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Category: Niyi Akinnaso

Ways to retail information

No one doubts that effective communication between the government and the governed encourages public knowledge of government policies, programmes, and projects; builds trust in government; fosters transparency and accountability; and even encourages public participation. The more the citizens know about government policies and their rationale, the less bitter they are likely to be at their consequences, and the more they are able to recognise and dismiss distortions and misrepresentations.

There are various channels of communication available to the government, including (1) regular briefings, press releases, and official statements; (2) print and electronic media (newspapers, radio, and television); (3) new media and other digital platforms (social media, government websites, mobile apps, and email); and (4) direct engagement with the public, such as (a) town hall meetings and (b) community outreach—engagements with specific communities through events and workshops, and (c) public consultations—surveys, opinion polls, and public hearings.

I pointed out last week that, at present, much of government information circulates only among a fraction of Nigeria’s literate population, because the government has limited its options to (1), (2), and part of (3) above. This leaves the masses, especially rural dwellers, at risk of consuming distorted information, or no information at all, about government policies, programmes, and projects (Time for the government to retail information, The Nation, July 17, 2025). The major reason for this omission is lack of direct public engagement—option (4), discussed further below.

But, first, let’s review how the government has been using options (1), (2) and (3). Regarding (1), yes, there are occasional press releases and official statements, but briefings are very rare, being limited to presidential speeches on special occasions. There needs to be weekly or biweekly verbal briefings by the President’s spokesperson, to the press somewhere in Aso Villa. Such briefings should be limited to current issues or problems and outline the President’s responses to them. For example, Mr. Sunday Dare’s essay on the President’s midterm achievements could be summarised as one briefing, while also being published in newspapers (see his Tinubu’s midterm: From reforms to recovery, ThisDay, May 29, 2025). The briefings will create soundbites on radio and TV, while being amplified by pundits. More importantly, the verbal briefings would give reporters the opportunity to ask questions, which could elicit explanations and illustrations from the spokesperson. They are also useful in avoiding presidential delay in responding to topical issues. For effectiveness, the relevant Minister could be on hand to answer specific questions within his or her portfolio. Such briefings, of course, presuppose that the spokesperson has the ear and mind of the President and can also read his “body language”.

The government’s presence online, on social media, and the airwaves is limited and mostly reactionary. As I pointed out last week, even occasional proactive posts on social media are overwhelmed by opposition views. The President’s new media team has work to do in this regard. At the moment, it is as if there is no social media team at all. Perhaps the Director of New Media and Corporate Services at the party Secretariat, who is a mobiliser and social media guru, should be drafted immediately.

However, the most important gap in the government’s information management is the lack of public engagement as in option (4). No town hall meetings. No community outreach programmes. No public consultations, for example via surveys, opinion polls, and public hearings. These are tools that It must also be realised that ours is not a one size-fits-all country. Rather, it is divided along regional, ethnic, religious, and language lines. Besides, more than a third of the population is illiterate and nearly 70 percent is poor. As a result, government information must be tailored for various publics from the heart of the bustling urban areas to the rural hinterlands.

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Reaching the various publics will involve local party leaders and community organisers, using local languages to explain what the government has done, what it is doing now, and what it plans to do over the next two years. The government’s policies on subsidy and exchange rate as well as their consequences and remedies need to be explained. The leader of the Tinubu Mandate Group in Ondo state, Chief Femi Bakare, embarked on such a project about two weeks ago. Canvassers were chosen from each ward to go back home and talk to their people about the President’s policies and programmes in their local dialects. This is the kind of community outreach that President Barrack Obama of the United States (himself a community organiser) used to salutary effect during his presidency.

It is high time President Tinubu embarked on town hall meetings, at least one in each zone to explain the need for his policies, why costs have been high, how and why they are now coming down, and so on. The experiences of other countries in comparable situation could be recalled for emphasis. Rescue and renewal should be key themes. It is like the country was so sick that it fainted. The President came in as the doctor, who revived the now very lean country. Like every sick person, it will take some time to heal. The country is now on the path of recovery. Fortunately, we have now reached a turning point. International organisations and media as well as local newspapers are now reporting on the gradual recovery. Interest rates are down. Petrol price is down. There are no more queues at fuel stations. Food costs are coming down. When the new harvest season kicks in, further reductions in food prices should be expected. We are getting more hours of electricity. Bottomline: the economic signs are good. The economy is bouncing back.

The truth is that some folks want to see and feel the President. He should not wait till election time before coming out. Fortunately, as President, he can move around the country, selling his programmes, without necessarily campaigning. That has been the practice in the United States, especially since President Bill Clinton. It is time we adopted good practice that works.

July 23, 2025
Time for the government to retail information

Retailing products and services is central to the production-consumption chain. For example, most Nigerians today do not have to go to the bank to cash money. Instead, they go to a roadside POS kiosk near them. Similarly, they don’t have to go to a bakery to buy bread for breakfast. Instead, they buy it from a roadside kiosk or a street hawker. Indeed, in many parts of the country, where there are intermediariesneither banks nor bakeries, these retailers are the only points of purchase. Often, there are intermediaries, such as bank tellers, who make cash available to the POS retailers, or bread wholesalers, who sell bread to kiosk owners and hawkers. As Nigeria’s cashless transactions policy took root, bank Apps became available for money transfers and payments.

Similarly, if information about government policies and programmes were to reach the yam farmer in Benue state, the cocoa farmer in Ondo state, or the cattle herder in Ekiti forest, it has to be retailed. Unfortunately, with the exception of political campaigns during the four-year election cycles, there has been no consistent effort to do so on the part of the federal and state governments. Yet, retailing information to reach the masses and rural dwellers, especially illiterates, is critical to the government’s inclusivity agenda. The masses need to know about what the government is doing to improve their lives, and in a language and style they can understand.

There are several reasons why retailing information is necessary. First, effective communication of government policies and programmes to the masses allows them to distinguish between such policies and their distorted varieties. It is also not enough to tell them that better days are coming. They want to hear from the horse’s mouth or delegated spokespersons why not today? It is important to explain to farmers, artisans, and market women why fuel subsidy removal and flotation of the Naira were necessary to stabilize the economy, given the economic distabilisation into which they were thrown in 2023. True, such policies often result in unintended consequences, including a hike in prices, the steepness of the hike needed explanation.

Second, such knowledge allows voters to rigorously evaluate government performance for reelection. Without such knowledge, voters become victims of distortion and misinformation. If that is all they hear, then they could easily believe that the government has failed.

