The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • On the chopping block

    On the chopping block

    Seven Days Have passed between last Thursday and today that the Rivers State House of Assembly adopted a motion to initiate impeachment proceedings against Governor Siminalayi Fubara. According to the 1999 Constitution (as amended), the impeachment notice must be served within seven days.

    Speaker Martin Amaewhule promised to ensure that it  was served within the stipulated time. The assembly later claimed that it had served the governor the notice. When was it served? Who acknowledged receipt of the notice? What time was it served? The answers to these posers are not in public domain.

    This first hurdle is critical to any planned impeachment. It must be followed strictly in order to give the governor fair hearing as enshrined in Section 36  of the Constitution. If at any point in time, it emerges that he was not granted fair hearing, the exercise will be rendered a nullity. So, for both parties the time element is essential. When do we start counting the time in this instant case? If we start from the day of the assembly’s special plenary where the decision was taking, seven days have passed.

    Meaning that the governor is left with seven days to respond to the allegations of gross misconduct against him and his deputy, Prof Ngozi Odu. It must also be stated that it is also within his right not to reply, but that would not be a wise thing to do. Why? This is because whether or not he responds, the assembly is constitutionally empowered to go on with the exercise. He can also not say that he was not served.

    The office of governor is one and  it is staffed by people expected to receive such communication on his behalf. Things should not be complicated for the governor by those who are now saying that he was not served the impeachment notice. Are those in the governor’s office saying the document was not delivered there and received by them? The governor is not expected to, and should not, receive correspondence personally by virtue of his office.

    Impeachment is serious business, and nobody knows this more than the governor himself. You cannot evade the service of an impeachment notice. Those thinking the governor can do that by saying that he was not served, and as such ignore the notice, should perish the thought. That is a dangerous path to tread. The governor, and not those people, is at the receiving end and they should not worsen things for him. For the sake of emphasis, this is what Section 188 (3) of the Constitution say:

    Within fourteen days of the presentation of the notice to the Speaker of the House of Assembly (whether or not any statement was made by the holder of the office in reply to the allegation contained in the notice), the House of Assembly shall resolve by motion, without any debate whether or not the allegation shall be investigated. That Fubara was not around when the notice was served is not sufficient ground to vitiate the process. Wherever a governor is in the world when such katakata bursts, they are expected to rush back home to douse the fire.

    Fubara can still save the situation, even though the assembly has vowed not to spare him this time around. Upon his return to office following the lapse of the six-month state of emergency in Rivers, he should have courted the lawmakers rather than continue to antagonise them. Politics is about give and take. The more reason he should have done this is hecause he knows their loyalty lies elsewhere. Who says he cannot woo them to his side, if he plays his politics right?

    We have seen such happen elsewhere before. But to get them, he has to play their politics and talk to them in the language they understand. He must have heard about the anecdote of ‘people talk to people, people understand’ in political circles. If he has chosen to remain a minority and be in the shadow of those he should lead as their governor then he is not a politician. No political godson can unseat his godfather that way. Wooing the lawmakers would cost him nothing, but treating them as a pariah may be the beginning of the end.

    He may have the President’s ears, but he must understand the political terrain well to continue to enjoy this privilege. Saying that the President asked him to join APC,  or brandishing a membership card bearing ‘001’ does not confer automatic leadership right or an assurance of a second term ticket on an incumbent who acts out of turn. Are there anything to the allegations of gross misconduct against him? Did he act in breach of the Constitution as alleged? It is a grave offence to breach the Constitution.

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    Why should a governor spend public funds without appropriation by the assembly or decline to send a list of commissioner-nominees for screening and confirmation? Can special advisers constitute the executive council of a state (EXCO) and approve the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) on which fiscal budgets are predicated? Fubara’s mistake is not knowing how to manage the lawmakers in the face of his feud with their common benefactor, Nyesom Wike. If he had handled things well, he might have won the lawmakers over to the consternation of their godfather.

    This may be too late now. The battleline is drawn again. His only hope is in the President. But for how long will he continue to run to the President? The President has many other matters to contend with, without being bogged down by Fubara’s self-inflicted woes. He knows what to do, but has deliberately refused to do it for reasons best known to him. Those calling for peace today should have intervened long before things got to a head. They should not have waited for the impeachment proceedings to be initiated before wading in the crisis.

    What this says about them is that they do not want the governor impeached, but they are comfortable with him governing without following due process. When the Supreme Court described Fubara as a “despot”, they did not call him to order. When the President declared a state of emergency in Rivers last March to save him from impeachment then, some of them described it as illegal. Strangely, now that the assembly has again resorted to impeachment, they want peace because his neck is on the chopping block!

    Only Fubara can save Fubara from himself. He knows what to do if he wants this cup to pass over him.

  • Rage therapy

    Rage therapy

    Apeople can grow weary of hope without knowing it. They begin to speak carelessly of fire and joke with the lexicon of extinction. They summon ruin as if it were a cleansing rain and call it banter.

    Somewhere between disappointment and rage, the tongue learns to flirt with death. And a nation, like the human body, begins to rehearse its own burial long before the blunt spade touches earth.

    Nigeria is doing this as you read. We have got the funeral habit. Some have called it disillusionment. But all I see is a civilisational failure; animal instinct overtaking everything human.

    Long before borders are breached and institutions collapse, ethics get rotten. Nigeria will not fall because our enemies are strong, it will fall because we desire our own unmaking. Too many citizens ignorantly suppose that implosion will give them relief. Like it did in Nepal? Or Bangladesh perhaps.

    History is pitiless on this point. When a people start invoking violence against themselves deploying death as a casual metaphor;  when civil war is romanticised with the bravado of anarchists who have never smelled a mass grave, external predators take note. Empires have always listened for this sound—the clang of an unlatched door.

    International law has become worthless as nuclear-armed states now act less like guardians of order and more like impatient gods, striking first and justifying later. “Might is right” gets validated with news features and hashtags.

    The United States, in particular, has demonstrated, through rhetoric and precedent, that it reserves the right to interpret reality however it pleases, and to act unilaterally when it suits its interests.

