President Donald Trump’s electoral triumph has exposed and concretised the unremorseful political partisanship of Nigerian evangelicals. In the 2023 Nigerian presidential election, they ignored logic and defied their conscience and went ahead to openly campaign for someone they believed would best represent their sectarian interest, not the interest of the country. They were unbothered by their insularity. At the inauguration ceremonies of US president Trump, particularly the non-governmental and non-political inaugural prayer breakfast, some Nigerian evangelicals ministered, an indication that they rooted for the Republican Party candidate, and exulted his victory. Their Nigerian candidate, Peter Obi, lost badly in the 2023 poll, only for them to discover that the ogre they thought the All Progressives Candidate (APC) to be was unreal. What if in the coming months and years they discover Mr Trump to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing?
Over the millennia, the church has always fared very badly when they foray into politics. Over the centuries they have transmogrified from personifying peace to embodying the most appalling forms of venality, greed, torture, bloodshed and mayhem, and from revivalist dependence on the Spirit to supine embrace of and dependence on the flesh. Their predilections served them badly in Nigeria; they are unlikely, together with their American counterparts, to serve them well in the United States. Before the elections, the devious Mr Trump postured as the champion of the evangelicals, not even the champion of Christianity – for the two are different – but at his inauguration he declined to swear on the bible, though his longsuffering wife dutifully placed them at his reach. The truth is that Mr Trump is irreligious, and couldn’t care less what the rubric of the Christian faith looks or sounds like. He sees Christianity as a tool to be harnessed for political goals, in the service of his deeply divisive, malicious and malevolent career.
Nigerian evangelicals have learnt nothing from the 2023 Nigerian elections. Rather than view society and politics with the circumspect eyes of the Spirit of God, they continue to blunder into partisanship, anchoring it on poor scriptural interpretations. By attending the so-called prayer breakfast last week, they lent credence to Mr Trump’s politics, ideas and lifestyle. They naively see him as a modern-day Cyrus the Great (who founded the Achaemenid Empire in 550 BC and ruled until his death in 530 BC) who was used by God to execute an agenda (Isaiah 44 – 45). But they forget that God neither needs their help nor has he told them he would use Mr Trump’s hateful and spiteful agenda against the ‘enemies’ of America. By the way, Cyrus was a far better and more competent leader than Mr Trump. Read his history. The Episcopalian bishop of Washington, Mariann Budde, who coaxed and admonished Mr Trump on the principles and practice of love in the face of immigrant crisis and sexual deviancy, among other pressing challenges to the American society, received the full and remorseless length of his tongue. The evangelicals who hail him think that political and legislative solutions would solve the crisis of sexual permissiveness plaguing America; in other words, what the church began in the Spirit could, because of spiritual laziness, be accomplished in the flesh.
It is true that previous US administrations had given free rein to all sorts of decadence, and there was indeed danger of American society either imploding or descending into outright bestiality. But there is nothing in the history of the early church, which laid the foundations of Christianity, to indicate that the church excels in political pushback. Traditionally, and notwithstanding technological advancements and information overload, the church had always needed revival and spiritual rebirth to push its Kingdom of God agenda. But in America, which Nigerian evangelicals ape, they believe in electing a political champion in whose unworthy and tremulous hands they repose the hope of societal reformation and change. By lying in bed with characters like Mr Trump, the church signals the repudiation of the scriptures in favour of the power of flesh and horses. Mr Trump will be their ruin. There are millions of sexual deviants scurrying around in America, and millions more of illegal immigrants. The methods advocated by the church’s champion in dealing with these societal challenges will test the fundamentals of the Christian faith to their elastic limit, especially when the shrill cries of children and the dispossessed rend the heavens.
The church in Nigeria has fared badly and embarrassingly in recent years in their exegesis of tithes and prosperity, two topics that have been misinterpreted and exploited; now they seem adamant in toeing the controversial line of their American evangelical brethren. Yet, they were sired mostly by British and European churches, but since those forebears acquired football and went overboard in their secularism, Nigerian evangelicals have quickly adopted American evangelicals as their source and champions. There is nothing wrong with being mentored; but it is dangerous when the Scripture which should be the real and ultimate mentor is replaced by human and charismatic mentors. A terrible affliction is ravaging the body of Christ; Mr Trump will apotheosise that perversion in ways that would be difficult to remedy. While Americans brace for the Trump phenomenon, Nigerians, particularly the evangelicals, who see him as a godsend against queers and all other deviants must also brace for a terrible backlash. The Nigerian evangelicals exposed themselves to ridicule over tithes and prosperity; it is alarming that they appear ignorant of what they may be exposing themselves to in their embrace of the irreverent Mr Trump, a small and modern parallel of the abomination that maketh desolate…
Former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) governor and Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, was unsparing of the Bola Tinubu administration’s economic management style last week in Lagos when he gave a few remarks at the 21st memorial lecture of Chief Gani Fawehinmi organised by the Ikeja branch of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA). Without his effervescent and controversial remarks, it is doubtful whether the NBA (Ikeja branch) lecture would have attracted the kind of publicity it received in the following day’s media reports. The emir, whose throne is still disputed in court following his deposition by former governor Abdullahi Ganduje and reinstatement by Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf, can be trusted to attract newspaper headlines any day.
In his remarks at the NBA lecture he seemed unsure he still had friends in the administration, perhaps because he doubted their commitment to his efforts to reclaim the stool he believed he lost unfairly when the then governor, Dr Ganduje, who is now the All Progressives Congress (APC) chairman, deposed him. When he spoke of their lack of commitment to him, it was an oblique reference to the protractedness of the court cases barring him from being the undisputed Kano emir. When he spoke about the administration’s controversial and unnerving economic reforms, it was also an indication that he still recognised them as friends who were nevertheless reluctant or unwilling to behave as friends. If they were reluctant to requite his love, he would not feel bound to help them, he said, inferring both their absolution and their pigheadedness.
Said he: “I have decided not to speak about the economy or the reforms, nor to explain anything regarding them. If I explained, it would only benefit this government, and I don’t want to aid this government. I can stand here today, to be honest, and give a few points that are contrary, a few points that explain perhaps what we’re going through and how it was totally predictable—most of it, and maybe avoidable. But I’m not going to do that. They’re my friends. If they don’t behave like friends, I don’t behave like a friend. So, I watch them being stewed, and they don’t even have people with credibility who can come and explain what they’re doing. But I’m not going to help. Let them come and explain to Nigerians why the policies that are being pursued are being pursued. Meanwhile, I’m watching a very nice movie with popcorn in my hands. What we are going through today is, at least in part—not totally, at least in part—a necessary consequence of decades of irresponsible economic management.”
