The Nation Newspaper

Category: Columnists

  • Help Nigeria needs

    Help Nigeria needs

    The threat by the President of the United States of America (POTUS), Donald Trump, to invade Nigeria, “if the Nigerian government continues to allow the killing of Christians” will tantalize many victims of the vicious attacks by Moslem extremist groups like the Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa (ISWA) and similar terrorist groups making life unbearable for residents in many parts of Nigeria. For such victims, especially in the northeast, Plateau and Benue states, where thousands have been killed by insurgents, invasion by the Trump army as guardian angels will be welcomed.

    But, that would be only one part of the story, considering that the lives of thousands of regular Moslems have also been wasted by some vicious religious extremists. A jejune argument would be that there are no extremist Christians killing Moslems, the same way there are extremist Moslems killing Christians. Also, that prominent Moslem leaders in the country do not vehemently and openly condemn such vicious killings. Another of such untenable argument would be that it is Moslems that are killing their fellow Moslems, so why should the rest none Moslems bother.       

    The truth however is that extremist Moslems constitute danger to moderate Moslems, Christians and non-believers wherever they operate to establish a theocratic state. If they can, they would kill every person who does not agree with their extremist ideology, in pursuit of their narrow interest. Sadly, as evidence have shown in several countries across the world, they mask their political interests, while fighting to conquer and excise power, under the cloak of religious piety, and the gullible Moslems believe them.

    A ready example is Afghanistan. It has remained a desolate country despite being a Moslem country, because of the internecine war for political power, between extremist Moslems and the moderates. The Taliban which pretend to be fighting for religious piety are in reality fighting for political control of the country. When they gain control, they impose extremist religious doctrines to mask their real intention, which is political control of the country and its resources.

    Like in the Animal Farm by George Orwell, they create an animal kingdom, where some animals are more equal than others. They live off the resources of the state, and use the apparatus of state to whip the rest into line. Like the pigs, the bloody extremists would say: “it is for your sake that we drink the milk and eat those apples” while the gullible fool will intone “I will work harder.” They would say: “Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend” and the masses will chant amen.

    Similar masked extremism plays out in several predominant Moslem countries, and parts of northern Nigeria. What complicates the Nigerian situation is the mixture of religious extremism with ethnic exceptionalism, particularly in the northern part of the country. For an example, the killings in the middle belt are substantially fuelled by the desire by an ethnic militia to control natural resources of another ethnic group. Even former president, Muhammadu Buhari alluded to that when he urged the ethnic groups in the region to accommodate the herdsmen, who are seeking pasture.

    But the crisis in the northeast part of the country seeks to create a theocratic Moslem caliphate that would overthrow the present political configuration. It can be argued that should such permutation work, it would extend westward to possibly overthrow the Usman Dan Fodio dynasty that has dominated local political leadership for over a century now. While religion is a form of binding force for those pursuing ethnic exceptionalism and those pursuing religious extremism, the fact is that in the long run, both cannot cohere.                 

    Of course, should US attack Nigeria, the two interest would likely work together to defend their common interest. While one is not a military expert, one ponders on the complexity of such an attack. Except in the northeast, where the Boko Haram is localized in the massive forests of the Lake Chad region, one wonders the focal points of attack for the US forces. With the threats from the extremists in several parts of the country, how will the mighty US Army wipe out the threats against Christians livings in several parts of the country?  

    If there should be such intervention to help secure the lives of Christians which Trump claims to be the main objective, the inter-ethnic and religious rivalry in Nigeria would likely exacerbate, and the country may degenerate into a civil war. While Trump has modern military capabilities, rich Moslem countries, have money to pour into the theatre and Nigeria could become another Ukraine. With no clear cut boundaries between Christians and Moslems across the country, it may turn into a war without boundaries.

    Read Also: JUST IN: NSA Office to brief media on Trump’s genocide claim against Christians in Nigeria

    To protect the Christian minority in the northern part of the country, will the Trump army patrol the streets, guard the churches, clerics and Christians as they engage in their routine and religious activities? If the rich Moslem countries fund Moslem militias to also protect Moslems, will the country not degenerate into atrocious internecine, inter-ethnic and religious wars similar to the Bosnian War in the 1990s? If the US army should fight to save Christians from Moslems, how would they deal with spouses, brothers and sisters who share different faiths?

    Few years ago, many international pundits had predicted that Nigeria would disintegrate before now. The argument was premised on the fact that all the indices of a failed state were prevalent in the country. For example, there are several armed non-state actors, challenging the state monopoly of force. The national economy is dependent on external shocks and the political elites are willing to fight to finish. The inflationary pressure remained frightening, while the population was growing way ahead of economic development, to compound the bourgeoning youth unemployment.

    Until May 2023, many states in the country could not pay salaries without borrowing from the bank. The national economy suffered deep stagflation, and running away from the country, was considered the wisest investment for the young and even not so young. To the amazement of the world, Nigeria is turning the bend, and despite the economic hardship, the majority appears willing to give the political actors, led by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a chance to succeed or fail.

    Should Donald Trump fall into the trap set by international buccaneers who want to trade on Nigerians’ misery, the consequences will reverberate across the entire continent and even beyond. What US can do for Nigeria, is to supply her army with requisite knowledge, intelligence and ammunition to defeat the several insurgency groups seeking to destabilize the country. This writer hopes the threat from Trump would be a wake-up call for the ruling elite and the national army, to save their face, and protect our nation’s independence and integrity.

  • Salami’s pound of flesh?

    Salami’s pound of flesh?

    Might Justice Isa Ayo Salami, revered jurist and retired President of the Court of Appeal (PCA), be seeking own pound of flesh from former President Goodluck Jonathan, now reportedly ogling a 2027 presidential run?

    Not likely.  For one, Justice Salami’s profile paints a rather grave jurist, with no less grave fealty to his calling.  That thumbs down any base predilection.

    For another, Justice Salami cuts the strict — almost sacred — quintessential jurist, the very diametric opposite of the frivolous. His rather limited tribe is the very antithesis of the flippant hugging publicity for validation, to veil a natural core of full emptiness.

    Still, Justice Salami’s sweeping dismissal of Dr. Jonathan’s yearning for a presidential encore, as far as the law goes, echoes a past political tango between the two.

    The one, the embattled President of the Court of Appeal, conscientiously doing his job, let the heavens fall!  He resisted judicial-executive bullying and he triumphed.

    The other, a rather naive — or wilful? — President of the Federal Republic, that couldn’t stomach stolen mandates judicially retrieved from his ruling PDP; and so, resorted to strong arm tactics, that eventually blew in his face.

    More, however, on all of that presently.  For now, what’s that Salami declaration, that must be causing quite some ache in the Jonathan camp?

    The headline, as reported by The Nation of October 31, is explicit: “Jonathan not eligible to contest in 2027, says Justice Salami.”  In the story, Justice Salami spoke with the finality of a judge that had examined forensic evidence, which he found immutable.

    Hear him: “It is painstakingly and dispassionately demonstrated abundantly to all and sundry that [the] ambition of Goodluck Jonathan to contest for office of the president, for the second term in the 2027 general election, is effectively and undoubtedly shot down by Sub-section (3) of Section 137 of the 1999 Constitution, as altered by the Fourth Alteration Act, No. 16 of 2018 which, to my mind is unassailable.”

    But should Jonathan even contest and win, Justice Salami’s legal prognosis is even direr: “In the event of his winning the election, he will be conveniently removed by the Court of Appeal in an election petition to that court, which removal will be undoubtedly affirmed by the Supreme Court on the ground that his total tenure would have exceeded the eight years maximum tenure.”

