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Category: Thursday

2026 Nigeria: Looking forward backward

It Is the first day of 2026, the year that looked far away at the dawn of 2025, 12 months ago. It is now here and as I type this, I do so in awe of the unseen God, who rules in the affairs of men. If you are reading this, it means only one thing: you are alive and well. Compliments.

For the living, it is a great joy to be alive, especially on New Year’s day on which people place a lot of premium. What is it about the first day of a year that makes people so sentimental and spiritual about it? How is January 1 different from February 1, March 1, April 1, May 1, June 1, or any other first day of a new month for that matter? May be January 1 is special because it is the first month and the first day in the 12-month Gregorian calendar.

Worldwide, the coming of a new year is celebrated with fanfare. It is heralded with music and fireworks at the stroke of midnight, depending on the time zone of a country. Beyond the celebrations is what the new year may have in stock for the individual and his country. Ahead of a new year, plans and projections are usually made, with targets and timelines set.

A new year is also a time for resolutions by individuals and predictions by men who believe that they can see tomorrow. These Nostradamuses are already at work, telling the world what they said they heard from God. What did God say about 2026, the year that will set the tone for the election year of 2027? Their predictions for the year ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. Before we look at what those predictions, let us take things in our own hands, beginning from the known to the unknown.

The unknown is the forte of the prophets. It is the realm in which they operate because of their so-called direct access to God. According to them, they hear from God clearly and all they do is to pass His messages to us, the undiscerning. I tell you, we heard a lot from them last night as 2025 rolled away. Some of them ran ahead of themselves by releasing their prophecies long before yesterday. They have been changing those prophecies as situations demand to meet the exigency of the time.

Read Also: New Year: First Lady urges Nigerians to choose peace, empathy, unity

If you like, call it a prediction or whatever! For a start, the implementation of the new tax law begins today. It will not take off, only if today is not January 1, 2026. The tax law has its benefits for the hoi poloi, who have over the years borne the brunt of government’s economic policies. They have been made beasts of burden working with nothing to show for it. This new tax law brings them relief. As low-income earners, they will henceforth, pay nil tax. Middle income earners will pay marginal (lower) tax, while high income earners will pay more.

For long, high income earners circumvented the tax net. They paid little or nothing as tax, yet they made billions of naira every year. Their salary was not proportional to their income tax, commonly known as pay as you earn (PAYE). Taxes are major sources of revenue for government globally, especially in Europe and the Americas, with high income earners paying heavily to subsidise the poor. Next is the war against terror which will be intensified. The controversy over the purported doctoring of the law will fade away. This is not because of its implementation, but the inability to substantiate the claim of its alteration made by lawmaker Abdulsamad Dasuki

The Christmas Day bombing of Tangaza in Sokoto State, said to be a base for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorists, may be child’s play, considering what awaits them and other related groups in the epicentres of terrorism and insurgency in parts of Northeast and Northcentral. The joint Nigeria-U.S. operation in Tangaza shocked intelligence analysts who had thought that such assault would begin either in Borno or any other state in Northeast known as hotbeds of insurgency. The world has seen the first strike. It was deadly, with colossal and collateral damages in farflung places.

The next one will be deadlier and the damages more stupendous. The collateral damage will also be massive, as there is no control over how far the debris from the fired missiles will go. So, in taking down the terrorists, many innocent bystanders may also be killed or maimed. It is unfortunate; very, very unfortunate. As usual, politics and economy will shape the nation’s outlook in 2026. As a petrol-dependent economy, developments at the international oil market will impact the economy. Oil price will remain a key determinant of the success of the budget.

Locally, Dangote Refinery will remain a dominant force in the downstream sector, as regards the pricing of petrol. For now, the plant has brought down the price to N739 per litre to the annoyance of many marketers. Consumers are enjoying the fallout of this power play as they get Epo Dangote (Dangote petrol) at MRS outlets for N739. Will the romance endure? This is the fear of many, who have advised that an eye be kept on the plant to ensure that it does not become too big to control and regulate.

Dangote is having a field day at the expense of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), which has been commercialised in name only. Its four refineries in Port Harcourt, where two are located; Kaduna and Warri may remain comatose, despite the billions of dollars spent on them. The nation cannot afford to continue to waste scarce resources on those refineries. As declared by former Rivers State governor and Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister Nyesom Wike last December, ‘politics will start in 2026’.

He was talking about the 2027 elections. Indeed, preparations for the elections will start this year. The parties will be holding their congresses and conventions to pick candidates for the polls. The ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has said it would hold its convention in March, which is just two months away. None of the other parties has made such a categorical statement because of their internal crises. With the leading opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) losing virtually all its governors to APC, the months ahead of the elections will be interesting.

Will PDP have a presidential candidate for 2027? What I am seeing in the crystal ball is not good at all. A chef knows that you cannot make omelette without breaking an egg. Likewise, PDP may not have a presidential candidate if it does not put its house in order first. The portents are not good for the party, as can be seen from what has happened to its candidate for the June 20 Ekiti State Governorship election. The morning, they say, shows the day. I am sorry, if I sound like one of those prophets. Happy New Year, dear readers.

January 1, 2026
Happy New Year 2026

We had a merry Christmas or shall I say we had a merry Christmas until we were woken up on Boxing Day with the news that the American government of garrulous President Donald J Trump had bombed somewhere in Sokoto as part of their war against terrorism wherever it rears its ugly head! We settled down when our own government made it clear that the raid was coordinated with our armed forces and that our government was in the knowledge of it and had our approval.

What first came to my mind is that it is the responsibility of government everywhere to protect the interest of its citizens and that for 15 years our government had been struggling to do this without success and that if they had to do it now with the cooperation of a friendly government, it is proper for it to do it as long as Nigeria’s interest is protected. There is no reason why the Nigerian government would not want to protect our interests right now especially when the country that it cooperates with it, has no ostensible or clandestine interest in destabilising Nigeria.

Our country is the only country in our region that has the strength and muscle to operate regionally in our area independently of foreign power. Our recent move to establish stability in our region when there was an attempted coup d’état in Benin points to the credibility of Nigeria. We need to make it known either publicly of by other means that Nigeria would not stand by idle when friendly regimes in our region are overthrown. Our recent move in Benin points to the solid direction of the regime in our country.

There is also no doubt that the Nigerian government was in touch with the American government over the situation in Nigeria that has caused some anxiety in the USA over alleged religious persecution and killing of certain religious groups in Nigeria particularly in the northern parts of our country in the 15-year old terrorist insurgency in Nigeria. The fears of the religious dimension of the problem may have been allayed. But whatever the outcome of the Nigerian discussion with the American government, the decision of the American government to intervene in the terrorist campaign did not surprise the Nigerian government and was coordinated with our government whose armed forces apparently had problems with targeted military especially aerial campaigns.

So, when the Tomahawk missiles were unleashed on the gathering storm of terrorists in a local government area in Sokoto, it was received with welcome relief. This appears to be the reaction of most Nigerians who felt they have had enough with terrorism in the last 15 years and enough was enough. If the American intervention in the campaign of terrorism will extirpate the problem, then we must all welcome it. But we must be careful with involvement of any country in our internal affairs.

