electoral reform, so that elections will no longer be about who has the deepest pockets, but more about the brightest and the best? What will be done about providing infrastructure, and at the same time, stopping the people from destroying same by scavenging? What will be done about the deep level of poverty? What will be done about out-of-school children? In short, how do they intend to achieve the goals set out in Chapter II of the Constitution, as they relate to any political office a candidate may be vying for?

Conclusion 

Recovery, like decline, is cumulative. It does not arrive with a new oath of office, a single subsidy decision, or a slogan. It arrives when the State again monopolises force in fact, and not in communiqués; when a child-trafficker who has already sold two children does not treat four months in custody as a cost of doing business;  when public office ceases to be the most reliable path to private wealth; and when those who seek 2027 can say, without comedy, what they did with the years they already held.

Section 14(2)(b) is not a campaign decoration. It is the Constitution’s own statement of why the State exists: the security and welfare of the people. Chapter II sets out the programme. Neither provision began in 2023, and neither will expire in 2027. The buck stops with whoever sits at the table now. It also sat with those who sat there before.

So, the question for the coming cycle is not who can abuse the incumbent most fluently, nor who can promise an overnight resurrection; it is who will treat fragility as a decision that can still be reversed — with a plan for security that breaks the business of violence, a fiscal floor that does not assume $100 oil, a justice system that can hold the powerful and the petty, elections that test merit rather than the depth of the war chest, and the honesty to admit that a crisis assembled over decades will only be dismantled over years. 

A people who will not read their own history, will keep mistaking the last chapter for the whole book!

Bola A. Akinterinwa

9/11 is the shortened form for September 11, 2001. This was the day 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four different commercial airlines and launched their very heinous attacks on the American people: two planes consciously flew to hit the Twin Towers playing host to the World Trade Centre in New York City. One plane hit the Pentagon while the fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. This is what 9/11 refers to in international relations. It refers to the 2,977 victims killed innocently during the attacks. It also refers to the deadliest terrorist act in global history. And perhaps more concernedly, it refers to the failure of terrorism ab initio, as of today, and predictably, in the foreseeable future.

It should not at all be forgotten that the fourth commercial plane that crashed in a field in Pennsylvania crashed as a result of the courage of the passengers to challenge the terrorists and prevented the pilot from concentrating on his piloting. Even though the terrorists were not flying to escape but to go and hurt Americans by taking innocent passengers to go and die with them, and even if there had not been any fisticuff in the plane, both the passengers and the criminally-oriented pilots would have gone to hit their targets and all die, there is no disputing the fact that thousands of innocent American lives were lost. The American life, the American soul, however, has not been killed, because it cannot be neutralized. This explains why, year after year, 9/11 is strengthened, why commitment to anti-terrorism is always energized worldwide. 9/11 was 25 years old last week on September 9, 2026.

6/30 is the short form June 30, 2026. It was the first notice with deadline given by the proponents of xenophobia in South Africa to foreigners to live their country. The proponents defied the directives of their government not to imbibe xenophobic attitudes. They carried out inhuman attacks on other African compatriots. And true enough, South Africa’s xenophobic acts have a dose of Nigerianophobia. It has not simply been Afrophobia. As June 30, 2026 belongs to the dustbin of history but Afrophobia and Nigerianophobia are yet to end, a new deadline, September 30, 2026 has again been fixed for all unwanted African migrants to leave South Africa. What will happen by then? Last week, Nigerians were still brutalized and killed, prompting Nigerian parliamentarians to suspend their mission to South Africa. Is this not playing diplomacy with Nigerian lives? 9/11 is atrocious. 6/30 is notorious. What will 9/9 look like?

Terrorism and Xenophobia: The Linkages 

9/11 and 6/30 have the potential to seriously undermine international security in the foreseeable future. 9/11 has presented several challenges that have prompted adoption of new security policy measures. For instance, 9/11 prompted the United States to invade Afghanistan in order to hunt down al-Qaeda and also to invade Iraq. Not only did the United States establish the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), charged with the responsibility of screening all passengers and luggage, but also created the Department of Homeland Security to protect the country against any future attacks. 

On the contrary, there is nothing concrete to compel African leaders to seek to contain xenophobia in South Africa. Ghana is on record to have formally asked the African Union (AU) at the last mid-year coordination summit to debate South Africa’s xenophobic attacks. The AU Executive Council refused and suggested a continent-wide migration review rather than singling out South Africa. In the same vein, Nigeria’s Vice President, Kashim Shettima, formally urged the AU Assembly in Luanda, Angola, to place the xenophobic crisis on the AU agenda to be considered at the forthcoming 40th Ordinary Session in January 2027. The AU has not been able to act, more so that the South African government is claiming to be committed to the protection of human rights and safety and that it has the sovereign right to enforce its immigration laws. South Africa says migration should be addressed as a broader systemic issue rather than as an isolated matter. As such, neither the question of 6/30 nor 9/9 is addressed. The mania of marking 9/11 is similarly no longer addressed to strengthen anti-terror war. 

Without whiff of doubt, terrorism and xenophobia have common definienda: act of destruction and use of illegal means to protest. Terrorism has been variously defined by Member States of the international community, with emphasis on three factors: the manner of action (murder, kidnapping, severe property damage, disruption of critical public systems, etc.); the intent (intimidation of the public or coercion of a government or international organization, etc.), and motive (the pursuit of a political, religious, ideological, or racial objectives).

For the U.S., a distinction is made between international and domestic terrorism. International terrorism refers to violent, dangerous acts that transcend national borders and aimed at coercing a civilian population or influencing government policy through mass destruction, assassination or kidnapping. Domestic terrorism also has the same features of international terrorism except that the acts do take place within the jurisdictional competence of the U.S. As good as this distinction may be, it is, at best, meaningless because it does not reflect the situational reality of how terrorism is organized. Put differently, the thinking, the preparation, etc. of terrorism can take place in one country while the manifestation of it can take place in a completely different country. In other words, terrorism can be a continuum in terms of preparation. The preparation can have a domestic character and the implementation can be international by locus delicti. This is one reason it has been difficult to have a definitional consensus on terrorism. 

At the level of the United Nations, for example, there are the UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1373 (2001) and UNSC 1566 (2004). Resolution 1373 was an immediate response to 9/11. It was adopted on 28 September 2001. It is a legally-binding resolution that suppresses terrorism financing by criminalizing any voluntary collection or provision of funds for terrorist acts. The resolution freezes assets and economic resources of facilitators or whoever is involved in any act of terrorism. The importance of UNSC Resolution 1373 was to the extent that a Counter-Terrorism Committee was created to oversee the implementation of the resolution. The Committee comprises all the 15-Member States of the UNSC.

The spirit of the UNSC Resolution 1566 of 2004 was not different. It not only strengthened resolution 1373, but also attempted to define terrorism as criminal acts directed at civilians with the intent to take people into hostage, or cause death, or cause serious bodily injury. More importantly, the resolution considers that no act of terrorism can be justifiable, especially that terrorism is designed to provoke a state of terror and intimidate a population, or compel a government or an international organization to act or abstain from acting.

In this regard, terrorism can be likened to xenophobic acts. Etymologically, terrorism is traceable to the time of French Revolution in 1789. Terror, as a word, originated from terrere, a Latin word, meaning ‘to frighten’ or ‘to tremble.’ Terrorism, as a political concept, was first popularized during the French Revolution, and particularly during what is referred to as the ‘Reign of Terror,’ from 1793 to 1794 when the Jacobin regime, under the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre, adopted systematic violence to project the new revolutionary government against perceived internal enemies. This old type of terrorism is quite different from the modern-day terrorism. The old type was state-sponsored and top-down violence in design, while the modern-day terrorism is essentially associated with non-state actors. States and civilians are involved.

Xenophobia involves terrorist methods. We believe that there is really nothing much wrong if South Africans have hatred for foreigners or for any given people. Where is there is much wrong is when South Africans engage in the use of brutal violence in making a case against unwanted foreigners. They consciously kill under the watch of the South African government. Xenophobic attacks are therefore not different from the ‘Propaganda of the Deed’ in the 20th Century when Anarchists in Europe and the U.S. opted to use bombs and dynamite in the strong belief that public violence was a more powerful tool for political awakening than words. The truth is that South Africans do not believe in diplomacy as a reliable tool to get out unwanted foreigners from their country.

In spite of David C. Rapoport’s theory of Four Waves of modern terrorism – the anarchist Wave (1880s-1920s), the Anti-Colonial Wave (1920s-1960s), the New Left Wave (1960s-1980s), and the Religious Wave (from 1979 to date) – terrorism has been used as an instrument of politics by both state and non-state actors. When the United States was trying to impose its view that those fighting apartheid in South Africa were terrorist, and therefore was preaching the gospel of ‘Constructive Engagement,’ Africa, led by Nigeria, countered that those fighting apartheid and racial discrimination were Liberation Movements and cannot be rightly considered as terrorists. 

Most unfortunately, many Nigerians have forgotten that Nigeria’s national passport that was patterned after that of Britain, had, up till the late 1960s, in the inner back cover a provision that every holder of the passport should use whatever means available to the holder, to fight apartheid. In fact, Nigeria formulated an exception to the rule of non-intervention under Article 2(7) of the UN Charter, arguing that apartheid could not be accepted as falling under the exclusive domestic competence of South Africa. In 1963, Dr. Jaja Wachukwu, as Minister of External Affairs, formulated ‘No Compromise with apartheid’ as a fundamental principle of Nigeria’s foreign policy. 

With apartheid believed to have been thrown into the garbage of history, xenophobia is replacing it. It is resuscitating it, but the resurrection is threatening regional security, and particularly continental economic integration, political unity, and African solidarity. And this cannot but be more so with the policy of MAGA under President Donald Trump.

How Global Security is undermined by MAGA

 Making America Great Again (MAGA) is a strategic and main focus of United States (U.S.) foreign policy under Donald John Trump, the 45th and 47th President of the U.S. Achieving MAGA is largely predicated on the use of manu militari methods. It is within the context of this manu militari that Venezuela was flagrantly aggressed by President Trump and that President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores Maduro, were kidnapped and flown to the U.S. for prosecution in violation of the basic principles of international law. It was also within the same context of manu militari that the Gulf of Mexico and the Lake Ontario were renamed Gulf of America and Lake America respectively. And perhaps now more disturbingly, President Trump is dreaming of renaming the Strait of Hormuz. On Thursday, 10th September, 2026 President Trump suggested the need to rename the Strait of Hormuz after himself, that is, ‘Trump Strait,’ considering that the U.S. is the one controlling the Strait and predicting lower oil prices. Donald Trump is yet to understand the implications of always seeking to fish in troubled waters. 

As reported by the Agence France Presse (AFP), President Trump noted as follows: ‘now that we have it under U.S.A. control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to Trump Strait? Like America itself, it would be hotter than ever before!’ Additionally, the AFP has it that ‘the White House later posted a map of the Gulf on social media with his suggested name, adding, ‘it’s got a nice ring to it.’ Perhaps more recklessly, President has repeatedly been claiming sovereignty over the Strait and ‘even posting a map showing the waterway as a “new U.S. territory.’  Is this development a manifestation of the emerging new world order? President Trump has renamed the Kennedy Arts Centre after himself, while the US Treasury has also issued $1coins featuring Trump’s face to mark the 250th anniversary of US independence. Explained interrogatively, is MAGA to promote the U.S. or to promote Donald Trump?  Without any iota of doubt, the implementation of MAGA has not in any good way enhanced US image in international relations. On the contrary, it is straining U.S. ties with its allies. 

For example, Israelo-American aggression on Iran has created a special misunderstanding between Iran, on the one hand, and Iranian neighbours who are allies of the U.S., on the other. In this regard, President Trump has proposed a ‘Project Freedom’ which is a military initiative meant to provide armed escorts for commercial oil tankers that will be passing through the blockaded Strait of Hormuz and which Donald Trump is still dreaming to have renamed after him. 

Saudi Arabia rejected the initiative on the grounds that the Saudi Crown, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, only learnt about the initiative on the social media. In annoyance, the Saudi Crown has simply blocked the U.S. military from using the Saudi airspace to aggress anyone. Besides, Saudi Arabia does not want to be dragged into a naval confrontation with Iran that has the potential to put Saudi infrastructure destroyed. In the eyes of Saudi Arabia, it is better to strengthen the Pakistani-led diplomacy to end the war permanently, rather than expanding the military blockade. And objectively enough, Saudi Arabia has also been compelled to move its crude oil to the Red sea for export, but this has been challenged by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels who are advancing along the Yemeni coast. Saudi Arabia does not see any extension of the war in Iran as being in its national interest.

In reaction, the United States, apparently recognizing its power limitations, especially from the perspective that it cannot protect its military bases without the Saudi airspace support, has shelved its mission as reported by the New York Times. Also in reaction to the Saudi refusal, Donald Trump has threatened to delay air defense system shipments to Saudi Arabia. Even though U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, reportedly snubbed Riyadh during his Middle East tour, there is no disputing the fact that Washington is already considering the need to draw down its troop presence in the country.

From the foregoing experience of Saudi Arabia, we posit here that the implementation of Donald Trump’s MAGA has the potential, not only to undermine U.S. national security, in particular, if Americans adopt policies meant to be implemented outside of their jurisdictional competence do not have the consent of allies and protocolar courtesy of first informing the very countries expected to assist in the implementation of the policies. More interestingly, U.S. national and international security cannot but be seriously undermined if the U.S. also carelessly ignores the reasons that prompted the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers (World Trade Center) and the Pentagon. 

It should be recalled that, following the 1991 Gulf War, the late Al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian by ius sanguinis, and reportedly, a CIA agent, was vehemently opposed to the long-term positioning of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, generally considered the chief host of Islam’s holiest sites in Mecca and Medina. Osama bin Laden was against U.S. support for Israel during conflicts involving Palestinian and, particularly, during the 1982 Lebanon War. The al-Qaeda was not only against the sanctions meted out to Iraq and the Western military interventions in Somalia, Chechnya, Kashmir and the Balkans, but also vehemently opposed to the U.S. support for Middle Eastern regimes considered as very corrupt and un-Islamic. As Brookings has it, Bin Laden had considered that a high-profile attack on U.S. soil would provoke a massive military response, which would drag the U.S. into protracted wars in the Muslim world. And more importantly, ‘Al-Qaeda hoped these counter-attacks would exhaust the U.S. economically and rally Muslims to overthrow secular governments in the Middle East, (and) ultimately establishing a pan-Islamist rule.’

Bin Laden is dead but the struggle to establish a pan-Islamist rule has not abated. Even Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi made it clear to the Government of Nigeria in 2011 that Nigeria would not know peace until Nigeria is divided into Muslim North and Christian South. The more the Government of Nigeria bombs the terrorists, the more hardened and resolute the boko haramists. And true enough, many of them are in government. Former President Goodluck Jonathan confessed the existence of Boko Haram agents in his government. 

Consequently, if Osama bin Laden pulled down the World Trade Centre in protest against U.S. policy in the Arab world, especially in terms of the vehement opposition to U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, and if, for new reasons of force majeure, Saudi Arabia is now towing the line of Osama bin Laden by denying the U.S. the right to use its airspace, a decision that is prompting Donald Trump to now want to move its military bases from Saudi Arabia, MAGA, as a foreign policy, cannot be said to have helped Americans to sustain their great power status. It has only been undermining it. This is why Nigeria must learn lessons from MAGA and from South Africa’s Nigerianophobia.

In essence, 9/11 is terrorism, a method of political violence. 9/30 is xenophobia, an attitude of fear of, and hatred toward, foreigners. Terrorism and xenophobia are intertwined by their definienda, as rightly categorized by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) which has categorised a rising global threat as XRIRB (a United Nations term used to describe any hate-motivated violence, such as terrorist attacks on the basis of Xenophobia, Racism, and other forms of Intolerance such as in the case of misogyny, antisemitism, Islamophobia, or hostility vis-à-vis minorities and LGBTQ+ community. Indisputably, xenophobia creates a barrier between the local people and foreigners. Terrorism largely relies on an identical psychological cleavage according to which foreigners from a certain country or of minoritised faith, or government loyalists are dehumanized in order to justify violence. Both terrorism and xenophobia are driven by threat perception and fear: while xenophobia is driven by a perceived threat, terrorism manipulates the social anxieties and threat perceptions aimed at engineering widespread public distress in order to force political or societal change. Consequently, Nigeria must now go beyond the diplomacy of XRIRB or what the European Union calls VRWE (Violent Right-Wing Extremism) by asking South Africans to leave Nigeria the way Nigerians have been compelled to leave South Africa. The late Foreign Minister, Ambassador Olugbenga Ashiru applied the principle of reciprocity when South Africa started its Yellow Card diplomacy. It worked. When Nigerians reciprocated the South African violence on Nigerian businesses in South Africa, the language was clearly understood by South Africa. Reciprocity is what is required as interdependence is still a major dynamic of international relations.

