The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Tinubu: Two years on

    Tinubu: Two years on

    Today, the President turns two in office. It has not been a smooth ride since Asiwaju Bola Tinubu got into office on May 29, 2023. The campaigns and his election were tempestuous. There was a determined bid by his own party and its top echelons to stop him, even before the race began. There was no let up during the race itself as the party and the opposition almost coalesced to work against his election.

    The Jagaban of Borgu (Jagaban for short) has not known respite despite being President in the past two years. The opposition is still beating the drums of war, belching out threats of a coalition, the same arrangement that failed in 2023, to stop him in 2027. This is no time to talk about that major event coming up in two years. It is time to look at what President Tinubu has done in the past two years when the kingmaker became king. But then talking about the last two years will lead us to what to expect in two years time, precisely the 2027 elections.

    Tinubu came into office prepared. This is why he often says that he begged for the job and must deliver, and as such there cannot be any excuses for failure. He was determined from Day One to take hard decisions and the first one he took is still rocking the polity.  His ‘fuel subsidy is gone’ remark at his inauguration at the Eagle Square is the stuff of which legends are made. It was a bold and audacious statement not contained in his address but brought in at a moment only known to the President. It was a statement that showed that this President is not going to be one that played by prepared texts only.

    It will be a Presidency that breaks away from the norm, now and again, in order to achieve its objectives. Nigerians have seen that from his way of handling issues in the past 24 months. He is focused, knowledgeable and insightful. He does not play Mr I-Know-IT-ALL, and at the same time, he does not allow himself to be led by the nose. As expected, the ‘fuel subsidy is gone’ remark has come to be what his antagonists use to harangue him. To them, subsidy removal has become the nation’s headache because the price of petrol shot through the roof.

    They accuse the President of implementing the agenda of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which advocated subsidy removal before coming to the country’s economic aid. The truth is only the President can explain why he took that decision on the spur of the moment, so to say. No matter how you look at it, it has turned out to be a wise decision, after the initial protests against it. Though its price is high, petrol is now available all-year round, without the usual queues seen at filling stations at festive seasons. This is the result of the liberalisation (or is it deregulation?) of the downstream sector, which allows market forces to determine price.

    Though some are not comfortable with this principle of market forces, there is no doubt that in this circumstance, it has worked to the extent of ensuring regular availability of the product across the country, something that was strange before Tinubu’s coming. Tinubu’s flotation of the exchange rate almost at the same time with subsidy removal was also considered economically suicidal, with certain experts wondering how both policies could work simultaneously. The President listened to all these complaints, but stuck to his guns. Leaders are not known for allowing themselves to be blown here and there by the wind.

    They are known for their surefootedness and steadfastness. Taking a decsion and standing by it is the hallmark of a leader, but at the same time, he must also be prepared to admit it when he is wrong. But the fear of being wrong should not stop him from having the courage of his conviction. A leader should not be deterred by fear, but propelled by the will to do what is right for the common good. That the economy is bouncing back today is as a result of his keen foresight on what to do. The exchange rate may still be high at over N1500 to the dollar, but Tinubu is not resting on his oars to marry the fiscal and monetary policies to address the imbalance. But it will not happen overnight.

    Read Also: Senate passes N1.8trn 2025 FCT budget

    The public, according to analysts, are impatient. They want to see things corrected in no time. This is understandable considering what they have gone through. There are no quick fixes to any nation’s problems. These challenges are addressed with time. Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda (RHA) is restoring hope in various facets of life. With infrastructure springing up here and there, the President has in 24 months done what his predecessors could not do, even during their two terms of eight years. Virtually rebuilding an economy from scratch the way he has done since 2023 is not easy. As he says, he is not in it for the blame game, but to turn atound the fortunes of hapless Nigerians.

    This is what his programmes on student loans, conditional cash transfer, power subsidy, youth empowerment, road construction and rehabilitation, healthcare delivery and affordable drugs, widening the tax net to get the rich to pay more in order to subsidise the poor, diversification from oil to non-oil economy and ease of doing business, amomg others, are about. It will take time for some of these policies and programmes that are in their gestation period to germinate. The results of some are already manifesting. For instance, over 500,000 students have benefited from the Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND), helping many students who would have dropped out of school to continue their education, without fear of where the funding would come from.

    As proof that Tinubu is building a resilient economy, the country has paid the $3.4 billion IMF COVID-19 loan, raising its status in the comity of nations and among multilateral institutions. The external reserve is about $40.19 billion, which is over $6 billion higher than what it was in 2023. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) also rose to $6.2 billion last year, reflecting a $1.4 billion increase in two years, while the gross domestic product (GDP) shot up by 4.6% last year, indicating the highest rise in 10 years. All these in the space of two years.

    Without being told, the President knows that it is not Uhuru yet. More still needs to be done, especially in the area of security. Insurgency has resurged in the Northeast, especially in some parts of Borno and Adamawa states. The military must step up the fight against insurgents and bandits who are making life difficult for the people. Whether by symmetric or asymmetric warfare, or whatever other action, the military and its sister agencies cannot and should not allow any part of Nigeria to be in the hands of non-state actors. They should be flushed out, no matter what it takes.

    It is only by so doing that the people can enjoy the dividends of democracy and the President will have the peace of mind to concentrate on their welfare, which is the primary duty of government.

  • Nipco: The FCCPC magic

    Nipco: The FCCPC magic

    It took only one phone call and the dispute was resolved.  The intervention of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) did the magic, following my complaint. Minutes after lodging the complaint, my phone rang and the caller wanted a name of any official of Nipco Gas Station at Arepo, Ogun State, which I accused of not refunding my N20000, following a failed POS (point of sale) transaction for  which I was debited and the firm credited. In no time I was talking with the Nipco man. That was last Thursday. We agreed to meet the next day.

