The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tunji Adegboyega

  • Seven states at 50

    Seven states at 50

    A good idea; but state creation ought to deliver more than it has

    Seven of the 36 states in the country turned 50 on February 3. They were created by the then Head of State, General Murtala Ramat Muhammed, in 1976, barely 10 days to his assassination in a coup d’etat on February 13, 1976. The seven states created on that day were Bauchi, Benue, Borno, Imo, Niger, Ogun and Ondo. This raised the number of states in the country from 12 to 19.

    Bauchi and Borno states were carved out of the defunct North-Eastern State; Benue State emerged from Benue-Plateau State; Niger State was created from the former North-Western State; Ogun and Ondo states were carved out of the old Western State, while Imo State emerged from the East Central State.

    As ‘Daily Trust’ noted, “Exactly fifty years on, the seven states have expanded significantly in population, infrastructure and political relevance. Some of them have also been further subdivided in subsequent state-creation exercises, underscoring the continuing relevance of Murtala’s decentralisation logic.

    “Gombe State was carved out of Bauchi in 1996; Yobe State emerged from Borno in 1991; Abia State was created from part of old Imo in 1991; Ekiti State was carved out of Ondo in 1996 while Benue, Niger and Ogun have remained territorially intact since 1976.”

    Of course, more states had been created in the country after 1976. On September 23, 1987 Gen. Ibrahim Babangida created Akwa Ibom (from Cross River) and Katsina (from Kaduna), bringing the total number of states in the country to 21.

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    Again, on August 27, 1991, Babangida created nine more states: Abia, Adamawa, Delta, Edo, Enugu, Jigawa, Kebbi, Kogi, and Yobe; bringing the number to 30.

    And, finally, on October 1, 1996, Gen. Sani Abacha created six states: Bayelsa, Ebonyi, Ekiti, Gombe, Nasarawa, and Zamfara. These brought the number of states in the country to the present 36; all created by military regimes as we have seen.

    The main reasons Muhammed created the states in 1976 included: administrative convenience and development, i.e. to decentralise government, thereby making it easier to manage and ensuring that development reached rural areas.

    Another reason was to allay the fears of the minorities by giving minority ethnic groups a stronger voice and reducing the dominance of the larger regions. It was also part of efforts to strengthen the federal structure, following the Nigerian Civil War.

    Babangida and Abacha too didn’t have significantly different reasons for creating states when they did.

    While the reasons were germaine, the snag was that most of the good aspects of the state creation were marred by the unitary system that was foisted on Nigerians by military rule, among other reasons, like corruption and misplacement of priorities on the part of some governors. Unitary system made it impossible for state governments to freely express and pursue their development choices because of certain laws that barred them from doing so. Here, we had the law barring state governments from establishing railway, and setting up their own power infrastructure, among others.

    Mercifully, some of these ‘Walls of Jericho’ that had hobbled development in the country for decades are now being dismantled.

    But, how many of these states are viable?Interestingly, despite their inability to take care of themselves, many Nigerians still continue to clamour for more states. We have at least 31 such requests cutting across the geographical zones, as at the last count.

    This is ridiculous.

    Until the advent of the Bola Tinubu administration that pumped more money into the coffers of the state governments, courtesy of fuel subsidy removal, many of the state governments could not pay the then minimum wage, not to talk of embark on serious developmental projects.

    What is particularly disappointing is that even the current National Assembly could find the time and space to discuss such an issue as creation of states in spite of the myriad problems facing the country.

    I know their main reason would be political expediency. But when would we be free from such bondage?

    It was Jean-Jacques Rousseau in ‘The Social Contract’ (1762) who said that ,”men are born free and equal but everywhere they are in chains”. Why must we subject virtually everything to this bondage of political expediency? Which mother would put hot soup on a baby’s palm simply because that baby is crying for it?

    I think it is high time we learnt to separate politics from policy. From our initial three regions (northern, western, and eastern) in 1960 to our present 36-state structure, the soldiers who took us here got it right when they said they did that because they wanted even development in the country. Ideally, state creation should lead to more development because it somewhat brings government and governance closer to the people.

    But they missed it when they imposed unitary system on us. They should have left each region to blossom according to the capacity and dreams of their founding fathers. After all, there was nothing wrong with that arrangement. It was the politics that we didn’t get right; a thing that led to elections being rigged and the people losing confidence in the electoral process.

    Unitary system has remained an albatross as it has retarded progress across board in the country. Each region had its strengths and these were being galvanised for regional development with each region paying rents and royalties to the central government before.

    To that era we must return if we are really desirous of progress. This idea of some sections waiting for others kills initiative. It is a recipe for perpetual underdevelopment.

    Many Nigerians want more states? True. Indeed, the state creation was not equitable as it favours some people more than others. I won’t name names. But then, beheading cannot be the solution to headache. If we want to correct that, let us first return to true federalism. I know that in Nigeria we talk of ‘true’ federalism. Well, if that will make us happy, let’s call it that — true federalism.

    People cannot be clamouring for more states when resources from a section of the country are used to run the entire country.

    The clamour for state creation would make sense when every state can fend for itself, not when everyone waits on Abuja which also waits on the returns from the Niger Delta to do a simple thing as pay salaries and develop the individual states.

    I want to believe that the day when we federalise such that states fend for themselves would be the end of such clamour for new states. What we have been having over the years is a political class that has been weaned too much on over-reliance rather than self-reliance.

    When it gets to that point where governors and their entire cabinet would have to put on their thinking caps to generate funds that they would spend to develop their states, then we would see a drastic reduction in the clamour for state creation.

    Beyond that, the clamour for political offices too would reduce when political aspirants know that they are the ones that have to dream dreams that would generate the funds required to run their states.

    So, seven states at 50? Should we congratulate them or not? Honestly, I don’t think we have much to celebrate if we juxtapose what has accrued to the states as revenue against the developmental projects in some, if not many of the states.

    A child born 50 years ago would have become a grown-up man or woman today. But when you have that man or woman still using diapers and waiting on the parents to feed him or her, or make some other provisions for him or her, then there is a problem.

    Although it may seem I am talking to or about only the seven states that just clocked 50; it is not so. I have only used them as metaphor. What applies to them applies to the other states as well.

    As a matter of fact, it is worse for the older states that still cannot find their feet. Yes, we may say there was little or nothing they could have done to be self-reliant under military rule because of the unitary system of government that applied then. But it is now over 26 years since the country’s return to democracy. By now, we should be charting the path towards true federalism even if we are not operating it full throttle.

    But the way things are, it doesn’t seem there is any serious attempt in that direction. Everyone seems comfortable with the present unsustainable system that provides for all, both the hardworking and the indolent.

    And that is part of why the country has stunted growth. The competition that made the regions of old to thrive is no longer there. Easy and cheap money coming from the Niger Delta via Abuja, is a disincentive to anyone to work. Of course, why work if with or without work you will still get money to spend? Even the Holy Writ says a Christian without work is a corpse.

    One of the reasons people steal state funds is because states are not generating their own funds. It is also because states are not generating what they spend that many Nigerians do not look in the direction of the state governments but rather concentrate on the centre. If their taxes form a significant part of their states’  internally-generated revenue, they would show more interest in how their sweat is spent.

    I can only imagine how far this country would have gone if the military had not killed the regional arrangement under which each part of the country was developing at its own pace.  That is one of the evils of military rule that our youths do not know and which makes them think military rule is the solution to the country’s problems. We have been there before and we didn’t get much from it. It is not their business to govern.

    All said, while we may mark the 50 years of the creation of the seven states, it is only fit and proper to use the occasion to review the state of affairs in the states vis-a-vis where we ought to be by now. It is a good occasion for introspection.

    As I pointed out earlier, it is heartwarming that some of the encumbrances that arrested development in the country are now being dismantled. Let us quickly bring them down to enable us return to true federalism and see if we won’t fly. We have crawled enough.

  • The lucky 12

    The lucky 12

    For 12 teachers in the country, Tuesday, January 27 would forever remain a day to remember. It was a day they would thank God and whoever or whatever led them into the teaching profession. If they had been sad all their years in service, that melancholy was replaced with joy on January 27. If they had been shedding tears and lamenting their pitiable plight as teachers, their tears were wiped away on that fateful day that destiny bestowed on them awards for outstanding performance in their line of duty. For them, the saying that ‘teachers’ rewards are in heaven’ became nugatory as they got their own rewards right here on earth; not posthumously, but even while they are alive and still in service.

    The occasion was the maiden edition of National Teachers Summit held at the State House Banquet Hall in Abuja. The theme of the summit was: “Empowering Teachers, Strengthening the System: A National Agenda for Education Transformation and Sustainability”. It was also an occasion where the Minister of Education, Dr Olatunji Alausa, launched the EduRevamp Portal, a national digital platform for continuous teacher professional development, aimed at improving teaching quality across Nigeria. Its features include provision of audio/video lessons, text-based learning, and case studies, to foster skills.

    The lucky teachers are: Solanke, Francis Taiwo from Ogun State, who was recognised as the overall best teacher. Other awardees included Mrs. David Kachollom Joseph (Plateau State), Malam Musa Abubakar Garba (Kaduna State), Ifetike Hope Chekwube (Anambra State), Obafemi Peter Lawal (Lagos State), Johanna Gilando and Bashar Hantsi (both from Kebbi State), Blessing Ikong, Chinwe Ituma, Gombo Lawan, Khadijat Galadima, and Okide Ochike.

    Each of them, selected from the six geopolitical zones, got N25 million. But Solanke, who was recognised as the overall best teacher for 2025 got an additional N50m, a car, and a two-bedroom flat, to boot. The selection process was based on merit and covered different education levels.

    Alausa said at the occasion that “This is more than a reward. It is a national signal that teaching is a noble, respected, and valued profession in Nigeria.”

    This may be the destination, but we are not there yet. Ours is a country where teachers are rarely appreciated. It is heartwarming though that some of those in the teaching profession were recognised for award that could be described as mouthwatering, given the paltry nature of what many teachers are paid in the country, whether in the public or private schools.

    While it may be a little better in the public schools where many things like their remuneration and conditions of service are defined, it is worse in many private schools where greedy proprietors call the shot. At least, in the public schools, you are even entitled to pension after retirement. There is nothing like that in the private schools.