Femi Akintunde-Johnson

There was a time when Nigerian politicians threatened one another with defeat at the polls. It was part of the theatre: “We will send you home.” “We will retire your party.” “We will bury you politically.” The language could be colourful, sometimes outrageous, but everybody understood the metaphor. Increasingly, however, the metaphor seems to be losing its protective cover. We are beginning to hear words about killing, flogging, cutting fingers, driving opponents away, sacking officials for failing to deliver votes and even breaking up marriages in the name of political loyalty. At some point, the joke stops being funny. The politician may be laughing; the voter would be checking the exits.

 Consider the sequence of recent incidents. In Osun, Senator Francis Fadahunsi was summoned by the police after a viral video in which he appeared to tell APC supporters to “kill” members of the Accord Party. He later insisted that he meant killing the party with votes and that the video had been edited to distort his meaning. Context and intent certainly matter. But when the word used is “kill”, in a country with a long and unhappy history of political violence, the burden should not be placed entirely on the listener to decode the joke.

  Then came Kuje, where the area council chairman, Danjuma Samuel Shekwolo, was reported to have told residents, in effect, to support the APC or leave the area. In Borno, Commissioner for Youth and Sports Development Sainna Buba was reported threatening to flog opponents and cut off the fingers of those who opposed the APC. In Ebonyi, Governor Francis Nwifuru reportedly told newly inaugurated local government chairmen that those who failed to deliver their councils to the APC in 2027 would be removed from office. These are not identical statements, and intellectual honesty requires us not to lump them together as if they carry precisely the same meaning or legal consequence. But taken together, they reveal a political atmosphere in which coercive language is becoming remarkably casual.

And now Yobe has joined the procession. The state APC chairman, Muhammad Gadaka, reportedly told women that if their husbands prevented them from voting for the APC, they should leave their marriages, offering to pay their bride price and marry them. After the predictable backlash, he apologised and said the comment was merely joking banter. Again, perhaps he intended humour. But there is something revealing about a political culture in which virtually every offensive political utterance can be retrofitted as “just a joke” after Nigerians become angry. Politics is apparently the only profession where the punchline regularly requires a public apology.

The larger issue is not whether every offending politician actually intended to inflict physical harm. It is whether political leaders understand the peculiar danger of their microphones. A careless remark from an ordinary citizen may disappear into the evening air. A governor, senator, commissioner, council chairman or party chairman speaks with an amplifier. Supporters hear him. Political thugs may hear him. Young men looking for validation may hear him. Social media preserves and multiplies the words long after the speaker has forgotten them. The politician may mean metaphor; somebody else may hear permission.

This is not merely a matter of taste or good manners. Nigeria now has a new Electoral Act, 2026, and it could not be clearer about the principle involved. Section 97 prohibits parties, candidates, aspirants and others from directly or indirectly threatening people with force or violence during political campaigns in order to compel support or discourage opposition. Section 132 separately makes threats, force, violence, injury, damage or harm intended to induce or compel a person to vote or refrain from voting an offence, carrying substantial penalties upon conviction. The law therefore recognises something politicians sometimes pretend not to understand: intimidation is not campaign language merely because it is delivered from a political platform.

The Ebonyi episode deserves particular attention for another reason. When an elected local government chairman is told that his survival in office depends upon delivering his council to the governor’s political party, the issue goes beyond campaign rhetoric. It raises fundamental questions about the independence and democratic purpose of local government. The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed the constitutional status of democratically elected local government councils and rejected the notion that they are simply extensions of state governors’ political machinery. If a chairman’s primary political test becomes the production of votes for the governor’s party rather than the quality of administration delivered to citizens, then the local government begins to look less like the grassroots tier of government and more like a grassroots campaign office.

But let us resist the temptation to make this an APC-only sermon. Political intimidation did not arrive in Nigeria with the APC, and it will not disappear if another party occupies Government House or Aso Rock. Every major political party has its collection of political bruisers, boastful campaigners and professional intimidators. Tomorrow’s opposition may become tomorrow’s government, and yesterday’s victim may suddenly discover the joys of wielding power. The standard must therefore be larger than partisan convenience. If threatening the voter is wrong when APC does it, it is wrong when PDP, Labour Party, NNPP, NDP or any other party does it. Democracy cannot have one morality for the ruling party and another for its opponents.

There is also a responsibility on the media, which must resist turning every inflammatory utterance into political entertainment. Reporting such statements is legitimate; becoming their distribution network is another matter. We should provide context, ask whether the words violate electoral law, seek clarification, pursue the official response and, importantly, follow up. The Nigerian political ecosystem has perfected the art of producing outrage on Monday and forgetting it by Wednesday. Summon the politician, issue a statement, apologise, declare the matter closed – and wait for the next microphone.

The security agencies must equally resist selective enforcement. A politician should not be investigated merely because his opponent is noisier on social media. Nor should politically connected individuals enjoy the protective umbrella of “political speech” when their words cross into credible threats or intimidation. Where an offence is alleged, investigate it fairly; where evidence exists, prosecute according to law; where there is no case, say so. Justice should neither be a weapon of political persecution nor a luxury reserved for people without political connections.

And perhaps the most important responsibility belongs to us, the voters. We must stop confusing menace with strength. A politician who frightens opponents is not necessarily powerful. A politician who threatens dissenters is not necessarily courageous. Sometimes he is merely announcing, rather loudly, that he has run out of arguments or ideas. The real test of political strength is the ability to persuade people who are free to disagree with you.

An election is supposed to be a peaceful argument conducted with ballots. I make my case; you make yours. Your candidate promises one thing; mine promises another. We argue, campaign, persuade and eventually vote. Nobody should have to wonder whether voting against the incumbent could cost him a job, a contract, a government benefit, his home, his safety or his fingers. Nobody should be told that political disagreement is grounds for exile from his own community. And no woman should be invited to choose between her marriage and her ballot because a party chairman has temporarily forgotten that a voter is not party property.

As 2027 approaches, we should therefore be asking a more uncomfortable question than “Who are you voting for?” We should ask: what kind of political behaviour are we prepared to reward with our votes? Because today the threat may be directed at the opposition. Tomorrow it may be directed at you. And if citizens must first calculate the possible consequences of their political choice before exercising it, then the ballot may still be physically available – but democracy has already begun to lose its meaning. God forbid.

The Advocate

By Onikepo Braithwaite

Onikepo.braithwaite@thisdaylive.com

Court of Public Opinion v Court of Law: Law and Morals

I have said a few times that the way issues are considered and litigation works in the court of public opinion in Nigeria, is usually not the way proper law and litigation work in actual legal proceedings and courts of competent jurisdiction. And, usually, when the legal outcomes are not what the public desires or expects them to be, they are unhappy, they cry foul and are up in arms against the Judiciary, legal system, and even the Government. But, one of the reasons for the difference between the judgement of the court of public opinion and a court of law, is that the former is mostly based on morality and emotions, while the latter is based on statute and legal principles. I’m sure that I may have referred to the theory of ’Inclusive Legal Positivism’ in the past. It basically holds that law and morals are conceptually different, but can and sometimes do intersect. What is considered immoral, isn’t always unlawful. Marrying two sisters may be considered to be immoral, but not unlawful, while stealing is both immoral and unlawful. Even abortion which is considered to be murder and a sin as far as morality and religion are concerned, isn’t illegal in all jurisdictions – it is called the ‘right to choose’ in certain places. 

It is possible for a legal system to incorporate moral standards into its legal reasoning, where moral reasoning becomes part of what the law is, for instance, the Sharia legal system that’s operated in Saudi Arabia.

Nigeria keeps morality separate from its legal system, and with the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended)(the Constitution) excluding criminal jurisdiction from the Customary and Sharia Courts, it further narrows the many things which are immoral and could be offences as far as custom or religion are concerned, from being statutory offences in Nigeria. So, for example, fornication and telling white lies may be considered to be immoral, and most religions certainly adjudge them to be so, but the Constitution cherishes freedom of speech and association and upholds them as fundamental rights (see Sections 39(1) & 40 of the Constitution). The first mistake of the court of public opinion is equating immorality with illegality, and without following any due process, delivering judgement on that basis. 

Constitution Isn’t Self-Executory

However, though a Constitution is the supreme law (see Section 1(1) of the Constitution), it is not always self-executing, nor is it a complete working code. Most of what it requires is executed or carried out through ordinary laws, institutions, and procedures created under it. The Constitution creates the State, allocates power, sets limits, and states principles. Some clauses operate immediately: they confer jurisdiction, create offices, or invalidate inconsistent laws. Others only state a goal or a duty, and leave the details to later legislation. 

In a few months, Nigeria will be going into its eighth general elections since the inception of the Fourth Republic. The elections will cover four positions – President/Vice President (see Sections 130, 131 & 137 of the Constitution); Governor/Deputy Governor (see Sections 176, 177 & 182 of the Constitution); National Assembly – Senate and House of Representatives (see Sections 47, 65 & 66 of the Constitution); State House of Assembly (see Sections 90, 106 & 107 of the Constitution) [see these aforementioned sections of the Constitution on the establishment, qualifications, and disqualifications for these offices]. The Constitution has explicitly stated the qualifications for these offices and what would disqualify an aspirant for same, but, the details of how challenges or disputes that arise from these provisions should be addressed are not provided therein, that is, the provisions are not self-executory. 

Though some disqualifications are not clear cut, and cannot be acted upon because of a say-so or circumstantial evidence, others are obvious, and in some situations INEC may not accept nominations from such an overtly unqualified aspirant. For instance, contrary to Section 65(1)(a) of the Constitution which stipulates 35 years of age, if a one year old baby in diapers is supposedly running for Senate, it is obvious to the naked eye that the baby isn’t qualified, and INEC cannot be expected to accept the nomination of a baby candidate. It was probably because of the absurdity that could result from the provision, that the old Section 31(1) of the 2010 Electoral Act (as amended) which provided that INEC couldn’t disqualify a candidate for any reason whatsoever, was deleted from the law.  

Likewise, the constitutional disqualifications due to criminal sentences and convictions are also quite clear – 1) a person under a sentence of death imposed by a competent court of law or tribunal in Nigeria (a sentence of death or any conviction imposed by a Sharia Court wouldn’t qualify, because the Constitution doesn’t endow a Sharia Court with criminal jurisdiction); 2) under a sentence of imprisonment for any criminal offence imposed by a court or tribunal or substituted by a competent authority for any other sentence imposed by such court or tribunal – that is, the person is still serving or bound by the sentence; 3) if within a period of 10 years before the election, such person has been convicted and sentenced for an offence involving dishonesty or been found guilty of breaching the Code of Conduct – a person convicted of a non-dishonesty offence such as straight forward armed robbery, will not be bound by this 10 year rule.  

The truth is that, unproven criminal allegations are not convictions. And, even when they are convictions, the Constitution has stated how these convictions can impact candidates. A suspect is also entitled to the presumption of innocence, until proven guilty – see Section 36(5) of the Constitution; Ogwo v State (2026) LPELR-83571(SC) per Adamu Jauro, JSC where the Supreme Court reiterated Section 36(5). Of course, the argument of cynics is that the system delays the prosecution of high profile suspects particularly politicians, so they are not disqualified either by being caught under a sentence, or suffer the 10 year ban after being convicted.

President Tinubu’s Example

Those pushing the campaign against President Bola Tinubu, GCFR, based on a Chicago controversy of the 1990s do not appear to be abreast with the law, if one is examining the matter from the only prism that counts as far as the law is concerned – that of the above-mentioned disqualifications provided in Section 137 of the Constitution regarding a Presidential/Vice Presidential candidate. For one, President Tinubu isn’t under any sentence; secondly, there is no evidence that he was convicted for any criminal offence; thirdly, assuming but not conceding that he was convicted in the 1990s, even if it was a dishonesty offence, the 10 year ban would have expired over 20 years ago.

Disputing Qualifications 

The first response as to how a dispute on electoral qualifications can be resolved comes from Section 6(6)(b) of the Constitution, which extends judicial powers, inter alia, to the determination of all matters between persons or persons and institutions, which would definitely include those qualifications or disqualifications, excepting only matters covered by Section 6(6)(c) of the Constitution. Such disputes are resolved by the court. 

The second response lies in the statutes concerning electoral qualifications. Section 29(5) of the Electoral Act 2026 (EA) provides that only a fellow aspirant of the same political party who partook in the primaries, can challenge a candidate’s constitutional eligibility if they have reasonable grounds to suspect that the candidate provided false information concerning their constitutional qualifications in the forms submitted to INEC. Such fellow aspirant must file their case as a pre-election matter at the Federal High Court, seeking a declaration that the information is false, and the suit must be filed not later than 14 days from the date the cause of action arose – see Section 285(9) of the Constitution. The sum and substance of this is that, though the  qualifications and disqualifications are provided by the Constitution (‘constitutional matter’ as the public is always quick to remind us), the Constitution has only set the limits of qualifications and disqualifications. The EA is the law that stipulates, how some of these qualifications can be challenged. Those who have the locus standi to make the challenge are explicitly mentioned in Section 29(5) of the EA – it is restricted to only fellow aspirants, who participated in the primaries with the candidate with the suspicious qualifications.

And, where a Claimant doesn’t have the locus standi, that is, the right to bring an action, the court lacks the jurisdiction to hear the matter. In Adebiyi v DaSilva & Ors (2024) LPELR-62590(SC) per Chioma Egondu Nwosu-Iheme, JSC, the Supreme Court held that: “A person is said to have locus standi to sue in an action if he is able to show to the satisfaction of the Court, that his civil rights and obligations have been or are in danger of being infringed”. Similarly, in Okonjo-Iweala v Saheed Fawehinmi & Ors (2025) LPELR-80384 (SC) per Stephen Jonah Adah, JSC, the Supreme Court held inter alia thus: “This duty can only be carried out by one who is injured by the said act of the Respondents. The Court, therefore, must shun the temptation of giving a blank cheque to everyone, to prime up the zeal to approach the Court over every decision of the Executive and the Legislature. This will not be a problem, if there is no abuse. There is, in our clime, high tendency of abuse of such an unguarded open door, which will cause a floodgate of baseless and irritable litigations that will worsen the congestion that is rocking the Courts”. 

The rationale behind both decisions seems to be that, it is only a person who is directly affected by an action, that has the right to institute legal proceedings to correct that action. In the case of primaries, it is a fellow aspirant that is directly affected. If fellow aspirants are directly affected by the constitutional qualifications of each other, so also should fellow election candidates be so affected. This principle should easily be extended to fellow candidates in an election. And, just as a fellow aspirant can bring such a challenging action after the primaries, so also should a fellow candidate be able to bring the same challenge against fellow candidates or the winner, after the election, as part of their election petition. Unfortunately, challenging constitutional qualifications is not open to candidates, as it’s no longer one of the grounds upon which an election petition can rest – see Section 138 of the EA. The new Section 138 of the EA which replaced Section 134 of the 2022 EA operates as an ouster clause – ousting the right of aggrieved candidates to sue on constitutional qualifications. This operates as a denial of the candidates’ right to fair hearing, guaranteed by Section 36(1) of the Constitution. 

However, this brings us to the conundrum. It appears that during the period before the elections, no one has the locus standi to challenge constitutional qualifications under civil jurisdiction  (aside from aforementioned  fellow aspirants) and in some cases, INEC which may be able to refuse a nomination as described above. 

Then, there’s the question of getting a constitutional judicial review of Section 138 of the EA, on the ground that it denies candidates of their right to fair hearing on constitutional qualifications, is inconsistent with Section 6(6)(b) of the Constitution and should therefore, be declared unconstitutional to this extent (see Section 1(3) of the Constitution). Firstly, which venue would such a Petitioner ventilate this issue? An election petition tribunal may not be the proper venue for this. Should it be the Federal High Court? The argument for the establishment of a Constitutional Court to determine these types of questions, still lingers on. Of course, the allegation simpliciter that a candidate isn’t constitutionally qualified, should normally be able to be part of an election petition.  But, it goes beyond that. Examining the law itself, is necessary.