This is not to say that nobody knows what the government is doing. However, those who do constitute a negligible proportion of the population. It is a small fraction of the country’s 65 percent literate population, who consume information via print and electronic media. However, in a country where the poverty rate is about 70 percent, few can afford the cost of a newspaper or television to read or watch the news.

Some of the educated and half-educated folks also consume government information on social media, especially X, to which the government’s media team posts information from time to time. Unfortunately, however, much of the information is distorted, especially by Obidients and opposition readers, before it reaches the majority of social media subscribers. In 2023, I followed a message posted by the Tinubu campaign organisation on Twitter (now X). By the time the seventh response to the message was posted, it had been distorted. Obidients picked on the distorted version and distorted it even more. More of this should be expected as preparations get underway for the 2027 election cycle.

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Yet, it is among the educated folks that government information circulates. On various occasions, it is the distorted version that reaches the masses. True, Tinubu’s major policies were intended to stabilise the economy, it is unlikely that the Lagos market women who sang Ebi n pa wa (We are hungry) knew about those policies and their implications. Similarly, many retailers interviewed in 2024 had no idea why prices went up and were distrustful of price decline with some items (When will prices begin to come down?, The Nation, April 17, 2024). The question is: How does government information reach the masses?

In an excellent comparative essay, the Director of New Media and Corporate Services for the All Progressives Congress, Bamidele Ademola-Olateju, outlined several ways in which the government could reach the masses, especially at times of economic distress like ours (Communication at a time of renewed hope, The Nation, June 25, 2025). She suggested weekly press briefings and monthly town-hall meetings. The only caveat about the comparative cases is the high literacy rate in those societies, where the vast majority of the population reads newspapers or watch the news.

In our situation, where ethnic and religious rivalries are rife, where at least 45 percent lives in rural areas, where the illiteracy rate is near 40 percent, where the poverty rate is near 70 percent, where insecurity is high, and where the political opposition is desperate, government communication strategies must be adapted to existing social, political, and economic realities.

Accordingly, there must be a four- or five-tiered communication pattern that targets different populations, some in English, the official language, and others in relevant local languages. The different strands in the pattern will be explored next week.

July 16, 2025
Time and culture

You do not have to be an anthropologist to know that culture is not static. Rather, it is dynamic. Every aspect of culture changes from time to time but at an unpredictable rate. Depending on the stimulus, some aspects change slowly over time, others extremely fast. What is frightening about cultural change in Nigeria today is the quantity and quality of change and the effects, both positive and negative, on extant social, political, and economic practices.

Changes to the body and appearance

Let’s begin with physical appearance. For those who are 60 years or older, there are many noticeable features in the appearance of today’s youths, some of which attract jaw-dropping reactions. “Look at this young man, Prof,” said a fellow octogenarian to me as we waited in the Departure Lounge in Warri for a flight to Lagos. The boy in question had two distinguishing features: his hair was braided like that of a woman, while his girlfriend wore a yellow wig on her head, with the “hair” drooping over her shoulders. As my friend and I continued our conversation, more youths boarded the plane until over half of the passengers were young men and women mostly under 30. In addition to braided hair and coloured wigs, there were differently shaped beards and more wig colours.

As we focused on the girls, we noticed unusually rounded butts and hips, protruding backwards and sideways. I was told they wore butt and hip pads for enhancement. The pads are filled with silicon. Many wore similar enhancements to round out their breasts. In certain cases, the enhancement pushed up half or more of the breasts which made them look like they were about to pop out. Some cared less about breast enhancement than about how much of their breasts were exposed. They wore V- or U-shaped vests that exposed as much of their breasts as you cared to look. The craze for bodily enhancement has generated many customers for cosmetic surgeons, who pump the silicon into butts and hips. I am told some girls even enhance their lips!

What we observed at the Warri airport led me into deeper reflections on widespread cultural change among Nigerian youths, using Yoruba youths as a reference point. My mind went straight to women’s gele (headgear) and the new makeup tradition. A billion Naira industry has developed, consisting of itinerant makeup artists, who beautify women’s faces and tie their headgear for social occasions, such as weddings, birthdays, and funeral ceremonies. I understand that ready-made gele is now in the market.

I also recalled the traditional Yoruba sooro and buba, which our young men have reduced into tight-fitting outfit in the direction of English trouser and shirt. Even the traditional voluminous agbada has been reduced in size by the youths. The result is that the extra volume flowing beyond the hands is no longer there to wrap around the shoulders for fashion effect.

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Music and pop culture

For today’s Yoruba musicians, music is about rhythm, not about lyrics. True, youths sing along with the musicians, but there’s nothing about philosophy, culture, or history in the songs. Octogenarians like me cannot but be nostalgic about the musicians of our time: Fatai Rolling Dollars; Adeolu Akinsanya (Baba Eto); Ebenezer Obey; Sunny Ade; Dele Abiodun; Orlando Owomoyela (popularly known as Orlando Owoh), and, of course, the Afro King himself, Fela Anikulapo Kuti. They produced historical, cultural, political, and philosophical songs you remember and learn from. The scanty lyrics of today’s music are about self, sex, money, and other material things. Their cultural basis is not the Yoruba that I know.

Change in attitude and value orientation

Traditional values of community and respect for elders have given way to emphasis on individuality. Hard work is no longer considered the best path to wealth accumulation and material possessions.

Change agents

This leads to the drivers of cultural change in contemporary Nigeria. In the forefront is the intertwined influence of globalisation, modernisation, and the technologies of communication. Interactions with other cultures have been influenced by these factors more than ever before. In particular, American pop culture and the American dollar are global currencies. American pop culture has had the greatest influence on Nigerian musicians. American musicians and some sports icons are also among the drivers of dress change and bodily practices—beard, plaited hair, and clothing style—among Nigerian musicians and youths in general.

Another driver of change is corruption and the material orientation of the society, led by the political class. Corruption erodes necessary support for educational institutions, which are the grooming ground for the youths. In the absence of necessary tools for learning, most of the youths pass through the system with little or no skills to sustain them after graduation. While in school, many join gangs and Yahoo groups, while others engage in other deviant practices. In the absence of employment, they engage in more deviant practices or professionalise the ones they carried over from school.

For many of them, social media provides a means of escape. All they need is an adopted mentor and a target of abuse on X, Facebook, and similar media. This was particularly evident during the 2023 presidential election, when Peter Obi’s Obidients (Obidiots) targeted his political opponents and whoever expressed a contrary opinion. Their behaviour manifested the erosion of values that social media promoted.

The point about culture is that it takes a life of its own once change sets in. You cannot stop it by legislation or coercion. Nigerian youths are on a course of change that may consume the whole nation in a few decades when my generation and the one after me are long gone. The social practices at that time will be regarded as the culture of the people.

