The Nation Newspaper

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  • How Tinubu’s turning APC’s majority into Nigeria’s long-awaited restructuring moment

    How Tinubu’s turning APC’s majority into Nigeria’s long-awaited restructuring moment

    Last week quietly but firmly reinforced a pattern that has come to define the presidency of Bola Ahmed Tinubu: decisive action often happens away from the klieg lights, while public appearances are reserved for moments that signal direction, intent and resolve. As the President himself explained at the National Caucus of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), much of his time had been consumed by behind-the-scenes work, so intense that he initially yielded the speaking slot to his deputy, Kashim Shettima. That admission, far from suggesting absence, underscored a governing style that prioritises outcomes over optics.

    Yet, when Tinubu did step forward publicly during the week, the engagements were anything but routine. Thursday’s APC National Caucus meeting and Friday’s National Executive Committee (NEC) session became platforms for one of the clearest articulations yet of how the President intends to deploy the ruling party’s expanding political muscle to achieve long-delayed structural reforms. In essence, Tinubu is signalling that the numbers now available to him across Nigeria’s political architecture must translate into constitutional compliance, institutional restructuring and, ultimately, better lives for ordinary Nigerians.

    At the heart of this push is the long-stunted third tier of government: the local councils. Although Nigeria operates a federal system with three constitutionally recognised tiers, local governments have for decades been reduced to administrative appendages of state executives. That imbalance was formally addressed in July 2024, when the Supreme Court of Nigeria delivered a landmark judgment granting financial autonomy to local government councils. The ruling, historic in its clarity, promised to restore grassroots governance by ensuring councils receive allocations directly.

    However, as Tinubu bluntly noted, judgments do not implement themselves. Despite the federal government’s readiness to enforce the ruling, resistance from state governors has largely confined the verdict to what many describe as a “show glass”;admired but untouched. It was this impasse that the President confronted head-on at the APC Caucus.

    Speaking not just as Head of Government but as leader of a party that now dominates much of the federation, Tinubu appealed, and warned, in equal measure. Local government autonomy, he insisted, “must be effective,” stressing that autonomy without direct funding is meaningless. “There is no autonomy without funded mandate,” he declared, adding that direct allocation to councils is not a favour but a constitutional obligation flowing from the apex court’s decision.

    The subtext was unmistakable. With 28 of Nigeria’s 36 governors now members of the APC’s Progressive Governors Forum and the ruling party commanding about 65 per cent of the Senate and 57 per cent of the House of Representatives, Tinubu believes the political conditions are ripe to fix structural distortions that previous administrations either avoided or lacked the leverage to tackle. Numbers, in this context, are not for celebration; they are instruments for reform.

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    That confidence was further revealed when the President spoke of his discussions with international partners on security sector reform. Tinubu disclosed that he had assured counterparts in the United States and Europe that Nigeria would pass the long-debated state police framework. When asked if he was confident, his response was telling: he has a party to depend on. The implication is clear, constitutional amendments and sensitive reforms that once seemed politically impossible are now within reach because the ruling party controls the levers that matter.

    Friday’s NEC meeting sharpened the message. Tinubu moved from persuasion to unmistakable resolve, making it clear that compliance with the Supreme Court judgment on local government autonomy is non-negotiable. Any attempt to delay, dilute or sabotage direct funding to councils, he warned, would be treated as defiance of constitutional order. In one of his most pointed remarks, the President suggested that if governors wait for an executive order, “because I have the knife, I have the yam,” he would not hesitate to act. It was a metaphor laden with authority, and intent.

    Beyond fiscal federalism, the President framed party discipline and internal accommodation as essential to sustaining the reform agenda. A ruling party as large as the APC, he cautioned, cannot afford intolerance or exclusion at the grassroots. Ward and local government politics, often dismissed as routine, are in fact the engines that determine whether reforms reach the people or stall in capital cities.

    This emphasis on grassroots governance also resonated in Tinubu’s mid-week engagement with leaders of Ogbia Kingdom in Bayelsa State. Hosting the delegation at the State House, the President acknowledged the Niger Delta’s long history of neglect and its immeasurable contributions to Nigeria’s economic survival. Yet he was equally firm that progress cannot be achieved by dwelling endlessly on past injustices. What matters now, he argued, is collaboration with an administration prepared to act.

    Describing the Niger Delta as “the goose that lays the golden egg,” Tinubu struck a balance between empathy and pragmatism. Yes, the region had been shortchanged; yes, successive governments failed it. But the path forward lies in partnership, not perpetual grievance. His assurance that infrastructure development would continue, coupled with praise for Niger Delta indigenes serving in his administration, reinforced a message of inclusion within a broader national restructuring effort.

    Earlier in the week, the President’s appearance at the re-presentation of the biography of Muhammadu Buhari added a more personal dimension to his leadership narrative. Paying tribute to his late predecessor, Tinubu spoke not merely as a successor but as a friend and political ally who understands loyalty beyond the tenure of office. In celebrating Buhari’s belief that public office is a trust rather than a windfall, Tinubu subtly aligned that ethic with his own reform drive, one anchored in discipline, restraint and institutional respect.

    Beyond the party caucuses that provided the most explicit platforms for the President to lay down his restructuring markers, the rest of the week revealed a presidency operating on multiple tracks at once, security, economy, institutions and human relationships, each reinforcing the same central objective: making Nigeria work, not in fragments, but as a coherent state.

    On Friday, the President presented the 2026 Appropriation Bill to the National Assembly after convening an emergency, one-item meeting of the Federal Executive Council. That sequencing was deliberate. Budgets, in Tinubu’s reform logic, are not ceremonial documents but instruments of restructuring. By tightening fiscal assumptions and insisting on coordination between the executive and legislature, he signalled that economic stabilisation, security spending and grassroots development must align with the broader federal reset he is pushing through politics and law.

    The same logic underpinned the decisive shake-up in the petroleum regulatory space. The resignation of Farouk Ahmed and Gbenga Komolafe, followed by the nomination of new chief executives for the NMDPRA and NUPRC, came after months of tension in the oil and gas sector, amplified by the bruising confrontation with the Dangote Refinery. Tinubu’s intervention was less about personalities than control and clarity. By asserting authority over regulators created under the Petroleum Industry Act, the President demonstrated that strategic sectors will not be left hostage to regulatory drift or institutional turf wars. Energy reform, like fiscal federalism, must serve national interest, not bureaucratic comfort.

    Security and regional diplomacy also featured prominently. On Sunday, addressing ECOWAS leaders, Tinubu warned that coups, terrorism and transnational crime demand a united West African response. Speaking through Vice President Kashim Shettima, he reminded the sub-region that porous borders make isolation impossible. The message was consistent with his domestic push for state policing and decentralised security: modern threats require shared responsibility, whether among Nigerian states or West African neighbours.

    Mid-week, the President’s late-night engagement with labour leaders and governors ahead of a planned protest over insecurity reflected another strand of his leadership, preventive dialogue. Rather than allow tensions to spill into the streets, Tinubu chose engagement, reinforcing his belief that stability is best preserved through consultation, not force.

