The Nation Newspaper

Category: Wednesday

NASS: Police fingerprints, face shots, DNA databases please

Fingerprints were studied off and on since the year 1200 when they appeared in a Chinese novel. In 1788, JC Mayer confirmed that fingerprints were unique to individuals and between 1880-1886, Henry Faulds suggested to the UK Metropolitan Police its use in crime detection. An Argentine police officer, Jaun Vucetich classified fingerprints and successfully, for first time used them in crime detection in 1892 by convicting a woman, Fransisca Rojas of murdering her two sons.

Francis Galton published an 1892 book titled Finger Prints. In India 1858 Sir William J. Herschel used fingerprints on documents to prevent fraud and in 1897 India opened a Fingerprint Bureau for Criminal Identification. Since 1902, Great Britain and other countries and now INTERPOL have placed great reliance on NATIONAL CRIMINAL FINGERPRINT /MUGSHOT/DNA DATABASE BANKS. Disgracefully in 2025, Nigeria does not have a criminal fingerprint or photo (mugshot) database- jobs for thousands of technologists. No Nigerian police station offers this routinely.

Why this introduction? Because FINGERPRINTING/FACE PHOTOGRAPHS/DNA ARE NOT NUCLEAR PHYSICS EXCEPT IN AFRICA apparently. Every present activity has an origin in someone’s work in the historic past. Nigeria seems to resist being brought into even ‘Ancient and Modern’ crime detection methodologies, though they are educated daily by TV crime programmes. The very first law of crime is to cordon off the crime scene, wear gloves and collect items and examine or ‘dust’ the area for fingerprints

No doubt there are modern security professionals in the Nigerian Police. Some police, criminals themselves, fear that fingerprinting will catch them. What powerful force prevents the Nigerian Police entering the 21st Century? Although there are budget allocations for Police Crime Laboratories, fund diversion and underfunding cripple crime detection.

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I remember when my first cousin, my father’s full sister’s son, Funsho Williams, a Gregorian of athletic and academic distinction and Lagos State governorship candidate was brutally executed, murdered, assassinated (you choose) on 27-7-2006 in Dolphin Estate Lagos, in a still unsolved politically-motivated crime. I was shocked at the number, in their hundreds, of people, police (high and low officer, men and women), politicians and their aides and hangers on – all eager to be press recorded, neighbours, gawkers and murderers (most likely) who were seen trooping in and out, marching all over the blood-stained upstairs landing, ruining the crime scene. The access from the adjourning part of the duplex would have had uncontaminated DNA evidence – but no fingerprinting and no DNA till today 19 years later. Worldwide, ‘COLD CASES’ evidence awaits future investigative techniques. Here, we have no storage mentality, zero storage space and throw critical evidence away. TAPING THE CRIME SCENE IN POLICE INVESTIGATION 1-0-1. BUT DO WE EVEN HAVE LABELLED ‘POLICE: KEEP OFF’ TAPE?

We have learnt no lessons because recently there was a kidnap homeowner victim who was held in a house for eight days. Another victim, a doctor, was murdered at home. Both these locations would have had fingerprint and DNA evidence. Nationwide, violence, kidnapping, sexual abuse, traffickers, body part dealers as well as blatant terrorism thrive.

Our gallant security services must be supported by 2025 investigation methods including gloves, boots, masks, hamzat suits, ‘A CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION BOX’ and BACKUP FORENSIC LABORATORIES capable of taking photographs of victims and surroundings, labelling and taking samples for later analysing for fingerprints, drugs (medical and stimulants), alcohol, chemical poisons, blood group, infections, etc.

The best Nigerian based laboratories now are NAFDAC Laboratories, Police Lab in Oshodi both sometimes attacked, in universities, teaching hospitals especially the DNA Lab in Redeemer’s University, in the private sector especially the food and beverages and petroleum industry. THE POLICE CAN GO INTO IMMEDIATE PARTNERSHIP with these until Police Labs are upgraded.

The National Assembly recently called for a 2025 review of the ‘Security Architecture’ in the face of rising terrorism. Nigeria’s terrorists repeat the cycle of capture, re-education, release, re-terrorising, recapture etc. Database identification of everyone in Nigeria is key to security. The National Assembly must include greater police crime detection capacity & capabilities as part of the strategic 2025 security architecture upgrade.

