From a land of farms and civil servants to a destination for travellers, researchers and investors, Ekiti turns 30 with its head high and its doors wide open for opportunities. Raheem Akingbolu reports.

Thirty years ago, it had no oil. No seaport. No metropolis. It had teachers. Farmers. And an unshakable belief that knowledge was enough. Today, planes are landing where dreams once took off. The land that helped teach Nigeria is building a home for its own. Ekiti is 30, and the world is coming.

There is music in Ekiti this October. It is in the drums, in the church choirs and in the buzz of Ado-Ekiti’s streets. It is in the sound of arrival, in aircraft touching down at the Ekiti Agro-Allied International Cargo Airport, visitors making their way to the warm and cold springs of Ikogosi, and researchers working in a new centre devoted to newborn health. It is also in the quiet confidence of a people looking at their state and recognising something they have waited years to see: movement.

From the market woman to the professor, from the farmer to the civil servant, the celebration carries one unmistakable message. Ekiti is 30, and there is much to celebrate.

When Ekiti was created on October 1, 1996 from the old Ondo State, its birth was the culmination of years of agitation by traditional rulers, academics, professionals, community leaders and political actors who sought a state that would bring government closer to the people and give the predominantly Ekiti-speaking communities greater recognition and influence. It was not simply a demand for another boundary on the Nigerian map. It was an argument about identity, belonging and the right to determine the direction of one’s own development.

There is a remarkable symmetry in the fact that Biodun Oyebanji, who today occupies Government House in Ado-Ekiti, was himself part of that historic journey. As secretary of the committee chaired by Chief Deji Fasuan that worked for the creation of Ekiti State, he belonged to a generation that helped articulate the case for statehood. Nearly three decades later, he is presiding over another chapter in its evolution. The story, however, is larger than any individual governor. It belongs to the generations that carried the idea before the state existed and to those now giving physical form to its ambitions.

For much of its early history, Ekiti was described in simple terms: a land of farms, schools and civil servants. Yet simplicity of description often concealed complexity of character. This was a society that produced doctors, professors, lawyers, engineers, journalists, teachers, administrators and scholars in remarkable numbers. Its reputation as the Fountain of Knowledge was not manufactured by public relations. It was earned in classrooms, lecture theatres, hospitals, courtrooms, newsrooms and professional institutions across Nigeria and beyond.

Yet there was a paradox at the heart of that achievement. Ekiti produced people whose education gave them the confidence to compete anywhere, but the state often lacked the economic infrastructure to retain enough of them. Its brightest sons and daughters travelled to Lagos, Ibadan, Abuja and eventually London, New York and other cities in search of opportunity. The state supplied talent to the wider economy while frequently struggling to build an economy capable of absorbing the talent it produced.

Today, another chapter is taking shape. The difference is increasingly visible in transport, connectivity, knowledge infrastructure, healthcare, agriculture and tourism. These developments do not erase the work still required, but they suggest that Ekiti’s longstanding assets are beginning to connect in ways that could give the state a stronger economic identity.

The most dramatic symbol of that change may be the airport. On December 10, 2025, the Ekiti Agro-Allied International Cargo Airport received its first commercial flight, operated by United Nigeria Airlines from Lagos. The state government reported that more than N49.7 billion had been expended directly on the project. The inaugural occasion brought together political figures from different administrations, including four former governors, with three of them travelling on the maiden flight.

An airport, of course, is not development by itself. Its real value will be measured by what moves through it and what follows it. Can agricultural produce reach markets faster? Can investors travel more easily? Can tourism become a more serious economic proposition? Can manufacturers and agro-processors reduce the distance between production and customers? Can professionals who once considered Ekiti too remote for regular business begin to see Ado-Ekiti differently?

Those are the questions that will ultimately determine the economic meaning of the runway.

For the Ekiti professional living outside the state, however, the symbolism is already powerful. A consultant who once calculated the time and cost of travelling by road can now imagine flying in for a meeting. An entrepreneur can think differently about moving goods. A researcher can consider a project that requires regular movement between Ekiti and other parts of Nigeria. A member of the diaspora can begin to see home not merely as somewhere to visit during Christmas, but as somewhere to build.

Perhaps even more significant than the aircraft was the political picture around it. Former governors who once occupied the same office at different times stood together at an event celebrating a project that had passed through several administrations. Governor Oyebanji publicly acknowledged the contributions of his predecessors, including Kayode Fayemi, who laid the foundation and advanced the airport project significantly. The gesture reinforced the idea that public development is often a relay, with successive administrations contributing to projects whose benefits ultimately belong to the people.

It was an unusually powerful picture for a state whose political history has known intense competition. In Ikogosi, the warm and cold springs eventually flow together, each retaining its character while becoming part of the same stream. There is something instructive in that natural phenomenon. Political differences need not become permanent divisions, particularly when the object of public service is larger than the interests of any administration.

Development, after all, is a relay. One administration starts something, another improves it, another completes it and the public inherits the result. The airport itself tells that story. Its journey involved successive administrations, federal intervention, private and institutional support, and years of political and technical effort before commercial operations finally began. That history is important because it changes the language of development from ownership to continuity.

The same principle is visible on the roads. The state government says the Oyebanji administration has constructed more than 285 kilometres of inter-city and intra-city roads, including a 1.2-kilometre flyover, while another 135 kilometres of rural roads have been delivered through the Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project, or RAAMP. President Bola Tinubu also approved the reconstruction of the Ado-Ijan-Ilumoba-Ikole Road through the Federal Government’s Renewed Hope Infrastructure Project Fund.

That corridor matters because it connects Ado-Ekiti with institutions and economic assets that increasingly define the state’s emerging development geography, including Agbeyewa Farms, the largest cassava farm in the world, Afe Babalola University, the Federal Polytechnic, the airport, the Ekiti Knowledge Zone and the Federal Institute of Transport Technology. In a developing economy, a road is more than asphalt. It is a line connecting a farmer to a buyer, a student to an institution, a patient to a hospital, an entrepreneur to a market and an investor to a location.

And then there is the idea that may eventually give Ekiti its most distinctive economic identity: the Ekiti Knowledge Zone. When its foundation was laid in 2026, the project was presented as a future hub for innovation, research and skills development. The state says the first phase is projected to create more than 20,000 jobs, while the full development could generate about 100,000 jobs across research, science, technology, industry and education.

These are projections, not jobs already delivered, but they reveal the scale of the ambition.

For decades, “Fountain of Knowledge” described what Ekiti people were. The Knowledge Zone asks a more demanding question: what can that knowledge produce?

That question goes to the heart of Ekiti’s future. The state already possesses a deep reservoir of educated people. What it increasingly needs is an ecosystem capable of turning education into intellectual property, research into enterprise, skills into employment and ideas into companies. If laboratories, technology firms, universities, investors, training institutions and entrepreneurs can operate within the same environment, the old reputation for knowledge could acquire an entirely new meaning.

The development of the Centre for Newborn Health Research and Innovation at Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital adds another dimension to that story. Commissioned in 2026, the centre is described by the state government as Nigeria’s first facility focusing solely on newborn health. Its mandate includes research, innovation, capacity building and clinical excellence in newborn care.

Its importance extends beyond the walls of a hospital. For years, Ekiti’s human capital travelled elsewhere because that was where specialised institutions, equipment, funding and opportunities were concentrated. The emergence of institutions designed to conduct specialised research and build professional capacity at home offers another possibility: that expertise can increasingly find an institutional home within the state itself.

The same argument applies to agriculture. Ekiti’s farming tradition is older than the state itself, but the modern economic question is no longer simply how much the land can produce. It is how much value can be created around what the land produces. Processing, packaging, storage, transportation, market access and technology are the difference between agriculture as subsistence and agriculture as enterprise. Programmes encouraging young people into commercial farming reflect an effort to make agriculture part of that new economic equation.

This is where the airport becomes more than an airport, the roads more than roads, and the Knowledge Zone more than another construction project. Each becomes part of a larger chain. A farmer needs a road. A processor needs logistics. An exporter needs market access. A researcher needs an institution. An investor needs connectivity. A tourist needs transport and accommodation. A young graduate needs an ecosystem in which education can become a livelihood.

Ekiti’s natural attractions add another layer. The warm and cold springs of Ikogosi have always offered the state something that cannot be manufactured in a laboratory or reproduced by policy. What has often been missing is the scale of infrastructure, marketing, hospitality investment and connectivity required to convert natural attraction into sustained economic value. With better access, the question becomes how deliberately the state and private sector can build a tourism economy around its landscapes, culture, festivals and hospitality.

That is why Ekiti at 30 is about more than age. Thirty is an occasion to look backward with gratitude, but it is also an appropriate moment to ask what comes next. The state has accumulated advantages over three decades: an educated population, respected institutions, agricultural potential, cultural depth, natural attractions and a growing network of infrastructure. The task ahead is to make those advantages reinforce one another.

For Oyebanji, the significance of this moment is also personal and historical. He belongs to the generation that argued for Ekiti’s creation and now leads it at a point when some of the ambitions associated with that creation are becoming physical realities. The airport, the roads, the Knowledge Zone and the newborn research centre are not the work of one man or one administration, and the governor’s acknowledgement of earlier contributions has underscored that history.

That is perhaps the more consequential political story in Ekiti today: not that competition has disappeared, but that the language of continuity has become increasingly visible around projects whose gestation extends beyond a single tenure. The presence of former governors at the airport offered a striking public image of that continuity. Whether such accommodation becomes a durable institutional culture will depend on what future administrations choose to preserve, improve and complete.

The next decade will therefore test the foundations now being laid. The true measure of the airport will be the businesses it helps move. The true measure of the roads will be the economic activity they unlock. The true measure of the Knowledge Zone will be the researchers, companies, technologies and jobs it eventually produces. The true measure of agricultural policy will be whether farmers earn more from organised value chains. And the true measure of political continuity will be whether successive administrations can inherit projects without inheriting the instinct to start everything afresh.

That is the unfinished promise of Ekiti at 30, and the opportunity before the state now is to build on these foundations until knowledge, infrastructure and enterprise translate into lasting prosperity for its people.

Thirty years ago, Ekiti entered the federation with knowledge as its inheritance and determination as its currency. It now stands at a different threshold, with an airport linking it to the wider economy, roads opening new corridors, a Knowledge Zone seeking to turn intellectual capital into enterprise, a specialised health research centre expanding the boundaries of local expertise, agriculture looking towards value creation and tourism waiting for a larger audience.

So let the drums beat and the choirs sing. Let Government House and the village square keep the same rhythm. Let the farmer look towards a wider market, the researcher towards a better laboratory, the entrepreneur towards a new customer and the young graduate towards a future that does not necessarily require departure.

The Fountain of Knowledge has always had something to say. At 30, Ekiti is building the roads, institutions and connections that may finally allow the world to hear it more clearly.

Ekiti is 30. Truly, there is much to celebrate.

Give different audiences different answers on same issue, reckons JOSHUA J. OMOJUWA

On Monday in Sokoto, Peter Obi told a town hall that his administration would bring back the petrol subsidy once corruption had been dealt with. His words were not ambiguous. He assured them that subsidy would return.

Five weeks earlier, at the Nigerian Bar Association conference in Port Harcourt, he had said the opposite in language equally plain. He subscribed to the removal of subsidy and maintained that position. He argued then that the government’s mismanagement of the savings was not a sufficient reason to bring the policy back.

Port Harcourt in August. Sokoto in September. Same candidate, same question, two different answers.

I want to be careful here, because a politician is entitled to change his mind and we should not make that a hanging offence. A man who holds a position for twenty years regardless of evidence is not principled, he is inflexible. What we are owed when a position changes is an account of what changed it.

No such account has been offered. What we have instead is a subsidy that should stay removed when the audience is lawyers in the south-south, and a subsidy that will return when the audience is a town hall in the north-west. The new condition attached to it, that corruption must first be eliminated, is not a policy. It is a hedge with no date on it, and it happens to arrive in the same season that his running mate has promised to bring subsidy back in their own way, and that Atiku Abubakar has built a campaign around restoring it.

That is the context that makes the reversal worth writing about. It did not follow new evidence. It followed Atiku.

Now the pattern that a single reversal only illustrates.

Peter Obi has been a member of five political parties, one of them twice. He was in APGA, having helped register it after leaving the PDP in 2001. He moved to the PDP and stood as its vice presidential candidate in 2019. He joined the Labour Party in May 2022 and contested the presidency on that platform. He joined the African Democratic Congress at the start of this year. He resigned from the ADC on 2 May 2026 and was ratified as the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress on 29 May.

Three of those five platforms have carried him inside a single year.

He has explained each departure, and the explanations are internally consistent. APGA became toxic after a disagreement with his successor. The PDP was transactional and ignored due process. The Labour Party was wrecked by orchestrated litigation. The ADC, he said on leaving it, was being infiltrated by the same state agents who had wrecked the Labour Party.

Examine the shape of those four explanations rather than their content. In every case the party failed him. In every case the failure was somebody else’s doing. In no case is there a policy disagreement, a principle he could not accept, or anything a voter could use to work out what he actually believes about how Nigeria should be governed.

A man may be unlucky with four consecutive institutions. It is also possible that a platform, to him, is transport rather than conviction, and that the question of what a party stands for has never been the question he was asking of it.

There is a third thing, and it needs stating more precisely than it usually is.

Obi has condemned the violence in the south-east. In July 2023 he described the sit-at-home as criminal activity that must be stopped. In June 2024 he condemned the killing of five soldiers by gunmen enforcing a sit-at-home order in Abia, and demanded investigation and punishment. In June last year he told Arise that he criticises every wrong act wherever it happens and is hard on everybody.

Anyone who says he has never condemned it is simply wrong, and I will not make that argument.

What he has consistently declined to do is name who is doing it.

His position in July 2023 was that IPOB had publicly denied issuing the sit-at-home directive, and that what was happening in the region was therefore the work of criminals rather than of the organisation. He extended the group the benefit of its own denial, in a season when video of enforcers attacking market women and schoolchildren was circulating freely.

He condemns the act but never identifies the actor. Condemnation without attribution costs a politician nothing, because nobody in the room has to feel accused.

The same architecture appears in how his movement is defended. When supporters behave indefensibly online, the response is that those people are not really supporters. It is an unfalsifiable defence. Anybody who embarrasses the movement is, by definition, not of the movement, which means the movement can never be held responsible for anything done in its name.

There is a core that has not moved in twenty years. Frugality in government. Investment in human capital. The insistence that Nigeria’s fundamental problem is not any single policy but the theft that runs underneath all of them. He said that in Sokoto too, and he has been saying it since Anambra. Six million Nigerians voted for that in 2023.

He stands for a disposition rather than a programme. Prudence, austerity, anti-corruption, a certain moral seriousness that people find credible because he appears to live it. (Prof. Charles Soludo, his successor in Anambra, has a lot to say about that though).

What he does not stand for is a set of positions that can be relied upon between August and September, or a party that can be relied upon between January and May. Governing is a sequence of specific decisions taken under pressure, in front of audiences who want incompatible things, and the evidence of the last five weeks is that when two audiences want different answers, this candidate gives each of them the answer they came for.

This is why the question matters, what does Peter Obi stand for? Port Harcourt and Sokoto aren’t so far apart to make a leader take the polar ends of the same policy question.

 Omojuwa is chief strategist, Alpha Reach/BGX Publishing

As Nigeria marks 66 years of independence, Jonathan Eze examines the country’s turbulent journey, the changing character of its politics and the difficult choices that will determine whether the promise of independence can finally be translated into prosperity, stability and national confidence.

On October 1, 1960, Nigeria inherited the sovereignty for which generations of nationalists had agitated. Sixty-six years later, the question is no longer whether Nigeria can survive. It has survived wars, coups, economic crises, political upheavals and democratic reversals. It has endured moments when its very existence appeared precarious and yet emerged, sometimes battered but remarkably resilient.

The more consequential question now is whether survival can be converted into transformation.

That is the uncomfortable paradox of Nigeria at 66. The country possesses enormous human and natural resources, a youthful population, a formidable entrepreneurial spirit and considerable influence within Africa. Yet millions of its citizens continue to contend with poverty, insecurity, unemployment, inadequate infrastructure and declining purchasing power.

Nigeria’s anniversary, therefore, ought to be more than another ceremonial occasion punctuated by patriotic speeches. It should provoke a serious interrogation of the national journey: what was inherited, what was lost, what was achieved, what went wrong and what must change if the next generation is to inherit a country more confident than the one it received.

Nigeria We Inherited

The founding generation left behind a complicated inheritance: a vast territory, considerable agricultural and mineral wealth, a growing population and a society divided by geography, language, ethnicity and religion.

The challenge was never merely to govern this territory. It was to forge a political community out of its diversity.

Nigeria’s First Republic attempted that difficult task under a parliamentary system, with Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa as Prime Minister and Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe as Governor-General, before the country became a republic in 1963 with Azikiwe as President.

But political competition soon became increasingly regional and ethnic in character. The crisis eventually produced the military coups of 1966, followed by a counter-coup, civil war and years of military rule.

That period left an enduring lesson. When institutions are too weak to mediate political competition, elections can become existential contests. Political opponents cease to be merely opponents; control of government becomes synonymous with access to the state itself.

Much of Nigeria’s subsequent political history can be understood against that background.

Military Years and Architecture of State

Nigeria’s military era cannot reasonably be compressed into a single verdict. Its different administrations left different legacies.

Yakubu Gowon’s government confronted the enormous task of rebuilding after the civil war. Murtala Muhammed brought a forceful reformist disposition to government before his assassination in 1976. Olusegun Obasanjo subsequently completed the transition programme that returned Nigeria to civilian rule in 1979.

The military governments that followed brought centralisation and authoritarianism, but they also shaped many of the administrative structures through which the Nigerian state continues to function.

The country eventually returned to civilian government in 1999 carrying the accumulated weight of military rule, political instability and institutional fragility.

Democracy’s Long Test

The return to democracy in 1999 was not simply another transfer of power. It was an attempt to make constitutional government a permanent feature of Nigerian political life.

Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration confronted debt, economic restructuring and the challenge of rebuilding institutions after years of military rule. Umaru Musa Yar’Adua placed considerable emphasis on the rule of law and his Seven-Point Agenda before his administration was cut short by illness and death.

Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency was marked by political and security challenges, but his administration also presided over the 2015 general election, during which an incumbent president conceded defeat to an opposition candidate. That episode became one of the notable moments in Nigeria’s democratic experience.

Muhammadu Buhari’s two terms placed considerable emphasis on anti-corruption, security and infrastructure while confronting economic difficulties, falling oil revenues and other structural problems.

Yet one weakness has persisted across administrations: too much of Nigeria’s development has remained tied to the personality and priorities of individual leaders.

Policies are introduced, renamed, abandoned or redesigned with changes of government. Institutions struggle to preserve continuity. National development consequently becomes episodic rather than cumstand

Nigeria too often begins again.

Tinubu and Politics of Structural Adjustment

President Bola Tinubu inherited a difficult economic environment in 2023 and embarked on reforms that included the removal of the petrol subsidy and changes to foreign-exchange arrangements.

The reforms have produced sharply different assessments.

The Federal Government has defended them as necessary steps to correct structural weaknesses and establish a more sustainable economic foundation.

Critics, meanwhile, have concentrated on their immediate effect on households, particularly the rising cost of food, transportation and other essentials.

The International Monetary Fund’s June, 2026 assessment acknowledged improved macroeconomic outcomes and greater resilience following the reforms, while noting that conditions remained difficult for many Nigerians. It projected real GDP growth of 4.1 per cent for 2026.

That distinction deserves attention.

An economy can improve at the macro level while households remain under severe pressure. Better fiscal numbers do not automatically translate into cheaper food, affordable housing, reliable electricity or better healthcare.