    Last year, the American President Donald Trump threatened to invade Nigeria ‘guns-a-blazing’ to protect Christians from genocide. Of course, he made good his threat though in coordination with local authorities. That incident revealed how easily Nigeria could be fabricated as a moral emergency requiring foreign “intervention.”

    Whether managed diplomatically or not, the undertone is unmistakable: Nigeria’s ability to prevent external force depends less on sovereignty than on the goodwill of those with superior firepower. Had cooperation been refused, who doubts that the bombs would still have fallen?

    This is the New World Order; one in which any nuclear-armed nation can storm an African country on the flimsiest pretext. Leaderships can be deposed and presidents abducted and prosecuted abroad like common criminals. Borders can be redrawn under threat of violence, all in the name of “security,” “humanitarian intervention,” or some other sanctified lie.

    Nigeria is not immune. No African country is. Imagine, for a moment, what Nigerians casually threaten themselves with when they speak longingly of collapse: terrorism escalating beyond containment and major cities falling under siege as the courts and constitution become irrelevant.

    Imagine if the anarchists have their day: neighbours will hack each other to death as rage forges prejudices into weapons. At breaking point, the corrupt leaders over whom many bicker and fight, online and offline, will not remain to share the consequences. They will flee to safe houses abroad. They will not queue for refugee status in Chad, Ghana or Niger. That will be the fate of over 200 million Nigerians.

    We shall remain the negligible indices in a state of war. Guns will seek out our lost boys and carnage will school them faster than any classroom ever could. People who once shared fences, marriages, and jokes will hunt each other to death. Old friendships will split like overripe fruit as many learn to think with the machete and speak with bullets.

    Nigerians will hound and hack to death, people with whom they used to be next door neighbours, in-laws and “best friends  simply because they are Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Fulani. Women will pay first. They always do. Rape will become a tool of terror and domination. Many will watch their mothers and wives, daughters and sisters become “comfort women” and voiceless courtesans to, at least, four or five soldiers or revolutionaries at a go.

     And when they are delivered of pregnancies that no man will take charge of, we shall name the poor, ‘regrettable’ fruits of their shame: Okwuoeimose (War is ugly), Okwoeinata (Not to be told), Okwoba (Red is the colour of war), Enitaiyeko (The one whom the world rejects), Enitan (Child of intrigue); Aiyeteminimowa (I have come to live my own life); Ogunbayoje (War has destroyed our joy) and so on. An entire generation will learn grief before it learns to walk.

    Millions of citizens will be reduced to mere statistics, blurred news footage and “developing situations.” Nigerians will embody the kind of suffering that must be hidden until it becomes too grotesque to ignore. Reason will evaporate and morality will be repurposed as a weapon. Every atrocity will be justified in the name of God, patriotism, tribe, or profit.

    Streets will rot with bodies and human innards will litter our sidewalks like discarded orange peels. Our journalists and poets will be hunted for showing the world the septic underbelly of our rage. Plantations will become mass graves and aid will arrive too late – only after the right images have been captured and the foreign weapons contractors have made profit.

    Through the sadism of it all, we shall accomplish the separation we love to talk about. The Igbo may have Biafra; the Hausa may have their Emirate; the Yoruba, Oodua Republic; and the South-south, Niger-Delta Republic. Every tribe shall have its nirvana; yet, in those hazarded homelands, the same old brutes will rule and the same greed will scorch the fertile soil. Violence does not cure itself by changing flags.

    This is how nations die. Rwanda taught the world this in 1994, when nearly a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in a hundred days. Later, the horror was repackaged into award-winning films like Hotel Rwanda (2004), viewed safely in distant cinemas. The carnage became narrative and the trauma nourished art.

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    If Nigeria implodes, there will be big budget movies. The same powers that nudged, armed, or watched will fly in actors and film crews. Oscars will be won and performative tears will be shed on the stage. Our dead will be immortalised by people who goaded them into mass graves – all for a profit.

    This is the obscenity Nigerians flirt with when they summon destruction in anger. The ingredients for implosion are already abundant: ethnic bigotry, religious absolutism, greed dressed as grievance, and a reflexive “us versus them” mentality.

    Nigerians are skilled at inventing enemies, especially when disappointment needs a face. Elections, football matches, private quarrels—everything becomes a battlefield of blame and identity. The literate and semi-literate alike now traffic in incitement, mistaking virality for truth and cruelty for courage.

    They imagine they will be spared when Nigeria burns to a rubble. They forget that the matchstick is indifferent to which house it burns. Those who inflame will be consumed and those who cheer will choke on fumes. There is no safe corner in a country on fire.

    Our differences must be resolved through dialogue. Not the selective kind that flatters tribe, but the hard memory of what war actually does to ordinary bodies. Then we must learn restraint; the discipline to refuse dehumanising language even when angry.

    Grievances must be pacified, not armed. Nigeria won’t thrive by toxic taunts or a resort to aggression. Violence begets death and destruction. To summon death upon our country is to invite strangers to nourish on its corpse.

  • 2027 Presidency: Early scenarios (1)

    2027 Presidency: Early scenarios (1)

    Over the last one year Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has been waging a losing battle against early politicking for an election that was then two years away. With the polls now just over 12 months away, activities are building up to a frenzy, despite official campaigning not being scheduled to start until November.

    The umpire may not have given its thumbs up for the contest to be joined still it’s not too early to outline scenarios that may define the polls. Nigerian elections are rarely decided in the final stretch; rather they are shaped years in advance by hard bargaining, economic pressures, and slow alignment of political interests. By that token, the 2027 contest is already taking form.

    At the centre of all plausible scenarios stands President Bola Tinubu. Barring any dramatic development, he will be the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate. Incumbents hardly ever step aside. Even a doddering President Joe Biden, who at some point didn’t know if he was coming or going, insisted on running until a calamitous debate performance forced his Democratic Party to shoo him aside.

    Tinubu, perhaps the most consummate political strategist of his generation, will most certainly be on the ticket barring the unknown. The real question is not whether he will run, but the conditions under which he will seek a second term, and the quality of opposition he confronts.