    Read Also: FG to equip 12 universities with high-fibre internet, 24-hour electricity

    We met and the matter was resolved. Just like that! He turned out to be an official with good human relations.  ‘People talked to people and people understood’, as we used to say in the political reporting circuit between 1992 and 1993. I commended the guy’s human touch. No matter how socially irresponsible an organisation may be, having the right man in place can make a world of difference.

  • Jonathan’s jibe

    Jonathan’s jibe

    Few days ago, former President Goodluck Jonathan stylishly took a swipe at the integrity of the present National Assembly. He was speaking at the champions of local content dinner in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State. He spoke of how the Local Content Act came into being and the role of the National Assembly in enacting the law. According to him, this happened when the “National Assembly was National Assembly”, a jibe at the present National Assembly. His audience roared in laughter as it knew the butt of his sarcasm. Jonathan signed the law in 2010 as acting president

    Read Also: Senate passes N1.8trn 2025 FCT budget

    The National Assembly in session then, if my memory serves me right, was led by Senator David Mark. Was that really a National Assembly? What makes Jonathan to be over the moon over it? Politics, simply politics.

  • Cynics build no country

    Cynics build no country

    They smelled blood and gathered like hyenas. Not in the savannahs of Sambisa or the dry grasslands of Konduga, but in the digital amphitheatre of Nigeria’s public opinion: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, the press, and WhatsApp.

    At the centre of this frenzy was Professor Ishaq Oloyede, the Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). A technical glitch during the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination led to irregularities in the scores of thousands of candidates. It was later discovered that over 20 suspects, including some school proprietors, had hacked into JAMB’s server to fraudulently boost the scores of “special” candidates, charging fees ranging from N700,000 to N2 million.

    The culprits reportedly infiltrated the national exam board, corrupted the computer-based testing system, and sullied the hopes of thousands of candidates. Yet, the national outrage did not pivot when this truth emerged. It simply fizzled.

    Oloyede cried, perhaps out of genuine remorse or frustration, but Nigerians were merciless. They called for his dismissal, demanding his head on a pike of shame, despite his peerless exploits as JAMB registrar. A teenager, reportedly distraught by his UTME results, took his own life, further aggravating the rage of a populace milking the tragedy for all its worth. May Almighty God comfort the family of the deceased. No doubt, the teenager’s death was avoidable and heartbreaking.

    But the glitch, however lamentable, was not unprecedented. In 2017, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in the United States had to cancel thousands of Graduate Record Examination (GRE) results due to server breaches. Similar mishaps have occurred in the UK’s A-Level exams. Technology fails. Systems collapse. But only in Nigeria do we drag a man to the digital square and skin him in public view, while conveniently ignoring the syndicates who orchestrated the sabotage. The Department of State Security  (DSS) must eventually make public the identities of the culprits, at least, to silence the drone of scepticism trailing the news of their arrest.

    This is Nigeria, where the appetite for bad news has morphed into a national delicacy. It is no longer mere pessimism; it is schadenfreude in full bloom. An emotional disfigurement where citizens derive pleasure from the collapse of their own public institutions.

    When news broke that Nigeria had quietly repaid its loan to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), one would expect relief. Instead, the public discourse quickly mutated into denial and deflection. Fact was contorted into fiction as influential voices, including supposed intellectuals, journalists, and opposition politicians, spread the falsehood that Nigeria still owed the IMF.  Official documents from the Ministry of Finance and the Debt Management Office confirmed the debt repayment, yet the people preferred the lie because it was juicier.

    Why? Because many Nigerians, particularly the vocal digital elite, suffer from a curious affliction: a longing to see Nigeria fail if it means the politicians they hate are discredited in the process. This dubious disillusionment and selective outrage are weaponised along party lines. We reserve our pitchforks for the ruling class only when our political enemies are in power. The revolutionaries of 2023, it turns out, are now the cheerleaders of chaos in 2025. Patriots by day, partisans by night.

    Consider, too, the more recent uproar about a supposed $21 billion loan by President Bola Tinubu. Social media buzzed with fury as influencers, commentators, and news media bemoaned a purported bid by the president to plunge Nigeria into a $21 billion debt. And yet, once again, the truth was sacrificed on the altar of sensation.

    The $21 billion figure is not an actual loan, but the aggregate borrowing ceiling outlined in Nigeria’s Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) for both federal and state governments over the next three years. In reality, only $1.23 billion can be borrowed in 2025, and that figure includes borrowing by all 36 states and the Federal Government, across every geopolitical zone. But Nigerians did not care to check. They shared the headlines, forwarded the falsehoods, and relished the chaos.

    Read Also: Senate passes N1.8trn 2025 FCT budget

    Nigerians do not read. Most would rather not read the MTEF, the Appropriation Act, or even official communiqués.  Instead, they rely on emotionally charged interpretations from partisan sources. We embrace anti-Nigerian narratives because they fit the tragic scripts we have already written in our minds. We do not wait to verify; we prefer to vilify. Shall we care to get informed, at least?

    The true crisis is not technological, fiscal, or political. It is emotional. Nigerians are caught in a destructive sentimental loop, forever swinging between hope and despair. But rather than seek healing, we find solace in cynicism. We make bonfires of bad news, and subconsciously pray for collapse, that we might be vindicated in our pessimism.

    This culture of cynicism is born of suffering and suspicion. Decades of misrule, corruption and failed promises have conditioned us to believe that nothing good can come from Nigeria. And when something good does come, like debt repayment or a public official taking responsibility, we dismiss it as propaganda or performance. We are allergic to good news because it disrupts our grievance narratives.