    The remainder of the week was punctuated by gestures that humanise power without diluting authority: condolences to Bayelsa over the death of Deputy Governor Lawrence Ewhrudjakpo; tributes to the late former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Tanko Muhammad; and the mourning of industrialist Michael Ponnle. His congratulatory messages to Ifeanyi Ararume, Prof. Segun Gbadegesin, Bisi Olatilo and Dr Olusanya Awosan reflected continuity with Nigeria’s political, intellectual and media traditions, even as reforms press forward.

    Taken together, the events of the week reveal a President consciously leveraging the newfound strength of his party to address Nigeria’s most stubborn structural flaws. From local government autonomy and state policing to party discipline and regional reconciliation, Tinubu is making the case that political dominance must serve constitutional order and social progress, not complacency.

    For the ordinary Nigerian, the implications are profound. Functional local governments mean services closer to the people. Reformed security architecture promises safer communities. Cooperative federalism opens pathways for economic inclusion. And a ruling party aligned behind these goals reduces the friction that has historically stalled reform.

    In this sense, last week was not about spectacle. It was about positioning, quietly but firmly, Nigeria closer to the vision of a functional, stable and respected nation. For President Tinubu, the message is consistent: the time for excuses has passed; the numbers are there; the responsibility is unavoidable. The task now is to turn political strength into national renewal.

  • COLOUR OF BURNING BOOK (1)

    COLOUR OF BURNING BOOK (1)

    From Book-banners to Book- burners)

    for Jack Mapanje

    … a good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm’d and treasur’d up on purpose to a life beyond life

     John Milton: Areopagitica, 1644

    These, still, are seasons of rapid edicts

    Let running tongues mind the bend

    On Memory’s road

    The censor’s voice drops,

    oath-laden,

    like a wrathful axe:

    silence rules the twilight

    of bleeding words;

    an orphaned lyric limps along,

    curse-coated,

    larynxed by muted whispers

    The glossy glide of new books,

    future-bound

    with orchards of vigilant leaves

    polyglot bridge of severed musings

    oracle of a million fables

    counting Wisdom’s kernels in

    white and luminous black**

    The despot’s scourge,

    magic scrawls on his iron wall,

    the bearded prophet of every vowel

    ringing bells which claim the calm

    of stolen dawns

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    The Queen’s goiter

    the Emperor’s swagger,

    alphabets which reek, every letter,

    with the stench of gilded chambers,

    the wind which bares the rumps

    of hen-pecked braggarts …..

    It hides what they seek

    it seeks what they hide;

    they who cover raging smokes

    with the basket of murderous lies

    The moon laughs in its sky

    knowing so well the journal

    of passing frenzies

    These, still, are seasons of rapid edicts

    Let running tongues mind the bend

    On Memory’s road

    To Continue next week

  • Nigerians and the Burkinabe affair

    Nigerians and the Burkinabe affair

    If social media is a fair barometer of the proclivities of Nigerians, then their exultation over the detention of a Nigerian Air Force Hercules C-130 aircraft in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, on December 8 after a technical issue forced it to land is a sad reminder of the deterioration crisis faced by Nigeria. Some 11 crewmen were detained in addition to the aircraft. They were Nigerian sons, brothers and fathers on active national duty. But some Nigerians, perhaps taken in by the Burkinabe military leader, Ibrahim Traore’s months of propaganda, praised the junta, derided Nigeria, and concluded that the West African giant had been tamed by a mouse. They added that Nigeria was being ‘rightly punished’ for aiding and abetting France’s national interest and ‘ill-advisedly’ terminating the Benin Republic coup which tried to overthrow President Patrice Talon’s government. Left to the surly Nigerians, the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) of three military juntas in West Africa did right by delinking from France and jumping into bed with Russia. They see nothing wrong in substituting one Caucasian and exploitative master with a Slav antidemocratic and brutal master.

    The problem is not the substitution that has taken place in the sub-region; the real problem is Nigerians’ lack of national identity and pride. To disparage their country in its hour of trial, to ridicule their men in arms simply because they dislike the administration of the day indicates how ignorant and insensitive politics of division has made them. They have no idea how Col. Traore is charming the Brukinabe like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, how he is repressing his people, how economic development has not been as impressive as propaganda has made it, and how unwinnable the anti-jihadist war has become. All the scornful Nigerians know is that they resent the government of the day, and any reverses it suffers, even if it reflects very poorly on the country, is deserved. They rejoiced over the detention of the craft and military personnel, believing the propaganda of the Burkinabe that the soldiers were on a war mission to Benin Republic through the back door. But what war? And was the coup not crushed the first day?

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    Nigeria’s political division is hardening irredeemably, and its people have no idea what nationalism means. The traditional media and social media commentators seem to think that until a man of their choosing is in office, no leader deserves their support. Have they by any chance heard of the expression credited to a US naval officer Stephen Decatur in 1816? He said: “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong!” At the signing of the American Declaration of Independence in 1776, Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the US, was believed to have said: “We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

    Given the highly visible marks of division tearing Nigeria apart, including the bloodletting triggered by banditry and insurgency, Nigerians seem already hanging separately. Worse, it does not even appear to them that they are well on the highway to Sudan or Somalia, an apocalyptic scenario they may lack the ingenuity to understand or confront, let alone escape.

  • Banditry, extremism and family culpability

    Banditry, extremism and family culpability

    Former Executive Secretary, National Health Insurance Scheme, Usman Yusuf, an oncologist, has as usual been talking up a storm over the Bola Tinubu administration’s plan to fight banditry and insecurity in general with every determination the government can summon. Tragically, some northerners, to whom he has directed his inciting rhetoric, appear convinced that he is the genuine article. On the one hand, the fight against insurgency in the Northeast has reached a crushing and intense level. It may be plagued by half measures, such as deradicalisation and rehabilitation of insurgents after capture or after surrender, especially ahead of their victims still marooned in refugee camps, but any indication that the counterinsurgency efforts were directed against the Kanuri has since subsided. On the other hand, however, the campaign against banditry in the Northwest appears bogged down in ethnic and religious rhetoric incomparable with any zealotry the country has seen since independence in 1960.

    The press, which today is largely against the Tinubu administration, loves to get the opinion of the eminent Prof. Yusuf. Last week he regaled the media again with his careless summation of the fight against banditry. His previous staple of deconstructing Boko Haram within the ambit of his zealous ratiocinations is no longer as marketable as it once was. He is not Kanuri. His new pastime is banditry, an affinity he shares with Sheikh Ahmad Gumi, a notable northern Islamic cleric famous for his sympathies for bandits. Reacting to a question on the Nigerian Defence minister’s logic about fighting banditry to its logical conclusion, the oncologist argued that such a fight would unfairly target the Fulani and indicate prejudice against that race. He was more worried about the atrocities he claimed security agencies and Hausa vigilantes were meting out to the Fulani than respond to the cruelty and economic sabotage occasioned by the bandits.