The real measure of economic reform must ultimately be its capacity to expand production, create jobs, attract investment and improve the material circumstances of citizens.

The Federal Government has increasingly framed the next phase of its programme around production, investment, infrastructure, agriculture, enterprise, jobs and improved living standards.

That is where the political argument will eventually be settled, not merely in statistics or speeches, but in whether Nigerians can feel a meaningful improvement in their daily lives.

Nigeria’s Political Season Has Arrived Early

Nigeria is already entering the political atmosphere of the 2027 general election.

Political parties are reorganising. Alliances are shifting. Presidential ambitions are becoming more visible. Incumbents are defending their records while opposition forces are developing alternative narratives.

An August 2026 assessment by the International Republican Institute described Nigeria’s political environment as characterised by greater consolidation around the governing APC, weakening of the PDP and continuing fragmentation and realignment among opposition forces. It also identified economic hardship, insecurity and declining confidence in political institutions as significant challenges.

The importance of 2027 therefore extends beyond the personalities seeking office.

It will provide another major test of Nigeria’s Fourth Republic and of the country’s evolving political choices.

But the quality of the election will depend considerably on the quality of the conversation surrounding it.

Nigeria deserves an electoral discourse that goes beyond the familiar language of ethnicity, religion, personality and political mobilisation. Questions of electricity, security, education, healthcare, agriculture, jobs, technology, productivity, constitutional reform and institutional accountability should occupy the centre of national debate.

Campaigns will come and go. Nigeria will remain.

Real Battle Is Beyond 2027

There is a tendency in Nigerian politics to treat every election as if it were a final destination. It is not.

The 2027 election is simply another junction in a much longer national journey.

Whoever governs after 2027 will inherit problems that cannot be resolved within four or eight years. Some policies will require continuity. Others will require correction. Some institutions will need reform rather than abandonment.

Nigeria needs a state capable of remembering what previous administrations have done, preserving what works and correcting what does not.

The economic imperative is equally clear. Nigeria must produce more of what it consumes and export more of what it produces. Dependence on crude oil cannot remain the principal foundation of national prosperity.

The country’s enormous youth population must become an economic asset rather than a permanent source of anxiety. Electricity must become sufficiently reliable for businesses to plan and invest. Education must prepare citizens for an economy increasingly defined by technology and knowledge. Agriculture must move beyond subsistence towards competitive commercial production.

And security must cease to be a perpetual emergency that interrupts development.

From Leaders to Institutions

Perhaps the most important lesson of Nigeria’s 66 years is that no individual, however gifted, can build a permanent nation alone.

Nigeria has had leaders with different temperaments, ideologies and governing philosophies. It has experienced military governments and civilian administrations. It has experimented with different economic policies and political arrangements.

Yet the institutional question remains.

A serious democracy requires institutions capable of surviving the personalities occupying public offices. The judiciary, police, electoral system, civil service, legislature, local governments and regulatory agencies must function according to rules that citizens can understand and trust.

Public policy cannot remain excessively dependent on the individual occupying the presidential office. The future of Nigeria will ultimately be determined not simply by who sits in Aso Rock, occupies the National Assembly or governs a state, but by whether ordinary citizens can obtain justice, start businesses, travel safely, educate their children, access healthcare and participate productively in the economy without political connections.

Generation After Founders

At 66, Nigeria is increasingly a country of people who were born after independence.

For millions of young Nigerians, October 1, 1960 is history rather than personal memory. Their worldview has been shaped by smartphones, social media, artificial intelligence, digital finance, global employment markets and international mobility.

They compare Nigeria not only with neighbouring African countries but with India, the United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Europe and North America.

Their expectations of government are consequently changing.

The questions are increasingly direct.

Can a graduate find meaningful work? Can an entrepreneur obtain reliable electricity and affordable credit? Can a farmer reach markets? Can a child from a poor household receive quality education? Can a citizen travel across the country without fear? Can justice be obtained without influence or connections?

Those questions will define the next phase of the Nigerian project.

Nigeria at 66 should neither be romanticised nor dismissed.

The country has struggled, but it has also accomplished much. It has preserved its territorial union through enormous crises, sustained democratic government since 1999, produced globally competitive businesses and creative industries, nurtured a remarkably resilient entrepreneurial population and developed technological and diplomatic capacities that continue to command attention beyond its borders.

But potential is not achievement.

For too long, Nigeria has lived on the promise of what it could become. At some point, promise must give way to performance. The country cannot indefinitely celebrate its possibilities while postponing the difficult work required to realise them.

Projection

The Nigeria of 2092 will be shaped, in considerable measure, by decisions being made today.

Today’s choices on education, energy, security, public finance, infrastructure, healthcare, agriculture, technology and democratic institutions will become tomorrow’s inheritance.

The political season ahead should therefore be understood as more than another struggle for power. It is part of a much larger argument about the direction of the Nigerian state.

But responsibility does not belong exclusively to politicians.

Citizens must demand evidence rather than rhetoric, programmes rather than personalities, institutions rather than patronage, and accountability rather than excuses.

Political parties must understand that Nigeria’s problems cannot be solved merely by changing slogans. Leaders must recognise that governing a country of more than 200 million people requires a vision larger than electoral mobilisation. Citizens, too, must understand that democracy is not exhausted by the act of voting every four years. It requires sustained attention to how power is exercised between elections.

At 66, Nigeria has accumulated enough history to understand the cost of institutional collapse, enough experience to recognise the consequences of bad policy and enough human capital to know that its future need not be a repetition of its past.

The country enters its 67th year with an unfinished assignment.

The founding generation secured independence. The post-independence generation fought to preserve the federation. The democratic generation fought to consolidate civilian rule.

The emerging generation now faces the harder task: building a Nigeria in which independence is measured not merely by freedom from colonial rule, but by the capacity of the Nigerian citizen to live with dignity, security, opportunity and confidence in tomorrow.

That is the deeper meaning of Nigeria’s 66-year journey.

Nigeria has survived its history.

The challenge now is to transcend it.

Former National Vice-Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, South-West, Mr Bankole Adefemi Oluwajana, in this interview, speaks on President Bola Tinubu’s performance, the state of Nigeria’s economy, agriculture, restructuring, and the 2027 general elections, among other national issues. Wale Igbintade brings excerpts.

What is your assessment of President Bola Tinubu’s vision and performance so far?

President Tinubu is very brilliant and knows what he is doing and where he is taking Nigeria. He means well for Nigeria. Presidents before him majorly had governance in mind. In addition to governance, the government of President Tinubu has introduced restructuring, growth and economic stability. If there are lapses and mistakes, they are not deliberate. Such hitches are not unusual, and the rough edges can be smoothened.

Obviously, President Tinubu wants a well-structured and better future for Nigeria. The naira deregulation and removal of subsidy are good policies. Now, Nigerians travel abroad with goods to sell there, earn income and return with empty boxes. Before now, it was the other way around—Nigerians would go abroad with empty boxes and return with boxes filled with goods. This was injurious to the economy. The reversal of this trend is good for the economy.

We are making good progress, as shown by the increase in our reserves from $28 billion under President Jonathan to $54 billion now, an increase of almost 100 per cent within a few years. Economically, we are moving forward, and there is global acknowledgement of this. It will be disastrous to reverse the course.

Looking at political dynamics, what caused the APC’s loss in Osun State?

On politics, the loss to the Accord Party in Osun State was expected. It couldn’t have been otherwise. The man who won, Governor Adeleke, is one of us. Our candidate, the candidate of the APC in the election, is good. The man who believes himself to be the leader of the APC structure in Osun State, the immediate former governor, doesn’t have what it takes to lead progressives. He is not charismatic, looks like an introvert, and his human relations are weak. He never would have been in politics but for his closeness to the President.

His deputy, Benedict Alabi, would have done better. Baba Akande would have done far better, even at his age. There are so many strong politicians in the APC—Bashiru, Omisore, Fadahunsi, Omoworare and many others. Oyetola was the weak link.

How do you evaluate the current state of opposition parties ahead of the forthcoming elections?

 On the forthcoming election, it is very obvious that there is no serious opposition, or the opposition parties are not serious. The supposedly biggest of them all, the ADC, has no governorship candidate in Abia, Cross River, Enugu, Ebonyi, Kano, Katsina and Taraba States, comprising 159 LGAs, about 20 per cent of Nigeria. Kano alone has 44 LGAs and has the largest voting bloc in the North. Kano is one of the two swing states that decide presidential elections. The NDC is in an even worse dilemma.

The opposition candidates are in three categories. Some are dreamers, often misled by marabouts and prophets. The second category comprises serial contenders who gather together those who are angry with President Tinubu, those who do not like him, and some former associates who have fallen out with him. In this second group, we have strange bedfellows. How can we explain Aregbesola, a known progressive socialist, pairing up with an anti-democratic dictator like David Mark, who retired as a military irredentist, and an aggressive capitalist like Atiku? It is impossible to have a unified team from such a concoction.

The third group comprises unduly ambitious young men without structure. They assume that a riot, protest or upheaval can bring them to power, forgetting that the same upheaval may consume them.

Anywhere in the world, including the United States of America, you cannot be a serious contender in a democracy without a structure. It takes time and serious work by serious-minded people, acting with principles and without anger, envy or jealousy, to form a formidable team or party.

The election is just a few months away, and the understanding of major opposition figures of what a campaign means is to abuse President Tinubu on social media like kindergarten children fighting over a bar of chocolate or groundnuts. The battle has been won even before it started. There is no contest.

Is your party not threatened by the move by the opposition to field a single presidential candidate to challenge Tinubu?

It cannot work. This is why it cannot work. You see, many of them are people of ambition. And people of ambition don’t look at any other person’s interest. That explains why Peter Obi kept jumping from one party to another.

The same thing with Atiku. Atiku also is a man of ambition, and he has changed parties—virtually every available party that you have seen. So, you can see, at the end of the day, assuming they now say they want to work together, that means that they have already acknowledged that they have failed.

In other words, Atiku will work with Peter Obi when he knows that Obi cannot win, and Obi knows that Atiku cannot win. Are you getting the point? So, for me, all of them together constitute an opposition. They are sharing the number of people who are opposed, for instance, to Tinubu. But again, I will add that such a concoction cannot work. And I have not seen signs that they are telling us anything—anything that they didn’t say in 2023.

The only thing right now is that they are talking about the supposed case against Tinubu in the United States. Come on, was it not there in 2023? And how does that affect Nigeria? Are the votes to be cast by the international community, by Americans? It just doesn’t make sense. So, to me, whatever anybody is doing anywhere will not succeed.

The President has been distributing the subsidy savings to governors. What can Nigerians do to make the governors do more for the people?

Well, thank you so much. You know, if you observe the way Tinubu operates, he knows that, in a democracy, as the structure is in Nigeria, the governors hold a lot of power in the states. That wasn’t created by him. That was created by the Constitution. So, he’s trying to make the best of a seemingly bad situation. There’s nothing he could have done. He still has to use them to be able to reach the people as much as possible.

And, in his own way, as he’s counselling them, he recently spoke about, “Look, don’t spend too much money on bridges.” He’s telling them that, “Look, you have to do more than that. You have to reach the people. You have to find a way of making sure that you perform your role as a governor.” That’s the best he can do—we don’t have a unitary government in Nigeria.

We have a federal system, which Tinubu is even trying to improve. Are you getting the point? It’s still the best we can have. But I will also agree with you that the governors need to do much more than what they are doing.

Tinubu has been known to be an advocate of restructuring the body politic. How far has he been able to do that?

You know, in four years—I will say in three years—you can’t achieve the ultimate. But people would have observed that he is gradually restructuring Nigeria.

He’s doing what people before him never did. For example, it is now a known fact that the states are richer than they used to be. Another example is the fact that he’s trying to reach the nooks and crannies of the country with a network of roads, trains and every other thing.

So, for me, Tinubu has moved us forward in restructuring. But we are not yet there. By the time he finishes his second term, hopefully, we will have gotten there. He has shown us signs that he has restructuring in mind. And this is not a military regime that can just wake up one day and restructure through military fiat like what a former Head of State, Aguiyi-Ironsi, did or what another person did at that time. With democratic limitations, he’s definitely pursuing restructuring.

The issue of subsidy removal is criticised by opposition figures like Atiku Abubakar, who point out that other nations maintain subsidies and that Nigerians benefited from them. How do you respond to this argument?

Atiku is a political gangster! Who is a gangster? Somebody who wants to get what he wants by force. He’s saying whatever he could say to show that he could do something better. But his history does not justify that. The same Atiku spoke about subsidy when they were running the first election. Atiku will say anything just to try to—want to give the dog a bad name to hang it. And serious people will not take him seriously.

Leaving the messenger aside, what about the core message that everyday Nigerians actually need government subsidies?

Look, let me tell you. People like you and me, we belong to a supposedly elite group. Just listen. You have a large percentage of Nigerians who don’t have the opportunities that you have.

Subsidy has enriched the privileged because they have the network of friends. They know how to tap into it. If subsidy is returned, it will favour people like you and me. But it will further enlarge the gap between the rich and the poor. Why? Because the elite, the privileged people like you and me, capitalise on it.

Look at what was happening during the subsidy? There are two things: subsidy and deregulation. Those are two major things. I will tell you what happened, for instance, in deregulation.

Nigerians are very smart. The smartness of Nigerians is not limited to only the Yahoo boys. The only thing is that some people use it positively; some use it in a way that work against the system.

What people were doing was that they would incorporate a company in the United States, where they wanted to buy, say, a phone. So, the company they had incorporated in the US would raise an invoice saying that the item could be bought for $10,000. They would use the $10,000 to source foreign exchange here, and the foreign exchange would be taken to them. They would then buy the item for $2,000 over there. They would repatriate the $8,000 and sell it where people were struggling to obtain dollars here. They made money without working.

It even happened the other way before, when the naira was stronger than the pound. You know what used to happen? You would change sterling here, say £1,000. The £1,000 you had changed here, Nigerians would go to the UK and sell it on the streets. They would come back to Nigeria with naira worth £1,300. They wouldn’t bring in any goods at all. So, goods were not coming to Nigeria, yet formal transactions were going on.

So, people were buying—the rich people were buying houses in Potomac. We know them. They have houses in Potomac. Potomac is a very expensive place in Maryland, near Washington. They have houses there. Now, they can’t do that anymore; it’s tough.

Do you see ethnicity and religion shaping the outcome of the 2027 election like they did in 2023?

I would say that ethnicity and religion always have some effect, but this time around, the effect will be diminished more than what we witnessed in 2023 when there was so much talk about the muslim-muslim ticket. If you google it, that clamour has gone down for the president

In fact, a major advocate of the issue at the time is now a spokesman, Daniel Bwala. And the other major advocate has been silent, former SGF, Babachir Lawal. Lawal has suddenly realised that the issue has not really worked against Christians. If anything, else, he’s subtly praising Tinubu. It wasn’t like that before; he was so antagonistic. So, the noise-making about muslim-muslim at that time has gone down.

Now, when you talk about ethnicity, a majority of the governors in the North are all pro-Tinubu. I mean, are they not Northerners? The Fulani and the Fulani effect—you think it’s going to work against Tinubu one day? Is Senator Sani, the man in Kaduna, not a thoroughbred Fulani? Are you getting the point? But thank God for people like him. I think Nigeria is improving. We are not going to get there overnight, but one after another. Hopefully, by the time Tinubu is done with the additional four years, the person we will have there will also be as broad-minded as Tinubu has been.

Is there anything you would have loved the President to do differently during his tenure?

Well, I don’t know. I pray that—if you know Tinubu very well, if you have been following his trajectory, Tinubu is not one of those who sit down to share the national cake. What I mean by that is, he doesn’t look at somebody who is waiting for the budget or the money of the state and take a portion. For me, that is what I’m seeing in him.

In your state, Ondo, why is there political tension between Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa and Minister Tunji-Ojo?

Well, I will make two comments. The first comment I’ll make is that, if you observe, the major leaders—leaders, I mean anybody I call a leader now, somebody who has held a position in the state. I’ve mentioned; I will mention my humble self because I was a former National Vice-Chairman. I will mention the former Governor, Mimiko. I will mention the deputies, Ali Olanusi and Mimiko’s deputy, Agboola Ajayi, yes.

Part of what leaders learn—mature leaders—is that you never criticise or work against your party openly. The man carries the flag of your party in the state. And this happens also in the United States. That’s why, no matter what Donald Trump does, you hardly see Republican senators criticising him openly.

As a matter of fact, they almost automatically give him the ticket for the next election. It’s cultural. Because when you diminish the image of that person, you are watering down the image of your party. This new generation of politicians don’t understand that. It does not necessarily mean that we approve of everything that he does. We’ll tell him. In his space, many of us don’t go—we have no business, we don’t get contracts from him. We are not expecting appointments from him. I can’t be commissioner again; I can’t be anything. Are you getting the point?

Secondly, as to whether he comes back, whether he wants to come back, that is not for me to decide. Is Tunji-Ojo an inexperienced person who will talk about such a thing? In politics, anybody is free to aspire to be anything. When the time comes, we will cross it. If we don’t cross it, law will cross it. If law has crossed it, it will be re-echoed again. So, why should that be an issue?

Finally, even Tunji-Ojo will not admit that they are fighting. Neither will the governor say they are fighting. So, who am I to say that they are fighting? It’s also just human speculation as to what is happening—but I think I’ve made enough comment for you to understand. Are you getting the point?

Even if I have reservations, I will see the governor and tell him. If he’s not doing right, I’m APC to the core. I will never come on the street and begin to clamour and make it a point. I will see the governor directly and tell him. That is why you see me in the Governor’s Advisory Council.

How do you view Nigeria’s shift away from its original agricultural base over the decades?

Nigerians need to understand that God created Nigeria in the world for a purpose. That purpose is to grow and supply food to the world. Activities shifting our focus away from agriculture and towards other areas are misplaced—we are simply on a frolic of our own. From the 1960s, it became a culture in Nigeria that every graduate must get a white-collar job, preferably in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt or Kano. Graduation became a walk away from farming, creativity and self-employment. Every other job, including farming, was abandoned.

When Nigeria gained independence in 1960, Nigeria supplied over 50 per cent of the palm oil consumed in the world. Today, Nigeria supplies about two per cent. Malaysia and Indonesia, which took seedlings from Nigeria, now supply 85 per cent. Cocoa, groundnuts, cashew nuts and several other farm products are suffering the same neglect.

How has urbanisation and the quest for white-collar employment affected cities like Lagos and the rural areas?

One of the negative effects of colonisation in Nigeria is that the vast majority of Nigerians aspire to take up white-collar jobs and become employees after graduation. Many followed that pattern and ended up in Lagos, which offered the best opportunities for white-collar employment.

At independence in 1960, the population of Lagos was less than 800,000, about the size of Ikorodu Local Government Area today. When I came to Lagos in 1978, the population was about two million. Lagos is now about 25 million. It is projected that Lagos alone will have more than 35 million people in a few years’ time.

Most of the industries established between 1970 and 2000 that offered thousands of job opportunities have folded up, yet many people are still limiting themselves to office jobs and employment, wearing coats and ties. Some will still come to Lagos this week looking for jobs that are no longer available. They will be compelled to live in slums and uncompleted buildings, just like the prodigal son.

Where they are migrating from, in the farmlands of the countryside, you don’t see mad people on the streets at night because family members can accommodate them, sometimes in an entire house.

What impact is foreign involvement having on Nigeria’s agricultural sector and cash crop economy?

While our people are rushing out for what they call greener pastures in foreign lands, the Chinese, Indians and fellow Africans are taking over our land for farm plantations—cocoa, oil palm, cashew, timber and so on. Virtually all the major oil palm plantations in Nigeria, with the exception of one or two, are indirectly owned by foreigners. These people are not producing for the local market. They get paid in dollars outside Nigeria, which they smartly keep outside Nigeria.