Read Also: 2026: Be hopeful and confident, Nigeria’s future assured — ICRC DG urges Nigerians

But the point is that terrorism cannot be called internal affairs of our country when we are told that Libya and the same countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar that have been fingered in the destabilization of our sister country of the Sudan are also involved in the situation in Nigeria; and that they have a hand in the destabilization of Nigeria. We cannot just fold our arms and allow the only credible Black Country with the possibility of becoming a great power be destroyed by other countries without reasons to wish us ill. We must therefore wake up and look for friendly countries that can help us to sustain our sovereign independence and if we can find such a secular country with the muscle to do this, we would be foolish not to accept their hands of friendship. This is what politics among nations is all about. We can do this to secure a peaceful end to our internal conflict but this does not have to tie us to the apron strings of that country and we should have the freedom and intelligence to negotiate our way in the complex territory of international relations.

Any observer of international politics would know that sovereignty is not absolute these days. Countries like South Korea, Japan, Germany and good old Britain have since 1945 had large numbers of American troops domiciled in their countries to secure the sovereign independence of those countries in a coordinated defence of global democracy. There are American military bases in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Kuwait. While I am not advocating this kind of relationship, I would like to add that the above mentioned countries are not the worse for it and they are not complaining because apart from guaranteeing their security, the presence of large American forces have become economic assets there. Whatever comes out of the military cooperation we are forced to have to secure our internal political stability and peace for all our citizens irrespective of their religion, we must ensure correct and respectful management of the situation so that while riding on the tiger we don’t end in it.

I take this opportunity to wish my readers a happy new year in 2026 and hope the hazardous conflictual situations in the world and particularly in Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine and Venezuela will be resolved peacefully so that mankind can witness development in peace.

January 1, 2026
Against the tyranny of small minds

Something broke in the Nigerian psyche in 2025, and it was not a bridge, a budget, or an election promise. It was subtler and therefore more dangerous. I’d call it the ghastly coronation of small minds. Not the smallness of birth or circumstance, but the deliberate dwarfing of thought, empathy, and civic duty.

The same year that paraded bandits in the forests and terrorists in the streets, also enthroned Lilliputian minds in the civic sphere: little men with loud mouths, brittle tempers, and a crippling addiction to discord.

These men are scarcely defined by stature or age but by a meanness of spirit, like the religious and ethnic collective that desperately urged United States’ invasion of Nigeria over fictitious claims of a “Christian genocide.”

Their minds are cramped rooms with low ceilings where no generous idea can stand upright. They speak in absolutes, breathe in grievances, and exhale venom. They are convinced that Nigeria exists to validate their moods, and when it does not, they declare war on reason itself. They are the termites of the civic house: rarely seen, endlessly gnawing, and often mistaken for harmless.

Nigeria has always contended with visible enemies: herdsmen with machetes, kidnappers with guns, bandits with motorcycles, terrorists with flags, and coupists with manifestos. These are brutal afflictions, and their violence is immediate. Yet the greater danger in 2025 manifested in the invisible army of the petty, those who sabotage Nigeria with cynicism and bile. I speak of those who season our hopes with incessant bad faith. They are the ones who poison the well and then complain that the water tastes foul.

This is a civilisational problem before it is a policy issue, as these characters wear different faces across ethnic, professional and religious divides. Ultimately, they share the same impulse: to reduce citizenship to a tribal, political or religious audition. Patriotism, in their lexicon, is obedience to their prejudice. If you do not mirror their anger or chant their slogans, you must be an enemy. They claim ownership of truth and revoke it from anyone who dares to think differently. In their warped republic, disagreement is treason, nuance is weakness, and restraint an unforgivable betrayal.

Their bigotry is not always loud; sometimes it comes wrapped in sanctimony. They speak of nationhood through the smokescreen of ethnicity and religion, insisting that only their pain counts and only their fears are legitimate. They are unmoved by context and allergic to complexity. Every issue must bend to their bias or be broken. And when reality doesn’t comply, they curse it in bad faith.

The same voice that cheers or excuses the daily slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza suddenly becomes hysterical over spurious claims of a Christian genocide in Nigeria. Children, nursing mothers, fathers, sons—entire families—can be murdered elsewhere, and he will gloat, rationalise, or wave it away as geopolitics. But if a rumour surfaces at home that flatters his religious anxieties, he will howl to the heavens in performative grief.

I’d call him a moral speculator; trading in tragedy, he would not mourn deaths that defund his penchant for artifice. To him, empathy is a commodity to be spent only where it profits bias. Such a man is dangerous precisely because he presents himself as principled. He latches onto every movement wired to derail Nigeria’s fragile peace, not because he seeks justice, but because chaos flatters his resentments.

He contributes enthusiastically to the poisoning of minds, offering wildly abrasive and juvenile takes on conflicts he barely understands. Duelling in ignorance and the arrogance of unearned wisdom, he mistakes noise for knowledge and cruelty for courage.

Rather than enlighten, he inflames, amplifying discord while posing as a dispassionate truth-sayer. Yet truth neither trolls nor stalks dissenters across platforms like a hungry ghost. But this creature does. And in doing so, he becomes cancerous to the polity and the intimate lattices of life: family, neighbourhood, and the workplace. Wherever he goes, conversations curdle. Laughter stifles as people brace themselves for his next outburst.

One such character’s wife once issued a weary plea after one of his juvenile outbursts in a public forum, begging forgiveness, she explained that her husband has the build of a grandfather but the emotional maturity of a three-year-old. Beneath her lighthearted joke was a diagnosis. “Age has visited my husband’s body, but growth has skipped his soul,” she inwardly railed.

Yet the culprit persists. His takes are juvenile but abrasive, his certainty loud but thin. He prowls social media like a nocturnal animal, sniffing for disagreement, pouncing on nuance, and tearing at strangers to feel alive. If events or debates do not suit his bias, he comes out guns-a-blazing, lashing out at anyone who dares to think differently. He argues, never to persuade but to harm and conquer.

His tragedy was domestic before it became public. At home, he is the toxic relative who notices the speck in every eye except his own. Declaring himself as the only voice of reason in a room full of fools, his truth is the only truth and the final word. Unsurprisingly, he is tolerated out of politeness and avoided out of self-preservation at home, in the neighbourhood and the workplace.

For all his pretensions, he affects only a mood ring that changes colour with his interests. He gloats over recorded atrocities when they inconvenience his enemies, then performs the most tiresome form of virtue-signalling when tragedy aligns with his agenda. This does not make him brave or informed. It makes him morally hollow.

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Like a hunter who dares not enter the wild to hunt big game because he is past his prime and lacks the courage to fail, he scurries instead to hunt tadpoles and sewer rats. He attacks the vulnerable, the thoughtful, the moderate—anyone he deems unlikely to fight back with equal savagery. His bravado thrives only where the risk is minimal. In this, his smallness is complete.

How, then, does Nigeria survive men like this? Not by silencing them—that would flatter their persecution fantasies—but by starving them of the attention they crave and confronting the culture that enables them. The first remedy is civic humility: the recognition that no single tribe, faith, or ideology owns the nation. Citizenship must be reclaimed as a shared burden, not a sectarian trophy. Nigerians must learn again to argue without annihilating one another, to disagree without demonising.