    Some have framed the 2027 presidential election as a rematch as it throws up the same personalities who faced-off in the bitter 2023 contest: Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi. While the contestants may be the same, the circumstances couldn’t be any more different.

    Three years ago, the incumbent was an outsider aspirant whom power brokers in the ruling APC were less than enthusiastic about. Such was the resistance that on the eve of the primary, then party chairman, Adamu Abdullahi, attempted to sell the dummy that President Muhammadu Buhari had anointed Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, as flag bearer. It would take rear-guard action by Northern governors to frustrate the scheme.

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    Today, the unwanted stone sits as head of state with all the advantages of incumbency. Back then Atiku ran as candidate of a divided Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) five of whose governors, rallying behind Nyesom Wike, decided to work for Tinubu’s victory. In the run-up to 2027, the former Vice President has dumped his former platform, choosing to make his bed in the African Democratic Congress (ADC) whose very structures are still in the making.

    Sensing that the PDP’s ticket was being kept warm for Atiku, Obi fled early to the Labour Party (LP) where he transformed into a cult hero of sorts. Despite a modest record as governor of Anambra State from 2006 to 2014, he was suddenly transformed into this would-be saviour who had an answer to all of Nigeria’s problems.

    A frustrated urban youth demographic bought massively into the hype. The candidate was then gifted the Muslim-Muslim ticket controversy by APC. This product of Tinubu’s cold calculation that having a Southern religious minority pair up with an individual from the Northern religious minority was a recipe for electoral disaster, almost backfired.

    Obi played it for all it was worth – campaigning in churches, having photo-ops with popular clerics and encouraging Christians down South to ‘take back their country.’ It worked a treat, generating a surge from the angry youth to those who believed that the APC ticket was a vehicle for the imminent Islamisation of the country.

    Not even Tinubu’s repeated pleas that he hadn’t even been able to successfully Islamise his home – his wife is a pastor and some of children Christian – made any difference. The upshot was unprecedented electoral breakthroughs for Obi in the North-Central zone and in wide swathes of the South. In his native Southeast, ethnic and religious solidarity produced landslides across five states. 

    In the last three years, so much has changed and many things sold to the gullible as gospel truth have been exposed as crude lies manufactured by fake news merchants. Back in 2023, social media was awash with videos that presented Tinubu as infirm. But after he won and was sworn in, the sickly old man attack line vanished. Today, one of the most recycled attack lines of his critics is that he travels too much.

    Fake news is alive and well and would be deployed in the coming elections by dark forces. But they would be confronted by a populace that has been bitten once, and now scrutinise ‘breaking news’ more suspiciously.

    Over the last three years Nigerians have been led by two individuals from the same faith. The Islamisation bugbear used to deceive many voters, turning many churches into campaign arenas, has not materialised. As a factor in the coming polls, this is deader than the dodo.

    Many have pointed out that three years ago, Tinubu as an outside political force was able to defeat APC apparatchik and powerful office holders who didn’t want him as flag bearer. Today, he wields all the powers of the presidency and can embark on incumbency consolidation.

    All over the world it is acknowledged that incumbency is a powerful advantage in electoral contests. In Nigeria, incumbents often win because alternatives fail to cohere and the system rewards continuity over disruption. It is not to say that office holders don’t lose, but they are more likely to win. Three years ago, of 11 governors who sought re-election, nine returned to office.

    After the 2023 poll, APC had 21 governors. A steady stream of defectors has now seen that number reach 30 heading to the next election. Some opposition figures have tried to encourage their supporters with lame comments about the next election not being about defectors “but about Nigerians and the ruling party.”

    Others have declared dismissively that governors have only one vote.  But even those who make such comments know that incumbency isn’t about the individual’s single vote but about the influence and resources his position attracts.

    To understand politicians and their mind games, notice how those who sneered at the defection of governors, have been quick to celebrate when a handful of federal lawmakers joined their camp recently.

    The ruling party’s incumbency advantage becomes more formidable with the opposition behaving like a collection of rival camps rather than a serious governing alternative.

    Despite agreeing that the only hope they have against the APC machine is unity of purpose, that hoped-for oneness remains a fantasy. Every election cycle, they convince themselves that moral outrage, demographic weight, or social media momentum will overcome structural realities. Obi even once famously dismissed such arrangements as “structures of criminality.”

    But to pursue his ambitions he’s today part of a coalition against Tinubu, involving PDP refugees, remnants of LP, and defectors from APC and elsewhere. What was once sold as an all-conquering opposition platform that would reprise what APC did in 2015 is increasingly looking shaky as the battle for party’s ticket shapes up. What happens if OBI fails to get the ADC ticket? Would he jump ship, again? Would he take the next best thing and run as the under card? The nation is watching to see if this time common interest trumps individual ambition. Nigerian opposition leaders are often united only by their opposition to power, not by trust in one another.

    The youth vote which was a disruptive force three years ago, faces a reality check this time. This segment of our population is vast, vocal, and frustrated – but it is also fragmented, fatigued, and structurally disadvantaged. This isn’t a monolithic bloc that works with common purpose. Rather, they are just as divided as other demographics by faith, sentiment, geography and ethnicity.

    Their enthusiasm in 2023 quickly collided with the hard walls of party machinery, voter turnout dynamics, and state power. By 2027, youth voters are more likely to be selectively courted than organically mobilised. Without firm links to governors, party structures, and local power brokers, youth energy will remain morally resonant but electorally limited.

    Ultimately, 2027 may not be a contest driven by ideological choice. It may not even be an assessment of the administration’s performance in terms of success of policies or infrastructure built. It may be shaped instead by misinformation, voter fatigue, ethnicity and elite consensus on matters like zoning. It could also come down to personalities and likeability.

    The race is not yet fully formed. But its contours are already visible. And unless something fundamental changes, Nigerians may once again be asked not who can reinvent the country – but who can manage its contradictions for another four years.

  • Trump as Europe’s nemesis

    Trump as Europe’s nemesis

    At the Berlin conference in 1884, European nations gathered in Berlin, Germany, to share Africa, as one would share a cake. Their only authority to do that was that they wielded enormous military powers which the African peoples lacked. The driving force for them was economic, political and social factors. They wanted secured sources of raw materials, to power their emergent industrial revolution, enhance their national prestige as major powers, and feel good that they are liberating others from ignorance.