    That eerily echoes how Justice Salami’s Court of Appeal — then serving as the final court on gubernatorial election disputes — had removed PDP governors that, in 2007, brazenly stole the vote, in Edo, in Ondo, in Ekiti and in Osun: the last two after more than three years, during which the thieving governors usurped power sans a mandate. 

    Justice Salami himself chaired the final panel that tossed out Engr. Segun Oni in Ekiti.

    So, what legal principle would fling Jonathan against the rock and send him crashing, even if he won the election, given that the amendment, which Justice Salami quotes, was made after Jonathan had left office?  Wouldn’t  the non-retroactive principle count for him?

    It’s that definitive difference between criminal and civil rights, rarely espoused in the public space by jurists. 

    “The Constitution protects criminal right against retroactive legislation … The Constitution,” he admitted, “frowns at or forbids retroactive enactments with regard to criminal act, omission and penalties, and not civil or constitutional infractions.”

    So, on the grund norm, the difference can’t be starker: “It is trite that an amendment to an enactment relates back to the date the principal enactment (legislation it is seeking to amend) came into force.  In other words, the date for the commencement of the Fourth Alteration Act, No. 16 of 2018 is the date the 1999 Constitution of the Federal of Nigeria itself, came into force.”

    To buttress his points, Justice Salami quoted Section 4, Sub-section (1) of the Interpretation Act, viz.: “A reference in an enactment shall, if the other enactment has been amended, be construed as a reference to the other enactment as amended.”

    Thus, Justice Salami declared, with measured finality: “Consequently, the hue and cry that there has been a retroactive legislation is most unjustifiable.”

    Now, Justice Salami is retired.  So, this could be a mere legal opinion, to which serving jurists could differ.  Yet, such is his sure-footed references that a fit may be seizing the Jonathan camp!

    Which is why Dr. Jonathan would naturally permit himself to wonder: is that jurist after me, for past wrongs done him when I was president?  Ha!

    In fairness to Dr. Jonathan, it was strictly a judicial affair, though triggered by the excitable politics of the moment.  Seeing the Salami Court of Appeal retrieving PDP stolen votes in the then Yoruba opposition bastion of the South West, Iyiola Omisore, then a senator, penned a controversial piece in The Guardian.

    That piece — more angry than sober — insinuated Justice Salami might be an Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) judicial mole, an insinuation not only reckless but almost equating an apostasy, given Justice Salami’s whistle-clean image.

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    Somehow, however, the late Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu, came up with a “promotion” for the PCA: a seat on the Supreme Court, at which Justice Salami balked. 

    The CJN called it promotion. Justice Salami called it elimination — elimination from the Court of Appeal, because that court had retrieved stolen votes from the ruling PDP! 

    Omisore was clearly peeved, because the last retrieval was in Osun: the judicial sacking of Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola, for ACN’s Rauf Aregbesola, the rightful winner of the 2007 election — but three-and-a-half years after, in November 2010!

    After CJN Katsina-Alu found Justice Salami would not be bullied, his deus-ex-machina, staged at the National Judicial Council (NJC) absurd theatre, was a sudden suspension from office, after an alleged misdemeanour, by Salami. 

    The trigger was another Sokoto gubernatorial judicial challenge.  In the ensuing exchange, CJN claimed PCA had “lied” against him.  That stalemate lasted between August 2011 and May 2013. 

    Dr. Jonathan’s role was how his government hurried to affirm Salami’s “suspension”, but tarried to obey his reinstatement, by the same NJC, after it found the jurist did no wrong. 

    But by then, CJN Katsina-Alu had retired, and new CJN Dahiru Musdapher crested Nigeria’s judicial system.  PCA Salami statutorily retired, with his honour intact, on 15 October 2013.

    Which is why Jonathan would wonder: is Salami after me?  Again, not likely; though the mind of the guilty, who are always afraid (to filch the title of one of James Hadley Chase’s crime fiction thriller novels), could run that way.

    But whatever the jurist’s motive by his legal opinion, it could well help to jar Jonathan back into the stark reality, from his reported latest dreamy fixation.

    Smell the coffee: the PDP, that staged the 2007 vote heist, is in disarray.  The ADC door is slammed shut — isn’t ADC an Atiku Abubakar special purpose vehicle (SPV)? The old South East/South-South alliance, that served Jonathan rather well, is all but vanished.  Now, Salami has added dreary tales on the legal front!

    Old Greek philosopher, Heraclitus was right: you can’t step in the same driver twice!  So, on what basis might Jonathan want to run?  Well, it’s a democracy!

  • The transformation of Soludo

    The transformation of Soludo

    In another four days, November, the people of Anambra State will go to the polls to elect a new governor.  The Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC) has so far cleared 16 candidates for the battle. Of the 16, Chukwuma Soludo, an outsider and the incumbent governor who joined politics only four years ago however remains the candidate to beat. Political pundits have in fact tipped him to win with a landslide beating all his other seasoned and professional politicians round and square.

    The rise of Soludo is unprecedented. Many are therefore anxious to know the sources of his transformation. In fact, on account of his unparalleled rise and extraordinary performance, not a few believe the Soludo brand will require future studies by intellectuals. Here was a cynical intellectual who has spent his most productive years in the Ivory Tower.  He was a professor of Economics at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka; visiting professor at Swarthmore College, USA; Smuts research fellow at Cambridge University; visiting scholar at University of Warwick and Oxford University; visiting fellow at Brookings Institution, Washington, DC; research fellow at UN-Economic Commission for Africa, Ethiopia and a visiting scholar at IMF research department, among others.

    He was a former Finance Adviser to the federal government and one time governor of Central Bank of Nigeria. He was the founding chairman of the African Finance Corporation and has consulted for many international organisations including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), UNCTAD, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the African Development Bank (ADB), etc.

    Nothing therefore prepared Soludo, an intellectual, a cynical breed that regards all men as fortune hunters, for politics as a calling. Many of his predecessors who took the risk ended up in grief. They were unable to survive in the real world of politics where being a politician itself is a nightmare because all politicians are regarded as tricksters, corrupt, untrustworthy and an unscrupulous breed. 

    Beyond the struggle to protect their integrity as builders of institutions including  bureaucracy without which society decays, involvement of  intellectuals in politics meant learning anew how to survive party intrigues, betrayal by trusted allies and stabbing in the back by those driven by party ambition. And if they survive navigating that purgatory, then comes the true test of being in power – balancing self-interest of pressure groups and that of public interest they are elected to serve. This task, as many who fell by the way side have discovered, often requires a politician’s versatility, brinkmanship and skilful exploitation of innermost fears of the masses in order to satisfy the demand of the rich, the real owners of society and the power behind the throne.

    That Soludo was able to successfully balance the interest of the poor masses of Anambra and the greed of their economic elite regarded as the richest group in Nigeria was part of Soludo’s unique record he celebrated through dancing and rendition of local songs about Igbo folklores and folktales as he carried his campaign message from one Local Council Area to the other. And that was all he needed to win the trust of ordinary people of Anambra who freely added their widows mite to the huge donations from Anambra super rich, to offset Soludo’s campaign expenses.

    But Soludo, a highly resourceful fellow, in spite of that advantage did not take his peoples’ support for granted. He campaigned vigorously, selling a new vision without forgetting to remind his people of fulfilled promises.

     On the other hand, many of his opponents are unknown, are without structures while some launched their campaign a week to Election Day, forcing Soludo to observe: “This is shocking and a mockery for a political party like the APC to flag off its campaign seven days to the voting process”.