Historically, Nigeria escaped the shame of its 50-year chronic administrative lapse, neglecting to provide landlines for the masses as it rode the crest of the cell phone wave. This move, by 2025, has empowered almost every adult Nigerian, from pauper to with communication capacity.

Today, Nigeria missed the crest of the computer wave to educate its youth but can and must now ride the new crest of the ARTIFICAL INTELLEGENCE, AI, wave available to our government, police force and security forces to hugely accelerate the capture and quickly expose violent and impersonation 419 criminals by comparing their data to a harnessed and ALREADY AVAILABLE BIODATA BASES across several areas. These include FINGERPRINTS, DIGITAL FACIAL INFORMATION FROM very expensive previous registration exercises, costing probably trillions of naira to date, for DRIVING LICENCE, SIM CARD, PASSPORT, VOTER CARD, EXAMINATION REGISTRATION, TAX NUMBER, BANK, NATIONAL IDENTITY NUMBER CARD, SCHOOL AND WORKPLACE identity.

Of course, Nigeria faces similar hacking threats and ‘computer crash’ risks as other countries. But with 330 proudly Nigerian languages at our disposal, it should be possible to make our passwords and codes so unique and quickly changeable that we could be adequately firewalled and protected. ONE WAY IS TO KEEP THE ENTIRE DATABASE fully backed up, separated into multiple independent segments; 26 segments by alphabet for example and by having several regularly updated copies completely off the INTERNET AND ONLY ALLOW OFF GRID ACCESS.

June 18, 2025
Tinubu Administration at mid-term (2): The security question

Given the bitter fallout that trailed the 2023 general elections, dispassionate assessments of what’s been achieved in the first two years of President Bola Tinubu’s administration are rare. Admirers, predictably, go into overdrive in gushing praise, while critics swear Nigeria is back in the stone ages. The truth lies somewhere in between.

What is clear is that significant progress has been made at the macroeconomic level, with much expectation that these improvements would quickly manifest at microeconomic level. The masses of the people often grade success by things they can relate to – prices of staples, cost of transportation, cost of utilities etc.

The messaging has been that after initial challenges, the economy is on the mend. The same cannot be said about insecurity – an area in which the administration has been locked in mortal combat. It’s been a mixed bag of good news one day, very bad reports the next. It’s the reason why President Tinubu who was originally scheduled to be in Kaduna State today, has made a detour to Benue on a condolence visit of sorts.

While hitherto volatile areas like Southern Kaduna have witnessed a recession in killings, and swaggering bandits in the Northwest look like they are in retreat, bloodletting in the North-Central resurfaced with a vengeance to blight the modest feel-good factor around the second anniversary.

Early in April, an attack by anonymous gunmen on six villages in the Bokkos area of Plateau State left 52 people dead and over 2,000 displaced. This incident recalls one in this same district in December 2023 that produced 100 fatalities.

Barely, two weeks after the May 29 festivities and a couple of days following the June 12 democracy celebrations, another bloody excursion by a band of killers claimed over 150 lives in Yelwata community, Guma Local Government Area of Benue State. Both incidents are believed to have been perpetrated by herders in their unending battles with farmers in the zone.

It is easy to blame the incumbent administration for not stamping out the carnage with a flick of its fingers, yet the reality is there’s something deeper going on that would take more than a presidential order to address. It’s a problem that was there before the onset of the Fourth Republic and has resisted the largely ad-hoc solutions thrown at it over time.

It is estimated that over the last three decades, more than 4,500 lives have been lost in Plateau State in unrelenting violence between ethnic groups. I don’t have the death toll for Benue State over the same period, but suspect they mirror those of its next door neighbour.

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Along with the Boko Haram insurgency in the Northeast, the farmer-herder conflict in the Middle Belt helped to cement the image of incompetence that enveloped the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) administration headed by Goodluck Jonathan.

It was a headache that the first All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, Muhammadu Buhari, made one of three pillars of the 2014/2015 campaign platform. By the time he was leaving office, insecurity was back as a cornerstone of the 2022/2023 campaigns.