    Never known to mince words on the painful subject of insecurity, Prof. Yusuf had said: “We strongly reject any plan by Nigeria’s Minister of Defence, Christopher Musa, to wage war against Fulani bandits. He must understand that he is now a political office holder, not a battlefield soldier, and therefore has a duty to listen to the people. We do not support a full-scale military campaign against Fulani bandits. What we demand is dialogue and non-violent solutions, not endless warfare. Any insistence on military confrontation will ultimately fail. We have firsthand experience. We have entered forests where bandit leaders are located, engaged directly, and witnessed the devastation caused by military operations and vigilante groups (Yan Banga). In reality, these bandits see themselves as freedom fighters.”

    It is true that sometimes dialogue resolves a number of sore issues in a society, but that would depend on what the causes of those sore issues are. There have been suggestions that socio-economic factors are to blame for banditry, amidst a number of other causes, including farmers-herdsmen clashes mostly instigated by shrinking grazing reserves. However, it is not clear what kind of dialogue Prof. Yusuf wants. Most Northwest states had at one time or the other entered into dialogue with the bandits, as a former Katsina State governor Aminu Masari once exasperatedly noted, but each time a truce was reached, and handsome money paid out, it was followed by only very brief spells of peace. After those spells, vicious campaigns of pillage and abductions often and constantly resumed, each campaign signposted by extreme cruelty disproportionate to the alleged cause of the disagreement between the bandits and locals.

    The governors who dialogued with the bandits and later resigned to fate are themselves Fulani. So what kind of dialogue do Prof. Yusuf and Sheikh Gumi want? While the beginnings of banditry so-called might be reasonably attributed to farmers-herdsmen clashes, they have in recent years, especially in light of the rampant and lawless artisanal mining ravaging the Northwest and parts of North Central, morphed into very lucrative kidnapping business. In turn, the kidnapping business is morphing into jihadist fantasies as the Mamuda, Lakurawa, and Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (Arabic for “Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims”), an expanding Salafi-jihadist organisation and al-Qaeda affiliate in the Sahel region of West Africa, take firm root in the Northwest. Some northern political leaders, particularly the progressive ones, are painfully aware of the dangers constituted by these groups, and the fact that banditry, not to talk of the short-sighted political rhetoric of some northern governors, opened the doors to the hyenas to ravage Nigeria.

    What is raging in the North, which Nigeria as a country has taken an unduly long time to adequately respond to, is more than a civil war between the Hausa and Fulani, or between farmers and pastoralists. A more formidable but less obvious war is also raging below the surface between the reactionary and conservative political elite in the region versus the progressive and fairly liberal political and business elite of the North. The former are cocooned in religious conservatism which they see as the be-all and end-all of life, and the second are insistent that whatever ideologies are introduced into the system must birth progress and advance the cause of mankind in a world constantly evolving through scientific and technological wonders. The fierceness of the war is indicated more poignantly in the fears of the first group as they desperately seek to prevent the inevitability of the progress advocated by the second group. The Northeast has taken an awful long time to recognise the madness they once seemed generally enamoured of. On the other hand, the Northwest is tragically the new epicenter of a deathly fight likely to determine the future of Nigeria in more ways than the erratic and infantile self-determination struggles of IPOB’s Nnamdi Kanu or the complacent and rose-coloured liberal lenses through which the Southwest has chosen to view Nigeria.

    Weeks after the United States president Donald Trump threatened to bomb terrorists and their sponsors in Nigeria and also warned against political and criminal justice part of sharia, a warning amplified by some Nigerians particularly from the Middle Belt, a group of Islamic clerics disseminated a video in which they scathingly condemned Nigerians who denounced sharia as both divisive and unconstitutional and also dared the US to do their worst. Watching the video, no one is left in doubt as to the fierceness of the conservatism Nigeria must contend with in order to make progress, or the depth of indoctrination and radicalisation that has infected the body politic. Mr Trump’s war of words, which is not limited to Nigeria or even Africa, but is directed indiscriminately, including at Europe, may grate on the nerves of Nigerians, but in no part of his declarations against Nigeria or his warmongering did he say he would bomb Muslims. But his threats have been appropriated by the clerics, and their ire directed at mostly Middle Belt Christians. The threats, expansively interpreted, have encouraged the divisive former Kaduna governor Nasir el-Rufai and many others to amplify religiously and politically divisive posts on social media.

    Little introspection is going on over the Nigerian condition in many parts of the North as leaders and communities double down on their extreme positions. No lessons are learnt from the tragedy that took place on Australia’s Bondi beach where two radicalised persons, a father and his son, took up arms and enacted a slaughter directed against Jews. Indications are that they were influenced by the Israel-Gaza war, which in many circles has been equated with a war between Muslims and Jews instead of a war over land and living space. Even in Nigeria, and shockingly among the enlightened, any crisis or conflict between Palestinians and Israel is often seen as a war between Christians and Muslims. Such intensely binary view of conflict is also indicated in Nigeria where every disagreement balances on the fulcrum of ethnicity or religion, and seldom on issues, ideology, political platforms or even class division. This binary treatment of issues has permeated families, leading to the radicalisation of children and household members compelled to view life through the prism of religion or ethnicity. But it is not only political opportunists like Mallam el-Rufai, or former vice president Atiku Abubakar, or former governor Peter Obi all of whom recklessly appealed to ethnic and religious sentiments during the 2023 elections. Many other political leaders are guilty of the same sins. The radicalisation has now ended up producing millions of extremists, some of them operating from closets, and constituting existential danger to Nigeria’s fragile unity, stability and development.

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    Addressing the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) National Executive Committee meeting late last week in Abuja, President Tinubu underscored the fragility of Nigeria in his promise to go all-out against non-state actors and terrorists. The truth is that he has no choice, caught as he is between the US rock and Nigeria’s insecurity hard place. But almost immediately, revisionists like Prof. Yusuf decided to ethnicise the war against terror as if Fulani and Muslims were to be specially targeted, just as Mallam el-Rufai has painted a dismal but fallacious picture of Muslims being purged from office and power. Such incendiary and opaque views are believed to resonate in some parts of the North, especially among the gullible. However, Nigeria’s economic indicators show that if growth is not sustained at a high level, the country’s rising and unchecked population could trigger chaos or revolution. But how can growth be assured when insecurity gulps a significant proportion of national resources, not to talk of young men and women consumed by needless war in at least four regions of the country?

    As the northern elite take their eyes off the ball in a wild goose chase for ethnic and religious advantage, they have virtually forgone billions of dollars in tourism revenue. (Kenya makes about $3.5bn annually). The North has multiple tourist destinations either in game reserves or other destinations: Yankari and Borgu game reserves, Mambilla Plateau, Gurara Waterfalls, Wikki Warm Springs, Kajuru Castle, and dozens more. No one visits those exotic and beautiful destinations anymore. Tribe and religion, and years of indulging northern youths and neglecting to curb their bloody tendencies when they were still amenable to control, continue to rob the region of huge earnings. The region’s dominant political and business elite concentrate on Abuja and political power, gorge on oil earnings, and by their incompetence and exploitative orientation impoverish their population. No elite and no generation have been so irresponsible. Worse, no remedies are being conceived or applied save in a few states led by modern and progressive governors who see no future in the bestial return to atavism overtaking the region.