The administration’s response was rather copious but also tame. They do not need his approval, Information minister Mohammed Idris said, suggesting pointedly that the administration understood that the emir was unable or unkeen to subsume personal interest under national interest. Indeed, apart from justifying their economic measures and proving that they had the competence to explain themselves, contrary to the emir’s cavil, the administration centred its rebuttal on the shocking fact that for Emir Sanusi, it was all about his person, not strictly the policies of the administration nor presidency staff. In his remarks at the NBA lecture, the emir deployed pungent satire to capture the administration’s troubles with Nigeria’s long-suffering public. Hear him: “I don’t want to aid this government; I’m watching them being stewed; they don’t have people with credibility who can explain their policies; I’m watching a very nice movie with popcorn in my hands…”
Emir Sanusi has always been controversial and impetuous. The problem, as the Information minister said, is not that he took issue with any government policy, the big problem is how he failed to realise that his statements show the disturbing inner workings of his mind: his immense self-centredness, his obsession with his ‘immaculate’ worldview, and his incredible willingness to sacrifice anything, including friendship and patriotism, to achieve his private and limited objectives. He is probably right that despite pursuing the right course and policies, the administration has been awkward in explaining themselves. He is also probably right that some of the administration’s policies have been blunted or even inadequate in tackling the country’s socio-economic crisis. And who can refute the emir’s conviction that some of the administration’s officials have been ill-equipped for the tasks at hand. Yes, the emir has ample reasons to be cautious about his optimism, but he also probably flaunts and exaggerates his eloquence which he sometimes substitute for substance, as his alleged profligate first term on the Kano throne indicated, not to talk of his equally controversial and partially undisciplined tenure at the CBN also showed.
In his NBA lecture remarks, Emir Sanusi may have displayed uncommon candour, but he probably underestimates the intelligence and character of many of his listeners, some of whom would have been dismayed at how petty he sounded. To withhold advice to the nation, if not an administration he confessed was staffed by his friends, simply because he was spurned, is to display the crassest measure of self-importance and meanness anyone is capable of exhibiting. His audience would have seen him for what he truly is, a man and traditional ruler strangely lacking in wisdom and noblesse oblige. If he didn’t see the pitfalls of being viewed as a man lacking in generosity of spirit, then he is in fact overrated, regardless of his intellectual profundity and eloquence. When he made the statement of not being eager to help the administration, the applause was muted, and the snickers subdued. His audience probably shuddered at his confessions and shrunk at his lack of circumspection. Indeed, there is a limit to candour and selfishness.
Emir Sanusi forgets himself very quickly. He may disregard the reasons behind his dethronement, but it will be baffling if he also downplays the superficial and crassly political reasons for his restoration to the throne. He is a ready and clearly willing tool in the fight between New Nigerian People’s Party (NNPP) leader, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, a former governor of the state, and Dr Ganduje, Gov Yusuf’s predecessor. The combatants can’t stand each other, and will deploy anyone or tool in the service of prosecuting the war. This is why the restored emir is useful, probably only or mainly as a battering ram. But few Kanawa can forget that Dr Ganduje managed to carry out his wish against the emir through a process that passed muster. There was a query, an inquiry, then a dethronement. The inquiry was largely hinged on the emir’s alleged profligacy and refusal to be accountable, a strange behaviour for someone who rose to the position of Governor of the nation’s Central Bank. Had the emir been less voluble and critical of the governor’s policies and style of governance, Dr Ganduje, who was immersed in controversies of his own, would have been sparing. But the emir displayed immense sense of entitlement, not responsibility, and he further scoffed at the efforts to remove him, culminating in his deposition in March 2020.
Emir Sanusi possesses the capacity to always reenact his overreach, sermonising against his unfriendly friends as well as his enemies with equal passion. In the NBA lecture, he trained his guns on the current federal administration, revealing to everyone’s amazement that he was doing so because the administration refused to acknowledge him in certain ways and over certain issues. This style has become, for him, idiosyncratic. He will repeat the NBA-like harangue now or in the future when anyone, friend or foe, crosses his path. He can’t help it. There is no altruism in his methods, and he does not care. Consumed by self-consideration, he will not be denied what he thought heaven and tradition, not to say intellect and aristocracy, has vouchsafed him. It is just as well that one of his closest friends is the stormy petrel of Kaduna politics, the inimitable Nasir el-Rufai, a former governor. Both are incurably entitled, and both can be appallingly acerbic when denied. They do not think they are ever wrong; indeed they do not think they can be wrong. Intelligent, courageous, proud of their Fulani heritage, and imperial and ruthlessly vindictive, all that remains for them, as their chequered years in politics and monarchy have exposed, is to develop the character necessary to produce the staying power they covet and the pillars to anchor their tall ambitions.
Sooner or later, the Bola Tinubu administration will have to focus on state courts, far beyond the laudable feats of raising the pay of judicial officers and driving the financial autonomy of the judiciary. The reason is simple: at the states level, judges and magistrates are overweeningly beholden to governors and senior state officials. Many of the judges lack any sense of independence and judicial rectitude. Judgements from state courts in Rivers (Governor Siminalayi Fubara V. Nyesom Wike), in Kogi (In the heady days of the pretentious Yahaya Bello), and in Kano (The battle of the emirs) have been troubling and depressing. There are of course many other examples elsewhere in the states, examples designed to stymie justice and fair play, but in recent months and years, the Kano, Kogi and especially Rivers examples of far-fetched legal interpretations or outright perversion of justice take the biscuit.
Reforms are desperately needed to curb the malady. Nigeria’s various judicial regulatory authorities, including the National Judicial Council, Federal Judicial Service Commission, and State Judicial Service Commission, have only made a partial dent on keeping judicial appointees on the straight and narrow path. In addition, neither the Nigerian Bar Association nor the Body of Benchers has been able to aid the effort to make judicial officers models of rectitude. There is plenty of work to be done, not only in sanitising the judiciary and raising its competence level; there is also quite a lot to be done to get state judicial administrators, working by themselves or in league with state executives, to institute fairness in the administration of justice. In fact, and sadly, many state judiciaries have managed disreputably to suffuse their operations with ethnic and religious colourations.