    Again, while one may not be able to blame some of the proprietors of the private schools, particularly those that are just managing to survive, there are still others that could be described as ivy private schools whose proprietors are greedy; they take so much from the students’ parents and yet pay so little to their teachers. Unfortunately, many of them get away with this shabby treatment of their teachers either because there is, unlike in the past, no regulation, or the regulators have been compromised.

    It is against this background of poor pay that many teachers combine teaching with other things, some of which eat into their school periods. Some of them become emergency traders, selling all manner of things like clothes, shoes, groundnuts in bottles, foodstuffs, etc. Anything, just anything that they think is moving, so as to augment their meager pay. This would not have been an issue if the merchandising takes place after school hours. But sometimes, it is not only during school hours, but within the school premises.

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    I remember the private school that my children attended in Lagos. The school allowed the teachers the freedom to organise lesson after school hours but the teachers had to pay a token to the school authorities for maintenance because the lesson was being done on the school premises. Some of these teachers were not satisfied and they began to organise private lesson for the pupils whose parents were ready to pay for it right during the school hours.

    And, guess what? These lessons took place right under the nose of the school authorities! But they did not know! What happened was that one of the parents who happened to be our family friend had cause to visit the school one day. The teacher in the classroom had divided the pupils into two; those she had private teaching arrangement with their parents on one side, and those whose parents could not afford the payment or simply refused to join, like my wife, on the other side. This was before 12 noon. The children, as young and innocent as they were (generally under–10) knew this was what was going on as the son of our family friend told his mother during the visit that the teacher was focusing on those that had private lesson arrangement with her! She neglected the rest of them.

    Not only that, those pupils who were doing the private lesson also had some other benefits; like double promotion, pampering and slaps on the wrist for offences they committed. All of these the other pupils did not get. If you did not belong in the category of the private lesson, your son or daughter even in the baby care section would also be neglected. You may come to pick him or her with soaked and smelly diapers.

    When our family friend reported what she saw to the proprietor of the school (the school is owned by a couple), he dismissed her story rather than pledge to investigate, even if he wouldn’t. That, to me, was the beginning of the school’s descent in the area. This was a school that should be the toast of the environment, but see what teachers turned it to.

    And to think that most of the teachers involved in this cruelty to children were women!

    But, can we in all honesty blame the teachers alone for this?

    One of them at a point approached my wife for home lesson for our son. Apparently, she had not known her stance on such matters. When she asked her to name her price, the teacher said we should pay N15,000 per subject! Meanwhile, her salary at the time was about that amount. So, she wanted us to pay her monthly salary for only one subject!  

    The interesting thing is that by the time my children gained admission into the university, many of those pupils that those wicked teachers were pampering unduly by awarding them marks and double promotions they never deserved (but just to justify that their private coaching was working) were nothing near such progress. It was at that time I realised what my wife was always saying then that ‘’she would never buy someone else child’s glory for her children’’. Of course we withdrew our children from that school to other places.

    Many of those teachers are now retired or had been sent packing from that school. Many of them try to hide their faces when we come across them now because they no longer look like human beings. They look and dress like some deranged persons. Not that they were doing well even when they were getting all the illegal monies they were collecting without delivering value; just that they were a shade better then.

    And, when we talk about the ridiculous pay that teachers earn generally in the country, it does not exclude the lecturers in tertiary institutions. It was on this page I lamented what many professors earned at least until December, last year, about two weeks ago, and I felt so sorry for the country. Mercifully, the Bola Tinubu administration has managed to somewhat redress this through its enhanced salary structure that it just put in place, the impact of which those affected would have felt when they received alerts for their salaries last month (January, 2026) because that was when the new salary structure in the federal public universities was supposed to take effect. 

    Hopefully, that, and some other measures that the Tinubu government has taken will bring some tranquility into our universities that have been citadels of strike rather than learning in the past three or so decades.

    I narrated this personal story because I know many people would have shared from this kind of horrible experiences. Some might even have gone through worse scenarios. True, we have neglected our teachers for so long. But, the personal experiences I just shared, just like many others that others have experienced at whatever level of our educational pursuit, show the difference between ‘born teachers’ and other teachers.

    It should be surprising that in the midst of this madding crowd, we still have teachers that have received their calling as their fate. They are unmoved by what is happening around them. Materially, they may not be rich but they are contended with the little they have. They do their job without minding what they get in return.

    But their type is going into extinction in an ever-increasing materialistic country that Nigeria has become.    

    This should worry us.

    Public officials often speak so glowingly about teachers and the teaching profession, yet do little or nothing to lift them up. Without teachers, no person of substance would be whatever they are today; doctors, journalists, engineers, lawyers, bankers, or what have you. I therefore implore our governments, federal and states, to do something about teachers in their employ. It is good that we often spare some thought for them on World Teachers Day or during National Teachers Summit as in the present instance. They are treasures that we must cherish always rather than treat like Australia that many people know where it is but are not willing to go to.

    I congratulate these lucky 12 whose levels have changed and wish others would emulate them. I congratulate Dr Alausa too for being so thoughtful, especially concerning EduRevamp Portal and the teachers’ summit. As the First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, who gave the keynote address at the event said: “Teachers are the quiet architects of great nations, shaping young minds, instilling values, and nurturing hope. I understand firsthand the demands of teaching and the enduring impact of teachers in shaping societies.’’ She is a teacher herself.

    Alausa echoed a similar sentiment, even if in different words: “No nation can rise above the quality of its teachers. No reform, no matter how well designed, can succeed unless teachers are empowered, motivated, supported, and respected.”

    So, the summit should not end up being a talk shop; action must follow the talks. The nation is the better for it when we do our teachers well. Teachers used to be respected in Nigeria. We must return to that glorious era in the national interest.

  • A day to remember

    A day to remember

    • May the January 18, 2026 agreement between the FG and ASUU permanently end their hostilities. Amen!

    January 18, 2026, would for a long time be remembered in the annals of university education in Nigeria. It was a day that two hitherto sworn ‘enemies’ agreed to sheathe their swords.

    This is significant given the belligerent nature of their relationship, especially since the signing of a controversial 2009 agreement that had been the source of acrimony between the two parties. This had led to strike several times, which paralysed academic activities on our university campuses, and made nonsense of their academic calendars.

    Some accounts say the country’s university system lost about 1,200 days to the 17-year-old crises.

    I am here talking about the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Federal Government.

    The 2009 agreement dealt essentially with university funding and budgeting; academic welfare; university autonomy and governance; research and development (R&D); legal frameworks and implementation, as well as implementation and review.

    It was supposed to be a foundational document aimed at revitalising public universities in the country, which, really, were in dire need of revitalisation. However, the agreement suffered poor implementation, leading to incessant strike by the university lecturers.

    On the basis of the agreement, ASUU called its members out on a strike that lasted four months in 2009; followed by another that lasted five months in 2010. There was a 51-day strike in 2011 and another five months strike in 2013. In 2017, ASUU members went on a month-long strike while students were sent packing for three months in 2018.

    As if these were not damaging enough, ASUU went on what could pass for the ‘Mother of all strikes’ in 2020. The strike lasted nine months, followed by another eight months strike in 2022.

    The effects of all these strikes cannot be quantified in financial terms alone. Students who should spend four years on their chosen courses ended up spending six years or more. Of course, students staying at home for longer than necessary were exposed to all manner of dangers, including but not limited to drug taking and sundry crimes. As they say, ‘an idle mind is the devil’s workshop’.

    Abroad, certificates issued by our public universities lost recognition. It was private universities to the rescue.

    It was not that ASUU did not have good reasons to protest. Things were bad enough in our tertiary institutions to make anyone who had an idea of what many of these institutions were in the past, angry.

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    Just that many Nigerians saw ASUU as too rigid in its demands from successive governments, especially its penchant to resort to strike. The truth of the matter is that our higher institutions, including the hitherto iconic ones, have become shadows of their former pristine state.

    Those of us who went to some of these institutions even as late as the 1980s know the kind of things we met on ground, which were even at that time mere remnants of what those who were ahead of us enjoyed in the higher institutions, particularly the universities.

    I remember vividly then that we had foreign lecturers that were among some of the best anywhere in their respective disciplines. Till today, myself and some of my colleagues still speak nostalgically about one of such lecturers, one Father Schuyler.

    Just as we had foreign lecturers then at the University of Lagos, we also had foreign students on the campus from around the globe. These were positive indices about those institutions then. One, foreign lecturers on our university campuses pointed in the direction of the comparative pay the institutions offered, among other things. Foreign students on our campuses, on the other hand, was indication of the high quality of our academic standards.

    All of these are gone with the winds.

    A few months back, I was discussing with one of my seniors at the Federal School of Arts and Science in Ondo, Ondo State, who is now a lecturer at the University of Lagos. When he told me what a professor earns, I felt so sorry, first for myself, and then the country. How come? How did we sink that low?

    How do you attract good hands to the universities if lecturers are not well paid? It is only a matter of time for the institutions to decay because they would not be able to attract brilliant minds and can only recourse to people who just want a job, any job at all, not necessarily people who want to impart knowledge to others. Even if they want to impart knowledge, where do they get it? If they too had it, they wouldn’t be in the universities where they are paid peanuts when they can get better pay outside of the academic environment.

    In the same vein, foreign students would not come to study in universities where students perch on windows to listen to lectures. The state of most of our public higher institutions is just nothing to write home about.

    This reminds me of what a student in one of the public higher institutions told me about two weeks ago. I am talking specifically about The Polytechnic, Ibadan. We were discussing on why the student chose to stay off campus when there are hostel facilities on the campus. I expected her to say it was because they didn’t have enough space to go round. But what she said surprised me: she said many of them chose to stay off-campus because the toilets and some other facilities were bad. And, as if to punish the students for the bad state of the facilities, the institution forces those of them who chose to stay outside to pay about 50 per cent of the accommodation fee for what it calls “hostel refusal”!

    In our time, we did everything possible to stay on the campus. The situation must be so bad for many students to want to stay off-campus, given the many advantages. Of course, a few may want to stay outside because they have free accommodation somewhere around or because they want to do some other things beyond what their parents sent them to do in school. But there is cause to worry when majority fall for the off-campus accommodation and, on top of that, they are forced to pay for refusing to stay in the hostels.