    The disintegration of Somalia, the ongoing civil war in Sudan, the irresolvable chaos of Libya, and the coup-ridden countries of West Africa offer no lessons. That was why Russian flags were hoisted in parts of the North during hardship protests in August 2024, and why some members of the elite sold the idea of a coup d’etat, a bait bought by some incurable optimists unable to appreciate that Nigeria had become too big, too exposed, and even too fractious to fall under the magic wand of military officers. The times have changed, ethnic and religious differences have ossified, and political divisions have become intractable. It is sheer fantasy to expect that a country of more than 230 million people can consequently be mesmerised by a few officers armed with guns, a coup speech, and promises of utopia which their military ancestors failed to midwife for the more than 28 years they seized power and wrecked the country. Reforms are being undertaken, even if imperfect, and democracy, though it continues to wobble, is taking roots. There is free speech, rule of law, freedom of conscience whether they are what they are cracked up to be or not. If the elite will not eschew the madness that is consuming them and find ways of minimising the differences that unsettle them, and if they continue to embrace and wink at the waspish rhetoric of yesterday’s men like Prof. Yusuf and Mallam el-Rufai, then they most brace for calamity, for it will come as surely as day follows night.

  • Opposition parties and fear of one-party state

    Opposition parties and fear of one-party state

    A spectral nightmare assails Nigeria’s opposition parties. They have become so befuddled by their own actions and inactions that they cannot explain where they are and where they want to go next. Their ordeal apparently arose from an inferiority complex, but they won’t admit it. They regularly conjure up the image of the polity lapsing into a one-party system. But they cannot justify their claim without indicting themselves. They depict the portrait of a ruling party that set out to ruin the opposition, but they forget that politics is like a football match. The result you get is determined by the tactics of the players and not the complaints about the rival team. The opposition parties have so far demonstrated tactlessness. They appear to prefer rancorous engagements to rational arrangements. They blame others for their immobile motions. They display an ego that emanates from the figment of hyperactive imagination; they brandish a yellow card – to the ruling party – out of sheer illusion of grandeur. Their persistent complaints have become their only weapon for blackmailing the ruling party.

    Instead of coming together to present a formidable front, opposition parties are already accusing the governing party of rigging the 2027 general election, which has not been conducted by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

    APC is expanding its coast because it is utilising the opportunities at its disposal very well. It is building on the antecedents of the legacy parties that fused in 2014 and succeeded in managing their internal cleavages. The wisdom that permitted APC chieftains to resolve to stay and survive together is grossly lacking in their rivals.

    In a heterogeneous country like Nigeria, having a one-party state can only be a product of daydreaming. But what cannot be ruled out is the dominance of one party that has done its homework accurately under a dynamic leader. Yet, this is not final. No particular party can dominate the polity forever.

    Nigeria can only officially become a one-party state if the Constitution prescribes it. That possibility is highly remote in a highly diversified nation-state where freedom of association and assembly can never be outlawed.

    Like the party in power, the opposition parties swim in an ideological vacuum, without clear, unambiguous, coherent beliefs and guiding principles. The sole motivation is floating a vehicle that can catapult their leading lights to power. The link between ideological doctrine and corresponding governance focus is lost.

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    Since there is no unifying idea, individual opposition parties work at cross-purposes, oblivious of the fact that there is strength in unity and cohesion.

    Under the current presidential system, the 1999 Constitution (as amended) guarantees a multi-party system, which fundamentally satisfies the criteria of diversity, representation and inclusivity. The prevailing political order reflects the plural nature of Nigeria’s society and accommodates diverse ethnic, religious, and cultural groups, thereby offering platforms for varied interests.

    Currently, 18 political parties are on the register of the umpire. In September, 14 political associations that applied for registration as political parties were shortlisted for vetting.

    Five of the pre-existing 18 parties – the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the Labour Party (LP), the New Nigeria Peoples Party (NNPP), and the African Democratic Congress (ADC) – are potentially strong. The fifth party, the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), only operates in a region, the Southeast, with Anambra State as its undisputed and permanent stronghold. It should be noted that the ADC qualifies to be among the Big Five because of the Atiku Abubakar factor, although the borrowed platform is surprisingly not waxing stronger.

    In the second category are three parties – Accord (A), often used and dumped, but now adopted for next year’s governorship poll by desperate Osun State Governor Ademola Adeleke; the Social Democratic Party (SDP), which is increasingly being popularised by the wealthy lawyer and businessman, Adebayo Adewole; the Young Progressive Party (YPP), which was orphaned by the exit of Senator Ifeanyi Ubah; and the Zenith Labour Party (ZLP), which is always praying for adoption by aggrieved defectors from the major parties.

    Other platforms, largely considered as mushroom parties, are the Action Alliance (AA), African Action Congress (AAC), Allied Peoples Movement (APM), Boot Party (BP), National Rescue Movement (NRM), and Peoples Redemption Party (PRP). On poll days, their presidential candidates are like spectators.

    Both the ruling and opposition parties face similar challenges in varying degrees. The only difference is their diverse responses to the problems, their leadership, the place of the crisis resolution mechanism, and how they are playing their roles as political parties.

    While the ruling party is expected to monitor the government it has midwifed to ensure that it delivers on its cardinal campaign promises and never sleeps on guard, the role of the opposition is to offer constructive criticisms and provide robust checks and balances to the ruling party and the government. So far, the role of opposition in democracy has not been effectively felt.

    Also, both the ruling and opposition parties face the constraints of internal division and external pressures. But while the ruling party, being the controller of power and resources under a strong and dynamic leadership, can easily exert influence on its members, resist external pressures, insist on party supremacy, enforce discipline and whip erring members to line, members of the opposition parties, already left in the cold outside the power calculus, are easily uncontrollable, especially when their national leaderships are disputed or when they become the source of division, destabilisation and discord.

    Individually, the scattered opposition platforms are in disarray, aptly bogged down by infighting. Their inability to put their houses in order cannot be the fault of the ruling. The intra-party crisis has led to fragmentation, particularly in the main opposition party, the PDP, the LP and the NNPP, which persistently suffer from avoidable leadership tussles, factionalisation and futile reconciliation.

    The PDP spends more time in court than on the mobilisation field. Tragedy has hit the platform, decimating the fold with the exit of the Atiku camp. Even those left behind cannot close ranks. While a section wants to keep the platform as a proper opposition party, a section is actually pushing for a deal with the ruling party.

    Leadership is a bone of contention in the PDP. Only the court can interpret the lingo of its Babel. The party is polarised; neither the Wike camp or the Turaki group can accurately predict where the pendulum will swing. That is why key chieftains, including the governors, are jumping from what has become a sinking ship.