In the final year of Buhari’s tenure, there were headline-grabbing incidents that showed his administration had only taken one step forward and two backwards. For instance, on 28 March, 2022, terrorists ambushed a passenger train traveling between Abuja and Kaduna. They killed some passengers and abducted scores of people.

What followed was six months of negotiations, and suspected payment of ransom. The hostages would be released in batches – with the last batch of 23 persons being freed in October.

On June 5, 2022, a terror attack at a Catholic Church in Owo, Ondo State, shook the nation to its roots. Unidentified gunmen casually walked into the church and mowed down more than 30 people.

Things were so bad that even Buhari’s home state of Katsina was not left out. Up till the 2023 polls, it was battling kidnappings, mass abductions and cattle rustling. The then president had all of eight years to address the issue; it was a measure of how much success he achieved that the problem returned to his successor’s in-box as a welcome gift.

In the last two years some progress has been made with the government reporting thousands of terrorists and bandits killed. A couple of weeks back, Zamfara State Governor, Dauda Lawal, was crowing about the return of peace to a community that had been ripped apart by the activities of bandits in illegal mining sites, as well as the long running feud between the Hausa and Fulani.

Contrariwise, the likes of Borno State Governor, Babagana Zulum, were suddenly raising the alarm about a resurgence of attacks by Boko Haram and ISWAP elements. Similar activities have been reported in some of the Islamists old stomping grounds like Adamawa and Yobe States. And, now, the old patterns of killings have resurfaced in Benue and Plateau.

The same helplessness noticed under Buhari and his predecessors seems to have reared its head. Each cycle of slaughter sows seeds of retribution which the butchers are ever willing to water with blood – patiently overseeing its sprouting into another round of bloodshed.

High profile visits by the leadership of security agencies haven’t stopped anything. The Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Olufemi Oluyede, made a public show of relocating to the troubled region. This is a hackneyed manoeuvre supposed to create an impression of action, but doesn’t change much. Under Buhari, security chiefs were often ordered to relocate to theatres of conflict to little effect.

Today, we have the egg-in-the-face situation where the Army Chief, with all the might of his office, is on the scene and right under his nose shadowy killers have pulled of one the worst incidents of slaughter in the nation’s history.

Nigeria faces a very grave situation in the North-Central zone; one that’s been decades in the making. It shouldn’t be manipulated for advantage because members of the political elite in all parties had their chance to resolve the problem whilst in government over the last half century, but failed to do so.

It’s no mystery that any solution to the problem would have to deal with issues surrounding land use between farmers and herders. While the former are aggrieved that cattle casually destroy crops in which much has been invested, the latter argue that killing their animals or even the pastoralists to make up for the damage is unjust. They insist that places where these disputes have played out were grazing routes demarcated by the authorities eons ago.

In reaction, we’ve seen government make the case for ranching as a way of weaning herders from the out-dated practice of roaming cattle across the country. It has even gone further to create a Livestock Development Ministry. While these measures could have an impact over time, there are other things that can be done in the short term – with telling effect – where there’s political will.

One such thing is breaking the cycle of retribution. Every round of killings only leaves the victims crying for vengeance. But this unending bloodletting is not just mindless; it’s futile as it never restores what’s been lost. Local communities and leaders at all levels have to resolve to break the cycle at some point and begin the process of healing and forgiveness. Now is a good time to do so.

Aside the herders and farmers, it’s no secret that politicians have been enablers of notorious gang leaders across the zone. The late, unlamented Gana reportedly had close ties with well-known politicians in Benue and his successors-in-crime are said to be patronised by some of the individuals now shedding crocodile tears. They can help the process of change by distancing themselves from known criminals.

Lastly, while everyone claims to know who is responsible for some of the killings, very few have been apprehended and made to face the music. Given the gravity of crimes being committed in the North-Central zone, people need to be held to account and pay a commensurate price. Until the killers and their sponsors are brought to justice, there would be no let-up in this recurring national shame.

June 18, 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
Naira ; Uwais; CBN; $38.32b Fx; Mokwa

We do have good leaders, we just do not follow. Nigeria’s former, Chief Justice of Nigeria, CJN, Mohammed Uwais dies at 88, appreciated supervising and delivering a good Electoral Reform Report in 2008, disgracefully still not fully implemented. May he RIPP.