    Why did Nigerians go silent after the arrest of 20 hackers who compromised JAMB’s systems? Why are we not celebrating the efficiency of the DSS and Police in apprehending the criminals who tried to discredit a national institution? Why are we louder in condemnation than we are in commendation?

    The answer is disquieting. We do not want redemption. We want revenge; revenge on a state that failed us and a leadership that dashed our dreams. But revenge, when misdirected, becomes self-immolation. We are burning the house because we were denied a room.

    And so, the same voices that mocked Oloyede’s tears now rustle silence as JAMB’s attackers are exposed. The same timelines that trended #JAMBFailedUs are now eerily quiet in the face of vindication. The hyenas have fed, and now they slink away into the shadows, waiting for the next wound to lick.

    To stem the tide of cynicism, Nigeria’s leadership must govern more humanely and communicate better. Perception is power. The government must establish a National Information Literacy Campaign comprising a coalition of ministries, media houses, and civil society tasked to teach citizens how to verify information, read official documents, and engage responsibly on social media.

    There is a need to create a Unified Government Fact-check Portal, a centralised platform where Nigerians can verify breaking news, track ongoing investigations, and access documents like the MTEF, Appropriation Acts, and debt records in simple, digestible formats.

    We must incentivise reading and data literacy via relatable channels like entertainment, gamification, and social media, to encourage understanding of public documents and policy summaries.

    When a public servant acts with honesty or when institutions self-correct, as JAMB did with its resit examination, the government and media must celebrate these actions with the same intensity we condemn failure. We must teach Nigeria to hear the quiet footsteps of integrity alongside the crash of corruption.

    The state must close the emotional distance between itself and the citizenry. Only then will Nigerians begin to see it as a trustee, not a tormentor. Every democracy is fragile, but its greatest strength lies in the people. If Nigerians lose faith in the country, no textbook reform will suffice.

    It’s about time we confronted our biases and cynicism, and ask: Do we want a better country, or do we just want our preferred side to win?

  • Crusading for Emefiele

    Crusading for Emefiele

    Godwin Ifeanyi Emefiele (CFR), Nsukka, Harvard and Stanford University-trained economist turned banker, who served as governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) from 4 June 2014 until he was suspended by President Bola Tinubu, on 9 June 2023, will probably go down in history as the most criminally minded and the worst Nigerian CBN governor.

    Undoubtedly, Emefiele was a master of his game. A PDP sympathiser brought in to supplant Sanusi Lamido, believed to be sympathetic to APC on account of his relentless criticism of massive corruption going on in Jonathan’s administration, effortlessly manipulated an untrusting Buhari who just watched him as he broke all rules, including attempting to succeed his principal even as a sitting CBN governor.

    As a leader with the mindset of a feudal lord, Emefiele gave Buhari all feudal lords’ want – unalloyed loyalty.  Buhari overlooked Emefiele’s criminal tendencies, which were apparent from his handling of $2.1b released to the former National Security Adviser, Colonel Sambo Dasuki (retd), which was shared as election largesse to reappoint him for a second term.

    But how was Emefiele able to cover up his criminal enterprise for eight years, whether in terms of foreign exchange manipulation, where his friends who did not bid secured allocation freely deployed for round tripping, printing of over N30 trillion through ways and means, half of which was suspected to have been stolen, and various multibillion CBN intervention programmes that produced only fake rice pyramids?

    Emefiele had a useful ally in a section of the media that opted to trade its constitutional role of holding other institutions of state accountable and serving as agents of socialisation, for crusading for crooks, a very rewarding endeavour when they are executed on behalf of influential bank owners who converted depositors funds to private use, governors who desperately need the judiciary to retain their opponents’ stolen mandates, and, of course, those who stole the country blind by confiscating national patrimony in the name of privatisation and monetisation self- serving policies.

    Emefiele was a toast of ARISE TV and her Thisday platform, especially since his reappointment for a second term by President Buhari. They had waged war after war against anyone who dared to raise questions about Emefiele’s character, including the House of Representatives and its speaker, vice president Osinbajo, candidate Tinubu in the 2023 election and some APC governors that went to court to compel Emefiele to obey the Supreme Court judgment.

    It is on record that Emefiele held the nation hostage during his politically motivated currency re-colouring exercise, as angry and hungry Nigerians, denied access to their money, laid siege to banks and ATM centres. The House of Representatives tried to persuade an unfeeling and arrogant Emefiele to consider the suffering of Nigerians.

    Thisday immediately embarked on a crusade on behalf of Emefiele, with a front-page January 28, 2023 story titled “In battle against independent monetary policy, House threatens Emefiele.” The crusaders dismissed the House invitation of the CBN governor to appear before its banking committee over the lingering currency crisis, in line with its statutory oversight function, as a plot to “erode” CBN’s independence.

    Read Also: Tinubu intervenes in FCT ground rent saga, grants defaulters 14-day waiver

    After his repeated failure to  honour House committee summons,  the then House Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, had threatened to invoke relevant sections of the law to effect Emefiele’s arrest by the police for undermining the efforts of the House to carry out its oversight functions. Thisday and its self-proclaiming patriots accused the speaker of pursuing personal interest, claiming the invitation was “against the provisions of the law.”

    Vice President Osinbajo was not spared by ARISE, self –proclaimed patriots. When, in November 2021, he criticised the Central Bank governor for what he called an “artificially low” exchange rate, claiming he was convinced that the demand management strategy adopted by the CBN needed a rethink, it was from far-away Paris, during Nigeria International Partnership Forum, that Nigerians were told, through ARISE Correspondent, Adefemi Akinsanya, that the Vice President missed the point. He debunked the VP’s accusations of poor collaboration between Nigeria’s fiscal and monetary authorities. Emefiele also spoke of pumping close to N3trillion loans to manufacturers at a single digit rate and more monies to Buhari’s policy of creating 100 million jobs in four years.