    No African nation or people were represented and after the giddy conference, each of the participants went to Africa to tend what they got from what their historians christened the scramble for Africa. While Europeans lived happily thereafter, the savagery and brigandage that went into the invasion, conquest and colonization of the scrambled territory is better imagined. What drew my interest to this history was the lamentation of the President of Germany, (the same country where the war monger, Chancellor Von Bismarck, presided over the unlawful partition and sharing of Africa,) following President Donald Trump’s invasion of Venezuela (subject of my intervention last week) and Trump’s umpteenth threat to use force, if diplomacy fails, to acquire Greenland.

    President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany, while urging for caution, said: “It is about preventing the world from turning into a den of robbers, where the most unscrupulous take whatever they want, where regions or entire countries are treated as the property of a few great powers.” That statement tantalized this writer. In very clear words, the revered president of Germany confirmed without equivocation that German Chancellor von Bismarck and those who gathered in Berlin in 1884-1885, to treat Africa as the property of the then great powers were no better than a den of robbers.

    Upon hearing and relishing the confession, I wished Chief MKO Abiola, the most notable leader of those pursuing reparation for the unlawful colonization of Africa, was alive to witness this historical admission of guilt. Those pursuing reparation for the criminal appropriation of the resources of Africa should latch on this statement, as a proof beyond any iota of doubt that the colonization and expropriation of the resources of Africa should be atoned and paid for. Even worse than colonization, was the brigandage that attended slavery, as a business.

    According to AI overview, between 16th to 19th century, an estimated 12.5 million African were forcibly shipped to the Americas. The European nations which participated in this inhuman trade went on to become great economic powers and the African nations, whose strongest segment of their society were taken out as commodities, have not recovered from the human capital expropriation. When Europe moved from plantation-based economy in the new world to industrialization, they changed their strategy in Africa, from slavery to scramble and partition of Africa, for raw materials, mineral resources, markets, and leisure parks.

    The trajectory has since moved to neo-colonialism under which Europe struggles to remotely control Africa, albeit with competition from, America, China and Russia. It is that competition that is driving United States, originally conceived as Europe’s military and economic outpost, crazy, to the consternation of European leaders. Again, the German President Steinmeier, captured the fears: “There is a breakdown of values by our most important partner, the USA, which helped build this world order.” This writer agrees that Trump is destroying the world order, set up by Europe and its allies, principally for their own benefit.

    While acknowledging that Trump’s different world outlook is fraught with immense danger, many in this part of the world, believe that perhaps Europe is getting its deserved comeuppance, for centuries of exploitation of other peoples. Of course, the leaders of Europe would be banking on the next election in US, to return to status quo. In the meantime, they should worry about how much damage Trump will do, before his tenure expires, and whether he would succeed in swinging Americans, to choose at the next election, another president in his own image.

    Hoping the apocalypse won’t come sooner than later. While European leaders lament, Trump at a meeting with oil and gas executives, at the White House, last week, maintained: “If we don’t take Greenland, Russia or China will take Greenland, and I am not going to let that happen.” He went on: “One way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland, whether they like it or not.” He argued that the existing Pituffik Space Base agreement, with Denmark will not suffice. He contended: “You defend ownership. You don’t defend leases.”

    On Venezuela, Trump remains upbeat about realizing his economic plans for America, regardless of whose ox is gored. He told the oil and gas executives: “We are going to be extracting numbers in terms of oil like few people have seen.” He continued: “Venezuela is going to be very successful, and the people of the United States are going to big beneficiaries.” He went on: “The plan is for them (oil and gas companies) to spend, meaning our giant oil companies will be spending at least $100bn of their money, not the government’s money. They don’t need government money, but they need government protection and government security.”  

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    The Europeans are apprehensive that China and Russia may want to ape America, elsewhere, more so as President Vladimir Putin of Russia has encouraged US in its quest for Greenland. He argued that Trump’s expressed determination to have Greenland is grounded in historical context, considering that America has been trying to gain the country as far back as 1868. According to CNN, “US interest in Greenland dates back to the 19th century, when then Secretary of State William H. Seward, fresh of the purchase of Alaska from the Russians in 1867, floated the idea of buying Greenland and Iceland from Denmark.”

    During the World War II, US had to protect Greenland territory after Denmark was attacked by Nazi Germany. For this writer, the most tenable reason why US can acquire Greenland is that Danes were never the original inhabitants of Greenland. Their ownership is no different from the way Europe laid claims to countries of Africa, with some living off the resources of Africa, the same way a gang of thieves live off a booty or a loot. The people who should determine the future of Greenland in a fairer world, are Greenlanders, without the interference of Danes.

    The pretence that Greenland is part of Denmark stems from the same mentality that inspires US to want to acquire Greenland. It is a derivative of President Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s statement that the world is about a den of robbers where the most unscrupulous take whatever they want, where regions or entire countries are treated as the property of a few great powers. If European nations want the world’s sympathy, they should enter into negotiation on how to pay reparation to Africa, for centuries of exploitation through slavery, colonization and neo-colonization.

  • Nigeria marches on…

    Nigeria marches on…

    For many across the globe, the past year must have been enervating not just with Donald Trump’s steep, punishing tariff walls, but his slow-motion torpedoing of the rules-based global order and the emerging rule of unrestrained, unchallengeable power. Thanks to Trump’s new-fangled Donroe doctrine, oil-rich Venezuela is practically under American receivership for debts which the Orange Man insists a certain Maduro owed Uncle Sam.  It is a brand new world order – one that is not so much a matter of choice but of compulsion – and if it becomes necessary, extortion.

    For Nigeria, the acclaimed giant in the sun, the outgone year must have been one of a new realism and adjustments all the way. First was the burden of a 15 percent tariff clamped on her by Donald Trump under a rather dubious concept of reciprocity; second, the additional burden of fighting a war of terror with America not only breathing down her neck but deliberately mischaracterising as ‘Christian genocide’, and third, the well timed, low intensity scheme to torpedo the administration’s four signature tax laws – arguably the most consequential yet by the Bola Tinubu Presidency.