    Defections are not peculiar to the PDP. It cut across the opposition community. In their cross-carpeting desperation, the chieftains are not learning the tactics and strategies for survival, which are the legacies of the former Opposition Leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, who is now the President. As a party leader, he made patriotic sacrifices, deployed resources, and served as a bridge builder, manager of crisis and symbol of the organisation.

    In those 16 years of the PDP hegemony, the party had 28 governors. As people defected from the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) to the PDP, those in the opposition went to the drawing board to strategise. By dint of hard work and courageous moves, they aborted the prolonged and planned permanent dominance of the polity by the PDP, which boasted that it would rule Nigeria for the next 60 years.

    Unlike Asiwaju Tinubu and his compatriots, today’s opposition figures tend to prioritise personal advancement, financial incentives, and the “lure of political relevance” over ideological alliance, sacrifice and commitment to broad goals of salvaging the country.

    Also, the opposition cannot stir meaningful debates on government policies and programmes because they cannot really approach voters with alternatives that can elicit public confidence. Their indulgence in personality attacks and a campaign of calumny, instead of showcasing their programmes, accounts for their low popularity rating. Although Nigeria is going through challenging times, the opposition cannot boldly say that the government of the day is not working hard to reposition the critical sectors through its bold socio-economic reforms.

    Neither is the opposition’s recourse to wiping emotions capable of yielding sufficient political capital. While the PDP and other smaller parties have accused the ruling party of deploying the anti-graft agencies to intimidate, witch-hunt and oppress their members so that they can defect, it is evident that the allegation is unfounded. This is because the suspects, irrespective of political leanings, are being investigated and prosecuted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC).

    Opposition in Nigeria is becoming a sort of window dressing. Their tactics are becoming crude, with key figures making wild appeals to ethnicity and religion. This is injurious to the cause of nation-building and harmony. After months of planning for a coalition movement, the structure has not arrived. The PDP, LP, NNPP and ADC cannot jettison their differences, despite knowing that they cannot individually compete for presidential power with the APC and triumph.

    Can Atiku make a sacrifice, like Tinubu did when he sacrificed his vice presidential ambition in 2015? Can he step down? Also, can Peter Obi dump his presidential bid and pair with Atiku as the running mate? Can there be a compromise?

    There is no chance for a one-party system in Nigeria. But there could be a dominant party at a given time. PDP is a brand and to bounce back, its leaders should return to the drawing board to re-strategise.

     The opposition has a lot to learn from the ruling party in coordinating its vision, tactics, crisis resolution, reconciliation, and leadership.

    Planning and winning an election does not start and end with ranting. It is a long race. It requires focus. It needs resources – men, money, and materials. It is like trying to build a factory. All hands must be on deck. Any political party that intends to be a long-time player in the Nigerian political system must understand the vastness and dynamics of the system. It must then deploy the right resources through the right people to get the right results, even though the results may not come immediately.

    Today’s opposition parties need to return to the classroom and learn from the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. The Leader of Opposition in the First and Second Republics made his parties the darlings of the people. Despite the failure of the Action Group (AG) to occupy the federal seat in the First Republic, and the near success of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) to win the 1983 election, Awo’s parties etched the opposition leader’s name in the hearts of modern history.

    The achievements of the AG in the defunct Western Region have remained unparalleled. Also, the success of the UPN in the Southwest, and later Bendel and Kwara states, during the short-lived Second Republic showed how a strong opposition party should operate.

    Between 1999 and 2003, AD was in power in the six Southwest states. The governors -Tinubu (Lagos), Lam Adesina (Oyo), Olusegun Osoba (Ogun), Bisi Akande (Osun), Adebayo Adefarati (Ondo), and Niyi Adebayo (Ekiti) – did their best. When EFCC was on the trail of their counterparts in other regions, they walked freely on the streets. Also, they never defected. They were consistent. Unfortunately, the current opposition parties are not focused on rendering services to the people. Their leaders are after what to pocket and live like emperors at the expense of the masses. This is why the federal seat is their main target.

    None of the current opposition parties can point at any programme that matches, much less surpasses, any Federal Government’s programmes. The UPN’s Four Cardinal Programmes remain unique till today. Why can’t the opposition parties adopt at least two of them in their states?   

    It is not too late for the opposition parties to redirect their steps.

    The general election is about a year away. A serious opposition party that is not out for the filthy lucre would utilise the months ahead to enunciate several programmes to uplift the people. Making noise about the ruling party will not stir the electorate to vote against a government that has done far better than all the other governments in the last 26 years. The cacophony about an imminent one-party state cannot sway the electorate. Only a performing opposition can make the voters change their minds.  

  • Life in the opposition wilderness

    Life in the opposition wilderness

    These are not the best of times for opposition parties in Nigeria. On paper there are scores of them registered with Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). In reality, only a handful of them exist with realistic chance of success at the polls.

    Today, the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) controls 28 governorships and seems to be casually targeting the 32 once held by the once-upon-a-time mighty Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Incidentally, this force of nature that at some point boasted it would govern the country for 60 years is now a shell of itself.

    Aside battling fragmentation which further enfeebles it in its bid to return to power anytime soon, opposition parties and their most prominent leaders are fighting for scraps looking for what to hurl at the ruling party. Bad news and statistics are good news for them. Unfortunately, they’ve not had much to work with in this area.

    After United States President, Donald Trump, labelled Nigeria ‘a disgraced country’, threatening to storm our shores with ‘guns blazing’, there was jubilation in certain quarters. Visions of US marines dropping on the roof at Aso Rock to effect regime change had some people in ecstasy. Alas, it was just a fleeting dream!

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    What followed was swift engagement with Washington by the government. After the recent fact-finding visit by the American congressional delegation, every dream about bombs dropping from the sky disappeared in the unappealing diplomatic talk.

    Even the rash of suspicious mass abductions which looked like a reprise of the final days of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s hapless regime, have petered out as the Nigeria Army fanned out ‘guns-a-blazing’ across the land.

    It’s Christmas time and the trademark fuel queues are nowhere to be found. Food prices are crashing. The president just decisively dealt with necessary personnel changes that were potentially distracting for his government, and raw material for a thousand opposition press releases. Tinubu looks increasingly presidential, his would-be usurpers increasingly frustrated with feeding on scraps.   

  • From farm to freight: Ekiti’s agro-allied cargo advance

    From farm to freight: Ekiti’s agro-allied cargo advance

    It was a privilege to witness the commissioning of the Ekiti Agro-Allied International Cargo Airport last week. It was a momentous, uplifting occasion – truly an experience of being part of history in the making, for reasons that go far beyond the tarmac. Key for me is that Ekiti is finally ready to become a logistical hub for the region.

    What was witnessed on December 10, 2025, in Ekiti State, when Governor Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji (BAO) inaugurated the N49.77 billion airport, was a reconfirmation. It reconfirmed that a deliberate economic programme is essential to achieving economic prosperity in the near term.