The second remedy is moral consistency. Grief must not be selective. Justice must never be tribal. A life lost anywhere should trouble us everywhere. Until Nigerians reject convenient compassion and affect inward integrity, the petty will continue to masquerade as principled.

Third, we must rehabilitate public conversation. Social media need not be a sewer. It can be a school, where voices with reach model restraint, context, and empathy. Families, too, must stop indulging the toxic relative. Silence brokers no peace when it enables harm. Sometimes, love demands correction.

Finally, the Lilliputian mind must be challenged to grow, reading beyond echo chambers and listening without preparing to strike. Accepting that being wrong is not death. Nigeria’s survival depends not only on defeating armed enemies but on outgrowing emotional infants masquerading as patriots.

Nigeria will endure, not because of the loud and the petty, but despite them. When enough of us grow tall in mind and spirit, the tyranny of small minds will collapse under the weight of its own insignificance.

January 1, 2026
Makinde and PDP warriors of democracy

A latent war of attrition among PDP factional leader started with the pulling out of the late Bola Ige/Olu Falae group on the eve of the party’s registration in 1988. It did not become covert until the party’s takeover by retired Generals and their contractor fronts. Victory in the 1999 election and greed over sharing of spoils of victory only brought in more acrimony. Resentment among factional leaders at this point was tagged “family quarrel” because there was more than enough to go round. But by 2015, PDP had fought itself out of power. For a group driven by greed, that there might be nothing to share until probably after 2031 is the source of today’s bitterness and factional leaders’ resolve to fight to the bitter end.

Much as PDP anti-democratic fortune-seekers might wish to change the narrative, I am not sure Nigerians are deceived by the claim that the current renewed war of attrition is a patriotic attempt to protect democracy, or prevent President Tinubu from turning the country to a one-party state.

Is it not an irony that those who in 1993 buried democracy, promoted an unconstitutional Interim National Government, became beneficiary of sacrifices of NADECO, Civil Society Groups, journalists and other unsung Nigerians killed by Abacha soldiers, and then danced on the grave of MKO Abiola for 16 years without acknowledging his supreme sacrifice, now say they are soldiers of democracy?

It cannot get any more sardonic than the claim that President Tinubu, the arrow head of opposition to dictatorship and the only man left standing during Obasanjo 2003 “mainstreaming” crusade that led to PDP’s ‘land slide and sea slide victory in opposition strongholds’ (apology to Walter Ofonagoro) is today considered a threat to democracy?

There is no doubt Nigerians are worried about survival of democracy. How about the ongoing deliberate attempt by anti-democratic elements like Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, Rotimi Amaechi and others now in ADC, (Obasnajo’s special vehicle for disgruntled politicians) with history of moving from party to party at every election season in search of platform to mislead our youths below 30 years of age? This concern is perhaps what informed Nigerians who know that democracy thrives better under a multi-party system, to counsel PDP factional leaders on the virtue of negotiation which is an invaluable democratic ethos, instead of acquiring new war arsenals.

Concerned Nigerians had also expected the warring factions to have been sobered by INEC’s declaration of the controversial Ibadan Convention null and void, and the forced dislodgement of warring factional leaders and their thugs by the police from their Abuja Wadata Plaza headquarters which for a period became a battle field. However, with last Wednesday’s Wike-backed NWC announced dissolution of the party’s state executives in some states and the inauguration of a 19-member state caretaker committee, it is not difficult to conclude that neither survival of PDP nor democracy matter to Wike’s group or his opponents who are also digging in.

For instance, instead of Seyi Makinde, the newly appointed war leader seeking way to put his house in order after the Ibadan fiasco, he is trying to find a scape goat in President Tinubu. And without the courage to confront PDP demon, Kabiru Turaki, the Ibadan elected faction leader is seeking outside help to truncate two and half years old Tinubu’s administration. Nigerians can still hear the roaring ring of his desperate plea “I want to call on President Trump, what is at stake is not just genocide against Nigerian Christians, he should come and save democracy in Nigeria”. Turaki can be excused because a drowning man will hold to any straw.

But he has probably not heard about a Yoruba axiom that admonishes us to first study the apparel a man that promises us a new dress adorns. In his desperation, Turaki forgets that Trump was the first American President in 200 years to be impeached twice for sponsoring an attack on the Congress, the symbol of American democracy in a failed attempt to overturn an election he lost and a leader that has assaulted all democratic institutions since his re-election.

But much as we all want PDP to survive because democracy thrives better under multi-party system, the challenge is whether a party that has always been haunted by crisis of internal democracy can offer what it has not got. It is on record that Obasanjo was imposed by retired generals and northern ruling class as Yoruba candidate and eventually president in 1999. And as a leader who was roundly rejected by his Yoruba people even in his own polling booth, by becoming a president without a base, it can be said he literarily climbed the palm tree from the top.

And in power, Obasanjo who has always been a victim of messianic complex, publicly declared he was not obliged to listen to appointed advisers insisting he would rather listen “to the voice of God’. But deeply religious Nigerians agreed that it was the voice of someone else other than God that drove Obasanjo and Maurice Iwu to conduct the most scandalous elections in Nigeria in 2003 and 2007. In the 2003, the judiciary had to retrieve stolen mandates of governors of Edo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun from Obasanjo. In 2007, Umaru Yar’Adua the declared winner, was so scandalised by the extent of rigging that he set up the Justice Uwai’s commission to prevent a repeat of what happened under Obasanjo.

Besides Obasanjo, all PDP political actors are tarred with the same brush of anti-democrats. There were the 16 PDP governors who resorted to self-help after losing the Governors’ Forum election to Rotimi Amaechi; there was PDP gang of seven including Atiku Abubakar, Alhaji Baraje, Bukola Saraki and some governors that traded PDP for APC in 2015. In 2023, Atiku Abubarkar, Kwankwaso,and Peter Obi, out of greed, splintered PDP into three on the eve of an election, while Wike like his fellow sore losers, led his ‘integrity group ‘of five governors to Tinubu’s camp to spite Atiku.

But beyond actors, PDP itself is never a political party. The distinguishing characteristic of any political party is a consensus of members on identified values and principles. PDP and its factional leaders hardly agree on anything. PDP’s illegal sharing of our nation’s resources is often accompanied with acrimony. It was through their endless war of attrition that we knew about the mismanagement of the privatization programme under Atiku and El Rufai. Bukola Saraki was the whistle-blower in the fuel subsidy scam. Yar Adua and other PDP members told us Obasanjo spent between $10 and $13b on the energy sector that only brought darkness. It was from Chukwuma Soludo and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala the nation got to know the level of debauchery by PDP leaders under Jonathan presidency. The above facts confirmed the claim by many including former US envoy to Nigeria, that PDP is not a political party but an elite group that came together for the sharing of power and proceeds of oil.

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But if Nigerians want to know the true colour of PDP and its ignoble leaders, all they need to do is sieve what Seyi Makinde, the new war commander of “PDP warriors of democracy” claimed to have discussed with the president from other aspects he did not disclose.