    Candidate Bola Tinubu in the 2023 election was similarly viciously attacked by ARISE’ self-proclaimed patriots in the service of Emefiele. He had publicly criticised the government claiming the CBN policy was targeted at him to scuttle his presidential campaign. His APC supporters threw their weight behind his remarks.  ARISE, of course, took sides with Emefiele, and the president, who they claimed were acting in the public interest. They spoke of a bullion van found in his house during the 2019 election in which he was not a participant.

    For ARISE, Emefiele could do no wrong. In February 2023, Governors Nasir El-Rufai (Kaduna), Yahaya Bello (Kogi) and Bello Matawalle (Zamfara) dragged the Federal Government before the Supreme Court, complaining of the time frame for the exchange of the re-designed naira. According to them, “the majority of their state indigenes have been unable to exchange or deposit their old naira notes as there are no banks in the rural areas where the majority of the population of the states reside.” What they got from Emefiele was his insistence that the February 10 deadline remained unchanged.

    But the battle cry from ARISE that claimed, without proof, that the governors were driven by a desire to buy votes was “fact check me, it is all about the governors’ shenanigans.” They even went farcical, questioning the right of the governors to appeal to the Supreme Court when they did not go to court over the abduction of Shaibu five years earlier

    In May 2022, Emefiele expressed his desire to succeed President Buhari by filing a lawsuit at the Federal High Court in Abuja seeking an order directing INEC and the Office of the Attorney General not to stop him from contesting the presidency. While Nigerians demanded the removal of the CBN governor and accused him of violating multiple provisions of the Central Bank Act, Emefiele’s media enablers found nothing.

    After being dressed in borrowed robes for eight years, what Nigerians can deduce from various recent judicial pronouncements is that Emefiele engaged in corrupt practices.

    For instance, Justice Bogoro, in his judgement, held that the following funds and properties are proceeds of unlawful activities, which are bound to be forfeited to the Federal Government of Nigeria: $4.7m, N830m, and multiple properties linked to Emefiele by the Federal High Court in Lagos.

    The funds, forfeited to the Federal Government, were held in First Bank, Titan Bank, and Zenith Bank accounts managed by individuals and entities including Omoile Anita Joy, Deep Blue Energy Services Limited, Exact Quote Bureau De Change Ltd, Lipam Investment Services Limited, Tatler Services Limited, Rosajul Global Resources Ltd, and TIL Communication Nigeria Ltd.

    The properties affected include 94 units of an 11-floor building under construction at 2 Otunba Elegushi 2nd Avenue, Ikoyi, Lagos; AM Plaza, 11-floor office space on Otunba Adedoyin Crescent, Lekki Peninsula Scheme 1, Lagos; Imore Industrial Park 1 on Esa Street, Imoore Land, Amuwo Odofin LGA, Lagos; Mitrewood and Tatler Warehouse (Furniture Plant at Bogije) near Elemoro, Owolomi Village, Ibeju-Lekki LGA, Lagos; and two properties purchased from Chevron Nigeria, located in Lakes Estate, Lekki, Lagos.

    Others are a plot at Lekki Foreshore Estate Scheme, Foreshore Estate, Eti-Osa, LGA; an estate at 100 Cottonwood Coppell Texas Drive, Coppell, Texas, owned by Lipam Investment Services; land at 1 Bunmi Owulude Street, Lekki Phase 1, Lagos; and a property at 8 Bayo Kuku Road, Ikoyi, Lagos.

    Similarly, on 22 June 2024, in another related case, a Federal High Court granted the final forfeiture of properties worth over N12.18 billion to the Federal Government. EFCC Chairman Olukoyede described the seizure and forfeiture as “one of the most significant in the nation’s history.”

    The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court, sitting in Apo, presided over by Justice Jude Onwuegbuzie, also struck out an application filed Godwin Emefiele, seeking to reclaim the 753 duplexes and apartments located at Plot 109, Cadastral Zone CO9, Lokogoma District, Abuja, and measuring 150,462.84 square metres, which had already been forfeited to the government.

    Now who is going to save us as the new normal today is for corrupt people to go to court to defend the disproportional share of our resources they illegally cornered while those crusading for them daily assault our sensibilities mouthing patriotism, even when it is not lost on us that “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”

  • Oloyede: Beyond the glitch

    Oloyede: Beyond the glitch

    In His almost nine years as registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof Is-haq Oloyede, has scored many firsts. He has discharged and is still discharging his duty diligently. He has done what his predecessors could not do, leaving the public in awe of his feats.

    His record speaks for itself. A record of diligence, truth, excellence, passion, industry, timely delivery on tasks, fairness, equity and justice. For all these attributes to be found in one man is rare, but Oloyede has them and more in abundance. Regrettably, it is this same record which earns public officers plaudits in other places, that is now threatening his own work.

    He is in this bind because of the 2025 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), which was written between April 24 and May 5. The results were woeful. This is not new. That has been the pattern for years now. As usual, nobody paid any attention despite JAMB’s regular release of the statistics of performance at the end of the examination each year.

    Who takes responsibility when a student does not do well in an examination, where the examining body is not found wanting? To me, it should be the parents/guardians, teachers and the candidates – in equal measures. The parents for not paying close attention to what their children/wards are doing; the teachers for not monitoring the pupils well and the candidates for not taking their studies seriously.

    Also, what did we do as concerned citizens every year that JAMB sounded the alarm of a fall in education standard after releasing the results? We turned deaf ears. To us, the government must take responsibility for the fall in education standard without the citizenry playing its part.