    For historical accuracy, former Governor Kayode Fayemi’s foresight in initiating the project must be commended, but in a country riddled with childlike rivalries and repudiations, Oyebanji has shown great maturity and tactical élan by seeing this initiative to fruition. This should be a sobering lesson for all.

    The cargo airport is not just another vanity of the type condemned by the French Agronomist and later politician, René Dumont, in his 1962 groundbreaking seminal work, False Start in Africa. The present Ekiti State Government has clearly heeded the advice (largely ignored by others) that the essence of development must be to achieve consistent, self-sustaining growth with development as opposed to ‘growth without development’.

    Ekiti Cargo Airport is not a prestige project. It is the core of a plan to achieve sustainability in Ekiti. Its essence is to have a transformative impact as the state develops its agro-industrial potential. This will create a synergy that will shift its agriculture from large subsistence into commercial farming. The airport will then act as the fulcrum of its transformation into a much-needed, increasingly export-oriented ecosystem. The verdict of history, when economic historians will dispassionately write it in 50 or so years’ time, will give deserved plaudits to the foresighted governor’s efforts.

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    As an economic zone, the new airport will give the credit risk analyst used by potential investors the data needed to advise that Ekiti deserves an investment opportunity. It will also have a significant influence on inducing inward-bound investments into the state for a host of agricultural and agro-processing ventures.

    In today’s economic world, logistics and data interwoven drive an economy. The new airport will combine both attributes into a critical mass for an advanced thrust for the Ekiti economy. The result will be reinvigorating. In the next five years, the anticipated inflow of investments will be massive, with the airport acting as a logistics base that will have a ripple effect across, at least, four states in the South West and, perhaps, as far as Edo and Delta States.

    Ekiti State Government itself might be cautiously playing down the cargo airport’s effects. To maximize this impact, the administration should establish an Ekiti State Commodities Exchange, with the long-term goal of transitioning it into a publicly quoted entity. A public-private partnership (PPP), similar to the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) framework, provides the ideal blueprint for this transition.

    A commodities exchange will act as the feeder, guaranteeing continuous and growing output into the cargo airport, thereby maximizing its potential. The commodities exchange will modernize agriculture by providing the much-needed guaranteed minimum farm gate prices, which will in turn lead to higher productivity output and a bourgeoning revenue base for the state. Guaranteed output levels will, as we have seen, in particular, India and Malaysia, induce investments in agro-processing and distribution, which will continuously feed activity in the cargo airport. Done properly, out of obscurity, the Ekiti cargo airport could – and should – become a foremost logistics base for much of the South West.

    The Ekiti State Government must therefore exploit the synergy involved in this project. Adeptly handled, it will transform Federal allocations to the state into a reserve for the protection of future generations and strictly to develop the social and physical infrastructure. Within years, the state’s ever-increasing internally generated revenue (IGR), with the cargo airport acting as the engine room, will cater for all expenditures. It will still have a surplus to invest in the social and physical infrastructure, in conjunction with Federal allocations.

    Oyebanji, in our considered opinion, is doing what development economists have been advocating for over seventy years, that economic development is not about ego-serving, vanity projects but about investing in a project such as the Ekiti State cargo airport which will act as the engine room for the overall, self-sustaining development. With presidential approval for the extension of the railway line from Osogbo to Ado‑Ekiti and the reconstruction of the Itawure‑Aramoko‑Iyin‑Ado‑Ekiti Road, it is evident that Ekiti, under BAO’s leadership, has only glimpsed the horizon.

  • Oládèjo Afoláyan: A national treasure at 71

    Oládèjo Afoláyan: A national treasure at 71

    On December 15, 2025, Professor Michael Oládèjo Afoláyan celebrated his seventy-first year on the Planet Earth.

    No doubt about it, Afoláyan has led a life of profound meaning, a life defined by discipline and a steadfast commitment to the “straight and narrow”. His sterling contributions to linguistics and education are not merely academic milestones, they are essential blueprints for Nigeria’s national development.

    Born in the cocoa-growing community of Oke-Awo, Aba Irosi – fifteen miles east of Ile-Ife – Afoláyan remains deeply defined by his roots. The eighth of eleven children born to James Ogunremi and Abigail Adenihun Afoláyan, he was raised in the rich tradition of his father, a farmer and the village Head Hunter. This dual heritage of terrestrial labour and intellectual curiosity remains his bedrock.

    Afoláyan was educated early in life through indigenous Yoruba worldview at the feet of village elders before attending the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Yale University. In a remarkable feat of academic continuity, he eventually taught at every institution where he once studied.

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    After a distinguished forty-year career teaching Yoruba, Linguistics, and Anthropology, he retired as a Professor of Education and Linguistics from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville. His administrative expertise further led him to the Illinois Board of Higher Education, where he served as Assistant Director overseeing 613 degree-awarding institutions.

    Currently, as an independent scholar and President of M & P Educational Consulting International, the erudite professor shuttles between Osogbo, Nigeria, and Springfield, Illinois, with his wife, Dr. Precious Afoláyan. His recent 350-page translation of Joseph Odumosu’s Iwe Iwosan (Book of Healing) reflects his enduring commitment to cultural preservation.

    More importantly, in this era of global educational tide turning back toward the mother tongue, events have shown that students absorb complex concepts more deeply when taught in their native language. Indeed, this makes Afoláyan’s expertise more relevant now than when he first entered the profession. In the age of Artificial Intelligence and Coding, the ability to teach Mathematics and STEM subjects through initial deductions in the mother tongue is no longer a luxury, it is a competitive necessity.

    Whereas it’s a strategy that has propelled countries like India and China to the forefront of global innovation, one of Nigeria’s historical missteps was failing to introduce Science and Technology in indigenous languages. So, while Afoláyan may be retired, his intellect must not be allowed to ‘tire’. Instead, the government should bestow upon him one of the highest national honours and enlist him as a Special Adviser, Consultant, or Roving Ambassador.

    Language is the decisive battleground of the next century. Nigeria must deploy its finest ‘generals,’ like Afoláyan, to lead the charge. This involves embedding mother-tongue instruction into the foundational first six years of schooling across all levels of government. Anything less would be a national tragedy.

    May the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, grant us peace in Nigeria!

  • What irks Nasir el-Rufai?

    What irks Nasir el-Rufai?

    Reacting to this week’s launch of a new book on the life, times and legacy of the late President Muhammadu Buhari, former federal Minister and two-term governor of Kaduna State from 2015 to 2023, Nasir el-Rufai, appealed to Nigerians to let the former President “rest in peace”. Expectedly, a major book on a man like Buhari, who served first as military Head of State after the collapse of the Second Republic in December 1983 and was elected President for eight years after three unsuccessful bids for the position in 2003, 2007 and 2011, is bound to generate a lot of interest and controversies. This is moreso because Buhari was an enigma for the better part of his private and public life and, like most great leaders, was as intensely admired by his supporters as he was derided with equal passion by his traducers.