Secondly, the review of the law cannot arise until the locus standi of the Petitioner who is demanding for the review is established. This requisite locus standi for candidates, will most likely be ignited by the elections (just as it is ignited for aspirants by primaries). It would then make the argument of fellow candidates that they suffer direct injury viable, not just because an unconstitutionally unqualified candidate may have partaken in the election, but also that such a candidate is declared the winner of the election, and allowed to take up the position. See Adebiyi v DaSilva & Ors (Supra). 

Conclusion 

A challenge of the constitutional qualifications of a candidate before an election in the court of public opinion, doesn’t appear to be able to achieve any tangible results, possibly apart from being a source of embarrassment and discomfort to such candidate. As long as morality remains separate from law, morality is mostly of no relevance in law. 

In a court of law or tribunal, such challenge or quest to have a candidate disqualified or prevented from taking part in an election, apart from the Section 29(5) of the EA mode, amounts to an abuse of court process, because the law as it stands, doesn’t seem to permit it. In certain jurisdictions, Counsel that bring actions that abuse the court process, thereby wasting the precious time of the courts, usually face sanctions, which serve as a deterrent to others.

Sections 29(5) & 138 of EA have converted a constitutional matter to an intra-party squabble, and deleted it from election petitions. Seeking the invalidation of Section 138 of the EA for denying candidates who may have locus standi their right to fair hearing, its attempt to override Section 6(6)(b) of the Constitution, and allowing those who do not meet the constitutional qualifications to slip through the cracks, may be desirable. 

MONDAY PHILIPS EKPE writes that the people’s sorry living conditions can become tools for holding the ruling elite accountable

When President Bola Tinubu declared to his guests at the Villa the other day that hunger and poverty had been in Nigeria long before he assumed its highest office, he inadvertently opened the gates of hell. Accusations and insults were thrown at him freely. Insensitive. Inhumane. Clueless. Opportunistic. And more. Truth be told, the only wrong thing about that statement is the mouth that spoke it. He, the “Asiwaju” of Lagos, now Nigeria’s Asiwaju, wasn’t supposed to utter that, at least, publicly. When a national football team’s top striker misses a critical penalty, it isn’t his responsibility to remind his compatriots that such an error is not peculiar to him, that even the world’s greatest footballers do fumble during crucial moments. After all, Tinubu swore on May 29, 2023 to, among other duties, create an environment for his people’s happiness.

Rather than bear grudges against the president, the substance of his Freudian Slip should sober those concerned about the country’s intractable socio-economic conditions. The perennial paradox of suffering in the midst of plenty ought to engage the minds and hearts of people who are genuinely desirous of concrete positive changes in the indices that portray the good life – comparable to other progressive places on earth. Despondency is certainly not Nigerian by origin. Not even the present unfortunate ranking of being the nation with the largest number of multi-dimensionally pauperised people on the planet should suggest otherwise. China, India and some other countries once achieved that ignoble tag. Today, they’re proud global frontrunners in various spheres. Nigeria’s current characterisation too can be altered.

But doing so would come at a price. Leaders and followers must decide on the goal and be determined to reach it. Wishful thinking won’t do. Neither would finger-pointing, country-bashing, self-defeating mindsets, surrender, bland promises and grandstanding. These negative energies have conspired to keep Nigeria on this spot for too long. Sadly, the political elites have over time used the despicable state as an instrument to hoodwink the populace to either elect them or accept their incursion into government.

Yes, soldiers in the bad old days also knew how to mine the people’s frustrations to further their self-apportioned messianic pursuits. The December 31, 1983 coup announcement by the then Brigadier Sani Abacha captures that succinctly: “You are all living witnesses to the great economic predicament and uncertainty which an inept and corrupt leadership has imposed on our beloved nation for the past four years. I am referring to the harsh, intolerable conditions under which we are now living. Our economy has been hopelessly mismanaged; we have become a debtor and beggar nation. There is inadequacy of food at reasonable prices for our people who are now fed up with endless announcements of importation of foodstuff; health services are in shambles as our hospitals are reduced to mere consulting clinics without drugs, water and equipment.

“Our educational system is deteriorating at alarming rate. Unemployment figures including the undergraduates have reached embarrassing and unacceptable proportions. In some states, workers are being owed salary arrears of eight to twelve months and in others there are threats of salary cuts. Yet our leaders revel in squander-mania, corruption and indiscipline, and continue to proliferate public appointments in complete disregard of our stark economic realities.” The junta headed by the late Major General Muhammadu Buhari carefully identified the sore needs of the land, put them in fine prose and delivered same to the masses who had been substantially disillusioned by the government of the late President Shehu Shagari. That was 43 years ago. Perhaps, the only item on that list of systemic failures which may have now been solved, at least appreciably, is the salary bit – if the federal government’s claim to have channelled the huge subsidy removal proceeds to state governments for that purpose is to be believed.

Shagari’s initial term heralded the Second Republic in 1979, nine years post-civil war and 13 years after the military first tasted political power. The timing of his administration was, therefore, historic and strategic. The nation urgently required a stable, visionary and focused leadership to forge ahead and thrive. Shagari and his crew tried their best but it was clearly not enough to engender faith in the future. The underperformance of the first four-year outing of his National Party of Nigeria (NPN) didn’t stop it from attempting a return, however. And, more disturbingly, with virtually the same set of pledges to the Nigerian people.

An archived newspaper advert that has resurfaced on the internet titled, “Shagari for All Reasons, Programme for ‘83”, tells us some of the pledges the politicians of that era made to their fellow countrymen and women: “Free qualitative education guaranteed plus/Electricity and water for every town and village/More houses for the masses/Effective medical services plus/Industrial transformation of Nigeria/Self sufficiency in food production”. This direct appeal to the necessities of the people and the deft moves of the masters of the game handed NPN its “landslide” victory which became short-lived via that khaki-powered intervention or interference, depending on where you stand.

So, as Nigerians would say, “Nigeria wahala nor be today!”. The famed June 12, 1993 presidential election won by Chief Moshood Abiola happened for a number of reasons, principally: the personality of the candidate which had an unprecedented nationwide fascination, the relative integrity of the prevailing electoral system, and the relatability of the SDP campaign headlined, “Farewell to Poverty: Hope ‘93”. Ten years of dictatorship by Buhari and General Ibrahim Babangida had brought Nigerians to despair. Babangida’s Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), in particular, ensured that even average enjoyment could no longer be taken for granted. Nigerians were in desperate search of a better tomorrow which Chief Abiola preached so well. Instructively, the people had good reasons to believe his intentions.

Politicians haven’t changed, especially in telling the electorates what they want to hear. Abiola’s outing resonated so distinctly with Nigerian voters that when Tinubu came up with his “Renewed Hope” slogan in the runup to the 2023 poll, he was accused of plagiarism and opportunism. As another election cycle beckons, he is now struggling to convince the people that he hasn’t taken them for a ride; that his scorching reforms will eventually come to fruition. Members of the opposition club too, as usual, are selling poverty-alleviation vows like ice-cream.

But what will save those at the receiving end? Majority of voters are poor. Ordinarily, they should be in a position to decide their own fate. Unfortunately, politicians continue to take advantage of their weak memories, worries for the belly, resort to nostalgia and class scepticism to perpetuate the status quo. A day could still come when penury would cease to be a weapon in the hands of conscience-less souls. Someday!       

Dr Ekpe is a member of ������Ƶ Editorial Board

X: @monday_ekpe2

The Advocate

By Onikepo Braithwaite

Onikepo.braithwaite@thisdaylive.com

“For me, it was a reminder of the fact that, nobody would dare misbehave in China.” -Vimbai Mutinhiri-Ekpeyong

The Chinese/Nigerian Collaboration and Illegal Mining

Yet, the Chinese (in cahoots with the locals of the countries they plunder), go around misbehaving in other people’s countries, particularly African countries that are richly endowed with mineral resources, like Nigeria. And, mostly, they are able to get away with it. If not, they won’t keep coming. The same China that polices conduct tightly at home, through some of its nationals and companies extracting minerals in Africa with far less restraint, and Nigerian collaborators plus weak enforcement, make it possible. 

The aforementioned statement made by Vimbai Mutinhiri-Ekpeyong during Arise TV’s Morning Show a couple of months ago, brought to the fore something that has been on my mind for quite a while. Last year, I sat next to a top Government official on a local flight, and he remarked that, if I see the environmental degradation in one of the South West States caused by illegal mining activities of the Chinese, I would cry. It is bad enough that the oil companies have ruined the South South oil producing areas as a result of exploration or should I say exploitation, now other zones in Nigeria, including but not limited to Kwara, Plateau and Niger in North Central, Zamfara in the North West are also being plundered by the Chinese for illegal profit, with the connivance of Nigerians. Some Chinese are also in Ghana illegally mining gold, and  Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) illegally mining gold and cobalt, though maybe not as much as the Ghana galamsey where they engage in illegal mining using Ghanaian fronts for small scale mining reserved for Ghanaians. 

Statutory and Constitutional Provisions 

Though Section 1 of the Land Use Act 1978 (LUA) vests the land within each State in their Governors to hold for and on behalf of the people, for the avoidance of doubt, Section 44(3) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended)(the Constitution) vests all the minerals whether under or upon the ground or in the waters, in the Government of the Federation of Nigeria, and only the National Assembly has the power to legislate on matters related thereto (see Item 39 on the Exclusive Legislative List of the Constitution). Section 1(1) of the Nigerian Minerals and Mining Act 2007 (NMMA) restates the same vesting in the Government of the Federation of Nigeria for and on behalf of the people of Nigeria, and that mineral titles (reconnaissance permit, exploration licence, small-scale mining lease, mining lease, quarry lease) are granted only by the Mining Cadastre Office. In fact, Section 1(2) thereof provides that where mineral resources have been found in commercial quantities upon any land, from the commencement of the NMMA, such land stands acquired by the Government of the Federation. 

The aforementioned Section 44(3) evincing the fact that Surface ownership does not confer mineral rights, appears to be an exception to the well established common law idea of “cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos”, that is, “whose is the soil, his it is all the way to heaven and to those below”, because it creates a situation of dual ownership, where minerals whether upon or beneath land are Federalised, though land is State-held. This ownership structure also appears to support a Unitary constitutional system, rather than one of State resource control which would have vested the same minerals in the State Governors for and in trust for the people. 

Nigeria is not only fabulously endowed with hydrocarbons, minerals, base and precious metals, gem stones, she also has a good showing of rare earth minerals. Nigeria is a country known as one that suffers from “the Resource Curse”, that is, a country that is rich in natural resources, but has been somewhat slow in economic growth and development, leading to high levels of corruption and poor governance, as opposed to countries that are not particularly endowed with natural resources – a country that easily comes to mind is South Korea (SK), one that was a rural agrarian economy in the 1960s, and without any natural resources has successfully transformed into a First World Country, while Nigeria, with all its endowments, appears to have fallen to the bottom of the barrel, ranked as the poverty capital of the world in 2018 during late President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR’s  administration, struggling with the highest number of out-of-school children globally, and insecurity in several parts of the country.

Unfortunately, it is not the Nigerians who are enjoying the benefits of these natural endowments, but some foreign operators, including Chinese nationals and firms, and their Nigerian  collaborators  that include Government Officials, traditional rulers, politicians, locals and in some cases, armed terrorist groups, while ordinary  Nigerians bear the brunt of the insecurity that the illegal activities of these people has helped to escalate, because illegal mining operations have been identified as one of the key factors driving the pervasive insecurity in Nigeria. 

Though not every foreign or Chinese presence in Nigeria’s mining sector is illegal or unlicensed extraction, smuggling or other unlawful activity, the role of foreign miscreants in this illicit business cannot be ignored, and Nigerians call on the various levels of Government and law enforcement agencies, to arrest and prosecute these people who are not only ruining our environment and plundering Nigerian resources, but fuelling insecurity. Some successes were recorded in Kwara, where in July 2023, 13 Chinese Nationals linked to a syndicate were arrested by the EFCC for illegal mining activities spanning almost 16 local government areas of the State. These Chinese people entered on tourists visas, didn’t get the necessary work or other permits for their operations, engaged in unlawful extraction and failed to pay royalties to the Federal Government.

Estimates in 2025–2026 reporting put annual losses from illegal mining in the region of $9 billion; about 80% of mining in the North-West is described as illegal; NEITI/ANEEJ (May 2026, Reuters) pointed to foreign buyers, especially Chinese actors, dominating informal purchase and export channels, with shell companies and local proxies. Senate reporting has explicitly linked illegal gold mining in Zamfara, Kaduna and Katsina to arms procurement and banditry. Naturally, the Chinese Embassy has denied that its nationals fund terror or have terror links; but, what is documented is illegal extraction, informal buying, and, in the North-West, a mining economy that armed groups tax.

Offences 

Section 131-134 of the NMMA sets out various acts that constitute offences punishable with fines of not less than N20 million and imprisonment of not less than five years (see Section 133 of the NMMA), including mineral exploration, quarrying, and the removal, possession and disposal of such minerals not in accordance with the provisions of the NMMA. Section 142 of the NMMA also provides that offences under the NMMA, shall be tried at the Federal High Court. 

Section 1(8) of the Miscellaneous Offences Act 1983 (MOA) is also an enactment used to prosecute illegal miners and those who trade in the illicit mineral proceeds, with a stiffer punishment of life imprisonment and forfeiture. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear as if the courts have been meting out the maximum punishment, but levy fines and impose lighter prison sentences instead. 

The Mexicans

The Mexicans have also not been left out. In May 2026, the NDLEA raided an industrial scale methamphetamine factory in Ijebu East, Ogun State where three Mexican nationals and seven Nigerians were arrested, and approximately N50 billion worth of goods were seized. The illegal factory was dismantled, while the suspects were charged at the Federal High Court on an 11 count charge. We are all aware that drugs and violence, are inseparable Siamese twins. Moreover, many of those who have been arrested for terrorism and kidnapping, usually have methamphetamines and other drugs in their possession.

Conclusion 

The Constitution did not vest minerals in the Federation so that they could leave through the back door, with a tourist visa and a local collaborator holding it open. Until titles are transparent, sponsors are prosecuted with the extractors, and a fine stops being a substitute for the jail term the law already provides, the plunder will continue – and so will the insecurity it feeds. China does not permit this at home. Nigeria should not permit it here. 

And, that is why they keep coming. A visitor’s visa, a local front, a traditional blessing, a quiet Official, too often, a compromised law enforcement officer, and, in the North-West, a tax paid to whoever holds the gun, have proved cheaper than a mining lease, royalties and an environmental plan. When conviction ends in five years with an option of a fine, prosecution is not a deterrent. It is a line item. Ghana calls the same informal gold rush galamsey and has not killed it either; the lesson is not that the phenomenon is uniquely Nigerian, but that no mineral-rich African State can outsource enforcement to indignation. 

If the Constitution insists that what lies under our soil is Federal property, then the Federal Government  must police that claim. Titles should be public. Community Development Agreements should be real. Foreigners who enter as tourists and leave as miners, should face the immigration offence and the mineral offence, not one or the other. Nigerian collaborators — title-holders who front, officials who look away, and anyone who sells protection — belong in the same dock. And, the option of a fine, where the statute offers imprisonment for life, should stop being the default. 

Nobody, Vimbai Mutinhiri-Ekpeyong reminded us, would dare misbehave in China. The question is why anyone should dare, with such ease, on land and minerals the Constitution says belong to Nigerians, do so in Nigeria. 

The Nigerian Government should develop a comprehensive policy, including a holistic statutory enactment covering the field of mineral resources, including rare earth minerals and everything pertaining to them, including offences concerning their illegal exploitation and the punishments arising therefrom, In an efficient system, the law must be dynamic, not frozen in the time that it was enacted. The law must speak to new facts, technologies, social change and values, and the reality that not only are rare earth and battery minerals sitting at the centre of a new ‘Scramble for Africa’ to obtain them, a more robust legal framework
and better protection of them is urgently required. 