    Let no one get me wrong. The Polytechnic, Ibadan, might not be alone in this. It is only a metaphor for the state of affairs in many of our public higher institutions. Perhaps the institution itself was forced to be collecting money for a service not rendered as a result of the larger malaise of underfunding that the institutions are grappling with.

    Given the afore-stated, among others, one would think successive governments would have dealt with the tertiary institutions’ matter with utmost urgency. That they didn’t, and only kept flexing muscles with the union lent the governments open to accusations of being insensitive to the plight of the students and their parents.

    Although the neglect that these institutions suffered from successive governments was not good enough, ASUU still got the chunk of the blame for its inability to think out of the box for solutions to the universities’ seemingly intractable problems. As people in the ivory towers, Nigerians expected them to be more creative in dealing with the government.

    Indeed, this penchant for strike led to the formation of CONUA, the Congress of University Academics, which has always opposed ASUU’s flagrant recourse to strike to settle disputes with the government.

    Be that as it may, it is good that, as they say, “all is well that ends well”.

    The ASUU/government feud has only confirmed what Ralph Waldo Emerson said that “Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.” Many other people have affirmed this saying in different words. For instance, Sun Tzu also said that “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

    It is incredible that the braggadocio and an ego war that has lasted so long could end, albeit at a roundtable without, literally put, any single ‘shot’ being fired. But that is the way of all wars.

    I am not sure that many Nigerians were aware of the processes that led to the signing of the agreement. Even if they were, they would have simply dismissed it as improbable fiction.

    But here we are today, celebrating what should herald hope of uninterrupted academic activities in our universities, a thing that has eluded us for years.

    Although one would have to see the details of the current agreement before drawing conclusions, one needs to remind the government that the curtains cannot be drawn on the challenges in the universities without attention paid to the aforementioned areas and others outside of the universities.

    The Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration has come a long way in barely 30 months in office, particularly in the area of tertiary education.

    The government’s student loan scheme, the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), alone speaks to this commitment. It is one major way of demonstrating its resolve to expand access to tertiary education.

    At least about N89.94 billion has been paid directly to 263 tertiary institutions for tuition and institutional fees, and N72.03 billion paid directly to students as upkeep allowances at N20,000 per student, for the over 864,798 students that had benefitted from the fund as at January 13.

    As the Managing Director of NELFUND, Akintunde Sawyerr, noted, “These figures are not just statistics. They represent real lives impacted, real barriers removed, and real opportunities created.”

    I commend the Tinubu administration for coming this far on the ASUU crisis. Specifically, the Minister of Education too, Dr Maruf Tunji Alausa, should be commended.

    But, as we have seen with past pacts, the problem is not in signing agreements, the issue is honouring them. This government must do its utmost to honour the agreement. At least we did not see anyone pointing a gun at the other person before it was signed.

    Not only that, it is not only our university teachers that have been clamouring for better conditions of service. Their counterparts in the nonacademic unions, teachers in the polytechnics, etc. also deserve consideration. Mercifully the minister acknowledged that much: “I can assure you that the ASUP and the NASU agreements will be finalised as well.”

    Again, as Dr Alausa observed, “However, we cannot resolve a 20-year-old problem in just two and a half years,” nonetheless, we urge it to sustain the tempo such that our public higher institutions would gradually begin to regain their lost glory.

    This is the expectation if we must avert the kind of violence that we are battling with in the northern parts of the country. Half-baked graduates are only a shade better than stark illiterates.

    What would it benefit us if we invest so much in education only to reap whirlwinds in return? God forbids,

    We must never return to the ugly era of incessant strike. This is a cautionary note to both the government and ASUU.

  • ‘Civil defence’ to the rescue

    ‘Civil defence’ to the rescue

    Tinubu deserves applause for replacing VIPs’ policemen with NSCDC personnel instead of pandering to the wish of the spoilt elite

    Sequel to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s order to the Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Kayode Egbetokun, to withdraw policemen protecting certain categories of Very Important Persons  (VIPs), the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) has requested presidential approval to recruit about 30,000 additional personnel, to enable it cope with the surge in the demand for its personnel, as the sole security outfit to fill the vacuum created by the withdrawal of the policemen.

    According to ‘The Punch:, the request was the follow-up to the meeting that President Tinubu  held with the Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, and the Commandant-General (CG) of the NSCDC, Ahmed Audi, last month.

    The 30,000 personnel is separate from the ongoing 30,000 personnel recruitment currently being carried out across the paramilitary services.

    President Tinubu last November said the withdrawn policemen should be deployed to concentrate on their core police duties. The presidential directive came days after a series of attacks that saw the kidnap of at least 300 people, mostly schoolchildren, across Kebbi, Kwara and Niger states.

    “Henceforth, police authorities will deploy them (policemen) to concentrate on their core police duties,” a statement signed by the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, read. According to Onanuga, “VIPs who want police protection will now request well-armed personnel from the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps.”

    The President subsequently approved the recruitment of 30,000 additional police officers even as the Federal Government is collaborating with the states to upgrade police training facilities nationwide.

    It is instructive that the presidential directive was issued at the security meeting President Tinubu held with  the Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Waidi Shaibu; the Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sunday Kelvin Aneke; Egbetokun; and the Director-General of the Department of State Services, (DSS), Mr. Oluwatosin Ajayi.

    The IGP promptly complied with the order.  “In line with the President’s directive, we have withdrawn a total of 11,566 personnel from VIP protection. These officers are being redeployed to critical policing duties immediately,” he said.

    What followed was to be expected: the affected officials, suddenly discovered, like our credulous parents, Adam and Eve, that they were bare, without the policemen. They protested and pleaded with the president to rescind the decision.

    One such protest came from the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, who spoke on behalf of his fretting colleagues. Akpabio told the President during the 2026 Budget presentation last month that “Some members of the National Assembly say I should let you know that they may not be able to go home today. We plead with the President to review the decision.”

    It is commendable that President Tinubu stuck to his guns. This is especially so against the backdrop of what led to his order to withdraw the policemen in the first place, and the skepticism in some quarters that the order was a mere political statement that would never be implemented, and even if it was, it was not the answer to the country’s security challenge.

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    Of course, we cannot blame those who believed the directive would not last before exemptions from various quarters would render it useless.

    President Tinubu’s order on such withdrawal was not the first. Successive IGPs had issued similar directives that lasted only as the ink with which they were written.

    But there is hope that Tinubu’s order on it could be the last, other things being equal. This is because past directives, apart from coming from the IGPs (as against the President in this instance) did not provide alternative. Tinubu’s alternative is what has brought the recourse to the 30,000 more personnel that the NSCDC has asked for presidential approval for.

    We never had any such arrangement before. What we have always had was a situation where the policemen were withdrawn without any alternative. That explained the relative ease with which such policemen soon returned to their previous beneficiaries. As they say, Nature abhors a vacuum.

    What this tells us is that the president is not unmindful of the risks in exposing these public officials and political office holders to the general insecurity in the land. It is just that fair is fair. The old order of about five to 10 policemen guarding one VIP when millions of Nigerians are left in the lurch is ungodly and unfair. It is unsustainable.

    It is this resort to NSCDC personnel as alternative to the withdrawn policemen that gave me the confidence that we may never have the recurring experience of such withdrawn policemen being surreptitiously returned to the VIPs. A source in the NSCDC reportedly said “The CG and the minister have met with the President. They explained the need for more personnel, especially with the increasing demand for VIP protection. He added that “The president has given his word that justice will be done to the request, with possible recruitment of about 30,000 personnel.”

    At least Nigerians are no longer left alone to suffer for the ills that are plaguing our police force. Come to think of it, the force should not be in its present sorry state if those elites who protested the withdrawal of their police security men had been alive to their responsibility.

    Let us even forget the military era when soldiers did not take good care of the police force, either due to fear of ‘rivalling’ them, or for whatever reason, politicians have had more than ample time to right the wrongs since May 29, 1999, when we returned to civil rule. That was 26 years ago.

    That they failed largely in that regard explains why the country cannot boast the adequate quantity and quality of policemen to take charge of internal security that is their primary responsibility.

    It is shameful that we keep failing to address the problems bedevilling our policemen; from being underfunded to being under-kitted, Ill-motivated, and what have you. We hear stories about police stations not having patrol vans; and where they do, there won’t be petrol to hit the roads in case of emergency. A few years ago, we saw pictures of some students in our major police training institution sharing one fish head!

    It is like the changing never changing with our police force despite the reported efforts of successive IGPs to make things better.

    Unfortunately, our elite, particularly the political elite (those in the National Assembly in particular) who have the power to turn things around in the police force have not done much, either to increase their numbers or even if they want to keep their figure manageable, at least it should be lean and mean.

    Now that the country has serious security challenges and it has become obvious that it cannot continue to pamper a tiny minority at the expense of the larger society, it is the very people with the capacity and capability to improve the lot of the police but failed to do so who want to continue to enjoy the services of the few available policemen.

    Our political elite should be taught that life should not start and end with them. They should know that life has no duplicate, whether for the rich or the poor. For too long, they have lived under the illusion that they are more special than their electors.

    Apart from depriving the majority of Nigerians the adequate protection that is the inalienable right every government owes the citizens, allocating policemen to special people robs the policemen of their dignity. Many of those they are supposed to protect have turned them into glorified house helps, drivers, errand boys, etc. Nigeria’s elite have this penchant for showoff and turning virtually every privilege into status symbol. These are the same people we see comporting themselves in public trains outside the country.

    The withdrawal of the VIPs’ policemen is also expected to boost professionalism in the police force. The job of the police is basically internal security; not VIP security. We have it on record that the country has some of the best policemen one can come by,  in spite of structural and other deficiencies.

    Our policemen had excelled among their peers at international engagements. Some of them had brought home laurels from such engagements

    But the same political elite that needs the policemen for protection are pinchy when it comes to remunerating them. These same people who would have nothing to do with locally-produced vehicles do not seem to know that the police force deserves to be well taken care of so that it can in return do its job well.