The majority of the cash crops now existing on farms—cocoa, kola nuts, bitter kola, cashew nuts and timber—were planted in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. They have now almost reached the end of their lifespan. No new plantations exist, even when there are now better hybrids that will bear fruit within three to four years. The market for agricultural products is inexhaustible, nationally and globally.

Where do you see the biggest potential for Nigerian agricultural exports going forward?

In a few years’ time, there will be scarcity of bitter kola, kola nuts and cocoa because most of the ones available now were planted by our grandfathers more than 70 years ago and will soon stop fruiting. Every economic tree has a lifespan.

In the meantime, the most populous nation on earth, China, has opened up to the world, and the Chinese are as traditional as Africans. They need roots, herbs, leaves and other items that cannot be grown on their soil.

The demand for bitter kola increased sharply and its value quadrupled during COVID, and it has remained high because some pharmaceutical companies now use it to compound medicines, following the immunity effect that was observed during COVID. Researchers are making discoveries every day that the plants around us are medicinal.

The last appears not to have been heard of the political battle between Anambra State Governor, Prof Chukwuma Soludo and one of his predecessors, Mr Peter Obi. David-Chyddy Eleke reports.

Some well meaning indigenes of Anambra State are of the view that if elders in the state fail to wade into the battle between the governor of Anambra State, Prof Chukwuma Soludo and the presidential candidate of Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Mr Peter Obi, the crisis between them may degenerate to a full blown battle. This is coming as the families of both men have now been smuggled into the battle, showing an interwoven family ties that were hitherto hidden from the public.

What started as a small challenge where Obi insisted that he left Anambra State debt-free and also a savings of N75billion, with a call for anyone who can to prove the fact wrong had made the state governor, Soludo to dig through the files of the state and present what he stated were liabilities left by Obi, which included unpaid debts and outstanding salaries, pension and gratuity. Obi had in his response stuck to his gun that he owed no one before leaving, a response that prompted further clarification by the Soludo administration through the commissioner for information, Dr Law Mefor.

In the statement, Anambra State Commissioner for Information, Dr Law Mefor, expressed surprise why Obi and his supporters were attacking Soludo after the governor merely heeded a challenge by Obi for anyone to show proof that he left any debt when he left office. It also insisted that the state government would have allowed Obi’s lies to slide if he didn’t challenge them to show proof of his borrowing or owing anyone as at March 17, 2014 when he left office. It insisted that Obi’s saintly posturing was all media packaging and nothing more, while acknowledging that such media packaging has really worked for him, as many people are swayed about his personality.

Part of the lengthy text read: “We watched the interview by Mr. Peter Obi, on Arise TV on 24th September, 2026, where he tried to equivocate about the settled matter of his legacy of debts in Anambra, with intent to obfuscate and change the subject. You cannot attack first and then end up as the victim at the same time. For us, it is only a matter of record. Since Mr. Obi himself initiated this self-imposed challenge — daring anyone to prove that he left debts — it is only a matter of integrity and character that he owns up to the outcome.

“There is this dangerous trend in our public discourse whereby there are two sets of standards: one for everyone else and another for Peter Obi. This is one former governor of Anambra who is not on record to have ever complimented any of his predecessors or successors in office. He is the only next big thing after God. And indeed, to his credit, the media packaging has worked. Only Peter Obi has the right to lie about and against any and everyone, and if you dare to expose his lies, you must be the “sinner”, the “saboteur”, etc.

“In 2022, when this administration assumed office, he as usual publicly lied that his investment of about $14 million in the brewery in which he has interest was worth “over $100 million”. When our governor exposed the lie in an interview in November 2022 that the investment was worth “next to nothing”, hell was let loose. Even till date, that same investment of $14 million is still worth less than $3 million. For his supporters, Peter Obi has the right to choose who to support and campaign for, even when he was not on the ballot, but for our governor to dare to exercise the same right and support anyone else but Peter Obi, he must be crucified.

“We have definitively and conclusively provided evidence that Peter Obi’s administration signed eight loans from the IDA-World Bank over his eight-year tenure, totalling US$123,771,179.30, and even disbursed some of it before leaving office but deceptively concealed these from his handover notes. We have provided the dates and the amounts that his administration signed the loans, and this can be verified from the Debt Management Office (DMO), Abuja. As of 30th June, 2026, the DMO report showed the outstanding balance of those same eight loans was $92.35 million, equivalent to N127.37 billion, which successive administrations, including the current one, have continued to service through monthly FAAC deductions.

“Till date, neither Peter Obi nor anyone else has disputed these facts at the DMO. So, what is the issue again? We do not want to comment on his laughable argument: “I did not go to the World Bank or DMO to borrow the money”. Peter Obi, you do not have to “go to a bank or DMO” before your borrowing can be perfected. All that is required is for you to sign the loan agreements and your government did. Many Ndi Anambra were actually scandalized to see their former governor, whose government signed Subsidiary Loan Agreements (SLAs), but who did not seem to know the difference between an IDA-World Bank loan, which the Anambra State Government is still paying billions to repay and service, and grants.

“No state government is forced to take any IDA-World Bank loan: you must express interest and sign for the loan before you can access it. It was a pitiable sight seeing our respected former governor showing a lack of understanding and almost insinuating that he did not know that he borrowed even after signing for the loan. Our current government rejected a similar World Bank loan — NG-CARES 1 — principally because the terms were considered too expensive due to exchange rate risks. But if future IDA-World Bank loans are on favourable terms, we would consider them.

“The fact again is that Peter Obi borrowed and left a debt of over US$123 million contrary to all his lies about it for 13 years, and the current government is paying billions of Naira in repayment. Don’t change the subject. No matter how you disingenuously invent the “account net-offs”, the facts won’t go away. Peter Obi did not just owe one worker, he owed over 700 workers and thousands of pensioners. The records show that he owed over 700 staff of the Anambra State Water Corporation their salaries, pensions and gratuities. An Arbitration Panel in 2009 as well as the National Industrial Court judgment of 2019 confirmed that the State Government owed the workers.”

The state government described it as jaundiced logic for Obi to borrow and keep in the bank, hoping to reap interest, while several state projects were waiting to be tackled. It said: “But let’s interrogate your jaundiced logic. Yes, we don’t dispute that you saved $150 million, and if it had not been spent by your immediate successor, it would have been earning interest. But did it, and does it make any sense at all? Many may argue that the so-called savings were a default setting for a government bereft of any long-term transformational agenda. The issue was never whether the assets you left behind were more than enough to repay the debt. That is what you are saying now. But your initial challenge was that you never left any debt. Yet, Peter Obi, every accounting balance sheet has sections on Assets and Liabilities. No matter how huge the assets or how miniscule the liabilities, you are obliged to disclose both sides. It is Accountancy 101. In this case, you exaggerated the asset side but concealed and lied about the liabilities.”

Obi had always insisted that there was no problem between him and Soludo. Speaking at the Nigerian Guild of Editors’ recent conference, the Nigerian Democratic Congress presidential candidate while buttressing his relationship with the Soludos, declared that he and his wife were the godparents of their children. Obi said: “People think I have problem with Soludo, but they do not know that our families are very close. People do not know that I and my wife are godparents of Soludo’s children.”

Soludo’s wife did not take this kindly as she entered the fray, aiming to correct the impression created by Obi. Though a quiet and humble First Lady, she felt there was need to correct the record, lest it stuck.

In a press release by her media aide, Mr Dan Ezeigwe, Mrs Soludo stated that: “Following the widespread circulation of the video, we have received several calls and enquiries seeking clarification on the claim. We hereby state clearly that the claim, as presented, is false. For the avoidance of doubt, Mr. Peter Obi is not a godfather to any of the children of Professor Chukwuma and Dr. Nonye Soludo. The facts concerning the godparent relationship between the two families are as follows; Dr. Nonye Soludo, First Lady of Anambra State, is the confirmation godmother to Peter Obi’s daughter; Mrs. Margaret Obi, wife of Mr. Peter Obi, is the baptismal godmother to one of Professor Chukwuma Soludo’s daughters. Neither Mr. Obi nor Professor Soludo has served as a godparent to the other’s children.”

Supporters of Obi had since the release was made public been on the neck of the governor and his wife, insisting that there was nothing different between Obi claiming to be the godparents of Soludo’s children, so long as they have admitted that his wife was truly the sponsor of one of Soludo’s daughters.

Insisting on setting the records straight, Soludo’s wife in another release quoting the canon laws of the Catholic Church stressed that sponsorship at baptism was an individual thing that had nothing to do with spouses. She insisted that neither Soludo nor Obi is godfather of each other’s sons at baptism and that the fact should remain so.

Meanwhile, in the view of Obi, the issue of borrowing and leaving debt in Anambra was more important issue to engage in and not godparentship. Obi in his response to Soludo said: “I have remained silent over the past few days because I have been grieving the loss of my very dear elder brother and friend, Chief Okey Ezeibe. However, the time has come for me to address some of the matters that have occupied public discussion in recent days. Regarding the multilateral funding inaccurately described as “debt owed by Peter Obi” in Anambra State, I wish to state unequivocally that as Governor of Anambra State, I did not approach any financial institution to borrow funds or issue a bond on behalf of the state. Indeed, at his farewell ceremony, the then Director-General of the DMO, Abraham Nwankwo, appointed me chairman and declared that, during his 10 years in office, I was the only state governor who had not approached him for a loan facility.”

As the controversy continues to rage, many Anambra citizens have called for a public debate between Obi and Soludo to ascertain the truth of the debt profile mentioned, but for people like Uche Nworah, a public affairs commentator, there was need for elders to intervene in the public spat by both men, to save Anambra further embarrassment.

“The escalating war of words between the Anambra State Government and former Governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi, has reached a point where one begins to wonder: Are there no more leaders in Igboland who can step in and de-escalate the situation? It is getting out of hand. It has become increasingly embarrassing to read the debt-related claims, counterclaims and other comments emanating from the camps of the state government and that of the NDC presidential candidate.

“There are bigger challenges confronting Anambra State, the South-East and Nigeria. The elders should urgently intervene, not to silence legitimate debate or scrutiny, but to encourage civility, restraint and reconciliation. For the sake of Anambra State and the wider Igbo nation, the falcon must once again hear the falconer,” Nworah stated.

Nigerian Democratic Congress-Obi/ Kwankwaso Movement’s dispute over campaign structures exposes deeper tensions over organisational authority, as Presidential candidate of the Nigerian Democratic Congress, Mr Peter Obi, backs the party while the movement insists on retaining its independence and grassroots machinery. Sunday Aborisade examines the issues at stake.

What began as a disagreement over a 59-member Presidential Campaign Council has evolved into a potentially consequential organisational dispute within the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), with the party leadership insisting on the supremacy of its formal structures and the Obi-Kwankwaso (OK) Movement refusing to surrender its independent political machinery.

The disagreement took a new turn on Thursday night when the NDC presidential candidate, Mr Peter Obi, publicly backed the position of the party’s leadership and rejected the campaign council constituted by the OK Movement.

Obi’s intervention is significant because it places the party’s presidential candidate directly at the centre of a controversy that had hitherto been largely defined by an exchange between NDC leaders and the leadership of the movement supporting his joint ticket with the party’s vice-presidential candidate, Senator Rabiu Kwankwaso.

Speaking during an interview on Arise Television’s Prime Time, Obi said the NDC remained the political party to which he and his supporters belonged, while the OK Movement, Obidient groups, Kwankwasiyya and other platforms should function as support organisations.

According to him: “NDC is the political party we all belong to, and I agree entirely with the position of the leader. OK Movement, Obidient Group, Kwankwaso and other supporting groups are supporting groups.

“They must play their role as supporting groups, supporting the party. They should not play the role of the party.”

Asked specifically whether the 59-member campaign council announced by the OK Movement had his approval, Obi was unequivocal. “Not at all. And I say it here, it is wrong,” he said.

The former Anambra State governor further indicated that activities undertaken in the name of the joint Obi-Kwankwaso ticket would require the express approval of the two candidates.

His position has potentially altered the dynamics of the dispute, given that the OK Movement had repeatedly argued that its organisational independence was separate from its support for the NDC candidates.

The immediate trigger was the unveiling, on September 17, of a 59-member campaign council by the OK Movement.

The structure included zonal and state coordinators and directors responsible for areas such as mobilisation, women affairs, strategy, security and legal matters. John Ozyl Ughulu, the movement’s Director-General, was named Director-General of the campaign council, while Saadatu Sani, its National Secretary, was named secretary.

The NDC responded by publicly dissociating itself from the structure, declaring that the list did not emanate from the party and should be disregarded.

The party’s position was that the official Presidential Campaign Council of the NDC could only be constituted through the appropriate organs of the political party.

That response immediately raised a broader question: where does the authority of an independent political movement end and that of the political party begin when both are campaigning for the same presidential candidate?

For the NDC leadership, the answer appears straightforward. The party is the legal political platform on which Obi and Kwankwaso are contesting the 2027 presidential election, and therefore campaign structures representing the candidates and the party must be authorised by the party.

For the OK Movement, however, the relationship is different. The movement has maintained that supporting the NDC ticket does not mean surrendering its identity, leadership or organisational structures to the party.

The dispute became more heated after the NDC National Leader, Senator Seriake Dickson, publicly criticised the campaign council. Dickson described the decision to establish the council as “unheard of” and “nonsensical”, arguing that support organisations should mobilise for political parties rather than establish structures that could compete with the parties themselves.

He said, “Support groups don’t compete with the political party that is sponsoring candidates. Support groups don’t compete for supremacy, for space. Support groups are what they are — support groups. They don’t play the role of political party. They don’t sponsor candidates. They provide grassroots support and mobilisation. They don’t convert themselves to become critics of the political party sponsored.”

He argued that support groups exist within virtually every political party and that their responsibility is to strengthen, rather than challenge, the formal party organisation.

The intervention by Dickson turned what could have remained an internal administrative disagreement into a public political confrontation.

The OK Movement subsequently rejected the description of its organisation as merely a support group and insisted that it was an independent political organisation.

Its Director-General, Ughulu, said the movement was neither an appendage of the NDC nor an extension of another political group.

“For the avoidance of doubt, the OK Movement is an independent political organization. It is not a support group created as an appendage of any political party or another movement,” he said.

According to him, the movement was independently organised, managed and structured through its own mechanisms.

He also argued that political organisation in Nigeria had evolved beyond conventional party structures.

OK Movement’s counter-position

The movement’s argument is not that it wants to replace the NDC. Rather, it says it wants to preserve its independent organisational machinery while collaborating with the party in pursuit of a common political objective.

Ughulu insisted that the movement would continue to campaign for Obi and Kwankwaso and defend their votes, but would not allow its own structures to be absorbed into the NDC.

“Our cooperation with the NDC party should therefore be understood as political collaboration, not organizational subordination,” he declared.

The movement has also argued that it does not need the personal approval of an individual NDC leader to organise its members and volunteers.

Its National Secretary, Saadatu Sani, similarly stated that the organisation did not require the “personal validation or approval” of any individual within the NDC before undertaking what it considered legitimate organisational activities.

Ughulu went further, insisting that the movement’s national, state, local government and ward structures would remain under its control. He said the movement would resist any attempt to appropriate, dissolve or absorb those structures without authorisation from its legitimate organs.

“We will not surrender our identity,” he said, adding that the movement would continue to participate peacefully and lawfully in the democratic process.

That position has created the central contradiction in the current dispute.

The OK Movement says it supports the NDC candidates but is not subordinate to the NDC organisationally.

The NDC, on the other hand, recognises the importance of support groups but insists that they cannot establish structures that replicate or compete with the party’s official campaign machinery.

The controversy became even more pronounced after the NDC began moving to establish its own Presidential Campaign Council.

In an indication that the party was determined to retain control of the official campaign structure, the NDC authorised Obi and Kwankwaso to nominate principal officials of its campaign council.

The positions reportedly include the Director-General, Deputy Director-General for the North, campaign spokesman and deputy, Head of New Media, Finance Director and Deputy Finance Director. The arrangement followed consultations involving Obi, Kwankwaso, Dickson and other party leaders.

This development creates a clear distinction between the two structures.

While the NDC’s proposed council is the official campaign machinery of the political party, the OK Movement says its own structures are designed to mobilise its members and supporters for the same ticket.

The question now is whether the two organisations can operate side by side without creating confusion over authority, messaging, mobilisation, fundraising, campaign events and the deployment of grassroots structures.

Obi’s latest intervention appears to have settled one part of that question from the candidate’s perspective.

By rejecting the OK Movement’s campaign council and backing Dickson’s position, the NDC presidential candidate has effectively affirmed the distinction between the official party campaign structure and support organisations. But his intervention may not, by itself, resolve the deeper disagreement over the organisational identity of the OK Movement.

A wider battle over political machinery

At the heart of the dispute is not simply the nomenclature of a campaign council. It is the question of who controls the political machinery that will mobilise supporters for the 2027 election.

The OK Movement claims to have built extensive structures across the country, including at state, local government and ward levels. It has also described itself as a political movement whose members may come from different political backgrounds but share support for the Obi-Kwankwaso project.

That model differs from the conventional structure of a political party.

The NDC’s concern, however, is that an independently controlled structure operating at the same levels as the party could eventually create competing centres of authority.

That concern explains why the party has repeatedly warned against parallel structures.

The dispute also comes against the backdrop of earlier tensions among the various movements associated with Obi and Kwankwaso.

The Obidient Movement, Kwankwasiyya and the OK Movement have distinct histories and organisational identities, although they converge around the current presidential ticket.

In August, 2026,National Coordinator of the Obidient Movement Worldwide, Dr Yunusa Tanko, dismissed claims that the Obidient Movement had collapsed into the OK Movement, saying several groups were working towards the same objective of supporting Obi and Kwankwaso.

That history of multiple support platforms adds another layer to the current debate over coordination and control.

Despite the increasingly sharp rhetoric, neither the NDC nor the OK Movement has announced a break over the dispute.

The OK Movement continues to declare support for Obi and Kwankwaso, while the NDC continues to recognise the importance of grassroots mobilisation by support organisations. That common ground could provide the basis for an accommodation.

But the language used by both sides shows that the disagreement has gone beyond a simple misunderstanding.

The NDC wants a clear distinction between the official political party and external organisations supporting its candidates.

The OK Movement wants the same distinction, but from the opposite direction: it wants its independence recognised even while campaigning for candidates of the NDC.

The difference is therefore not over whether the two sides support Obi and Kwankwaso. Both say they do. It is over who has authority over the structures through which that support will be organised.

Obi’s intervention has now introduced another critical element into the equation.

As the presidential candidate whose name is embedded in the identity of the OK Movement and whose candidacy is at the centre of its mobilisation, his rejection of the council could make it more difficult for the movement to present the structure as an authorised campaign vehicle for the joint ticket.

Yet the movement’s insistence on organisational independence suggests that the disagreement may not disappear immediately.

For the NDC, the challenge is to maintain party discipline and a coherent campaign structure without alienating grassroots organisations whose members and networks could be important to the electoral effort.

For the OK Movement, the challenge is to preserve its independence without creating the impression of competing with the political party on whose platform its preferred candidates are contesting.

As the 2027 election approaches, the dispute has therefore become a test of the NDC’s ability to manage the relationship between a formal political party and the increasingly influential movements built around its presidential candidates.

The immediate controversy may have been triggered by a 59-member campaign council. But beneath it lies a much larger question: can a political party and a powerful independent movement pursue the same presidential project while maintaining separate centres of organisational authority?

