The African Democratic Congress (ADC) increasingly looks less like a political party with a future and more like a loose gathering of yesterday’s politicians—retired, angry, bitter, expired, and visibly frustrated by their repeated rejection at the polls. It is hard to identify any clear vision, mission, or new idea driving the party. What stands out instead is desperation: a frantic search for power, not to serve Nigerians, but to satisfy long-standing personal ambitions and political greed.
Take Atiku Abubakar as a central symbol of this exhaustion. Well into his late years and having contested the presidency multiple times, his political playbook appears unchanged. No fresh strategy. No bold new ideas. Just the same recycled promises, repackaged for each election cycle. Nigeria has moved on, but Atiku’s politics seem stuck in the past.
The ADC’s conduct further exposes its emptiness. With the next general election fast approaching, the party has been reportedly busy begging Peter Obi to join them. This alone signals weakness. A party with confidence in its ideology and leadership would not be scrambling for borrowed credibility so close to an election. It would be building structures, inspiring citizens, and presenting a coherent alternative. ADC is doing none of these.
Leadership choices also raise serious questions. A party that parades figures well into their seventies as its top leadership cannot convincingly claim to represent renewal or the future. Recycling the same old political faces—many of whom Nigerians already associate with years of stagnation—shows a deep disregard for the country’s youthful population and their aspirations.
Including controversial figures like Nasir El-Rufai in its leadership mix only adds to the confusion. Rather than signalling strength, it reinforces the image of a party that is ideologically empty, clinging to any familiar name it can find. Appointing someone like Rauf Aregbesola as party secretary further underlines how disconnected ADC appears from public sentiment. It feels less like strategic leadership and more like an insult to Nigerians who are demanding competence, clarity, and accountability.
In sharp contrast stands the All Progressives Congress (APC). President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is not loved because he is perfect, but because he is decisive. He takes tough, often unpopular decisions—decisions many politicians fear—but necessary ones nonetheless. Tinubu is not managing Nigeria as a career politician obsessed with optics; he is confronting national challenges as a leader focused on long-term stability and reform.
Leadership is not about telling people what they want to hear. It is about doing what must be done. While ADC looks backwards, APC—under Tinubu—pushes forward, making hard choices to reposition the country, even when the cost is political comfort.
Nigeria does not need another gathering of angry, expired politicians recycling old ambitions. It needs leadership, courage, and direction. On that score, ADC offers little more than noise, while APC continues to define itself by action.
Even the acronym ADC – borrowing a leaf from the APC- shows its lack of vision and originality. The old African saying that when one cries, one must see, encompasses the need for Nigerians to see beyond the confused, arm-twisting tactics of ADC and see the rich future the APC is taking the country to.
The ADC is often portrayed as a platform that thrives more on grievance than on ideas. Rather than presenting clear policies, solutions, or a compelling vision for the country, its public conversation is dominated by negativity—anger at opponents, blame for the past, and endless complaints about who failed Nigeria and who should be removed next. What is striking is that the party appears louder in what it opposes than in what it actually proposes.
Many of the figures around the ADC were central voices in the campaign to remove Goodluck Jonathan from office. At the time, they painted him as unfit to lead and rallied public sentiment against his administration. Today, however, those same actors are seen seeking Jonathan’s goodwill and support, a move that exposes a deep inconsistency and a politics driven more by convenience than conviction.
Within the ADC, there is also a glaring credibility vacuum. There is no single figure who commands broad public trust based on integrity, performance, or fresh ideas. The leaders themselves seem aware of this weakness, which explains the desperation to court Peter Obi. Rather than building their own identity, ideology, and grassroots strength, they appear eager to hide under Obi’s popularity—hoping his reputation can serve as a canopy to mask their lack of substance.
In the end, the ADC comes across not as a movement powered by vision and renewal, but as a gathering of political actors united mainly by bitterness, recycled ambitions, and the fear of irrelevance—talking endlessly about negativity because they have little else to offer.
The ADC can be described as a group that appears unwilling to wish Nigeria well, a political camp that seems more comfortable with perpetual pessimism than honest national progress. They rarely, if ever, acknowledge reforms or positive steps taken by the current administration. Instead of engaging constructively, they choose selective blindness—ignoring policies, initiatives, and difficult but necessary decisions aimed at stabilizing the country.
President Tinubu’s courage to take politically risky reforms, his determination to confront long-standing insecurity, and his willingness to make tough calls in the interest of long-term national recovery are met not with fair critique but with outright silence or dismissal. To the ADC, nothing is ever improving, nothing is ever commendable, and no effort is ever worthy of recognition.