    The United Nations (UN) might not have set any single, official global standard for police-to-citizen ratio, but it often cites benchmarks suggesting around 222 officers per 100,000 people (or 1:450). Indeed, some sources mention 1:400 or 1:460 as a general UN guideline, while acknowledging that it varies greatly, with technology influencing needs. Nigeria’s police strength of about 371,000 to the country’s about 236 million population means about one policeman to 636 persons. This is far from the average even in countries where there are better facilities and the policemen are well kitted and well motivated.

    Our political elite should aim at improving on this, particularly the lawmakers that are supposed to make laws for good governance as well as keep an eye on the executive to make sure they do the right thing.

    If they had done that, perhaps they wouldn’t have needed any special protection because the country would have been safe for all.

    At any rate, what is it that is pursuing our political class, particularly those in the National Assembly, who always want to go about in bulletproof vehicles and want security around them all the time? What is it that they are doing that makes them so vulnerable unlike their counterparts in other parts of the

    world who move about freely; no airs around them? Are they not supposed to be representatives of the people?

    Something just does not add up here! Somebody help me!

    Anyway, again, I commend the President for thinking out of the box in order to satisfy both the ordinary Nigerians and the affected VIPs. He should do all within his power to ensure the new deal works. If the NSCDC is well taken care of, better trained and kitted, it would rub off positively on security generally in the country.

    It is also time to pay more attention to the needs of the police force, even as the governments, state and federal, continue to keep State Police in view.

  • Thank God for Donald Trump

    Thank God for Donald Trump

    After about eight weeks of threatening to bombard ISIS camps in Nigeria, in what the United States President Donald Trump said would be “powerful and deadly” strikes against groups Washington claims are affiliated with ISIL (ISIS) in Northwest Nigeria’s Sokoto State, the bombs finally dropped on Christmas Day, last year. It was a big relief to Nigerians who had anticipated that the terrorists would want to disrupt the end-of-year festivities by carrying out significant, perhaps never-to-be-forgotten deadly strikes on several communities, particularly in the volatile areas of the north. The airstrikes probably averted such disasters.

    America had insisted it would rain the bombs on the heads of the terrorists since October 31, 2025, when it re-designated Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC). That it eventually carried out its threat in collaboration with the Federal Government is indeed heartwarming.

    As far as the Americans are concerned, they had to drop the bombs in order to protect Christians who had been victims of several attacks by some Islamic fundamentalists. As Al Jazeera noted in a December 31, 2025, piece titled ‘How many countries has Trump bombed in 2025?’, the strikes were ‘’timed, analysts say, to appease Trump’s Christian supporters as Washington doubles down on a narrative of “saving” Nigerian Christians, although Nigerian authorities insist the strikes are not about any one religion.’’ The Federal Government admitted that there was a problem of insecurity, with victims cutting across faith.

    I pitch my tent with the Nigerian government. This is not necessarily because I want to be patriotically correct but simply because that would seem to me to be the truth. Although Christians who had lost loved ones to these senseless attacks would not agree with this position (and I won’t blame them; as they say, “he who wears the shoe knows where it pinches’’). What I know as a fact is that it was only at the beginning of the insurgency that the attacks were targeted mainly at Christians. At that time, many Muslims felt unconcerned. But it was only a matter of time for the insurgents to turn even against fellow Muslims that they also see as infidels because they do not accept to practice Islam as they (fundamentalists) practice it.

    So, what we have in Nigeria today is not necessarily targeted against Christians; it is not Christian genocide but general insecurity imposed on the country by ragamuffins who had imbibed the wrong side of Islam’s pristine doctrine. They had been fed with the wrong assumption that the more blood they spilled in the name of the religion, the more the number of virgins they would have the opportunity to disvirgin in heaven!

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    Expectedly, some Nigerians have criticised the Federal Government over the American bombings. Interestingly, for such different folks, it was different strokes. There are those who felt the American bombings demeaned Nigeria’s sovereignty. I do not know what that is supposed to mean. The last time I checked, it is only the living that can talk of sovereignty; not the dead. So, we need to be alive first to be sovereign. Notwithstanding my reservation on their reason for the American intervention, those of them who may feel genuinely so concerned about our sovereignty should accept my sympathy.

    Naturally, there are also perpetual critics who have sworn not to see anything good in the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration. These include, but not limited to people who had lived all their lives on fuel and forex subsidies that the Tinubu administration stopped, and would stop at nothing to blame the government even for things that are visibly positive or result-oriented. They are entitled to their opinion, although I owe them neither an apology nor sympathy.

    What we have to realise is that countries, from time immemorial, have always had cause to come to one another’s assistance in times of distress. Even in modern times, no country can be an island unto itself; hence, the different bilateral or multilateral agreements between and among the different countries. There is nothing unusual in America lending a hand in our fight against terrorism. Good enough, the US and Nigeria have a long history of security collaboration through training and intelligence sharing. The only difference is that the Christmas strikes marked the first known kinetic US military action in Nigeria.

    Apart from Nigeria, the Trump administration has struck in six other countries, this year. These include Venezuela, Somalia, Syria, Iran, Yemen and Iraq. In all, monitors say the US had carried out at least 111 strikes this year alone, and that this surpassed the number carried out under the George Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations combined.

    Well, the lexical semantic differences notwithstanding, what matters most to me was that the December 25 air raids were eventually carried out successfully. And Trump has promised to drop more bombs should the need arise. The fact of the matter is that Nigeria has wasted too much time and resources fighting insurgents. If we have not been able to have a handle on the problem, what is wrong in the US or any other friendly country for that matter that has the superior fire power and other requirements coming to help us out?

    One of the things that pain me on this matter is this idea of some people saying we should negotiate with the terrorists, kidnappers who demand ransom, bandits, etc; or assimilate them into the society after deradicalising them. We have tried all of that in the last 16 years since the insurgency started, to no avail. I am pained the more because Nigeria has thrown more than enough good money into the bad rubbish that these nonentities represent. So, I do not see any patriotic Nigerian calling for a slap on the wrist for them given the havoc they have wreaked on the country. These are resources we should have spent to brush up people who value western education.

    Those who think it is ‘haram’ or forbidden to have western education should be free to live their lives like the caveman; but to want to hide under the guise of religion to coerce the rest of us to join them in the blissful ignorance is highly reprehensible. Even Saudi Arabia that is the birthplace of Islam and home to Mecca and Medina, its two holiest cities, making it the spiritual epicenter for Muslims worldwide, has since embraced western education and is indeed comfy in its relationship with the current world power, the United States of America, based on strategic mutual interests. So, where did these undesirable elements get their own brand of Islam?

    As I said earlier, I am not interested in semantics. I am more interested in the overarching needless loss of lives perpetuated by these murderers in human skin. What I am saying is that it is immaterial whether it is Christians or Muslims that are being wantonly killed. Human lives are too precious to be wasted on the altar of some jaded religious beliefs or, in terms of the Boko Haram, to curtail the spread of western knowledge.

    As a matter of fact, I do not think we have been told the full story of what these so-called insurgents want. For one, it is unthinkable that some people could be so daft to think they can turn Nigeria, a country whose population is a nearly even mix of Christians and Muslims, to an Islamic country. But that is what you have when people are just given birth to without adequate planning for how they would get education so they can be useful to themselves and the society at large.

    And for the so-called Boko Haram, too, how can people who are making use of the very products of western education say that western education is useless? What of the bombs that they sometimes use? Even if we talk about the Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) that the insurgents sometimes deploy, despite their being “homemade”, are they entirely devoid of western education or civilisation?  What of the motorcycles and vehicles that they transport themselves and their weapons in? 

    For me, Nigerians have the almighty God to thank for the December 25 airstrikes. I am delighted. Anyone who is not should put in his or her all to rein in the terrorists. All the kid’s glove treatment should be over by now for good. They have to impress it on the terrorists that they are on a wild goose chase if they ever thought they could convert Nigeria to a Muslim country. This is necessarily because no single religion has a monopoly of violence.

    Similarly, those of them who have problem with western education are living in fools’ paradise if they ever thought they can bring down the rest of us to their caveman level. But we should no longer continue to tolerate the situation where some misguided elements would make us continue pouring water into a basket, which is what the trillions we have spent fighting terrorism is, instead of using it to uplift our people’s lives. Those who want to continue pouring libation on terrorism are free to do so. But Nigeria as a country should not continue to pick the bill. Those who lost out to fuel and forex subsidies should not be allowed to continue to feast on our common wealth again via ransoms and terrorism; the new faces of subsidy.

    Once again, thank you, President Donald Trump. But don’t go too far away yet because we might still need you. The people we are fighting have been so brainwashed that they have become recalcitrant criminals who, like King Pharaoh, would rather prefer to perish rather than repent.

    As they say, ‘a child who says his mother would not sleep should also not have the opportunity to doze’. The criminals and their sponsors should not be allowed to continue to unleash mayhem on innocent Nigerians, Christian or Muslim. People cannot be giving us sleepless nights and all we do is trying to differentiate between bandits and terrorists. To the extent that they all maim, steal, rape and kill, leaving tears and blood in their trail, they are all birds of the same feather.

    Come to think of it; how can human beings with flesh and blood slaughter fellow human beings like cow and say they are fighting a just cause? I don’t think we should split hairs over whoever is coming to save us from such brutes.

  • Resignation isn’t enough

    Resignation isn’t enough

    Allegations against former NMDPRA boss, Ahmed, are too weighty to be forgotten simply because he has resigned

    Weeks before, there had been protests in mainly some northern states, clamouring for the sack of the immediate past Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), Farouk Ahmed, over sundry allegations of corruption. At the time, the question in the mouths of many was who were the sponsors of these protests, especially as it seemed many of the protesters probably knew next-to-nothing about the oil sector, upstream or downstream.

    We have seen many such protests in the country, whereby many of the protesters carrying placards would turn them upside down, suggesting they were stark illiterates who could never have understood the reason for their joining the protests beyond the stipend they would be given for participation.

    Despite the loudness of the protests, neither the Federal Government nor Ahmed was moved to action. Both went about their different duties.

    But all that was to change when Africa’s richest person and founder of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, joined the fray by making some grievous allegations against Ahmed. Dangote’s voice alone dwarfed the voices of the entire motley crowd that had been crying like John the Baptist in the wilderness. If the government did not hear, or pretended not to hear: not Ahmed. The former NMDPRA boss heard Dangote loud and clear, and immediately did what occurred to him to be the needful. He resigned. Thereafter, he tried to defend the allegations raised against him by Dangote.