Bola A. Akinterinwa

Name is an identity and a reflection of personality. It is particularly important in international relations because it serves as a potent tool in defining, asserting sovereignty, and shaping global identity. What is in a name goes beyond the name itself. The mentioning of a name can ring many bells. Every living and non-living thing has a name and the name can always be changed for various reasons. Monuments, airports, countries, etc. have been renamed. Even marriages have prompted changes of names. A name can be changed for geographical reasons. Names of seas, regions, borders, territories, landmarks, etc. can be changed. Apart from geographical renaming, official state titles do give legal status and legitimacy to new governments at the United Nations.

More important, there is no disputing the fact that a name carries values and history in terms of global image and connects people or citizens to their culture and history. Many countries have changed their names in order to defend their nation’s dignity against past colonial powers. And true, there have been name controversies in international relations. For more than a decade, Greece and Macedonia have been in disagreement over what the official country’s name should be. What is noteworthy about changes of names in international relations is that the reasons for changes of names are also changing from appreciation to cold war. It is moving away from being an act of good gesture to dangerous cold war politics. 

This development is now threatening the maintenance of international peace and security. This is what U.S. foreign policy of ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) under President Donald Trump is suggesting and to which global concerns are pointing. What informed the renaming of Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America? How do we also explain the renaming of the Lake Ontario as Lake America? In which way are these changes of names different from the previous re-naming in international relations?

Some Previous Changes of Names

Changing a name is important but not important than the reasons for seeking a change. The political motivations are particularly noteworthy, especially when asserting sovereignty and making territorial claims. In traditional African settings, for example, a name defines one’s identity, links a person to his or her ancestors, and unites him or her to the community. At the level of a whole country, names are taken more seriously. Many countries have changed their names. In Africa, Rhodesia was renamed Zimbabwe in 1980, Gold Coast was renamed Ghana in 1957 to recall the medieval Ghana Empire; Swaziland became Eswatini in 2018 to restore the pre-colonial name which meant ‘the land of the Swazi. Upper Volta was changed to Burkina Faso in 1984 in order to suggest that the country is a ‘land of upright and honest people’; Belgian Congo/Congo Leopoldville was first changed to Zaire in 1971 and later to Republic of the Congo in 1997 in consonance with President Joseph Seseko Mobutu’s policy of authenticité in protest against colonial names; Cape Verde was changed to Cabo Verde in 2013 to emphasize the Portuguese-language name and to reject the translated English name.

In Europe and elsewhere, the Irish Free State became Ireland on December 29, 1937, following the approval of a new constitution of Ireland in a national plebiscite. In 2020, the Dutch government officially dropped Holland from its international branding to use only ‘The Netherlands’, the true country name. This decision is understandable from the consideration that Holland is not the whole country. It is a regional area that consists of only two of the country’s 12 provinces. Turkey changed its name to Turkiye in 2022 to discontinue the country from being referred to as a ‘bird’ or a ‘failed’ state, because the word ‘Turkey’ also means failure. In 1993, Czechoslovakia was changed to Czech Republic, to comprise Czechia and Slovakia, following what was called the Velvet Divorce, or a peaceful dissolution into two separate sovereign states. Thus, renaming in international relations is always an important instrument of protest, appreciation, self-re-projection, and domination as it is the case with the U.S. MAGA.

Grosso modo, one prominent category of renaming in international relations is in the area of geographic features that are either shared, or contested, or used by more than one country. The category includes seas, rivers, lakes, gulfs and mountains. As these features do not belong exclusively to one country, any unilateral renaming in order to acquire primacy cannot but be provocative. This is precisely what President Trump’s MAGA is all about. Change of names of geo-political locations under President Donald Trump raises many issues of international peace and security. 

First, Donald Trump wants to present himself to the whole world as an agent of a new America, as a protector of a strong and not a weak America under President Joe Biden and as a maker of renewed great America. In the eyes of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, his immediate predecessor, was unnecessarily too weak which should not have been so. Donald Trump therefore wants to show America’s strength and send indirect messages to China, the quietly rising challenger and aspiring new leader of the world. America wants to tell China and other competitors that it is not yet ready to relinquish its leadership of the world.

In showing American strength, Donald Trump has deliberately been threatening the national interests of other sovereign states. The renaming of Gulf of Mexico and Denali is a good illustration of this point. On the very first day in office in January 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order No. 14172, entitled ‘Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness.’ The Order directed the Secretary of Interior to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America for use by the Federal Government and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. Besides, the same Order also restored the name Mount Mckinley to Alaska’s tallest peak. The renaming as Mount Mckinley was a reversal of the 2015 decision taken under President Barack Obama who returned the mountain to its traditional Alaska Native name, Denali. 

Renaming Denali as Mount Mckinley did not generate controversy because the Mount Mckinley is located within the United States. The exercise of renaming falls squarely within the purview of domestic competence of the U.S, Government. However, the renaming of Gulf of Mexico as Gulf of America generated much animosity simply because the waters of the Gulf are adjacent not only to the United States but also to Mexico and Cuba. President Trump unilaterally decided to appropriate the commonly accepted name, Gulf of Mexico. The major considerations of President Trump were the economic importance of the Gulf to the United States, and the infuriating facts of trade imbalances, unauthorized migration, and drug trafficking across the U.S.-Mexico border.

The immediate implication of the U.S. unilateral decision is that the renaming does not go beyond the 12 nautical miles from the coastline recognized by international law as limit of exercise of national sovereignty. While the renaming of the Gulf was considered ‘appropriate’ in the eyes of Donald Trump, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico noted that Mexico and the rest of the world would continue to call the body of water the Gulf of Mexico, adding that  in the same logic, North America itself could be renamed ‘Mexican America’ since Mexico’s 1814 constitution used that phrase before the United States’ own founding documents were signed. As noted by Agata Weremczuk, ‘the President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, has unequivocally stressed that the country will continue to use the existing term ‘Gulf of Mexico’ (vide “The Significance of Geographical Names and Trump’s Strategic Intentions – Gulf of Mexico or Gulf of America?” (February 19, 2025 Titan, News, Experts).

The problematic raised in international relations is about how to refer to the Gulf. For the United States of America, Google calls it Gulf of America while Mexico retains the old name. This is how the United States is promoting disorderliness and making the maintenance of international peace and security more difficult. The mere fact that the Gulf, regardless of whatever name it answers, is accessible to Mexico and Cuba, requires a tripartite consultation in the spirit of international law. Donald Trump is vehemently opposed to consultation in the wrong belief that America can be great again by manu militari. More disturbingly in international relations, the renaming does not have any legal weight beyond the United States. This is in spite of the fact that the U.S. House of Representatives passed a legislation seeking to codify the Gulf of America.

As if the renaming of Gulf of Mexico were not enough, Donald Trump again extended the trade war or his struggle to Make America Great Again to Canada last week by renaming  Lake Ontario. What greatness is there in the act of renaming? What international respect is there for Americans if the renaming is only meaningful to Americans? Unlike the Gulf of Mexico to which three different sovereign states have access, Lake Ontario is one of the Great Lakes straddling the border between New York State and the Canadian province of Ontario. This means that the renaming is a bilateral issue to be addressed by both the United States and Canada. The likelihood of Canada taking the renaming of the Lake as friendly is remote, bearing in mind that President Donald Trump had once proposed to Canadians to accept to be the 51st constituent part of the United States. The Canadians have politely rejected the insult.

Appreciation, Self-Protection, and Cold War

As shown above, renaming is a good instrument of power. It is an exercise of power. It is a manifestation of politics per excellence. It can have a multipurpose function. For our purpose in this column, it should be recalled that during the colonial days, rivers, mountains, cities, and an entire territories were renamed after colonial monarchs, explorers, and national heroes. By so doing, indigenous names were consciously obliterated. However, with decolonization, African leaders began to reverse the colonial acts of renaming in favour of local names, indigenous languages, etc.

As of today, and in this Vie Internationale, we distinguish between and among three broad types of renaming. First is appreciation and identity renaming in which people are honoured for their services to the community, or to show historical memory or restore dignity to a place or people. Second is self-protection renaming, which is done to assert sovereignty, or protect economic or territorial interests, as well as projecting strength, drawing a symbolic boundary when there are situations of contested resources or assets. The third category is the cold war style or the tit-for-tat renaming. Greater emphasis is placed on this third category in order to underscore the implications for the maintenance of bilateral and international peace and security. 

Without jot of doubt, the most common category of renaming in international relations is the change of the name of a country, examples of which we have mentioned above. It is the third category of renaming, that is, the diplomatic tit-for-tat type that we want to explicate in order to draw lessons for global peace and security and particularly for Africa’s development and strategic autonomy in global affairs. 

At the level of Nigeria’s bilateral relationship with the United States, there have been both appreciation and cold war types of naming and renaming. It was in appreciation of U.S.-Nigeria good understanding under Nigeria’s Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and United States under President Bill Clinton that the access road to the international airport in Abuja, Nigeria, was not only renamed Bill Clinton but also that he was given a Nigerian name, OMOWALE, a Yoruba name meaning a ‘Child Returns.’ The name suggests the returning home of a son, the returning of a friend of Nigeria and Nigerians. This is expression of gratitude. Appreciation naming is also an invitation or request for a better entente in the relationship. Consequently, it does not involve political qualms.

At the level of cold war renaming, there were two cases of note: the Kudirat Abiola Corner Affair and the Walter Carrington affair. As regards the Kudirat Abiola Corner Affair, the Nigerian pro-democracy activists in the United States proposed that the New York City honour Kudirat Abiola, the wife of Chief M.K.O. Abiola whose electoral victory was annulled by military President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida in June 1993. The activists suggested that the street corner outside Nigeria’s United Nations Permanent Mission and Consulate at the intersection of East 44th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan be named ‘Kudirat Abiola Corner.’ The strategic calculation of the pro-democracy activists was to compel Nigerian diplomats to see her name whenever they enter and also go out of the building.

The proposal unsettled the mind of the government of General Sani Abacha who was compelled to lobby the U.S. State Department and fund opposition to the proposal, as well as go to courts to challenge the renaming. The argument of Nigeria was that the act of renaming was an improper interference with the diplomatic standing of Nigeria’s Permanent Mission. The City Council held hearings and eventually upheld its authority to rename. General Abacha was not happy with the decision and would retaliate immediately.

The Nigerian government renamed the street on which the U.S. Embassy was located on Victoria Island after Louis Farrakhan, the controversial leader of the Nation of Islam. The name of Louis Farrakhan was among other names like Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, and Timothy McVeigh that were considered just to provoke the U.S. Government. The political lull created did not last long as the Louis Farrakhan Street was again renamed in honour of Walter Carrington, a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, a major critic of General Sani Abacha, after Nigeria’s return to civilian rule. Thus, the Kudirat Abiola Corner affair is an expression of the use of naming of streets as a proxy battlefield for a much larger political confrontation over the issues of democracy, human rights, and legitimacy. It was an expression of a cold war.

At the international level, the cases of the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico and the Lake of Ontario are good expressions of cold war and self-protection. Trade relationship between Canada and the United States has been collapsing and not at all in good shape. In fact, Washington has placed tariffs on Canadian goods against which Canada has also retaliated. President Trump has explained that the deepest parts of the lake lie within U.S. waters and that the United States could be said to hold most of the lake’s volume.

In reaction to the thinking, the Canadian Prime Minister, Mike Carney, said the name Ontario was derived from a ‘centuries-old indigenous (Wendat) word which means ‘the lake is beautiful, the lake is big.’ More importantly, Prime Minister Caney made it clear that the name Ontario predates the founding of Canada and the founding of United States, and therefore, Canada’s identity and its names would not change to suit Washington’s political messaging. This is again a situation of order and counter-order amounting to disorder. It is a pointer that U.S. renaming cannot have much effect outside of the United States. 

The same reasons of politico-economic interests largely informed the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. In this regard, to what extent can it be rightly argued that U.S. acts of renaming have succeeded? Have the acts been able to bring the Chinese to their knees or to accept the sovereign superiority of the United States by Mexico and Canada? There is nothing to suggest that. Canada is coping with the U.S. tariff in a defiant manner. The mere fact that Canada has arrogantly rejected U.S. request to have Canada become the 51st State of the United States ought to have taught Donald Trump some lessons about the principle of sovereign equality. Since Donald Trump has made himself the lord of lords and another omnipotent power in international politics, of what benefit to the people of America has the policy of Make America Great Again been? Has the policy brought more friends or enemies in international relations?

Even within the context of Nigerian politics, renaming as retaliation has not helped nation-building. Nigeria’s original National Anthem was “Nigeria, We Hail Thee.” It was adopted on October 1, 1960. It was generally accepted even though it was written and composed by British citizens. However, in 1978, the military Government of General Olusegun Obasanjo replaced it with “Arise, O Compatriots” but President Bola Ahmed Tinubu also rejected “Arise O Compatriots.” He restored “Nigeria, We Hail Thee” as National Anthem in May 2024. Many observers considered the renaming as a diversionary tactic to make people see less of the economic and security problems with which the country was faced. 

Whatever was the case, there is no disputing the fact of serious misunderstanding between Chief Olusegun Obasanjo as President and Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu as Governor of Lagos State. President Obasanjo reportedly undermined Governor Tinubu, especially in matters pertaining to creation of new Local Government Areas. Now that Governor Tinubu is Nigeria’s President, he availed himself of the opportunity as president to retaliate using the context of national anthem to engage in a cold war. The misunderstanding between both of them is deep-seated. In this regard, why has renaming been used as an instrument of retaliation and not stricto sensu for nation building? What prevents another incoming President in the future from changing or re-writing a new National Anthem? 

Without jot of doubt, every act of renaming is not simply an administrative exercise. Be it at  the level of geographic feature, a state, or a piece of urban infrastructure, renaming is a communication between and among political actors to either show admiration, assert sovereignty, correct a colonial wrong, protect a domestic interest, or deliver a well-calculated insult in diplomacy. Renaming as a tool of ‘Making America Great Again’ (MAGA) under President Donald Trump is not about admiration for anyone or appreciation. It is more about unilateralism and insulting of other sovereign states, intimidating them to accept U.S. claims of sovereignty. The renaming of the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario are clear manifestations of U.S. policy aggressiveness. Most unfortunately, the strategy of MAGA has not succeeded in intimidating China, the perceived arch rival, if not enemy, of the United States. And true enough, China has attained the same level of technological and industrial greatness as the United States, if not more, particularly in many areas: military equipment (the Fujian aircraft carriers), genetically modified seeds, the increasing use of the RMB (cross-border payment system by 180 countries) which necessarily makes the dollar less of a priority. Besides, China does not use Western medical equipment as Shanghai United Imaging’s CT scanners are now entering the U.S. and Europe according to Professor Yang Fan of the University of Political Science and Law. Consequently, if President Trump wants to promote an imperialism-driven new world order while the world wants the maintenance of international peace and security, Africa should not accept. Reaction can begin with the renaming of all inherited colonial names in Africa.