July 2, 2025
Communication at a time of renewed hope

The Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci pointed out that the main essence of political action is to determine the course of the discourse in favor of your own project. Today, Nigeria is witnessing unprecedented, profound change. It is dislocating and must be explained to the public in a multi-ethnic and multilingual state as to why this painful but necessary adjustment has to be made.

Much of government communication today appears to be directed at literate people. Unfortunately, this is not the issue. The government must direct the message at the hoi polloi – the traders, the artisans, workers’ unions, students, street hawkers, and so on. The key point in directing the territory of the discourse at those outside the elite group is to convince the grassroots, the base, to accept government policy, despite temporary dislocation and pain. The message should be about why this temporary pain will in the long-term benefit all of us and our families.

What the government needs to do today is to emulate Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who, in getting into office in 1964 and facing a devastating economic outlook, appointed one of the youngest Britain’s professor of economics to explain the economic crisis to the public. The key point here is that Professor Balogh, from Balliol College, Oxford University (not Babe College London University), was not a media person per se, but he could explain and enlighten the hoi polloi as to why the crisis arose and why the government had to respond in ways that may, at first look, seem harsh and punitive. At the time, his appeal was not to the elite but to explain the economic crisis to those who were disaffected, those with very low levels of education, and those who now saw the crisis as a punitive tax on the least protected sectors.

He did his job with aplomb.

President Tinubu’s media team will do well by studying how the United Kingdom Labour government of 1964 managed the economic crisis, and won re-election by a landslide in 1966 to learn how to explain an economic crisis in a way that will favor the government’s own position. This is important. The grave economic situation President Tinubu inherited, necessitating the current measures, has not been explained to the overwhelming majority, and the disaffection is getting pronounced. People are experiencing a massive erosion in their cost of living, in their standards of living. As one pundit has said, “We no longer have a cost of living crisis,” but rather, “a cost of existence crisis.” Therefore, we must note that the government did not cause the economic crisis, but it must explain its way out of it and show how things will gradually get better for future generations yet unborn. The key issue here is that the government itself must stop being reactive and be preemptive, by anticipating what the naysayers and the opposition might say about any government policy.

There have been a lot of particularly good government policies, such as the student loans and so forth, but they have not been explained with the clarity of how they benefit the overwhelming majority in the way that they ought to have been. Politics, as Machiavelli said, is about “the law of constant reminders.” The government must constantly remind the audience of the positive changes that are already in place. After two years in the saddle, the law of constant reminders is of extreme importance, and urgency in directing public acceptance of government policy and acceptance of the government itself.

Therefore, the two key strategies now must be “preemptive” and understanding the law of constant reminders, which is that the government’s own positive bearing in a difficult climate must be constantly explained in simple language to give the public the impression that things are getting better and will continue to get better.

The format also needs to be legitimate. As the late, much-revered Canadian communications expert Marshall McLuhan pointed out decades ago, “the medium is the message.” A new framework has to be drawn up of weekly press briefings, not press conferences, to present the economic message in simple terms with background graphics and data analysis in a humorous and enlightening way that can capture and captivate the audience at the same time, with the presumption that the audience has only a junior secondary school-type education.

This should be followed up with monthly town hall meetings across the six geopolitical zones, in which the message is presented with clarity in ways that can be understood by the overwhelming majority.

A good exponent of this kind of format was Charles de Gaulle, as President of the French Republic. He held press conferences explaining the dilemma of the Republic in ways which looked, in many instances, like pure theater. People loved watching them on television; there were live audiences, and there were a lot of things that were stage-managed to favor the perception of the government not as cruel but as caring and working towards a better future for all.

The entire format of government presentation must be rejigged. What obtains now is out of sequence with today’s 24/7 social media news cycle. It is too reactive; it must dictate and direct the terrain of thinking, thought, and action in favor of continuing momentum to gain support for the government.

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The government must be wary, because another example for the United Kingdom is that of John Major. He was a good Prime Minister, but he never really had a communications team to explain the very important gains that were being made under his government. He ended up losing by a landslide to Tony Blair. A better alternative is to look back at the past, to the intervention of President Franklin D. Roosevelt when he took over as president in the midst of a terrible economic crisis in 1932, in which Americans were eating out of the dustbin. In addition, we can borrow a leaf from the public presentation of policies by the Labour government in the United Kingdom in 1945, when the welfare state was created against opposition, but in which they carried the majority of the people with them.

The government must now be proactive, preemptive, and realize that a lot of fine-tuning has got to be made in the presentation of policies in order to rally the republic behind its own good intentions. We must now not just look at public policy as good intentions but present them in a way that people will accept that, yes, there’s temporary pain, but things are getting better in the direction of helping myself, my children, and generations yet unborn.

In the reality of today, we must not only look at geopolitical, ethnic, and religious disparities in tailoring messages to specific locations, but we must also begin to look at subgroups and social cleavages, such as age and gender. Pinpointing specific messages and formats, for example, to the informal sector and even sub-groups within the informal sector, is crucial. We need to explain why all these are a benefit to them.

The days of looking at the public as one whole are out of the question. We must now put together several specific groups and tailor messages towards encouraging them and steering them towards accepting government policy and, indeed, gradually becoming supporters and, in the end, enthusiastic supporters of the government. The work is very clear-cut.

The spokespersons of the government must see Nigerian as a fragmented population which must be rallied in a republic. to use the phrase must associated with President Charles De Gaulle . Tailor made messages must now be targeted at focus – groups and sub – divisions. This must be the way to revive and reinfigorate the communication strategy and strengthen the perception that all of these is to make tomorrow better.

Bamidele Ademola-Olateju, a former Ondo Commissioner for Information, is Director of New Media and Corporate Communications for the All Progressives Congress (APC)

June 25, 2025
Improving higher education in Nigeria

As an accountant with corporate experiences at home and abroad, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu understands the intricacies of the economy. To use a popular Nigerian lingo, we have seen his hand in that sector as the economy has begun to make a steady recovery. In particular, his most controversial policies on fuel subsidy removal and the harmonization of foreign exchange have been successful, despite initial hardships. Fuel price has been coming down, and the exchange rate has stabilized.

Similarly, as a university graduate, who values education and understands the needs of higher education institutions, he has been making significant impact on higher education across the country. He started by removing higher institutions from the Integrated Personnel and Payment Information System (IPPIS) so that institutions could manage their own staff salaries internally. He launched the student loan scheme and approved the establishment of more universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education. The two programmes are intended to widen access to higher education in the country as part of the President’s inclusivity agenda.