But first two quick anecdotes: Wike once told us long before the mass defection of PDP members to APC started that some governors who criticise President Tinubu openly often pay nocturnal visits to seek private favours. Makinde said he went to see the president in respect of expansion of Ibadan Airport. As a member of Council of State, he did not need Wike to see the president if expansion of Ibadan airport was the only agenda.

Makinde, like his fellow politicians is probably a man of many words because we can draw more conclusions from what he did not say than what he said. For instance, he started his narrative not from airport expansion but from where he told the president that Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, the man the president picked in place of his recommended ministerial nominee, did not have the capacity to mobilise APC party in Ibadan with the president challenging him by saying “ I want you to do the mobilization for me”.

For Makinde who supported the president in 2023 but currently not facing the challenges of re-election like his fellow PDP defectors, the president’s response was proof he coerced his colleagues to join APC and his rejection of the president’s request establishes his democratic credential and consolidates his position as commander of PDP warriors of democracy’!

I have been wondering if Makinde is confessing he and his defected colleagues can be so cheaply bought; how he expects Tinubu whose resourcefulness, political, brinkmanship and capacity for skilful exploitation of human infirmities has been acknowledged even by political foes, not to take advantage of politicians who behave like prostitutes with five husbands (apology to TOS Benson).

December 30, 2025
Ethnic nationalism and national development

The First World War had ramifying effects on the world including the people of Africa and Nigeria was not an exception. In the case of Nigeria, the colonial administration feared that Islam could be exploited to rally the defeated Muslims in Northern Nigeria against the British because of Turkish propaganda calling for jihad against infidels all over the world. This was the only major threat to British hold on Nigeria but by this time the Fulani rulers who were united in sharing with the British the booty of the Native Treasuries (Beit-el-mal) which were taxes on cattle (jangali) and crops had something in common. This commonality of interest between the colonial powers and the native rulers was to, by and large, draw a wedge between the Northern Effendiyyah and the educated elite in the south before and after independence and possibly till today.

The idea of native treasuries were extended to the South where it largely met resistance and even uprising in the East which had no hierarchy of chiefs because it was sociologically a chiefless or headless society or what anthropologists call an acephalous society and attempts to create chiefs among the Igbo by colonial administrators by giving warrants to some identified supporters to act as chiefs led to uprising in many parts of Igboland. In Yorubaland where there were chiefs, some of them were elevated beyond their traditional status. This also led to armed resistance in upper Ogun area of former Oyo Empire.

The effects of the First World War were accompanied by several political and economic ramifications in Nigeria. The Nigerian soldiers and carriers came back with natural exaggerations of themselves in the face of enemy fire while their white colonial officers ran away. Their stories spread to their home cities and friends who demanded rights and better salaries and more respect from their rulers. Political parties initially confined to Lagos and other coastal cities like Calabar began to spread into the hinterland that by the outbreak of the Second World war, the demands and influence of the educated Nigerians in Lagos and the urban centres began to be echoed by illiterate Nigerians saying that service must deserve its rewards. Their leaders began to be known and cultivated by the colonial rulers and their bosses In London.

Newspapers that had been in reasonable numbers but whose interest and influence were confined to Lagos colony alone began to have wider readership and credibility in regional hubs and places like Ibadan, Abeokuta, Benin, Enugu, Port Harcourt, Kano, Bauchi, and Jos. The Second World War which began in 1939 and ended in 1945 began with a muffle but ended with a bang in terms of its influence in Nigeria. Tens of thousands of Nigerian troops fought under the Union Jack in the jungles of Burma against tough and intrepid Japanese troops sworn to fight for victory or death in defence of Japan and its emperor Hirohito and its people s ‘interest in Asia particularly in the pacific islands of the Philippines and Taiwan as well as mainland China, Korea and Burma. Nigerian troops saw action mostly in Burma.

On returning home, many of the ex-servicemen were courted by the main political parties in existence. Particularly, the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC) which was formed in 1944 mainly by former students of Kings College who then surrendered leadership to Herbert Macaulay as president and the America-educated Nnamdi Azikiwe as Secretary General. The NCNC was like the various Rassemblement Africain in several French African countries. It was hoped it will be an umbrella political organisation for the various existing African parties some of them existing since the Lugardian years. Unfortunately, this hope was not realised because Herbert Macaulay, the president of the NCNC died in 1948 and Azikiwe, the fiery journalist and nationalist took over and gave the leadership more élan and vigour but in the process, he was accused of leaning too much on Igbo tribal support. This led to the emergence of the Action Group which had its roots in the Egbe Omo Oduduwa formed in1950 and eventually the Action Group (AG) by Obafemi Awolowo, a journalist and trade unionist in 1951 and the Northern Peoples Congress, NPC ( jamiyyar Mutanen Arewa or JMA. These two parties representing the West and the Northern peoples tried unsuccessfully to make the NCNC look as a tribal Igbo party without effect until independence in Nigeria.

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The issue of tribalism or ethnic differences have largely ruined the success of the country. It has infected our politics to the extent that people either vote along ethnic lines and where they tried to look at issues rationally and nationally, they are immediately slapped back into supposedly tribal redoubts or ostracized as traitors or saboteurs. There is widespread rigging of votes to enhance ethnic figures in the census which are usually rigged because revenue sharing is tied to census. This is a problem that affects states creation, education, financial allocation and inability to have genuine democracy and stability which have been the bane of our society.

The constitution which was a negotiated federal constitution before independence has been undermined by the military dictatorship egged on by civilian politicians who have less than noble or patriotic motives. Most of the political problems Nigeria has had since independence are traceable to tribalism or ethnic parochialism. Example of this can be seen in the Action Group crisis of 1961 to 1963 which split the party into two rival groups which indirectly led to the incarceration in 1963, of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, the then leader of opposition in the federal parliament. The ruling NCNC/ NPC coalition government combined the forces of the tribally rooted Northern politicians and their collaborators from the Eastern Region to remove Awolowo from the political scene.

.Awolowo may have been ambitious, but it is doubtful that he would have tried to violently overthrow the federal government of Nigeria with a few party toughies trained in Kwame Nkrumah’s WINNEBA ideological school where the likes of Samuel Grace Ikoku, a former Secretary General of the Action Group was a lecturer. The evidence presented at the famous trial for reasonable felony were not overwhelming enough to condemn a major political leader without upsetting the equilibrium of the country and its stability. The reaction of the people of the West got to a crescendo in 1965 when the Chief S.L. Akintola’s government which was obviously unpopular, decided to manipulate the voting process when the Deputy Premier Chief Remi Fani-Kayode boasted that whether the people voted for their party or not “… angels would vote for them” took laws into their hands, burning and looting while the cabinet prepared for the worst.

When some elements in the army struck at dawn of January 15, 1966 ,some of the ministers felt that their opponents were behind the “attempted coup d’état while the BBC radio network was telling the whole world that there had been an attempted coup and the prime minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa seemed to have been kidnapped and two regional premiers namely Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto and Chief S.L.Akintola, the Are ona Kakanfo of Yoruba land had been killed and many senior army officers seemed to have been killed. When the news were confirmed, and regional and ethnic dimensions of the killings were analysed, the original cheering for the army putsch petered out in fear of what may happen because Nigeria had never seen anything like this before. The counter coup of July 1966 about half a year later appeared as if the equation was balanced by the number of army officers who were killed. But sadly the situation got out of hands when the pogroms against the Igbo in the North began and the whole country became destabilised setting the stage for the three year civil war after the mediation by Ghanaian military leaders failed and General Gowon on return from the Aburi reconciliation meeting in Ghana, appeared to have been outflanked by those who wanted to militarily sort out the issue.