By Adeola Akinremi

If there were credible national opinion polls in Nigeria, four months and nineteen days before the presidential election, we would have a clearer picture of where President Bola Tinubu and the other contenders stand.
We do not.
And so we are left with something less precise but perhaps more revealing: the record.
Without serious polling, it seems to me that Tinubu is driven more by mission than by ambition. That distinction matters.
His aggressive economic policies may make him intelligible to those who understand the macroeconomic necessity, but unbearable to those bearing the microeconomic pain, although temporarily. The pain of reform often dulls its immediate prosperity, making it hard for people to see the gains, especially in a political firmament where opponents with nothing concrete to offer try to confuse citizens with illogical arguments and reasoning.
As Reuters recently wrote, “few Nigerian presidents have moved as quickly on economic policy as Tinubu.”
Yet, history offers a reminder: In March 2012, I made a business trip to Singapore. My trip allowed me to learn directly from the people on the ground what I have read in “From Third World to First”, a book authored by Singapore’s revolutionary Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.
Singapore’s transformation shows how today’s economic discipline can become tomorrow’s prosperity.
Singapore was not Nigeria. It had a tiny population, a strategic port, unusually strong state capacity, and exceptional continuity in economic policy. When Lee Kuan Yew’s government began transforming the country’s transformation, it was dealing with poverty, unemployment, and a poorly educated workforce. But its government deliberately pursued industrialization, attracted foreign investment, built infrastructure, and invested in human capital. By the early 1970s, the unemployment problem had largely been solved, and the country subsequently moved toward higher-skill and higher-technology industries.
Tinubu’s real revolution is quiet. Beneath the noise of politics and headlines, what started as a policy memo is now drawing the world’s attention.
International businesses and governments are paying attention, not because of slogans, but because of Nigeria’s growing appetite to use technology to squeeze more productivity from the same tired systems to open new possibilities, and to raise the quality of what this country produces.
Here is the paradox. The International Trade Administration, the U.S. Department of Commerce agency responsible for promoting American exports, is looking at Nigeria and encouraging American businesses to explore its emerging technology opportunities. The Americans are looking toward Nigeria. Some of Nigeria’s opposition politicians are asking Nigerians to look away.
To be honest, Tinubu’s quiet tech revolution is easy to underestimate. But it is not going unnoticed. Washington sees a market worth entering. Washington is watching and aligning its interests.
In 2024, the U.S. Department of Commerce and Nigeria’s Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment signed a Commercial and Investment Partnership focused on agriculture, the digital economy, and infrastructure. At the same time, Washington released a joint statement on harnessing artificial intelligence with Nigeria’s Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy. Later that year, Lagos hosted the second-ever U.S. Global Inclusivity on Artificial Intelligence: Africa conference, bringing ten U.S. government agencies and 400 pan-African stakeholders to the table.
This is not ceremonial. The United States already counts Nigeria among its top 55 trade partners, with two-way trade at $11.2 billion in 2023. And in a country where oil’s contribution to GDP has shrunk to 5.7 percent, the digital economy now accounts for nearly 20 percent of output in a single quarter, almost four times what oil contributes. When a superpower starts staging AI conferences in Lagos and signing joint statements on digital governance, it is not tourism. It is strategy.
Europe is moving in the same direction. The European Union has announced a €290 million investment package for Nigeria under its Global Gateway strategy, with the largest share—€131 million—dedicated to expanding fibre-optic networks to reach millions currently without stable internet. A separate €45 million EU Digital Economy Package targets secure connectivity, digital public infrastructure, e-governance, digital entrepreneurship, and advanced skills, explicitly tying into Nigeria’s 3 Million Technical Talent (3MTT) programme.
The message is blunt: Europe sees Nigeria not just as an energy supplier, but as a future digital and manufacturing hub for West Africa. More than a quarter of Nigeria’s trade is with the EU, over 200 European companies operate here, and Brussels is betting that digital rails will make those ties deeper, not thinner.
The United Kingdom, for its part, has deepened engagement through a £15 million growth programme aimed at investment and the digital economy, even as bilateral trade with Nigeria climbs toward £7.2 billion. Canada’s Africa strategy emphasises economic cooperation, youth empowerment, and digital skills, with high-level trade missions and new instruments to mobilise finance for technology and infrastructure. In diplomatic terms, this is what alignment looks like: multiple capitals, same conclusion.
None of this erases the daily struggle, which other nations equally faced.
What am I saying, to reduce Nigeria’s story to only pain is to miss the big picture: a country that, despite everything, is becoming one of the most important digital markets on the continent.
Nigeria already leads Africa’s ICT market, contributing 82 percent of the continent’s ICT value and 29 percent of its internet usage. More than 210 million mobile subscribers. Broadband penetration is above 40 percent. 5G licences awarded and rolled out in major cities. A fintech ecosystem that moves hundreds of billions of dollars in payments every year. This is not a “potential” market. It is a live, breathing digital economy with real users, real transactions, and real stakes.
The reforms are expensive. They are politically risky. They are also necessary. A country of over 220 million people cannot build a twenty-first-century economy on twentieth-century infrastructure and nineteenth-century bureaucracy. Digital transformation will not fix every broken thing, but it can make everything else work better: tax collection, service delivery, financial inclusion, education, health, even anti-corruption efforts when systems are designed to leave fewer shadows.
Still, there is a danger in the way this story is told. Too often, “digital economy” becomes a euphemism for apps and startups, as if the point is to produce a few billionaire founders while the rest of the country watches. That is not the ambition here. The ambition is to change how work gets done, how value gets created, and how ordinary Nigerians plug into global markets without having to leave their postcodes.
The 3MTT programme, the broadband push, the data protection regime, and the emerging AI strategy are not vanity projects. They are attempts to lay the rails for a different kind of growth. One that does not depend solely on oil prices or the mood swings of global commodity markets. One that can absorb a youthful population instead of spitting them out as statistics.
Yes, the cost of reforms is an enduring issue. But the cost of stagnation is higher. The world is not waiting for a perfect Nigeria. It is engaging with the real one: messy, complicated, stubbornly alive. The question is whether Nigerians, especially those with the power to shape policy and capital, will match that external interest with internal conviction.
Optimism is not denial. It is a decision. A decision to see the quiet tech revolution for what it is: not a distraction from “real” development, but one of the few credible paths to it. The world has taken its position. The memo has become a movement. The only thing left to decide is whether Nigeria will fully inhabit the opportunity Tinubu has created.

*Adeola Akinremi is a public policy advisor, strategic communications expert, and the founder and CEO of Hintells, an AI-powered intelligence platform serving businesses and African diplomatic missions in Washington, D.C. He has extensive multilateral experience advising on governance, economic and policy reforms across global markets and can be reached at: adeola@hintells.com

Femi Akintunde -Johnson

There is a Nigeria where a woman stands before a food seller, calculating how many cups of rice her remaining money can buy before deciding that perhaps the children can manage with something less expensive. There is another Nigeria where a man leaves home at dawn, not because he is particularly diligent or eager to beat the Lagos traffic, but because he is trying to combine three jobs, two side hustles and an occasional favour from a friend in order to keep his family from falling through the widening cracks.

There is the young graduate who has spent years acquiring certificates, only to discover that certificates are now decorative items unless accompanied by connections, influence or a relative who knows somebody who knows somebody. There is the pensioner calculating which medicine can be postponed until next month. There is the civil servant wondering how transport to work has become a major item in the family budget. There is the tenant who wakes up one morning to discover that his landlord has suddenly developed the entrepreneurial spirit of Aliko Dangote.

The rent goes up. Shop rent goes up. Transport goes up. Food goes up. School fees go up. Hospital bills go up. Electricity tariffs go up. The only thing that appears reluctant to go up with similar enthusiasm is the income of the ordinary Nigerian.

Yet, somewhere in another universe, the figures are looking impressive. Trillions have been saved. Revenues have increased. Allocations to states and local governments have risen dramatically. Foreign reserves are being discussed. Macroeconomic indicators are being celebrated. Inflation may be moderating statistically, even if the woman in the market is still wondering which statistics can be cooked and served for breakfast.

This is increasingly the fundamental problem with the Nigerian economic conversation: the Nigerian people and their government often appear to be living in two different universes.

In the official universe, there are graphs, percentages, projections and encouraging figures. In the real universe, there are empty wallets, shrinking meals, unpaid hospital bills, jobless young people and families quietly selling possessions in order to maintain the appearance of being okay.

And Nigerians are talking. They talk on radio call-in programmes. They cry on social media. They complain in buses, markets, offices, churches, mosques, beer parlours and neighbourhood meetings. Every day brings another testimony of hardship, another desperate appeal, another story of somebody who has reached a point where survival itself has become a full-time occupation.

But there appears to be a communication breakdown of monumental proportions. The people say, “We cannot breathe.” Government replies, “But look at the figures.”

The people say, “Food is beyond our reach.” Government replies with revenue allocations.

The people say, “Our children cannot find work.” Government announces a new policy framework.

The people say, “We are dying in hospitals.” Somebody reminds them of a proposed infrastructure project.

There is nothing inherently wrong with macroeconomic gains. A serious country needs them. Foreign reserves matter. Revenue matters. Investment matters. Infrastructure matters. Economic reforms sometimes require difficult transitions. Nobody is suggesting that government should run the economy from the kitchen table.

But an economy cannot be declared successful simply because the arithmetic is improving while the people doing the living are deteriorating.

The real test of economic management is not how impressively a minister can recite figures at a press conference. It is whether those figures eventually translate into affordable food, accessible healthcare, meaningful employment, functional transport, reasonable housing and a measurable reduction in human misery.

Nigeria’s poverty challenge is becoming frightening not merely because people are poor, but because the ladder out of poverty is disappearing. A young person without a job may once have hoped to acquire a skill, get employment, start a business or gradually improve his circumstances. Today, capital is scarce, borrowing is expensive, electricity is unreliable and basic survival consumes so much energy that planning for the future has become a luxury.

Meanwhile, government continues to speak proudly about savings arising from the removal of subsidies. Nigerians were told that the country could no longer continue bleeding resources into an unsustainable system. Fair enough. But a legitimate question remains: where, exactly, are the savings visibly working for the people?

If trillions have indeed been released or saved, citizens should not have to employ forensic accountants and diviners to understand where the benefits have gone. There ought to be clear, accessible and verifiable evidence: these are the savings; this is where they were deployed; these are the schools, hospitals, roads, transport interventions, employment programmes and social protections they have financed; and this is how ordinary Nigerians are better off.

Instead, explanations sometimes become so broad and technical that the people emerge more confused than enlightened. Government may be telling the truth, but opacity has a way of making even good news sound suspicious.

The other disturbing contrast is the widening gulf between the hardship of the people and the lifestyle of sections of the political and affluent class. At a time when families are reducing meals, government convoys still glide through traffic like visiting royalty. Public offices still maintain protocols and privileges that belong to a country much richer than the one being governed. Political office remains one of Nigeria’s most successful escape routes from the economic realities endured by ordinary citizens.

There is something morally uncomfortable about preaching sacrifice to people while those entrusted with leadership appear largely insulated from it. Nigerians are being told to tighten their belts, although many have reached the stage where there is simply no belt left to tighten.

This is why the government must be careful about its current economic messaging. Statistics should not be used to invalidate suffering. A citizen complaining that garri has become expensive does not necessarily need a lecture on gross domestic product. A father unable to pay hospital bills may not be comforted by a glowing presentation about fiscal consolidation.

The government may genuinely believe that the reforms are working. Perhaps, in certain respects, they are. But reforms that cannot communicate their human benefits, or cushion their human costs, will eventually lose the confidence of the people expected to endure them.

The two Nigerias cannot continue travelling in opposite directions: one riding on spreadsheets and projections, the other trudging through markets and motor parks, hospitals and unemployment queues. At some point, the numbers must meet the people.

Because Nigerians do not live inside macroeconomic indicators. They live in houses they must rent, on roads they must travel, with children they must feed, and in bodies that sometimes require medical attention.

And if the people are still asking, every morning, how they will survive till evening, then somebody, somewhere, needs to look beyond the beautiful figures and ask a more inconvenient question:

What exactly are we saving the economy for, if the people keep losing their lives to it?

The Nigerian political class must prioritise beneficial, people-centred interactions at this period, writes MONDAY PHILIPS EKPE

Should we pretend that political parties in the country have only just begun their electioneering campaigns in preparation for next year’s general polls, in line with the official timetable? Of course not! August 19 was fixed to usher in direct, vote-prospecting exercises between those seeking elective offices and the various electorates. It’s among the variables that ensure the much-touted level-playing field. Like in athletics where runners proceed from designated spots and wait for the whistle before hitting the tracks. No competition can claim equity and fairness without this simplest of requirements.

Sadly, however, the Nigerian polity is not a stranger to practices that are strange to polished democratic norms. Many functionaries of the major parties went into action before that time to canvass votes, directly or otherwise. The easiest thing to do is blame the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for not rising up to its duty of monitoring the processes. But doing so without factoring in its own institutional handicaps would be unfair. At any rate, its capacity to keep track of the activities of politicians has now been further weakened by today’s expanded and liberalised mass communication channels. The orthodox media, far more restricted and easier to monitor, can now be readily side-lined in preference for their social counterparts and still gain access to sizable portions of the population. Policing the virtual space can indeed be daunting. Let’s leave sanitising the political climate for another day.

But what can’t wait is a look at the messages that are churned out by those pushing and scheming to occupy leadership seats across the land. It’s bad enough that not much premium is placed on the academic qualifications of the prospective candidates – from local government councillor to president. An attempt at – not necessarily excellence in – school certificate or its equivalent is all that’s needed to clinch any of the offices. One day, someone will research into the likelihood of the low self-esteem of either the framers of the constitution or the successive national parliaments that haven’t amended that clause. Or, worse still, the country as a whole. Not suggesting here, though, that degrees and diplomas should be the prime requisite credentials for governance. Only that, as a nation, we’ve ignored for too long the critical aspect of communicating the right messages effectively to citizens, something that entails a sound intellect.

This situation has cost the country dearly. Persons without a clear compass on how to govern have found their way into government positions. Buccaneers and barracudas who never established meaningful connections with the people they claim to serve have assumed responsibilities all the same, with dire consequences. Even though holding political office holders accountable for their actions and inactions isn’t a forte of the Nigerian masses, that laxity has been further aggravated by the inadequacy or absence of well-defined propositions and promises of intending public office seekers. Trust the largely opportunistic political class. What they lack or refuse to do in terms of constructive oral or written engagements with their constituents, they compensate by handing out indomie, rice, bread, N2000 and such stuff. Studies on the perpetuation of penury in Nigeria must include these festivals of humiliation.

Just in case our politicians need this warning, Nigerians may not always be taken for granted. The picture at the moment isn’t encouraging, we know. The twin monsters of poverty and hunger have substantially undermined the ability of the average citizen to think beyond his/her visceral wants. The ever-increasing volume of multi-dimensionally challenged citizenry has continued to ensure they often take the accustomed paths of disillusionment, docility and resignation. The future then becomes blurred and dark with no immediate signs of illumination and grit, not to mention collective agitation and victory. And, like manic predators, the political overlords pounce on and plunder the commonwealth without much thoughts for the present and later generations.

That may not last forever! The result of the recent governorship poll in Osun State is a clear pointer. It was, no doubt, a rare display of people-power. Majority of the indigenes stood behind their embattled governor who held the Accord Party ticket. Some stalwarts of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) have tried to twist the narrative by attributing the win to President Bola Tinubu’s magnanimity. That’s far from true. The Osun experience followed the other examples in Nigeria’s political history when the people stood their ground to enforce their will against the odds. It is their failure to do so at some other critical points that is mainly responsible for emboldening the men and women at the helms of affairs, many of whom lack empathy, communality and competence.

Messaging. Developing and communicating appropriate messages stem from, in part, genuine respect for target audiences. Do Nigerian people deserve to be courted and persuaded? Does their endorsement count? What’s even the worth of their votes? We saw in the last presidential election when a simple glitch, whatever that means, rendered the franchise of millions of voters redundant. Isn’t it then cheaper to take that route and trash the people’s wishes and preferences?

There’re indications that there aren’t easy answers to those questions anymore. Tides do turn in social perceptions and acceptability. And quickly too. Often, the bottom-line is the power to convince. Yes, our institutions do not look capable of withstanding the vagaries of this period, especially devious manipulations by desperate politicians. And the voting populace does not seem to possess the resolve required to defend this democracy. Yet, it may not be taken for a ride much longer.

Vote canvassers should, therefore, roll up their sleeves and get down to work. Step away from monotony. Marshal their selling points. Avoid ad hominem and invectives, for, Nigerians have since come to a sad conclusion that most politicians are the same – only hustling for power. So, do less to attack the integrity of your opponents. Focus on how the country’s well-known mountains can be made low or eliminated.

At present, Tinubu’s achievements are primarily in the macro bracket. Most of his compatriots just can’t relate them to their own daily existence, unfortunately. The promise of a brighter tomorrow without ready, relatable anchors can be truly tormenting. As for the opposition, Tinubu-loathing alone won’t resonate with the people. In a fatalistic sense, many of them have settled with having underperforming leaders, sadly. Taking them out of that pitiable state should be the mission of our political elite. This is where pragmatic, people-oriented communication comes in. 

Dr Ekpe is a member of ������Ƶ Editorial Board

X: @monday_ekpe2

The Advocate

By Onikepo Braithwaite

Onikepo.braithwaite@thisdaylive.com

Different people had different things that caught their attention, about the recently concluded Osun State Gubernatorial election. But, the fact that Accord Party’s Governor Ademola Adeleke, the incumbent, was re-elected to do his second term, having defeated his closest rival, the APC candidate, with a wide margin, not only laid some of the issues to rest, but brought credibility to the election and INEC (Independent National Electoral Commission). 