Their politics thrives on doom-saying. Every development is framed as failure, every reform as disaster, and every challenge as proof that Nigeria is beyond repair. Rather than offering alternative ideas, practical solutions, or balanced criticism, they recycle negativity as a strategy. In doing so, they project an image of a party more invested in seeing Nigeria struggle—so they can say “we told you so”—than in seeing the nation succeed.
Such an approach does not inspire hope, unity, or progress. It reflects a mindset that feeds on despair, not patriotism, and opposition for its own sake, not for the good of Nigeria.
Let it also be stated plainly: Peter Obi joining the ADC will make absolutely no difference whatsoever. Nigerians are not fools. They know who the ADC people are—career political failures that have moved from party to party, election to election, without ideas, integrity, or credibility. Slapping Peter Obi’s name on their decayed structure will not suddenly give them relevance. You cannot perfume political rot and expect the stench to disappear.
This is also the time to tell Peter Obi the hard truth his supporters are too emotional to say: he should not contest the 2027 presidential election. Nigerian politics is not Twitter politics. It is about power balance, structure, and regional agreement. The North will never allow another southerner to take over immediately after Tinubu’s four years, because that would mean potentially eight uninterrupted years of southern presidency. That door is firmly shut.
Running in 2027 under these realities will not make Peter Obi a hero; it will make him a political instrument for confused coalitions and desperate politicians looking for cover. It will only weaken the opposition further and make victory easier for those who actually understand the political terrain. Wisdom is knowing when the battle is unwinnable—and walking away before your political capital is wasted on an already dead arrangement.
The ADC appears to have no real political structure or strategy for a few clear, interconnected reasons:
It was not built as a grassroots party
ADC was never patiently constructed from the ward–local government–state level upward. Strong parties in Nigeria grow structures over time: loyal ward executives, polling-unit agents, youth and women wings, funding pipelines, and dispute-resolution mechanisms. ADC skipped this hard work and instead operates like a meeting point for elite politicians, not a mass party.
It is personality-driven, not institution-driven
Rather than ideas and ideology, ADC revolves around who is angry with the ruling party at any given time. When a party depends on personalities instead of institutions, it collapses once those personalities lose relevance or disagree among themselves. That is why ADC keeps looking for a “saviour” instead of producing leaders internally.
No clear ideology or policy direction
ADC does not stand for anything concrete—no consistent economic philosophy, no social agenda, no governance blueprint. Without ideology, you cannot design a strategy. All that remains is reactionary politics: attacking whoever is in power and hoping public anger does the rest.
Electoral opportunism instead of long-term planning
Serious parties plan the election cycle years. ADC wakes up close to elections and starts shopping for popular candidates instead of grooming them. Begging Peter Obi to join them late in the game exposes the absence of succession planning and political foresight.
Internal contradictions and credibility problems
Many of its loudest voices once supported policies and leaders they now condemn. That inconsistency makes it impossible to sell a coherent message to Nigerians. Strategy requires trust; ADC lacks it—even among its own members.
No discipline or command structureA functional party has hierarchy and discipline. ADC members speak anyhow, attack one another, and contradict party positions publicly. Without internal order, external strategy is impossible.
Power-seeking, not nation-building
At its core, ADC behaves like a coalition of politicians desperate to remain relevant, not a movement committed to solving Nigeria’s problems. When power is the goal, but vision is absent, structure and strategy become afterthoughts.
ADC has no political structure or strategy because it was never designed to be a serious political institution. It is a convenient platform for frustrated politicians, held together by negativity, bitterness and ambition—not by ideas, discipline, or grassroots strength.
• Allison Abanum writes from Orogun, Ibadan, Oyo State.
The year 2025 will probably not be remembered as a dramatic breaking point for democracy.
No sudden collapses. No single moment where everything fell apart. And that is exactly what makes it important.
Institutions continued to function. Elections took place. Courts remained open. From the outside, democratic systems appeared intact. Yet something shifted underneath. Not abruptly, but steadily. Democratic erosion did not accelerate through shock. It deepened through repetition.
This was not the year new threats appeared. It was the year familiar ones began to reinforce each other.
Uncertainty as the starting point
Europe entered 2025 already uneasy. The war in Ukraine not only tested military capacity. It exposed how dependent European security still is on the United States. Support from Washington continued, but it no longer felt automatic. Domestic polarization in the US and shifting global priorities made commitments appear conditional.