Foreign reserves rise to $38.32b. This is good especially after settling the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and settling past Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) mismanagement and debt to airlines and other forex debts and then properly doing the CBN’s duty of receiving forex inflows and promptly paying legitimate and approved forex demands. The foreign reserves target for the CBN, and the government should be $50b minimum. This should be government’s minimum target in order to defend and improve our naira, supposed to be our national pride.

Our political class should be informed that, for our population size, we actually need $200b foreign reserves as our gold standard to protect the economy. Nigeria needs a compulsory percentage of forex earnings saving scheme to achieve this. Or we can make ‘foreign reserves’ the 38th state of Nigeria and allocate monthly to it like other states.

We must commend the CBN for fighting-the-good-fight with Nigeria’s greed and corruption-driven protected powerful forex cartels fighting back to preserve and grow their hugely expensive ‘forex middleman status’ which precipitated economically destructive black-market rates.

In the old days, it was the forex cartels crashing the naira to horrendous black market rates, destroying the value of the naira – financial terrorism. After the forex cartels repeatedly and greedily increased the black market, or parallel market rate margin, the CBN too kept crashing the naira towards the black market rate which continued to fall until the CBN almost eliminated the difference. We have all suffered for the callousness of the forex cartels as they destabilised our lives with the devaluation of our incomes, pensions, rents and purchasing power all spreading poverty. Fortunately, this tactic of CBN ensured financial ruin also for forex cartels which have suffered more as their self-created criminal enterprise, collapsed from billions being extracted from Nigerians daily to almost zero.

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Nigerians may not know but Nigeria’s corruption has created several layers of ‘banking fraud’ which increase the cost of the naira and foreign exchange that exist in no other country. There is no black market in most other countries. The currency is the currency in most countries. In Nigeria, our bankers weaponised new notes under their control, withdrew the mint fresh notes from paying out by the bank teller over the banking counter, hoarded the new notes, made them scarce and then criminally created an army of usually young ladies specifically to carry out a financial crime of selling new naira notes. To this we must add the past criminal allocation of forex at CBN and through banks in exchange for financial reward-another layer of financial fraud.

The government is at a crossroads. It has billions of weakened naira pouring in from the ‘subsidy withdrawal’ and other dollar incomes like international remittances. If the CBN manages to improve the value of the naira, that naira amount will reduce funds going to the federal and states and LGAs. Nigeria’s local debts in pensions and to contractors are in naira. It does not matter the value to the dollar on that day of payment. So, the dilemma at CBN is: having defeated the forex cartels, will they stay dead or are they just dormant, biding their time only to resurrect when the CBN tries to improve value of the naira?

In addition, will the political machinery in Nigeria, so full of multibillions EFCC revealed corruption and ‘cash and carry’ mentality allow the naira to improve? Can they cope with their dollars hoarded abroad being worth less naira in future? A strengthening of the naira is imperative for Nigeria’s dignity. Your country is currency! The fear is that whatever improvements are made, will they be abandoned when the pendulum of political power swings elsewhere, as usually happens in Nigeria. Why should CBN and government and Nigeria rebuild the treasury, forex reserves and naira value only for it all to be officially looted in an immediate subsequent regime?

From a German immigrant descendant president, the US ban on Harvard international students may be interpreted as pathological jealousy of Obama’s Harvard success, just as he craves a Nobel Prize – already won by Obama. Or is he just a failed university owner enacting the BHB-Bring Him Down vengeance-is-mine syndrome. The US has also introduced a 3.5% charge on international remittances to non-US citizens. This double taxation will marginally reduce the value of US-Nigeria remittances. Could the long-predicted very public breakup in the ‘Muskmania Matter’ be extreme playacting, an Oscar winning ‘media deception performance’ ‘let’s pretend to fight and separate’ photo trick?

The Mokwa flood disaster death toll rose to 230 dead, 500 missing. Is aid being delivered to all the needy in a speedy and sympathetic manner? These people are not beggars, but victims. We are disgusted with disaster relief in the past and insist that accountability and monitoring bring transparency. It is a huge task to cater for the immediate, mid- and long-term needs from daily meals, shelter, rebuilding homes and infrastructure. Qualified distressed citizens must be included in their own recovery and care so as to inject funds back into their pockets and give them a sense of dignity, not just handouts.