    While the first two were exogenous and so the administration had little or no control over them, it is, nonetheless in my view, safe to say that the administration handled them admirably. 

    Surely, there are figures to show. Going by the National Bureau of Statistics trade statistics, Nigeria’s exports to Africa in the third quarter of 2025 surged 97.16 per cent year-on-year to N4.9tn, a signal of how much realignment toward emerging markets is taking place, particularly intra-African trade and the BRICS bloc. Notably, exports to the United States and India reportedly declined significantly during the period. In other words, it’s not been exactly a season of lamentation, tariff or no tariff.

    And we know the truth about Trump’s so called Christmas present – the precision strike operations were launched with the “explicit approval” of President Bola Tinubu and with “the full involvement of the armed forces of Nigeria”. In any case, that the terror war is being fought with renewed vigour and determination is no longer in doubt.

    As for the third, the four tax laws on which the Tinubu administration had staked its reputation as incurable reformer, although the challenge had presented as a test of will for the administration, it was one instance that the administration will prove several steps ahead of an opposition sworn to ensure that the reforms do not see the light of the day.

    Nigerians will recall the event of December 17, 2025, when an opposition member of the House of Representatives, Abdulsammad Dasuki (PDP, Sokoto), raised concerns over alleged inconsistencies between the tax laws passed by the National Assembly and the versions later gazetted and released to the public. Since then, all manners of conspiracy theories have been spawned all of them pouring fuel on the matter but adding little knowledge to the discourse on what matters most: the integrity of the process.

    The man, Dasuki, conveniently forgot that four laws were actually passed by the parliament – The Nigeria Tax Act, The Nigeria Tax Administration Act (NTAA), The Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment) Act (NRSA) and The Joint Revenue Board (Establishment) Act (JRBA). He didn’t care to tell Nigerians which of the law was altered. He even pretended not to know that the laws had perforce of presidential assent, were already in operation and so could only be amended through legislative action. For these, the usually excitable partisan mob were led into a wild goose chase over nothing; even as our hordes of street commentariat hopped from one television station to another with barely digested talking points all in the bid to bring down the roof!  

    For the opposition and those sworn to help them muddy things up, it was sufficient to impugn the process, hoping that by so doing, the law would be rendered inoperable!  Well they were wrong! The laws are live!

    For me, there is something fundamentally dishonest in what appears to be a calculated ambush of a process that Nigerians saw through with their own eyes. We saw it at the beginning when the Council of States openly kicked against the bill when the draft was first presented to them.

    Ever since, it has been bad faith all the way! In fact, it became, at a point, a north-south affair with the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), asking northern lawmakers to reject certain components due to concerns it would disproportionately disadvantage the region, particularly the proposed Value Added Tax (VAT). 

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    Even the Northern Elders Forum described it as a policy conceived in bad faith and thus threatening national cohesion; none in the north in particular, seems persuaded that the bills deserved to be considered on its merit. A particular northern senator said he could not be bothered to read it let alone contemplate a discussion on it at the chambers! Which is why it is not entirely surprising that the opponents of the new laws are back on the same course. 

    We are referring here to bills that experts had spent considerable time putting together; in this particular instance, it concerns a subject that the president had long signalled its importance to his administration’s reform agenda.  Here is a president who, all along didn’t pretend that he had all the answers to the questions raised by the bills’ opponents, requesting at a stage that objections be channelled to the parliament as part of the process. And to imagine in the final count that the outcome still fell short of satisfying the bloc of those who think that the president does not deserve a landmark legislation to his name! And to further imagine that they are not even about to give up the fight long after the laws have been in operation can only be a measure of the depth of their desperation!

    How far will they go?

    At this time, it’s hard to imagine. I salute the chairman of the Presidential Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms Committee, Taiwo Oyedele. He has done a yeoman’s job of breaking down the issues for the ordinary Nigerian to understand. Mercifully too, the House of Representatives has released the certified copies of the four tax reform Acts. However, while the resort to open blackmail and campaign of misinformation has, thus far failed, I think the House of Representatives still owes the nation one additional duty: the man who came under the shield of privilege in parliament to raise hell must be compelled to show proof; in the event of failure to do that, he must be compelled to apologise to Nigerians whose privileges he has criminally violated.

    Happy New Year, dear readers. 

  • Between Wike and Fubara

    Between Wike and Fubara

    Whatever name: errant godfather bootlicker, or  a loquacious mischief maker, etc.; that his media bashers may call him, Wike, a versatile, shrewd  master of his game, has since the run up to 2023 elections, defined the character and the colour of Nigerian politics just as he remains the main issue of 2027 election. While President Tinubu, overwhelmed by a deluge of defecting politicians, trying to escape from a sinking ship, is laughing at his political foes and unthinking ‘Obidients’ who only yesterday swore to pull his government down, Wike remains unapologetic as he embarks with an unusual fervour in his self-assigned crusade of ensuring President Tinubu’s victory in Rivers in 2027. Towards this, he has passed ‘fatwa’ declaring Rivers State close to other contestants in 2007.

    Wike, a very versatile and resourceful politician is a man whose adversaries often underestimate until almost too late. The testimony is in the number of wars he waged and won since joining politics at the grass root level as a local council chairman in his state. It is on record that Wike has never lost any political battle.

    His first victim was Rotimi Amaechi, his dependable and faithful ally during his war against dictatorship of Obasanjo who substituted Amaechi’s name after winning a PDP primary with that of the president’s favourite. Wike fought the judicial battle while Amaechi took refuge in Ghana, returning only after judicial victory was secured.  When they however fell apart over sharing of spoils of war, Amaechi came out with bruised nose.

    That encounter which occurred on in Port Harcourt on November 11, 2015 where, gun-toting security men attached to Wike’s convoy confronted Amaechi’s over 50 SARS personnel, soldiers and mobile policemen ended in a draw. The second encounter was when Amaechi suspended the chairman of Obio/Akpor Local Government Area which had become Wike’s recruiting base for thugs in readiness for the 2015 election. But President Jonathan came to Wike’s aid by directing Joseph Mbu of Rivers State Police command to illegally take over the LGA.