However, higher education institutions have been facing serious problems that may compromise the project on inclusivity. In addition to paucity of funds and decaying infrastructure, the institutions are dying under the weight of excessive oversight, which has been hampering the duties of the management of the institutions.

There are four institutions with statutory oversight powers over higher education institutions in the country: the National Universities Commission; the National Commission for Colleges of Education; the National Board of Technical Education; and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board to oversee admissions into these institutions. The various institutions have been tolerating the excesses of these bodies and their oversight functions.

However, in addition to these statutory bodies, there are over a dozen committees claiming to do oversight over federal universities, colleges of education, and polytechnics. All the committees are resident in Abuja. They include various committees of the National Assembly, many of which are duplicated between the Senate and the House of Representatives; the Federal Ministry of Education; the Office of the Auditor-General; the Office of the Accountant General; the Procurement Office; TETFund; NELFund, and many others.

The result is that hardly a week passes before each institution gets a notice to prepare for an oversight visit. At such times, a group of 4, 6, 8, or more could show up, demanding hotel accommodation and other perquisites for the duration of their stay. At other times, the VC, Provost, or Rector could be invited to Abuja to answer questions from oversight committees. Sometimes, the entire management of the institution is invited to Abuja to answer various questions about different aspects of their duties. As a result, there are times when the head of an institution is away for two weeks, attending to oversight managers!

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It would have been helpful if the oversight functions lead to improvement in service delivery in the institutions. The problem is that most oversight visitations lead to depletion of the institution’s meagre resources. For example, many oversight committees demand as many as 40 copies of the documents they wish to inspect. For example, the House of Representatives Committee on Public Procurement recently asked for 40 copies and one soft copy of over 30 separate documents covering the 2023 financial year. Never mind that other committees may still perform oversight on the same documents, which will have to be reproduced afresh.

What is worse, many oversight visitations are accompanied by demands for brown envelopes. Sometimes, if the institution complies, the envelope may be all that is needed, and the oversight is taken as done. The bottomline is that cooperation is needed to have a good report.

Getting an institution credited with government approved funds is another major problem. You may have a letter of approval in your hands but getting the money out of the Accountant-General’s Office is another matter. The bureaucratic process, involving a web of officials, may take months, if not forever. Worse still, there are significant discontinuities between approved budget and released funds. As a result, many institutions are behind in the payment of staff salaries and contractors, not to speak of limited or no funds for overhead expenses.

There is no doubt that more institutions will further complicate the financial problems and increase the misery of superfluous oversights. This is where the establishment of more higher education institutions for purposes of inclusivity may be hampered by other problems.

In order for higher education to serve its purpose in Nigeria, serious steps should be taken to tackle several urgent problems. One is to increase funding for the institutions and make the funds available as and when due. Admittedly, at no time since independence has higher education been adequately funded. The funding problems increased with the establishment of more and more higher institutions. In the last few years, only a meagre 5 to 7 percent of the total budget was allocated to education, a far cry from UNESCO’s recommendation of 15-20 percent. Either the government increases the allocation substantially or allows federal higher institutions to charge more money for tuition and other fees.

The other is to streamline the oversight functions by reducing outside interference in the affairs of higher institutions. Whatever autonomy these institutions had before has been wiped out by undue interference and superfluous oversight functions. What makes the duplicated oversight duties ridiculous is that they are performed either by the Federal Ministry of Education or its Commissions or by committees of the National Assembly.

Finally, unless the government is satisfied with the reproduction of mediocrity in our higher institutions, a deliberate programme is needed to raise some of the institutions to world class status. That will be the subject of a future essay.

June 18, 2025
Tinubu at midterm: Like the economy, like the education system

It is all too easy to criticise President Bola Ahmed Tinubu that he has not done enough with the education sector after two years in office. But it will be irresponsible to say that he has done nothing. If he has made any mistake at all, it is in taking on too much, as if he could correct all the imbalances in the education sector all at once and within one or two tenures. As I pointed out last week, that is precisely the mistake he has made with the economy. The truth is that it will take long-term planning and effective implementation over at least a ten-year period to make appreciable progress across both sectors. However, considerable progress could still be made in particular areas in each sector.

Background

Like the economic sector, at no time in Nigerian history has the government given enough attention to the education sector as revealed in the budgetary allocation to education over the years. Take a full decade before Tinubu came to power. From 2012 to 2022, government expenditure on education decreased from 0.55% of GDP to 0.35%. However, these figures masked the annual Naira increase in the allocations due to increased revenues. For examples, the allocation to education was only N400.11 in 2012. However, more than double that figure (N923.79) was allocated to the sector in 2022. But while the 2012 figure represented about 8 percent of the total budget, the 2022 figure was only 5.39% of the total budget. Nevertheless, the inadequacy of these figures is highlighted by the United Nation’s recommendation of 4 to 6 percent of GDP or UNESCO’s 15-20 percent of the total budget.

Tinubu’s imprint on education so far

Tinubu inherited an education system in shambles, one in which union strikes became a regular tool for waking up the government to its responsibilities. To worsen the situation, he inherited a depressed economy and there were no reliable data for effective planning in the education sector. That is why one of Tinubu’s first moves was to establish a comprehensive National Education Data System that will provide a comprehensive census of all schools, students, teachers, and facilities across all levels of education in the country as such data were useful for planning and research purposes. It should not take too long for the results of the data collection to be shared.

In the meantime, Tinubu went ahead to establish the National Education Loan Fund to increase access to higher education. In 2025, as much as N58.4 billion was allocated for the loan scheme. As of May 21, 2025, nearly N57 billion had been disbursed to about 300,000 students in about 300 institutions.

Still in pursuance of access to higher education, Tinubu has also approved the establishment of many new higher education institutions, made up of 22 universities, 33 polytechnics and monotechnics, and 12 colleges of education. This aspect of Tinubu’s education venture has been criticized for at least two reasons: First, existing federal higher education institutions lack adequate funding, proper infrastructure, and necessary resources (labs, libraries, and necessary technologies of learning). Second, young graduates are no longer interested in a teaching career, which requires them to toil further for a doctorate degree only to earn the poor salaries their teachers earned. The result is that the new institutions are bound to face teacher shortages. Besides, the present generation of teachers in older institutions may be difficult to replace. This twin problem can only be exacerbated by creating more institutions.

There are two misconceptions about higher education in Nigeria. One is the mistaken belief that the larger the percentage of higher education among the citizens, the more progress the nation will make. Not true. Less than 40 percent of adults aged 25 and older in the United States have a bachelor’s degree or higher. Besides, the failure or drop-out rate in secondary schools is over 40 percent!