Obi’s answer appears to be that the NDC must remain the political party, while the OK Movement and other organisations should remain support groups.

The OK Movement’s answer, however, remains different: it will support the NDC ticket, but will not surrender its identity or structures.

How that contradiction is ultimately resolved could have significant implications for the organisation of the NDC’s 2027 presidential campaign.

As the 2027 elections draw closer, Nigerians should scrutinise the conduct of religious scholars who enter the political arena under the banner of religion. Islamic scholars have every right to speak on governance, justice, corruption, poverty, insecurity and the moral responsibilities of political leaders. The concern arises when some scholars appear to abandon those principles after allegedly receiving money, appointments, patronage or privileged access to political power. That contradiction is what many Nigerians describe as religious hypocrisy and sycophancy.

Recent events have brought this tension into sharper focus. Ahead of the 2027 elections, the ruling party and its political allies have sought the support of Islamic sect leaders and non-sectarian religious figures through courtesy visits and other engagements. Such outreach is a legitimate part of political mobilisation in a democracy. However, it becomes troubling when religious influence appears to be exchanged for material benefits, political access or personal advantage, thereby compromising the moral independence expected of religious leadership.

The Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA) and Jama’atu Nasril Islam (JNI) have cautioned Muslim and Christian clerics against partisanship, misinformation and hate speech ahead of the 2027 elections, while also warning politicians against compromising religious leaders.

Against this background, reports of a cleric publicly praising politicians after receiving a ₦600 million donation have generated considerable public criticism. The issue is not whether a religious institution or scholar may receive a donation. Rather, the question is whether financial gifts should influence a cleric’s judgment or lead to the elevation of politicians beyond legitimate public scrutiny. Religious authority loses credibility when material generosity appears to purchase moral endorsement.

 Another controversy surrounding a gathering of northern Islamic scholars in Jigawa was equally instructive. Sheikh Abdurrahman Abubakar Azzamfari disputed reports that participants had collectively endorsed President Bola Tinubu’s re-election, alleging that the scholars had not been adequately consulted. Whether or not one accepts his account, the episode raises an important principle: political and religious actors should not present religious gatherings as unanimous endorsements when such unanimity has not been clearly established.

Similarly, Sheikh Qaribullah Kabara, leader of the Qadiriyya sect, declared his support for President Tinubu’s administration and his 2027 re-election bid during a visit by the APC Presidential Campaign Council, led by Senator Abdul’aziz Yari, in Kano. Kabara said the sect believed that Tinubu had a “Good Mission for Nigeria.” Hilariously informed Campaign Council Yari, has openly supported this House. He is one of us, and whatever he brings forward, we have no option but to support it. He added that the sect would also begin praying for the president, with emphasis on peace, economic recovery, job creation, and an end to insecurity.

Such declarations inevitably invite questions. How should claims about a government’s “Good Mission” be assessed against the lived experiences of Nigerians facing high unemployment, insecurity, banditry, kidnapping and ransom demands? These realities should form part of any honest and comprehensive assessment of government performance. Supporting a government does not require ignoring its shortcomings, just as criticising a government does not require denying its achievements.

The matter becomes even more sensitive when the pulpit meets power, particularly when religious authority is used to transform political loyalty into a religious obligation. Sheikh Sani Jingir, for instance, has urged Muslims to mobilise their votes while framing the political contest, in part, through the lens of religious identity. Other Islamic leaders, however, have called on Nigerians to place competence, fairness, national development, and national unity above religious affiliation.

This divergence raises a fundamental question: what happens to justice, accountability and the obligation to speak truth to power when the politician standing before the scholar is also the person providing money, platforms, appointments or access?

The most hilarious is like a scholar who condemns corruption when committed by a political opponent but excuses or minimises similar conduct by an ally, turning religious leadership into political brokerage. Likewise, a cleric who demands accountability from one administration but remains silent about serious allegations involving another undermines the moral consistency expected of anyone speaking in the name of Islamic values.

This criticism should not be directed at all Islamic scholars. Many religious leaders have challenged politicians, rejected partisan manipulation and warned against turning religious institutions into campaign instruments. The issue is neither Islam nor the legitimate participation of Muslims in democratic politics. The real issue is whether religious authority is being used consistently to defend truth and justice or selectively to advance political interests.

It is particularly troubling to hear some scholars praise government policies and suggest that citizens’ lives have substantially improved when many Nigerians continue to report severe economic hardship and insecurity. Scholars are entitled to their political opinions. But religious authority carries an additional responsibility: the courage to speak honestly, especially when the truth is inconvenient to those in power.

Abba Dukawa, Kano

With the recent reports that more than 600 senior academics from public universities across the 19 northern states and the Federal Capital Territory endorsed President Bola Tinubu for a second term, Davidson Iriekpen calls on the Independent National Electoral Commission to thoroughly scruntise the collation and returning officers it will recruit to oversee the 2027 elections if it wants the 2027 presidential poll to be  free, fair and credible

Genuine concerns were raised recently on the credibility of the 2027 presidential election following the reports that over 600 senior academics from public universities across the 19 northern states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) endorsed President Bola Tinubu for a second-term bid ahead of the poll.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) hires university lecturers to conduct elections, and political analysts believe the endorsement could taint the neutrality of these lecturers in the conduct of the 2027 elections and undermine the credibility of the polls.

 The organisers and participating academics announced their endorsement in Kaduna at a meeting convened by the Special Adviser to the President on Political Matters, Ibrahim Masari, and attended by various northern governors and federal ministers.

These academics reportedly claimed that their backing of the president’s reelection was conditional and based on data analysis of infrastructure development, educational funding reforms like Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), and other administration policies.

However, many fear that the non-neutrality of such critical stakeholders in the nation’s electoral system could influence the outcome of the presidential election in favour of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Sensing the danger this could pose to other political parties and the credibility of the 2023 presidential election, the Peter Obi Media Office (POMR) was the first to raise concerns over the endorsement.

In a statement signed by its spokesman, Idris Zekeri, the office described the alleged endorsement as an early attempt to build what it called a network of partisan actors ahead of the election.

It said the development was particularly concerning because university academics had frequently been engaged as electoral officials, including returning and collation officers.

The office alleged that electoral malpractice could begin long before election day through the identification, cultivation and placement of individuals capable of influencing the process.

 It urged Nigerians to remain vigilant and called on the INEC to publish the names of all prospective collation and returning officers well ahead of the 2027 elections. Such disclosure, it stated, would allow civil society organisations, political parties and the public to assess the political neutrality of prospective electoral officials.

“Their public backing for the incumbent consequently raises a serious and unavoidable question: Is the framework for manipulating the 2027 election already being established?” it queried.

“Electoral rigging does not suddenly occur on election day; it begins months or even years earlier through the identification, cultivation, and placement of individuals capable of influencing the process when votes are finally cast,” the statement added.

It further called on university governing councils and academic bodies nationwide to adopt strict conflict-of-interest rules to prevent staff from using their professional positions to facilitate partisan political mobilisation.

Recall that one of the strategies introduced during the military regimes was the appointment of academics from Nigerian universities as chairman of INEC. When the country returned to democratic governance in 1999, the practice was sustained.

Professor Attahiru Jega, who was appointed INEC chairman by former President Goodluck Jonathan, expanded the practice to include the deployment of university academics as election officials in the 2015 general election.

He saw it as part of the efforts to ensure the credibility and integrity of the electoral process.

Under the arrangement, vice-chancellors functioned as Returning Officers at the federal and state levels, while lecturers and other academics played roles at the local government level. 

Jega believed that the academics were an embodiment of integrity, who would be less susceptible to inducements by unscrupulous politicians who might try to corrupt electoral officials to subvert the will of the electorate. 

The INEC boss was also of the view that lecturers knew that their honour as members of the intelligentsia was at stake, and they would not easily soil their reputation and career by aiding electoral malpractices.

Justifying his decision, Jega said, “We know that anybody who has risen in the system to become a vice chancellor will not for anything damage his or her reputation by pandering to the wishes of politicians.”

However, experience gathered from several elections has shown otherwise. It is now obvious that academics, like other professionals, are susceptible to corruption.

Professors and other lecturers have been aiding electoral malpractices since the return to democracy in 1999.

Ironically, while reacting to the 2019 general election, Jega, attending an event at Bayero University, Kano, where he was once Vice Chancellor and is currently a lecturer, expressed disappointment with university lecturers for “allegedly conniving with politicians to undermine the integrity and outcome of this year’s general elections.”

He expressed disappointment against the background of the conviction of two professors and complaints against many others, showing that not all academics are men of honour and character. 

In 2019, two courts in Akwa Ibom State sentenced professors Peter Ogban and Ignatius Uduk to terms of imprisonment for electoral fraud committed during the 2019 general election.

Ogban, a Professor of Soil Science at the University of Calabar, and Uduk, a Professor of Human Kinetics at the University of Uyo, received three years’ imprisonment for their offences.

University lecturers have been accused of conniving with politicians and their political parties to alter and write results in their favour.

Even those with mathematics, engineering, business administration and accountancy backgrounds are known to have embarrassed themselves during the collation of election results by their inability to reconcile the figures due to the falsification of the figures.

This has made those who had faulted Jega’s action then and questioned the yardstick used in choosing university dons as collation/returning officers by the commission to believe that they have now been vindicated.

Lately, INEC has been facing criticism for not improving the system. Concerns have also been raised about the appointment of partisan individuals, card-carrying members of political parties and known allies of politicians into leadership roles in the commission.

As the commission prepares for the next general election in 2027, it behoves INEC to hinge the appointment of election officials on character and integrity.

 The time to start headhunting credible individuals to conduct the elections as officials is now. It should cast its net wide to include other professionals in its search for men and women of honour and integrity.

For the sake of transparency, the electoral commission must also strive to publish the complete list of all prospective Collation and Returning Officers well in advance of future elections in order to allow civil society, political parties, and the public to evaluate and scrutinise their political neutrality. 

The machinery for rigging must not be allowed to take root before the election even begins.

INEC should not only be open and transparent but must be seen to be open and transparent in all the processes leading to the conduct of the 2027 general election to sustain Nigeria’s election.

LEONARD ONOTAKEVWE urges the party to put its house in order

There is something increasingly difficult to ignore in the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC). On the surface, the party has what appears to be a formidable presidential ticket in Peter Obi and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso. It has the Obidient movement, the Kwankwasiyya movement and the institutional structure of the NDC. It has, at least in theory, the ingredients of a powerful opposition coalition.

Yet beneath that surface, a palpable uncomfortable undercurrent appears to be unraveling, making the NDC a party of particular concern. It is the question of who truly controls the political machinery of the NDC — the party itself or the movements and political structures that Obi and Kwankwaso brought into it?

That question may sound organizational. In an election as consequential as the 2027 presidential contest, however, organizational questions can quickly become political questions. And increasingly, the disagreement is no longer entirely underground. People have now taken note of it.

National Leader of the NDC, Senator Seriake Dickson, has publicly insisted that the party should not be portrayed as the beneficiary of a favour from Peter Obi or any other politician. In June, responding to criticism from some Obi supporters, Dickson declared that nobody was doing the NDC a favour by joining it; rather, he said, the NDC was doing politicians a favour by providing its platform. He also reminded his audience that he could have been the party’s presidential candidate himself.

Dickson subsequently made his position on political identity even clearer. He has said, in substance, that he is NDC and not an Obidient or a Kwankwasiyya. There is nothing inherently contradictory about that position. A political party is entitled to assert its institutional authority, just as a support movement is entitled to maintain its identity.

The problem begins when the two positions appear to collide. That collision became particularly evident in the controversy over the 59-member presidential campaign council unveiled by the Obi-Kwankwaso Movement.

The movement presented the council as a mobilisation structure for the Obi-Kwankwaso ticket. The NDC leadership rejected it, saying it had not emanated from the party and should therefore be disregarded. The party further warned that only its leadership could constitute and announce its presidential campaign council and cautioned support groups against creating structures that could be interpreted as parallel party organs. The Obi-Kwankwaso Movement, however, did not accept that interpretation. It insisted that it was an independent political organisation with its own leadership, structure and internal processes, while acknowledging the supremacy of the party within its constitutional sphere. Thankfully, Peter Obi has clarified the position, that the movement is subordinate to the party.

 It is instructive to note that campaigns for the January 16, 2026 presidential election formally began on August 16. The quarrel was not necessarily between Obi and Dickson or between Kwankwaso and Dickson. It is fundamentally a dispute over political architecture. Who commands the grassroots structures? Who appoints campaign officials? Who mobilises the voters? Who determines the campaign message? Who speaks for the presidential ticket? And, perhaps most importantly, will the Obidient and Kwankwasiyya constituencies see themselves as supporters of an NDC presidential candidate or as members of a broader political movement that happens to be contesting through the NDC?

Politics is not only about what is happening. It is also about what people think is happening. In politics, perception matters a lot. That is where the present situation could become problematic for the NDC.

A political party entering a presidential election is expected to project unity, clarity of command and strategic coherence. When the public instead sees senior party figures publicly clarifying who is doing whom a favour, support groups being warned about party authority and a presidential campaign council being publicly disowned, the immediate perception can be one of internal uncertainty. Whether that perception is completely accurate is another matter. But perception has consequences.

What is apparent is that the NDC appears as though its major political forces are still negotiating the terms of their marriage and finding integration difficult while the electoral contest is already fully underway. The party has good reasons to insist on institutional discipline. But Obi’s supporters also have a legitimate political history of their own. The Obidient movement was not created by the NDC and so was Kwankwasiyya. Both existed before the present political arrangement and developed their own networks, identities and loyal supporters. The challenge is to create a situation in which party structure and movement energy reinforce rather than compete with one another.

 The timing makes the matter even more disturbing. The presidential election is scheduled for 16 January 2027, while the official campaign period has already commenced. Obi has already flagged off his presidential campaign and presented his broad political message to Nigerians in a manner that has drawn some criticisms. The question is no longer whether the NDC has a candidate and a running mate, it does.

The question is with the current rumbling. Can the NDC rapidly transform the considerable political enthusiasm around Obi and Kwankwaso into one disciplined, coordinated and recognizable national campaign machine ahead of the 2027 election? This is where comparisons with other political parties inevitably arise.

The APC has been methodically proceeding through its electoral preparations, while the ADC has also formally submitted its presidential and vice-presidential candidates to INEC and continued its organizational preparations. The NDC, meanwhile, has spent considerable public energy dealing with questions of internal structure and authority.

That does not mean the party is inactive. Indeed, there have been consultations among Obi, Kwankwaso, Dickson and other senior figures aimed at producing a coordinated campaign structure in an endless manner. But the very fact that such consultations remain necessary illustrates the unfinished nature of their political integration.

And for Obi, this is where the issue becomes particularly important. Peter Obi’s political strength is inseparable from the enthusiasm of the movement around him. Now that Obi is contesting under the NDC, the challenge is: will the rigid system in the party be able to convert that movement energy into the formal structures of a political party without extinguishing the very enthusiasm that made the movement significant?

If Obidients perceive the NDC as attempting to subordinate their movement completely, some may feel alienated. If the NDC perceives the Obidient and Kwankwasiyya structures as attempting to operate above the party, the leadership may resist them. If both perceptions harden, the result could be duplication, competing chains of command and conflicting public messages.

And when two structures are sending different signals, voters can become confused about which one represents the actual campaign. The same applies to Kwankwasiyya. Kwankwaso brings his own political history, geographical base and organizational identity. The value of his presence on the ticket partly lies in the additional constituency he represents.

The rejection of the 59-member council should consequently not be treated merely as another political disagreement. It is a stark warning sign that the NDC is still work in progress.

The OK Movement clearly believes it has the organisational capacity to mobilise for the presidential ticket. The NDC leadership believes that a formal presidential campaign structure must come from the party. Both positions can coexist only if there is an agreed framework. Without such an agreement, every appointment, rally, statement or mobilisation exercise could become another potential flashpoint.

That would be damaging not because disagreement is inherently bad, but because an election campaign requires the ability to translate decisions quickly into coordinated action. The electorate is unlikely to be interested in the internal constitutional arguments of the NDC. Voters will be looking for answers. Who is leading?

What is the message? What does the ticket stand for? What is the plan for the economy? What is the plan for insecurity? How will jobs be created? How will the cost of living be addressed? How will the different regions of Nigeria benefit? And, above all, can the people behind the ticket demonstrate that they can work together?

Without being told, the NDC’s fault lines are too glaring for all to see. But if the disagreements continue to spill into public view, they could create an impression of a coalition that has not yet fully become a party.

 Onotakevwe Jnr, a political and current affairs analyst, writes from Abuja, FCT

A collaboration of progressive minds promises to make a difference, reckons IFEANYICHUKWU AFUBA 

A man stung silly by bees runs at the sight of a humming fly. This Igbo proverb helps in the understanding of our crisis of governance. Nigerians have had a raw deal from our governments since independence. Consequently, there’s a tendency by citizens to be dismissive of all those in government. As the cynics said of Nazareth in the Bible, so it’s also asked, can anything good come from Nigeria’s political leaders? The most charitable view approximates Tell magazine’s 1991 description of Ibrahim Babangida’s ministers as “tourists in government.” And the cynical outrightly labels those in power as thieves. But for the discerning, matters are not always cut out in black and white. There are exceptions; there are shifts; there are altering dynamics. And individuals too experience attitudinal changes.

In the present 10th National Assembly, it’s not all lamentations on the performance of senators. No doubt, there’s the widespread impression that the Senate leadership is not detached from the Presidency. Critics cite the high rate of foreign loans as well as their ease of approvals by the Senate as a cause for concern. The pattern of submission to the executive is also seen in the controversial Rivers State emergency instrument of 2024.  Mercifully, the ensuing Supreme Court judgement did not endorse the elastic interpretation of state of emergency as power to remove an elected Governor. Yet, it’s to be borne in mind that the workings of government require a degree of cooperation between the three arms especially the executive and the legislature. This demand is even more so in a polity such as ours still grappling with nationhood challenges.

There’s a sense, then, in which the Senate leadership’s apparent inferiority to the executive is in fact, a mettle of strength. Seen from another perspective, what critics perceive as a weak Senate, may well be the avoidance of confrontational politics. By steering the upper chamber towards good working relationship with the executive, Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, obviously voted for partnership rather than competition. Cordial relations with the executive branch should be seen as a win for governance. That the policy is well received is reflected in the stability in the Senate. And while it may not be too obvious, it seems logical to find this accord internally working in the Senate.

A demonstration of this engagement is seen in Akpabio’s initiative of dropping the counter lawsuits against Senator Natasha – Akpoti, over the harassment case between them, earlier in January this year. Akpabio’s gesture takes on greater significance by his not backtracking in the face of non reciprocation from the other side.

Months back, in October 2025, Senators Victor Umeh and Enyinnaya Abaribe, had at a Senate plenary objected to the omission of a nominee from the southeast in the board of the National Communication Commission (NCC).  There was nothing new or surprising about the intervention of the duo. For reasons that are not very clear, Igbo or southeast marginalisation has become a recurring decimal of Nigeria’s government and politics. Anytime a section of the country is found to have been cheated in the sharing of national resources, it’s almost always the southeast. Whether it’s in regional allocation of states and local governments; headship of the armed forces and paramilitary organisations; number of ministers and manning of super ministries; siting of military – industrial complexes or strategic infrastructure such as gas pipeline or standard gauge rail, the southeast is regularly the underrepresented and most denied! It’s a sorry picture dating back to Yakubu Gowon’s state creation of 1967 which launched the plot of reducing the Igbo to minority status. But as the unwritten policy persists, Senators Umeh and Abaribe have proved foremost actors in efforts to right the wrong. Their protest on the NCC board was predictable, following a pattern of advocacy for fairness.