    Indeed, his action reminded me of the expensive joke that one of my bosses at the then Kingsway Stores, one Mrs Dina, an Ijebu woman who was hardworking to the core, used to crack whenever any of us fumbled at work. ‘’Kingsway a koko le e lo, ki won to fi ‘we da e duro’ (Kingsway would first send you away before following it up with your sack letter!) 

    But why did Ahmed not resign all this while? Could it be that Dangote’s voice was likely to attract the attention of the government, in which case he could have been fired, instead of the opportunity he had to honourably resign?

    Just as we may never know whether we saw his exit at the time it came or not; we may also not know why he did not put forward his defence and stay put, if he knew he was indeed without blemish. Could he have reigned so that the government would simply close the case as usual and we move on? 

    Again, we may never have answers to these questions. What is clear at least as in the public domain is that he tendered his resignation on December 17, barely days after Dangote made public the damning allegations against him. A newspaper report gave what could be a possible clue as to why the NMDPRA boss eventually threw in the towel as it reported that the embattled Ahmed had earlier that evening met with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu at the State House, Abuja, for about 30 minutes.

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    Indeed, the newspaper described the resignation as ‘’unexpected turn of events’’. Perhaps unexpected because people had all the while thought Ahmed enjoyed the support of the government.

    If Ahmed’s resignation was unexpected, then, how do we describe that of his counterpart at the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), Gbenga Komolafe, who also turned in his resignation same day? Both Ahmed and Komolafe were appointed by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration in 2021 to lead the two regulatory agencies created by the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA). Their tenure should have expired next year.

    However, if anyone had thought the government had been treating Ahmed’s matter with kid gloves, its swift replacement of the duo confirmed the contrary. Perhaps the government had only been shopping for their replacements all through the time it did nothing (at least in the eyes of the public) despite the cries for Ahmed’s probe and ultimate sack. This swiftness led to the president sending the names of two new chief executives for the NMDPRA and the NUPRC, namely: Saidu Aliyu Mohammed and Oritsemeyiwa Eyesan, respectively. This is commendable, given their strategic importance in the oil sector. No vacuum should be allowed in such strategic agencies.

    If I had been ‘Ahmedcentric’ so far in this write-up, it is because, as I mentioned earlier, tongues had been wagging about Ahmed’s activities at the NMDPRA long before now. We have not heard that Komolafe did anything to warrant his sudden resignation alongside Ahmed’s. Moreover, as we would discover shortly, Ahmed’s matter appears hydra-headed or multidimensional.

    Komolafe’s case is particularly pathetic because he was said to have raised the bar at NUPRC. He was said to have embarked on a series of reforms that border on regulatory transparency, community engagement, investment confidence, industry performance and international engagement. From the time he was appointed in 2021, he succeeded in increasing the country’s active drilling rig counts from barely eight to almost 70 by October, 2025. His efforts were said to have paid off with approvals in investments and capital inflow. He also did well with community engagement and took measures that reduced crude theft.

    So, what could have led to his resignation?

    The only thing I heard was that it was done for ethnic balancing? I do not believe this. This is why the government itself has to shed some light on Komolafe’s dark deeds at NUPRC (if any), to erase any doubt of ethnic balancing. After all, a Yoruba adage says it is the finger that sinned that is cut off (ika to ba se l’Oba nge). I do not think it is possible for anyone to carry vicarious liability in this matter.

    Back to Dangote vs. Ahmed.

    Dangote in recent times has been at daggers-drawn with the NMDPRA and particularly Ahmed, its head, that he accused of sleaze and economic sabotage by undermining local refining capacity in Nigeria, especially through the unbridled issuance of import licences for petroleum products, despite the capacity of local refiners to meet the country’s needs.

    Africa’s richest person also raised what some people refer to as personal allegation against the NMDPRA boss. He alleged that Ahmed was living beyond his legitimate means, claiming that four of his children attend secondary schools in Switzerland at a cost of about $7 million.

    Dangote concluded that this kind of expenditure raised questions about potential conflicts of interest and the integrity of regulatory oversight in the downstream petroleum sector. He subsequently submitted a petition to the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), calling for Ahmed’s arrest, investigation and prosecution.

    Ahmed, on his part, has tried to answer some of the questions raised by Dangote, particularly as they affect the education of his children. He said, “Three of my four children received substantial merit-based scholarships ranging from 40% to 65% of tuition costs.”

    Beyond these scholarships, he explained that his father, a businessman, established a trust fund for the education of his grandchildren before his death in 2018. Apparently, he is taking advantage of this as well as what he called support from extended family, consistent with traditional Nigerian values of collective investment in education.

    He added that when his three decades of accumulated savings (of about N48 million annually) and official compensation are considered, he cannot be said to be living beyond his means and that he has consistently declared his assets to the Code of Conduct Bureau since joining the public sector in 1991.

    For me, I do not see any reason why Nigeria should continue to import petrol at the rate it did even up till last month. In November, last year, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd (NNPCL) said it had stopped importation of fuel. Melee Kyari, its then chief executive officer, said “Today, NNPC does not import any product; we are taking only from domestic refineries.” 

    However, figures from the NMDPRA showed that NNPC Limited and other marketers imported 52.1 million litres of petrol daily in November, 2025, despite the fact that consumption fell to 52.9 million litres per day in the month, down from 56.74 million litres per day recorded in October. This amounted to 1.563 billion litres for the month. NMDPRA said this was done because local supply could not meet up with demand, and especially with the festive season around the corner.

    I know some people had invested in tank facilities during the period of fuel importation, but then, we can only try to strike a balance between their interest and the larger interest of the country. We cannot kill local refineries (just because of that), a thing we had been craving for, for decades.

    Of course, I am also not oblivious of the potential threat that a single dominant player in the sector could pose to the economy. Even at that, we have to see it in the larger interest of the economy while the government tries to do some balancing act to avoid this.

    To those who felt Dangote should not have mentioned the fabulous amount Ahmed allegedly spent on his children’s secondary education outside the country, because it is a personal affair, I think they missed the point. Dangote is a major tax payer; his Dangote Group paid N402 billion tax to the Federal Government’s coffers last year, at least as confirmed by the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS). Some other reports quoted N450 billion. Whichever, this is huge. He is therefore more than qualified to know how this is spent and should therefore not keep quiet when he feels a public official is spending above his means. Many public officials in Nigeria do. I do not think Dangote would have cited this if he had issues with a private citizen.

    And, to those who have always felt Dangote is allergic to competition. While I am not in a position to deny or admit this, suffice it to say that it is impossible for a man who has established a $20 billion world-class refinery of Dangote Refinery status to be a gentleman. This is much more so in our kind of clime where the oil sector stinks to high heaven, with people that had been creaming off billions of money meant for fuel subsidy after they had ensured that all the public refineries became either dead or comatose. That business is not one for gentlemen because the stench in the sector is almost pervasive; with, perhaps, none exempts. 

    My conclusion: Ahmed’s resignation cannot be the end of the matter; the allegations against him must be investigated in the interest of natural justice, the economy and transparency and accountability in public office. Nothing short of this would do.

  • No objection, Mr. Trump

    No objection, Mr. Trump

    • America’s decision to impose visa ban on Nigerians with link to terrorism is welcome

    I wholeheartedly welcome President Donald Trump’s decision to restrict visas to Nigerians who violate religious rights. The U.S. Department of State said in a statement titled: ‘Combating Egregious Anti-Christian Violence in Nigeria and Globally,’ that the U.S. was taking a decisive action in response to the mass killings and violence against Christians by radical terrorists, ethnic militia and other violent actors in Nigeria and beyond.

    “A new policy under Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act will allow the State Department to restrict visa issuance to individuals who have directed, authorised, significantly supported, participated in, or carried out violations of religious freedom and, where appropriate, their immediate family members.”

    It added that “As President Trump made clear, the ‘United States cannot stand by while such atrocities are happening in Nigeria, and numerous other countries.’ This policy will apply to Nigeria and any other governments or individuals engaged in violations of religious freedom.”

    I would indeed appreciate it if the World’s Number One Citizen could extend such punishment to those responsible for corruption and bad governance generally because they are the ones that are making Nigeria and Nigerians a laughing stock all over the world, because of their exodus to places outside their God-chosen country, for sanctuary.

    Trump’s latest decision must have been informed by his unbending belief that there is religious genocide in Nigeria, despite the denials by the Federal Government and some other groups in and outside the country. Mr Trump is entitled to his opinion and I would not even mind whatever sanctions he applied to people violating religious rights because this is an inalienable right that even God Almighty had in His wisdom given to all humans, without exception. When He created us, he did not impose any particular religion on anyone. Indeed, God gave us the Free Will to decide between good and evil; including the freedom of what or which God or god to worship.

    I do not therefore know how some misguided, ill-educated individuals would impose it on themselves the power to want everybody else to sleep and face where they are facing religion-wise. Those who had been so indoctrinated constitute the chunk of those now troubling the nation. Unfortunately, what is paining me in all of these is the fact that it is the whole country that is picking the avoidable bills for such indoctrinations that were done with selfish class motives by some religious and political interests in the North for decades. People had been fed all manner of lies in the name of religion, whereas at the bottom of it all is the intention to keep the misguided perpetually ignorant and unable to differentiate their left from their right hand.

    We have seen the consequences of religious hate in several countries like Afghanistan, Sudan,  Somalia, Central African Republic (CAR), Lebanon, India and Pakistan, to mention only a few. Their experiences are not the kind of thing one would wish for Nigeria or even an enemy country. So, if help is going to come by way of sanctions for elites, political or religious, that fan the embers of such dichotomies, I have nothing against it. This is especially so in a situation where nothing else seems capable of checking such trend. Nigeria’s elites must be some of the most in the world that cannot do without travelling to the United States, and Trump knows this insatiable appetite on their part.