Going to war was a terrible denouement for which Nigeria is yet to recover. Previous opportunities for Nigeria to be more united had been missed in 1954 and 1959 to form a forward looking governments and the July coup of 1966 tragically followed the same trajectory.

December 25, 2025
Trekking in the wild
- Papiri schoolkids ordeal in captivity
Many Hearts would have skipped at the sight of the kids. It was not something to behold. As they alighted from the buses that brought them to the Government House, Minna, the Niger State capital on Monday, I shuddered as I beheld the tiny tots on television. These kids are too small to undergo what they have just experienced, I muttered under my breath.

They had just gone through what could be likened to hell and back. Some would say that the kids are lucky they returned alive, while others would wonder what kind of human beings could have kidnapped them. The thought of kidnapping itself is repulsive, not to talk of the act. It happened, anyway, in the chilly hours of the night of November 21.

They were in their hostels when the marauders struck. The invaders number is unknown, but they reportedly went away with 280 people, comprising 265 pupils and 15 teachers. Fifty of the pupils escaped, leaving 230 others in the hands of the kidnappers. With 230 souls, they knew that they had the government by its balls. To them, the remaining 215 pupils and 15 teachers was ‘good business’ in terms of what they would get from the head of each abductee.

This is what human life has been reduced to by these terrorists, as the Federal Government has now classified all these criminals, whether kidnappers, bandits, militants or insurgents. Classification is not enough. They should be wiped away from the face of the earth to give the public the assurance that no child would ever be kidnapped from school again. As a nation, we have allowed this criminal act to fester to the extent that terrorists now see themselves as being above the law.

It is time to draw the line for them, using the Papiri incident to say enough is enough. The kids cut a pitiable picture, as they filed out in a straight line on arrival at the government house. I blinked several times as I watched them walk into the place so that my eyes would get accustomed to what I was seeing. I was shattered by what I saw. I never expected any sane person to kidnap such kids, many of who are under seven or below, judging by their looks. Believe it or not, they had just gone through roving in mangroves as they were being herded from one forest to the other by people old enough to be their parents.

They are too small to have undergone that harrowing and horrible experience. These kids; these children who do not know their right from their left were sent to boarding school by parents who believe in the life changing power of education. Their parents wanted the best for them in life, and the first steps toward achieving that was to enrol them in a school where their outlook will be shaped. They might have chosen a boarding school, believing that it is a proper place for grooming children.

Can we blame their parents for sending them to boarding school? This is not just any boarding school, but a faith-based one, the kind of which many of us attended in the past, without any hitch. Then, schools never had this kind of nasty experience of kidnapping, vandalising, killing and looting. Schools even in the remotest part of a community were safe and secure for learning. It was unheard of that some mad men stormed a school to kidnap pupils and teachers. Papiri was not the only school invaded in November. A girls school in Maga, Kebbi State, was attacked on November 17, four days before the Papiri incident.

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There is a historical angle to these invasions. These marauders struck in Chibok, Borno State in 2014; Dapchi, Yobe State, 2018; Kankara, Katsina State, 2020, and in 2021, four secondary schools and a private university in four states of Katsina, Niger, Zamfara, and Kaduna were attacked. In 2024, two schools in two states of Kaduna and Sokoto suffered the same fate. By now, the nation should have overcome the challenge, but it seems to have defied solution, with the rate kidnappers now strike across the country. In Maga, they snatched 24 schoolgirls on November 17, and four days later, they hit St Mary Catholic Private Nursery, Primary and Secondary Schools in Papiri, Agwara Local Government Area of Niger State.

The invaders always caught the security agencies flatfooted whenever they struck. At times, the security operatives withdraw from the scene hours or minutes before the attackers strike. The Kebbi school raid might not have happened, if the soldiers posted there had not left about 30 or so minutes to the invaders arrival. The soldiers claimed that they were directed to withdraw. Governor Nasir Idris has been shouting blue murder since, alleging that it was an act of sabotage. Truly, there is no other way to describe what happened. The matter is said to be under investigation. By now, a preliminay report should have been issued to assure the public that there is no cover up.

The nation must know what happened in Maga. As the nation rejoices over the release of the Papiri kids and their teachers, the point must be made that things cannot be allowed to continue like this. There must be a reason for the spike in school kidnapping and related incidents in recent time. It is up to the government to find out those behind the rising incidents and deal with them. The government cannot sit back and allow some elements to make the country ungovernable.

Whatever may be the motives of the perpetrators and their sponsors, the government, which has all the coercive and suasive power should always be a step ahead of them. Of what use is our intelligence security outfits if they cannot nip these acts in the bud? The public has borne for long with successive governments on the security issue, yet the problem keeps rearing its ugly head. There cannot be any excuse for kidnapping to thrive as if it is an industry. It is not and it should never be allowed to become one under this administration’s watch.

As the President has repeatedly said, he was elected to take hard and courageous decisions to make life meaningful for the people. Nigerians can only get a better life under a safe, secure and serene environment where children go to school; parents go to work, and citizens travel across the country without the fear of being kidnapped. They cannot do all these now because of the fear of terrorists.

It may not be the President’s fault, but it is his lot today to restore sanity in the land. He can do it and he must do it for the sake of posterity. The haunting looks of those freed Papiri schoolkids should propel him to cut these kidnappers to size. No innocent schoolkid should be allowed to undergo such trauma again.

•Merry Christmas, dear readers
December 25, 2025
From memory, not mimicry

It is sheer folly to watch a house burn while bickering over who should hold the bucket of water for quenching the fire. Such is the madness that has gripped Nigeria for decades; generations chanting placebo therapies prescribed by scheming colonists for the country’s behavioural cancer. The land is rich, but the minds are colonised. The soil is fertile but poisoned by imported seeds of thought.

Nigeria’s corruption, for instance, is not just a matter of flawed governance, but a crisis of ethics exacerbated by an inordinate lust for expedience. The 2023 National Bureau Statistics (NBS) corruption data reveal a worrisome trend: over 87 million bribes paid, amounting to over $1.26 billion, mostly money stolen by fathers, mothers, uncles, aunts, grannies, clergy, principals, and officials. How did we get here?

We got here because Nigeria’s postcolonial elite, groomed in the mould of their colonisers, learned to loot with logic and a grin. They speak of “efficiency” and “modernisation” while defunding schools and pawning national resources to foreign interests. They are dangerous for their dexterity at dismemberment. It is not the devil that plagues Nigeria; it is a culture of systemic dysfunction rooted in the disintegration of social conscience.

Nations do not emerge fully formed from constitutions or borderlines. They are shaped by the character of their citizenry. And the latter, in turn, are shaped by their most intimate institution: the family. The family is the receptacle in which the values of a nation are first kindled or corrupted. It is where character and social conscience are either nurtured or strangled in the cradle. The integrity of our public life, therefore, depends on the morality of our private lives.