    It is not just that Soludo’s opponents in the battle coming up in four days’ time are unprepared; they don’t appear to have anything to sell beyond fear. They are apprehensive that Soludo might rig the election through either vote buying or the use of the state security apparatus to intimidate opposition.

    This was the narrative of three of Soludo’s opponents viz John Nwosu of African Democratic Congress (ADC), Chioma Ifemudilike of African Action Congress (AAC) and Onyekwelu  YPP’s spokesman who stood in for  Paul Chukwuma, candidate of the Young Progressives Party (YPP) during their last Saturday’s encounter with  Channel TV’s  Ayo Makinde.

    For instance, the governorship candidate of ADC, John Nwosu who listed his assets as ‘18 branches of his IT firm’, his expertise as a trained economist and IT expert, has declared that the only thing that stands between him and victory is Soludo’s possible vote buying and abuse of the of Anambra security outfit to intimidate the opposition’. He was silent on the fact that his party, ADC has no structure to man the polling booths in Anambra in an election that comes up in another four days.

    The excuse of Chioma Ifemudilike, the governorship candidate of African Action Congress (AAC), whose party is not known to the masses, and has no structure or even agenda, was not different. The only reason she could lose the election is if Soludo rigs the election. Similarly, Onyekwelu YPP’s spokesman alerted Nigerians that if his principal, Paul Chukwuma, loses, it will not be because his party is unknown but because Soludo rigs.

    This why many believe that Soludo’s opponents have made his victory inevitable. For while they sell fear, he advertises his achievements. Campaigning in Oguata LGA last Saturday, Soludo reminded the people of how he dislodged IPOB terrorists from eight Local Government Areas (LGAs) it controlled before he assumed office in 2021. He also told them of how he employed 8000 teachers, over 1000 doctors and nurses and empowered over 13,000 youths.

    As November 8 draws nearer, Soludo’s records continue to speak for him. The latest recognition came from BudgIT which rated, Anambra State as 2025 Nigeria’s best-performing state in fiscal management, rising from second position in 2024, to beat Lagos to the second, as well as Kwara (third), Abia (fourth), and Edo to the fifth position. Anambra government has attributed the feat to Soludo’s “strategic economic reforms and disciplined financial management, which have placed the state on a sustainable growth path.”

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    On the health sector, Governor Soludo’s administration according to his commissioner of health has revolutionised the state’s health sector through the “construction of five new general hospitals and the rehabilitation of over 130 others, including primary healthcare centres, across the state within three years.”

    Soludo’s education policies focus on free and compulsory education from nursery to senior secondary school in Anambra State, “to ensure that children from all socio-economic backgrounds can access quality education and develop their full potential”.

    On agriculture, Soludo has said his agriculture policy in the last three years focused on ‘an agriculture-led transformation in Anambra State to boost food security and create wealth’. To achieve his government set goals, some of his administration’s initiatives include the “Farm to Feed” campaign”.

    The lack of seriousness on the path of Soludo’s 15 opponents is the reason many believe that the problem with elections in Nigeria has always been politicians who exploit our religion and ethnic faults to behave like outlaws. We remember Chief Remi Fani Kayode of NNDP in the First Republic, emboldened by Nnamdi and Ahmadu Bello, swore his party would win the 1965 Western Region election  whether the people voted for his party or not. That sounded the death knell of the First Republic. In 1983, the same group with Walter Ofonagoro as rain doctor spoke of ‘landslide and sea-slide victory in opposition strongholds”. That led to the sacking of the Second Republic by the military. In 2023, the same group led by unprincipled serial cross-carpeters – Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar, driven by greed on the eve of an election splintered their party into three. For two years each of them has continued to claim victory despite the verdicts by INEC and the Supreme Court. Following their rhetoric, their unthinking followers openly canvassed for insurrection or military takeover thereby once again, bringing the past to pain.

    As we have often said, the federal arrangement often produces egocentric men who behave like outlaws. Solution can therefore not come through electoral law but through politics. With defecting politicians almost turning the nation to one party state, the president has the yam and the knife.

  • Drug parties?

    Drug parties?

    A new trend in the use and abuse of illicit drugs appears to be creeping into Nigeria’s list of social vices. Nothing bears out this foreboding development than last week’s warning by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) to club operators and fun seekers against organising and attending ‘drug parties’.

    NDLEA’s warning followed its raiding of a night club in Akin Adesola Street, Lagos penultimate weekend and subsequent arrest of over 100 attendees including the club owner and his manager for organising and attending a drug party.

    The raid was sequel to intelligence which revealed that the organisers had circulated flyers, inviting people to what they called a ‘drug party’. The agency said in a statement that its “undercover agents had infiltrated the night club, made pre-purchases of illicit drugs and monitored activities for four hours before storming the premises between 11pm on Saturday and 3am on Sunday”.

    During the raid, 384,886 kilograms of Canadian Loud, a potent strain of cannabis and other illicit substances were allegedly recovered from the club’s store. The agency has filed a suit against the alleged promoters to secure forfeiture of the property in which the drug party was held.

    NDLEA did not disclose the names of other illicit substances recovered during the raid apart from Canadian Loud. But the term ‘Loud’ is a slang for high-quality cannabis that may have derived its name from the legalisation of recreational marijuana by the Canadian government in 2018.

    It would have made more sense had the agency named the other confiscated illicit substances. That would have given a clearer picture on why the event was advertised as a drug party. But we are only contending with marijuana- an illicit substance that is hawked freely around motor parks and drinking joints around urban centres. Could marijuana have been the only attraction to the advertised drug party?

     This gap notwithstanding, the development is very worrisome as it seems to have added a new dimension to the war against illicit drugs. It is perhaps, the first time the attention of Nigerians is being drawn to advertisements and invitation to a party for the sole purpose of consuming illicit drugs. It sounds somehow confusing.

    NDLEA alleged it reached its conclusion that the club hosted a drug party through flyers circulated by its organisers. That is their evidence. Though one is not privy to the flyers to draw independent conclusions on its contents, the open purchase of drugs within the club’s premises and seizure of 384,886 kilograms of Canadian Loud and other illicit substances from the club’s store appear as corroborative evidence.

    The agency is not taking the matter lightly. It considers the incident a test case because of its domino effect. “We will not allow a culture of impunity such as this to evolve in Nigeria. If you allow one, give it two or three weeks and every night club in the country will invite people to come and have a drug party. We will not allow it”, Buba Marwa, chairman/chief executive of the agency said.

    His warning to club owners, hoteliers and facility managers that their buildings risk being seized if they are used for drug-related activities underscores the determination of the agency to nip the emerging trend in the bud. The agency is right to be apprehensive of the fast spread of such acts of impunity if stern measures are not taken to punish offenders. The nation’s experience with other social vices including the festering insecurity has shown how tardiness could aid their quick spread.

    There is little doubt that much of the consumption of hard drugs takes place in and around entertainment centres, hotels and motor parks. The usual practice is for some agents to lurk around these venues either on their own or in connivance with their owners to sell the substances to willing buyers.

    It is usually a secret affair only open to those initiated to the act. It must have therefore struck Nigerians as a huge shock that flyers inviting people to come and consume illicit substances could be brazenly circulated in the public space. That is a new high in the abuse, spread and consumption of illicit substances.

    But it also says something about the efficacy of the campaigns by the NDLEA against the circulation, sale and consumption of hard drugs. It is either the organisers of the drug party were ignorant of the implications of the contents of the flyers or they thought they could get away with their act of indiscretion. Whichever way, the advertisement was a very reckless endeavour.