    We forget that no good parent toys with the education of his child. As I tell my friends, the home is a child’s first school, not the four walls of a classroom or the church. As parents, many of us love to blame others for our failure. This is precisely what we are doing in this instant case. We believe that JAMB must take the fall for the mass failure in the 2025 UTME. Nothing will make many of us happy than to see the back of Oloyede in office.

    It is not all about Oloyede. Yes, he is the head of JAMB and must take responsibility for everything done under his watch. We forget that Oloyede is also human and cannot solely discharge the enormous duty of his office. He has others working with him to ensure the smooth running of JAMB, especially its main task of conducting the UTME. The row over the 2025 exercise broke out not only because of the mass failure, but the technical issues that many candidates in the LAG/Southeast regions encountered.

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    These issues did not crop up in other centres and that says a lot about JAMB’s efficiency. Still, we have to tell ourselves the truth. It is not good enough that there were technical glitches during the examination. I also agree that JAMB should have ensured that everything was in shape before conducting the exam.

    I believe that the mock exam it conducts prior to the main UTME is to test run its system and ensure an hitchfree exercise. But as they say, “things do happen”. I am not holding brief for Oloyede, but I know him to be a thorough person with eyes for details in everything he does. Again, things will go wrong when they are bound to go wrong. This unforeseen factor undid all JAMB’s plans for the 2025 UTME.

    Calling for Oloyede’s head is not the answer. His good work of almost nine years at JAMB should not be undone by this unfortunate incident. His track record speaks for itself. He had no control over what happened, but he has taken responsibility for it. If the situation can be reversed, Oloyede will go beyond the call of duty to ensure a seamless UTME. What has happened has happened. As a way out, the 397,997 affected candidates have resat the exam and their results were released yesterday.

    Oloyede will be turning nine in office in August, meaning he has 14 months left to complete his two-term of 10 years. He completed the first term of five years in 2021 and was reappointed by President Buhari. He cannot afford to, on the eve of the completion of his tenure, allow anything like this incident,  mar his reputation.

    There cannot be any person more pained by the incident than him. It was obvious that he took what happened as a challenge on his integrity when he addressed the media on May 14 in Abuja. In tears, he tendered an unreserved apology to the nation, pleading for the understanding of the candidates, their parents, and schools. Oloyede is not a run-of-the-mill administrator and academic. When it comes to tertiary education and administration, he is no push over.

    So, it would have taken every fibre of his being for him to publicly admit that JAMB’s efforts at conducting a hitchfree 2025 UTME were thwarted by “human and technology errors”. He noted: “ what should have been a moment of joy has changed due to one or two errors… While this was not a case of sabotage, the oversight by one of our two service providers is inexcusable. I apologise. I take full responsibility “.

    The hitches, Oloyede explained, were later traced to a failure in the deployment of updated grading software by the service provider’s officials. His lofty years in JAMB should not be measured by this incident. He has done and is still doing more than enough to uplift the board. It is heartbreaking enough that the incident happened under him and if there is anything that can be done to rectify it, Oloyede will be more than ready to do it. This is why he quickly organised another exam for those affected. This is the kind of person he is.

    He has shown capacity in the discharge of his responsibility. What is more. Oloyede has shown that we still have forthright persons that can hold public office without being influenced by filthy lucre. Rather than persecute him, it is for us as a nation to address the rot in our education system for better results in future UTMEs. For now, the statistics are not cheery.

    They are scary. In 2016, 1.59m candidates (64.24%) scored below 200 out of 400; 2017, 1.72m (73%); 2018, 1.19m (77%); 2019, 1.40m (77%), 2020, 1.54m (79.2%); 2021, 1.14m (87.2%); 2022, 1.33m (77.8%); 2023, 1.17m (76.7%); 2024, 1.40m (76.1%) and 2025, 1.5m (78.5%). The 2025 result is the third worst since 2016.

    The first and second worst results were recorded in 2021 and 2020, and interestingly there were no technical glitches then. So, to what do we blame that, if not failure of parenting, teaching and candidates’ indiscipline? This is not to exonerate JAMB for the lapses that marred the 2025 UTME, though. We should, therefore, direct our energies to treating the disease and not the symptoms.  

  • Pope Leo XIV

    Pope Leo XIV

    Pope Leo XIV, 69, former Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, formally began his pontificate by the inauguration service on Sunday the 18th of May 2025 at Saint Peter’s Square in the Vatican, attended by dignitaries from all over the world, including our President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, J.D. Vance, the Vice President of the United States, and the American Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. The two of them are practising Catholics.

    Ordinarily the United States, and especially Donald Trump and his Republican cavemen, do not pay much attention to Catholic affairs because that is not where the votes are.  Besides that, apart from presidents JF Kennedy and Joe Biden, no other Catholic has been in the White House since 1776. But in this particular case they have no choice.

    The Pope is an American priest serving in a Catholic district after a distinguished missionary service in Peru, one of the poorest countries in the world.  It was there that the former Pope Francis appointed him a cardinal and sent him back to his native Chicago, where he was born to devout Catholic parents born in Saint Louis, Louisiana, in the southern part of the United States.

    The Pope’s grandparents, particularly the grandmother, was born in Santo Domingo or in Haiti, and it was from there she migrated to Saint Louis in Louisiana.  She then married a French man, the father of the pope’s mother who, like her own mother, married a French man in Saint Louis before they headed to Chicago where the pope was born.

    The young Robert Prevost went to university in Chicago and got an honours degree in mathematics before entering the priesthood in the Augustinian order.  What is the Augustinian order? This order, also known as the Order of Saint Augustine (OSA), is primarily known for its emphasis on friendship, charity and missionary work. They are inspired by the teachings of Saint Augustine of Hippo, a 4th century friar born in North Africa who had a great influence in the development of the early universal church.