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    I cannot understand, for instance, a situation like that which happened to Deborah Samuel Yakubu in 2022. That it could happen at all in 21st Century Nigeria was bad enough. It pained me to the marrows the more as a Christian. How could life just be snuffed out of a 21-year-old second-year student by her Muslim classmates who accused her of posting a “blasphemous” comment against the Islamic Prophet Muhammad in a student WhatsApp study group? She felt such a platform should be for sharing of things having to do with their studies only; a not particularly illegitimate statement.

    To think that this was the reason she was dragged out from the security post at Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto, where she had been hidden, and stoned to death while her body was then set ablaze, took something off our humanity as a nation. Those who committed the heinous murder even had the temerity to exhibit their barbarity online by showing the video to the world. And that in a state where there is a sitting governor with all the instruments of power. That those accused of her murder are still walking free three years after leaves a sour taste in the mouth. This was despite the national outrage and international condemnation, highlighting ongoing issues with religious violence and blasphemy laws in the country.

    The governor of the state where such grievous harm was done may not have been guilty of directing or authorising violations of religious freedom; he is certainly guilty of vicariously supporting such violations by his inability to bring such murderers to justice. They are murderers; it is when Nigerians want to deodorise crimes that they look for all manner of technical subterfuge to describe it in order to lessen the import of the crimes. They cannot hide behind one finger by saying Miss Samuel’s killers did it for their religion. I do not know of any religion that permits people to take the lives of others in the name of blasphemy. 

    So, if sanction like the one that Trump just came up with will help rein in such barbarity by preventing the governor of such a state from entering a place like the United States where our big people crave to enter, so be it. May be that would force them to recall those they had fed with all manner of wrong indoctrinations so they could make them regurgitate them and now feed them aright spiritually.

    Every Nigerian would benefit from such re-indoctrination because it would save us the enormous costs we are spending to prosecute this needless war against banditry, terrorism and allied crimes. These are resources we could jolly well have deployed for the general good in the areas of power, health, roads, energy, and what have you.

    That the Deborah Samuel incident was not an isolated one is indeed depressing. There had been several other such incidents in parts of the North that went the way of Samuel’s. These are some of the things that many outsiders are seeing and calling genocide against Christians in Nigeria.

    AI overview defines genocide as ”the deliberate, systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, encompassing acts like killing, causing serious harm, imposing harsh living conditions, preventing births, or forcibly transferring children, all with the specific intent to eliminate the group as such, as defined by the UN Genocide Convention. Coined by Raphael Lemkin, it’s an international crime targeting a group’s identity, not just its members”. The operational word that many people look for in genocide is ‘mass killing’ or ‘mass murder’, or mass whatever that can systematically lead to the extermination of a particular group. Unfortunately, this is not the definition under International Law. Mass killing is not a mandatory element for the crime of genocide.

    It is little drops of water such as the Deborah Samuel’s that many people are now adding together to make up the mighty ocean of what they call genocide. It is not just the attacks on churches or abduction of students and children in Christian schools. These seemingly isolated cases are a national tragedy because it is their aggregate that is giving Nigeria the bad name or reputation of ‘Country of Particular Concern’.  Unfortunately, too, many of what eventually led to such classification are politically motivated.  This is why the Federal Government cannot stand aloof and see these cases as a matter concerning the states where they occur alone. It is the Federal Government that is absorbing the shocks of the inactions in states where these incidents occur. It is the one feeling the heat.

    There is no doubt that there is general insecurity in the land that has claimed many lives and we are probably still counting. Which is condemnable all the same.  Not even the Federal Government is denying this fact. And, to the extent that provision of adequate security for all citizens is a cardinal duty of government, the government has an abiding responsibility to protect them, irrespective of their faith or lack of it. 

    All said; whether it is insecurity or genocide, the government has a duty to ensure safety of all citizens. And it must continue to do that. But not many Nigerians are happy that the real big names behind terror in the country are not made public, not to talk of prosecuting them. Nigerians and indeed the international community would appreciate if these people can be named and shamed, and have their day in court. Terror is like fire; take out oxygen and the fire gets extinguished. Take out the financiers, it is a matter of time; terror itself would dry to its root. 

    But what the terrorists and their promoters do not seem to understand is that no particular religion has a monopoly of violence. The only thing is that the teachings of the religions differ. So many Christian leaders have been expressing frustration on these unprovoked attacks that have been given the country a name that is not its own. Some have told their members to be coming to church armed. The other day, one even went to the extent of telling his members to (ti ese ile bo) ‘look inwards’, that is take to unorthodox means to respond to the situation.

    What they are all saying is that the government has to be more drastic on this matter if we are to get out of it anytime soon. Two major sources of illicit funds for some people were erased when the Tinubu administration came in 2023. People that were benefitting from the fuel subsidy fraud and floating of the foreign exchange market have since been rendered jobless. Since nature abhors a vacuum, they must find an alternative source of illicit profits which the terror war promises to be, especially with sundry crimes like kidnapping for ransom, etc.

    Such people would look for all manner of ways to keep the war alive. But, can Nigeria continue to pour libation on this their new-found sources of illicit profits? I don’t think so. Even if the country is, it is unlikely the international community is. Terror against one, the world seems to have realised, is terror against all. That seems the message Trump has been harping on. If ‘protecting’ Christians provides a convenient excuse for that, why not exploit it?

  • VIPs also cry

    VIPs also cry

    President Tinubu’s withdrawal of their police security men does not seem to go down well with them. But will the order stand this time?

    Last Sunday, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu ordered the withdrawal of police officers currently providing security for Very Important Persons (VIPs) in the country, to boost the number of personnel, as well as enable them concentrate on their core police duties.

    The directive was issued at the security meeting the president held with the Chief of Army Staff, Lt General Waidi Shaibu; the Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sunday Kelvin Aneke; the Inspector-General of Police, Kayode Egbetokun; and the Director-General of the Department of State Services (DSS), Tosin Adeola Ajayi, in Abuja.

    Henceforth, VIPs who want police protection will now request well-armed personnel from the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC).

    Before the ink with which the presidential spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, wrote his press release on the matter dried up, reports say some of the affected VIPs had been inundating police headquarters with calls seeking more clarifications over the development and expressing fears, based on the prevailing security situation in the country.

    The major concern of these VIPs is whether the NSCDC has the capacity to protect them, considering their training and requirements. “He (a VIP) told us that it will be like engaging Boys Scouts to protect them as the mobile policemen they normally engage are more agile and battle-ready to confront any situation.”

    Another VIP told Vanguard: “The practice of providing police escorts to high ranking officers and VIP’s has become a major feature of the security landscape in Nigeria, but it must be noted that as the country grapples with growing security concerns, the use of police personnel for VIP protection has raised significant questions about its broader implications on public safety and the overall effectiveness of the police force.”

    This VIP would even seem more considerate, considering the attempt he made to strike a balance between public safety and individual safety. So, rather than the blanket ban or withdrawal that could lead to increase in the prevailing fears of insecurity, he called for rationalisation of the exercise.

     “The justification behind this practice often rests on the high-profile nature of individuals involved, the perceived threat to their safety, and the desire to project power and influence.

    ”While these measures are meant to offer security for influential figures, the broader implication is that they come at a high cost to the public, both in terms of the security resources diverted and the moral perception of a system that favours the few over the many,” he said.

    Fair argument, if you ask me.

    But, we should have expected the big people affected by the directive to react the way some of them did. Nigeria’s big men do not want to lose any privilege. After all, this is not the first time that such order for the withdrawal of policemen serving VIPs would be made. In the last 20 years or so, there has not been an inspector-general of police that did not issue such directive.

    As far back as 2003, the then IGP, Mustafa Adebayo Balogun initiated one of the earliest major attempts to withdraw police orderlies from judicial officers and politicians nationwide, essentially to  prevent abuse of the police officers.

    Ogbonnaya Onovo, who succeeded Balogun, in August 2009 issued a sweeping order mandating all police personnel serving as private orderlies to return to their bases. This directive extended to former heads of state, ministers, legislators, and governors. Onovo gave a seven-day deadline for the order to be complied with. He said he was disturbed by the degradation of police professionalism caused by officers performing menial tasks such as carrying handbags or opening doors for VIPs. As at that time, there were 100,000 such policemen attached to the VIPs.

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    Then Hafiz Ringim, who succeeded Onovo. He reinforced the withdrawal policy by cautioning officers guarding unauthorised individuals to return to their commands or face arrest and prosecution. To underscore his seriousness on the issue, he established a special monitoring unit to ensure adherence to the directive, signalling a more rigorous enforcement approach.

    Then Mohammed Abubakar, Solomon Arase,  Ibrahim Idris, Mohammed Adamu, Usman Alkali Baba, and Kayode Egbetokun, the incumbent Inspector-General of Police who had also repeated the same ritual. That it had to take President Tinubu to personally make the order this time around means that he also appreciated the need for such an order to come from the seat of power.

    The thing is; in all the cases, the big people have always complained and their police security men restored. 

    So, I saw the silence-enough-to-be heard protest coming. I knew that the big men would kick against the presidential order even before the ink used to pen the press release on it dried up. Nigeria’s big men do not want to lose any privilege, no matter how obnoxious. And they have a surfeit of them. Otherwise, how do you explain that in a country of over 220 million citizens being served by about 370,000 policemen, more than a third of the number was allocated to VIPs?

    Are such people fair to Nigerians? Do they have two heads? And are the other Nigerians who had to be deprived so the VIPs could breathe not entitled to police protection? Is it not the same one life that the VIPs have that the ordinary Nigerians too have? 

    Although some would make the point that it is not all about numbers; but numbers also matter. Freeing a whopping 100,000 policemen to complement those on the field should definitely make some impact on the terrible security situation in the country. The United States, for instance, protects its 341 million population with about 750,000-strong law enforcement officers. This is an average of one policeman to about 455 persons.

    Nigeria’s population is about 232.6 million and it is being served by about 270,000 policemen (less the 100,000 others assigned as security to VIPs). This is a ratio of about 1:859 persons. With this, it is clear that Nigeria is disadvantaged and underserved in virtually every policing index unlike the U.S. that has the advantage of technology to leverage in terms of internal security. So, if we are able to free about 100,000 policemen to join the 270,000 that are presently doing strictly policing, the ratio would increase to 1: 600. Other things being equal, this should reflect in effectiveness and efficiency.