    Before now, Nigeria used to be a transit route for illegal drugs’ exportation. For the years our borders served as transit routes for hard drugs, many of our citizens had little idea of what such banned substances looked like. Neither did they indulge in their consumption.

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    But all that changed with time. Consumption, sale and patronage of illicit drugs are now commonplace within our shores. Nigeria’s most recently widely cited national drug consumption prevalence rate was put at 14.4 per cent among a population aged between 15 and 64 years. This figure which represents approximately 14.3 million people came from two major national surveys conducted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) and the National Bureau of statistics (NBS).

    It is nearly three times the global average of 5.5 per cent. The figure speaks eloquently of the alarming progression of the country from transit camp to consumption home. Not only are Nigerians involved in the export and sale of illicit drugs, they are also reported to be into their cultivation and production.

    It is not surprising that the country is now posting consumption rates nearly three times the world average. That should be a big source of concern. And for a country that houses the poorest of the poor in spite its huge natural endowments, this figure is bound to grow further unless serious measures are taken to stem the tide. It is not just enough to mount campaigns against illicit drug consumption without addressing the factors that predispose our citizens to it.

     The link between abject poverty, high level of unemployment and the consumption of hard and illicit drug substances has long been established. World Bank’s October 2025 report showed that approximately 139 million Nigerians live in poverty, representing about 62 per cent of the population. NBS had also reported in 2022 that 63 per cent of the population or 133 million Nigerians were multi-dimensionally poor.

    Even then, the alarming number of arrests and seizure of huge quantities of illicit substances by the NDLEA only reinforce how widespread the abuse has become.  In the last 30 months, the agency made 45,853 arrests, seized 8.5 million kilograms of assorted illicit drugs, secured 9,263 convictions and rehabilitated 26,613 drug users. The data is scary. But it illustrates most clearly the daunting nature of the war against illicit drugs.

    It requires concerted action not only in arresting and punishing offenders but addressing the objective conditions that predispose a preponderance of our citizens to their use.

  • NARD’s strike: Alarm bell

    NARD’s strike: Alarm bell

    “With about 11,000 members, the strike will affect 91 healthcare facilities nationwide,” the Secretary-General of the Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD), Dr Shuaibu Ibrahim, was quoted as saying on the eve of the strike by members of the association, which started on November 1. 

    NARD is mainly made up of doctors in the public sector – federal and state teaching and specialist hospitals. Resident doctors have already received their medical degree, and are completing additional training in their specialty of choice. It is a stage of graduate medical training that lasts from three to seven years, depending on the specialty. 

    NARD President Dr Muhammad Suleiman, in a statement after the strike began, said the association’s demands “are not selfish, neither are they politically motivated.” According to him, “They are genuine, germane, and patriotic, centred on the survival of the Nigerian health system and the well-being of every citizen who depends on it.” He added: “This is not a fight between resident doctors and the government; it is a struggle for a functional, just, and humane healthcare system.”

    Why did the Federal Government fail to take action to avert NARD’s strike before the expiration of its 30-day ultimatum?

    Following the meeting of the association’s National Executive Council on October 25, Suleiman had announced that the council “has declared total and indefinite strike action” starting November 1.  “There is no going back,” he said.

    How did things get to that point? He said the association had made efforts to engage the government after suspending its five-day warning strike on September 14. He added that the two-week ultimatum was subsequently extended by 30 days on September 26.

    “This grace period has since elapsed, yet the Federal Government has failed to demonstrate the political will necessary to address the legitimate concerns of Nigerian resident doctors,” he declared.

    NARD has 19 demands, which he described as “minimum demands.”  Notably, he highlighted welfare issues, saying, “There are allowances of over two years, there’s 18 months, there’s seven months, there’s four months, there’s eight months.  There’s an allowance error that is over 10 years old. There’s a failure to review even the basic salary of doctors in this country for 16 years.”

     The figures he mentioned are astounding.  He said: “For all healthcare workers, I think the outstanding owed is about N35 to N38 billion. If it’s just resident doctors, we’re talking about maybe N400 million, but for all doctors in Nigeria, it could be N600 to N800 million.” Are these figures correct?

    NARD also noted that “The current unsustainable practice of spanning duties across several days poses serious risks to physicians’ well-being and patient safety.”

    The association complained that “Doctors continue to work excessive hours far beyond international standards without adequate rest, in clear contravention of established guidelines and international best practices.”

    There are other concerning complaints, which informed the association’s 19 demands. Resorting to a strike demonstrated the association’s frustration. It was a statement on the government’s seemingly contemptuous unresponsiveness.

    NARD’s strike has the blessing of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA). This speaks volumes about the government’s shortcomings. The Secretary-General of the NMA, Dr Ben Egbo, was quoted as saying, “It’s like the only language the government understands is strike, and it’s quite unfortunate.”

     He noted that resident doctors “are part of the NMA,” adding, “We are very much behind NARD in this fight. Their demands are essentially the same as the demands of the NMA. We’ve been at this for a long time.”

    His reference to the long-term struggle for a better healthcare system in the country further underscores alleged neglect by the government over the years.  He observed that the healthcare system “is gradually failing.”

    NARD called for President Tinubu’s decisive intervention. “You are the father of the nation. Come into this matter, weigh in on it, and solve it for us,” Suleiman said.

    The Federal Government should not have allowed the situation to deteriorate to this point. The government’s inaction has serious consequences for those who need healthcare services in public hospitals across the country. The people should not have to pay for the government’s failure to do the right thing at the right time.      

     NARD’s strike not only highlights problems in the country’s health sector but also exposes neglect by the authorities. The situation that prompted the strike partly explains the escalating exodus of medical practitioners from the country, which has been detrimental to its health sector.   

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    The brain drain phenomenon afflicting the country has not spared its health sector. More than 16,000 doctors are estimated to have left its shores in the last five to seven years. The alarming flight has been blamed on poor leadership, corruption, poor remuneration and insecurity. For instance, more than 700 medical doctors trained in Nigeria were said to have relocated to the UK between December 2021 and May 2022, a period of six months.  According to the NMA, Nigeria-trained doctors are leaving in droves for Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

    The situation calls for urgent intervention by the authorities. The country cannot afford to continue losing its healthcare experts by failing to provide an enabling environment for their work.

    It is noteworthy that the country’s doctor-patient ratio is alarmingly poor, and nowhere near the standard often referenced as ideal, which is one doctor per 600 people. The situation is worsening as doctors continue to leave the country for pastures new. With only about four doctors available per 10,000 people in Nigeria, it is unsurprising that there are issues regarding availability of, and access to, quality primary healthcare services in the country. The problem is compounded by the flight of nurses and medical laboratory scientists.

    Importantly, in April 2001, heads of state of African Union countries met in Abuja and pledged to set a target of allocating at least 15 percent of their annual budget to improve the health sector. It is disappointing that Nigeria has consistently failed to meet the standard of the Abuja Declaration. The trend of underfunding in the country’s health sector continues unabated.

    NARD’s strike sounds the alarm bell. The strike is not just an industrial action, but a symptom of a much deeper, more urgent problem. The situation demands more than the routine cosmetic appearance of resolution.

  • Are the masses 419?

    Are the masses 419?

    The news seems impossible. It is against the grain. The masses stole from the elite as we witnessed in two banks. It is what sociologists and philosophers would describe as counterintuitive. Is it the masses who corrupt the state or the state that corrupt the people? Can the masses steal? Is it not, from time, the province of the elite to put their fingers in the people’s cooky jar? We call them the masses, but we don’t imagine them amassing wealth. Amassing is a filthy word, sentenced to the big man who picks the people’s pocket. But for the scenario to be reversed? That is something unusual.