In the months Mr Bello of Kogi State played hide-and-seek with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) when they sought him, one or two state courts startled everyone with their ill-considered judgements. In Kano, the courts are stalling and playing ducks and drakes with its emirs’ stability and composure. And in Rivers, the courts forsook reason, abandoned their independence, and are playing the harlot with the executive branch. They cannot be trusted to self-regulate, regardless of what the law says. They are too far gone in their excesses and harlotry. The Tinubu administration cannot pretend that these dire problems do not exist, and he can also not attempt to dive into the quagmire and directly reform and recalibrate the judiciary. Yet, it has a duty not to leave the judiciary as it met it. Everyone knows that the third arm of government is in trouble, and is also troubling Nigerian democracy. The administration must, therefore, first empanel a group of legal experts to study the problem and get to the root of the crisis before proposing lasting remedies. Yes, Nigerians have a fair idea of what is wrong, but the panel should be able to dig deeper. Secondly, the administration should thereafter sponsor legislation, not too dissimilar to the new tax reform bills, to tackle the rot. Here it will need the help of retired but incorruptible jurists who have tracked the decay and decline in the judiciary for years, if not for decades.
The Tinubu administration cannot afford to leave the judiciary as it is, abandoning the third arm of government to appointees who lack the intellect and character needed to preserve, promote and strengthen the judicial arm. Nigerians sneer at the tainted process of appointing judicial officers, which are sometimes carried out in flagrant disregard of competence, and sometimes to promote ethnic and religious agenda. Nigerians are exhausted with the operations of their courts, and they need to be succoured, not palliated with cosmetic changes. The National Assembly could attempt a fundamental remake of the judiciary through novel lawmaking, but lawmakers are either too distracted to pay attention to the problem or too tainted themselves to exercise both the gumption and character needed for a comprehensive overhaul. Much more, the legislature does not have the kind of courage President Tinubu summoned to back the tax reform bills to the hilt. The lawmakers seem prone to wilt in the face of the most perfunctory and tepid of challenges. That leaves only the executive branch, assuming President Tinubu can be encouraged to turn his attention to an arm of government certain to doom Nigerian democracy if it is left to its own devices.
It would be a relief if the president can be persuaded to turn his gaze upon the judiciary. Would it be certain that whatever reforms he proposed could do the job of repositioning the third arm of government? No one can tell with certainty. Hopefully, he will get it right, as he has done with the tax bills, and indeed with so many of his other policies, despite initial misgivings and hiccups. The operation of the rule of law upon which investment in any country is hinged depends on the justice system. But Nigeria has only a form of justice system; it is sadly crippled by incompetent and cowardly judicial officers. Their problem is, however, not a lack of brilliance; the problem is that in the Nigerian judiciary, often competent and courageous judges are endangered species weeded out by perverse forms of natural selection. Hopefully, the reforms, if and when they come, will repair the breaches.
Two factors informed the rather unusual and direct intervention of the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Kayode Egbetokun, in the looming enforcement of Motor Third Party insurance cover for vehicles on Nigerian roads. One, according to him and estimates by insurance experts, only about 30 percent of vehicles plying Nigerian roads are insured. Two, the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) has itself entered the insurance business by establishing the NPF Insurance Limited, and was recently granted licence, according to a business newspaper. So, when the IGP announced the beginning of enforcement from February 1, it is clear what the motivations are.
With the entry into the fray of the police insurance company, the police are clearly out to make money and profits, especially as third party premiums are virtually free money to operators. That the motoring public would conclude that most police enforcements are profit driven, including the illogical annual revalidation of vehicle proof of ownership, is not an exaggeration. The police are clearly underfunded; but to engage in brazen measures that earn the police economic profit in its interactions with the public during law enforcement may indicate that the Ministry of Police Affairs and the National Assembly have abdicated their responsibilities to the public, and have shown a debilitating misconception of the philosophy of law enforcement and national security.
Like military chiefs under the last administration who instigated the siting of tertiary institutions in their homesteads, the police are setting themselves up for a dangerous enactment of conflict of interest. They have always been accused of extortion during law enforcement, but they have consistently denied the allegations and even punished malfeasant officers who ran afoul of service regulations, now they will lack the legitimacy to argue their innocence. At a time when insecurity has multiplied by leaps and bounds, the police appear determined to be distracted. It remains to find out who will nudge them to retrace their steps and increase and sharpen their professionalism.
Pundits have relied on political antecedents to project 2025 as a defining year for Nigeria. The next elections will take place in 2027, and the primaries in 2026. To stand any chance of influencing the direction of the elections, opposition politicians as well as the present federal administration will need to proactively shuffle the political and economic cards this year. To win the March 2015 presidential and legislative elections, the All Progressives Congress had to be formed about two years before in February 2013, exactly two years and one month. To stand any chance of dislodging Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the then frontrunner in the 2023 presidential election, his opponents in the APC in fact started their manoeuvres about three years earlier when they unhorsed his man, party chairman Adams Oshiomhole, in June 2020. And to win the 2023 presidential poll, President Tinubu in turn began shuffling the cards as early as 2013 when the party was formed, and in particular from December 2014 when he engineered the presidential primary victory of former military head of state, Muhammadu Buhari, in Lagos.
This year will undoubtedly be very eventful. Everyone had better brace for high-wire politics. There will be rumblings in the ruling party itself, but the pushing and shoving in the opposition, and in probably a Third Force, should it emerge, will be imponderable. The opposition’s strength is at the moment diffused, but there is nothing to suggest they can’t get their act together sometime this year in order not to perish separately. It will take some doing, though, given the contrasting approach to politics by the two main opposition parties, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party (LP), and their amorphous leaders, ex-vice president Atiku Abubakar and ex-Anambra governor Peter Obi. Indeed, the opposition has belled the cat of the next polls, with whispers as early as sometime last year, and with dissonant bellow since the beginning of 2025. Their zeal for 2027 permutations will not flag. They will be as exuberant as they are vitriolic.
Meanwhile, Nigerians have a hazy picture of the emergence sometime this year of a Third Force inspired by Nasir el-Rufai, Kayode Fayemi, Rotimi Amaechi, Rauf Aregbesola, and a host of other disgruntled and alienated political leaders. Their success in engendering a formidable Third Force will depend on how fissiparous the PDP and APC become. LP is so gaseous and unstable that few people think it really resembles a political party, and there is nothing ideological or even substantial about the party for anyone to quarrel over. Mr Obi himself maintains a tenuous and dismal hold on the party, and has, aside from his opportunistic and exploitative use of its organs, been a very chary investor in its future. On the other hand, the PDP had been engaged in prolonged bickering before the 2023 presidential election and, more viciously, after their defeat in that fateful poll. They can’t transcend their party leadership squabbles, whether at the chairmanship or national secretary level, and they are unwilling to subordinate their private interests to the party’s future and ambition. And they have so distorted the shape and philosophy of their party that neither they nor anyone else recognises what the party stands for.