The second misconception about higher education in Nigeria is prevalent among politicians, especially governors and federal legislators. They think of a university, polytechnic, college of education, or an institute as a political good to be used as a constituency project. If you trace the history of the new institutions credited to Tinubu, you will discover that they were sponsored by one legislator or another. To be sure, some of the sponsors donate generously to their pet institutions, but such funding can only be for a limited time in the life of such institutions.

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Nevertheless, Tinubu has forged ahead with another neglected area of education—Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET). Only recently, at the instigation of the Minister of Education and TEFund sponsorship, the Chairpersons of Governing Councils of Polytechnics had a 5-day retreat to make suggestions to the President on how to move forward with the renewed focus. I wrote about the communique issued at the end of the retreat (see Revisiting polytechnic education in Nigeria, The Nation, March 26, 2025). According to the Executive Secretary of the National Board for Technical Education, Professor Idris Bugaje, Tinubu’s investment in technical education is “the best in the country’s history since the civil war.” Skills development and entrepreneurial education are the focal areas of the renewed focus on TVET. The ultimate goal is to impart the right skills and competencies for the job market, while also promoting opportunities for entrepreneurship and self-reliance.

Beyond linking technical education training to the job market, Tinubu is also interested in linking higher education with the agricultural value chain. To this end, a sum of N30 billion has been set aside for the nation’s 30 federal universities of agriculture to commence mechanized farming to improve the nation’s agricultural productivity. Similarly, medical schools will receive N17 billion to train healthcare professionals.

Furthermore, N100 billion has been allocated to school feeding for children in primary schools to provide needed nutrition and boost enrollment for some children who otherwise would be out-of-school.

The major problem with these efforts, including the proposed 12-4 educational system, is that none of them addresses the issue of excellence. There is no plan for the likes of Oxford, Cambridge, MIT or Berkeley, all public institutions, not to mention Harvard, Yale or Stanford, which are elite private institutions. Yet these are the institutions that have been producing the movers and shakers of their countries. We cannot continue to roll along with mediocre institutions and hope for a miraculous breakthrough, especially now that standards have been declining, rather than rising.

June 11, 2025
Critics of the midterm report

I was one of those who wondered why President Bola Ahmed Tinubu wanted to be Nigeria’s President in 2023, given all we knew then about the depressed state of the economy and the sheenanigans of Godwin Emefiele, then Governor of the Central Bank. My thinking then was simple: If Tinubu won and decided to focus on just one or two areas, such as electricity and infrastructure, and did extremely well, he would be accused of neglecting other sectors of the economy. Alternatively, if he chose to take every sector of the economy in stride for improvement, as he has been doing since inauguration, he would be accused of doing little or nothing at all, because virtually every sector was in shambles. That is where we are today. For example, only about 3,000MW of power was available for distribution when he assumed office in 2023. Today, double that amount (6,000MW) is being distributed. Yet, the difference is negligible because the base was too low to start with. That is the sad story of the entire economy.

Nevertheless, Tinubu’s midterm report has attracted more encouraging commendations from outside than from inside the country. External assessors, such as the World Bank, the IMF, and Moody’s ratings, are impressed by the economic outlook, based largely on possitive assessments of Tinubu’s economic policies and macro-economic outlook. While some internal economic-literates are also impressed with the macro-economic outlook, others focus on improvements in specific sectors, such as infrastructure and revenue generation.

However, there appears to be more condemnation than commendation for Tinubu’s midterm report at home. There are at least three major categories of negative critics of the report. They include (1) politicians, labour unions, and the elite; (2) the masses; and (3) the media. All the critics share two things in common—(1) they focus on microeconomic realities, typified by existential economic hardships anchored on high inflation and high cost of living, resulting from the removal of fuel subsidies and the harmonisation of foreign exchange, and (2) they fail to acknowledge that Tinubu commenced his administration on May 29, 2023, from a bankrupt economic base (briefly described below). Yet, that was the starting point for the external assessors, who saw major improvements to the base two years after restructuring the economy. It is, therefore, necessary to recall the economic base from which Tinubu started his administration in 2023 in order to properly situate reasonable assessments of his midterm report.

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A “dead economy”

On assumption of office, Tinubu inherited what a former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria and now Governor of Anambra State, Chuckwuma Soludo, described as a “dead economy”. It was typified by a $10 billion annual fuel subsidy; multiple foreign exchange rates floated by the Godwin Emefiele-led Central Bank of Nigeria, which promoted arbitrage and speculations; and a total debt profile of N80 trillion (N50 trillion external borrowing and N30 trillion Ways and Means!). In addition, unspecified trillions of Naira was spent on subsiding electricity. Even the CBN owed foreign airlines over $7 billion. Then there were the CBN’s ill-conceived e-Naira programme and Naira swap policies, which led to Naira scarcity well into Tinubu’s administration.

Along the line, the nation’s foreign reserve was drastically reduced from about $15 billion in 2015, when former President Muhammadu Buhari took office, to just under $4 billion, when he left office in 2023. As a result of all these economic distortions and heavy borrowings, Buhari left office with a debt service-to-revenue ratio of 96%! His administration already knew that a first line of economic rescue was to remove fuel subsidy. He failed to do so but left it for the succeeding government, by removing fuel subsidy from the budget as from June 2023.

Renewed Hope Agenda

Tinubu designed the Renewed Hope Agenda precisely to pull the sunken ship of the economy out of deep waters. From Day 1, he removed fuel subsidy to free money that is now being shared across the states. This was immediately followed by the harmonisation of the foreign exchange market in order to remove multiple exchange rates and allow market forces to dictate the selling and buying rates. The two measures brought immediate hardships as one led to a hike in the price of petroleum products, while the other led to the devaluation of the Naira. True, two years on, the cost of living remains high, but stability is returning to the market. Fuel price is coming down. The exchange rate has stabilised. Prices are coming down gradually. Investor confidence has returned, leading, for example, to over $8 billion new investments in the oil sector.

But, then, Tinubu has taken other measures to free more money. Many sectors of the economy have been restructured and their records digitized for accountability, transparency, and efficiency. They include the oil sector, tax assessment and collection, marine and blue economy, and the mining sector. There is now more synergy between monetary and fiscal policies. These measures are producing positive results already. For example, in quarter 1, 2025, alone, government revenue increased to over N6 trillion. Debt service-to-revenue ratio has been reduced from 96% to under 40%. The Yemi Cardoso-led CBN has offset the bank’s debt to foreign airlines. External reserve has grown fom a mere $4 billion to over $23 billion.