    When the masses steal, they do it against public trust? The public outwitting the public. It is not only suicide; it is also incest in the open square. It is the underbelly undermining itself.

    Lotus Bank is one of the new generation banks. It may not have the capitalization of the marque brands of finance. It is not UBA, Zenith, GTB, or even the oldies known as First Bank or Union. But they have come to play. Or, shall we say, come to be played?

    But it did not happen to Lotus alone. It is not an epidemic, or else one would have said Lotus, unlike the flower, gave off a foul scent. It happened to another new generation bank, the Taj Bank.

    Taj faltered in July this year. Lotus’ was in 2024. For Taj, it was no consolation that its loss was less terrifying at N900 million. The Taj story was too embarrassing for any public tears.

     After all, money can bleed, but it does not cry. Taj kept the noise down, the coins jingling sober within its vaults.

    There is no public record on how many customers stole, and whether there was any pursuit of such public perverts. But the Lotus story smells like poisoned scent, like a fart in a flower shop.

    What enabled this ignoble hour? A glitch upset the banking system into a breakdown. The banking falcon could not hear the falconer. Payments fell apart. Anyone could withdraw how much they wanted and transfer how much they wanted. Mere anarchy was loosed. Innocence was lost in this ceremony of pillage.

    So, in the words of Poet W.B. Yeats, “The best (customers may have lacked) all conviction/ while the worst are full of passionate intensity (to steal).”

    For Lotus Bank, the sum was N1.13 billion. A nifty penny, even for a bank. The number of thieves? 718 customers. In this era of sanctifying averages, how much did one person steal? N6.3 million. A nifty penny for any civilian not named Dangote or politician. It is astounding because we know that the average Nigerian does not have up to N50k in their accounts. It means some have gone home with as much as N20 million. What a pay day, or what a steal day. Or shall we say, what a people’s day?

    What might the people have had in mind when they made a run at their bank. They probably were fantasising about that shirt, that shoe, even that moment in a plush hotel in Ikoyi. Not a plate of pounded yam and egusi soup. By this act, these people failed the poor test.

    The poor would steal to eat, to pay rent, for transportation. Not a N10 million pay day. Even if it is rent, the poor does not rent a N6 million flat. So, how are the people different from the elite they gripe about?

    That is not the only part. Lotus Bank has sued 45 banks in order to retrieve their money. Is it funny? The elite are fighting the elite to resolve the crime of the people. Usually, when the elite fight, it is to steal from the people. Like when politicians fight, they claim it is on the people’s behalf. They fight for spoils. The people rejoice over crumbs while the dueling elites fatten. Here, the people’s cheeks are aglow at the expense of the elite who fight over who made away with the loot.

    It is an inversion of a morality tale. The good guys are now the bad guys. But who is the good or bad guy? It is what Martha Nussbaum, an American philosopher, calls the “fragility of goodness.” Are we good because it is innate, or because the power of circumstances lionise us, make us saints or heroes or even warriors? Is it the law that tames us into good husbands, good secretaries, good accountants.

     Left to ourselves, we might be monsters. These issues obsessed Greek plays like Aeschylus’ Agammenmon and Sophocles’ Antigone. Nussbaum muses often in that book on Aristotelian ethics. “If there is no God, everything is permitted,” asserted Russian writer Dostoyevsky.

    So, in the blindness of a glitch, the people could show their true colour. They could steal and get away with it. Maybe not so fast. What technology takes away, technology can also give back. Maybe that is why the Lotus Bank is suing its competitors. If the people are knocking the heads of the elites against each other, we wait to see when the giants collide. Will the people, as grass, suffer? Lee Kwan Yu said when two giants make love, the grass also suffers. It is true of banks. Routinely, they romance in interbank transactions that happen every second. It is endless coming and going. The people interrupted at Lotus.

    Does it mean there is 419 in the people? A few years ago, a protest was a disguise for open robbery. During EndSars, they raided food warehouses, destroyed BRT buses in Lagos, decimated a mall. Those who took bags of rice stepped over those who got nothing. They did not say, ‘let’s share, we are all poor together.’ Even the poor eat alone.

    The most intriguing paradox is that the money at the bank is not, technically, the bank’s. It is other people’s money. It is a sacred trust. The people put the money there. The people stole it. They stole from themselves. Blessed be the people.

    It only speaks to a trait: the foolish majority. Hence, philosopher John Stuart Mill laments “a few wise and many foolish individuals, called the public.”

    Yet, it is the same majority that cries foul at official corruption, at stolen and unaccounted billions. They hide. But if Lotus finds them out after the lawsuit, will they be named? If they run an advert of 718 thieves, who will shame them? No one knows them. If it is a senator, a governor, a minister, it makes screaming headlines. The streets also scream. One prominent politician’s error is a disgrace; the people’s collective folly bears no name or face. This is not a shame society anymore. Since we left the village state, we lost shame.

    The public space is mainly urban and, as Claude Ake asserted, it has been privatized by the elite. Positions and offices are prebends, places held in trust for some higher power. If they are held in trust or on trust, they are not for trust. The public do not own the public space and they cannot be held responsible for whatever goes wrong there.

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    Glitches are no new to modern commerce. We saw them at Heathrow Airport. PayPal was no customer’s pal when a glitch put 10 billion euros in jeopardy a few years ago. An American customer woke up to become a $92 quadrillion man. The zeroes behind 92 dazed him. He then playfully fantasised about clearing the United States National debt and buying his favorite baseball team. Before the glitch joy, the man had had few transactions over a thousand bucks. The bank returned him to his humble dollars.

    It is this humility of low estate that the Lotus customers did not have. They became instant megalomaniacs. They always were but the opportunity just opened their eyes to who they always were. Maybe they did not rise up to that self-knowledge, a fatal flaw of tragic heroes.

    Some may assert that the poor stole because the elite made them. As novelist Samuel Butler is quoted as saying, “the society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.” We can expand it to mean, the elite prepares the crime, the people commit it. It is a collaboration. This makes either party guilty.

    These glitch thieves are the same people who vote, who protest, who fulminate in the media, who grab the lawmaker for being a thief. What would playwright Bertolt Brecht say today about his poem in which he asserts that the leaders held a meeting and they had a vote of no confidence in the people? They decided to dissolve the people and elect another one.

    With these 718, shall we say the masses are 419? Was Brecht right that we should dissolve the people? In his play Coriolanus, Shakespeare’s masses reject their own good. In the Bible, the people grab a king in Saul after a prophecy that Saul will whip their backs sore. Perhaps, hence French philosopher and novelist Jean Jacque Rouseau said, “force them to be free.”

     Bottomline: the people are not innocent.

    After all, the masses have perennially voted, by their own admissions, thieves and scoundrels. In democracy, it does not make sense to dissolve the people. In tyranny, it does not make sense either. The people are the state, no apologies to Louis XIV.

    We have to live with them, hug them, scold them, beat them up but accept them all the same because they are us.

  • PDP faces appalling dilemma

    PDP faces appalling dilemma

    What started as a trickle of ‘deserters’ in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has become an avalanche threatening to bury the leading opposition party. In the past few months, and especially in the past few weeks, the PDP has lost a number of states, scores of national lawmakers, and hundreds of state legislators. It in effect allowed a small wound to become gangrenous, thus making the frenzied exits enormously difficult to curb and the storm almost impossible to quieten. Alarmed that its elective convention was days away, the party desperately tried to keep up appearances and force a healing. Unfortunately, that abrasive effort to paper over the cracks has exposed it to a chasm far worse than it ever imagined in nearly three decades of existence.