Recall a few weeks ago, I stated that certain things bring credibility to an election/electoral process – this is one of them – the fact that the national ruling party didn’t win this election “at all costs”. Despite the pre-election violence in which over 40 people were reported to have been killed, and Senator Francis Fadahunsi’s live video in which he counselled APC supporters to kill Accord Party members if they encountered them before the election (“pi pa ni o”), the election appeared to end up being reasonably decent, apart from some vote buying that was reported. However, while Governor Adeleke’s victory strengthens the credibility of Nigerian elections, comments like that of Mr Nyesom Wike, about a different outcome had he been involved in the Osun election, tend to do the opposite. 

Nyesom Wike on the Osun Election 

FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike stated thus: “If the President had wanted to win the Osun State election at all costs, I would have been there and we would have won it, and there’s nothing the Governor can do”. Such a statement does nothing, but undermine the credibility of INEC and the electoral process. 

The will of the Osun people was expressed quite clearly at the ballot – they want Ademola Adeleke and no one else as their Governor, this time around. In fact, the truth is that each time Ademola Adeleke offered up himself to run for Governor, he seems to have always won the elections; even the 2018 election against Gboyega Oyetola that he eventually lost out on, he had initially satisfied the provisions of Section 179(2)(a) & (b) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended)(the Constitution) which sets out the conditions to be fulfilled to win a gubernatorial election. The election was however, declared inconclusive, and Oyetola was able to win the supplementary election, and subsequently, emerge as winner. I will discuss inconclusive elections below.

Pertinent Questions 

What did Mr Wike mean by ‘win at all costs’? How does Mr Wike win elections by “all costs”? Did Mr Wike mean that he would have joined APC in their campaign before the election, to sway voters to their side? That seems doubtful, due to Mr Wike’s  reference to Governor Adeleke not being able to do anything after losing out – a loaded statement that not only undermines the credibility of INEC and even the Judiciary, which is where aggrieved candidates turn to for succour, but one that would definitely rile the people, and ignite resentment against the President, the Federal Government and APC. So, what could Mr Wike have done to supersede the will of the Osun people, and force an APC victory on them, no matter what? What would he have done differently that would have guaranteed APC’s victory, without the buy-in of majority of the voters who opted for Governor Adeleke and the Accord Party? 

In Nigeria, an election outcome that diverges from the actual votes cast or fails to mirror same, is considered to be a stolen or a rigged election, the outcome of which could only be described as illegitimate or undemocratic – a selection, rather than an election. 

Electoral College System 

Of course, there is another exception besides election rigging, to the popular vote not being the determinant of the outcome of an election, but we don’t practice it here – the Electoral College system which is used in America, where the votes of the Electoral College which is really the final decider of the American Presidential elections, doesn’t necessarily have to mirror the outcome of the popular vote, as we saw in the election of Hillary Clinton v Donald Trump, in which Clinton won the votes of the people (popular vote), but Trump won the votes at the Electoral College, making him the winner of the 2016 American Presidential election. In the 2024 Kamala Harris v Donald Trump election, President Trump won both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote. 

NBA Observance of the Osun Election

However, as a Lawyer, what actually interested me about the Osun State Gubernatorial election, was the fact that the the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) that was unable to conduct its own general elections credibly, went to observe the Osun election! I found that amusing. If INEC had done what the ECNBA did in the conduct of the 2026 NBA elections, not only would the public have been up in arms, election petitions arising therefrom would have been rife. 

And, Osun State for that matter, where the issue of INEC declaring an election inconclusive, was part of the subject-matter of their gubernatorial election petition two cycles ago. How ironic. Even though the 2019 Osun State case – Adeleke & Anor v INEC & Ors was concerned with inconclusive elections, its decision can be distinguished from that of Hon. James Abiodun Faleke v INEC & Anor 2016 18 N.W.L.R. Part 1543 Page 61, because it was decided more on procedural irregularity – the Court of Appeal held that the Judge who delivered the majority decision in the Adeleke case was absent at a crucial sitting of the Tribunal, thereby rendering the judgement a nullity. This position was subsequently upheld, in a split decision of the Supreme Court. 

The NBA having just concluded a classic example of what can only be described as an inconclusive election fraught with irregularities, in which over 70% of eligible members were disenfranchised, and is trying to proceed normally as if the election was credible and conclusive, has absolutely no moral justification or election expertise to observe, supervise or judge the elections of others, when it failed to conduct and judge its own elections properly. Hon. James Abiodun Faleke v INEC & Anor (Supra) is the Supreme Court’s foundational authority on the legality of INEC declaring an election inconclusive and the margin-of-lead principle, whereby the number of registered voters exceeds the margin of the votes between the two leading candidates. This is because, this margin is capable of changing the outcome of the election. 

In the case of the NBA, the body for Lawyers, it is inconceivable that the margin-of-lead principle, very well known to us, hasn’t been applied and a rerun election conducted. The number of registered voters that were disenfranchised, approximately 60,000, was many times more than the margin of votes between Mrs Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya, SAN and Mr Lateef Omoyemi Akangbe, SAN, and between Mrs Badejo-Okusanya, SAN and Mr Olumuyiwa Akinboro, SAN. In the case of NBA elections, a rerun election is capable of changing the election outcomes completely, or transforming the performance of Mrs Badejo-Okusanya, SAN and that of the other declared winners, to a credible and valid victory. 

Going Forward

Sadly, whether there are institutional or credibility gains, or there are legitimate concerns and complaints about institutions or processes, those concerned fail to follow up appropriately by doing the needful to develop stronger institutions and better processes. 

With INEC, Nigerians expect them to build upon their gains of the Osun State election in order to deliver a free, fair and credible general election come 2027 – be it in perfecting their logistics or training their ad-hoc staff, we are expecting less complaints and better outcomes. Nigerians hope that INEC will not disappoint. 

As for the NBA, over the years, there have been complaints about the conduct of its elections. It appears that there have been difficulties, in making the electronic election process unimpeachable. However, those complaints reached an unprecedented crescendo in the 2026 cycle, particularly because all the shortcomings had been brought to light well before the election was held, but the NBA/ECNBA chose to ignore/justify  them, instead of implementing the necessary corrective measures. Unfortunately, the attitude of ignoring legitimate issues and lack of accountability have become a culture in Nigeria, and the NBA being a Nigerian association, is not immune from same. 

The NBA’s internal dispute resolution mechanism seems to have been exhausted and appeared to fail, expectedly so too. It therefore, wouldn’t be out of place for aggrieved candidates to institute legal proceedings to seek redress, seeing as it has become impossible for them to benefit from the right of fair hearing and just treatment from any NBA Appeals Committee – see Section 36(1) of the Constitution. The court has jurisdiction to hear and determine the NBA election petitions – see Section 6(6)(b) of the Constitution and Madukolu & Ors v Nkemdilim (1962) LPELR-24023(SC) per Vahe Robert Bairamian, JSC. A candidate also has the locus standi to institute an action, concerning their dissatisfaction with the conduct of the NBA elections and the outcome, as they have a personal interest in the outcome, since they are directly affected by and will suffer injury from same – see Olawoyin v AG Northern Region (1961) LPELR-25065(SC) per Edgar Ignatius Godfrey Unsworth, JSC; Fawehinmi v IGP & Ors (2002) LPELR-1258(SC) per Samson Odemwingie Uwaifo, JSC. 

Their first prayer would be for an injunction to restrain the inauguration of an NBA Executive which has arisen from an electoral process that is being questioned, as it is trite that an order of injunction cannot be granted to restrain a completed act, so it’s obviously expedient to get one before the swearing in, while the second prayer would be for an order for a rerun election – see AR Security Solution Ltd v EFCC (2018) LPELR-43828(SC) per Kumai Bayang Aka’ahs, JSC. If the court is genuinely interested in playing its role in strengthening institutions and the development of society, the legitimate and fertile grounds for the grant of remedies in the NBA matter, will not simply be brushed aside. They will be given the serious consideration they deserve.

Conclusion 

Building of strong institutions, requires the courage to prioritise institutional integrity over convenience and personal interest. The Osun State election demonstrated that a clear expression of the people’s will, can enhance the credibility of both the process and INEC. Statements that suggest outcomes can be engineered “at all costs”, regardless of that will, do the opposite. Such statements are unhelpful to the President, his campaign and his victory, if he is re-elected.

The NBA faces a parallel test. An election in which a substantial majority of eligible members couldn’t participate, cannot simply  be brushed off as concluded and unimpeachable. If the courts remain the last hope of the common man, then aggrieved candidates are entitled to seek judicial scrutiny of the electoral process that failed basic standards of accessibility and reliability. Maybe for the first time, Lawyers will see a positive step towards the aggrieved candidates getting the justice they deserve, if the requisite orders are made and the NBA is thereby compelled to obey. 

Like Amuda Akanbi commented on my page a couple of weeks ago, it only took one Rosa Parks refusing to vacate her seat for a white passenger on a bus, to change the course of American history; likewise, it need only take one Judge to make orders that will not only bring accountability that appears to have been sadly lacking into NBA elections, but also show that any presumption of regularity sought to be enjoyed by the NBA must be earned by conducting unimpeachable elections, and it is obvious that the presumption of regularity cannot be achieved without the requisite integrity needed to make this regularity a reality.

It is unfortunate as well as discouraging that many have lost faith, and do not believe that anything will come out of any quest for justice and redress in the NBA situation, and it will just be business as usual!

Bola A. Akinterinwa

International law and reimbursement of deportation bills is quite interesting a topic in intra-African relations for various reasons. First, there is no general rule regulating the need to reimburse countries that deport or repatriate unwanted people. Secondly, the politics of refund of deportation bills is not only creating a diplomatic row between and among Nigeria, South Africa and Ghana, but is also raising several questions about the future of continental unity and integration. Thirdly, in the absence of a regulating rule of law, it is either the deporting state accepts to fund the deportation as a result of its own policy of unwanted immigrants, or the deportee is made to pay if the domestic law allows, or the airline that is carrying the deportee in violation of immigration law. The problems in this case are many.

 First, deportees do not want to leave the deporting state. They are coerced to leave against their will. When they are coerced to leave, it is most often when they are ill-prepared. Little or no time is given to them to prepare and leave in decency. This is why they are always rushed out and are put in the next available airline or shipping vessel. South African government has deported many unwanted Africans and has exceeded its deportation budget. The insolvency created as a result of the deportation has prompted the South African government to demand for reimbursement from some Governments, including those of Nigeria and Ghana. Both countries have refused.

Secondly, in most cases, deportees are always insolvent at the time they are arrested and prosecuted, or arrested and immediately deported. In this time of forced evacuation, there is nothing the deportee could do other than accepting to be a liability to the deporting state. This means there is nothing the deporting state can do than either to pay for the deportation or keep the unwanted person in detention. This situation is true of the airline carrying the deportee contrarily to the immigration laws of the deporting state. An airline can be sanctioned by way of refusal of next landing right but this can also warrant the application of the rule of reciprocity. In this regard, how do we deal with the emerging diplomatic row between South Africa, on the one hand, and Nigeria and Ghana, on the other hand?

International Law and Deportations 

There are different forms of deportations in international law and relations. They include refoulement, repatriation, and expulsion. The concepts of refoulement and repatriation are different in meaning but can at times be synonymous in application. Normally, refoulement is by definition the opposite of repatriation. Repatriation is the return of a person to his or her home country, generally on the basis of consent. Refoulement is the illegal forced return of a refugee or asylum seeker to a place where his or her life has the potential to be seriously threatened. Repatriation occurs at the end of conflicts or when environmental conditionings of life are not inclement back home. Repatriation is legitimate it is free and done by choice. Repatriation is meant to be voluntary and safe while refoulement is forced and unsafe. But both concepts can be synonymous when people are compelled to repatriate against their will to a dangerous territory where their life may be threatened. In this type of situation, repatriation becomes a refoulement.

The two concepts should also not be confused with the notion of expulsion which is the formal legal action by a host government forcing a non-citizen to leave its territory for reasons ranging from immigration infractions to security law violations. Again, repatriation may not be synonymous with deportation. Repatriation is the return of a person to his home country voluntarily on either humanitarian, legal or administrative reasons. When people are stranded or are prisoners of war or migrant workers and they found themselves in irregular situations, they may be repatriated. Travelers considered to have the potential of becoming a landed immigrant, or landed tourist  can be repatriated. On the contrary, deportation is the act of forced removal of a foreign national by a government, especially as a result of violation of immigration laws or lack of legal status. In general, it is used in cases of non-citizens living illegally or found to have committed certain offences. In the context of Nigerians and Ghanaians in South Africa, it is more of deportation or expulsion.

Without whiff of doubt, an act of deportation, repatriation, or refoulement can lead to a demand for reimbursement of deportation bills by a deporting state.  What is made clear under international law is that such a demand can only be legitimate if there is a valid existing treaty, bilateral accord, or a financial framework providing for such reimbursement. As regards refoulement, it is a French word that means an act of extraditing, or deporting to a country or place where there is the risk of torture, inhuman treatment, or persecution. Article 33(1) of the 1951 Refugee Convention specifically provides for the principle of Non- refoulement, that is, it bans the act of refoulement. Refugees are not to be returned to territories where their life or freedom would be threatened because of their race, political opinion, nationality, religion or membership of a given stratum of society. 

Refoulement can be direct, in which case a refugee is returned to the very country where they face danger; or indirect, in which case a person is sent to a third country that may return such a person to a country to face persecution or serious harm. What is noteworthy here is that the principle of non-refoulement, especially in the context of an asylum seeker, who is trying to escape persecution, cannot be deported back to the state where he is likely to be tortured, imprisoned, or persecuted. The principle of non-refoulement has attained the status of a customary international law. It has become a fundamental norm or peremptory norm that cannot be derogated.

Consequently, in the context of reimbursement of deportation bills, what really is the status of Nigerians and Ghanaians deported by the South African government? Are they hardened criminals? Are they refugees or asylees? Is there truly any record of Nigerians and Ghanaians posing a serious threat to the security of South Africa? These questions are necessary because the only exception to the rule of non-refoulement is when an asylum seeker or people constitute(s) a serious danger to the security of their host state. In fact, Article 31 of the 1951 Convention on refugees unlawfully residing in the country of refuge are still supposed to be protected. The Article says “the Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened…’ Additionally, Article 32 prohibits expulsion: the “Contracting States shall not expel a refugee lawfully in their territory save on grounds of national security or public order.” 

More importantly, Article 33 on prohibition of expulsion or return (refoulement), stipulates that ‘no Contracting State shall expel or return (refouler) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where  his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. Rather than expulsion, Contracting States are required under Article 34 to facilitate the assimilation and naturalization of refugees.

In the same vein, the Convention Against Torture (CAT), adopted on 10 December, 1984 and which entered into force on 26 June, 1987, similarly prohibits’ Contracting States from expelling, returning or extraditing any person to another state where there are substantial grounds for believing they would be in danger of being tortured. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which was adopted in 1966 and entered into force on 23 March, 1976, similarly provides in its Article 13 that ‘an alien lawfully in the territory of a State Party to the present Covenant may be expelled therefrom only in pursuance of a decision reached in accordance with law and shall, except where compelling reasons of national security otherwise require, be allowed to submit the reasons against his expulsion and to have his case reviewed by, and be represented for the purpose before, the competent authority or a person or persons especially designated by the competent authority.’

The essence of the foregoing references is to suggest that, grosso modo, acts of deportation, repatriation, expulsion, refoulement, etc. are regulated and are allowed only in the context of serious dangers to national security. Secondly, there is no reason to suggest that there are no Nigerians, Malawians, Ghanaians, etc. that have entered South Africa for fear of persecution in their home countries. In other words, are there no Nigerian or Ghanaian or Zimbabwean asylum seekers among the victims of South Africa’s xenophobic attacks? If there are, has South Africa not violated international law? Is South Africa’s xenophobic attacks consistent with the quest for United States of Africa? Why should there be reimbursements for South Africa’s disregard for international law?

Nigeria and Ghana versus South Africa

Deportation is an important foreign policy tool in the protection of national sovereignty. All sovereign nations use it as a right to send out of their territories unwanted foreigners. What is noteworthy about it as of today is that it is more frequently used by the big powers, especially by the United States of Donald Trump. But, more disturbingly, Africa has been the choice for the third-country deportees, that is, undocumented migrants who are not being returned directly to their home countries. 

Explained differently, Africa has become the deportation network centre for unwanted criminals, undocumented migrants, and convicted persons in the United States. Many African countries like Rwanda, Uganda, Eswatini, South Sudan, Ghana, Cameroon, and the Central African Republic, have received the third-country deportees in exchange for money. The United States does not want convicted criminals on US territory and is asking African leaders to accept them with U.S. financial support. The latest in the expansion of the deportation network is Liberia, in West Africa.