What is more, Tinubu has laid the foundation for prosperity, by creating several funding options. There is the Consumer Credit Corporation for financing micro, small, and mediu-sized enterprises; the Nigerian Education Loan Fund for providing access to higher education through long-term loans; and the N100 billion National Agricultural Development Fund. He has also laid the foundation for transition to clean energy programmes, by investing in solar energy for homes and industries and compressed natural gas for transport vehicles.

Politicians, Labour Unions, and the Elite

It is disingenous at best and mischievous at worst for this category of critics to ignore the depressed economic base described above, and the administration’s effort to pull the nation out of the hole. Yet, politicians, labour leaders, and the elite, who should know better, play ignorance, by capitalising on the short-term negative effects of Tinubu’s economic policies. In the attempt to convince ignorant people to believe their distorted narratives, they ignored improvements in the overall economy.

The masses

Poverty, under- and unemployment, illiteracy, and rural dwelling have created a wide gulf between the masses and government programmes. As a result, the majority have no idea what is going on. In most cases, information trickles down to them from political bosses and social media. Unfortunately, it is often distorted information, usually tailored to the disseminators’ point of view. These are mostly bread and butter citizens, who are not impressed by macro-economic outlook, whatever that means. They are concerned about the here and now. To the extent that they still cannot make ends meet, to that extent has the government failed.

The media

Mainstream and social media in general sided with the masses in the coverage of the midterm report. It is their conception of the goal of keeping the government accountable. For most columnists, what the government does right is immaterial. The story is in what it fails to do. It is as if insecurity, poor education funding, frequent power outage, and other socioconomic ills started under Tinubu in 2023. He must fix them all within two years! Yet, we know too well that it takes time for reforms to take hold and for their effects to trickle down to the grassroots.

What should be done

That’s why more should be done to reach the masses and the media from now on through periodic but regular outreach programmes. The media needs regular briefings from government, while the masses need information beyond mainstream and social media. But they need the dividends of democracy even more, and in more concrete forms—skills acqusition, jobs, and various forms of social protection, possibly through channels beyond partisan politics.

June 4, 2025
President Tinubu: Beyond the mid-term

In a few hours, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu will have completed two years in office. What are his notable achievements? What areas require attention and improvement in the next two years?

A review of the past two years reveals a significant redefinition of conventional wisdom in key areas, particularly the economy and infrastructure. The removal of the petroleum products subsidy has been a defining point of the new administration. The preceding Buhari administration had already placed the incoming administration in a challenging position, by stopping allocations for “subsidy” after a May 31, 2023. President Tinubu demonstrated boldness in its risk-taking by addressing this issue head-on. Could the gradual phase-out approach employed in Chile over eight years have been a viable alternative? Unfortunately, Nigeria’s weak institutions and distorted economy render the Chilean model impracticable. Quarterly price adjustments, as implemented in Chile, would have been chaotic in Nigeria; therefore, the government’s decisive action, although risky, was the most sensible approach.

Similarly, eliminating arbitrage-fuelled foreign exchange manipulation and speculation was a necessary measure, albeit a disruptive one. The country was on the brink of a balance of payments crisis, leaving little room for manoeuvre. These two policies have had far-reaching dislocating effects. The government has had to manage these consequences in a country lacking even the most basic social safety nets. Consequently, purchasing power parity has been impacted, and painful adjustments in living standards have been necessary.

Looking ahead to the post-midterm period, the government would do well to redirect the savings from subsidy elimination into more comprehensive social safety nets, such as food banks and transportation access mechanisms for school children. Merging the Ministry of Labour and Humanitarian Affairs into a single Ministry for the Social Economy could facilitate this process. This approach, inspired by the Scandinavian countries and increasingly adopted in Latin America, notably Brazil, Chile, and Peru, would integrate humanitarian and disaster management efforts into social and economic development.

Despite current challenges, the government merits accolades for implementing structural economic reforms. Notable achievements include significant debt repayment, rising foreign reserves, growing investor confidence, expansive infrastructural development, youth empowerment schemes and student loans. The government’s commitment to recapitalizing Development Finance Institutions, such as the Bank of Agriculture and Bank of Industry, is commendable.

Deferring immediate gratification will enable Nigeria to accumulate patient capital for long-term infrastructural development, surpassing the benefits of seeking external “Direct Foreign Investment.” The Brazilian Bank for Sustainable Development (BNDES) serves as an exemplary model, having been consistently capitalized since its inception in 1952. BNDES can now offer loans with tenures of up to fifty years, enabling Brazil to develop its infrastructure using internal financing mechanisms and becoming a competitive economy that has lifted tens of millions of people out of poverty.

Nigeria can adopt a similar approach by recapitalizing its development finance institutions. Continuous recapitalization of development finance institutions will revitalize Nigeria’s struggling infrastructure. Within the 2025–2027 period, equal emphasis should be placed on international trade, monetary policy, and fiscal policies, as part of the economic tripod. Although improvements have been made in non-oil exports, Nigeria still lags in international trade. To address this, the country must shift into “export or perish” mode by revitalizing and professionalizing all agencies involved in the export value chain, including the Standard Organisation of Nigeria, Customs, and the Nigerian Ports Authority. These agencies must be given specific timelines to streamline export procedures.

The establishment of a Board of Customs, Trade, and Tariffs is crucial for achieving an export-oriented economy. This board will serve as the focal point for export strategy, comprising experts in international trade and consultants in specialized areas. Dr. Jumoke Oduwole, the Minister for Trade and Industry, should prioritize the establishment of this board. By doing so, the Ministry will operate similarly to Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry. Nigeria must capitalize on the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCTA) and prepare for the potential non-renewal of the United States Africa Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) in September 2025.

In the next two years, the government must focus on quadrupling the value addition of Agro-Industrial exports and transition away from being “hewers of wood and fetchers of water.” Brazil offers a good lesson by shifting from exporting raw cocoa to producing chocolates, thereby creating hundreds of thousands of jobs across the value chain. Exporting non-oil products remains the most viable solution for Nigeria in the immediate and medium term, requiring utmost seriousness.

The government must also revamp the educational curriculum to enable Nigeria to benefit from the growing outsourced economy. By leveraging its English language skills, Nigeria can create at least half a million outsourced jobs, each earning a minimum of $400 per month, within the next seven years.

While progress has been made in internal security, an institutional revamp in thinking and philosophy is necessary. The government must focus on deploying more boots on the ground and intensifying the training and utilization of special forces to combat terrorists and insurgents. Nigeria has only about 400,000 policemen, whereas Egypt, with half of Nigeria’s population, has 1.7 million policemen. The inadequacy of police numbers has placed the miscreants at an advantage. Devolving policing powers to the state level will allow state governments to have operational control of the policing system. This will enable the effective gathering of local intelligence, which the Federal Police cannot accomplish. Nigeria must move away from the post-1966 mindset of a unitary, Bonapartist, conception of the state, which has not worked and will not work. The UK, USA, Australia, and Canada’s devolution of policing systems should serve as models for Nigeria to adapt and implement urgently.