    Wike won the third round when he defeated Amaechi as a sitting governor along with his candidate in the governorship election. When Itse Sagay, alleged “Wike climbed to the governorship seat over dead bodies”, Wike celebrated his victory by declaring through his information commissioner that all he did was to “urge his people to defend their right to freely choose their leaders with their blood”. With Wike’s formation of a rainbow coalition of PDP and APC in Rivers State, Amaechi without a political base has been forced to escape to ADC, a ready-made vehicle for disgruntled and frustrated politicians.

    It was the turn of IGP Ibrahim Idris and Major General Kasimu Abdulkarim of Port Harcourt sixth division to be tamed following the beheading of some security officers during Rivers State legislative rerun election, in Ujju community near Omoku on December 10 2016. When the service personnel attached to Wike were fingered following the recovery of the uniform of the beheaded officers in the bush, Wike’s question which remained unanswered was “were there polling units in the forest?

    Moving to the national level after consolidating his state, Wike literarily retired Iyorchia Ayu, PDP former chairman he had challenged to account for the sum of N1b allegedly raked in from sales of forms to aspiring political office holders.

    Wike, more than any other PDP politician, probably caused Atiku Abubakar the loss of the 2023 presidential election. After he and Tambuwal breached PDP zoning policy, Wike who has driven all those involved in that fraud from Atiku to Tambuwal and David Mark to ADC, was further incensed by Atiku who settled for Ifeanyi Okowa to spite Wike despite securing 14 of the 19 votes of PDP leading lights that carried out the screening exercise.

    In the battle for the soul of PDP against Bode George, his estranged godfather, and Makinde who disagreed with him over the controversial Ibadan convention which ended in fisticuff with use of thugs at their Abuja Wadata plaza headquarters, it was his opponents that came out calling on Trump to come and solve their intraparty crisis.

    Unfortunately, after series of external victories, Whirlwind Wike who always ensures those who sow the wind reap the whirlwind, has been drawn back home to face the battle he thought he had won.

    Fubara, against the run of Rivers politics, often dominated by Ikwere Igbos was installed as the first governor of Ijaw extraction for reasons not totally altruistic.  But you never know a man until he is in power or has acquired wealth.  Just a few months into his four years tenure, Fubara tried to assert his own independence.  Fubara, ‘a mistake’, to borrow Rivers Speaker’s phrase was doing this in breach of the constitution. He employed the services of media meddlers and the like of Ugochinchere, an interloper from Imo state.

    Fubara, who was saved from impeachment at the last minute by the president’s declaration of state of emergency, was again served notice of impeachment for an alleged bombing of the assembly complex, conducting LGA election in defiance of court order and presentation of budget to a three-man assembly while he side-lined 27 elected members of the state assembly. After being saved by the president’s declaration of emergency rule, Fubara learnt no lesson from his six months ordeal. He is yet to understand the intrigue that goes into balancing the interest of pressure groups and public interest in a democracy, the deviousness and ruthlessness of office.

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    Back from emergency rule, one would have thought Fubara would have realised that “politics is the art of the possible’’ where compromise is a badge of honour. Now served with another impeachment notice last week, Fubara who has learnt nothing from his six months ordeal during which other people helped him to fight his battle is probably hoping to be saved by appeal to his Ijaw nation, just as he did few months back.

    A Yoruba axiom crudely translated says someone who is aware of enemies plan to have him roasted should not rub his body with inflammable oil.  The question Fubara sympathisers, including the APC to which he recently decamped is not asking him, is why he is deliberately breaching the constitution. But for the appointment of a sole administrator during the emergency who raised a moral question about NBA holding on to unappropriated N300m Fubara donated on the understanding that Rivers would host NBA annual conference, no one would have discovered that NBA refused to refund the money even after the venue had been unilaterally changed by some ignoble men in NBA protesting president’s declaration of state of emergency in Rivers. Supporting NBA’s right to hold on to the money, the chairman of the NBA 2025 Conference Planning Committee, Emeka Obegolu (SAN) said that the money was “an unconditional gift to support the event”.

    That incident is enough reason for the Rivers State House of Assembly to insist Fubara does the right thing. And who do you blame if such impunity and deliberate breach of the constitution provided additional incentive for Wike, who holds no hostages, set in his ways and would do whatever he says he would do no matter how mean?

    Wike had during his recent visit to some traditional rulers in Rivers criticized Fubara saying he would not secure re-election after accusing him of failing to honour their political agreement. But the Ijaw Youth Council Worldwide, under the leadership of Dr Alaye Tari Theophilus, has reaffirmed its total, unwavering, and unequivocal support for Governor Siminalayi Fubara. And while “The Ijaw Youth Council Worldwide categorically states that it does not recognise, accept, or align with any political arrangements or agreements being promoted by the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nyesom Wike”, Fubara was not cautioned about his breach of the constitution.

  • Wike/Basiru clash

    Wike/Basiru clash

    “From my records, he isn’t a member of the APC. I don’t see which authority or temerity he has to be dabbling into APC affairs. I am the head of the national secretariat of the APC. So, he has no locus whatsoever to engage me in any official activity that concerns the APC, until he joins the party”.

    These were the exact words with which the national secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Ajibola Basiru reacted to scathing remarks against him by the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FTC), Nyesom Wike. He had also asked Wike to resign from his ministerial position and face what he called, his obsession with Rivers politics.

    The altercation arose after Basiru led the National Working Committee (NWC) of the APC to Port Harcourt, Rivers State during which they interfaced with Governor Siminalayi Fubara. In the course of that visit, the NWC members had reportedly endorsed Fubara for a second term.

    Basiru equally cautioned the national vice chairman of the APC South-south, Victor Giadom for making derogatory remarks against the governor.  Giadom had reportedly said at a political function that “Gokana is a no-go-area for anybody, be it the so-called governor”.

    Basiru contended that it was wrong for anybody to hide under personal loyalty or political allegiance to denigrate a governor elected by the people. Giadom is said to be an ally of Wike.