As noted by Ayodeji Adegboyega in his ‘Trump expands US deportation network in Africa as Liberia agrees to take 1,200 people,’(; 19 August, 2026), Liberia has agreed to take 1,200 people deported from the United States over the next 12 months. The United States is to provide support for Liberia for accepting to host the 1,200 persons. The first group of 20 arrived in Liberia on Friday, 21st August, 2026. The deportees can seek asylum in Liberia or choose to leave after arrival.

This type of deportation not only raises the daftness, so to say, of many African leaders. Put interrogatively, why will people considered unfit to stay or live on the soil of the United States be acceptable to live in Africa, especially when they are not citizens, when they are third-country deportees? Something appears to be fundamentally wrong with African mentality. This wrongness is also not far-fetched at the level of intra-African politics. Let us look at one dimension of funding of deportations in Africa.

The dispute between Nigeria and Ghana, on the one hand, and South Africa, on the other, is about payment of deportation of Ghanaians and Nigerians from South Africa to Ghana and Nigeria respectively. Repatriation and deportation of foreign nationals is considered too financially burdensome for the Government of South Africa to carry alone. Consequently, the Government adopted a policy of making countries of origin pay part of the costs of deportation of their citizens. In this regard, South Africa is asking for $18.5 million (R292 million) from Nigeria, Malawi, and Ethiopia as reimbursement for the costs of deporting and repatriating more than 82,000 of their undocumented citizens. This amount largely exceeds Pretoria’s initial $3.8 million budget. As explained by the South African Department of Home Affairs, expenses for transport, temporary centers like Musina, and staff overtime were unforeseen and unavoidable. Government does not want South African taxpayers to be solely responsible for the deportation of foreign nationals

The $18.5 million bills include the costs of transportation, accommodation, security, and administrative expenses. Besides, the South African government argues that countries that can organize voluntary repatriation flights should also be able to share responsibility for deportation costs. As further explained by the South African government, this policy is still under discussion and is yet to become official government policy.

However, both Ghana and Nigeria have been reacting to the policy proposal as if the policy is already in force. Ghana objected to South Africa’s request for payment for various reasons. Ghana raised questions about the number of its citizens involved and the circumstances surrounding anti-migrant incidents. Besides, Ghana raised concerns about the xenophobic attacks against African nationals in South Africa at the level of the African Union. And perhaps more significantly, Ghana has also argued that it repatriated all its citizens from South Africa by itself using chartered flights organized by its government and diplomatic missions. Therefore, there is no good basis for any payment of deportation bills by Ghana. And true enough, as we noted above, international law does not require any state of nationality to reimburse another state for deportation expenses unless there are bilateral agreements or readmission agreements, or regional agreements to that effect. Some States negotiate specific commitments on deportation. The question therefore is: do both countries have any agreement on the basis of which there can be negotiation?

In the context of Nigeria, Nigeria has neither admitted nor refused payment but has simply claimed not to have received any official request from the Government of South Africa. However, the issues of mistreatment of Nigerian nationals during the deportation operations and during the anti-immigration protests were raised. Nigeria drew attention to the need for due process, humane treatment and respect for Nigerian citizens. Nigeria not only accused the South African government of complicity in the maltreatment of Nigerian nationals, especially in light of South African policemen standing aloof during mistreatment of Nigerians, but is also asking for compensation which South Africa has refused to recognize. 

As noted by former Southeast spokesman to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT) and Chairman of the Forum of Former Members of the Enugu State House of Assembly, Denge Josef Onoh, in a statement made in Dar es Salaam, Nigeria would not pay ‘a single cent… As an independent sovereign nation, and that Nigeria firmly rejects this illegal levy, which directly violates international law, the principles of continental solidarity, and the fundamental rights of African citizens.’ Rather than pay, he wants South Africa to be held responsible for ‘Xenophobic Property Indemnification’ as Nigeria would officially return Pretoria’s invoice without any due consideration.

In this regard, how do we interpret Nigeria would officially return Pretoria’s invoice without consideration? This question is quite relevant at this juncture because Nigeria claims not to have received any request for reimbursement? Besides, if South Africa has not adopted payment of deportation bills as an official policy, why should South Africa send a deportation invoice to Nigeria? If South Africa did not send an invoice, why then talk about returning an invoice that was never sent? Can we not also admit that Nigeria has truly not received any request from South Africa? Whatever is the case, how does South Africa go about this type of order and counter-order? There is nothing to suggest that there is an existing agreement on deportation bills. To what extent can we therefore talk about violations of international law? 

And true enough, who really is respecting international law as of today? U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has said that the ‘UN needs to act. Iran violated international law by blocking Hormuz.’ His Iranian counterpart has responded by asking thus: ‘international law? Where was that when the U.S. hit a school, blocked Cuba, and grabbed Venezuela’s President? Put differently, to what extent can Nigeria and Ghana, on the one hand, and South Africa, on the other hand, go regarding payment of deportation bills? Where is the place of continental unity and solidarity? Is the quest for continental integration necessary with the increasing emphasis on nationalism and protectionism? 

International Law and Refund of Deportation Bills necessarily raise not simply the future of international law but also that of the United States of Africa. First, at the level of international law, Jeremy Bentham formulated the word ‘international ‘to replace ‘Law of Nations,’ which he considered ambiguous. For him, ‘international’ means ‘between nations.’ But the concept of ‘international’ has moved beyond the postulation of the 1780 coinage of Jeremy Bentham. International can refer to what is bilateral, plurilateral, and multilateral. Consequently, international law, which, grosso modo, is considered to have a universal character, is de facto being unconsciously redefined to imply restricted scope. There is international law à la United States, and international law that is no longer driven by rules, but by nationalism, whims, and caprices. Will the emerging new world order be defined by rules of law? At the level of Africa, it was because of the quest for continental integration and political unity that Africa was divided into five regions by the 1991 Abuja Treaty Establishing the African Economic Union. Today, Africa is increasingly treading the path of disintegration. Members of the Alliance of Sahel States have withdrawn from the ECOWAS. Guinea Conakry has indicated its withdrawal from the ECOWAS monetary union with effect from 2027. Nigeria and Ghana are currently in a diplomatico-deportation bill imbroglio with South Africa. Quo Vadis Africa? When will Africa be African? When will Africa stop being the dumping ground for unwanted criminals in Europe and America?

Femi Akintunde-Johnson

Nigeria’s 2027 election may already have received one of its most useful lessons from Osun State, provided we are sufficiently wise to learn it. The lesson is not simply that Governor Ademola Adeleke won re-election, or that the All Progressives Congress candidate, Bola Oyebamiji, lost. It is that, even in a political environment increasingly saturated with money, intimidation, federal might, partisan machinery and the crude expectation that electoral victory can be manufactured from Abuja downwards, voters can still surprise the political establishment.

On Saturday, 15 August, 2026, Osun voters gave Adeleke 511,067 votes against Oyebamiji’s 444,815, a margin of 66,252. The African Democratic Congress candidate, Najeem Salaam, finished a distant third with 17,180 votes. The figures are important, but perhaps the larger story lies behind them: a state where political passions had been running high, where election-related violence had already claimed lives and where the contest had acquired the familiar Nigerian aroma of existential political warfare; nevertheless produced a result that, at least for now, has demonstrated the stubborn capacity of voters to frustrate expectations. 

What, then, should the defeated opposition machinery learn? Perhaps the first lesson is that federal presence is not the same thing as electoral ownership. The APC went into Osun with considerable institutional weight and political reach. Yet, political machinery, however formidable, cannot permanently substitute for the voters themselves. A party may command impressive structures, deploy influential personalities, assemble enormous crowds and enjoy the confidence of powerful political actors; but, ultimately, the voter remains the person holding the ballot.

The Osun result should therefore be studied carefully by every political party preparing for 2027. Voters are not necessarily as predictable as political strategists imagine. They can listen to the most powerful campaigners, collect whatever inducements are offered, smile for the cameras, dance at rallies and still go into the privacy of the polling booth to make another decision. Nigerian politicians have long treated the electorate as an easily manipulated market. Osun suggests that the market may occasionally have a mind of its own.

And what should Adeleke learn from the result? Gratitude, certainly. Humility, preferably. And perhaps the most difficult lesson of all: that electoral affection is not a lifetime tenancy agreement. The voters have given him another mandate, but they have also given him a four-year examination paper. The fact that a large majority of participating voters stood with him should not be interpreted as a licence for complacency, extravagance or the sort of political self-adulation that eventually convinces governments that every criticism is sponsored by enemies.

Adeleke’s victory is also a reminder that personality matters in politics. His unconventional public persona, easy relationship with popular culture and obvious ability to connect with sections of the working-class and agrarian population may have helped create an emotional bond that conventional political arithmetic cannot fully explain. But affection is a fragile currency. The dancing governor must also remain the working governor. The entertainer must not eclipse the administrator. The popular man must still deliver the unpopular necessities of governance.

Then comes the more uncomfortable question: what did the voters themselves learn? Hopefully, they learnt that courage is possible. Reports preceding the election documented a troubling pattern of violence, with the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development’s tracker recording at least 34 election-related violent incidents and 18 deaths since May. That background makes the conduct of voters who still turned out to exercise their franchise all the more significant. 

For decades, Nigerians have complained about political thuggery, ballot snatching, intimidation, vote buying and the weaponisation of poverty. Yet we sometimes behave as though these evils are unavoidable natural disasters rather than practices sustained by our own participation. We complain bitterly about bad politicians, then cheer when they arrive with envelopes. We denounce corruption, then ask what is in it for us. We condemn electoral manipulation, yet some voters are prepared to sell the very instrument with which they could punish it.

Osun offers another possibility: that voters can accept inducements without surrendering their conscience, reject intimidation without surrendering their franchise, and recognise that the small money received on election day may be a pathetic down-payment on four years of poor governance. A N10,000 gift from a politician who subsequently presides over billions of public funds is not empowerment. It is an unusually cheap purchase of public silence.

 There is another lesson for 2027: voters must stop regarding elections as tribal, religious or partisan wars in which the candidate’s victory becomes more important than the citizen’s welfare. The politician will return to Abuja, Osogbo, Benin, Owerri, Kaduna, Lagos or wherever his or her political headquarters happens to be. The voter remains behind to confront the roads, schools, hospitals, electricity, employment, insecurity and rising cost of living.

The electoral umpire, too, should be studying Osun. INEC must understand that every successful election is not merely an event completed; it is an investment in public confidence. The upload of polling-unit results to the IReV portal was an important component of transparency, but electoral technology must work predictably, promptly and credibly, not become another source of anxiety. During the Osun exercise, thousands of results were uploaded as counting progressed, but any delay or technical uncertainty can quickly become ammunition for suspicion in an already distrustful environment. 

 Security agencies have an even larger lesson. Their responsibility is not to help any party win; it is to help citizens vote without fear. The reported violence surrounding the election should not be filed away as another Nigerian electoral anecdote. Every death, assault or intimidation is an attack on democracy itself. Political actors who recruit thugs and manufacture fear must be identified, prosecuted and, where guilt is established, punished. Otherwise, we will continue to invite citizens to vote while simultaneously warning them that voting may be hazardous to their health.

But perhaps the most important Osun lesson belongs to the rest of Nigeria. Can the courage displayed by many Osun voters travel beyond the state’s boundaries? Can it reach Ekiti, Lagos, Kano, Rivers, Kaduna, Enugu and every other corner of Nigeria before 2027? Can voters finally understand that the ballot is not a souvenir from politicians but their most consequential instrument of accountability?

We should not romanticise Osun. One election cannot suddenly cure Nigeria’s electoral maladies. The violence, inducements, intimidation and partisan calculations that preceded it remain real. Nor should Adeleke’s victory be interpreted as proof that every aspect of the election was perfect. The APC candidate has said he respects the process while supporting his party’s review of the outcome, which is a legitimate avenue in a democracy. 

Still, something encouraging happened in Osun. Voters demonstrated that political power, despite all its intimidating machinery, can ultimately encounter something more stubborn: the independent judgement of citizens. That is the lesson politicians should fear most. And the lesson voters should cherish most.

If Osun becomes merely another isolated electoral story, we will have wasted it. But if its voters have shown the rest of us that courage can survive inducement, intimidation and political pressure, then perhaps the state has offered Nigeria something more valuable than a governor’s re-election. It may have offered us a glimpse of what a mature electorate looks like.

Bola A. Akinterinwa

Manu Militari is a Latin phrase derived from manus (hand/force) and militaris (military/soldier) and meaning ‘with a military hand’ or ‘by military force.’ Legally, it is the act of carrying out a court order or action with the use of public armed forces or police. In ordinary political usage, it means compelling someone forcibly, brutally or abruptly. It is an act of doing something with force or with armed intervention. In this regard, winning election in international relations, especially in Nigeria and Africa, by manu militari, has become the technique increasingly adopted which should not be so.  

Without iota of doubt, there are many ways of winning an election, particularly in Nigeria. The most often talked about is election through the ballot box. However, election by ballot box or by highest number of votes has generally been weaponized. For example, political parties and their presidential standard bearers want to win elections by manu militari, by hook or by crook, or by do or die approach, etc. A good and current illustration is the Osun State gubernatorial election, held yesterday. Many people were killed before the election took place. When election by manu militari becomes controversial, the issue is referred to the court for ruling and judgment. Candidates have to be delayed until final court decision. New voting cards had to be printed to reflect court decision, meaning double expenses. 

It is against this background that the political campaigns of the gubernatorial election that took place on Saturday, August 15, 2026 and the implications for ‘Emi lokan’ (it is my turn) are hereby explained. Senator Francis Adenigba Fadahunsi, representing Osun East Senatorial District, called, during his political campaigns in front of the Owa Obokun palace in Ilesha for the killing of members of Accord Party. The call not only raises questions of national security, but has seriously damaged the essence of Emi l’okan politic of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT), and tainted Nigeria’s international image. Trying to win election by manu militari has damaged PBAT’s good image of democracy advocate.

Winning Election by Manu Militari 

Election by manu militari is not only by use of force. The force can be subtle and fraudulent in design. The essential point is trying to win dishonestly. In Africa of today, coup making, sit tightism, constitutional manoeuvres, using power to harass and oppress opposition elements, influencing electoral bodies, neutralize the opposition, etc. are manifestations of manu militari. Even when people get to power by legitimate election, to accept defeat thereafter, or allowing for free and fair election, is most difficult for incumbent leaders. And most unfortunately, too, this manu militari attitude has been part of Africa for long.

Put differently, politicians in Africa appear to have belligerent blood in their veins when it comes to struggling for power. As far back as 1927, elections considered ‘the most rigged ever’ took place in Liberia. The elections were listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most fraudulent election in history, as noted by the head of the National Elections Commission, Frances Johnson-Morris. The fraud is not difficult to understand: there were only 19,000 officially registered voters as recorded in the official results, but candidate Charles D.B. King of the True Whig Party had 229,527 votes, which represented 96.23% of the total votes. Thomas J.R. Faulkner of the People’s Party scored 8,992 votes, representing 3.77%. 

Even though these figures, as given by Saye Guannu, raise how there were only 19,000 registered voters and there were more than 19,000 votes for candidate King, the incumbent president, there were also the suggested figures of Harold D. Nelson of the American University, who had not explained why there were more votes than the registered voters. Harold Nelson said candidate King received 24,000 while Faulkner got 9,000. The fraud was to the extent that the incumbent President King was not only accused of ‘using slave labor and selling slaves to the Spanish colony of Fernando Po, as well as involving the army in the process,’ the League of Nations had to establish an International Commission of Inquiry into the Existence of Slavery and Force Labor. By recalling this story is to suggest that, as of today, the interest of winning elections by hook or by crook is still much there. African leaders often engage in whatever is humanly possible to win election, including use of coercion and intimidation. This is precisely what Nigerians are presented with in the 2026 gubernatorial elections that took place yesterday in Osun State in Nigeria.