In March 2021, Abaribe had sponsored the Armed Forces Commission bill in the 9th Senate. The proposed legislation sought to establish the machinery for reflecting federal character in the appointment of service chiefs and other top military positions. What would have been a game changer in the sectional domination of the military was aborted by ethnic hegemonists in the Senate at the time. In his very first outing in the Senate, in 2018, Umeh secured wide support for a motion 

for the inclusion of the eastern rail line in the railway modernisation programme of the federal government. Again, on November 23, 2023, Umeh brought another motion that the Eastern Rail Line be built with standard gauge tracks. It was also passed by the Senate. The two Senators are known to have spared no opportunity to engage with the authorities for solution to the Nnamdi Kanu matter. In the latest of such interventions, Umeh, using his leverage as Vice Chairman, Committee on Lands, this September 2026, waded into the ownership conflict between the Federal Housing Authority, developers and land owners in the Abule Ado areas of Festac, Lagos, in search of solutions.

It was therefore little surprise that the two Senators in their familiar activism of public and constituency defenders rose as one to scrutinise the initial composition of the NCC board. Their interrogation subsequently led to the inclusion of Engr Ikechukwu Ugwuegede as the southeast representative. But what probably stood out more was the presiding officer’s complementary role. 

Senate President Godswill Akpabio was not just considerate in entertaining the complaint. He complimented Senators Victor Umeh and Enyinnaya Abaribe for their courage and diligence in championing the South East’s interests.

“This is what representation is all about — standing up for your own people and ensuring equity in governance,” Akpabio said. The Senate President’s mature handling of what was a sensitive matter proved refreshing against a trend of impersonal officialdom. High office holders in Nigeria often see their positions not as a call to serve but as entitlement to be served.

It’s noteworthy that Akpabio expressed solidarity with the cause of equity and fairness spearheaded by Umeh and Abaribe. His identification with, and indeed, encouragement of the principle of inclusion is heart glowing. The disposition towards a progressive agenda raises hope of better legislative climate. Is this optimism realistic? Some analysts would say no, given the extensive reach of the political elite’s irresponsibility. Others may cite the few months left in the legislative calendar too short to effect positive change. By a similar token, however, achievement does not come in absolutes. Who says that even when the desired vision is not realised, incremental progress is of no value? Revolutions after all, sometimes cut a middle path. The Nigerian condition is so urgent that the least mitigating circumstance should be welcome. Progressive legislative work begins with availability and responsiveness. Akpabio, like Umeh Abaribe and few others record regular attendance at plenary. Taking it from there, a collaboration of progressive minds promises to make a difference in the scheme of things.

Afuba is of Governance & Development Forge, Awka

Since the dramatic impeachment saga that briefly shook the Lagos State House of Assembly, Speaker Mudashiru Obasa has remained a familiar name in the ever-turbulent theatre of Lagos politics. And just when it appeared the political waters were settling, the veteran lawmaker has once again found himself at the centre of fresh whispers.

This time, the intrigue is coming from Agege, his familiar political backyard.

During the recent All Progressives Congress (APC) primaries, two politicians regarded as Obasa loyalists, Ganiyu Egunjobi and Azeez Yusuf, failed to secure the party’s tickets for Agege Constituencies 1 and 2, respectively. The development reportedly did not go down quietly.

Obasa, who himself secured the APC ticket to contest the House of Representatives election in 2027, was said to have thrown his weight behind the two aspirants. But despite his intervention, Egunjobi and Yusuf could not clinch the coveted tickets.

And then came the political twist.

Unwilling to abandon their ambitions, both politicians reportedly moved out of the APC and secured tickets on the platform of the Allied People’s Movement, APM, to contest the 2027 Lagos State House of Assembly election. That move has now opened another intriguing chapter in the Obasa political story.

Society Watch gathered that tongues have begun wagging in political circles, with some accusing the Speaker of secretly encouraging the movement of his loyalists to another political platform. The whispers have inevitably triggered the familiar “anti-party” question.

But those close to Obasa have swiftly pushed back against the insinuation.

His supporters insist that the Speaker had no hand in the decision of Egunjobi and Yusuf to leave the APC, maintaining that the two politicians independently made their political choices after losing out in the primaries.

For now, the allegations remain allegations. But the development has added yet another intriguing subplot to Obasa’s already colourful political narratives.    

If the reports are to be believed, Senator Ireti Kingibe and FCT Minister Nyesom Wike have never once met privately since both assumed office in 2023. That says more about their current quarrel than any of the insults now being traded between them.

The dispute began over numbers. Kingibe, citing Debt Management Office figures, said Abuja’s debt climbed from N88.5 billion in August 2023 to N389 billion by March 2026, and alleged the loans lacked National Assembly approval. Wike rejected the claim, insisting due process was followed.

The House of Representatives sided with Wike. Deputy Spokesman Philip Agbese said there was no evidence of any breach, since borrowing for infrastructure is lawful once required approvals exist, a finding that has not ended the argument between the two Abuja figures. 

Wike has since gone further than defending the loans. During a road inspection on Tuesday, he declared that Kingibe will not return to the Senate in 2027, calling her an illiterate on public finance and endorsing former senator Philip Aduda as her replacement.

Nothing new there, to be honest. Wike has long been Aduda’s political ally, and Kingibe defeated Aduda to win the FCT seat in 2023, a result that set up structural rivalry between the minister and the senator from the outset.

There was a brief thaw in May 2025, when Kingibe praised Wike’s N1.78 trillion budget presentation and Wike publicly declared their rift over. It held for less than a year before collapsing as Abuja’s debt figures kept climbing.

Kingibe has responded that power belongs to God and that Wike cannot stop her, suggesting his focus on her stems from her opposition party membership rather than genuine concern for FCT residents. Wike, meanwhile, is folding the fight into his 2027 messaging, using visible road projects across Abuja as evidence for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s record. For Kingibe, those projects are exactly what she wants investigated.

The political pot in Agege is boiling again, and this time two familiar names have found themselves at the centre of the latest drama.

Former Agege Local Government Chairman, Chief Ganiyu Egunjobi, and Azeez Yusuf have been expelled from the All Progressives Congress (APC) in a development that has added fresh fuel to the already combustible political atmosphere in the constituency.

The Lagos State chapter of the APC announced their expulsion on Wednesday, accusing the two politicians of anti-party activities, disloyalty and conduct it said ran contrary to the discipline expected of its members. The decision, signed by state chairman Pastor Cornelius Ojelabi, was said to have been taken pursuant to Article 9(5)(II) of the APC Constitution, as amended in 2022.

But beneath the formal language of party discipline lies a more intriguing political story.

Both Egunjobi and Yusuf had sought the APC’s tickets for Agege Constituencies I and II respectively. When the dust settled around the disputed primaries, however, neither man emerged as the party’s choice. Gbenga Abiola and Sakiru Enimakure were recognised as the APC candidates.

Rather than quietly disappear from the political scene, Egunjobi and Yusuf took their ambitions elsewhere. Both subsequently emerged under the banner of the Allied Peoples Movement, APM, turning what began as an internal APC disagreement into a much more interesting political battle.

The APC, apparently unwilling to have its former aspirants contest the same seats on another platform, has now slammed the door behind them, declaring that they are no longer members and have no authority to speak or act on behalf of the party.

Yet Egunjobi and Yusuf have their own version of events. The duo have rejected the expulsion, insisting that they resigned from the APC in July, before the party announced their removal. They argue that one cannot expel people who had already walked away voluntarily.

And then there is the Obasa angle.

Both men have long been described in political circles as associates of Lagos State House of Assembly Speaker Mudashiru Obasa, making their departure particularly juicy in the context of Agege’s complicated political alignments.

But in a joint statement, Egunjobi and Yusuf were quick to distance the Speaker from their decision, insisting that Obasa neither engineered nor influenced their departure from the APC. They maintained that their decision was theirs alone and stemmed from grievances su rrounding the nomination process.

Agege finds itself with a fascinating political subplot: the APC has its chosen candidates, Egunjobi and Yusuf are flying the APM flag, and the political network around one of Lagos’s most closely watched constituencies is being tested once again. 

The expulsion may have formally ended Egunjobi and Yusuf’s chapter in the APC. Politically, however, the story appears far from over.

Ogun West has existed since the state was created in 1976 and has never produced a governor. That single fact sits underneath everything happening around Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, the APC’s consensus governorship candidate for 2027, better known by his nickname, Yayi.

His path to the nomination ran through Lagos before it reached Ogun. Adeola began in the House of Representatives representing Alimosho, then crossed into the Senate representing Ogun West, where he now chairs the Appropriations Committee, one of the National Assembly’s most consequential seats.

In June, Governor Dapo Abiodun personally accompanied Adeola and former governor Olusegun Osoba to Abuja, presenting the candidate and his running mate to President Bola Tinubu. Two months later, Tinubu used his birthday message to Adeola to call him a dependable political ally.

It is an enormous phrase, for sure, coming from a sitting president about a governorship candidate in another man’s state. As some observers have noted, it is a public gesture Tinubu did not have to make at all.Abiodun’s own stake is harder to miss. He is finishing his second term, and Ogun’s political class reads his backing of Adeola as an attempt to shape who inherits the machinery he built, rather than leave that question to chance.

Osoba’s presence adds an older layer of legitimacy. Adeola has openly called both Tinubu and Osoba mentors, and Abiodun a role model, language that positions his campaign as continuity rather than disruption.

The APC’s 2027 campaign council brings together Abiodun, Osoba, and former governors Gbenga Daniel and Ibikunle Amosun, politicians whose rivalries have influenced Ogun’s politics for two decades. Assembling them under one banner is itself a political achievement, and possibly a fragile one.

Slogans aside, the arithmetic behind “tested and trusted” is straightforward. Adeola has held office at three legislative levels across two states. Whether that record survives contact with Ogun’s grassroots is a question the endorsements alone cannot answer.

Nyesom Wike relaxes inside President Bola Tinubu’s cabinet as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory while remaining a prominent member of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). That contradiction, tolerated for two years, has produced the loudest quarrel inside the ruling coalition.

At issue is the Rainbow Coalition, a political vehicle Wike says exists to mobilise support for Tinubu’s 2027 re-election. APC governors read it differently, as a structure capable of drawing votes and loyalty away from the party machinery they personally control in their states.

Both sides insist they want the same outcome.

Wike has repeatedly said the coalition is not an attempt to replace the APC, only to widen support for the president. The Progressive Governors’ Forum has responded by refusing to back any arrangement that could weaken its candidates.

The language has sharpened beyond ordinary disagreement. Wike has called some governors politically lazy, while allies of the governors have accused him of undermining party discipline from inside a government that is not technically his own.

Even within the APC, opinion is split. Some view Wike’s reach into Rivers State and beyond as a genuine asset for Tinubu’s coalition. Others see a minister building an independent political base using the access his cabinet position provides.

The Presidential Campaign Council has already asked Tinubu to step in, with spokesman Ima Niboro describing the fight as a disagreement among allies who share an objective but not a method. That request came from inside the president’s own campaign structure.

What makes the dispute delicate is arithmetic rather than sentiment. Presidential elections are won nationally, but votes are organised locally, and governors control the structures that turn out those votes. Wike’s coalition operates above that layer.

Tinubu has stayed publicly quiet as the exchanges continue. The longer that silence lasts, the more the disagreement risks hardening from a quarrel between allies into two separate operations competing for the same voters in 2027.

Babachir Lawal has now belonged to six political parties since 2002, and the pattern behind his movements is more revealing than any single defection. On Tuesday, September 22, he joined the Nigeria Democratic Congress, three months after quitting the African Democratic Congress.

His NDC entry places him on the same platform as Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso, the party’s presidential and running mate ticket for 2027. In May, Lawal had publicly questioned Obi’s commitment to the ADC, arguing Obi joined the coalition late.

Lawal left the ADC in June, alleging its presidential primary had been rigged in favour of Atiku Abubakar, a claim the party disputed. Before that, he had passed through the Labour Party during the 2023 election cycle, campaigning for Obi under a different banner entirely. It was much the same formula in his early years.

The man entered politics through the ANPP in 2002, coordinating Muhammadu Buhari’s Adamawa campaign structure, then followed Buhari into the Congress for Progressive Change in 2010. When the APC merger happened in 2013, Lawal sat on the committee that fused the parties. That loyalty carried him to the position of Secretary to the Government of the Federation in 2015, a post he lost in 2017 amid controversy over the Presidential Initiative for the North East, which he has always described as a political setup.

He stayed in the APC until late 2022, when he broke with the party over its Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket. At the NDC, National Leader Seriake Dickson handed him responsibility for the party’s North-East campaign structure.

That role trades on decades of regional networks built across five previous parties. Whether the NDC becomes a lasting address or another waypoint depends less on rhetoric about national salvation than on how the 2027 primaries unfold within a party still assembling its own balance of power.

Usman Abubakar

Public policy acquires its truest meaning not in government documents, budget speeches or ceremonial unveilings, but in the burdens it removes from ordinary lives. In Kaduna State, that meaning can now be seen every morning as workers, students, teachers, traders, artisans and pensioners board gleaming Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) buses without reaching into their pockets.

For millions of citizens negotiating one of Nigeria’s most difficult economic periods, Governor Uba Sani’s Free CNG Mass Transit Scheme has become more than a transportation programme. It is a moving social safety net, returning money to households, protecting livelihoods and demonstrating that government can bring both compassion and imagination to economic reform.

The removal of petrol subsidy by President Bola Tinubu in 2023 was a difficult but necessary national decision intended to free the economy from an increasingly unsustainable fiscal burden. Yet its immediate consequences were severe. Higher fuel prices rapidly translated into increased transportation costs, while the prices of food, education, healthcare and other essentials rose simultaneously.

Workers discovered that commuting consumed an alarming share of their salaries. Students struggled to reach their schools. Traders watched transport costs erode already narrow margins, while artisans, retirees and low-income families bore the harshest edge of the adjustment.

President Tinubu consistently urged state governments to complement federal reforms with practical measures capable of cushioning their effects on citizens. In Kaduna, Governor Uba Sani responded with uncommon decisiveness. On July 7, 2025, he launched a fleet of 100 brand-new CNG-powered buses and made transportation entirely free.

What began primarily as an intervention for workers and students was soon expanded to embrace every citizen because, as the administration correctly recognised, economic hardship does not respect professional, social or occupational boundaries.

Twelve months later, more than five million passenger journeys had been recorded, with approximately ₦5.24 billion saved by commuters. These figures are impressive, but their deeper significance lies beyond arithmetic. That money did not disappear into an abstract economic ledger; it remained in the pockets of families. It became food on tables, schoolbooks in children’s hands, medicine for the sick, rent contributions, business capital and modest savings against unforeseen emergencies. In an era when every Naira matters, the scheme has redistributed relief directly and transparently, one journey at a time.

Comrade Ayuba Magaji, Chairman of the Kaduna State Council of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), captures the intervention’s effect on workers with striking clarity. “The Free Transport Scheme is simply marvellous,” he says. A state employee travelling from Maraban Rido to the Kaduna State Secretariat would ordinarily spend at least ₦1,000 on a single journey. With the CNG buses, that worker travels to and from work without paying a fare. “That transportation money will now be saved to meet other needs,” he explains, adding that some junior workers save as much as half of their salaries through the scheme. His conclusion is unambiguous: “We cannot thank Governor Uba Sani enough.”

That testimony reveals why the programme is considerably more consequential than a conventional transport subsidy. A subsidised fare merely reduces expenditure; a free service removes it. For a junior worker earning a modest salary, the difference can determine whether the household survives the month in relative stability or descends into debt. By eliminating transport fares on designated routes, the Kaduna State Government has effectively raised the disposable incomes of thousands of citizens without the delays, leakages and administrative complications that sometimes weaken other forms of social intervention.

For Aisha Ahmad, a student who previously spent about ₦2,200 each day on transportation, the programme has transformed access to education. Her monthly commuting expenses once approached ₦60,000, an enormous burden for a young person and her family. “Now, as we go to school four times in a week, it is very easy for us,” she says, linking the free transportation scheme with the administration’s wider commitment to affordable education. Her experience illustrates a fundamental truth: enrolment alone does not guarantee access. A classroom may be open, but a student unable to afford the journey remains effectively excluded. The free buses have therefore become vehicles of educational opportunity.

Peter Audu, a teacher commuting from Rigasa or Mando to his place of primary assignment, once spent approximately ₦2,400 daily on transportation. That recurrent cost substantially diminished the real value of his income. “The free bus transport scheme has eased my transport fare tremendously,” he says. Another teacher, Yusuf A. Umar, similarly observes that the programme has enabled civil servants to retain a significant portion of earnings previously surrendered to daily commuting. Their experiences demonstrate how an apparently simple intervention can strengthen morale, punctuality and productivity across the public service.

The benefit extends equally to commerce. Olawale Marvin, a trader who recently began using the buses, describes the positive effect on people’s lives as “very obvious and widely praised.” Traders depend upon movement: movement to markets, warehouses, customers and commercial centres. When transportation becomes prohibitively expensive, fewer journeys are made, less merchandise is carried and smaller profits are realised. Free mobility allows petty traders and small-business owners to preserve capital, sustain commercial relationships and direct limited resources towards replenishing stock rather than merely reaching the marketplace.

The buses operate on more than 40 routes across Kaduna State, including corridors serving communities beyond the metropolis and areas inhabited by low-income residents. Their presence across the state is important. Social programmes lose much of their value when they remain concentrated around privileged urban centres. By extending the service towards communities where transport costs are particularly punishing, the administration has aligned coverage with need and ensured that the intervention reaches citizens for whom every saved fare has substantial value.

Even some residents who own private vehicles now leave them at home and travel on the free buses. Their decision reflects both economic rationality and growing public confidence in the service. It also reduces individual fuel expenditure and advances the larger environmental and energy-transition arguments supporting CNG transportation. Nigeria possesses abundant natural gas reserves; deploying that resource for public transportation reduces dependence on more expensive petrol and diesel, lowers exposure to international energy shocks and creates a credible pathway towards cleaner, more sustainable urban mobility.

Kaduna’s achievement has understandably attracted presidential commendation. President Tinubu described it as the kind of practical, people-focused action required at the subnational level, declaring: “This is more of what we need to see.” The commendation is important because it identifies the proper relationship between national reform and subnational responsibility. The Federal Government may establish economic direction, but state governments remain closest to the daily anxieties of the people. Their duty is to translate broad policy into visible relief, designing interventions that reflect local realities and protect vulnerable citizens during periods of transition.

When President Tinubu visited Kaduna last year to commission the buses, he encouraged the state to subsidise fares. Governor Uba Sani chose to go further by abolishing them. That decision reveals the moral centre of his administration. It was neither a symbolic gesture nor a fleeting concession, but a deliberate judgement that public resources should be deployed where they could make the most immediate difference. Kaduna consequently emerged as the only state in Nigeria providing completely free CNG mass transit to its citizens, setting a national benchmark in compassionate and responsive governance.

Yet the programme’s success has not tempted the administration into complacency. An additional 120 buses are expected to support Kaduna’s emerging Bus Rapid Transit system, which would make the state the second in Nigeria, after Lagos, to operate a BRT network. Designed towards the Silver Standard, the project promises faster, safer and more organised public transportation. An ultra-modern terminal capable of accommodating approximately 5,000 buses is also nearing realisation, reinforcing Kaduna’s historic position as a major transportation hub connecting more than 12 states and linking northern and southern Nigeria.

These investments reveal a coherent vision rather than a collection of isolated projects. The free CNG buses answer today’s hardship; the BRT system anticipates tomorrow’s population growth; the modern terminal responds to Kaduna’s strategic geography. Together, they represent a transition from emergency relief to enduring transport reform. The Uba Sani administration is not merely moving people free of charge; it is laying the foundation for a modern mobility system capable of supporting commerce, productivity, environmental responsibility and inclusive urban development.