    The fact of the matter is that, in Nigeria, virtually everything under the sun is a status symbol. I remember when the global system for mobile (GSM) communication phones came into the country in 2001, you would see some of our big men trying to pause one call for another in the open, to show off the number of telephones they owned, courtesy of GSM. Some of them even engaged personal assistants essentially for the purpose of carrying the phones for them. GSM telephones then were status symbols.

    When we see policemen guiding many of our VIPs, we know it is not only about security; it is also a status symbol. It is something to let the community know that one has arrived, or that levels have changed. That is not all. Many at times, some of these policemen help their new ‘masters’ fight personal battles, that is when they are not turned to errand boys by not only ‘oga at the top’, but ,madam at the bottom,, and the kids as well.

    And they do these errand boy jobs even better and gladly than the professionals because of the extra bucks that such jobs fetch them. Obviously, their miserable take-home pay cannot take them home. 

    For Nigeria, this is not the best of times to over-pamper a select few at the expense of the generality of the people. The country is at war with terrorists and we need all hands on deck to win the war.

    So, am I now saying that some Nigerians do not deserve extra protection even by the very nature of their public assignments? NO! For most rules, there are exceptions. We cannot say, for example, that our judges should be left to their own devices. There are other categories of public officials who require police protection; they should be accorded the privilege. Others may, as the president rightly suggested, look toward the NSCDC for cover.

    But, the government should work out, on a sustainable basis, the number of policemen to recruit annually to reduce the manpower shortage in the force. The then President Olusegun Obasanjo had in 2000 ordered the police force to begin an annual recruitment of some 40,000 men for four years to bridge the gap. I do not know if this was followed throughout his eight years in office, and even subsequently. This cannot be the spirit in a country with serious security situation like ours. The recruitment and training should be regular and sustained until such a time when we know that we already have enough or close to enough.

    The fact is: we have been too lackadaisical about security. That explains why we could have abandoned the police force for so long. Now that we are facing the stark reality of that neglect, the very people who should have done something about the situation are the ones crying for special protection; a thing that had always blinded them to the reality on ground. What I am saying is that our big men, particularly those who are in position to make a difference to our lives should not continue to live in the illusion that all is well when that is far from being correct. When they are given police protection, they cannot understand when the hoi polloi say there is insecurity in the land. I learnt many politicians of northern extraction cannot go to their towns and villages due to insecurity. When they also have a feel of what the ordinary people see and feel daily on insecurity, they would realise the mistake they have made over the decades by leaving the country under-policed. And not only under-policed, but under-paid, poorly kitted, ill-trained, ill-accommodated and ill-motivated. All the ‘ills’ are present in the Nigeria Police Force! We must be prepared to address them if we are to sleep with our two eyes closed.

    It is ungodly and inhuman for a country that is battling terrorism, mass abductions and violent crimes to reserve 100,000 policemen to protect probably less than 250,000 Nigerians while 270,000 others are protecting the majority 230 million. It is absolutely absurd.

    What, in my view, the president can do is try to give a three-month period within which to allow for the training of the NSCDC personnel that would take over VIP protection from the police. Henceforth, VIP protection should be a permanent feature of their training.

    Then the salaries of all the security personnel must be reviewed, as well as their condition of service, to make their job attractive and enhance their performance. 

    This would appear the first time that such directive on police withdrawal from VIPs would be coming from an incumbent president. That being the case, it is expected that there should be a difference in implementation this time around. Normally, when a president speaks, it is like an oracle has spoken and I believe President Tinubu understands this.

    Meanwhile, where is State Police in all of these?

  • The wages of terrorism

    The wages of terrorism

    It is good that finally, the slow wheels of justice in the country crawled to its destination in Nnamdi Kanu’s case

    Unless two things happen, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, the separatist leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), will spend the rest of his life in prison, following his conviction on terrorism-related charges by the Federal High Court, Abuja, on Thursday, November 20. One, Kanu may be off the hook if President Bola Tinubu decides to exercise his prerogative of mercy powers and, two, if the convict appeals the judgment and finds favour in the eyes of the appellate court.

    Justice James Omotosho who delivered the judgment said that prosecutors had proved beyond reasonable doubts that Kanu’s orders and broadcasts incited deadly attacks on security forces and citizens in the southeast. Not only businesses but the entire south east region was usually paralysed whenever Kanu issued sit-at-home orders to the people in the region, banning businesses, schooling and other activities.

    Kanu, who was arraigned on a seven-count charge, was convicted on all. The least of the sentence for the offences was imprisonment for five years without an option of fine for count seven, whilst the maximum punishment for terrorism was death penalty. However, Justice Omotosho noted that death sentence was becoming anachronistic; he also considered the allocutus made on Kanu’s behalf to hand him the life sentence despite the prosecutor’s plea that he be handed the stiffest punishment of death by hanging till he be pronounced dead. A fair deal, if you ask me; considering the havoc Kanu and his goons had caused not only to security agencies but also his people who defied his sit-at-home orders in his heyday.

    According to Justice Omotosho, “The court finds that the defendant, Nnamdi Kanu, is an international terrorist and must be treated accordingly.” He added that “His intention was quite clear as he believed in violence. These threats of violence were nothing but terrorist acts.”

    It is significant that Kanu was cantankerous for the better part of the trial. Indeed, on the day of judgment, this cantankerousness reached a crescendo as he lambasted Justice Omotosho who he said did not know the law. The 58-year-old secessionist leader who had earlier dismissed his legal team and represented himself during the trial, had to be ejected from the court for “unruly” behaviour. “Which law states that you can charge me on an unwritten law? Show me,” Kanu said before he was removed from the court. “Omotosho, where is the law? Any judgment declared in this court is complete rubbish”, he said.

    Kanu was first arrested in 2015, and taken into custody in October of the same year, and slammed with multiple charges, including treasonable felony. He was granted bail 18 months later from where he disappeared, or jumped bail, as it were, before he was reportedly arrested in Kenya in controversial circumstances in 2021.

    IPOB, like some other Igbo separatist movements sought to revive the short-lived state of Biafra, which seceded from Nigeria in 1967. The secession sparked a three-year civil war that lasted from 1967 to 1970, and which claimed the lives of about three million people. But, after Biafra troops surrendered to the federal troops in 1970, the then General Yakubu Gowon military regime came up with a policy to reintegrate the Eastern Region back into the country under its three ‘Rs’ of  Reconciliation, Rehabilitation, and Reconstruction.

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    Somehow, years after, some people in the eastern region still felt the country was not fair to them and had formed several secessionist movements to protest against what they see as political and economic marginalisation. In the course of doing that, some of them have had to rally indigenes of the region in the diaspora to donate to the agitation for independence, including training militia in the region’s forests.

    It is unfortunate that IPOB that was formed in 2012 as a peaceful movement later metamorphosed and launched an armed wing in south-eastern Nigeria in 2020, ostensibly to defend the Igbo ethnic group.

    We have had other Igbo separatist groups like the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), which was founded by Ralph Uwazuruike in 1999. But he adopted the principle of nonviolence as propagated by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., as the philosophy of the struggle. Naturally, he was detained several times and charged with treason in Nigerian courts.

    Of course we also had the Simon Ekpa wing of IPOB that broke away from its parent body and was led by Ekpa, who was only in September jailed for terrorism against Nigeria, in faraway Finland. Between the two factions of IPOB, the geopolitical risk consultancy SBM Intelligence, had claimed that as many as ”700 deaths have been linked to separatist militants since 2021, including a May 2024 incident where five soldiers and six others were killed in an ambush in Abia State. During the conflict, military personnel have also been implicated in multiple cases of human rights abuses.” 

    Even the court that sentenced Kanu said that the prosecution proved that about 175 security personnel lost their lives; 134 police stations were destroyed and nine offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) were burnt on the orders of Kanu in his broadcasts. This was apparently why the court said Kanu should forfeit the transmitter used for his broadcasts to the Federal Government.

    These are not all. The court also found Kanu culpable of incitement in the destruction of government properties in Lagos during the EndSARS protest in 2020, as well as that Kanu had called upon his listeners or supporters to attack the British High Commission in Nigeria.

    All of these made Justice Omotosho to conclude that ”His action was aimed at causing anarchy, which will in turn lead to the breakdown of law and order. His evil intention was to wreak havoc on the people of Nigeria. Were all these actions for self-determination? The answer is No”, Justice Omotosho concluded.

    It is instructive that it is not only the Igbo in the southeastern part of the country that are crying of marginalisation. Several other parts of the country also have one grievance or the other against the Nigerian state, including the south-south region where the country’s golden eggs are being laid. Other parts of the country had also suffered one form of marginalisation or the other at one time or the other.

    Even at that, it is not that people cannot agitate for ethnic or whatever freedom. But there are constitutionally laid-down processes for doing this, as Justice Omotosho noted while delivering his judgment. ”Agitations for self-determination can only pass through the constitutional amendment through the National Assembly”, the judge said. But Kanu’s model deviated from this norm to embrace violence, illegal broadcasts, incitement, intimidation, threats and actual commission of crimes, including murder, to promote whatever cause he believed he was promoting.

    In actual fact, both Kanu and Ekpa committed virtually the same crime. While Kanu committed his own crime within, Ekpa was throwing violence across the seas to Nigeria from abroad. Ekpa activated the Biafra Government In Exile (BGIE) in 2022, and in 2023 declared himself leader of the government. The Federal Government protested to the Finnish authorities which initially seemed not keen on arresting him (a thing some people initially attributed to his being a Finnish citizen of Nigerian origin). Indeed, at a point, the Nigerian government called for his extradition, so he could come and face justice at home. In March, 2024, the Nigerian Army declared him and 96 others wanted for terrorism, violent extremism and secessionist threats.

    He was eventually arrested in Finland, in 2023. Ekpa’s trial which ran from May 30, 2025, to June 25, 2025, consisted of only 12 days of hearings as the verdict which sentenced him to six years in prison was delivered on September 1, 2025.