    Wike in reaction to the NWC visit to Rivers State warned Basiru to steer clear of Rivers politics. He alluded to those who go to Rivers State because they heard the state has N600bn allocation and accused them of going to the state to collect money only to open their mouths to talk anyhow.

    “I say it here; take this message to your national secretary. Leave Rivers State alone. Go and ask those who have done it before. Please, don’t take our support for Mr. President for granted. You have to be careful with the statements you make”, Wike warned.

    In the statement which Basiru personally signed (from which the introductory quote was lifted), the APC national scribe took strong exceptions to Wike’s allusion that he is interested in the N600bn allocation to Rivers State even as he queried his competence to dabble into the affairs of the APC.

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    The issues raised by the APC national secretary on Wike’s current political leaning, highlights all that is wrong with the brand of politics played in this country.  And in it can be located why it has been pretty difficult for significant progress to be recorded in deepening the democratic culture on these shores.

    Wike has been a key member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) until the last controversial national convention of the party held in Oyo State when he was expelled. Even then, the group he leads has formed a parallel faction. They floated a factional national caretaker committee of the party which went to court to challenge the Oyo State convention. Until the issues in their litigations are resolved, he still remains a member of the PDP.

    Since after his support for President Tinubu in the last presidential election, Wike had been embroiled in a running battle with some key leaders of the party for the soul of the PDP. He owes his current ministerial position to that support.

    But the way he carried on with his group of four other former PDP governors (before Makinde pulled out) has not gone down well with others who feel his agenda is to decapitate the leading opposition party. As things stand, the PDP is a ghost of its former self as most of its governors have defected to the ruling party. The Osun State governor has pitched his tent in another party for fear of disqualification in the face of the series litigations by opposing factions with Wike at the centre of it all.

    So, he remains a PDP member until the issues in court are resolved. As the crisis in the PDP raged on, some of its state assembly members in Rivers State defected to the ruling party. They were followed quickly by Fubara.

    It was sequel to these defections that Basiru led the APC NWC to Rivers State. The altercation between Wike and Basiru is a fallout of events of that visit.

    When Basiru said Wike is not a member of the APC and has no locus to engage him in the running of the party affairs, he was just highlighting the obvious contradictions in the current political posturing of the FCT minister. That role had before now given vent to allegations that the federal government has a hand in the crisis rocking the opposition parties and the slide to one-party system.

    That is not all. By asking Wike to resign from his ministerial position and face his obsession with Rivers politics, the APC appears to be coming to terms with the incongruity in Wike’s current political posturing. Yes, he can hold his ministerial position.

    But he cannot be the face of a troublesome faction in the PDP and at the same time seek to control the affairs of the APC government of Rivers State. Basiru was within his rights when he argued that Wike cannot challenge his job in the APC when he is yet to join the party. It is however curious that the APC is realising the duplicitous role of the FCT minister in the PDP in the last two years.

    Not a few Nigerians had viewed with utter suspicion and dismay the double role he has been playing in both the opposition PDP and the ruling APC government. That suspicion came to a head when a couple of weeks back, Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State and Wike were embroiled in serious altercations.

    The quarrel was sequel to the allegation by Makinde that Wike was attempting to weaken the PDP in support of President Tinubu’s second term ambition. He had alleged that Wike had during a meeting, openly offered to hold the PDP for the president ahead of the 2023 elections.

    But Wike quickly denied Makinde’s allegation describing it as a blatant lie. He said there was no such meeting. We are faced with Makinde’s words against that of Wike with no evidence to determine their veracity or lack of it.

    Even then, the body language and some utterances of the FCT minister have not helped matters. Not with recent unconfirmed reports that Wike is rooting for the former national secretary of the PDP, Samuel Anyanwu to fly the flag of the APC for the 2027 election in Imo State. Not with the impeachment notice to Fubara by the Rivers State House of Assembly last week.

    Wike’s politics in the PDP is responsible for suggestions that the federal government has a hand in the PDP crisis. His politics in Rivers conveys the unmistakable impression that one man determines the electoral swing of a state. That is the impression we get each time people say this or that local government area is no-go-area. It is no credit to our democracy that Wike postures to be of considerable influence in the APC and PDP. His altercation with Basiru exposes all that. It is time for him to take a stand or be compelled to do so.

  • BJ at 80

    BJ at 80

    It was a drama of an evening. It was more than a dinner for Professor Biodun Jeyifo. BJ, as he is fondly called, was marking his 80th birthday. He was not going to be generous to the man sitting next to him. Wole Soyinka, that is.

    He launched a barb at the bard. The memory travelled about 60 years ago. He charged that Soyinka only taught class twice in the full year, in the end, BJ was given a miserly B. Kunle Ajibade loomed from the sideline and tried to see the virtue of it all.

    If it was any consolation, Soyinka had invited him to abandon the English department and join him at dramatic arts. After a hesitation, BJ joined him and moved away from what Soyinka described as deadwoods.

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    Soyinka defended himself as a teacher, going back to his father Essay, and how he has the teacher gene. If he was able to pummel him with a humilating B, Soyinka did two things. First, he made a case for BJ to make a first class.

    WS made a fervent plea for BJ and wondered whether there was any essay that could match the authority of his voice and the rigour of his perspective. Soyinka made the point and won the day for BJ and became third to make first class in the history of the premier university.

    BJ would make the point later that that he was himself not liberal with his marks. At a panel held earlier, I spoke of his generosity. In a last class, I recalled using the word antipodal. The class drowned me in an uproar and they thought I was a showoff.

    ‘I like that word,” said BJ.

    I was vindicated. Ajibade and Ogoga Ifowodo made the point that BJ was stingy with his marks. It was paradox that he would complain of being shortchanged. There was  a case of an essay written by  Femi Macaulay. He scored him A- there was no such category as A-. He called Macaulay to his office and contended that the piece was not an a and not  b+. he just would not let Macaulay be.

    After his querulous issues with Soyinka. BJ confessed that WS gave him a note that opened his career in the United States.

    Dr. Bisi Anyadike, who runs a  school at Ife gushes  about how BJ inspired her.