Family is key. From this sacred unit, a people’s sense of self, place, and purpose begins. If the family is compromised, then society itself becomes a ghost town of ethics: full of laws but lacking justice and compassion; rich in rhetoric, but bankrupt of vision. Societal growth, therefore, cannot be engineered solely by policies or economic indices. It must be cultivated through the slow, careful evolution of the human spirit. Through education, yes, but not the kind that alienates the learner from their origins.

Francis Nyamnjoh, in his excavation of Africa’s epistemological crisis, recalls Okot p’Bitek’s Song of Lawino with painful clarity. Ocol, the educated African elite, emerges as a walking corpse; a clearing agent for foreign ideologies and an enemy to his kin. His education does not liberate; it enslaves. It turns him against his wife, his people, and ultimately, himself.

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This is the face of the Nigerian elite: fluent in multiple languages and philosophies but unable to communicate with their grandparents; draped in academic garlands but disconnected from indigenous wisdom; eloquent before foreign audiences but dismissive of local realities. They are, as p’Bitek lamented, hens that eat their own eggs.

The fetishisation of colonial values of beauty and notions of African reality has entrenched a psychological war on the African self. It is no surprise, then, that many Nigerians continue to bleach their skin, speak with borrowed accents, and look to the West for validation. Modernity, as defined by the West, becomes the Nigerian holy grail. Young Nigerians are taught to despise our histories, distrust our systems of knowledge, and to measure success by how far they can flee from our roots. In so doing, they become, like Ocol, a walking corpse, alive to foreign endorsement, but dead to native truth.

This crisis manifests across every sphere: from university syllabuses that erase indigenous knowledge systems to national policies crafted in donor-pleasing jargon. Even religious institutions, once cultural sanctuaries, have turned into imported franchises of guilt and prosperity.

Apollos Nwauwa rightly posits that Western education produced a contradictory elite in West Africa; one that served as both an agent of colonisation and nationalism. But nationalism, in our case, did not mature into sovereignty of thought. Instead, it hardened into mimicry. We changed flags, not philosophies. We rewrote our constitutions but kept the same epistemic shackles. What we call modernisation has often been little more than domesticated colonisation—metacolonialism, as Hussein Bulhan rightly names it.

This metacolonialism is no longer imposed with rifles and chains, but through curriculum, cinema, policy consultancy, and international development models. It creates a class of elites who worship at the altar of foreign approval; those who speak of development only in the metrics handed down by British colonialists. They are the Ocols of our generation, trained to quote statistics, but unable to feel the pulse of their people.

Thus, while the skyscrapers rise and the GDP is celebrated, the Nigerian mind continues to rot. We build flyovers over potholes of the mind. We chase digital revolutions while ignoring the intellectual genocide that is the continued erasure of indigenous knowledge.

It’s about time we reclaimed Nigerianness. We must start prioritising what we think of ourselves over what the West thinks of us. This recovery requires a radical revaluation of knowledge, a turning away from borrowed epistemologies toward what Nyamnjoh calls a reality larger than logic. We must reprioritise native philosophies over Western syllogisms.

We must dismantle the myth that science, stripped of ethics, context, and community, is the only path to progress; we must pay attention to knowledge systems that value Nigerian reality over Western logic. This means listening to market women who manage micro-economies more efficiently than government programs. It means engaging hunters, herbalists, griots, and artisans—custodians of ecological wisdom, history, and sustainable living. It means revisiting the shrines of thought that colonialism labelled “backwards” and asking: what did we lose when we stopped kneeling there?

We must re-educate our educators, decolonise our curricula, and refuse the seduction of validation by foreign wile. A child who learns to love their name will not be ashamed of their accent. A nation that learns to love its essence will not need to bleach its soul.

We must stop treating ordinary Nigerians as disposable extras in the theatre of governance. The people who truly challenge the status quo: those who resist the prescriptive gaze of foreign-funded NGOs and speak truth in idioms absent in Western textbooks, must be centred in the national discourse. It is from these everyday realists that a true renaissance will manifest.

The media must also unshackle itself from the imperial narrative machine. Too long has it amplified the metacoloniser’s myth of a Messianic Europe, while muting narratives of African resistance, resilience, and rebirth. The press must recover its role as griot and conscience, not just a content factory.

There is a future worth dreaming of: one where our development models are rooted in communal values; where schools teach both code and calculus alongside cosmology and craft; where governance is not about appeasing international donors, but serving the child hawking bananas on a dusty road in Madagali, Agbado-Ijaiye and Sankwala. Such a future demand that we stop waiting to be invited to someone else’s table and start building our own.

It’s about time we dislodged the clearing officers and coronated Ocols using Nigerian institutions as pit latrines of foreign ideologies. Shall we instead cultivate a new generation of thinkers? Those who can walk between worlds without losing their way, who can marry tradition with transformation, while acknowledging that progress is not a synonym for alienation.

Civilisations are rarely built with concrete and currency alone, but with narratives, rituals, and native wisdom. Nigeria’s rebirth will come from memory, not mimicry.

December 25, 2025
In defence of Ahmed Farouk and Malami

Nigerians are angry. For close to two weeks, they have agonized over Ahmed Farouk, ex MD of NNPCL and Abubakar Malami, the immediate past Attorney General and Minister of Justice’s alleged betrayal of sacred trust entrusted on them as public servants by the nation. The former was challenged over indiscriminate issuance of licences for PMS importation – an act, they said, could derail the government current drive towards energy self-sufficiency. He was also alleged to have spent about $5m school fees on his four primary school children in Switzerland. Such money, many have argued must be a product of corruption.

The latter was accused of hiding under Buhari’s presidency to serve other tendencies. As a ‘charge and bail’ lawyer before joining Buhari’s crew of ‘loyal gatekeepers’, many are asking for the sources of his alleged stupendous wealth.

For their ‘treachery’, the battle cry at home, on the street, in the social media and even in the hallow chambers of our National Assembly is “hang them”.

But the problem is that we know that “hang them” is a language of those shut out of the system or those driven by greed. And since everyone seems to be angry with the Nigerian state, it can be said that there is a bit of Farouk and Malami in all of us.

We rail at PENGASAN, IPMAN and DAPPMAN only because we don’t have the opportunity of becoming part of them. From ethnic nationalities, the owners of our society, whose arrogant spokespersons insist no one gets what they cannot get, to our political leaders who see Abuja as place for securing their own fair share of the national cake, and the governed, who swear at the politicians for not stealing enough monies from Abuja which they claim belong to no one, we have all betrayed the nation.

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If you are in doubt, let us again take a short journey through memory. At the 1957 London Independence Constitutional Conference, two of the dominant ethnic groups, the Igbo and the Fulani, betrayed the minorities over creation of states. In 1962, they again removed one of the legs of a tripod holding Nigeria together. Between the census crisis of 1962/63 and massively rigged 1964 election, the remaining two wobbling legs of the tripod finally collapsed. With each group insisting no one gets what the other could not get, our politically naïve military was dragged into politicians’ battle for supremacy. The result was a civil war driven by greed but fraudulent fought in our name.