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Fighting terrorists, bandits, and kidnappers is different from fighting conventional warfare. The Nigerian military cannot win such a war using the old order of battle, without the expensive, tech-rich weapons of the West with their fleet of Tucanos, Chinooks and C17’s. Our military has to be redesigned to be more agile. The Taliban won with Toyota Hilux and hand propelled arms. We must accept that we are in asymmetrical warfare for which our troops are not fully prepared. There must be specialized forces to combat guerrilla warfare. There must be a reordering of the cost of governance to put an extra 15,000 boots on the ground ever year. The Defence industries must also be beefed up so that arms and ammunitions can be produced locally and in greater numbers.

As far as infrastructure is concerned, we must now place emphasis on rail and water transportation. Concessioning could be done on major highways as in the US so that a tolling system can be used to recoup funds to be used in maintenance. The government should set up a three trillion-naira concessioning funds for contractors to use to build infrastructure they will now use tolling to repay over a 25–30-year period. This has been done successfully by BNDES in Brazil and other places. The infrastructure deficits can only be abridged by building up “Patient Capital” to finance long term infrastructure projects. Given the infrastructural deficit, a trillion-naira fund can only scratch the surface.

The country must also develop a Green Economy by developing local raw materials to produce solar panels, batteries, inverters etc., thereby using the economies of scale to bring down prices. To achieve a diverse energy base, a green economy will also include wind turbines to use along the coastline for electricity sufficiency. The recent adoption and ratification of National Integrated Electricity Policy shows the President has taken his time to study the power conundrum we are in. This policy has a goal of attracting $122.2 billion in investments to overhaul Nigeria’s power sector in line with global best practices. Unlocking a total investment of $122.2bn will help diversify Nigeria’s energy sources, reduce dependence on the national grid, and enhance the overall stability and sustainability of the nation’s energy infrastructure.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Nigeria First policy unveiled recently had all is poised to accommodate these suggestions. With zeal and commitment and effective project implementation, a new Nigeria is possible.

May 28, 2025
The 2025 JAMB technical glitch

It was as if that was what detractors had been waiting for—the server glitch that affected the results of a small fraction of the 2025 UTME candidates, specifically in CBT centres in Lagos and Southeast states. The detractors included ethnic jingoists, cheaters, unreflective critics, and university autonomy advocates.

The criticisms came pouring in as soon as the results were released, showing a high failure rate in which nearly 78 percent of the candidates scored below the 50 percentile mark of 200 out of a total of 400 possible marks. It must be JAMB’s fault, they proclaimed. No one wanted to admit that JAMB had succeeded in cutting down on exam malpractices, by setting up CCTV cameras in CBT centres, by establishing various malpractice detection methods, and, above all, by eliminating so-called Miracle Centres, where standard exam protocols were suspended for a fee.

Moreover, critics overlooked the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on educational outcome: The majority of the UTME candidates this year were the high school students in JSS1 in September 2019, who missed school for two or more years because of the pandemic. The rough patches of their foundation years in secondary school could not but take a toll on their performance down the line.

The fierce debate over performance led to the revelation of a computer glitch, which affected about 380,000 out of a total of 1,955,069 candidates, who sat for the examinations. 206,610 of the affected candidates wrote their exams in Lagos, while the remaining 173,397 wrote theirs across the five states of the Southeast. At the height of the outcry against mediocre performance, JAMB Registrar, Professor Is’ahq Oloyede, quickly advanced JAMB’s usual post-test review, detected the error, and summoned a press conference to reveal the findings. In the process. Oloyede took responsibility, apologised, and even chocked on the apology. Besides, he offered immediate remedies, including the retake of the exams by the affected candidates.

Regrettably, some critics still lost their bearing completely. Some professors, legislators, and armchair pundits from the Southeast ethnicised the problem, by claiming that the Yoruba Registrar, was motivated by ethnic considerations. A Professor specifically claimed that the Igbo in the Southeast and Lagos were the target of his mischief.

A respected columnist ignored Oloyede’s apology, by claiming that Oloyede had put the blame on God. The columnist merely parsed the title of JAMB’s post on X, which reads “Man proposes, God disposes.” It was an unfortunate heading because it is subject to variable interpretations. The said columnist opted for the literal meaning. However, as an English proverb, it basically means that even the best-laid plans can fail.

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In this particular case, Oloyede went to great lengths in explaining how human error, not God, caused the glitch: “A major operational flaw was uncovered during the implementation phase (of changes introduced to promote system efficiency). The system patch necessary to support both shuffling and source-based validation … was not applied to the LAG (Lagos) cluster, which services centres in Lagos and the South-East … As a result, 157 centres operated using outdated server logic that could not appropriately handle the new answer submission/marking structure. This affected an estimated 379,997 candidates.”

Ethnic sympathisers are not the only ones who ignored Oloyede’s explanations. There are also university autonomy advocates, who argued that JAMB should be scrapped to give way for the University Senate to conduct admission examinations through their admissions offices and admit students who meet their criteria. Their central argument is that universities are stifled by the Big-Brother role of JAMB on admissions and the NUC on curriculum, admissions quota, and even teaching qualifications.

I chorused such arguments until my post-retirement stint as Program Director or member of Governing Councils in some universities. The level of decadence I observed is unprintable. Suffice it to say that the level of corruption and the erosion of values I noticed within the universities led me to wonder what would happen to higher education in the country, without the oversight functions of the NUC and JAMB. Rather than scrap either or both, the focus should be on further streamlining their functions in order to enhance the role of University Senates and their respective admission offices. Moreover, membership of University Governing Councils should be less politicised so that their members could exercise effective control over the University Management.

Operators of Miracle Centers also jumped on the bandwagon of JAMB critics. The JAMB computer glitch offered a golden opportunity for criticising the institution that has all but eliminated their source of income. It was once reported that Miracle Centers charged as high as N200,00 per candidate for the UTME. Incidentally, those Miracle Centres were said to be rampant in the Southeast at the time when some states there produced among JAMB highest scorers.

Ardent critics of JAMB also included some parents, especially those who patronised Miracle Centres, bribed invigilators, employed exam takers, or besieged admission offices on behalf of their children. To be sure, some of them had genuine complaints this time around, but many joined the bandwagon of critics for selfish reasons.