  • Nigerians love zero-sum game

    Nigerians love zero-sum game

    Moderation, middle of the road, restraint are virtues now almost completely alien to Nigerians. Islamic cleric Ahmed Gumi threatens the republic on behalf of Fulani herdsmen, arguing apocalyptically that going to war with them over banditry and killings would be counterproductive and unwinnable. Pascal Chibuike Okechukwu, alias Cubana Chief Priest, night club owner and former shoemaker, threatens the ruling APC with defeat in the next presidential poll for jailing IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu. Oyo governor Seyi Makinde also threatens ‘to use madness to cure madness’ should the 2027 poll be rigged. His assumption, of course, is that should the PDP lose, then the elections were rigged. And then, former vice president Atiku Abubakar, always hyperbolic and vengeful, Peter Obi, ever so highfalutin, and other African Democratic Congress (ADC) leaders, have also jointly threatened that chaos would ensue if the next elections were rigged. In all, every one of these threateners indicate that their loss would equate with the ruling party rigging the polls.

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    The social media is not left out. There have been torrents of threats against the republic should the republic persist in fighting bandits laying the society waste. And there is also the owner of Air Peace threatening that if the new tax laws were not repealed or suspended, airline business would collapse inside a month. And finally, Nigeria’s neocolonial elite still bewitched by America and the irreverent President Donald Trump have threatened that should the APC rig the elections, US would give Nigerian leaders the Nicolas Maduro treatment. Truly sad. Flowing from the threats, it is clear that most Nigerian political and business elite are overrated.

  • Sense and nonsense in Rivers

    Sense and nonsense in Rivers

    Barely weeks after they seemed to have put their animosities behind them, Governor Siminalayi Fubara of Rivers State and his predecessor Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), have unsheathed their swords again. It didn’t take months in the first instance for the war between the two leaders to break out after the 2023 elections. Since then, they had been at daggers drawn until President Bola Tinubu brokered a peace deal between the warring factions. That deal quickly unravelled even before the ink was dry. Then threats of impeachment followed in quick succession, later a proclamation of emergency that stalled the impeachment, and soon thereafter another tentative peace deal presupposing that the combatants had learnt their lessons. Alas, all along, trench warfare had been unfolding, leading once again to another round of impeachment notice served one way or the other, on the governor last week.

    While the war seems to be about political disagreements caused by misdirected loyalties, it is really all about a battle for supremacy between the governor and the FCT minister. Mr Fubara does not appear to know how to sustain a peace deal, in addition to being tactless and insufferable; and Mr Wike seems apathetical to being gracious and patient, in addition to being overbearing. That the war keeps flaring, it is now very obvious, is less a reflection of the contents of the various peace deals and truces reached in the past as it is about the idiosyncrasies of the two politicians unmitigated by time, politics, logic and affiliations. There will perhaps be another round, or even a few more rounds, of making peace, but it is uncertain that any peace penned would last between two men so unalike in their worldviews and so fundamentally opposed politically and behaviourally.

    The war had been simmering for months despite strenuous efforts to keep up appearances and paper over the cracks. But the latest battle began when an unreflective All Progressives Congress (APC) national secretary, Ajibola Basiru, speaking at the commissioning of projects in Rivers State three days before Christmas, indirectly endorsed Governor Fubara for a second term in office. Having defected to the APC on December 9, not too long after a majority of Rivers lawmakers headed in the same direction, the governor, it was clear, had indeed begun to nurse a second term. It was probably not the most prudent ambition to exhibit in the circumstances, but it had been rumoured that one of the provisions in the peace deal Mr Fubara entered into related to his abjuration of a second term ambition. This may explain why Mr Wike kept harping on the ‘agreement is agreement’ mantra. But whether true or not, for the deal had never been made public, Mr Basiru, who was in a position to know the dynamic of the Rivers crisis, should have been more circumspect in his utterances.

    READ ALSO; Obi’s defection sets teeth on edge

    Last week’s flare up is also speculated to have been partly triggered by Mr Wike’s meddling in the succession battles in a few APC states. Incensed, some APC governors, already aware that the former Rivers governor was resented in President Bola Tinubu’s cabinet due to his rising profile and charismatic politics, threw in their lot with Mr Fubara and let it be known publicly that the governor was being treated contemptuously by a non-APC cabinet member who was becoming too big for his britches. They, therefore, began lending the Rivers governor support for his second term, agreement or no agreement. Mr Wike’s burden is compounded by two militating factors. One is the central role he seems to be playing in the disaffection and distemper coursing through the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), vitiating their politics and rendering them so weakened by dissension that any hope of revival appears foreclosed before the next round of elections in 2027. He is unloved and roundly hated in the opposition, making them wish his downfall. They revel in the animosities he has awakened in the APC and suggest that the ruling party had it coming, and so should not complain after deploying him as a battering ram against the opposition.

    The second factor is more troubling and a little nuanced. His enemies in both the PDP and APC do not pull their punches in suggesting cynically that Mr Wike had rested almost his entire relevance in the Tinubu cabinet on how he swung Rivers State for the APC in the 2023 presidential poll. That race and that victory were of course pivotal to President Tinubu’s election, but some APC leaders now say it is discourteous and impolitic to keep hammering on it as if the entire election was won by that singular state electoral success. The Rivers poll victory was part of a collective, they said, albeit a significant part. Mr Wike’s constant iteration of his role in the Rivers poll success has finally driven many APC leaders up the wall, and they are sick and tired of his preening.

    President Tinubu, a far better tactician than Mr Wike or any other political leader in the ruling party or in the opposition party today, has been more forbearing of Mr Wike’s excesses. He recognises that his stake in winning the 2027 presidential poll is far more epochal in significance than Mr Wike retaining his political relevance in Rivers. The other APC leaders, some of them popular governors in their own right, are more than ready to give battle to the former Rivers governor. And they have signaled their preparedness to fight, regardless of the cost in 2027. For the president to throw caution to the wind, however, and join them in the fray, they will have to convince him that sacrificing Mr Wike or even weakening his hold over Rivers would cost the APC little or nothing.