    Augustinians strive to live out a Christian vocation of love for God and neighbours. The Augustinians are a mendicant order that relies on the generosity of their hosts for their sustenance. They place much emphasis on community, education, pastoral care; and are involved in sending out missionaries all over the world, and are seriously involved in the work of evangelisation. They have pastoral presence all over the world and    devote their time to the study of the works of Saint Augustine, the writer of the famous book “The city of God. “

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    Robert Prevost’s adherence to the Saint Augustinian order influenced him in becoming a missionary and leaving the easy world of Chicago and going to Peru as a missionary where he was for more than 10 years; not even in the city of Santiago de Chile, the capital, but in a rustic village in the southern part of the country where he was known for regularly cooking for poor peasants.

    When Cardinal Robert Prevost chose the papal title of Leo XIV, it was an indication of the line he wanted for his pontificate to follow and this was the path of Leo XIII. Leo XIII was pope between 1878 and 1903. He was the Italian Cardinal Carpineto Romano, who on being made pope chose the title of Leo XIII. He belonged to the order of Saint Thomas Acquinas, a Catholic friar and philosopher who was born in the 14th century. 

    Thomas Acquinas was an Aristotelian philosopher who, in his writings, tried to bring cooperation between church and state.

    Leo XIII was a kind of a revolutionary pope in his time, who moved away from the previous antagonistic relations of the papacy to the state. He supported the poor people, when necessary, but not in antagonism to the state. It seems the new Pope Leo XIV wants to follow the path of his namesake in being socially relevant in these times of wars in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and immigration all over the Americas and Africa.  Time will surely tell how steadfastly the new pope will answer the call of the masses to help share their burdens.

    This pope came in a dramatic way. No one guessed that the United States was going to produce the pope. But God works in mysterious ways. Who would have believed that the time of President Trump, when through the American president’s economic actions of raising tariffs and freezing global trade relations and devaluing the American brand, an American pope will emerge to palliate the wounds of the American political tzar!

    When the white smoke signalled that the concave of cardinals on the second day of being locked up in the Sistine Chapel had chosen a new pope, we all held our breath waiting to know who had been chosen. This was the reaction of Christians, Muslims and others. When we were told it was Cardinal Robert Prevost, and not any of the Italian and Filipino front runners, I knew the new pope was chosen by God and not by man. 

    Who would have thought an American would follow an Argentinian to occupy the throne of Saint Peter. I join all Catholics and fellow Christians to pray for him that indeed “Habemus papam. “

    In fact, when I saw he shares things in common with Pastor Adejare Adeboye of the RCCG mission, I said ‘Hallelujah,’ and can’t wait for what will be an ecumenical meeting of the two men of God with mathematics backgrounds.

  • Ghosts of Hurti

    Ghosts of Hurti

    To walk the trails of Hurti today is to plod through ash and blood. It is to inhale the silence of a town stripped of laughter and homesteads where children’s voices once echoed, until they got choked forever by gunfire. Hurti, that rustic hamlet cradled within Bokkos Local Government Area of Plateau State, was not the first, nor, ominously, the last. But its horror, a massacre visited upon it on April 2, has already dissolved into the fog of Nigeria’s collective amnesia, barely a month since its soils got drenched with the blood of its young.

    Nigeria has moved on. But the graves remain chock-full of charred bodies, dreams aborted, and lives unlived. More pitiful is the fate of the innocent kids interred in the earth, their futures terminated. Yet to understand the anguish of survivors, young and old, is to confront the seething backdrop from which their tragedy emerged.

    For over two decades, Plateau State has stood on a fault line of simmering conflict, a geopolitical fissure where religion, ethnicity, politics, and land converge in an uneasy and often deadly embrace. Since 1999, more than 53,000 lives have been lost to communal strife across Nigeria. Plateau’s portion of this grim ledger is a macabre masterpiece: 700 killed in Yelwa in 2004; another 700 in 2008; over 1,000 in 2010; 300 wiped out in Mangu in 2023. The litany of death continues, each entry more grievous than the last.

    And now, Hurti joins that dark roll call. The sun did not blink the day Hurti bled. It hung, aloof and unrepentant, as if casting light on a tragedy it did not trigger. Under its fulgent beams, a thriving village disappeared in plain sight. Hurti, a hamlet tucked in the hem of Manguna District, in Bokkos Local Government Area (LGA) of Plateau State, startled from its mundane hum around 3.35 pm. In that fateful hour of April 2, 2025, death came hurtling at Hurti on motorcycles with a slayer in each seat. They slit the throat of the Mangut boys: Saltifat, four and Justice, seven, and tossed them into their burning home. Fatima Yusuf, barely nine, saw them hack her father to death; Josiah, eight, begged the assailants to spare his father. “Leave him alone! Leave him alone!” he cried. “Please, please!” But death is not sentimental. Neither was its squad of maniacal reapers.

     The bloodbath in Hurti, like that of Zike, Ukum, and Logo, follows a haunting pattern. They are attacks, largely unprovoked and wholly forgotten battles in which the casualties are always poor and faceless, the perpetrators seldom named, and the state perennially absent.

    To grieve for the victims, the children in particular, is to remember that they are not alone in their fate. In Buni Yadi, Yobe State, on February 25, 2014, 59 boys—students of the Federal Government College—were slaughtered in their sleep by insurgents. The massacre was apocalyptic. Then it was archived. Nigeria moved on. The same cycle of slaughter and forgetfulness enveloped Zabarmari as peasant farmers were hacked to death while harvesting rice. The victims all share a common profile: poor, invisible, expendable.

    This is not mere neglect. It is pitilessness. A systemic corrosion of compassion runs like venom from the corridors of governance to the convenient soapboxes of social critics. Nigerians talk a good game, hence our penchant for performative grief with calculated detachment: one-minute silences, press statements with bloodless condolences, photo ops and visits delayed until the spotlight fades. The rituals are rehearsed.