In his government address on December 17, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz stated openly that Europe was losing significance in the eyes of the United States and described the moment as an epochal rupture. The language was striking not because it was alarmist, but because it acknowledged what had long been avoided: The transatlantic relationship could no longer be taken for granted. This shift was reinforced by the new US security strategy. Washington signaled a clear departure from its traditional commitment to Europe and from a rules-based international order. The symbolic breaking point for many came earlier that year, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was received in the Oval Office and treated in a manner widely perceived as humiliating. When Donald Trump publicly accused him of “playing with World War Three,” the moment left observers across Europe stunned, not because of diplomatic disagreement, but because of the tone. It marked a visible collapse of mutual respect. As Stephen M. Walt has long argued, deterrence weakens not only when power declines, but when intentions become uncertain. In 2025 that uncertainty was no longer theoretical. It was visible, audible and politically consequential. Uncertainty did not stay in foreign policy. It seeped into public perception.
When truth stops convincing
Where uncertainty grows, disinformation finds room to operate. Cyberattacks and digital interference were no longer abstract scenarios discussed in security briefings. They became tangible disruptions. As security experts noted at the time, these operations no longer took place solely along distant front lines but across civilian, digital and psychological spaces. Intelligence agencies across Europe and the transatlantic community confirmed what many had already sensed: Contemporary disinformation is not designed to persuade. It is designed to exhaust. The goal is not to replace one narrative with another but to undermine the idea that a shared reality is even possible.
This development reinforced a broader realization: The boundaries between war and peace, external threat and internal stability, had blurred. What was at stake was no longer only territorial integrity but societal resilience.
Hannah Arendt warned that politics becomes dangerous when people lose trust not only in facts but in the possibility of truth itself. In 2025 this warning felt uncomfortably accurate.
Truth did not vanish. It simply lost its authority.
People grew tired of defending it.
Platforms don’t just host debate, they shape it
This fatigue cannot be separated from the architecture of the digital public sphere. Platforms are no longer neutral spaces where debate happens. They actively shape what is seen, amplified or ignored. Not through bans but through ranking. Through design choices that reward speed, emotional intensity and constant engagement.
Shoshana Zuboff describes this as a system built to predict and influence behavior, not to foster deliberation. Engagement becomes the measure of relevance, and relevance quietly replaces judgment. European efforts under the Digital Services Act reflect a growing awareness of this imbalance. The question is no longer whether speech is allowed, but who controls visibility in practice.
Exhaustion as a political condition
There is also a psychological layer to this story. An attention economy built on dopamine does not encourage reflection. It keeps users in a state of anticipation, always reacting, rarely settling. Gabor Maté has emphasized that addiction is less about pleasure than about escaping discomfort, a mechanism the attention economy exploits at scale. Young people feel this most directly. Attention shortens. Emotional overload becomes normal. Complexity feels heavy. Byung-Chul Han describes contemporary societies as exhausted rather than oppressed: overstimulated, yet increasingly passive. Exhausted societies do not disappear. They simplify. They don’t have any patience for complexity. But democracy is complex.
Why populism starts to feel reasonable
This is the moment where populism becomes dangerous: not because it shouts, but because it fits.
What mattered most in 2025 was not the success of authoritarian actors themselves, but how mainstream politics reacted to them. Under pressure, established parties increasingly adopted populist framing, especially on migration and security, presenting it as pragmatism.
Political theorist Jan-Werner Müller warns that populism is not neutralized by imitation. It is legitimized by it. Austrian political scientist Natascha Strobl describes this process as the normalization of authoritarianism: not through open rupture, but through shifting thresholds of what is considered acceptable. Authoritarian politics, she argues, does not need to abolish democracy. It only needs to redefine what democracy is expected to tolerate.
This is why 2025 felt different.
Exceptional measures no longer shocked.
Oversight felt inconvenient.
Complexity appeared inefficient.
Authoritarian logic did not announce itself. It blended in.
Not a moral failure, a structural one
What 2025 revealed was not a collapse of democratic values. Most societies still claim them. It revealed a structural problem.
Strategic uncertainty weakened confidence.
Disinformation exploited that weakness.
Platform design amplified distortion.
Attention fatigue reduced resistance.
Simplification filled the gap.
Each element reinforced the next. Democracy today is not lost at once. It erodes across systems: in how information circulates, how attention is managed and how “normal” quietly shifts.
There was no single moment in 2025 when democracy failed. There were many moments when it was simply adjusted. And that may be the more dangerous story.
In Nigeria, December arrives like a festival competing with itself. The streets get louder, the music gets brighter, and the pressure to feel joyful rises faster than airline ticket prices. It is a beautiful season, yet many of us enter it carrying a quiet tension. We try to look happy while our hearts whisper a different truth.