    Titled ‘From Soldier to Statesman: The Legacy of Muhammadu Buhari’, and written by Dr Charles Omole, Director-General of the Institute for Police and Security Policy Research, the book gives insider details on such issues as Buhari’s position on the choice of his successor in the run up to the 2023 presidential election, how the plot to impose former Senate President, Ahmed Lawan, as presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) failed or the late President’s management and leadership style.

    From media reports of the contents of the book, the author’s research involved detailed interviews with close family relations of Buhari such as his widow, Aisha Buhari, and some of those who worked closely with him as President such as former Director-General of the Department of State Security (DSS), Yusuf Bichi, former Inspectors-General of Police, Mohammed Adamu and Usman Alkali Baba, and former Chief Security Officer to Buhari, Abubakar Idris, among others. Surely, these are people who are in a position to speak authoritatively on the subject of the book, even though their account of events and interpretation of issues will naturally be coloured by their subjective value-preferences.

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    Although el-Rufai admits that he has not yet read the 600-page book, he cautioned against the “selective revelations” about a man who is no longer alive to give his own account, stressing that “Explaining the thoughts and motivations of a complex leader through selective anecdotes risks distorting, rather than preserving his legacy.” One would have thought that the stormy petrel should have at least read portions of the book before making magisterial pronouncements on the content, especially when he admitted that “it is possible that some media reports lack context.”

    Nevertheless, he felt confident enough on the basis of perfunctory media reportage to conclude that “many of the so-called revelations attributed to the late President appear one-sided and unfair”. el-Rufai is himself a published author. His reminiscences on his not-uneventful public life, titled ‘The Accidental Public Servant’, generated considerable media attention when published in 2013 and understandably attracted its fair share of controversies.

    Rather than calling on potential authors on the life of Buhari to perhaps exercise self-censorship to allow his soul to ‘rest in peace’, el-Rufai should avail the reading public of his own insider account of the public life and leadership style of a man he was privileged to observe and work with at close quarters. He undoubtedly has the ability to deliver a compelling read in this regard, which will, nevertheless, most certainly elicit its own controversies, disagreements, debates and rebuttals.

    But what actuated this latest intervention by el-Rufai in a statement with regard to the Buhari book launch? It certainly was no high-minded concern for the accuracy of the narratives about the late President or the need to preserve the sanctity of his legacy. No, what was at play was obviously his persisting bitterness and fury against the Tinubu administration, which apparently committed the unpardonable sin of acceding to the security report that declared el-Rufai unfit for ministerial appointment, leading to his exclusion from the current Federal Executive Council.

    Thus, apart from making baseless insinuations about the venue of the book launch, which was the State House Conference Centre, Abuja, el-Rufai asserted that “More troubling was the presence of long-time critics of Buhari, some of whom now hold high office, delivering glowing, but clearly faked tributes. These are individuals who once blamed his administration for nearly every challenge facing Nigeria, but who now appear eager to revise history—perhaps to deflect responsibility for present failures.”

    President Bola Tinubu was one of those who paid fulsome tribute to his predecessor at the book launch, but this can certainly not be credibly described as ‘faked tributes’. Throughout Buhari’s eight years as President, Tinubu never once criticised his administration in public, even when many leaders and groups in the Southwest were vehement in their denunciation of the latter’s politics, policies and leadership style. During the campaigns for the 2023 presidential election, President Tinubu severally stated that he would continue with Buhari’s legacies, eliciting furious reactions from caustic critics of the former President.

    And since he stepped into Buhari’s shoes as President in May 2023, Tinubu has pursued his government’s reforms with singleness of resolve while studiously refusing to dissipate energy on distracting criticisms of his predecessor’s administration. He has publicly stated that the government is a continuum, and he had naturally inherited both assets and liabilities from the previous government.

    What exactly irks el-Rufai about President Tinubu paying glowing tribute to Buhari at the book launch or the event taking place at the State House Conference Centre? After all, was Buhari not a former President elected on the platform of the ruling APC? Obviously, el-Rufai ‘s calculation, along with many other no less bitter members of Buhari’s defunct Congress of Progressive Change (CPC), one of the legacy parties that merged to form the APC, was that they would inherit the consistent bank of the late President’s 12 million northern votes following his demise.

    It did not matter that they never displayed the asceticism, frugality, modesty and commitment to the northern talakawa that earned Buhari his unprecedented grassroots support in the region despite his meagre material means. They thus are irked by the emotional and unprecedentedly grand and glorious state burial that Tinubu accorded his predecessor to the obvious approbation and approval of Buhari’s teeming support base in the North. This is also their grouse with the President’s continuing to honour Buhari’s memory with his presence and generous appreciation of the latter at the book launch.

    Unsurprisingly, el-Rufai declares that “It was also unsettling to see individuals celebrating Buhari in death who had neither his trust nor his respect in life. President Buhari was a principled man who did not easily forget personal or political disrespect, and he made his preferences clear to those around him. Unfortunately for the former Kaduna State governor and his fellow travellers, Tinubu is the sitting President, and he enjoys the support of members of his predecessor’s family and a significant number of leading members of his larger political family.

    Nasir’s wrath and frustration will most likely grow more incendiary over the next few weeks and months especially as the African Democratic Congress (ADC) continues in its failure to gain momentum, the ruling APC systematically utilizes its incumbency to strengthen its political grip nationwide, the President’s economic reforms increasingly yield more fruits with positive impacts on living standards and the former Kaduna State governor’s influence and acceptance in the state he presided over for eight years persists in its downward trajectory.

    We can therefore expect increasingly combustible radio and television interviews as well as explosive social media outbursts by the diminutive mobile time bomb dangling delicately on the fragile fringes of treason.

    Last week, we examined a write-up purportedly written by one Mohammed Bello Doka titled ‘Is Tinubu waging a war against the Muslim North?’ shared by el-Rufai on his Facebook page. By disseminating the inciting and deliberately provocative article, el-Rufai openly identified with the extremist views of the writer. The piece sought to instigate the Muslim North against the Tinubu administration by falsely claiming that Muslim public officials were being purged because of their religion and replaced by Northern Christians. It tried to whip up hostility against Middle Belt Christians by far Northern Muslims.

    Mohammed Doka reiterated a false allegation repeated severally on national television by el-Rufai that the Tinubu administration was paying huge sums of money in negotiations with bandits, even after this claim had been vehemently denied by the security agencies, and el-Rufai has provided no proof of his allegation. Again, the piece claimed that the Tinubu administration is indifferent to the insecurity in the North and that the cost of one road in Lagos exceeds the security votes of all northern states combined. Again, no attempt was made to provide empirical validation for this wild assertion.

    Yet, the security agencies have made no efforts to invite both Mohammed Doka and el-Rufai to offer proof of such utterly false and potentially destabilising information being brazenly peddled, which will encourage their persistence on this reckless path with dangerous implications for national harmony, stability and unity.

    Other dangerous claims in the post shared by el-Rufai is that insecurity is being deliberately encouraged in the North to discourage significant turnout of voters in the region in 2027; that Northern Muslims occupying public office in the Tinubu administration are complicit in ‘betraying’ the North and Islam; and that Northern Muslims in the administration are being marginalized and intimidated and Christians favoured to placate President Donald Trump.