    Of all the complications it feared, it is doubtful whether it thought the courts could take the wind out of its sail as peremptorily as it did late last week when it dismissed its preconvention formalities, judging them a breach of the law. Justice James Omotosho of the Federal High Court in Abuja, deploying idiomatic jurisprudence, ruled that the PDP had failed to observe its own constitution in planning its convention. He warned that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should not recognise the outcome. But the party remains defiant, however, citing a Supreme Court judgement enthroning party supremacy in such matters. In the next few days, when push comes to shove, and the litigants push their rights in the face of a stalling appellate court, it will be determined whether that defiance is not just braggadocio.

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    The party will be wondering how it got to this pass. From the Olympian height of commanding about 31 states to a miserable and almost concessionary eight, it is not certain that the party would not imagine that more could still be taken from them, the biblical equivalence of ‘whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him’. The party should be cheerful that its case is not as hopeless as the African Democratic Congress (ADC), which so far cannot see the forest for the trees, or the Labour Party (LP), which is at the mercy of its infanticidal parents.

  • 2027: dangerous fixation with peripherals

    2027: dangerous fixation with peripherals

    Even before last month’s coup stories began to circulate and fuel anxiety and speculations, Nigeria’s political elite have been far less circumspect or sanguine about their country’s politics. The coup stories will not go away quickly, as everyone now understands, but perhaps the elite would find the inspiration to begin recognising the dangers posed by their extreme focus on political peripherals. Here are a few reasons the elite must begin to slow down and be less schizoid about the nature and course of their politics. By focusing almost exclusively on the person of President Bola Tinubu, his idiosyncrasies and ethnicity, Nigeria’s ‘eternal’ fault lines become more reinforced than ameliorated. Something is clearly not right about the methods the elite have chosen to drive home their arguments or compete for relevance and office, a fact that probably explains why following the All Progressives Congress (APC) victory in 2023, there were calls for a coup d’etat, and later conspiratorial mass protests to reverse the gains of democracy and clip the unseen fingers helping the country to recalibrate and balance its politics away from ethnic and religious pivots. That political modus operandi may in fact explain why the coup stories of last month have lingered, and why many believe there was probably a plot after all.

    Firstly, the United States president Donald Trump’s right-wing politics has paradoxically made the world less safe and many Western countries more insular and self-absorbed. Should Nigeria come to any mishap, it is unlikely to find succour anywhere or apologists who would argue the country’s case and help modulate the consequences of a potential fracture. The US is narrowing its borders against foreigners; the United Kingdom is inadvertently fuelling the rightist and extremist politics of the Reform Party’s Nigel Farage; and rightwing politics, with special focus on anti-immigration regulations, is taking over Europe, further constricting any relief for Nigerians. Reworking and fixing Nigeria is, therefore, the crying need of the moment. Unfortunately, the Nigerian elite are oblivious of the danger their peculiar form of politics has elicited.

    Secondly, Nigeria is not too big to fail. The elite and their parliaments, not to talk of the drafters of Nigeria’s malleable constitution, may live in denial and suggest that national unity is inviolate and not subject to negotiation, but more has been said and done by the elite to degrade that tentative unity rather than nurture it. Apart from Somalia which has been unravelling for 24 years, Sudan has also become the poster child for political and governmental dysfunctionality. It first split into two, with South Sudan carved out of the country in 2011, then in April 2023, civil war broke out about four years after President Omar al-Bashir was toppled. The army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are now locked in a deadly struggle for the ravaged country, with some analysts fearing that Sudan could further split into east and west. The Sudanese tragedy is a study in elite recklessness which produced alienation of the less developed southern part, empowered the Janjaweed Arab militia (from which the RSF was birthed) to brutally pacify the Darfur region, and finally predisposed the country to further balkanisation.

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    Sudan mirrors Nigeria in many ways. When the elite (doctors, health workers, lawyers) ignited protests on the streets of Khartoum, the al-Bashir presidency fell in a matter of months and was replaced by a civil-military leadership, which upon further protests fell apart until civil war broke out in 2023. At every election cycle in Nigeria, some powerful groups lose out. If that loss is not handled well, as it is happening now, and is compounded by economic hardship, discontent could fester to the point of incitement. Among the opposition, there has been little effort to appreciate the economic realignment and rejuvenation taking place, partly because the positive effects of the realignment have not been substantially felt among the poor. Massive economic rejuvenation is taking place amidst dramatic social and political realignments, but the opposition, given the nature of Nigerian politics, will de-emphasise progress and focus on the inconsistencies, contradictions, immiseration, and policy reversals of the administration. The fixation with peripherals is mainly due to the displacement of powerful members of the political elite, the controversiality of some of the government’s economic policies, and the panic that some of the policies might actually be effective thus leaving the opposition to muckrake and centre their attacks on the person and affiliations of the president.

    There is a lot to fix about Nigeria; but it is dangerous to let the effort be inspired by self-centred and shortsighted politics. If the elite are not restrained by either the existential crises undermining peace and development in the continent or the unwelcoming racial and political atmosphere wafting over Europe, Asia and the Americas, centrifugal forces may take over. Opposition is essentially about policies, to a little extent about style, and certainly not about exploitation of ethnic and religious fault lines. The elite must be aware of the cataclysmic effects of deliberately promoting instability or letting divisions ossify in a country still susceptible to fracturing over small differences. Incendiary speeches, sponsorship of domestic revolts, and copycat embrace of the political dynamics unsettling other countries need to give way to responsible politics that take cognisance of the day after tomorrow. Whether the government and the opposition like to hear it or not, Nigeria’s survival is more threatened today than at any time in its history, partly because of the dangerous interplay of global forces.

  • Soyinka, visa revocation and parallels

    Soyinka, visa revocation and parallels

    Death and life, says the bible, are in the power of the tongue. Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka willed his visa revocation by making his Green Card to ‘have an accident’, a forerunner of the revocation of his B1/B2 visa. Hazarding a few guesses for the revocation, he believed that what happened to the Green Card was probably the ‘new facts that came to light’ to attract the United States response. He also suggested that his unyielding criticisms of President Donald Trump, whom he likened to former Ugandan president Idi Amin in Whiteface, might have played a role in the revocation. Notwithstanding the visa revocation, and certain that his judgement of the style and policies of Mr Trump was accurate, the laureate hinted he might still do some creative work with the American president as the protagonist. The professor may indeed be prescient, but it is unlikely that even he anticipated the dystopian nature American society and immigration controls have assumed. The Green Card accident and the visa revocation have fortuitously saved him the embarrassment and torment he would probably have encountered on trips to the US.

    If a lot of fight was still left in the old warhorse Prof. Soyinka, and he both spoke and acted the fight in his convictions about the depressing manifestations of US democracy, particularly in respect of the upending of the old rules-based international order as well as the decline and warping of American values and global leadership, other participants and activists on the Nigerian scene have spoken themselves into a very different kind of trouble they neither have the ethical mooring or courage to face. It is not every commentator that speaks himself into trouble that does it from a noble or altruistic point of view. Unfortunately, it is also not all the time that an undiscriminating public can tell the difference. Last March, a youth corps member, Ushie Uguamaye, spoke herself into foolish trouble when she admitted her participation in a ‘rant challenge’. Her ignoble confession did not rob her of significant public support, a sad commentary on the decline of values in Nigeria and a reflection of ethnic, class and political polarisation. ‘Lagos smells,’ she had posted, and ‘President Tinubu was a terrible president’, she added. She apologised for her description of Lagos, but it was obvious she did not mean it, but declined to apologise for insulting the president, anchoring her adamancy on what she said was her constitutional right to free speech. Of course, she ignored her obligation and oath as a corps member. Activists lent her wild support.