The transport initiative also complements Governor Uba Sani’s broader investments in education, vocational training, employment creation and human-capital development. Thousands of young people have graduated from the state’s skills acquisition institutes, with many already finding employment in Kaduna and elsewhere. Such citizens require affordable mobility to reach training centres, workplaces, markets and emerging opportunities. Transportation policy therefore becomes inseparable from economic inclusion: skills create capacity, while mobility connects that capacity to opportunity.

Governor Sani’s accomplishment ultimately offers a powerful lesson in the purpose of government. Economic reform cannot be measured only by improved indices, increased revenues or favourable projections. It must also be judged by whether citizens can still reach work, attend school, trade, seek medical care and sustain their families while reform runs its course. The best governments do not deny the necessity of difficult choices; they ensure that those choices do not abandon the weakest citizens.

Across Kaduna today, people are counting the gains in fares no longer paid, journeys no longer postponed and opportunities no longer surrendered. They are counting salaries preserved, school days recovered, businesses sustained and households steadied. In those millions of free journeys resides the clearest tribute to Senator Uba Sani’s leadership: a government listening closely enough to understand where hardship hurts, and acting boldly enough to provide relief.

Kaduna’s Free CNG Mass Transit Scheme is therefore more than a transport success. It is an affirmation that public policy can possess a human face, that innovation can serve compassion and that leadership is most credible when its promises become part of everyday life. In placing 100 buses on the roads and opening their doors freely to all, Governor Uba Sani has done something profoundly democratic: he has made the resources of the state travel daily with its people.

•Dr. Abubakar, a sociologist, resides in Kawo, Kaduna.

Chidi Amuta

Nigeria’s democracy and its federalist architecture face two critical challenges. First is how to elect governors that are sufficiently literate and enlightened to understand the rudiments and responsibilities of governance. The second and perhaps more important challenge is  how to get state governors to understand that democracy is only meaningful if it translates electoral mandate into the good of the people. Any state that has the luck of stumbling on a leadership that combines these two requirements must count itself lucky indeed. Today’s Abia State under Governor Alex Otti happens to be in this unique position.

Our federalism has since 1970 produced numerous experiments  and sporadic successes on translating gubernatorial power into the good of the majority. We have had the Ogbemudia episode in old Bendel State; the Jakande populist development model in Lagos State; the Sam Mbakwe model in old Imo State and the Balarabe Musa populist grassroots democratic development model in Kaduna State. In various ways, these episodes illustrate the understanding of different state governors of how best to deliver development and popular participation to the majority of Nigerians in different states.

When the military under Buhari toppled the Shagari Second Republic in 1983, Nigeria was in deep economic crisis. The treasury was empty. Foreign exchange was scarce and was being rationed. Basic essentials were scarce and people had to queue up in endless lines to access rationed supplies. Soldiers flogged those on queues with horsewhips  in the name of discipline. But neither long queues, horsewhips, nor detentions for minor foreign exchange infractions delivered any tangible benefits in terms of economic recovery. The frowning duo of Muhammadu  Buhari and his friend Tunde Idiagbon were presiding over a strangulated centrally controlled economy.

This was the nation that Ibrahim Babangida rescued by toppling the autocratic duo in August 1985. Ways and means had to be found to deliver some goodness to ordinary Nigerians.  Babangida liberalized the economy by tearing down the monopoly of a centralized government. He devalued the currency and freed the exchange rate from the monopoly of government. These measures alone did not solve the problem of a bad economy. Models of workable economic policy were being sought and touted by all manner of experts.

The old Imo State came up with something novel and realistic that seemed to work in the context of the paucity of resources at the time. Dr. Kalu Idika Kalu, an ex -World Bank economist with experiences in economic turnaround in Asia was the commissioner for Finance in the state.  His formula was simple. The state should only expend the resources at its disposal to meet its recurrent obligations on a month by month basis. Salaries and recurrents were prorated to the resources available to the state from the federation account and internally generated revenues at any given time. Workers were content to receive whatever salaries the state could afford instead of going unpaid for months on end. The people’s capacity for self- reliance was challenged as they turned inwards to levy themselves to fund some development projects. A project like the Imo Airport which later became the Sam Mbakwe Airport were floated and mostly funded through communal self help effort by the awakened consciousness of the people at the grassroots. The totality of these economic measures came to be known as the “Imo Formula”, a totally home grown self -reliance and pro-rated economic formula that simply insisted that units in the economy should only limit their capital and recurrent obligations to available resources. No borrowing. No deficit budgeting. No external borrowing and no pretenses. Spend only what is available and limit the expectations of the people to what is realistic in the context of self-reliance. The tasks of economic recovery and development were popularized as a shared responsibility of the government and the people.

This formula attracted the attention of the Federal Military Government under President Ibrahim Babangida  He quickly borrowed from Imo State the formula that had worked and began to free the state from the economic doldrums of the time. Kalu Idika Kalu was poached and appointed the Federal Minister for

Finance under who the nation’s home-grown Structural Adjustment Programme was developed and operated. Kalu I Kalu was to lead the drive for Babangida’s economic reform agenda which later domesticated the Structural Adjustment Programme.

Whatever success was achieved under that programme owed its origins to the ingenuity of the Imo Formula which encouraged the development of an indigenous Structural Adjustment Programme. The net result was the liberalization of the Nigerian  economy, greater self -reliance, increased entrepreneurship, irreversible privatization and the migration of the economy from a centralised government controlled system to today’s private sector led economy even with its imperfections.

The current democratic dispensation has in the last three and half years yielded in Abia State what may be regarded as a formula for economic development and popular participation in governance. Governor Alex Otti has earned plaudits for commendable strides in translating democracy into meaningful goodness for a good number of the people.

Let me quickly add caveats and cautions.  Abia is not yet a paradise. The state is still struggling under the burden of past neglect and sad governance. There are still workers whose accumulated arrears of emoluments have not yet been fully cleared. Poverty is still the lot of most people because of past denial of opportunities. Infrastructure renewal and construction has not yet reached all corners of the state. Many parts of the state are still locked away in medieval darkness and primitivity. But those still left behind have something to look up to. They are now hopeful that the goodness spreading all over the state will soon reach them.

Gradually, a certain consensus has emerged in and about Abia State in the country. Simply put, there is an agreement that Governor Alex Otti has led an honest economic and social reform of governance in Abia State. The net result is a perceptible improvement in the life circumstances of the people of the state. The people are convinced that the Otti administration has heralded a noticeable change in the administration of the state in contrast to past administrations. What has emerged is a marked distinction in governance which has been marked by a rapid transformation of the lives and material circumstances of ordinary Abia people.

To the best of my knowledge, not so many of the other 35 states have matched the Otti example i in the last three and half years. To that extent, we might as well christen  the Otti model as the Abia Formula. Simply put, the Abia Formula is as exemplary as what was then called the Imo Formula in the 1980s in its simple originality.

The Abia Formula has two elements. First, it has an economic policy component. It simply means the careful application of funds received from the federation account and internally generated revenues to the direct solution of the problems that directly afflict the people.   It means the systematic reduction of the huge mounds of debts owed by the state government and a moratorium on further borrowing. It means the clearing of accumulated workers salaries and the payment of current salaries as and when due. So with pensions and gratuities. The elementary economic logic is that when you pay the people the monies that rightly belong to them, you put back economic power into their hands. People are empowered to resume the role of economic agents instead of remaining hopeless spectators in the life of their state. The wealth of a state is the economic power in the hands of the people.

The second component of the Abia Formula is the restoration of popular political sovereignty. Here again, it simply means the return of political sovereignty to the people so that they see the government as theirs. The return of power to the people means that the people now see the government they elected as theirs because its actions and policies revolve around them,  their interests and daily needs. Each salary and benefits that is paid promptly, each school that is built or renovated, each hospital that provides healthcare  and each senior  citizen that is paid a benefit to take care of old age needs means a return of sovereignty to the people. It means a refreshing embrace of government by the people who elected it.

The restoration of popular sovereignty becomes  very critical  because it goes to the root of what was the problem in Abia before Otti. For 24 years, Abia had been under what we may call a “feudal democracy”.

A democratic constitution was being exploited to legitimize a feudal minority rule. Nearly everything revolved around an imperial governor. He pocketed the state House of Assembly, the judiciary and the civil service. The state budget was managed from the governor’s office or bedroom. He was surrounded by goons and commission agents that were only loyal to him. He warded whatever contracts he deemed fit and to whoever he wished. He paid whatever emoluments he deemed important and whenever he deemed it necessary. Under this arrangement, there was a  

Government and a governor on the one hand and the people on the other hand. The people were only invoked as occasional entities in a manner of speaking whenever it was necessary to use their mandate to legitimize the illegalities of the feudal overlord.

Thus, the current economic empowerment of the people and the return of their interests to the centre of governance indicates a redefinition of democracy as the centrality of the interests of the people in the business of government. This is the simplest definition of what I call the Abia Formula.

This is unlike what became the Imo Formula which was mostly a policy of self -reliant economic management. The Abia Formula under Governor Alex Otti encompasses an economic management style that directly applies state resources to the needs of the people. The contentment of the people is the measure of the state’s prosperity and the effectiveness of government. Most importantly, the Abia Formula is primarily political. It has replaced the imperial feudal template of governance with a new people- oriented template. The driving force of government in today’s Abia is the people and their welfare and wishes.

Infrastructure development in the state is beyond just roads. New schools are going up in line with a more futuristic education policy, Healthcare is being increasingly delivered in modernized hospitals and health centres just as a new transportation hub has emerged with electric energy saving buses emanating from an ultra modern Bus Terminus in Umuahia and spanning out to major centres of commerce in the state. Work is ongoing at the Abia 

Airport designed to service the passenger and cargo needs of the commercial corridors of the state especially the Aba industrial and commercial nexus. Hopefully, the airport will become operational in governor’s Otti’s anticipated second term in office.

The gains of the Abia Formula are immense. But they may create equally immense problems for the future of the state. The problem is principally political. The gains that have been made under Governor Otti will only lead to a lasting legacy if the present administration builds a corps of leadership that imbibes the leadership and management ethics of the incumbent leadership. I am afraid that the present political architecture of Abia State is too limited , fragile and untenable to guarantee a lasting legacy. In a multi -party democracy, you cannot build a governance revolution on the basis of one miserable episodic party. If the present tenuous Labour Party dominance evaporates, so also will the idealism of the Otti legacy. And Abia could end up in a worse ditch than it was in its 24 years of Babylonian captivity.

With campaigns intensifying across the country ahead of the 2027 general election, a cross-section of individuals, groups and organisations are beginning to dole out resources to support their preferred candidates and political parties of their choice.

While some privately donate whatever they wish, others are not in any way ready to conceal theirs; they chose to be loud about it.

Last week, High Chief Government Oweizide Ekpemupolo, popularly known as Tompolo, distributed 44 vehicles and other campaign equipment in Borno State in support of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and President Bola Tinubu.

Tompolo, who once led the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), has since transitioned into the private sector. 

In 2022, the federal government awarded his Tantita Security Services a pipeline surveillance contract reportedly worth about ₦44 billion annually.

The vehicles and other items were distributed at the PBAT Door-to-Door Movement’s mobilisation event at Sir Kashim Ibrahim Square, College of Education, Maiduguri.

The items included 44 vehicles, 88 speakers, 44 generators, 44 amplifiers and 44 microphones, all running into multi-million naira..

The movement is campaigning for the re-election of President Tinubu and Vice President Kashim Shettima in 2027.

Speaking at the event, Tompolo, the Grand Patron of the movement, urged residents to support the Tinubu-Shettima ticket, saying the state should reciprocate the retention of Shettima as vice president.

Tompolo who was represented at the event by Kestin Pondi, Managing Director of Tantita Limited, said the people of Borno should demonstrate the confidence and trust placed in their son by Tinubu and back his re-election bid in 2027.

Before then, he had donated 34 and 30 vehicles to Katsina and Sokoto states, respectively.

While many feel that Tomopolo has the inalienable right to spend his money the way he deems fit, they, however, said the gesture is a misplaced priority.

Many analysts believe he should invest his wealth in the Niger Delta where crude oil that he is benefiting from is produced. Niger Delta is the cash cow of Nigeria but one of the most impoverished regions in the country.

The situation in the Niger Delta should worry Tompolo, not APC campaign, because the ruling party has the resources to fund Tinubu’s reelection.

These are even vehicles that he could have donated to hospitals in Delta or other states as ambulances.

Chief Femi Fani-Kayode

Former Vice President of Nigeria, Atiku Abubakar, has attempted to become President of our nation no less than 6 times and his latest attempt is the seventh.

In 1993 he contested the Social Democratic Party (SDP) presidential primaries and lost to MKO Abiola.

In 2007 he contested as the Action Congress (AC) presidential candidate in the general election and finished third behind Umaru Yar’Adua and Muhammadu Buhari. In 2011 he lost the PDP presidential primaries to incumbent Goodluck Jonathan. In 2015 he lost the APC presidential primaries to Muhammadu Buhari. In 2019 he was the PDP presidential candidate and lost the general election to Buhari. In 2023 he was the PDP presidential candidate and lost the general election to Bola Tinubu. He is now on his seventh bid.

There are only six documented cases of individuals who have contested the presidency of their country 7 times or more.

They are: (1) Pascual Racuyal of the Philippines who contested 11 times. (2) Nicolás Zúñiga y Miranda of Mexico who contested 10 times. (3) Harold Stassen of the United States of America who contested 9 times. (4) Jack Fellure of the United States of America who contested 9 times. (5) Lyndon LaRouche of the United States of America who contested 8 times. And finally, (6) Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal who contested 7 times.

Every single one of them failed to ever win the presidency of their nation except Wade who won on the 5th and 6th attempts and lost on the seventh.

Atiku has failed in all of his six attempts over the last 33 years and he is now on his seventh. Stop and think about that.  In a country of 230 million people one man has been trying to be president for 33 years, has failed each time, and is now attempting it again for the seventh time.

Again consider the fact that the same man has been a member of seven political parties since he joined politics in 1991 and 4 political parties (one of which is the PDP which he left and rejoined twice) since 1999.

Given this, it is fair to say that he is a political wanderer.  Unlike leaders elsewhere, to Atiku the party is nothing but a vehicle of power that exists for him and he does not exist for the party. It is of course his right to keep trying but this could also be legitimately regarded as an obsession.

Nothing is more indicative of that obsession than his attempt to mobilise the governors of the PDP to move against his leader President Olusegun Obasanjo, a man who had nominated him as his running mate for the second time, topple him as the party’s presidential candidate and take his place as the flagbearer in 2003.

This was not only a case of ingratitude but also treachery and especially so because Obasanjo had trusted him to raise all the finances that were needed for that second run.

Atiku allegedly raised the money through private donors and instead of utilising it for the election and primaries he sat on it, refused to release it and literally blackmailed the President who was left with nothing.

Two interventions saved Obasanjo. Firstly the God factor, which was the most important, and secondly a stupendously wealthy businessman from Kano (who I shall not name) who made virtually all the money that was needed available for both the delegates at the convention and the election itself. That is how Atiku’s Luciferian rebellion and ‘Absalom’ agenda was thwarted and crushed.

Yet despite that Obasanjo refused to drop him mid-stream as his running mate and he was elected as Vice President on the same ticket of the man that he had sought to humiliate and destroy.

It was after the second term began after the 2003 election that the real war between the two camps began and I am proud to say that yours truly and others like Nasir El-Rufai, Nuhu Ribadu, Akin Osuntokun, Abiye Sekibo, Frank Nweke, Uba Sani, Adamu Bello, Julius Ihonvbere and many others that were either working in the Presidency or were Ministers together with others like Peter Odili of Rivers State, Umaru Yar’Adua of Katsina State, Ahmad Makarfi of Kaduna State and a number of other governors took the battle to the gates of the Vice President and gave him hell over the next four years.

By the time it was all over we had put him in his place and proved to him that treachery and rebellion are as the sin of witchcraft and never pay. His political career has not been the same since as he stumbled from one failed bid to the other leaving a legacy of division and destruction in his path.

Some may argue that if Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal could eventually win after 5 attempts Atiku may do so after 7 but the truth is that Atiku is no Abdoulaye Wade. He does not have the latter’s sincerity of purpose, courage,  sense of loyalty, humility, discipline and patriotism.

Outside of that, unlike Wade, Atiku Abubakar is more of a transactional and pragmatic businessman who is more interested in making a fast buck than a statesman who puts the interest of the nation before his own.

Unlike Atiku, Wade was upstanding in all his ways and would always endeavour to do the right thing by others, especially in the case of those who stood by him.

Unlike Atiku, he appreciated the  importance of loyalty, he did not covet the position of his leaders, he understood the power and dynamics of patience and he was not one to cut corners.

Unlike Atiku, he NEVER tried to undermine, destroy, humiliate, discredit or topple his benefactors and neither did he attempt to dishonour standing agreements or deny others the Presidency whenever it was their turn.

Wade played politics within the rules and norms: he did not attempt to subvert or violate them to his own advantage.

Atiku, on the other hand, revels in  subversion and believes that Nigeria was established for his benefit alone. This is a man that has consistently opposed and fought against the idea of a power shift to the South ever since he left office in 2007.

He enunciated that notion and willingly espoused that grave and grievous injustice. He challenged Goodluck Jonathan in 2011, stayed with the coalition that removed him from power in 2015, took the PDP ticket from Nyesom Wike in 2022, ran against Bola Tinubu and Peter Obi in 2023 and is doing so again in 2027.

What remains striking is that he has done this even in cycles when a power shift to the South was the prevailing argument from much of the political class, including many Northern leaders who backed it in the name of rotation, fairness and equity.

Clearly he has contempt for Southern aspirations. That is his mindset though he masks it well.

Simply put, he has a sectional outlook and not a national one and for this reason God will not allow him to achieve his ambition.  Outside of that you cannot repay good with evil and escape it before the Lord.

Atiku will learn this the hard way and so will those that stand with him. Is it any wonder that this time around he has employed the services of a foreign hired gun and vile mercenary to help him in return for a massive dollar fee?

In the history of our country we have never witnessed a presidential candidate employ foreign publicity firms to openly run down, threaten, slander and disparage the very Nigerians he wants to lead simply because he is so desperate to be president.

Yet he will fail and more importantly, if the necessary evidence is adduced, he will be made to face the law for the corruption that he allegedly indulged in when he was Vice President.

The most obvious was the Mambilla Power Plant case but there are others like the Siemens case, the Halliburton case, the INTELS case, the William J. Jefferson U.S. Congressman bribery case (for which the Congressman went to jail), the Leno Adesanya power plant bribery case (which is reported to have been re-opened) and other serious allegations of corruption and offshore payments involving millions of dollars which, though yet to be proven, have left many unanswered questions.

To be fair none of these cases have, at least so far, resulted in a Nigerian trial or conviction but all have left a paper trail in the files of foreign regulators and many unanswered questions at home. Yet it didn’t stop there.

Atiku’s worst crime was not the allegation of financial impropriety but his relentless determination to undermine and destabilise the Government that he was elected to serve and to utterly destroy his principal whom he obviously hated with what the Bible described as “a perfect hatred”.

Atiku betrayed Obasanjo to such a point that I, as Minister of Aviation at the time, was constrained to demand that he should be thrown out of cabinet meetings on two separate occasions during full sessions of cabinet.

I did this during the course of the meeting and in the presence of every single Cabinet member and when I did so there was pin-drop silence in the cabinet chambers. The first time Obasanjo saved him from the humiliation and appealed to me and the other Ministers to allow him to stay whilst he sat there looking daggers at me and clearly in a state of shock.