In 1993, a jolly good fellow and a generous giver, MKO Abiola, a man without any ideological orientation made billions through Nigerian state and ITT. (We all remember Fela Anikulapo’s famous lyric “ITT: International thief thief”). But as a generous giver, he shared the fortune so cheaply acquired among Nigerians, building mosques, churches, hospitals, schools, sport centres across towns and villages in Nigeria. Many analysts believe it was the secret of his landslide victory in 1993, defeating Bashir Tofa round and square even in his Kano stronghold.

But the ruling Fulani hegemonic class in the north according to Babangida’s rain doctors did not want a Yoruba presidency. Arthur Nzeribe placed a paid newspaper advertisement declaring “Igbo will not accept a Yoruba presidency”, Evans Enwerem, who later became a senate president during OBJ presidency, issued a press statement declaring “Igbo will go to war if Abiola’s election is de-annulled”. Odumegwu Ojukwu’s opposition to Yoruba presidency was reported by the PM News of October 17, 1994 with a howling headline “Hang MKO Abiola, Ojukwu tells Abacha”. Ojukwu later became Abacha’s ambassador to Europe to de-market MKO Abiola.

If the federating ethnic nationalities have no faith in their country, it should not surprise anyone why their political representatives only think of what they can get out of Nigeria and not what they could do for Nigeria.

For instance, all through the military era and up to 1999, there was a general consensus among Nigerians that NNPC had become a cesspool of corruption. Sanitising NNPC required our leaders political will, a virtue in deficit among our successive leaders.

When the former CBN governor, Lamido Sanusi Lamido reported a possible disappearance of $20b not paid by NNPC into the federation account, during the leadership of Diezani Alison-Madueke as Minister of Petroleum Resources, who has since been indicted by both Britain and the US for money laundering, it was Sanusi that got fired by President Jonathan and replaced by an unqualified and incompetent Godwin Emefiele, a choice many argued was informed by ethnic consideration.

As for the new breed politicians and new inheritors of power in Abuja, they made it clear it was time to recoup their expenses on the 1999 electoral battle. The PPPRA, with a staff strength of 249, supervised by an unwieldy board of 49, earning a whopping salaries and allowances of N57 billion per annum became an instrument through which N1.7 trillion was stolen according to a House of Representatives probe report.

As for the governed, the policy was ‘if we cannot beat them, we join them”. As fortune seekers in a world of the survival of the fittest, we try to bribe our way into getting our children employed by NNPC which pays salaries that will make our doctors and university lecturers green with envy. And once we get our children into NNPC or the CBN, we keep quiet in order not to get choked.

When it comes to treachery against Nigeria, we are all tarred with the same brush. That a part of a whole cannot be holier than the whole was clearly demonstrated during President Tinubu’s inaugural speech. The address brought out the Farouk in all of us in bold relief. He had hardly finished saying “subsidy is gone” when PMS disappeared from filling stations across the nation. And where they were available, PMS procured at less than N200 per litre was going for N700. Retail prices for pepper, tomatoes, beans, corn went up as much as 500% within two days. In agrarian Ekiti State where farmers had abandoned farming and waited for pepper and tomato to come from the north, chiefs had to go to the open market to chide market women for their greed.

The difference between Farouk’s case and Abubakar Malami is that having seduced Buhari by adding his divorced daughter, a mother of four to his harem, Malami was beyond reproach. And this was despite his efforts to confer constitutional rights meant for Nigerians on cows and mischievous attempt to equate criminal Fulani herdsmen who forcefully took over reserve forests in the south with documented legitimate Igbo traders and urban immigrants in the north.

Malami’s current travail stemmed from the Cable’s December 22, 2017 publication of his attempt to appoint two Nigerian lawyers, Oladipo Okpeseyi, a senior advocate, and Temitope Isaac Adebayo, lawyers to the defunct Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) at a cost of $16m to work on a job already completed by another lawyer. It was for this reason, it was claimed, Kemi Adeosun, in April 2018 as minister of finance, refused to approve the payment of $16.9 million in fees to the two lawyers for the “recovery”.

Besides recovery of assets, the current investigation is said to also cover probe of several bank accounts allegedly linked to the former minister, as well as his multi-billion-naira investments in Kebbi State.

I think this is important because Junaid Mohammed once described Malami as “Kano charge and bail lawyer” who opted to handle Buhari’s judicial cases, pro bono, at a time Buhari had no money to pay lawyers.

But today there is a trending video of Rayhaan Group of companies described as the biggest private conglomerate in Nigeria, consisting of a string of luxury hotels, largest rice milling factory in Africa, Rayhaan Academy and newly approved Rayhaan University and Security Companies, all managed by 29 years old Malami’s son.

While we all agree Nigeria has become an orphan repeatedly pillaged by leaders of ethnic nationalities, politicians, pastors, Imams etc., I think the ongoing search for sponsors of terrorism should not spare the likes of Abubakar Malami. He might have one or two things to say about sympathisers and sponsors of terrorism in view of his defence of their activities not just in the north but also in the ‘reserved forest’ of the south. In retrospect, when one looks back at Malami’s endless war with Rotimi Akeredolu, the late governor of Ondo State over the illegal take-over of his state’s reserved forest by criminal herdsmen. It will appear Malami was determined to export northern tragedy to the south.

December 23, 2025
Negative vibes and what upsets us as a people

Racism, bigotry, prejudice antisemitism, Islamophobia, Tribalism (ethnicism), sexism and homophobia and anti-communism etc. are what put us off because we just don’t like them or the people with whom we associate them with.

There are so many people in the current world whose lives are ruined by hatred for one thing or the other. There is of course nothing wrong in wanting to be with one’s type whether what unites one with others is language, race, or religion. But this does not extend to not wanting others of different hues, language or religion to be around.

One’s religion, race skin colour or ideology should not determine who one relates to. I have always believed that everyone has the right to meet or associate with anyone who has same ideas or with one who can add some virtue to one. Of course, the Almighty who made all of us made us differently as men and women, black, white, brown, yellow, Jews and gentiles, divided into five races namely Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid, Australoid and Amerindian.

Caucasoid includes people from Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and parts of central Asia and south Asia, characterized by light to olive skin and various hair and eye colours.

Mongoloid incudes people from Asia, the Arctic and Americas with yellow to brown skin tones.

Negroid includes people of African descent, with dark skins coiled hair and wide noses. Australoid includes indigenous populations from Australia, New Guinea and parts of South Asia characterized with dark brown to black skin tones and wavy to curly hair textures

Amerindian includes Native American with a mix of Mongoloid and other characteristics.

There have been debates over racial characterization because these five divisions do not cover mixtures of racial types. However there is broad agreement on three types of races namely Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid into which human beings fall into.

Racial categorization is really not the object of my article. I have dwelled on it to show how wrong even educated Nigerians are when they talk glibly about “Ibo race” “Yoruba race”, “Hausa” race. There is no such thing! However some Fulani types were regarded as Caucasians by some racist colonial administrators who favoured them in Nigeria. Physical features of some Fulani can have similarities with those of other Caucasians but not all of them have Caucasian features.

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Discrimination or even hatred based on whatever separates one man from another is just wrong and absurd and absolutely wrong. The situation in which the German Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party decided that Jews posed existential problems to the German nation was absolutely crazy. He then went ahead to industrially murder about six million of them who committed no crimes and just because they were of different religion than those of the ordinary Germans. The hatred of the Jews had always been a madness of all Europeans from the Atlantic to the Urals. Russian pogroms against the Jews were as odious as those of the Nazi but only different in scale.