    Last week another harebrained netizen, Innocent Chukwuma, openly and in offensive language advocated on X (Twitter) a coup d’etat in Nigeria, inspired, it was clear, by happenings in other parts of Africa, particularly the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). Here is what Mr Chukwuma posted: “A coup in Nigeria is needed. Dispose of APC, suspend the Nigerian Government, and join the AES. That is all we need now. It will happen eventually. Nigerians, the military needs your support now! Only them can save this country.” In another post, he said: “The @#*&! in Aso Rock has basically sold this country to the West, and they run our intelligence apparatus. Only the military can reset this country. Support them.” It does not matter to him and others who lionise his idiocy that Mali is in far bigger trouble than it can ever bargain for, and Burkina Faso is propped on insane propaganda. Nor is he discomfited by his mendacity about the president selling Nigeria to the West at a time US president Donald Trump is busy declaring Nigeria a country of particular concern, preparatory to declaring it a terrorist state deserving of American military action to ‘protect Christians’.

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    Activist Omoyele Sowore, who jumps on every anti-establishment controversy, gave Ms Uguamaye, alias Raye, huge support. It was expected. His lifestyle and politics are dysfunctional, and without any reflection, projects that warpedness onto national issues. He lives and thrives on discord and chaos, a member of the army of chaotic activists dedicated to dismantling Nigeria in line with some global doomsday predictions. To lend support to a self-confessed ranter embarking on a challenge to determine who was the nastiest on social media is an indication of failure of home training or psychological imbalance. But Mr Sowore was not the only one to lend support to Raye; many media houses and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) also did, thereby turning her into a cause célèbre. The constitutional right to free speech is of course inalienable, but there are always limits. When Mr Chukwuma advocated a coup on X, the consequences are not limited to him, whether he is arrested or ostracised. It strikes at the core of Nigeria’s stability, especially at a time when a few African countries are succumbing to extra-constitutional methods for regime change. Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger Republic, Sudan, Madagascar, Guinea, Gabon – all pejoratively described as belonging to the African coup belt – have truncated their democratic experiments. Some analysts have suggested that if current speculations about a foiled coup in Nigeria turn out to be factual, the plotters were probably encouraged by the public calls for military intervention.

    The social media has given rise to all kinds of extremism, particularly verbal and rhetorical terrorism. It encouraged the false narrative of EndSARS massacre in Nigeria, fuelled the Nepalese and Madagascar revolts, and gave fillip to the Tanzanian election protests regardless of President Samia Suluhu Hassan winning 98 percent of the estimated 32 million ballots according to the electoral commission. A few Western countries have made bland statements about the situations in the coup-ridden countries of Africa and those in the grip of electoral violence, but none issued a warning or note of caution regarding the January 2021 attack on the US Capitol. Decades of self-deprecation and de-marketing have pushed Africa to the precipice. And that de-marketing is fuelled in Nigeria by civil society groups, activists, political opposition, militias, insurgents, traditional and social media, and the gullible populace indifferent to economics but allergic to hardship.

    But the worst is about to come for Nigeria. Under President Trump, the US has become the world policeman, bombing and bullying its way around the world, and destroying post-World War II rules-based international order. It has re-designated Nigeria a country of particular concern while ignoring its own past and contemporary history of racism, gun violence, police discrimination, a justice system tilted against Blacks, and now creeping authoritarianism. Seizing upon the largely fallacious campaigns of some Nigerians and US lawmakers and private groups, Mr Trump has called for action against Nigeria to ‘save Christians’. Whatever methods of involvement it chooses to deploy are bound to complicate ethnic and religious relations in Nigeria, worsen counterinsurgency operations, destabilise the country, facilitate illegal mineral exploitation and expropriation, and perhaps predispose the country to state failure or new alliances to the East. The US approach is unprecedented. It is not designed to build, unite, or stabilise; it is fashioned to fracture and engender large-scale instability in the West African sub-region. But all this is happening because a few Nigerians, by their rhetoric, suborning of foreign interests, and neocolonial orientation, are exposing their country to plunderers.

    However, by failing for more than 15 years to rein in insurgency in the Northeast and banditry in the Northwest, and by being unable to curb the madness in the Middle Belt states of Benue, Nasarawa and Plateau, many local victims and aggrieved individuals as well as international observers have gone away with the impression that what is happening in Nigeria is not ethnic or economic struggle for land and mineral resources, but religious genocide. Yet, the attackers are largely foreigners who received training and arms from non-state actors following the collapse of Libya. The US had designated Nigeria a country of particular concern for nearly a decade, together with Mr Trump’s new darlings Syria, Pakistan and even Saudi Arabia; but the Nigerian media has painted the news as if the declaration was fresh or recent. If Nigeria can muster the will and the military muscle to undertake a final push against the lawlessness that has overtaken parts of the country, it may buy time to resolve its economic crisis and find a workable and fairly permanent solution to its structural and existential questions. But it does not have the luxury of time. If US meddling is allowed, in line with the lobbying of some Nigerian interests, there is no assurance that the country will survive. And if chaos ensues, no one, not the complainants nor the groups complained against, will be spared the consequences of anarchy. For decades, many Nigerians have spoken disaster, death and tragedy upon their country, with politicians leading the way and activists following hard on their heels; now their words are returning to haunt them in a way they may be unprepared to live with.

  • The steward, strategist, listener, reformer, patriot in Tinubu

    The steward, strategist, listener, reformer, patriot in Tinubu

    There are weeks in governance that simply pass through the calendar; then there are weeks that stamp a leader’s imprint on the psychology of a nation. The past week belonged firmly in the latter category for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. It was a week the President strengthened the guardrails of the Republic, re-anchored state authority on constitutional vigilance, rebuked the cynicism of those who doubt Nigeria’s rise, and again demonstrated, before citizens and critics alike, that leadership is not omniscience but the humility to reassess, recalibrate, and act courageously for the collective.

    It was, in essence, a distillation of the Tinubu doctrine: proactive security, principled nationalism, people-centred correction, and a fierce industrial patriotism that places Nigeria, not foreign appetites nor elite conveniences, at the centre of economic decision-making. In a turbulent world and a region where fragility often masquerades as fate, Nigeria has a President whose instincts are to anticipate, reorganise, and insist on outcomes. And last week, that instinct was on full display.

    Security is not merely about physical might; it is about clarity of mission, unity of command, and the moral courage to demand excellence. On Monday, President Tinubu met the newly appointed service chiefs at the State House, following sweeping changes in the military hierarchy. The reshuffle itself was an act of state stewardship, a deliberate reinforcement of Nigeria’s armed defense architecture at a time when enemies mutate and opportunists test the nation’s resolve.

    General Olufemi Oluyede took command as Chief of Defense Staff, with Waidi Shaibu leading the Army, Kevin Aneke heading the Air Force, and Idi Abbas steering the Navy. It was not just a personnel change — it was a signal: the era of complacency is over, and nothing short of decisive victory against insurgents, bandits, and destabilisation cartels will suffice.