Given his rhetoric so far, and having a keener sense of what 2025 should hold than anyone else, Mr Obi appears desperate to become the leading opposition figure, especially with a vacillating Alhaji Atiku unsure just how much of his resources to commit to a party wary of his leadership. In his controversial and sanctimonious New Year statement, Mr Obi assailed the ruling party, denounced its leadership, accused it of attempting to foster dictatorship, and concluded that the APC was incompetent in managing the country’s crises, particularly the economy. But in the eyes of APC spokesmen, the LP leader obviously ignored the reality of the progress made by the ruling party in restoring the economy to an even keel as well as the freedoms Nigerians enjoy and have clearly taken for granted. Soon, the exchange became bitter and threatening, with Mr Obi alleging threats to his life and his family, and the APC spokesmen also accusing the former governor of slander and incitement. The sum of all this is that in the past few weeks, and believing that the 2027 race is a sprint, Mr Obi has managed to keep posturing as the main opposition leader. But it won’t be for long.
The doughty Alhaji Atiku never surrenders until it is impossible to go on. He may not reach that threshold of needing to surrender this year, least of all to the flaky and sermonising Mr Obi, but he will keep his eyes trained on both the APC and the main prize, while he sees the noise of the LP leader as a tangential and necessary distraction to flummox their common enemy. For much of this year, the former vice president will amuse himself with the stifling anachronisms of his main contender for the opposition crown, and rest assured that Mr Obi will burn out in his exploitation of religious and ethnic divisions, not to talk of the sinister manner he has indirectly nurtured the Obidient mobocrats in the service of base interests. What is more, he will continue to manipulate the emotions of the people and prey on their fears. Alhaji Atiku may in a limited way possess the stamina to take the long-term perspective in politics, and hopes to flourish this year when it is needed, he will, however, have to contend with his abysmal lack of capacity to run a political party and his reluctance to get his hands dirty in resolving fratricidal differences. In politics, he prefers the clean and jerk, as he demonstrated in the Action Congress (AC) in 2007, and in his first and second attempts at the presidency on the PDP platform in 2019 and 2023. But fortunately for him, Mr Obi is cut from the same cloth in the LP whose dying embers are visible from 10 kilometres away.
Farsighted politicians, including former governors like Jigawa’s Sule Lamido, are apprehensive of the APC’s staying power and capacity to plot mischief. They fear that in the build-up to the next elections, starting from this year, there will be more defections to the ruling party, and even opposition lawmakers and governors will be more amenable to the wishes of President Tinubu. They suggest that only a coalition of opposition parties stands the chance of defeating the APC in 2027. How to form that coalition and find an altruistic leader to sacrifice self interest for public and party interest will, however, prove exceedingly difficult. Ambitious politicians who take a short-term perspective of politics hardly prove capable of sacrificing anything, let alone the presidency which all of them desperately covet. Opposition leaders have luxuriated in the exciting idea of a mega coalition, as if the very nature of the term is powerful and sufficient enough to gift them the highest office. But the three main opposition leaders, to wit, Alhaji Atiku, Mr Obi, and New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) leader Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, have time and time again displayed egotism of the highest order. None of them possesses the needed altruism to bury personal ambition in order to advance a common and nobler cause.
If the main opposition parties and leaders are unable to form a coalition, might the putative leaders of the Third Force be up to the task? In theory, they are capable. All of them are, however, aware of their limitations; and having been out of office for some years and are now presumably rid of the egotism that afflicts office holders in these parts, they may be prepared to eat humble pie. They will sacrifice anything and do everything, they say, to erase the president’s self-satisfied smirk. But they lack the resources and mischief which the PDP is capable of summoning for a common cause, and the ready army of charlatans and cannon fodder which the LP can muster at the bat of an eyelid. If they repose hope in some secret financiers angry enough to want to invest in their gambit, they may have to wait for much longer than they think. Today, given the sophistication in tracking movement of funds, as the last election proved to the chagrin of some business moguls, no tycoon worth his name will take such foolish risks of funding the opposition, not to talk of an obsolescent opposition. The Third Force will remain an entertaining option in Nigerian politics, but in 2025 they will be hobbled by a lack of resources and will thus be unable to bite as much as they bark. After all, their feeble alliance is backed not by any coherent ideology but by their common lack of loyalty to a mentor, and by their callous betrayals, ruthlessness and iconoclasm.
But the ultimate game changer in 2025 will be the economy. If it is revived on time and on a sufficient scale that significantly betters the lives of Nigerians before the end of the year, the opposition will be disarmed, and even soothsayers who have in recent years become less coherent in their predictions for the year and the future will also begin to hem and haw. Like any epidemic that runs its course, Nigeria’s ravaged economy may have inflicted its worst on the people and has in fact begun to mend. Contrary to Mr Obi’s New Year statement, the Tinubu administration has actually stabilised the economy which neared a free fall in 2023. Nearly all sectors are responding to treatment, perhaps not as fast as the people hope, nor as deep as may be needed for a major and consequential impact, but in 2025, the economy is unlikely to relapse into torpor again, since the administration had wisely spent its first two years in office executing nerve-racking and backbreaking reforms. Indeed, nearly all economic indicators are looking up, whether in growth figure or in forex stability, or in foreign direct investment. If the economy keeps looking up in the year, the hands of the opposition will be conversely weakened. And if the global economy does not prove adverse to Nigeria’s economic recovery, the opposition will be hard put to diminish the ruling party’s 2027 chances.
This year will also witness the ups and downs and the push and pull of insecurity. If the security agencies think a little outside the box, clean up their act, and add more zeal and imagination to their counterinsurgency efforts, Nigerians may actually be witnessing the dying embers of violent extremist groups. Security agencies have admitted that kinetic measures are insufficient to get the better of insecurity, but they and the federal and state governments have not shown enough appreciation of why these groups were birthed and why they have so far largely resisted most countermeasures. Some analysts emphasise the role played by economic factors, chiefly poverty; but other commentators point at the manipulation of religion. Elite irresponsibility in many parts of Nigeria has encouraged all sorts of successful challenges to the state; yet political and community leaders have refused to accept responsibility for being accessories to the breakdown of law and order. Whether in the Northeast, Northwest or Southeast, political and community leaders have been complicit in promoting insecurity and other diverse challenges to the system. Despite the occasional eruptions and last gasps, however, insecurity may finally begin to relent.