There will be many criminals stealing aid packages. This is why using affected citizens important.

June 11, 2025
Mokwa; 21 youth; Adesina/AfDB; EXPO-WAEC

The terrible Mokwa, Niger State, flood claiming approximately 200 lives and 3,000 displaced, with much destruction, was complicated by a dam collapse. Just last year, a team examined all dams in Nigeria following a similar dam collapse. We presume the team was made up of engineers and technical staff and not politicians. What was the verdict then on the dam which collapsed just last week? Were any emergency measures taken to strengthen dams made vulnerable by age, abandoned maintenance or the added water volumes of climate change?

Maintenance saves lives. Underbudgeting, stealing or undercutting maintenance budgets has been a bane of governance since the colonialists handed over ‘maintenance’ as a main leg of government policy. Our civil servants and politicians hate ‘maintenance strategies’ and constantly ask: ‘WHY MAINTAIN, REPAIR or REFURBISH?’ They prefer to allow the collapse of all infrastructure like dams, buildings, office content and roads under their supervision so as to illegally and criminally justify approval of criminally inflated contracts for ‘REPLACEMENT.’ This is why we mostly build the same colonial roads and bridges repeatedly, and not enough new roads and bridges in new directions.

Horrifyingly, a second set of youth die in a road crash, this time 21 Fellow Nigerian Youth, starry-eyed, victorious after years of teamwork and dawn-to-dusk painful and costly athletic training, discipline and self-denial. They were returning from the 2025 National Sports Festival held in Ogun State to Kano, having placed 17th with 1 Gold, 3 Silver and 6 Bronze medals. We don’t know if the medal winners died or survived, but that is not the point. The question is, was this a needless, senseless, totally preventable deadly disaster?

This accident, occurring just 40km to the destination, is barely 1-2wks after 10 students attending a competition in Lagos died in a road crash. One time is a mistake, twice is over-confidence or incompetence! Spare a prayer for the bereaved families. We must be told who or what was at fault, and exonerate the driver if he is innocent. However, if he or any other driver or road user is guilty or found wanting, then the law must take its course.

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Government drivers, instead of being exemplary, are well known for cutting corners, jumping traffic, blaring horns and using their taxpayer -paid security officials to terrify, torment and terrorise we taxpayers, considered lesser road-user status mortals, in order to ‘clear-the-road’ because of their ‘important cargo/passengers’ or ‘superior number plate’ or ‘government sign’ on their vehicle. It is unlikely that the Kano Sports Commission bus had any escort so the driver must be questioned, if he survived, as well as other sports commission officials, eyewitnesses among the survivors and other road users. Was ‘driver fatigue’ a factor?

Nigeria must thank and honour Dr Akinwumi Adesina, Nigeria’s shining agriculture, and now financial guru, and former Nigerian Minister of Agriculture, as he exits, in glory and triumph, the African Development Bank (AfDB), after, by all accounts, a meteoric 10 years at the helm of a bank he led to great reputational growth in available loan funds, and further cemented the strong foundations of the bank. Congratulations for keeping an unstained Nigerian reputation on the world stage and changing the focus of such a large bank in funding directions.

Exam malpractice, specifically the early release of the actual questions, again reared its ugly head in WAEC for N1,000-5,000/paper last month. ‘Expo’ was the name applied to it when we did WAEC in 1965, and some tried to cheat; so, sadly, it is nothing new. It is up to the student and parent to resist the temptation. To even ask for Expo is a criminal offence. Even if you are given a ‘fake expo’ for your money, you are still an exam cheat, something we considered to be very low on the scale of human morality.

Exam question papers are secret by definition. Any breach is not really the fault of the students, even if they offer money to buy the Expo. If the paper was not available for sale, no one would offer money for it. Exam Question Papers must remain secret from the point of choosing the question to exam time. In this case, it is always someone, or an embedded criminal syndicate within the WAEC echelons, or within the machinery of the printing cycle of exam papers, who is ‘Suspect’ 1. Such a person must be found by a high-powered police/administrative/ forensic investigation, including a document audit.