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    And yet, the President did not stop at administrative reform. He crowned action with philosophy on Thursday when he decorated the new chiefs. It was a charge steeped in urgency, clarity, and national expectation: “We cannot allow the crisis that began in 2009 to persist any longer. It is time to defeat the enemies. Be innovative, pre-emptive, and courageous. Nigerians expect results, not excuses.”

    In one sentence, the Commander-in-Chief reframed Nigeria’s counter-insurgency approach from reactive to offensive. He went further: “Let us smash the new snakes right in the head.”

    This was not metaphorical aggression; it was policy direction. Terrorists thrive on anticipation gaps, he closed that window. They exploit inter-agency silo mentality, he outlawed it by presidential directive: “Work together, compare notes, exchange information, and defeat this enemy once and for all.” He promised support and demanded accountability. He mourned the fallen and honoured their families. He thanked soldiers for reclaimed territories and refused to allow complacency.

    This is not the language of a ceremonial head; it is the voice of a wartime leader. And make no mistake, Nigeria is at war with forces who neither respect her sovereignty nor share her future. Tinubu’s message was unequivocal: they will not win.

    Leadership, in its purest form, is not infallibility. It is the capacity to act in public interest, refine decisions when confronted with new realities, and remain open to the moral pulse of the nation. This week, President Tinubu embodied that virtue.

    After consultations with the Council of State, he had earlier approved a list of 175 beneficiaries for presidential clemency. The public reaction was swift — especially around certain names whose offences struck deep emotional chords in the national conscience. The President did not stonewall. He did not rationalise. He did not retreat behind bureaucratic armour. He listened. He reviewed. He corrected.

    He removed 55 names, insisting that national security, victims’ rights, and public confidence could never be sacrificed on the altar of process. He relocated the Prerogative of Mercy Secretariat to the Ministry of Justice to tighten controls and tasked the Attorney-General with stricter guidelines. And he delivered the ultimate moral message: mercy is noble, but justice is sacred.

    In the words of Presidential Adviser Bayo Onanuga: “He is not afraid to reverse himself if he feels an error has been made. That is strength, not weakness.”

    It is worth underscoring — in a political culture where ego often trumps empathy, President Tinubu showed maturity. A genuine leader knows that listening is not surrender. It is service.

    If the security realignments showcased a decisive Commander-in-Chief, the economic decision unveiled a nationalist economist. Long before becoming President, Tinubu’s philosophy was clear: Nigeria’s resources must develop Nigerians. This week, that principle found expression in a quietly made, profoundly strategic decision, one whose implications will reverberate through Nigeria’s industrial future.

    On October 21, 2025, a fact only revealed publicly days later, the President approved a 15% import duty on petrol and diesel. Not to punish citizens. Not to burden the struggling. But to send an irreversible signal: the age of importing jobs and exporting opportunity is dying.

    For decades, Nigeria’s status as Africa’s top oil producer has been paradoxical, crude exporter, fuel importer; dignity compromised, economy constrained, future mortgaged. With local refineries finally entering production, policy had to align with national interest.

    By tilting the market in favour of domestic refining, Dangote’s mega refinery, modular plants in Edo, Imo, and other regions, the President is building a bridge to energy independence. As analysts rightly observed, “this duty is not a burden. It is a bridge — from dependence to independence.”

    It is industrial policy, not sentiment. It is job creation, not short-term populism. It is economic sovereignty, not foreign dependency.

    Nations do not rise by luck; they rise by nurturing strategic sectors and protecting infant industries until they mature. Tinubu has chosen the path every competitive nation has once chosen — from the U.S. steel industry to South Korea’s electronics revolution. He has chosen future prosperity over present applause. That is statesmanship.

    Taken together, these actions form a coherent philosophy: Security is foundational, not symbolic; governance is moral courage plus humility; economic sovereignty is a patriotic obligation; Listening to citizens is strength, not capitulation. Nigeria must own its future — militarily, economically, psychologically.

    This is not accidental governance. It is strategic statecraft. It echoes his earlier battles; currency unification despite political risks, student loans for equity in opportunity, global economic diplomacy that repositions Nigeria in the world. Every decision leans toward one principle: Nigeria must stand on her feet, not on borrowed crutches.

    For Nigerians bruised by years of insecurity, economic disruption, and institutional paralysis, Tinubu’s actions last week do more than manage crises. They reaffirm a contract; a contract to lead with resolve, adjust with humility, and envision a nation where justice and security are not elite commodities but universal guarantees. For the cynic, leadership is about optics. For the statesman, it is about outcomes.

    The President told the service chiefs: “We are in a hurry to celebrate peace”. He told Nigerians through his actions: We will build a nation where mercy is disciplined, security is uncompromised, and national wealth circulates at home, not offshore. And he told the world: Nigeria is not a weak state. It is a rising state reclaiming its agency.

    If the week’s headline events, the decisive military reset, the humble recalibration on clemency, and the nationalist fuel-duty policy, revealed the architecture of President Tinubu’s leadership, his other engagements through the week stitched together the fabric of a leader fully present: honouring history, inspiring the present, and engineering the future.

    It began on a note of gratitude and national memory. On Sunday, the President celebrated two icons of culture and service — veteran journalist Oloye Lekan Alabi at 75 and former Culture Minister, High Chief Edem Duke, at 70. Both men, torchbearers of Nigerian heritage and public duty, were praised for lives spent in elevating the nation’s narrative. In a week dominated by security and economic headlines, Tinubu reminded the country that national identity is also shaped by storytellers, cultural diplomats and civic architects.

    On Monday, he extended the same respect to pillars of democratic transition and generational mentorship, elder stateswoman Margaret Shonekan at 84, and Senator Abu Ibrahim at 80, whom he described as “a principled statesman and brother.” It was a nod to political memory, a leader rooted in history, refusing to detach governance from gratitude.

    Mid-week brought global and generational bridges. On Tuesday, Tinubu hosted Denmark’s Bestseller CEO, Anders Holch Povlsen, deepening Nigeria’s investment diplomacy and signalling that his industrial-nationalist vision embraces both domestic capacity and international capital. By Wednesday, the President honoured legal luminary Kola Awodein at 70, and in the same breath celebrated a rising star — NASENI Chief Executive, Khalil Halilu, 35 — proof that in Tinubu’s Nigeria, age is neither barrier nor entitlement; merit is.

    He continued that theme by praising female leadership and civic grace in Alhaja Adiat Subair at 80, then honoured Lagos’ revered monarch, Oba Rilwan Akiolu at 82, affirming traditional stools as partners in the republic.

    Thursday was policy and innovation day. Beyond the security charge, the President launched NINAuth — a leap in digital sovereignty. He praised Senator Osita Izunaso’s unwavering political service, and then capped the day with a global economic stroke: approving a National Carbon Market Framework to unlock up to $3bn annually.

    The Tinubu Doctrine in Motion

    The week under review will be remembered not for the events themselves, but for what they reveal about the man steering the ship of state. Tinubu’s leadership last week fused firmness with fairness, resolve with reflection, nationalism with strategy. In a world where leaders often choose applause over principle, he chose Nigeria.

    In crushing threats, correcting errors, and constructing economic resilience, he has signalled that the era of improvisational governance is fading, giving way to strategic, self-confident statecraft. Nigeria does not merely need a president; it needs a steward, a strategist, a listener, a reformer, and above all, a patriot. In the week in review, President Tinubu was all of these.

    And as the nation braces for the seasons ahead; confronting threats, seizing opportunities, and forging destiny, one truth grows clearer: Nigeria is under a leader who knows that history rewards not those who avoid storms, but those who steer through them. And steer he has begun.