Christmas in Nigeria is loud, perhaps not so loud nowadays. The excitement is real, and December is dirty. But music blares from every corner. People travel home in droves. Photographers line up for family portraits. New clothes, new hair, new plans. All that joy deserves celebration. Yet, beneath the glitter, many of us feel a pull inside. We perform happiness while harbouring unspoken worries.
I felt that tension myself. My mind drifted to checklists. Did I hit my goals this year? Did I grow? Did I become the person I hoped to be? Reflection matters, but I have assessed myself by outcomes. So, I pause. I ask a different question. Am I well?
Christmas can be loud while we are not in tune with ourselves. We rush. We give beyond our strength. We pretend. Sometimes the external noise hides the innermost feelings.
Name what is going on
This year, some people celebrate their first Christmas in a new city. Some are spending it with a significant other. Some hold newborn babies. Some sit at tables with one empty chair. Some juggle quiet family tensions. Some hope the year ends without more chaos. Others pray the new year brings softness.
Before planning anything, take note of what is present. Notice yourself. Name your state. Joy. Grief. Pride. Confusion. Exhaustion. Gratitude. The heart deserves recognition before instruction.
Jesus understood this
If you study the life of Jesus, you see a man in tune with himself. He stepped away to think, pray, and reflect. He explained rather than convinced those who doubted him. He acted from clarity, not desperation. He paused at key moments, and those pauses shaped direction.
We love to tell the stories of miracles. We forget the stillness that made them possible. Peace starts with inner honesty. He did not pour from an empty cup.
Your feel-good self matters
There is a type of helping that is not love but anxiety. We rush to fix others because we fear sitting with our own discomfort. We want to feel needed. Then we call it care. Sometimes it is avoidance.
The best gift you can give anyone this Christmas is your well self. Not your decorated self. Not your pretending self. Your well self. When you show up with clarity, you create space for others to carry their responsibilities. You make room for truth. You create boundaries that protect growth. Things may not go smoothly, but you can be well. That presence changes the atmosphere more than any gift.
Courage to say, “I am not okay”
There is dignity in honesty. When you hurt, admit it. When you need rest, take it. When you need support, ask. Strength is not silence. Strength is truth spoken with care. You do not earn love by hiding your condition. You honour love by naming it.
Slowing down is not failure. Pausing is not giving up. It is choosing to treat yourself as human and valuable. Remember, the body keeps the scores; if it is not cared for adequately, it manifests in mostly unpleasant ways.
Look beyond yourself, then inward again.
After noticing yourself, notice others. The neighbour who looks strong but feels alone; the cousin who jokes too much, and the friend who always plans and never receives care. True presence comes from being grounded. When you are well, you carry comfort without losing yourself.
Christmas is not a competition of who looks happiest. It is a moment to be truthful about humanity.
Real reason for the season
People say Jesus is the reason for the season. That is true. Yet he lived with the conviction that you are worth showing up for. Your healing matters. Your peace matters. Your well-being matters. You and I are part of the reason for the season…because God saw value in us. Love requires healthy carriers.
This year, permit yourself to be well. Permit others to take responsibility for their well-being. Let joy be real. Let grief be acknowledged. Let rest be honoured. Let’s be honest.
Christmas begins in the soul before it reaches the streets. When we treat ourselves with truth, we treat others with grace. That might be the gift that makes the season meaningful again.
I hope this season meets you with softness and gives your heart the space it needs to breathe.
• Mr Ukoh, an alumnus of the American University of Nigeria, Yola, and PhD student at Columbia University, writes from New York.
“When a man is cursed by the gods, they strip him of peace, deny him sleep, and turn him into a midnight town crier shouting at his own reflection.” – African Proverb.
This proverb captures, in full, the strange and unfortunate spectacle Nigerians witnessed in the late hours of Christmas Day (11:34pm to be precise). At a season when the nation was largely at peace with itself, families travelling freely without fuel scarcity, markets bustling, parents shopping for their children, homes filled with laughter, food, prayers, goodwill, and the spirit of love, one former unfortunate governor, named Nasir El-Rufai @elrufai, chose to spend the season consumed by bitterness. Instead of joining millions of Nigerians in celebrating a rare festive period without panic buying or endless petrol queues, he sat awake in what can only be described as political discomfort, amplifying an opinion piece attacking President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR. The coward lacked the courage to write the piece himself, too timid to put his name to the bile. Instead, he outsourced his bitterness to a hired hand and then, in a fit of nocturnal anxiety, rushed to post it on social media at midnight on Christmas night, a timing that exposes restlessness, suppressed rage, and a profound inability to accept a political reality he no longer controls, one that has permanently confined him to the graveyard of irrelevance.