WAEC officials should be forced to overcome this recurring barrier to the integrity of an exam which takes 5 years to prepare for after primary school; and a dangerous probability of Expo resulting in devastatingly destabilising delay, cancellation and added cost to the students and WAEC agents throughout the country. The enormity of the burden on WAEC management is emphasised now, more than ever, as we have Nigerian 30+m primary school and almost 14m secondary school students in approximately 81,520 primary and 23,550 secondary schools (Source: Google search) all in the WAEC pipeline aspiring to sit; and previous WAEC students in addition planning to re-sit WAEC. Kudos must go to WAEC for a ‘ZERO EXPO’ in most subjects but even ‘ONE SUBJECT EXPO’ in a key subject like English is ‘WAEC ADMINISTRATIVE FAILURE’ even if it is external sabotage. 73-year-old WAEC must, like Caesar’s wife, be above board to its 1973,253 current customers – our student children and youth.

June 4, 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.

Read Also: Presidency challenges opposition to present alternatives, not just criticisms

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
Insert Life Skills in curriculum; Security; Rangers

(Education Continued)

In Educare Trust, we addressed over 50 socially relevant life-skill topics neglected by the ancient RRR-Reading, Writing, Arithmetic school curriculum. Today, each of those topics has NGOs dedicated to its dissemination. Such topics include Abortion, Activities, AIDS, Abuse, Alcohol, Athletics, Art,   Boredom, Bullying, Budgeting Co-Curricular Activities, Career Choice, Corruption, Corporal Punishment Injuries, Crash Helmet/ Safety Belt Use, Creativity, Cultism, Diary Keeping, Data Base, Democracy, Development, Drug Abuse, Education, Entrepreneurship, Exhibition, Classroom Content, Care, Carelessness, Concern, Criticism, Exercise, Failure, Feedback, Finances, Friends, Friendly Learning, Environment, Intelligent Board Games, Giving/Taking, Guidance, Holi-School, Idleness, Instruments, Language, Leadership, Library, Meet-The-Expert, Mental Health, Mentorship, Music, Olaudah Equiano, Physical Health, Partnerships, Poetry, Prose, Posters, Photography, Reading, Recognition, Research, Quiz, Reward & Award, Self-Appraisal, Sign Language, Social Vices, Sports, Success, Sex, Talent Hunt, Think-Tank, Toilets, University Assess, Volunteerism, Values, Wall Charts, Youth Centres. Reader…please add your own.

All these topics are essential for students’ ‘Total Rounded Education’ and must be taught ‘in curriculum’ to Nigerian students and their counterparts in Africa and beyond. But they are not taught to most of our Nigerian 30+m primary school and almost 14m secondary school students in approximately 81,520 primary and 23,550 secondary schools [Source: Google search] unless an NGO shows up at the school.

NGO access to the school system is haphazard, potluck and not sustainable without parental, private sector and sometimes international funding and volunteerism through NGOs. Probably less than 1% of schools have, at best, epileptic access to one NGO. This does not include the ‘co-curricular needs’ of approximately 2.1m under and postgraduates in Nigeria’s 270 or so universities. Our students need more than sporadic NGO visits to haphazardly ‘perhaps’ learn ‘Essential Life Skills.’

NGOs cannot be a substitute for government-led archaic ‘Education Policies and Practice.’ Leaving this huge aspect of ‘The Total Education of the Complete Nigerian Student’ to NGOs has also consistently failed with consequent ill-prepared ‘poor life skilled Nigerian students’ in schools not reached by NGOs.

FOR EXAMPLE, HOW MUCH ‘CULT, DRUG, SICKLE CELL, & RESPECT FOR THE FEMALE EDUCATION IS IN THE CURRICULUM OR EVEN MENTIONED IN SCHOOLS IN A NIGERIA RIDDLED BY A HUGE CULTISM, DRUG, SICKLE CELL, VIOLENCE AND FEMALE ABUSE EPIDEMIC AMONG YOUTH? SCHOOL MUST BE WHERE VALUES ARE TAUGHT AND FIRST PRACTICED. There IS NO OR POOR GOVERNMENT SCHOOL ‘VALUES EDUCATION’ POLICY and most schools are off-radar and inaccessible to ‘Life Skill’ NGOs struggling to pay for personnel, equipment and transport to visit the Nigerian students in their classrooms.