The second time, which was a few weeks later, I made another demand in our cabinet meeting under ‘other matters’ that if he did not get up and leave the chamber as a consequence of his betrayals and treachery against our President then we the Ministers would walk out and leave him to conduct the Federal Executive Council meeting alone with the President.

Obasanjo again appealed to us to allow him to stay but compelled him to apologise to the entire cabinet there and then for his treachery and outrageous behaviour all motivated by the fact that he wanted to topple the President and take his place.

Atiku apologised there and then to the entire cabinet and consequently was allowed to stay at the Federal Executive Council meeting but he NEVER attended another cabinet meeting after that.

This episode proves how over-ambitious he was as Vice President and how he coveted the seat of the man that brought him out of obscurity in Adamawa State and made him his Vice President.

He repaid Obasanjo’s good with evil just as he later repaid Tinubu’s, Buhari’s and the old PDP’s good with evil in later years.

Today he is so desperate to win the presidential election that he has not only destroyed his old party the PDP by splitting it into two but he also did the same to the ADC, his new one, by breaking it in two and driving the Obi/Kwankwaso faction out to join a new party called the NDC.

Anytime he does not get his way or his ambition to become the flagbearer of whichever party he is in is threatened, the party must be broken.

In the case of PDP he single-handedly killed what was once Nigeria’s dominant party and finally buried it in 2019.  That is his political legacy: chaos and destruction.

Worse still, as presidential candidate of the ADC, he has said he will restore the oil subsidy just to get votes knowing that in the process of implementing this disastrous policy he will utterly destroy Nigeria and cause us to lose all the economic gains we have made in the last 3 years.

Let him be aware that there is nothing more irresponsible than attempting to destroy the future of your people just because you want to be President.

Again let him be reminded that to pay a foreign PR company led by a shady character who uses his wife’s surname rather than his father’s, $1.2 million to denigrate, undermine, demonise, vilify, malign and destroy your President in the international media just because you covet his seat is unacceptable.

History is against you Waziri. No person in the world has ever tried to be President of his country 7 times or more and has won except for Abdoulaye Wade and like I said you are no Wade and neither do you share his gravitas nor have his grit.

Statistically and historically you have little chance of winning on your seventh attempt or of ever becoming President. It appears that the Living God has placed a divine injunction on your ambition.

This will be proved in January 2027 when you will be defeated by your old friend and arch-nemesis and be compelled to go back to Dubai and retire in peace.

I come in peace, Waziri, and I wish you well.

* Chief Fani-Kayode is a former Minister of Culture and Tourism, a former Minister of Aviation, Nigeria’s Ambassador-Designate to South Africa, Lesotho and Estawani, the Sadaukin Shinkafi, the Wakilin Doka Potiskum, the Otunba of Joga Orile, the Aare Ajagunla of Otun Ekiti and a legal practitioner

Political parties are important vehicles for the attainment of political power in any democracy. Beyond merely providing platforms for candidates to contest elections, political parties are expected to be built around clearly defined ideologies, principles, ethics, core values and manifestos that communicate their vision for society. Membership should therefore be based on a genuine commitment to these ideals, with every member willing to subordinate personal interests to the broader interests and objectives of the party.

Unfortunately, over the years, Nigerian politicians have not only whittled down the powers and influence of political parties, but have also hijacked and, in some cases, effectively pocketed the parties they belong to. Instead of strong institutions where decisions are reached through established structures and internal democratic processes, some parties have increasingly become dominated by powerful individuals whose personal interests appear to take precedence over the collective interests of members.

Ordinarily, every party member, from a sitting President and governor to an elected legislator and the ordinary grassroots member, ought to conduct political activities in accordance with the constitution, guidelines, manifesto and decisions of the party. What is witnessed in many instances, however, is a situation where a highly placed individual or a small group within a party unilaterally determines what happens, who receives political appointments, who gets party tickets and, in some cases, who is allowed to exercise influence within the party.

Such practices inevitably create frustration and resentment among party members. When members feel neglected, marginalised or unfairly treated, some choose to defect to other political parties, while others remain within their parties but deliberately work against them during elections. The consequence is that loyalty to political parties becomes increasingly conditional, while personal relationships, political calculations and the pursuit of individual interests take centre stage.

Political parties in Nigeria are therefore increasingly being perceived as Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) for accessing political power, rather than institutions whose members genuinely subscribe to their ideologies and programmes. This situation is particularly troubling because a healthy democracy requires political parties with identifiable principles and policies through which citizens can understand what they represent and hold them accountable when they assume power.

Even more disturbing is the practice whereby some politicians openly work against their own party’s candidates and support or adopt candidates of other parties in the name of coalition building, even when their parties have not authorised such arrangements. While political alliances and coalitions are legitimate features of democratic politics, they should be governed by established party procedures and not become excuses for individual members to undermine candidates formally nominated by their own parties.

These actions do not augur well for the development and consolidation of Nigeria’s democracy. Political parties must not be operated as the personal property of one individual or a small clique. Party leadership must carry members along in decision making, respect internal democratic structures and ensure that members have legitimate avenues through which grievances can be addressed. A party that cannot practise internal democracy will struggle to convince citizens that it can effectively promote democratic governance.

At the same time, political parties must be fair to every member and also be prepared to enforce discipline. Members who openly engage in anti- party activities should be sanctioned in accordance with the party constitution and established rules. Such sanctions should be transparent, consistently applied and free from selective treatment. Party discipline should not be used as a weapon against perceived enemies while influential members are allowed to violate party rules with impunity.

There is also a responsibility on governments at the federal and state levels to create an environment in which opposition parties can operate freely. State institutions and public resources should not be deployed to weaken, destabilise or manipulate opposition parties. Nigeria’s democracy benefits when political parties are strong enough to compete, criticise government policies and offer credible alternatives. The country cannot afford to drift towards a political system in which meaningful opposition is weakened or a single party dominates political space without effective competition.

Tochukwu Obi, Obosi, Anambra State

Chike Anyaonu

In her landmark 2009 TED Talk, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warned of “the danger of a single story”. She argued that reducing complex realities to one-dimensional narrative robs people of dignity, equity, and peculiarity. Nearly two decades later, this warning resonates with striking relevance in Nigeria’s polity, particularly in the construction of NDC presidential candidate and former governor Peter Obi’s fiscal legacy in Anambra State.  

For over a decade, Nigerians have been sold a singular narrative: that the former governor exited office with billions in savings and zero debts for the state. It was a parable of administrative purity in a country where corruption is the default expectation. The story was seductive because it offered relief from cynicism; it allowed Obi’s supporters to believe that good governance is not only possible but was already achieved.

But a single story, no matter how flattering, eventually meets the inconvenient force of facts. And now, the books have been opened. What emerges is not necessarily a story of villainy or corruption, but certainly one of disingenuous, non-transparent incompleteness: debts undisclosed, accounts unmentioned, and handovers that listed assets but concealed liabilities.

This piece is thus an invitation to fuller truth. Yes, the danger of a single story does not end when that story belongs to someone you admire; it only shifts from erasing what was bad to obscuring what is complicated. Let’s now take a closer look at the narrative that was polished to perfection for over a decade.

Peter Obi, as former governor of Anambra State, left office in 2014. The claim became gospel in political discourse that he departed with N75 billion, or was it $156 million, or perhaps N86.7 billion, in savings, allegedly without leaving behind any trace of debt. For years, this single story carried the weight of administrative virtue and fiscal responsibility.

However,  stories, even celebrated ones, have a habit of crumbling under the scrutiny with facts. Recently, the Anambra State Government, through Commissioners for Finance Izuchukwu Okafor and Information Law Mefor, disclosed what had remained conspicuously absent from the public record for twelve years: as of June 30, 2026, Anambra State still carries an outstanding external loan burden of $92.35 million, equivalent to N127.37 billion, incurred during and carried into the Obi administration.

Eight distinct facilities, ranging from the $48.33 million Malaria Control Booster Project with $37.34 million outstanding, to the $37.89 million Nigeria Erosion and Watershed Management Project with $34.86 million still due, continue to attract monthly deductions from the state’s Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) allocations. Hundreds of millions of naira are expended each month to service debts taken thirteen years previously.

Yet, a debt dropped, accessed, and utilised remains a debt taken by the governor in office. This is the uncomfortable arithmetic that no amount of rhetorical flourish can dissolve. Public finance operates on principles older than the nations themselves: debts contracted by the executive are debts borne by the state. The eight World Bank and related external facilities attributed to Obi’s tenure, including Fadama programmes, health initiatives, education projects, and community development loans, were not federal gifts to Anambra. They were state-level facilities facilitated through the administration then in power, disbursed into state accounts, and utilised for state purposes.

The distinction matters profoundly. A World Bank facility facilitated for the state and drawn down is a state debt, not a federal subsidy. Subsequent governments inherit both the benefits and the obligations. Yet, here lies the central contradiction: if Obi truly left N75 billion in savings as he claimed, those funds would have been accessible to service or liquidate the liabilities before handover. The absence of such liquidation, and the continued servicing of these debts under successive administrations, suggests either that the savings never existed in the manner claimed, or that they existed separately from the mechanisms required to address the liabilities.

Both possibilities undermine the foundational claim of a debt-free exit and transparent legacy. The contrast provided by the current Soludo administration is instructive. Governor Chukwuma Soludo, himself a former central banker and economist, recently rejected a World Bank loan offer on grounds that the terms were unfavourable and would risk creating a debt trap for Anambra in the future. Other governors across the federation opened their arms in warm reception of that loan regardless of its future implications. This decision, turning down readily available financing precisely because of its long-term consequences for the state’s fiscal sustainability, sets a benchmark for what responsible fiscal stewardship demands.

Soludo’s administration has stated it has not borrowed from any commercial bank since taking office, yet continues servicing the inherited debts as mandatory FAAC deductions. Through disciplined fiscal management, they report reducing the burden by over 83%.

The implication is that a governor who refuses to contract debts he cannot service within his tenure leaves a cleaner slate for his successor. This is accountable leadership, whereby you do not borrow against your successor’s future revenue streams unless you have ensured those revenues will be available when payment falls due.

But into this accounting gap steps another claim, this one emerging only after the debt question was raised by the current state government. Obi’s defence now includes reference to First Bank Account No. 2018779464, purportedly holding N2.13 billion designated as an ecological fund at the UNIZIK branch, a detail, supporters say, that proves substantial reserves were left behind.

This defence collapses under basic scrutiny. If N2 billion in project-tied savings existed, why was it not captured in the handover note delivered to the succeeding administration in 2014? Handover notes, in Nigerian public service, serve as legal and administrative bridges between regimes. They are meant to disclose both assets and liabilities, not selectively present one while omitting the other.

The state counters that the account in question is an IGR-Consolidated Revenue Account that never carried the alleged balance. So, where is the money Mr Obi revealed was in a dedicated First Bank Plc account? Regardless of which version prevails, the timing of the revelation is telling: the account details emerged only after the debt disclosure forced a defensive posture.

This is being smart by half, as claiming savings in a commercial bank account only after the liability question becomes unavoidable is an afterthought, not transparency.

Interestingly, a popular suggestion advanced by a news anchor personality in one of the television stations and various pro-Obi analysts proposes deducting the N127 billion debt from the claimed $156 million in savings, so that the ledger will balance. This proposition represents an aberration in public finance accounting.

Public accounting does not operate on net-off logic. Savings and debts occupy separate columns on the ledger. A governor who declares “I left N75 billion in savings” while simultaneously contracting N127 billion in undisclosed liabilities is not presenting a balanced fiscal picture; he is presenting two disconnected facts that, when combined, reveal a deficit position.

The attempt to subtract one from the other is not accounting; it is rhetoric, masquerading as mathematics.

That’s because assets do not automatically liquidate liabilities. A treasury with N75 billion sitting idle while N127 billion in debt obligations accumulate elsewhere is still a treasury that has failed to address its indebtedness. The state of Anambra continues paying for those loans long after Obi departed office as governor, a measurable reality, regardless of how one chooses to frame the historical narrative.

Of course, governance is a continuum, but accountability requires discontinuity in disclosure. Each administration must account for what it inherited and what it left behind as complete pictures, not curated fragments. What Anambra State, and indeed Nigeria, requires now is not more defensive posturing by Mr. Peter Obi but radical transparency. There is need to publish all loan agreements signed between 2006 and 2014, including disbursement dates, repayment schedules, interest terms, and utilisation certificates showing where funds physically went. Also, a forensic audit of First Bank Account No. 2018779464 from 2011 to the present, should be conducted by independent auditors. And the reconciliation of the handover note delivered in 2014 against actual financial positions at that moment is imperative.

In the end, a debt utilised is a debt taken. An undisclosed liability remains a liability regardless of when it surfaces. Savings do not cancel debts in public accounting, as they represent separate line items that together determine whether a stewardship ended in surplus or deficit. As Peter Obi seeks to contest for national office, the question of his Anambra record transcends local politics. It speaks to a fundamental principle: leaders must account for the full consequences of their decisions, not just the portions that reflect favourably on them.

*Anyaonu is Council Member, International Center for Human Development And Rule Of Law.

 Sam Hart

There is a certain kind of representation that begins at home but refuses to be confined by geography.

It begins with a constituency, in this case, Bende Federal Constituency in Abia State, but expands into the national arena, across Africa and ultimately into the rooms where legislators from around the world debate peace, trade, development, security and the future of multilateralism.

That is the international parliamentary journey of Rt. Hon. Benjamin Okezie Kalu, Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Bende’s representative in Nigeria’s National Assembly has, particularly since becoming Deputy Speaker of the 10th House in June 2023, accumulated responsibilities across some of the principal forums of parliamentary diplomacy. He has served in the ECOWAS Parliament and Pan-African Parliament, participated in the Inter-Parliamentary Union and, in February 2025, was invited to join the Steering Committee of the Parliamentary Conference on the World Trade Organisation. The latter was particularly significant because his appointment is Nigeria’s first representation on that global parliamentary trade panel.

Records of Kalu’s international engagements is not simply a catalogue of foreign trips. It is a progression, from participation to responsibility, from making interventions to helping frame international parliamentary discussions and, eventually, to serving as co-rapporteur of a resolution adopted by the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

Geneva, March 2024: Taking Africa’s Trade Challenges To The Wto

One of the early markers came in March 2024 when Kalu joined Nigeria’s delegation to the 148th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Geneva, Switzerland.

The Assembly, held from March 23 to 27, focused on parliamentary diplomacy and the building of bridges for peace and understanding. The IPU’s official records confirm Kalu’s participation as Deputy Speaker of Nigeria’s House of Representatives. But his Geneva engagement extended beyond the Assembly hall.

During a visit to WTO Director-General Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Kalu raised the practical obstacles confronting African primary-product exporters. He drew attention to difficulties involving product standards and aflatoxin contamination and sought greater WTO collaboration to improve market access for Nigerian and African products.

There was a broader philosophy behind that intervention: international engagement should ultimately connect to the economic circumstances of citizens at home.

At the same IPU Assembly, Kalu also argued for changes to the Union’s procedures for admitting emergency items. His position was that the existing mechanism could limit the ability of African crises to receive sufficient international parliamentary attention. He raised conflicts affecting Sudan and other African countries while also addressing the humanitarian situation in Gaza and advocating greater gender inclusion in governance.

The pattern was beginning to take shape: participate in the international institution, but also challenge its processes where those processes appeared insufficiently responsive to African concerns.

Midrand, 2024: From Nigeria To Pan-African Representation

By June 2024, Kalu’s parliamentary responsibilities had expanded further with his entry into the Pan-African Parliament, the African Union’s legislative organ.

That placed him in an institution designed to bring African legislators into continental policymaking and integration. In September 2024, at the 12th Annual Conference of Speakers of National and Regional Parliaments held at the Pan-African Parliament in Midrand, South Africa, Kalu used the continental platform to draw attention to catastrophic flooding in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states.

He told fellow African parliamentary leaders that more than $200 million would be required to address the humanitarian consequences and reported that more than one million people had been displaced in one affected state. He connected the disaster to the broader African challenge of climate change and called for continental solidarity.

The intervention produced a tangible parliamentary response: the Conference of Speakers subsequently expressed solidarity with Nigerian flood victims and other Africans affected by similar natural disasters.

At the same gathering, Kalu advanced proposals linked to the African Union’s Agenda 2063, including subregional centres of excellence in technology, innovative financing mechanisms and stronger public-private partnerships for infrastructure development.

Nigeria’s immediate humanitarian concerns had therefore been placed within a larger argument about Africa’s resilience, infrastructure and long-term development.

New York, February 2025: Reimagining Multilateralism

February 2025 marked another stage. At meetings connected to the Inter-Parliamentary Union at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, Kalu argued that the architecture of global multilateralism required reform. Representing Nigeria at a meeting of parliamentary leaders preparatory to the Sixth World Conference of Speakers of Parliament, he called for greater representation of developing countries in international decision-making and argued for Nigeria’s inclusion as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

He also questioned aspects of the UN funding structure, arguing that excessive dependence on a small number of major donors could create imbalances in international priority-setting.

 During the IPU-United Nations Parliamentary Hearing in New York, he participated in discussions on financing the Sustainable Development Goals and the international debt crisis, presenting Nigeria’s fiscal experience within that wider global conversation.

Then came an institutional milestone. On February 12, 2025, IPU Secretary-General Martin Chungong invited Kalu to join the Steering Committee of the Parliamentary Conference on the WTO.  The appointment was the first time Nigeria would be represented on the panel.

This was more than attendance at another conference. It gave Nigeria a place within a continuing parliamentary mechanism connected to international trade governance.

The WTO Steering Committee comprises representatives of IPU member parliaments, the European Parliament and other international organisations and meets with WTO leadership and trade diplomats to examine developments in the multilateral trading system.

For Nigeria, that meant another channel through which its legislative voice could engage global trade policy.

MIDRAND, AGAIN: A FINANCIAL LEADERSHIP ROLE

Days later, another responsibility followed. On February 25, 2025, Kalu was appointed Chairman of the Pan-African Parliament’s Committee on Monetary and Financial Affairs after the West African caucus backed his nomination to complete the tenure of the previous chair. The appointment placed a Nigerian legislator at the head of one of the continental parliament’s important economic committees.

At the time, Kalu was simultaneously chairing the Finance and Administrative Committee of the ECOWAS Parliament while participating in the IPU and its WTO parliamentary architecture.

The significance lay in the convergence of these responsibilities: subregional finance through ECOWAS, continental monetary and financial affairs through PAP, and international trade through the IPU-WTO parliamentary process.

TASHKENT, APRIL 2025: FROM SPEECHES TO GLOBAL POLICY FORMULATION

The 150th Inter Parliamentary Union Assembly in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, in April 2025 became another important point in this trajectory. Kalu was the head of the Nigerian Delegation at an Assembly whose general debate centred on “Parliamentary action for social development and justice.”

Kalu used the occasion to discuss Nigeria’s legislative interventions in social development and to call attention to Africa’s debt burden and its consequences for investment in human development.

More consequentially, he became involved in the IPU’s work on post-conflict recovery. As co-rapporteur within the Standing Committee on Peace and International Security, Kalu advanced proposals for stronger post-war management frameworks, drawing particular attention to conflict-affected African countries including Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

His argument was that peace agreements alone are insufficient. Sustainable peace requires functioning institutions, economic reconstruction, social reconciliation and sustained international support.

That work would not end in Tashkent. It would eventually mature into something considerably more enduring. We’ll come to that later.

BRUSSELS, JUNE 2025: RETHINKING AFRICA-EU ECONOMIC RELATIONS

In June 2025, Kalu led a Pan-African Parliament delegation to engagements with the European Parliament in Brussels. There, his emphasis shifted towards the structural economic relationship between Africa and Europe.