In 2025, the Southwest appears alarmingly poised to be infected by the same malaise that predisposed other regions to various insurgencies. The remarkable secularism of the Southwest is being eroded inch by inch, and mile by mile, starting with seemingly innocuous religious observances and cultures, at a time when many previously theocratic states in the world have begun to recognise the drawbacks of obliterating the divide between state and religion. If they do not take conscious steps to free themselves from the claws of sectarianism, they will inherit the doom other regions are extricating themselves from. Days ago, both the Department of State Service (DSS) and Governor Seyi Makinde raised the alarm about creeping terrorism in the region, with international terrorist organisations allegedly finding a toehold in Osun and Oyo States. The DSS has announced the arrest of a terrorist cell in Osun, and the Oyo governor has also alleged that bandits and Boko Haram militants flushed out from the North are finding refuge in Oyo forests. Domestic terrorists will always find refuge and accommodation in communities that flirt with sectarianism and denude their secularist heritage. The hitherto peaceful Southwest is openly flirting with non-secularists and terrorists, years after herdsmen pillaged their region. Are they gluttons for punishment? They will suffer destabilisation and retrogression if they do not begin to walk back the folly of romancing the politics and religion of exclusion.
The far North has been reluctant to accept responsibility for birthing Boko Haram and banditry and the poverty the menaces have accentuated, despite the punishing genocide the crises have caused. Soon after the restoration of civil rule in 1999, they scorned the constitution and jumped into bed with sectarianism bordering on theocracy, notwithstanding the advance warnings Maitatsine religious revolts of the 1980s gave them about the dangers of such flirtations. In fact, instead of firmly dealing with religious extremism over the decades, they cuddled it, refused to prosecute those who engaged in mass murder in the name of religion, and pretended as if there would be no consequences. But the consequences came inescapably, and instead of putting out the fire, they at first handled Boko Haram with kid gloves, and then sponsored it until it grew into a Frankenstein monster. They then excused banditry in the name of reclaiming past grazing practices, but had no idea how to deal with what they finally acknowledged was a civil war between the Hausa and Fulani. It is expected in 2025 that the establishment of a placating Livestock ministry would mitigate the violent clashes between farmers and herders. It is not certain why the government hopes that the ministry is enough placation when the North’s complicit leaders have learnt no lessons from their errant ways.
Overall, optimism will likely remain high this year, as signposted by the oil sector recovery, while insecurity may reduce significantly, the economy maintain its steady positive trajectory on all indicators, including on unemployment and inflation, and hardship ameliorated. The administration will, however, need to sustain these gains by undergirding them with some social engineering measures to reorient Nigerians away from decades of entitlement and undue reliance on the state’s feeding bottles. In the end, each person owes himself a living. Despite the alarms Alhaji Atiku and Mr Obi have repeatedly raised about the hypothetical erosion of civil rights, it is unclear whether they can substantiate their allegations or find enough corroborations to justify their hysteria. As a measure of the political stability so far engendered by the Bola Tinubu administration, Nigerians at home and abroad have become fairly upbeat about their country, and they will be even more optimistic this year if nothing earthshaking undermines that hope. On its own, having survived nearly two years of bitter recriminations by the opposition, coup instigators, and rash of protests, the administration may have begun to understand that no positive achievement will be enough to dissuade opposition parties and a section of Nigeria’s regional elites from plotting its defeat in the next elections. But before 2025 is over, many pundits who have for months been unable to see the wood for the trees, partly because they have also become partisan, should more competently be able to determine how this year would impact the events of 2026 and particularly 2027.
Armed with a Yoruba proverb that all but implied that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd (NNPCL) told lies to the public about the scale of its refineries restoration, former president Olusegun Obasanjo scorned the efforts of the Bola Tinubu administration in the downstream sector. Two of the refineries, Old Port Harcourt and Warri, have been restored and are operating at about two-thirds capacity. The former president was careful enough to stop short of doubting the restoration of the refineries in their entirety, but he insinuated that the scale was far less than the company announced. He did not avail the public the details of the information he had about the scale of production he offhandedly questioned. He would not be trapped.
In an interview he gave Channels Television, he spoke about his doubts that Nigerian refineries could ever be restored, especially following the submissions by Shell Nigeria that the plants were too complicated, obsolete and potentially susceptible to corruption to become a profitable line of business for a company that finds the downstream sector of the oil business more profitable. But in the same breath, he tried to justify offloading the refineries at $750m to the consortium put together by business magnate Aliko Dangote. Chief Obasanjo reposed trust in Shell Nigeria’s summation, but nevertheless approved the Dangote/Femi Otedola/Transcorp deal, a deal he lamented his successor, the late Umaru Yar’Adua, ‘unwisely’ revoked. The former president then concluded that the about two billion dollars spent on revitalising the refineries do not justify the scale of the ongoing restoration. But, from all indications, he would have, through his equity in Transcorp, benefited from the Dangote consortium deal, a deal he hammered out in the closing weeks of his presidency without any shred of transparency. Surely, there is a limit to bellyaching. NNPCL has asked him, of course with a hint of sarcasm, to visit the restored refineries. He won’t. He will have a fit if he visits and sees the plants buzzing.
Chief Obasanjo’s position on the refineries has of course been dismissed by many critics who accuse him of being a wet blanket and an envious politician stunned by the current administration’s successful restoration of the facilities. He is now faced with the ordeal of witnessing the refineries restored to near capacity, and the commissioning of private refineries projected both to curb the importation of refined petroleum products and make Nigeria a net exporter of fuel, as indeed the Dangote refinery is already doing. The former president may be loth to admit his fallibility, but the fact is that he is as vulnerable as he is fallible, and his political and business judgements, which he believes to be sacrosanct, are questionable.
In his eight years as president, while he achieved some remarkable feats, he also made appalling decisions about his party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), about governors whom he disliked and got impeached, about respect for democratic principles, and after many rigmaroles and riding roughshod over the electoral system, ended up saddling the country with political liabilities and ill-fated succession. But despite these failings, and despite seeming to defy gravity after many years out of office, he has maintained some relevance in national affairs, with politicians organising pilgrimages to his residence to seek support for their ambitions or at least mute his waspish tongue.
In a little over two years, Chief Obasanjo will be 90 years old. Already, he belongs to the exclusive class of former Nigerian leaders who have lived very long and satisfactorily, and the small percentage of Nigerians (0.35%) who live above 80. Nature and divinity have been very kind to him, gifting him leadership of Nigeria as a military leader and as twice elected president, not to talk of international recognition that makes him an exceptional Nigerian. He has of course not requited nature for those gifts, nor performed with distinction the assignments he messianically claimed heaven had devolved to him. But not being one to be incommoded by protestations from any quarters, he has pranced all over the country and the world, posing as God’s most accomplished gift to his country and perhaps to the black man.