Nigeria needs TO BROADEN THE CURRICULUM TO MAINSTREAM THESE CO-CURRICULAR TOPICS IN THE CURRICULUM AS CLASSROOM SUBJECTS and tertiary General Paper.

Historically school-based Clubs including Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, Red Cross, Blue Crescent, Man O’War, Literary and Debating, Science etc. were widespread in schools and did an amazing job of transferring many of the currently undertaken ‘Life skills’ tasks, including Volunteerism, now abandoned to NGOs to transfer. Many good schools have computers, Scrabble and other CLUBS in addition, but the reach and spread are inadequate.

It is up to Nigerian politicians in GOVERNMENT TO URGENTLY REUSE STAGNATING FUNDS OF UBEC (N1.39b in mid-2024) for the education of youth at state level. WE MUST COMBAT THE LOW NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT CONCEPT OF WHAT ‘A NIGERIAN SCHOOL’ SHOULD BE, OFFER AND PROVIDE.’ UN standard Nigerian ‘CHILD AND TEACHER FRIENDLY SCHOOL’ with adequate Classrooms, Toilets, Libraries and Laboratories and Education Facilities’ are not nuclear physics. They are the Right of our Children and Responsibility of Governance. Most Nigerian schools would fail ‘IS THIS A CATFS?’ examination. This is a failure of the system.

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While awaiting State Police for states wanting it, in part response to new 2025 attack waves by ISIS and Boko Haram, President Tinubu rightly established a 130,000 Forest Rangers Force for our 1,129 forests i.e. approx. 115 per forest. This cannot be by federal character but by local recruitment content only but records can be the six Federal Zones e.g. North Central Zone Forest Rangers etc. Equipment quality, especially firepower, will counter combat constraints facing groups like AMOTEKUN, who have as a result needlessly lost gallant Fellow Nigerian members. May the Government educate their children and pay a Died-On-Active-Service Pension to their wives. What weapons will be ‘allowed’ for our FR? And what supervision will stop the FR in turn terrorising the forest dwellers as unsupervised ‘uniforms’ do nationwide?

The Forest Rangers organisers would need a similar army of IT experts for the deployment of a 130,000 Forest Drone Deployment Strategy for grid-based surveillance, heat-sensitive and real-time Combat Capacity with a Drone Squadron HQ for backup. These are security jobs for 13,000 or 130,000 backup frontline IT youth – right there. To anticrime and anti-terrorism, add anti-smuggling, agricultural and tourist advantages. Proper IT and drones will catapult our forests into the 21st Century with vital data available to universities and other bodies.

As we plan a 2025 Security Summit, including Forest Ranger surveillance, note MEDIA SILENCE & SECRECY and the stupidity of prior announcement of ‘Operation Hopping Cockroach’ on the air alerting terrorists to go on short leave. Update and improve the 9th ASSEMBLY SECURITY STRATEGY which cost untold millions with State Police, drone development partnerships, IT recruitments in security, bank and court-ordered cellphone surveillance, undercover work and communications monitoring. ONLY ENCIRCLEMENT, CAPTURE OR DESTRUCTION and only then the media announcement is the tested battle plan. Take our security to the IT level.

May 28, 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
10 pupils; FAAC; CBT; Youth ‘JAMB-ed’

Sadly, 10 brilliant pupils died in an accident on their way from Kano to Lagos by road, for a simple national assignment, a quiz. Do not dare take this as just another road statistic. Think prayerfully of their distraught brothers and sisters today – their roommates and playmates since birth. Who was responsible for that accident? The culprits in this case should pay the criminal negligence price.

Of course, no method of transport is completely safe, even flying. We sadly remember the 2005 SOSOLISO Oct 22nd crash claiming more than 60 mourned children. May God comfort their families. But do drivers drive children and youth with any greater sense of responsibility than they drive the rest of us? Definitely not! Across Nigeria too many youths are born to die uneducated, unsung and unmourned in preventable deprivation, disease, accidents and even by terrorism.