The real problem is that this year’s JAMB computer glitch may have sowed the seed of distrust that may erode confidence in JAMB’s work as in other government institutions. Nevertheless, those who may be thinking along such lines should pause to reflect on two major developments. First, it should be recalled that Oloyede brought significant technological improvements to JAMB’s operations, expanded its physical infrastructure, and imbued the organisation with uncommon culture of transparency, accountability, and effective service delivery. Above all, under his leadership, JAMB had remitted nearly N60 billion to federal government coffers as against a paltry N55 million in the 40 years before Oleyede came on board.

The second development has to do with computer technology. Who among us has not experienced a glitch or two on our computer, printer, tablet, or phone? Hasn’t your phone or an App frozen on you before? If a glitch could occur on an individual’s mobile phone, imagine the ripple effects of a glitch on a network of computers on a large scale.

Such was the case with this year’s SAT exam, taken across the globe. On March 8, 2025, a glitch in the Blue-book App used to keep time, among other services, caused the digital SAT to automatically submit tests early. An incorrect setting in the software caused the glitch, leading to the submission of tests at 11:00am local time, regardless of whether students had finished. The error made its way across the globe. The College Board, which administers the exams, responded promptly, by offering students a full refund and a voucher to retake the exam in as early as two weeks.

A similar fiasco befell Chinese students in 2023, when their computer screen abruptly froze on them while taking the Advanced Placement examinations. On detecting the error, the authorities organised a makeup exam for those affected by the glitch.

In both cases, no one politicised the error and no one asked for anyone’s head. Everyone understood that computer glitches could occur anywhere and at anytime. Oloyede’s JAMB acted in line with international best practices. He should be commended, rather than condemned.

May 21, 2025
What exactly does Pat Utomi want?

Patrick Okedinachi Utomi, popularly known as Pat Utomi, is a professed intellectual, who has been walking the corridors of power and business since his twenties. Born in 1956, he was drafted into politics early to serve in the Shehu Shagari administration (1979-1983). He would later serve in the Goodluck Jonathan administration. Along the line, he also served on the management or Boards of various companies, beginning with the defunct Volkswagen of Nigeria Limited, where he was Assistant General Manager of Corporate Affairs. He was not even 30 yet.

Now at almost 70, he cannot imagine himself far from either corridor, especially the political corridor to which he has turned maximum attention in the last 20 years or so. No one doubts that Utomi wants the best for Nigeria. However, genuine intellectuals often cringe when they find him inserting himself in discussions about power and even seeking political power for himself. It makes observers think that the best he wants for Nigeria is to create room for himself or his associates in power.

This is one of several reasons why the criticism of his newfound approach to speaking truth to power has been vociferous. Of course, the power he wants to criticize is the one held by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the All Progressives Congress, who defeated the candidate of Utomi’s party, the Labour Party, in the 2023 presidential election. Nothing, of course, is wrong with the Labour Party, and other opposition parties, criticizing the government in power.

But there is something wrong with Utomi’s novel approach. Noticing that LP, his latest political party, was crumbling, he chose to go beyond it, instead of helping to rebuild it. Observers quickly read through him and concluded that such a use-and-dump approach is consistent with Utomi’s political trajectory—the tendency to run away from a political party that does not, or may not, favour him anymore.

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Utomi’s political trajectory speaks volume in this regard. In 2007, he was the candidate of the African Democratic Party for President. He lost. In the following election in 2011, Utomi had moved to join another party, the Social Democratic Mega Party, and was adopted as its presidential candidate. He lost in the general election and the SDMP died with that election. Sensing that the presidency might not be his lot soon, he veered to the governorship. So, in 2019, he joined the APC and obtained the governorship ticket of a faction of the party in Delta state. Eventually, that faction was discredited.

Back to the presidency again. In 2021, in preparation for the 2023 presidential election, Utomi joined with others in seeking to form yet another mega party. At the end of the day, however, he joined a fourth political party, the Labour Party, to contest for its presidential ticket. He claimed he stepped down for Peter Obi during the primary. He would later join him in the campaigns. Now that the Labour Party is in turmoil, Utomi sensed that it may no longer be an appropriate vehicle for him to criticize the President. He needs a clean slate!

Now you might ask: What alternative golden ideas just occurred to Utomi on the eve of President Tinubu’s midterm mark, when the political tempo has been rising toward the 2027 presidential election? There’s nothing bad, of course, in criticizing an administration at anytime. What is rather strange about Utomi’s plan is the process. He began in April with what he termed “Freedom Converge”, a mobilised group of 7.2 million Nigerians to converge on Abuja to reclaim the country from “entrenched systems of state capture and self-serving leadership”. The protest, he emphasized, will last nearly one month. And here’s a real threat: “If they try to stop us, somebody may stop them. Let them be sure of that.”

But before the planned protest, another idea. Within three weeks of announcing Freedom Converge, Utomi launched the “Big Tent Coalition Shadow Government” as a “national emergency response” to President Tinubu’s policy failures. The group, drawn from various opposition parties, would meet every week to deliberate on policy failures in every sector of national life and propose alternatives. All well and good. But why Shadow Government in a presidential system? Even in parliamentary democracies, where the concept of shadow cabinet belongs, members of such a cabinet hold elected political positions in their party, but their party is not in government. No matter your status in the opposition party, you cannot belong to the shadow cabinet unless you have been elected. Any shadow cabinet or shadow government beyond this established norm is viewed as subversive.

Of what use is a name that raises eyebrows which may obscure whatever good intentions may be behind the formation of Utomi’s group? Developments like this one that make many a professor cringe at Utomi’s actions and pronouncements.

Some fellow professors have argued that Utomi really has little or nothing to offer beyond drawing attention to himself. When I argued otherwise, they directed me to his old columns and TV programme, named Patito’s Gang. Before he made his point in his columns, he would take you to the latest country he visited, the latest political figure he met, his most recent conference at a topflight university, or the most recent book he read! A similar tactic pervaded Patito’s Gang, his defunct TV programme.

While these media outings may brand him as a public intellectual, his political participations betray his intellectual disposition. An elder statesman once asked me, “How many true professors can you name who jumped from one political party to another three or four times in search of a presidential or governorship ticket? What’s the difference between Utomi and Atiku Abubakar in that respect?”

These are questions that raise other questions: What exactly does Utomi want? He alone can answer that question.

As I indicated last week, no political noise should be ignored as election time approaches. Some noises are full of sound and fury but they signify nothing. Other noises are symbolic in that they stand for something else. In politics, neither type of noise should be ignored. In particular, Pat Utomi’s political noise should not be ignored because it is more than noise.

May 14, 2025