    This was a remarkable difference from that of Kanu that lasted a whole 10 years (2015-2025). Granted that the wheel of justice travels at a snail’s speed in Nigeria, Kanu made his spectacularly so.   Apart from jumping bail, he has had cause to use delay tactic to prolong his trial. He had cause to reject at least three justices from sitting on his matter, citing either bias or lack of jurisdiction. Justice Omotosho who eventually decided the case was the fourth judge to sit on it. He too might have been put off by Kanu’s unruly behaviour even in the face of the court, but for his patience. All kinds of excuses that would not be tolerated in courts elsewhere were tolerated in the matter. So, Kanu is the architect of his own fortune as he even at a point fired his entire defence team and decided to defend himself.  However, despite its slow pace, and Kanu’s grandstanding, it is gratifying that a court of competent jurisdiction eventually found him guilty and sentenced him accordingly. If Ekpa could be convicted in Finland, why should Kanu’s case be different? This is why it is surprising that some people are wondering why Kanu should be convicted. Why did they not raise eyebrows when Ekpa was convicted? Is it because Kanu was tried in Nigeria?

    It would seem to me that Obi Aguocha, a member of the House of Representatives representing the Ikwuano/Umuahia North/Umuahia South Federal Constituency of Abia State, who delivered the allocutus on behalf of Kanu at the court shortly before Justice Omotosho delivered his judgment in the case of the Federal Government of Nigeria vs. Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, loved the accused more than the accused loves himself, given the sober manner he delivered the allocutus.  “My lord, I am the direct representative of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu. That is why you see me here almost every time, showing presence and solidarity with him.”  Aguocha explained that he and Kanu attended primary and secondary school together, noting that despite being Kanu’s senior, he felt a personal responsibility to speak for him, especially in his capacity as a federal lawmaker.

    But Kanu and his co-travellers should have seen what eventually befell him coming. It could not have been otherwise, given the gravity of the charges levelled against him. Neither terrorism nor treasonable felony is a minor crime.

    I know Kanu has his admirers as he indeed received royal treatment in his heyday; with some prominent Igbo personalities paying homage to him. The fact of the matter is that the law is the law. It is no respecter of anybody.

    It is good we have finally had a closure to the matter, unless Kanu appeals the judgment. If he does and the judgment is reversed, fine. Otherwise, it is President Tinubu we should all look up to for prerogative of mercy. Given Kanu’s recalcitrance, the latter option seems more like it.

  • Letter to President Donald Trump

    Letter to President Donald Trump

    • Nigeria has security issue, not genocidal one

    My dear President,

    At the risk of sounding patronizing, even though it is not exactly so, let me start by telling you that I am not an average Nigerian because an average Nigerian does not see anything good in your presidency. They never gave you any chances in the last American presidential election. That was not my problem and is still not my problem. And I made that clear right from the outset. As a matter of fact, I will quote part of what I wrote in my column in The Nation Newspaper of November 10, last year, titled ”Weep not for America”, so you will know that I am not your enemy; so I deserve your attention.     

    ” Unlike many Nigerians, I was not in any way excited about the just-concluded presidential election in the United States of America, right from the beginning. I knew that many of us in this part of the world anticipated a Camara Harris victory. I also knew that many of us would weep louder than the bereaved if Donald Trump eventually triumphed. In our minds’ eye, including many of the pollsters in America, Trump could never have won. I don’t blame such people, after all, it is said that people see what they want to see.

    ”Now that the election has been won and lost, many of us are not happy with the result. I can understand if Americans are sad. But what is our own…

    ”Democracy is about numbers. In terms of both the popular votes and the Electoral College, Trump, the Republican Party candidate, clearly trumped our favourite Harris of the Democratic Party. With 74,333,299 popular votes (50.7 per cent), he defeated Harris who had 69,857,510 (47.7 per cent). And, in terms of the Electoral College, Trump had 295, 25 more than the required 270, while Harris had 226. This was clear shellacking.”

    That was me speaking in November, last year.

    I still believe in what I said back then. People should weep for their own country; not that they should feel sad that Americans elected wrongly, when democracy is a game of numbers. And, as I said in subsequent paragraphs in that piece, even if your election was a mistake, that should be the business of the Americans.

    I needed to go this far to convince you that I am not necessarily an enemy. What I am therefore going to say is not coming from a biased mind, whether against Your Excellency or for the Nigerian government.

    I can see you have a secretary of war (formerly secretary of defence until Trump redesignated the office) in Pete Hegseth, who is ready to deploy troops to Nigeria for the purpose of killing bandits and terrorists who are, according to you, killing Christians in Nigeria. In other words, you are accusing the Nigerian government of genocide against Christians.

    Let me say that you took your eyes to the market while shopping for the right candidate that fits that designation. You left no one in doubt about your intention: yours is not about defense, it is about war. It would appear that Americans are less bothered about that, otherwise, they should have reacted. And, the way the man talks, one does not need to be told that he is ready to go into action in a twinkle of an eye. Hear some of his statements: The Department of War is preparing for action: either the Nigerian government protects Christians or we will kill the Islamic terrorists who are committing these horrible atrocities”.

    This was Hegseth’s statement on November 1, after Your Excellency instructed his department to prepare for potential military intervention in Nigeria. The man has made some other statements that tell me that he is ready to go beyond what you want if only he has the go-ahead.

    At this juncture, Mr President, let me thank you for showing concern about Christians in Nigeria. We Christians cannot thank you enough for this. The snag, this time around is that America is about to be pushed to act based on a misjudgment.

    Your Excellency, I beg to disagree that Christians in Nigeria have been mincemeat for bandits and terrorists because (especially the present) government is not doing enough to protect them. Nothing can be more fallacious.

    I have been a Christian right from my mother’s womb. As a matter of fact, I can’t count how many generations of mine had been Christians. That was why I knew there must be more to it than meets the eye when you threatened to attack Nigeria to protect Christians because of alleged genocide against them. Your Excellency, you must have been roundly misinformed.

    And the Nigerian government has said this much. Kimiebi Imomotimi Ebienfa, a spokesman for Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in an interview with Al Jazeera on November 2, denied this claim of mass killings of Christians in Nigeria.

    Yes, “We are not proud of the security situation that we are passing through, but to go with the narrative” that only Christians are targeted, “no, it is not true. There is no Christian genocide in Nigeria”, he said.

    “We’ve continuously made our point clear that we acknowledge the fact that there are killings that have taken place in Nigeria, but those killings were not restricted to Christians alone. Muslims are being killed. Traditional worshippers are being killed… The majority is not the Christian population.”

    Several other Nigerian officials, including the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, and Bayo Onanuga, the president’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, have spoken in the same vein.

    Mr President, if you had talked about insecurity as a Nigerian challenge; there cannot be any doubt about that. And I am sure the government of Nigeria is in any way denying that. But the security issue is sans religion, sans borders, sans tribes, and what have you. The bandits usually come to steal, to kill and to destroy whoever is unfortunate to cross their path.

    Your Excellency, I do not know what your impression of the Tinubu administration is; what I know however is that it is going to be difficult for anyone to suggest you have returned Nigeria to the list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) because you do not like Tinubu’s face. I say this because you had in 2020, under the Buhari administration included Nigeria in the list for engaging in or tolerating particularly severe violations of religious freedom. This was only lifted by the Biden administration that succeeded you in 2021. As a matter of fact, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a bipartisan federal government commission had as far back as 2009 recommended Nigeria for the CPC list!

    Of course, since the issue broke, so many people have been talking as experts on international relations and sundry matters. Some have said America’s military intervention in Nigeria over claims of genocide against Christians is against international law because it touches on Nigeria’s sovereignty. But we all know this cannot be dragged too far. ‎If we say the world is now a global village, it is not only about international network (internet) but also in terms of the effect of what happens in a country on another or other countries.

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    Even the African Union (AU), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) also try to influence policies and directions in member-countries. The only difference in the US threat is that Nigeria is not in any such member-state relationship with America. But then, if any religious crisis breaks out in Nigeria, America would be part of the countries to bear the brunt. Even now that there is nothing of the sort, America is home to some 700,000 people of Nigerian descent as per data from 2024 and 2025 reports.

    The truth is, international politics has always been a matter for the strong; the weak are perpetual victims or mere observers of the process. They can only be seen, not heard. And if they must be heard at all, that must be with the approval of the strong. That was why Your Excellency did not approach the United Nations (UN) or any international organisation before declaring that you would hit Nigeria with sanctions and follow it up with military action. All you need to act decisively is your country’s International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. Although the CPC designation is largely symbolic, U.S. law states that governments must “take targeted responses to violations of religious freedom.”

    I have seen all manner of figures quoted by various sources as the number of Christians that have been killed by bandits and terrorists in Nigeria but deliberately ignored them because I know many of them cannot be true. If Your Excellency had not tainted your reason for the proposed military action against Nigeria with alleged Christian genocide, may be some of us would have kept quiet.

    But, we cannot afford to in a situation where unverified statistics are being bandied as factual figures in a matter as serious as genocide.  

    I want to believe that those feeding you with these reports about genocide against Christians in Nigeria are either ignorant of the real situation or politicians fighting political battles by some other means. The fact is, the Tinubu administration, just like your humble self’s, has a lot of detractors who would stop at nothing to discredit it. 

    Yes, there are one or two dark spots. Like the case of Deborah Yakubu, a Christian student who was burnt to death in Sokoto State in May 2022 by about 50 of her classmates. They even had the temerity to video their cruelty against a weaker sex and put same on the internet for the world to see their level of barbarism in the 21st Century. It is sad no one was ever punished for that. 

    Then, the Owo, Ondo State Catholic Church killings in the same 2022. The case is not progressing as expected.

    In essence, there are lessons to learn from your threat and I hope the appropriate agencies of government are taking judicial notice of these.

    I want to believe that the Tinubu administration in a space of about 29 months has done far more to eliminate terror leaders than any of its predecessors since the insurgency started in the country about 16 years ago. The big names are all over the public space.

    Your Excellency, let me end this letter by saying that if truly, there is genocide against Christians in Nigeria, and you said you want to come and rescue us; as a Christian from the womb, I would be the first person to jump at the offer. This is not only about patriotism because I have to be alive first to be patriotic. It is about survival. And, as it is said, ”a drowning man would not mind clinging to a serpent for help”.

    But there is no such thing as genocide against Christians. We have insecurity and if Your Excellency has useful assistance for us, I do not think the Federal Government would turn it down.

    Yours faithfully,

    • Adetunji Adegboyega.