    By sharing this article, which is obviously the product of a deranged extremist religious mind, el-Rufai confirms the notorious reputation he acquired as governor of Kaduna State for eight years- that of a closet unhinged Ayatollah difficult to distinguish in temperament and outlook from forest bandits and terrorists. But why does it appear that the country’s security agencies see nothing and hear nothing and are so inexplicably paralysed to curb the reckless hubris of the el-Rufais of this world?

  • Let’s win on the pitch

    Let’s win on the pitch

    Now we know who to blame whenever the story breaks in the media that Super Eagles manager, Eric Chelle’s wages are in arrears as we have it till date. The chairman of the NSC told Arise TV on Monday that: “The NSC has been paying the salaries of Eric Chelle (Super Eagles coach) on behalf of the NFF even though we’re not a party to the contract.” “This is part of our support to the NFF.”

    The chairman’s response on television gave the impression that his commission was doing the NFF a favour, as if it isn’t part of his commission’s duties to ensure that things are done seamlessly. The failure of the commission to pay Chelle his wages promptly amounts to failure of leadership. He ought to humble himself by apologising to Nigerians for this administrative blunder.

    How the chairman has forgotten so quickly that he once held court at the NFF beats pundits hollow. Indeed, his comments on this tardy payment of Eagles manager’s wages are legendary. And they litter the internet as it never forgets. I thought the chairman ought to have given NFF the responsibility to pay Chelle his wages for such an action to be in sync with his views on the matter when he was an NFF chieftain. The chairman should take responsibility for the failure to pay the coach. After all, he was virtually the one who led the photo ops during the tactician’s unveiling at the Dankaro House in Abuja. Need I forget the celebrations involving the NSC’s top echelon and NFF bigwigs in England when Nigeria won the Unity Cup by beating Jamaica in the final game? 

    Curiously, one thought the issue of Nigeria missing out on getting one of the tickets to the World Cup was over until the news where NFF’s General Secretary Sanusi raised hopes about a likely third lifeline for the Super Eagles to the 2026 World Cup. Sanusi sounded like a qualified lawyer when he confirmed the petition has been lodged and that Nigeria is awaiting FIFA’s decision.

    “The Congolese rules say you cannot have dual citizenship,” Sanusi told reporters. “Wan-Bissaka has a European passport; some have French passports. The rules are very clear, and we have submitted our petition.”

    FIFA is reviewing Nigeria’s World Cup petition, but DR Congo have fired back, telling the Super Eagles to “focus on AFCON.”

    He added that FIFA’s approval was based on documents provided by the Congolese authorities.

    “As far as FIFA is concerned, once you have the passport of your country, you are eligible. That’s why they were cleared,” Sanusi said. “But our concern is that FIFA may have been deceived into clearing them.”

    ”Under DR Congo’s constitution, nationality can only be acquired through specific state-approved processes, including naturalisation, marriage, adoption or formal option, and the country does not generally permit dual citizenship. Nigeria argues that if those procedures were not followed, sporting eligibility could collapse,” he enthused further.

    FIFA has the power to act if fraud or falsification of documents is proven, including withdrawing eligibility, imposing bans, forfeiting matches or expelling teams from competitions. But a word of caution is necessary here for Nigeria, considering how we have gotten to the point where sanctions to offenders pushed us into the playoffs in Africa which we fluffed by losing on penalties to DR Congo.

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    A dangerous precedent would have been set if Nigeria displaces DR Congo at this stage. I hope we won’t start making false claims of FIFA being racists, if we get edged out by default like it happened to Burkina Faso, following the points deductions against South Africa and Eritrea’s late withdrawal from the qualification matches. It would be more dignifying for Nigeria to qualify for the World Cup based on her exploits on the field of play, not through boardroom points.

    Of course, DR Congo’s Director of Football, Hérita Ilunga, reacted sharply to Nigeria’s complaint, insisting FIFA operates on sporting nationality rather than domestic law.

    “FIFA does not operate based on legal nationality, but on sporting nationality,” Ilunga said. “If that is the case, I advise you, my dear Naija, my BBC brothers, to focus instead on the AFCON.”

    Hmmmmm! What is the matter with our sports administrators? Don’t they have shame? Do they intend to prepare a one player (Victor Osimhen) strong squad to the 2026 World Cup by default? Please somebody in government should tell those pushing for another boardroom summersault to catapult Nigeria into the World Cup next year to be co-hosted by Mexico, Canada and the United States to stop it. Nigeria shouldn’t be perceived as sore losers. After all, we have a chance to right the wrongs of our World Cup failures by lifting the Africa Cup of Nations diadem in Morocco on January 18, 2026.

    Must Nigeria qualify to play at the Mundial via the backdoor? Is playing at the World Cup Nigeria’s birthright? Which of FIFA’s rules would DF Congo have infringed to merit an ouster at the boardroom? Who determines eligibility at the World Cup? FIFA or the country concerned, in this case DR Congo? How much of a country’s constitution is important for eligibility as enshrined in FIFA’s rules?

    One is excited over the fact that there are deliberate attempts to reinvent the Super Eagles with younger players whose ages won’t be debatable. Unfortunately, the new boys are mostly Nigeria-born. But the significant thing would be how well they would fit into the spine of the team (Stanley Nwabali, Calvin Bassey, Ola Aina, Wilfred Ndidi, Alex Iwobi, Samuel Chukwueze, Ademola Lookman and Osimhen) to give us the desired results.

    One has been very impressed with the way the boys reported to camp in Cairo. They had the numbers to train and it rubbed off on how they played in the friendly. One isn’t, however, happy with the way Osimhen reports to the team’s camp. Osimhen is looking like the next monster we are grooming with penchant for coming late to the camp.

    The painful thing about Osimhen’s lateness is that he advertises his exit from his Turkish side with videos suggesting that he is leaving the stadium straight to the airport to board the aircraft. Sadly, he reports to camp late, leaving this writer in awe as he is welcomed to camp with no sanctions. It is absolutely unacceptable for Osimhen to report to the Cairo camp 24 hours to the team’s departure from the Egyptian capital.

    As an elite player in the squad, he should lead by example, not creating the impression that he is untouchable. His lateness to camp affects the team’s preparations for competitions. Osimhen should know that he is the pivot of the team and must, therefore, report early. One was pleased watching the team play comfortably the 3-5-2 formation before switching to the 4-4-2 style of play.

    My angst with Chelle is his penchant for openly disagreeing with referees’ calls. Chelle was shown a yellow card for dissent towards end of the match by the referee. One only hopes he doesn’t get the red card flashed at him leading to exit from the bench. This definitely would jeopardise Nigerians’ dream of lifting the trophy. The Eagles mustn’t spoil Nigerians’ Christmas and New Year with sloppy performances.

    The Eagles must change from being spoilers to clear winners on the pitch, not at the boardroom.