Yet his age and experience should instruct him otherwise. He is becoming infirm despite his best efforts, is stooping slightly when he had been ramrod all his life, and regardless of his avowal to stay on this side of heaven on and on and on, perhaps mummifying in the process, he has fewer years ahead of him than behind him, much fewer. A smart and sensitive and visionary leader should seize the time left to bind up wounds, heal divides, make peace with avowed enemies, and create an environment around his image that would make Nigerians genuinely grieve his departure. Instead, he is making more enemies, casting aspersion on everyone diametrically opposed to his rather rudimentary views and philosophy of life, and egregiously fouling the national well of trust by still seeking to impose leaders on the nation despite his infamous incompetence in judging people’s and leaders’ character. No one in Nigeria has been so gifted with the chance to forge a golden image for himself, and no one has been so extraordinarily adept at frittering away the chance.
The NNPCL affair was an opportunity to encourage the nation about its possibilities, even musing, probably with an ironic smile, how he almost misjudged the matter when he was president and pestered by greed. It was an opportunity to display nobility by sending a disarming message to his arch enemy, President Bola Tinubu, to work harder to get the other refineries back to life. But no. Having jumped into the trenches and muckraked during electioneering in 2022 and 2023, and having come a cropper in the process, he must keep up his old animosities to the very end by scorning every effort to revivify mothballed or ageing facilities. Chief Obasanjo was sculpted to be a national lodestar, perhaps unfairly to the rest of Nigeria, but he has remained transfixed on desecrating his gifts and diminishing his unique opportunities.
All is, however, not lost. Chief Obasanjo has promised himself many more years on earth, of course, leaving God no choice. In theory, and ignoring his flighty nature, he can make amends and be the man nature and heaven designed him to be. No one dares hope for his sake that he will fail to grab the chance with both hands. Should he, therefore, have a rethink, the country will be waiting eagerly to send him forth in a blaze of glory. He may not deserve it, having pipped the country at the post as it were, but it would be worth the effort for a beleaguered nation in search of heroes. He may not even have drawn the right lessons from the legacy of the late US president Jimmy Carter, whom he recommended to leaders everywhere to emulate, but his many leadership misdeeds and the damaging superficiality of his decisions will probably be glossed over should he, in the twilight of his years, foster the ethnic and political reconciliation Nigeria deeply yearns for. Hopefully he will seize the flicking moment.
Former vice president Atiku Abubakar is the remaining member of the troika (who lost the last presidential election to President Bola Tinubu) who is yet to disclaim the reported impending merger of the three main opposition parties, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Labour Party (LP), and New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP). Though he or his spokesmen are often spontaneous in their responses to Nigeria’s fluid political dynamics, they have kept ghostly silent so far as the other two parties shout from their rooftops. Today, in the three parties, Alhaji Atiku is recognised as the PDP leader, though he shirks his responsibilities when it comes to getting his hands dirty in managing the party’s unpleasant schisms; Peter Obi, former Anambra State governor, is recognised as the LP leader despite having nothing administratively and ideologically in common with the party; and Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, former Kano State governor, is the NNPP leader which he is imbuing with his insularity.
An engineer and PhD degree holder, Dr kwankwaso was the first last Monday to speak scathingly about the rumoured merger between the three parties. He is not a real democrat, going by his antics in the NNPP, especially in recent weeks when he inspired a minor purge of the ‘rebellious’ senior ranks in the party, but he has never allowed his populism to deter him from denouncing anyone below or above him in any party and in any government, state or federal. Responding ostensibly to the impression Alhaji Atiku reportedly created about the purported merger of parties and power-sharing arrangement between the three former presidential candidates, Dr Kwankwaso bristled: “I have implemented a principle of allowing state governments and the federal government to focus on governance for the people until the end of the year. The most annoying thing is hearing from a source that the PDP brought scholars—about 45 of them—and told them there is a consensus that Atiku will rule for four years, Kwankwaso for four years, and Peter Obi for eight years. This is totally untrue and a blatant lie. It is infuriating that elder statesmen in their 70s and 80s are spreading such lies to these scholars. Such statements and deceit were among the reasons I and others left the party. Now, they have destabilised the party. For me to accept any arrangement, we have to revisit history.”
Still angry and not done, the Kwankwasiyya leader fumed: “I understand the PDP thoroughly. I know their plan is to manipulate regional dynamics, bring us together, and make northerners vote for them. But we ask: what have they done for the North? These are the issues that will come into play. We have suffered the worst humiliation from these people. We loved the party and wanted to reform it for progress, but they forced us out. I left, Peter Obi left, Wike left, and many others left. Yet these are the same people now seeking to return and express interest in the presidency. This is appalling. Maybe they are remorseful or seeking forgiveness, but we have truly been humiliated by them.” To be fair to the NNPP leader, he was not one of those who swore that the 2023 presidential election was rigged, but hearing him declaim against Alhaji Atiku on radio, the main object of his diatribe, his Hausa-speaking audience would imagine he could never countenance a merger, not ever. But Dr Kwankwaso is politically eccentric, and he appears eager to continue mystifying Nigerians with his true leanings as well as keeping other political leaders and former presidential candidates on their toes.
Three days later, Mr Obi, whose sanctimonious drivel still beguiles many, weighed in and insisted there was no merger yet, nor any whisper whatsoever in that direction. As usual, he leaves everything open, sifted by the currents of reigning ideas and affiliations. He has at different times dallied with both the PDP and NNPP leaders, and has kept his options flagrantly open. He is chastened by his own political impotence, and miffed by the failure of his backers, chief among whom is ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, to cause an upheaval in the polity fomented to railroad him into office. And despite his ideological vacuity, he is desperate to win office even at the cost of the country’s religious and ethnic harmony. He may still speak faintly about rigged 2023 elections, but he has all but reconciled himself to the fact that none of the three opposition leaders can on their own win the Nigerian presidency. He will, therefore, be the readiest to enter into a merger once the conditions are right, regardless of his insouciance.