Racism in France and the UK were a hindrance to human progress and Benjamin Disraeli had to become a baptized Jew before his talent as a politician was allowed to flourish. The story of the sentencing of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, an artillery officer in the French army who was accused of leaking military secrets to the Germans in 1894 epitomizes rampant anti-Semitism in France. Dreyfus was eventually pardoned after a spirited campaign by Emile Zola, a prominent French writer published his article “j’accuse”. Effort to silence Zola failed and attracted international attention. Dreyfus was eventfully freed in 1906. Even in the UK, anti-Semitism got close to the House of Windsor when Edward viii embraced national socialism before he abdicated and was accused of antisemitism. What happened in Germany was therefore not strange to followers of political trends in Europe.

The killing, a few days ago in Sydney, Australia, of 15 innocent people in a Jewish fun-fair of Hanukkah is related to the Benjamin Netanyahu war against Palestinians in which he slaughtered thousands in response to Palestinian killing of innocent Israelis. The Israeli prime minister is blaming the Australian prime minister of recognition of the non-existent Palestine for breeding anti-Semitism. It is clear to me that one act of hatred triggers another hateful action.

Coming home to Nigeria. There is so much mutual dislike if not hatred among the various ethnicities in Nigeria. It is so bad that if one does not share the same sentiments with the ethnic haters, one is almost considered a traitor against the group. In some places, homophobia is so rampant that a lesbian or homosexual is seen as a leper. What is tolerated in America is seen as a journey too far in Nigeria. This is why our government says Nigerians would rather starve to death than accept AID tied to toleration of same sex relationships.

As long as people of this orientation keep to themselves, one should, in my view not bother.

It is very dangerous when it gets to a situation of intolerance of other people based on even ideology. Communists are regularly persecuted in some western countries while a capitalist democrat would not be tolerated because such a person would be considered a danger to the state security.

There was a time in the USA when a senator, McCarthy led a national movement against communists as if they were some kind of vermin. Jimmy Lea at 78 faces a life sentence in People s Republic of China for holding on to his liberal political philosophy as against the communist ideology of the state. These days in Donald John Trump America, to be labelled a “liberal” is like a sentence of political death.

President Trump openly discriminates against black Africans and Haitians in preference to Norwegians or Scandinavian immigrants.

In America where there is a right to own weapons, dislike of the other person for whatever reason is dangerous and can lead to one life’s termination. Of course these differences have different implications. The racial discrimination is the most obvious and could be most significant in the life of anyone. It could, in most western countries, determine where you live, which institutions you go to, what hospitals you are allowed to go to when ill, it could determine your economic opportunities and who you associate with generally.

It sometimes controls what country’s visa is readily available to you .In other words your race is your destiny. As a black person, I have to be twice as good as my colleague to attract the same attention or recognition. It will probably not matter so much if hatred for others different from one were not tied to possession of nuclear weapons as threatened by the North Koreans and Americans when confronting each other or Americans and Chinese in their struggle for world domination if not now but in the future.

December 18, 2025
Emergency power: Supreme verdict for the ages

Outside a validly declared state of emergency, the President possesses no power whatsoever to interfere with state executive or legislative institutions – Supreme Court

WITH THESE REMARKS, the Supreme Court, has once and for all, cleared the air over a vexed provision under Section 305 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) dealing with the extraordinary measures that the President can take in a state where he has declared a state of emergency. By the way, the statement was made in passing, and I believe that it was deliberate on the part of their Lordships .

It was made in passing because the court went out of its way to do so, after holding that it has no jurisdiction to hear the case which it equally held that the plaintiffs had no locus standi (legal right) to file. The case was instituted by 11 states against the state of emergency declared in Rivers on March 18 by Predident Bola Tinubu. He also suspended the governor, his deputy and the House of Assembly. All the institutions were restored on September 18.

For long, the court had shied away from speaking on Section 305 under which the President can declare a state of emergency in any part of the country under certain conditions in order to restore peace, law and order. These conditions are, among others, when the nation is at war; under real or imminent threat of danger; and the breakdown of law and order.

For reasons best known to the apex court when similar cases came to it in the past, it refrained from making any pronouncement on the section, preferring to, as they say, ‘blow muted trumpet’ by allowing the issue to pass. For instance, it struck out the suit brought against the state of emergency declared in Plateau State by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2004 for want of jurisdiction and allowed the matter to end there. Obasanjo suspended then Governor Joshua Dariye and the House of Assembly in the wake of the emergency. President Tinubu did the same thing in Rivers 10 months ago.

So, the Plateau and Rivers cases are ‘on all fours’. But something changed in the Rivers case. The court came out boldly to pronounce on Section 305, perhaps to settle for all time the unending row over whether or not the President can suspend a governor, his deputy and the state legislature where there is a state of emergency.

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It is obvious that the Supreme Court’s decision is in response to calls to lend its voice to the matter and lay it to rest forever. This column was among those that made such calls. In a March 27 article titled: Much ado about Section 305, we appealed to the court to so act so that the nation can benefit from its wisdom. Part of the article is reproduced below, with the rest concluded online.

An institution like the Supreme Court should not keep mute when the nation is confronted with serious legal and constitutional matters because of mere technicality such as want of jurisdiction. It should go into the merit of the case and make its stand known for good or for ill. The court should not be too legalistic on such matters, and the issue of Section 305 is one of them. There are times that the court should not talk too much law in order to resolve certain issues in the national interest. It has done well to speak on Section 305 without being inhibited by the technical issue of jurisdiction. It does not have to make a declarative, consequential or injunctive order on every case to achieve this.

It is not always that the court should use the force of law to correct things. At times, moral force achieves more than the force of law because once the Supreme Court speaks whether on the merit of a case or not, its name would do the rest. The court’s name alone is enough authority on any matter. When you hear: ‘the Supreme Court has said…’, you sit up and ask no further questions.

It is in the light of this that some people are now dissipating energy on whether the court in the Rivers case upheld the President’s power to suspend a governor, his deputy and the state assembly during a state of emergency. If the majority decision did not uphold that power, what then did it say? The quote at the top of this essay is clear and unambiguous and it comes from the lead judgment. It is not written in French or Latin, but in plain, simple English. Again, if the majority decision did not uphold the President’s power to so act during an emergency, why then is there a dissenting judgment?

I believe the dissenting Justice’s action was informed by his disagreement with his Learned Brothers’ stand. Although, the position might have come as an opinion (obiter dictum) in the course of the judgment which struck out the suit for lack of jurisdiction, it amounts to Intellectual fraud for anybody to want to twist the statement. What those arguing this way wanted was for the court to disclaim the President’s action and upbraid him for what they consider as undermining the Constitution. Thus, all this their noise about the Supreme Court not upholding the President’s power to suspend some democratic institutions during a state of emergency.

They should hold their breath and wait for the certified true copy (CTC) of the judgment. No matter the noise, what is written has been written and cannot be altered. The Supreme Court, the judicial oracle in Abuja, has spoken and so be it.

December 18, 2025