We must juxtapose the FAAC ALLOCATIONS TO THE URGENT NEEDS OF OUR YOUTH IN AND OUT OF OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM vis-a-vis the youth just JAMB-ed at their point of hopeful ‘exam success’ and the 12-18m youth reported as being out-of-school Youth, too many as IDPs.

Each member of NASS ridiculously pays himself or herself N1,000,000,000, yes N1billion for HOR and yes N2b for Senators as annual Constitutional Allowance – a completely irresponsible Allowance.

There have been many faults and glitches in the JAMB system, now apologetically admitted with tears, or in the past when they were so often arrogantly sidetracked, ignored, or swept under the carpet. Those faults and glitches left good students sadly confused, unable to explain their poor certified performance against their known academic prowess. But who would believe ‘disgruntled, disrespectful’ students and their very poor or sometimes wealthy parents – it is not cheap in time or money to ‘challenge’ WAEC, or NECO or JAMB. Also, since the examination body is also the arbitrator in an appeal for a remark or dispute, there has never been a guarantee of a fair review.

Granted, in fairness to the examination bodies, we have several cases of successful protest and remarking. But it can take a very emotional traumatising 6-12 months of a student’s life with no guarantee of success. But are there any annually published statistics by the exam bodies or by EXAMINATION WATCHDOG BODIES of ‘REMARKED EXAM SUBJECTS STATISTICS’?

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This is why the government must make the bold decision that there should be an office of an EDUCATION EXAM OMBUDSPERSON OR PANEL, PERHAPS STATE-BASED if the workload will be too much for one person and a team. The leader should be a distinguished, seasoned, respected principal, maybe retired principal, changed every 1 or 2 years to handle the emotionally exhausting and delicate cases of exam protests for that period only. The person must work harmoniously with examination bodies to eliminate the unimaginable pain and trauma, and indeed sometimes successful suicide resulting from ‘MISDIAGNOSIS’ OF EDUCATION FAILURE AND SUCCESS. The exam bodies must be like Caesar’s wife – impeccable.

Remember the unimaginable horrible situation of the too many unknown brilliant and ‘lucky on the day’ Nigerian students who have been wrongly condemned to being called ‘WAEC, NECO or JAMB CHEATERS’ and DENIED THEIR PLACE IN UNIVERSITY or worse just because WAEC, NECO and probably JAMB REJECTED THEIR ‘TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE’ BRILLIANT SCORES on the grounds that the results were too good to be true? But without interrogation, interview or follow up.

Imagine the impact on the youth involved, the other children in the home, the family and relations and friends and classmates and entire school when they hear that their most brilliant emblem has become a common cheater, according to INFALLIBLE WAEC, NECO or JAMB? Years ago, we called for a THOROUGH PANEL ENQUIRY, INCLUDING AN INTERVIEW WITH EACH AND EVERY SUCH CANDIDATE and Principal and a thorough examination of all the circumstances before a cancellation or downgrading could take place. Is that the case now?

These bodies make more than enough money to execute such an ‘EXAM RESULT VERIFICATION ENQUIRY.’ Indeed, there may be a need to reduce the exam fees as the organisation can raise up to N22b and return N7b to the government. That should reduce the fees by 25%. Some suggest that the extra N7b could create the necessary Computer Based Training, which is not just a skill required for sitting JAMB. CBT is the 21st century youth right and the responsibility of LGA, State and Federal governments to introduce usable CBT, using solar panels preferably, to every school.

Figures vary, but one estimate reports 23,550 secondary schools of which approximately 10,000 are public schools i.e. N700,000/school. Let us add FAAC allocation and Constituency Projects by NASS, and probably State Assembly, and who knows if LGA councillors silently receive Constituency Allowances, off the books. All must spend such funds honestly and wisely and face youth education as a powerful weapon against poverty. They should note that if neglected, that same education will become a powerful weapon against progress, threatening all of us in our day-to-day life, and especially during our movements on our neighbourhood streets where the masses of obviously poor and abandoned youth are well versed in begging or providing menial services to obtain daily bread.

The fact remains that our youth across the country remain at a severe disadvantage, almost uniformly in public schools, and partly even in private schools. Fund the education deficit, please.

•(To be continued)

May 21, 2025