Of all the three political leaders and former candidates, Dr kwankwaso appears to be in control of his party. On the other hand, if Mr Obi does not eventually ditch the LP, the party will at some time in the future ditch him, for he has no hold on them. As a matter of fact, neither the party nor its purported leader has emotional or any kind of connection with the other. Indeed, they scorn each other and have engaged in recriminations. On his own, Alhaji Atiku has made only a token effort to rein in the fractious members of the PDP, and every time the party’s cantankerous leaders resisted him, he recoiled into his characteristic indifference, believing that when the chips are down, the party will rally round him as a deep pocket. And herein is the riddle Dr kwankwaso will contend with in the months ahead. He says he is unwilling to let any discussions about one merger or the other distract the federal and state governments from focusing on their responsibilities, but in reality he is simply saying he has no idea yet how to disentangle the knot constraining Nigerian politics or how he would fit in. But trust this most eccentric of men and self-professed populist, when he discovers that he cannot go it alone, as he will discover soon enough, he will throw in his lot with even the most disagreeable of monarchists, if it comes to that.
Still in combat mood, in fact foul mood, Rivers State governor Siminalayi Fubara presented his 2025 budget to a three-man House of Assembly led by Oko Jumbo, and got it passed and signed in less than a week. Such budgetary haste is not unprecedented in Nigeria, but it was still blistering and obscene. The other 27-man House of Assembly led by Martin Amaewhule is at daggers drawn with the governor, and since Mr Fubara says he determines which faction is legitimate, he insists he will only present the budget to the three-man Assembly that sits in Government House. Soon, however, the squabble over which Assembly is legitimate will be resolved by the Supreme Court. The governor had better hope the courts would rule in his favour. If not, he will be faced with a number of dilemmas.
One, he will be in a quandary regarding what to do with Budget 2024, which he also presented to a three-man Assembly, with all the attendant financial and procedural illegalities. Two, he will then face the additional indignity of re-presenting the 2025 budget before the Amaehwule-led legislature which will scrutinise it with a fine-tooth comb. The victorious Assembly, should that be the fate of the 27-man legislature, will get its pound of flesh, whether the victim bleeds or not. The governor has grandstanded so far; but should he lose at the top court, his third dilemma will be whether to declare a republic, provoke a mutiny, or procure a revolution. If he would not cross that Rubicon, his hesitations will spell his doom.
Having both dug their heels in, neither side will be willing to capitulate. They will fight to the death. What the courts are being asked to determine is whether the announcement by the 27 Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) lawmakers to defect to the All Progressives Congress (APC) was in fact consummated. The 27 will not be punished for their tactical mistake of making the announcement; they will be scalded should the other side prove by facts and documents that a defection took place in the eyes of the law. But despite all this, it beggars belief that Mr Fubara, having so far fought a rather risible war, can face the world, seduce Rivers State elders, and feel smug about running a state with three lawmakers.
After resisting for more than 18 months the call to hold a presidential media chat, President Bola Tinubu finally relented days to Christmas. None of the interviewers asked why he had not held a chat for so many months, and he proffered no unsolicited explanation; but the anchor, Reuben Abati, had volunteered the information that the president was not armed beforehand with the questions posed by the eight-member panel. Whether armed beforehand or not, the president shocked the panelists and most Nigerians by his composure, his self-assuredness, the candour of his answers, and his understanding of the subjects discussed. He sometimes omitted to answer parts of the often double-barrelled, or even triple-barrelled, questions, and needed to be prodded to address what he omitted, but he had full grasp of the subjects, was single-minded on controversial economic issues, and was unabashed and determined.
The president’s strength was his grasp of the subject matters in discourse, not whether he possessed the oratorical powers that often impress and mesmerise audiences. He sometimes paused, and the interviewer wondered whether he had completed answering the questions, but he resumed soon enough and tried his best to exhaust the subject. Beyond the questions posed to him, which he answered with considerable sanguinity, he also answered many other questions not verbalised, such as whether he was sentient of his surroundings. The bitter presidential campaigns of 2023, which however really began in 2022, had led many to question whether he was not already in his dotage. To catalyse public fears, opponents composed poems and musical scores to alienate him from a wavering electorate before the polls. But last Monday, he dealt with every question firmly and knowledgeably, and with even temperament, lacing many of his answers with earthy and uncomplicated humour. There was no overreach, no grandstanding, and no attempt to impress, causing some highly-placed Nigerian leaders to question his democratic credentials.
Did he answer every question to the satisfaction of everyone? Impossible. The president is not a practiced polemicist or a rhetorician of the first order in the class of Plato, Aristotle or Cicero, men who could spot the fallacy of undistributed middle from one kilometer away, and for whom syllogism was sinew over their bones. He was curt in his response to the tax reform bills, but sighed at the end that he was open to reaching some accommodation. He was not sure critics of the bills had digested its elements, not to talk of arguing its many parts with the adeptness expected of political leaders. Yet, he would not mind placating the bills’ opponents, he said. How he will mollify the rage and security and electoral threats of those, like Bauchi governor Bala Mohammed and Borno’s Babagana Zulum, who have regionalised the VAT component of the bill will, however, test his wits to no end. And when he declared peremptorily that the reforms would stay, it was red rag to a bull, the northern bull.
On price control, he said tersely that he was unalterably opposed. He said he was aware of runaway price increases, but the tenor of his answer to the question of food inflation seemed to give the impression he was inured to the pains and sufferings of the masses. Yet, his answer, for an economist and numbers man such as he is, was both inescapable and appropriate. He was almost didactic on the fuel subsidy removal and forex harmonisation issues. He argued that these measures could not be done in phases, contrary to his interviewer’s suggestion. It didn’t make sense, and the problem would not only be complicated but become calcified. Interestingly, he then proceeded from being didactic to being philosophical, for, as he put it, Nigerians were deceiving themselves and wasting resources defending the naira and miring the entire process in what he described as a cesspit of corruption. Both issues amounted, in his opinion, to spending the future of Nigerian children. If he knew it, he didn’t say so, but Nigerians resent pain, and would not mind kicking the nuisance down the road for future generations to grapple with. He also didn’t say it as provocatively, but he seemed to suggest that nothing is as dispiriting and painful as a prolonged surgery.
Critics have suggested that his views on cabinet size vis-à-vis the 2012 Steve Oronsaye Report that recommended the rationalisation of ministries and agencies showed his detachment from reality. Fortunately for him, none of his interviewers contextualised his position on the subject quiet as inelegantly. He, therefore, got away with his blithe response that he was going to retain his cabinet size, for he needed them to do the work of safeguarding the interests and welfare of more than 200m people. His answer is a tough sell, but, well, that’s the president’s perception of how he wants to get things done. Where his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, regaled his audiences with bucolic humour, President Tinubu was more difficult to stereotype. In addressing the question of whether Federal Capital Territory (FCT) minister Nyesom Wike had not become a liability to the Tinubu administration going by the rambunctious manner he was carrying out his tasks, the president decried the public penchant for lawlessness and contempt for regulations, and concluded, gesturing, that he doffed his hat to the former Rivers governor. The response would of course cause trepidation in the FCT, which had hoped to get the president to clip the wing of the boisterous minister, and in the Rivers State Government House which is engaged in a deathly struggle with the former governor.