He advocated what he described as “near-shoring”: bringing technology and industrial capacity closer to the African locations from which raw materials originate. The argument was straightforward. Africa possesses substantial raw materials and a large young population; Europe possesses capital, technology and industrial expertise. Instead of perpetuating a model in which African commodities are exported in raw form and finished products imported back at greater value, industrial activity could be located closer to African resources.

Kalu linked such a model to value addition, employment creation and the reduction of economic pressures contributing to irregular migration.

Security featured as well. During the Brussels engagements, he advocated an African-led security framework supported by Europe, rather than solutions dominated by external intervention. He also proposed more regular institutional engagement between committees of the Pan-African Parliament and European Parliament to strengthen implementation and accountability.

Again, the recurring theme was African agency: partnership rather than dependency.

GENEVA, SEPTEMBER 2025: DIGITAL TRADE AND THE NEW ECONOMY

By September 2025, Kalu was back in Geneva for the WTO Public Forum and the 55th Session of the Steering Committee of the Parliamentary Conference on the WTO.

His intervention addressed “Promoting Multilateralism Through Digital Trade: What Role for Parliaments?”

Kalu argued that digital trade had become a central governance challenge, affecting entrepreneurs and the economic opportunities available to young people. He pointed to the African Continental Free Trade Area and its Protocol on Digital Trade as evidence that Africa was developing its own architecture for regional digital integration.

He connected those international discussions to domestic legislation, including Nigeria’s Data Protection Act and work on digital-economy legislation.

The underlying proposition was increasingly clear: parliamentary diplomacy should not exist in isolation from domestic lawmaking. International agreements require national legislation, appropriations, oversight and implementation. That is where parliaments matter.

YAOUNDÉ, MARCH 2026: MAKING THE CASE FOR FAIRER GLOBAL TRADE

By March 2026, Kalu’s position within the Parliamentary Conference on the WTO had advanced from participant to rapporteur. Ahead of the WTO’s 14th Ministerial Conference, the Parliamentary Conference met in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

Kalu was one of the rapporteurs for the substantive debate on “Fairness and development for all through global trade.”

His discussion paper challenged participants to look beyond the conventional question of whether trade is free and consider whether the international trading system is genuinely fair.

The paper argued that despite decades of global trade liberalisation, prosperity remained unevenly distributed. From an African perspective, Kalu placed industrialisation and value addition at the centre of the debate.

It was the maturation of an argument he had been developing since his earlier WTO engagements: Africa should not remain principally a supplier of unprocessed commodities to the international economy.

ISTANBUL, APRIL 2026: FROM CONTRIBUTING TO DEBATES TO SHAPING A GLOBAL RESOLUTION

Perhaps the strongest institutional evidence of Kalu’s growing role in international parliamentary work came in Istanbul in April 2026.

At the 152nd Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, he served as co-rapporteur alongside parliamentarians from Jordan and the Netherlands on a resolution addressing the role of parliaments in post-conflict management and the restoration of just and lasting peace. The subject had been developing since the Tashkent Assembly a year earlier. In Istanbul, it reached the floor.

Kalu presented the draft framework, which was subsequently adopted following deliberations by IPU members. The framework placed emphasis on five broad areas: institutional strengthening, equitable economic reconstruction, social reconciliation, inclusive political participation and sustained international support.

The adopted resolution emphasised national ownership of recovery processes and a stronger role for legislatures in designing legal frameworks, overseeing reconstruction and ensuring accountability.

Here, parliamentary diplomacy had moved beyond speeches and interventions. A Nigerian legislator had participated directly in developing an international parliamentary framework intended to guide legislatures across IPU member countries in approaching societies emerging from conflict.

GENEVA, SEPTEMBER 2026: FROM GLOBAL DISCUSSION TO ACCOUNTABILITY

The journey has continued. At the 57th Session of the Steering Committee of the Parliamentary Conference on the WTO in Geneva in September 2026, Kalu pressed for concrete progress on food security and investment facilitation.

He also proposed a mechanism through which participating parliaments would report the specific actions taken in their jurisdictions to advance previous WTO and Parliamentary Conference outcomes. His argument was that international meetings should increasingly be connected to measurable domestic accountability. At the same meeting, he called for WTO capacity-building programmes for parliamentarians to be extended to Nigeria.

The engagement also produced an indication of what may come next: the IPU leadership reaffirmed its commitment to working with Kalu towards the proposed hosting of a Parliamentary Conference on the WTO event in Abuja in 2027.

FROM BENDE TO THE WORLD

Taken chronologically, the record reveals an expanding sphere of parliamentary responsibility.

Geneva placed African trade barriers on the table. Midrand connected Nigeria’s climate emergency to continental action. New York provided a platform for arguments about reforming multilateralism and increasing African representation. Tashkent moved his engagement into the drafting of approaches to post-conflict recovery. Brussels provided a platform for a different model of Africa-Europe economic partnership. Geneva brought digital trade into focus. Yaoundé elevated him to rapporteur on fairness and development in the international trading system.

Istanbul saw a post-conflict parliamentary framework on which he served as co-rapporteur adopted by the IPU. And Geneva in September 2026 returned the emphasis to implementation, food security, investment and parliamentary accountability.

The progression matters because parliamentary diplomacy is sometimes mistaken for ceremonial travel. Properly practised, it is something different: the projection of national interests, the exchange of legislative ideas, negotiation across jurisdictions, coalition-building and the conversion of international discussions into domestic legislative action. Kalu’s international engagements provide several documented examples of that model in practice.

His parliamentary identity today consequently operates at several levels: representative of Bende Federal Constituency in Nigeria’s House of Representatives; Deputy Speaker of the House; participant and Committee Chair in West African parliamentary integration through ECOWAS; participant and committee leader within the Pan-African Parliament; contributor to the Inter-Parliamentary Union; and member of the Steering Committee of the Parliamentary Conference on the WTO.

From a constituency in Abia State, the platforms have become progressively larger. Bende, Nigeria, West Africa,  and Africa.

The global parliamentary community. And across these platforms, one principle runs through the public record:  The legislator who travelled to Geneva in March 2024 raising practical questions about African exports was, two years later, serving as a rapporteur on the fairness of the global trading system and as co-rapporteur of an IPU resolution on post-conflict recovery.

That progression tells its own story.

From Geneva to Midrand; from New York to Tashkent; from Brussels to Yaoundé; from Istanbul back to Geneva, Benjamin Okezie Kalu has increasingly carried Nigerian and African questions into international parliamentary rooms: How can trade become fairer? How can Africa add value to what it produces? How should the international system respond to conflict? How can post-war societies rebuild? How can Africa secure greater agency within multilateral institutions? And how can parliamentary declarations be converted into accountable action at home?

These are not merely Nigerian questions. They are African questions. Increasingly, they are global questions. And therein lies perhaps the most important dimension of parliamentary diplomacy: The ability of a legislator elected by a defined local constituency to carry the concerns, experiences and aspirations of that constituency’s country and continent into conversations far beyond its borders.

From Bende to Abuja. From Abuja to West Africa. From West Africa to Africa. From Africa to the world.

Ben of Bende.

A Nigerian voice in the global parliamentary community. Bende, behold your gift to Nigeria, West Africa, Africa and the world. He is still on duty.  Send him back to Abuja to do more.

Hart, Member of the National Institute, is Chief of Staff to Benjamin Kalu

Charles Odibo

In the often-opaque theatre of Nigerian politics, few things expose the true posture of a ruling party faster than an independent attempt to protect the integrity of the ballot. The recent warning issued by the pro-All Progressives Congress group, Renewed Hope for Greater Nigeria (RHGN), against plans by the associated groups of Nigeria Democratic Congress and its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, to deploy independent polling-unit result monitoring and protection ahead of the 2027 general elections, has done precisely that.

What the group presented as a defence of institutional order has instead revealed a deeper anxiety: a transparent, citizens-driven election monitoring platform has become the ruling party’s nightmare.

At the centre of this unfounded fear stands Obidient Connect, a technology-enabled civic platform developed under the Professor Pat Utomi-led Big Tent Coalition.

Far from the parallel electoral authority some APC voices have sought to portray it as, Obidient Connect is a deliberate response to a simple but profound question that has haunted Nigerian democracy for decades – how do well-meaning citizens ensure that the results announced by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) actually match what was recorded and displayed at the polling units where they voted?

The platform’s philosophy is straightforward. It does not seek to replace INEC. It does not claim the legal authority to declare winners or losers. It does not create a rival results management system.

What it does is enable real-time capture, transmission, and independent verification of polling unit results by trained citizen observers and party agents. In doing so, it treats transparency not as a threat to democracy but as its indispensable foundation.

This distinction appears to be lost on those who have rushed to sound the alarm. RHGN’s Deputy National Leader for the South-East, Mazi Franklin Ngoforo, has called on security agencies to seek clarification from the NDC and Obi, warning against the creation of “rival electoral authorities.” He has pointed to the Electoral Act 2026, particularly Section 60(3), which requires presiding officers to electronically transmit polling unit results to the IReV portal after Form EC8A has been completed and signed. That statutory framework, he insists, must be respected.

No serious democratic actor disputes the primacy of the Electoral Act or the constitutional mandate of INEC. What is being contested is the suggestion that citizen monitoring of results somehow undermines that mandate.

The Act itself, after all, requires that certified results be pasted at every polling unit for public viewing. Obidient Connect simply takes that principle of public visibility and extends it into the digital age, ensuring that the same information is captured, time-stamped, geo-located, and available for independent scrutiny in real time. The case for such technology-driven protection becomes clearer when one examines the documented failures of the 2023 presidential election.

An independent analysis by the election monitoring application Mundx.com produced findings that still demand sober reflection. Forty-eight per cent of the result sheets uploaded to the IReV portal were not transmitted from BVAS machines as required by law. Instead, they originated from more than 800 different phone devices.

In Oru-East Local Government Area of Imo State, over one hundred polling units had no agents from any political party, according to the Form EC8A documents themselves. The APC won virtually all of those units. More troubling still, the results from those agent-less units were uploaded from just two locations – one in Omuma within the local government, and another on the Owerri–Port Harcourt road, the site of the state INEC office. Photographs of those result sheets were taken a day after the election, not at the polling units where the votes were cast.

These were not isolated technical glitches. They were systemic vulnerabilities that eroded public confidence and left many Nigerians with the justified suspicion that the gap between what happened at the polling unit and what was eventually announced could be exploited. In the face of such evidence, the demand for independent, technology-enabled monitoring is not an act of political mischief. It is a civic imperative.

Obidient Connect has been designed precisely to close that gap. Its architecture rests on several interlocking features that prioritise transparency, verifiability, and citizen agency. At its core is a web application that allows accredited and party agents to photograph the completed and signed Form EC8A at the polling unit, immediately after results are announced and before they leave the premises. The image is automatically geo-located, time-stamped, and encrypted before transmission to a secure central dashboard. This ensures that the primary evidence of what occurred at the unit is preserved independently of any subsequent electronic transmission to IReV or physical movement of result sheets. The platform also incorporates a real-time transmission layer that feeds polling unit data into a situation-room dashboard accessible to authorised stakeholders. This is not a parallel declaration system. It is a monitoring and early-warning tool. Discrepancies between what is captured at the unit and what later appears on official portals can be flagged immediately, allowing for timely queries and documentation rather than post-election speculation. A network of trained citizen monitors, recruited across the 176,864 polling units in thirty-six states and the Federal Capital Territory, provides the human infrastructure that technology alone cannot supply. These monitors are not partisan foot soldiers; they are ordinary Nigerians committed to the principle that every vote must be accounted for.

Additional layers of the platform include offline capability for areas with poor connectivity, ensuring that data can be stored securely on devices and uploaded once a network becomes available. Blockchain-inspired audit trails create an immutable record of each transmission, making retrospective tampering far more difficult.

A public-facing verification module will, in due course, allow interested citizens to cross-check specific polling unit results against the images and data captured by monitors, further democratising access to electoral information. None of these features usurps INEC’s authority. All of them strengthen the environment in which that authority is exercised.

The vehemence with which some APC voices have responded to the mere idea of such a platform is itself instructive. If the ruling party is confident in the integrity of the electoral process, independent monitoring should be welcomed as an additional layer of reassurance. If it is not afraid of free, fair, and transparent elections, it should have no difficulty joining the call for more robust, technology-driven tools that allow citizens to protect their votes. The alternative reading is less flattering – that any system capable of independently documenting what actually happened at polling units is perceived as a threat precisely because opacity has historically served certain political interests.

Nigeria’s democratic journey has been marked by repeated cycles of hope and disappointment. Each electoral cycle brings fresh promises of technological innovation, only for familiar controversies to reappear when results are announced. The introduction of the BVAS and IReV in 2023 was hailed as a watershed. Yet the Mundx findings demonstrate that technology, without independent citizen oversight, remains vulnerable to the same human and institutional frailties that have long plagued the system.

Obidient Connect does not reject official technology but complements it by placing an independent check in the hands of the people whose votes are at stake.

There is also a deeper democratic principle at play. Elections are not the private property of electoral commissions or political parties. They are public processes whose legitimacy depends on the informed consent of the governed. When citizens are reduced to passive spectators who vote and then wait for distant announcements, trust erodes. When they are empowered to document, transmit, and verify results at the point of origin, confidence can be rebuilt. The Electoral Act 2026’s insistence on pasting results at polling units already recognises this principle. Extending it through secure digital means is a logical and necessary evolution.

Critics who frame independent monitoring as a recipe for confusion or violence invert the causal relationship. Confusion and violence are far more likely to arise when the gap between polling unit reality and official declaration becomes too wide to ignore. Transparent systems that allow rapid verification reduce, rather than increase, the space for rumour, suspicion, and confrontation. The call by RHGN for security agencies to investigate NDC or its affiliated coalition groups therefore risks weaponising state institutions against a legitimate civic initiative. The proper response of the security architecture should be to protect the right of citizens to monitor their own elections, not to treat transparency itself as a security threat.

As 2027 approaches, Nigeria stands at another crossroads. It can continue the pattern of official assurances followed by post-election disputes, or it can embrace a culture in which technology and citizen agency work together to make every vote count and every result verifiable. Obidient Connect represents one concrete attempt to move in the latter direction. Its existence should not be a source of fear for any party that claims to believe in credible elections. That it has already become a source of anxiety for elements within the ruling party is the clearest possible signal of why such platforms are needed.

The team behind Obidient Connect has made their position plain. They will not be intimidated into abandoning the work of protecting the ballot. They will not accept the false choice between respecting INEC and empowering citizens. Both are possible. Both are necessary. The Nigerian people deserve an electoral process in which the results announced at the national level can be traced, without ambiguity, to the polling units where the votes were cast. Technology makes that possible. Independent monitoring makes it credible. The only remaining question is whether those who currently hold power are prepared to live with the transparency they so often claim to support.

Odibo, a Marketing and Communications Practitioner, is the Coordinator of Obidient Connect Platform

* Total shareholders’ funds to remain fixed

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Sterling Financial Holdings Company Plc (Sterling Financial) has commenced its approved share capital reconstruction, consolidating every 10 existing ordinary shares into one new ordinary share.

Following the expansion of its equity base and balance sheet, the exercise is designed to improve capital-structure efficiency, support strategic growth and strengthen the Group’s positioning with institutional and retail investors.

Sterling Financial enters this phase following a first half in which profit after tax grew 20.4 per cent to N50.3 billion on gross earnings of N279.6 billion. Total assets reached N4.67 trillion, while shareholders’ funds increased 27.8 per cent to N547.7 billion, supported by the Group’s capital raise. The reconstruction forms part of its approach to optimising its share structure as it pursues sustainable earnings growth and stronger returns.

To implement the exercise, trading in the Group’s shares on the Nigerian Exchange Limited (NGX) was temporarily suspended on Wednesday, September 23, 2026. The announced suspension period runs for up to 10 working days, through Wednesday, October 7, 2026, allowing the Central Securities Clearing System Plc (CSCS) and Pace Registrars Limited to reconcile holdings and update the shareholder register. Resumption of trading will be communicated following completion and confirmation by NGX. Services across the Group’s subsidiaries – Sterling Bank, The Alternative Bank, and SterlingFI Wealth Management – continue as usual.

Sterling Financial expects the revised share structure to support more efficient price formation and strengthen its appeal to institutional and retail investors. Alongside consistently adjusted financial disclosures, the reconstruction is intended to make per-share performance easier to assess across reporting periods and support sharper comparisons with relevant sector peers.

A higher per-unit reference price also forms part of the Group’s intended positioning for a valuation that more fully reflects its earnings capacity, capital strength and growth prospects. Sustained valuation improvement will depend on operating performance, returns on capital, investor demand and market conditions. The proportional price adjustment itself does not increase the economic value of the business.

Shareholders approved the reconstruction at the Annual General Meeting on June 9, 2026. The requisite regulatory no-objections have been obtained and an order of the Federal High Court, dated September 22, 2026, confirmed the share reduction exercise.

Under the approved structure, issued ordinary shares will reduce from 68,502,331,708 to 6,850,233,171, each retaining a nominal value of 50 kobo. Issued share capital will consequently reduce from approximately N34.25 billion to N3.43 billion, with approximately N30.83 billion transferred to a Share Reconstruction Reserve. This reclassification leaves total shareholders’ funds unchanged. It does not constitute a fresh capital raise or a cash distribution.

For individual shareholders, every 10,000 existing shares will become 1,000 reconstructed shares, with a corresponding tenfold adjustment to the reference price. This preserves the calculated holding value at the point of adjustment. Actual trading prices may rise or fall when trading resumes.

Voting and economic interests will continue in proportion to reconstructed holdings, subject to the approved treatment of fractional entitlements. Where a holding does not divide evenly by 10, whole shares will be credited and the remaining fractional entitlement aggregated with other fractions for sale. Net proceeds from the sale will be distributed proportionately to affected shareholders.

Accrued dividend entitlements remain intact. Future dividends, when declared, will be calculated on the reconstructed share base. The reconstruction does not itself determine the amount of any future dividend.

Conversion of eligible holdings is automatic and requires no application or payment. Shareholders with valid CSCS account and stockbroker details will have their reconstructed shares credited electronically without further action. Holders of physical certificates should contact Pace Registrars and a licensed stockbroker for assistance in converting their holdings into electronic form and supplying the required account details.

CSCS maintains electronic securities records, while a Clearing House Number (CHN) identifies an investor within that system. Holdings without valid CSCS account details will remain with Pace Registrars under a non-tradeable Registrar Identification Number pending completion of the required process. Shareholders whose records are outdated or incomplete should contact the registrar to update them.

Investors with transactions awaiting settlement around the suspension should confirm with their stockbroker and the registrar how the approved record date and settlement cut-off apply to their holdings. Once adjustments are completed, shareholders should check their revised balances through their stockbroker, CSCS or Pace Registrars and report any missing or incorrect balance promptly for reconciliation. Details of fractional entitlement proceeds, and payment arrangements will also be available from the registrar.

Sterling Financial Holdings Company PLC (Sterling HoldCo) is a leading Nigerian financial services group committed to enriching lives through innovation and impact. Its diversified portfolio includes Sterling Bank Limited, The Alternative Bank Limited and SterlingFI Wealth Management among other businesses.

As a holding company, Sterling provides strategic direction, governance, and shared capabilities across its subsidiaries, enabling each to focus on its core mandate while benefiting from group-wide expertise, technology, and oversight.

With a heritage of trust built over six decades, Sterling HoldCo is committed to financial innovation, advancing inclusion, and shaping sustainable growth in Nigeria’s economy. The group continues to champion customer-focused solutions and socially responsible initiatives while creating long-term value for shareholders, employees, and the communities it serves.