    The callousness that stalks Nigerian society is no passive force, it is ravenous, gleeful in its consumption of the weak. It is what allows policemen to collect bribes from disaster victims, soldiers to withdraw from besieged communities, and governors to headline music and sports fiestas while children are buried en masse. It is what makes officials toss “relief materials” at villagers – bags of rice in exchange for sons and daughters razed to ash.

    But the most damning indictment lies in the societal shrug. The Hurti massacre and Bokkos in general have not only been forgotten by Nigeria’s leadership and security agencies, but also by the very citizens whose empathy should rise above tribal trenches. Our moral pulse has weakened to a flutter. We have become a people desensitised by overexposure to horror, insulated by the belief that suffering, if not in our backyard, is not our burden.

    What we fail to understand is that this pitilessness is a pandemic. It will not remain in Bokkos. It mutates and spreads from Hurti to Ikorodu, from Zamfara to Anambra, leaving in its trail corpses and hollowed communities, children raised in trauma, and a nation splintered by suspicion and hate.

    The cycle of reprisal killings and ethnic vendettas, whether visited on Berom, Fulani, Mwaghavul or Tiv, stems from the same toxin: mutual dehumanisation. The attackers of Hurti, reportedly Fulani militia, embody a villainous disposition long festering on both sides of the divide. But let us not be naïve. Fulani communities, too, have suffered brutal retaliations in Jos and its volatile outskirts. Entire villages have been wiped out in vengeance. This blood calculus and arithmetic of an eye for a tribe is unsustainable.

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    It is time, long past time, for a reckoning. Government, community leaders, traditional chiefs, and civil society must sit, not armed with accusations but with sincerity, to renegotiate coexistence. Not in panels or commissions that issue dust-gathering white papers, but through local peace councils empowered to enforce dialogue, mediation, compensation, and reintegration. Let us establish regional peace boards across flashpoints, integrating religious leaders, traditional rulers, security operatives, and victims’ representatives. The goal must be disarmament, reconciliation, and shared economic development.

    When schools turn into cemeteries and farms become killing fields, there is no national development—only national decay. We must also retool our policing and security architecture. Nigeria cannot keep papering over gaping wounds with the band-aids of ad hoc deployments and military showboating. What is needed is intelligence-led security, rooted in local trust and built through real-time surveillance, community policing, and consequences for failure. No more excuses, no more impunity.

    But even these efforts will flounder unless we confront the moral drought at the heart of our polity. We must unlearn the bestiality of our past and break from the brutal cycles of vengeance. For every Fatima left unavenged, another child picks up a knife. For every village unprotected, a new militia rises. What future awaits a nation where children are groomed in grief and taught to hate before they learn to read?

    The cost of our indifference is generational. The children of Hurti, those who survived, bear the scars not only of what was done to them but of what was denied them: the justice that never came, the love that was never shown, the homeland that failed them. They will remember. And what they remember will shape what they become.

    We owe them better. Nigerians must embrace a new social creed: one that prioritises humanity above heritage, dignity above dogma, compassion above conflict. We must teach our children that patriotism is not tribal allegiance but shared empathy. That to be Nigerian is not to be Hausa or Yoruba or Igbo or Tiv or Fulani. It is to be human and humane.

    The fate of Hurti’s children is not sealed in their deaths but in our response to them. History will not judge us for what happened in Hurti. It will judge us for what we did afterwards.

  • Dead rotational presidency bill diversionary

    Dead rotational presidency bill diversionary

    Of all Nigerian political elite, our current military-baked ‘new-breed’ politicians have come to be regarded by most Nigerians as the most cynical.  Twenty-six years into the Fourth Republic, Nigerians remember with nostalgia that not even the departing colonial British administrators were this contemptuous.

    Unlike our founding fathers that put their differences and individual ambition aside to foist a working federal constitution which defined how we were to live together in peace and justice, as brothers even though tribes and tongue may differ, our current leaders, driven more by greed for power and its dividends, have continued to take Nigerians for a ride. Thinking they could decree unity or wish away tribes, forgetting that tribes are the building blocks of African society, they have wasted billions of taxpayers’ money tinkering with our current unworkable ‘unitary’ constitution. They have done everything except revisiting the national question, which is about the challenges of living together in justice and respect as civilised human beings as was the case until January1966.

    Of course, we have had different administrations, including that of President Obasanjo, who probably genuinely believed attainment of economic justice, equitable allocation of resources, and effective and sustainable production and distribution of appropriate goods and services is the ultimate solution to the national question. But we have seen how this was marred by massive looting of the nation’s resources under Obasanjo and Jonathan, especially by those who saw undermining the nation’s economy as an answer to distributive injustice arising from non-resolution of the national question.

    We have also seen the effort of the current administration of Tinubu, who believes promoting efficiency within the existing structure will usher in all-round prosperity and life abundant for people of Nigeria, leading to equitable and peaceful cohabitation of the various communities in Nigeria. Even while the jury is out, there is already a basic misconception that leaders of ethnic nationalities in Nigeria who are at different levels of cultural development want life more abundant for their citizens.

    It is just as well that the House of Representatives, last Tuesday, rejected a constitutional amendment bill seeking to rotate the office of the president and vice president among the six geopolitical zones of the country. Deputy Minority Leader Aliyu Madaki led the opposition to the bill, saying that issues the bill intends to cure have been addressed by the Federal Character Commission, warning that the issue of rotation should not be included in the constitution, but allowed to remain the way it is.