As noted above, at the domestic or national level, winning an election by manu militari involves the use of coercion, intimidation, physical violence and state machinery, with the ultimate objective of suppressing the opposition and enabling the continuity of an incumbent government. In international relations, it is referred to as ‘coercive electoral engineering’ or violent electoral engineering. Winning election by coercion unnecessarily destroys democratic legitimacy and generates instability. In the eyes of Professor Chidi Odinkalu, former Chairman of the Nigerian Human Rights Commission, ‘the biggest source of insecurity in Nigeria is the illegitimacy of election mandate… When people discover that their votes do not count and judges have been bought, they resort to violence.’ Put differently, generation of instability creates localized chaos and the potential to deter opposition voters from turning out at polling stations. When voters do not turn out to vote, room is consciously allowed for un-monitored electoral malpractices. As such, expected result cannot but be wide vote margins which are often presented to the public as correct and fair. 

In the eyes of the international community, election victory by coercion is not acceptable. The election victory necessarily loses its legitimacy. The 2025 election in Tanzania provides a good illustration of this observation. Michelle Gavin noted in her “Protest and Crackdown in Tanzania: A Farcical Election and a Brutal State Violence Make Tanzania the Latest Example of a Government Not Fit for Purpose,” that ‘for months leading up to the polls, the State waged a campaign of dodgy legal maneuver and even more alarming abductions and torture of opposition leaders and civil society activities to clear the field of any serious challenge. The foregone conclusion led to markedly low voter turnout. But with or without the actual voters, the State was determined to achieve a resounding victory.’

More importantly, Michelle Gavin noted further that ‘as evidence of methodology, ballot box stuffing surfaced and citizens took to the streets to protest the lack of genuine choice on the ballot, security forces responded with deadly force, killing hundreds. Prominent journalists were assassinated. Officials trotted mobile data speeds and blocked access to social media.’

On Tuesday, 11th August, 2026 Senator Francis Adenigba Fadahunsi reportedly said ‘Kill Accord members,’ but later denied having meant that the members of the ACCORD Party should be killed. He truly said what he did not mean. Consequently, I took time to study the video. First, the video is a true reflection of what transpired in Ilesha. The video is not an Artificial Intelligence-generated, contrarily to the pretension of Senator Fadahunsi. Secondly, he gave an introduction to his call for killing. As he put it, ‘ti a batun gbo ACCORD kankan ni Ilesa, ni ibiyi, ibo ti ama di yi…’ 

In other words, ‘if we hear anything ACCORD again in Ilesa, here in this place, this election that is to take place…’ Anyone can complete the sentence objectively, especially in light of what he said thereafter: ‘titi di ojo ibo, bi a ba riwon, pipa nio,’ meaning ‘until the time of voting, if we see them, it is killing.’ He emphatically said ‘e ma pawon ni,’ ‘you have to kill them.’

Expectedly, Senator Fadahunsi denied calling for killing, claiming his intention was misconstrued. He explained that what he meant was killing ACCORD members with massive votes. As reported in the media, Senator Fadahunsi put it this way: “Kill Osun Accord with Votes, Not Violence, Senator Fadahunsi tells APC.” We can admit here probably, that he never meant what he said. However, when he claimed in another news platform that the video in which he called for killing was not original, that it was AI-generated and that what he said had been doctored, how do we interpret his new thinking? Why did he take Nigerians for granted? We have always observed in this column that Nigerian leaders often think after action and never think deeply before action. Is the action of Senator Fadahunsi not a reflection of thinking after action? 

Without jot of doubt, Senator Fadahunsi has totally lost his integrity as a distinguished Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. He can no longer be seen as a man of integrity if he has any. As explained by the New Central Television, Senator Fadahunsi said: ‘they say we are worried about them. We are saying it now, anyone that is not APC should not come out on the day of election. We are saying it now.’ What does this mean? What future has it? Can it stop impunity? Whatever is the case, it seriously damages the person of PBAT, his APC party, and Nigeria’s international image. How is PBAT’s ‘Emi lokan’ politics and Senator Fadahunsi’ ‘E ma pa won’ (killing them) impacted upon?

Killing Accord Party Members is Self-defeatist 

The politics of ‘Emi lókan,’ that is, ‘it is my turn,’ is ascribable to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT). When he was seeking the mandate of the APC as its standard bearer, and it appeared to him that he might not be given the opportunity of becoming the standard bearer of the party, he openly made it clear to all Nigerians that it was his turn and should therefore he should not be unnecessarily punished. And true enough, he was given the opportunity. The phrase entered into the political lexicon in Nigeria since then. 

However, Emi lokan does not simply mean ‘my turn.’ It has become synonymous with PBAT’s style and mania of governance, philosophy and code of behavior. For example, PBAT’s ‘fìlà’ (Yoruba traditional cap) has been accepted as a manifestation of political support. Several APC members wear it to show off, to show belonging. In the same vein, several people seek to join the APC in the strong belief that their membership of the party will stop official inquiries into their political misdeeds and criminal allegations against them. 

In fact, as APC members, many of them wrongly believe there is impunity when one is recognized as being pro-PBAT, and particularly for supporting his re-election in 2027. This is most unfortunate. It is within this context that many APC members have been opening their mouths recklessly and more than necessary and thinking that they are above the law. They all become other Commanders-in-Chief in the political scene, by arrogating to themselves the right of instruction to direct that their opponents be killed.  

Additionally, let us admit that Senator Fadahunsi did not intend to kill the members of ACCORD party. Are the members of ACCORD not all citizens of Osun State? How can he kill them with votes? Are they really killable? If yes, can the killing be total? If the killing is about massive votes, how do we explain pursuing them to their house and to the extent of their families also being killed? Without any whiff of doubt, Senator Fadahunsi misfired. He bastardised the name of his good family. He tainted his political record and brought shame to the entire Senate.

Secondly, and perhaps more disturbingly, Senator Fadahunsi said in the video that anyone could record what he said. This was to say that he was much conscious of what he was saying and what the implications were. He even said if members of the ACCORD were not seen, they should be pursued. This was nothing more than a declaration of war. One supporter at the campaign venue said in the background that supporters should go to the market place. As if this was not enough, another APC supporter told people that whoever would not be coming to vote for the APC should not bother to come out to vote.

Senator Fadahunsi’s death threats have generated national controversy. On Friday, 14 August, 2026, the Amnesty International Nigeria asked Nigerians to sign an online petition calling for sanctions against Senator Francis Adenigba Fadahunsi over his statement asking for the killing of members of an opposition party, the Accord. As told by the Amnesty International, the petition is ‘to ensure that Senator Francis Adenigba Fadahunsi face justice for inciting violence ahead of Osun election… The human rights of the people of Osun State must be upheld and protected. People must be free to vote – without anything or anyone undermining their right to make political choices… Political differences must never become a justification for violence” (vide Samuel Omotere, “Amnesty initiates online petition against Fadahunsi over ‘kill Accord’ comment,” , August 14, 2026).

The call for death for members of ACCORD party has prompted questions and much animosity for Senator Fadahunsi. He is believed not to be fit to be a distinguished Senator. In fact, many people have, on their own, removed the word ‘distinguished’ from Senator. Questions are being asked as to why he still remains a Senator. Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, the Osun State Government filed a suit number HOS/M.157/26 on August 12, 2026 at the Osogbo Judicial Division against Senator Fadahunsi. The prayers of the Osun State government in the suit are very damaging and cannot but be tainting in terms of his political career.

Thirdly, Nigeria’s international image cannot but be tainted in light of the African Union Protocol on democracy, generally referred to as the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG). It was adopted on January 30, 2007 and designed to promote good governance, human rights, and democratic stability. The ACDEG is meant to ensure democratic rule, respect for human rights, nip corruption in the bud, as well as sustain political pluralism. In this regard, when political stakeholders become agents of death, not in the promotion of rule of law, but in its disrespect, Nigeria’s national image is tainted. It unnecessarily sends wrong foreign policy signals to partners. 

For instance, how will Senator Fadahunsi be perceived by his international counterparts? Can he freely go to other African countries, Europe or the United States and be expected to be treated with respect? Is he going to be able to convince them that go and kill means go and vote? Diplomacy will even make a mockery of him by over-praising him for talking reasonably.

Additionally, how will Nigeria be able to defend its international responsibility especially in terms of respect of sanctity of agreements?  Article 7 of the ACDEG stipulates that ‘State parties shall take all necessary measures to strengthen the Organs of the Union that are mandated to promote and protect human rights and fight impunity and endow them with necessary resources.’ Supporting AU organs fighting impunity necessarily implies non engagement in acts of impunity. It first requires seriously sanctioning violations of human rights. Most unfortunately, Nigeria is a terra cognita for political impunity. It is because there is no much interest in sanctioning political infractions in Nigeria. This is why Senator Fadahunsi and people like Sheikh Sani Yahaya Jingir, Sheikh Ahmad Gumi and others who have been making very destabilizing statement and they go scot free. 

Perhaps this may not be taken too seriously because PBAT himself is on record to have provided the platform for the saga. PBAT has it that ‘political power is not going to be served in restaurant… At all cost, fight for it, grab it, and run with it’ and that ‘all is fair in politics’.

 Why must the acquisition of political power be a matter of do or die? Why must it be ‘at all cost?’ There is nothing wrong in fighting for it if the fighting is not criminally done. If the acquisition of political power is done fraudulently, what is the implication of having to run away with it?

Whatever is the case, Comrade Ini Ememobong, the National Publicity Secretary, Interim National Working Committee of the People’s Democratic Party, could not have been more correct when he said that ‘elections were not structured as a do-or-die contest, but as an opportunity for the masses to freely choose their leaders. What Nigerians face instead is a ruling party that has normalized warlike rhetoric – intimidating the people, silencing the opposition, and working to impose a pre-determined outcome on the electorate in 2027.’ With many APC candidates being identified as merchants of death, to what extent can PBAT dissociate himself from him and from other supporters? Has the problem created by Senator Fadahunsi not seriously damaged whatever good personality the APC may have?

Without any whiff of gainsaying, the conduct and management of electoral affairs in Nigeria always point to conscious and unconscious intention to be fraudulent. In the gubernatorial elections held in Osun State yesterday, one elderly voter, by name Adebayo Aderibigbe, gave his experience at the polling station in an interview with Tokunbo Oyetunji, an Arise

Chief Correspondent. Mr. Aderibigbe said the INEC first came with a list of registered voters containing about 1000 names. The people rejected the list because the list they had already seen had more than 2000 names. The INEC went back and came back with a completely different list. The voters again rejected it. The INEC went back and returned the third time with the correct list. In this regard, was it an honest mistake by the INEC or it was deliberate? Besides, Arise News correspondent in Ile-Ife showed the case of two voters, who gave conflicting views on the two APC candidates who came with presidential vehicles to the polling station. The male interviewee quarreled with how the candidates came to the voting units while the female interviewee, who said she was an APC member, said there was nothing the candidates did wrong. She admitted that the candidates truly came, but for what? The questions of concern are these: why are they in presidential vehicles? Vehicular movements are prohibited. Is it not to enable their movement that presidential vehicles were used? The bottom line is that government officials aid and abet societal indiscipline. This is why threatening to kill does not mean anything anymore and why the likely disintegration of Nigeria is a matter of time. Nigeria remains indissoluble and indivisible on paper but cannot survive with the promotion of lawlessness and national unity by manu militari. 

MONDAY PHILIPS EKPE writes that rival candidates in next year’s presidential poll do not stand much chance outside coalition

For now, it appears like kite-flying. The August 2, 2026 open letter conceived and signed by the self-styled G100 will need to be backed soon by stronger energies and actions in order to pass the test of a true catalyst for any consequential political engineering in the runup to the 2027 presidential election. The group had given itself two weeks to bring together the leading lights of the opposition political parties in order to kickstart the process of unifying them towards presenting a single candidate to challenge the incumbent president. The members didn’t seem to consider the conflict with the Osun State governorship poll this weekend.

But the awkward announced timing shouldn’t take any shine off the validity and urgency of this proposition. The group’s front-liners like former National Vice Chairman of All Progressives Congress (North-West), Malam Salihu Lukman, former member of the House of Representatives, Honourable Nnenna Ukeje, ex-Deputy Governor of Kogi State, Chief Simon Achuba, and political economist and public intellectual, Professor Anthony Kila, must be sufficiently conversant with the centrality of virile opposition to the integrity of any democracy and, by implication, every election cycle. Ordinarily, the summit they’re planning with their 96 colleagues should be embraced by all lovers of inclusive, collaborative democratic practice.

As altruistic as their mission is, whether it’ll come to fruition remains to be seen. The G100’s initial statement titled, “The Doctrine of a Necessary Democratic Opposition”, reads thus, in part: “We have fashioned a political order that too often rewards loyalty over merit, patronage over service, and power over accountability. We should not wonder that such a system produces poverty and misery; for, a nation cannot harvest prosperity from institutions that perpetuate poverty and deprivation.

“The ruling party grows stronger, not only because of its own organisation, but because it has surrendered internal dissent to the authority of the executive. At the same time, those entrusted with presenting Nigerians with an alternative have become divided by ambition rather than united by purpose. While the executive consolidates power, the opposition fragments…. The liberty of a people depends not only upon the existence of government, but upon the certainty that government may be peacefully challenged, corrected and, when necessary, replaced. A government that fears no opposition soon forgets the people. An opposition that cannot oppose soon forgets its purpose.

“Nigeria cannot be rescued by opposition leaders who march separately toward the same defeat. Personal ambition must submit to national necessity, for a people divided at the moment of decision will remain governed by those who profit from that division….” A well-crafted epistle which could turn out to be historic or prophetic. Or, perhaps, be remembered only for its poetic qualities – something even enemies of Nigeria shouldn’t wish this underperforming giant of Africa and a potentially bold and respected global player.

The country, no doubt, is at a crossroads, a delicate phase of nation-building and growth. A point where the slide on the graph of decent and progressive human development is yet to show appreciable signs of going upwards. It won’t be correct to lay all the blames for the nation’s current misfortune at the doorsteps of President Bola Tinubu and his government since the origin of most of the challenges does not, in truth, belong to the present. Sadly, though, Nigerians are now saddled with the wisdom or unwisdom of investing so much confidence in Tinubu’s ability to deliver the good life, especially against the backdrop of succeeding a lacklustre President Muhammadu Buhari administration.

Attribute it to nostalgia, short memory, mischief, ignorance, sincere testimony, or jejune politics, for all you want. Many people today think that their lives were much better during Buhari’s time than now, as painful as it was. Tinubu’s official and self-appointed image minders won’t mind losing a limb in defence of their master’s intentions, reforms and programmes. Not surprisingly. But one thing, in God’s name, they mustn’t do is to view the quest for a strong political rivalry as an unpatriotic, evil gang-up. So much has been said about Tinubu’s combative role in the processes that led to the unseating of President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015. If he hadn’t done so, together with his aggressive, relentless co-travellers, the then overfed ruling party, People’s Democratic Party (PDP), would still be running the show today. And now that many Nigerian citizens feel much the same towards this government, erecting a viable platform that would project a viable alternative is a most patriotic thing to do.

Ironically, the president may not even be the greatest worry at this point. One immediate hurdle is for Malam Lukman and Co to get the heavyweight targets of this move to first attend the parley and then show respect to its ideals. It’s instructive that the highest losers in the 2023 presidential election are in this mix: Wazirin Atiku Abubakar, now presidential candidate of African Democratic Congress (ADC), Mr Peter Obi of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) and his running mate, Dr Rabiu Kwankwaso; among other political titans.

These men can serve their country and themselves creditably if they dwell less on their own past records, particularly the rankings of the last outing. Reason: Times have changed remarkably. So have attitudes. The figures that were recorded in their favour by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) – whatever veracity is left of them – may have lost their relevance. Any permutations based on those numbers now may actually be in futility. For instance, I’ve met many young people who are so disappointed by Obi’s loss that they’ve lost faith in the country’s electoral system altogether. And, quite frankly, it’ll take more than simply hammering of the people’s unending suffering to turn the tide.

Getting apathetic individuals and sections to participate this time would be a function of several variables, one of which is the readiness of the front bench players to sacrifice their own ambitions – not minding legitimacy and expediency – for the general good. The ever-increasing incidence of voter indifference validates this. By now, the presidential frontrunners might have learnt some critical lessons. One simple arithmetic of the 2023 outing is that if Abubakar and Obi had run on the same ticket, nothing would have given Tinubu the victory, as demonstrated by the declared results. Now that the beneficiary of that costly calculation is in power, no soothsayer is required to declare that it’ll take extraordinary efforts (in this case, a well-mobilised coalition) to remove him. Anything short of that would be sleep-walking into a certain trouncing.       

Dr Ekpe is a member of ������Ƶ Editorial Board

X: @monday_ekpe2