Overall, despite longstanding misgivings in some quarters about President Tinubu’s capacity to lead, the media chat has dispelled such notions and done him a world of good. He looked fit, even feisty and eager to contend with every shade of argument on the Nigerian condition, particularly the economy and politics. It is not often easy to have a president with a comprehensive grasp of national affairs especially at the strategic and ideational levels, but President Tinubu has after 18 months appeared to have settled snugly into the job. He probably knows that both he and the country are not out of the woods yet, and that even when salvation eventually dawns there is a limit to how euphoric he must get, having suggested privately that he seemed to be a tool in the hands of God for this moment. It is, however, not known whether his team prepared him for this chat, considering that his answers had no trappings of stock responses but were almost all extemporaneous. But buoyed by his television performance, it should ginger him up for far more detailed appreciation of national issues and far more knowledgeable responses. He will probably take the hints.
Perhaps it made more sense, in retrospect, that he let himself to settle into the job and be apprised of the difficult and intractable national issues he would be contending with before he ventured into the open to offer his reflections and panaceas to a discerning and exceedingly discriminating nation. His naira policy, subsidy removal, and occasional but embarrassing reversal of appointments had led many Nigerians to wonder whether he was actually prepared for the presidency as his Lagos governorship mystique suggested. Some of his calculations might be flawed, but he was smart and sensible enough to know that in the first two years of his presidency he needed to enunciate and execute most of the volcanic measures required to retool the economy and realign the nation. Most of his measures are unpopular, and have caused tremors many Nigerians find quite unbearable. But in the months ahead, and before the politics of reelection begin to heighten, the pains should have subsided, and the wounds begin to heal. It is probably the best approach, instead of the drawn-out or phased remedies that cause pain to linger thereby stoking lasting anger well into the election period.
Sometime after this first media chat, the president and his team may need to do a post-mortem. Let them view the video all over again, particularly the unedited version, to see what corrections need to be administered, and what other positives need to be reinforced. His composure and humour in the version aired last Monday were remarkable and reassuring. But who knows, next time, whether he will not be called upon to give a long and exhaustingly extemporaneous interview that would test the texture of his composure and reveal the elastic limit of his humour. His team will hope that on that hypothetical day, when his patience and policies will be tested to the limit, nothing about him would seem choreographed or artificial. In their review of the broadcast, the president’s team must also help him understand how not to make superfluous comments, serious or humorous, until the microphones have been switched off. He was lucky last Monday that he said nothing incriminating when he bantered with the anchor, Reuben Abati, before the microphones were disconnected.
The hysteria over the siting of a French military base in Nigeria has strangely not abated weeks after the rumour gained traction, particularly in the northern part of Nigeria. The story didn’t make any sense, but someone originated and disseminated it in the hope it would imbue the rumour with political colouration as well as probably weaponising it. There is of course no truth to the story, and government officials have strenuously refuted the story and provided evidence of its falsity. No one could hide white Frenchmen in the Sahel, or bivouac them in nondescript accommodations along Nigeria-Nigerien borders. But Northern Nigerian elites who could send scouts to confirm the presence or planned deployment of French soldiers in Nigeria were uninterested in taking such steps. They know what they are doing.
Astonished that some Nigerian elites could be both ignorant and gullible, Niger Republic junta leader Gen. Abdourahame Tchiani added embellishments of his own. He probably understands that some Nigerians are eager to believe the worst of their leaders, so he gave them harder bones to chew. Last week he addressed his nation and accused Nigerian government of laxity in allowing the Lakurawa terrorist group to take root and flourish, to the point of now threatening Niger Republic. In fact he goes ahead to allege that Nigeria and France had colluded to arm the Lakurawa against Niger Republic, yes the same terrorist group that Nigeria is deploying huge military arsenal to combat. The aim, he alleges, is to destabilise the Niger Republic government and force its capitulation. Fortunately, other than a few hardened Nigerian irredentists, no one else in Nigeria or anyone at all in Niger Republic believes his tall stories about insurgency and destabilisation.
Gen. Tchiani is under pressure over his country’s worsening economic, security and political conditions. He will clutch at any straw to stay afloat. His fellow coupists in Mali and Burkina Faso installed as military administrators of their countries are also reportedly under pressure over worsening socio-economic conditions. Their citizens are demanding a timetable for the restoration of democratic rule, months after they foolishly gave rousing welcome to the coup leaders, and many months after they rallied on the streets in favour of Russian presence on their soils and denounced ECOWAS attempt to compel the return of democracy. Their folly is now attracting a backlash in terms of worsening economy, human rights abuse, and faltering counterinsurgency operations against Sahelian Jihadists linked to al-Qaeda. Even their Sahel alliance (AES) has proceeded only tentatively.
The easiest part of any rebellion, whether a military coup or a revolution, is to make empty utopian promises. Some misguided Nigerians, including activists claiming to be dedicated to the cause of democracy and good governance, clamoured for revolution or coup after the 2023 polls and during the ‘end bad governance’ protests. The problem, always, is that once the coup madness is activated, no one can predict its course. It is, therefore, dismaying that some Nigerians, still clutching to the old power order, are lending themselves to the service of an ignoble cause. They focus on demonising France rather than on campaigning for Nigeria to ensure good and favourable terms in its economic dealings with other countries, including France. If Francophone countries detest France for various economic and probably political and security reasons that hark back to their histories, it is unrealistic for Nigeria to inherit other people’s conflicts. After all, France is one of the highest importers of Nigeria’s oil.
The Alliance of Sahel States (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger Republic) has shortsightedly opted for the embrace of Russia, with China and Turkiye on the sidelines, partly because they do not want to be accountable to their regional and continental neighbours. They also resent the peer review mechanisms put in place by their ECOWAS brother states. They are at liberty to engage in political and strategic alliances, whether these make sense or not, and expose themselves to proxy wars by the great powers. After all, last September they even indicated their resolve to issue new biometric passports for their countries. What is, however, dispiriting is when members of the Nigerian elite who should know better begin to sponsor despicable campaigns to force Nigeria into shortsighted alliances and also weaponise falsehoods to destabilise their country. Elections 2027 are not too far away. They should return to the drawing board and find ways of winning polls without destroying their country or setting ethnic and religious groups against one another.