    The dead proposed bill was at best diversionary. The truth is that rotation of the presidency, like past social engineering efforts of the military, including NYSC, quota system of admission into tertiary institutions and bureaucracy, and other government brainwaves turned into government policies in a desperate attempt to ignore the national question, would have failed.

     Zero sum struggles for power at the centre is a symptom of our unresolved national question, just as it is a phenomenon associated with our new-breed politicians.

    With our independence constitution, which indeed addressed the national question, the centre was not as attractive. Ahmadu Bello did not think twice before ceding it to Tafawa Balewa, a minority from southern Bauchi, where the Fulani were only being tolerated. Zik had a chance to be prime minister at the centre, but conceded it to Tafawa Balewa, according to him, to promote the unity of the country. The only national leader that seriously aspired to go to the centre, ostensibly to replicate his miracle in the west, was Obafemi Awolowo. And having lost the 1959 election, he offered to serve as Finance Minister under Zik.

    That the north has since 1954 dominated the centre was not an accident. At the 1950 Ibadan constitutional debate, the North’s demand for control of fifty percent of members of the House of Representatives, which was not informed by the population factor, as a condition for remaining a part of Nigerian federation, was acceptable to all stakeholders, including the outgoing colonial government, which was ready to do anything to accommodate their preferred successors.

    The northern leaders, who never hid their desire to belong only to Nigeria they could control, got what they wanted. The Yoruba, being federalist by nature, wanted a federal constitution or regionalism where the centre will not interfere in how they manage their own affairs The Igbo, a landlocked nation with hostile neighbours, canvassed for a unitary system for a multicultural and heterogeneous society. But in the end, they succumbed to the superior argument of the British umpires, including Oliver Stanley, who reminded them that Nigeria is a multicultural and multilingual society where ethnic nationalities were at different levels of cultural development.

    That the age of ‘divine right of Kings’ ended around 1600 did not stop northern leaders from developing a mindset of being born to rule. There was, therefore, continued insistence by the northern hegemonic class including Ahmadu Bello, who according to Clark, swore he would never support southern leaders with real executive power. There was also the late elder statesman, Maitama Sule, Nigeria former permanent representative to the United Nations, who said,” Everyone has a gift from God. The Northerners are endowed by God with leadership qualities. The Yoruba man knows how to earn a living and has diplomatic qualities. The Igbo are gifted in commerce, trade and technology.”  Similarly, not too long ago, the immediate past governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El Rufai, tried to justify the northern monopoly of power on the grounds that the north has the population, especially if we accept that democracy is a game of numbers.

    Except for the new-breed politicians of the Fourth Republic that breed nothing but corruption, I am not sure old politicians from the east and the west envied the north for its monopoly of power that has brought nothing but misery to the northern masses.

    As for the east, despite being out of power but serving only as ever- willing bride to the northern hegemonic group to satisfy the demand of politics of participation and identification, the east was adjudged the fastest growing economy in the world in the early sixties. The west, which accepted its role as that of opposition, was ahead of the two other regions, paying higher minimum wage than even the federal government and sending more western region youths on foreign scholarship than the colonial master ever did for the whole of Nigeria in three years.

    What made all the difference was the independence constitution, which not only provided an answer to the national question by defining how we live as human beings in control of different culture, language and the education of their children, but also allowed groups/regions to develop at their own pace without interference from others.

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    But the coalition partners made up of the hegemonic ruling cast in the north and their ever-willing bride were envious of the independence and giant strides of the western region. They, in breach of the constitution, interfered in the affairs of the west. In 1962, Chief SL Akintola, the premier of the west, was removed from power by 82 votes to 29 for anti-party offences. Chief Adegbenro was constitutionally sworn in as replacement. Premiers Ahmadu Bello and Okpara refused to recognise him as stipulated by the constitution, despite the Privy Council judicial pronouncement that upheld the action of the governor of western region.  A subsequent attempt to pass a vote of confidence in Adegbenro at the western house was resisted by a few NCNC members who started throwing chairs. This was all the coalition partners who did not declare a state of emergency in the north or in the east, where there had been Tiv popular uprising and Isaac Boro insurrection suppressed by the military, needed to declare a state of emergency in the west.

    With the declaration of a state of emergency, Awo was detained in mosquito-infested Lekki while Akintola was installed premier of the west without an election. While in detention, Awo was charged with treasonable felony – attempt to overthrow her majesty’s government and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. The military finally intervened in January 19666 to end the First Republic while the ‘living’ constitution was thrown into the dustbin.

    While our current new-breed leaders play the ostrich, concerned Nigerians stakeholders are saying if we don’t know where we are going after 59 years in the wilderness, it makes sense to return to where the rain started to beat us.  It is for this reason many Nigerians believe we had more freedom and attracted more respect from the colonial masters than our new-breed politicians that have since the beginning of the Fourth Republic swindled Nigerians of billions of naira on self-serving periodic constitutional review without addressing the fundamental issue of the national question.

    We all know that our current crisis of nation building, including the Boko Hara insurgency, immigrant Fulani herdsmen criminals, bandits, kidnapping for ransom, massive corruption, are all but symptoms of the unresolved national question.

  • Nipco: The RRN angle

    Nipco: The RRN angle

    After some back and forth, he blurted out: “all I need is the RRN. With that I can reprint the receipt from my machine and sort this issue out”. RRN is not Greek; it is the Retrieval Reference Number normally found on the receipt of every POS transaction. But many of us do not pay attention to it until there is trouble. I learnt the hard way too.

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    Upon enquiry, he said I could get the RRN from my bank and I did. Despite that, Nipco and its official who asked for the RRN are still playing games with me on refunding the N20000 debited from my account for a failed transaction at their Arepo, Ogun State retail outlet since January 15.

    The battle has just started, and God willing, there will be more on the RRN angle the next time out.