This rejoinder is not written to trade insults, but to restore facts, logic, and perspective, and to do so in clear, simple language that most will understand. Context matters deeply here. The opinion article titled “Is Tinubu relocating Nigeria’s capital to Lagos, piece by piece?” was not written by disgruntled El-Rufai. He merely amplified it. Men with conviction write their arguments openly, attach their names to them, and defend them publicly. Men unsure of themselves hire others, hide behind borrowed words, and then distribute those words quietly in the dead of night. If El-Rufai truly believed in the substance of the claims, he would have written them himself, signed them boldly, and stood by them. Instead, he outsourced the task and chose the most symbolic night of goodwill and peace to push division. That choice alone speaks volumes about motive.
The national atmosphere at the time makes this even more revealing. Nigerians are, for once, enjoying a festive season without the familiar stress of fuel scarcity. Petrol stations are open and orderly. Transportation is moving. Food prices are trending downward in many markets compared to previous months. Traders are smiling, buyers are bargaining, and families are travelling to villages and cities alike. Terrorists and bandits are being decisively neutralised, sent to their final reckoning under sustained and precise aerial bombardment. Children are home from school, parents are present, and people are sharing meals and laughter. Churches and mosques are preaching love, forgiveness, and hope. In sharp contrast, El-Rufai appears locked in a personal war with reality, obsessively fixated on President Tinubu’s success, unable to rest or celebrate, and seemingly determined to poison a season of peace with bitterness. The contrast is not accidental; it is instructive.
At the heart of the opinion piece is the claim that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is quietly relocating Nigeria’s capital from Abuja to Lagos. This claim is not just wrong; it is fundamentally dishonest. Nigeria’s capital remains Abuja in law, in practice, and in reality. The President lives and works in Abuja. The Presidency is in Abuja. The National Assembly conducts its business in Abuja. The Supreme Court sits in Abuja. All foreign embassies remain in Abuja. No bill has been proposed to change the capital. No constitutional amendment has been debated. No referendum has been contemplated. In simple, everyday terms, nothing about Nigeria’s capital has moved. The article deliberately confuses administrative efficiency with constitutional relocation, hoping readers will not notice the difference.
Lagos has always been Nigeria’s commercial and economic nerve centre. This is not a Tinubu-era development. It was so under military rule. It was so under Obasanjo. It was so under Yar’Adua. It was so under Jonathan. It was so under Buhari. Businesses, banks, ports, airlines, manufacturers, investors, and markets are heavily concentrated in Lagos and its surrounding corridors. That reality did not suddenly appear in 2023. Federal agencies operating actively from Lagos are responding to economic gravity, not political favouritism.
Take FAAN, for instance. Lagos airports handle the overwhelming majority of Nigeria’s passenger and cargo traffic. This is a statistical fact that predates the Tinubu presidency by decades. Keeping operational decisions closer to where most flights, passengers, and revenue are generated is common sense. It reduces delays, improves coordination, and saves costs. Nobody described this as “relocating the capital” when similar operational dominance existed under previous administrations.
The same applies to the Central Bank of Nigeria. Financial regulation, banking supervision, payments systems, and consumer protection naturally gravitate towards where financial institutions operate. Nigeria’s banking industry is concentrated in Lagos. This is how global finance works. New York is home to Wall Street, yet Washington remains the capital of the United States. No serious analyst claims those countries secretly relocated their capitals. To suggest otherwise in Nigeria’s case is either ignorance of global norms or deliberate misrepresentation.
The Bank of Industry exists to support industrial growth, manufacturing, and private sector development. Industries, factories, investors, and supply chains are clustered heavily around Lagos and the South-West industrial corridor. Locating operational headquarters closer to industry is a governance decision rooted in practicality. It does not strip Abuja of its status, nor does it transform Lagos into a capital city. These agencies remain federal in mandate, funding, and reach. The idea of “institutional drift” is a narrative invention, not a factual development.
The most glaring intellectual failure in the opinion piece is the attack on the Lagos–Calabar Coastal Highway. One must ask plainly and without apology: was El-Rufai expecting a coastal road in the North? The project is called a coastal road because it follows Nigeria’s coastline. Coastal literally means along the coast of a sea or ocean. The North, by geography, does not have a coastline. Geography is not discrimination. Nature is not biased. You cannot accuse a shoreline project of regional favouritism simply because the shoreline exists in one part of the country. That argument collapses the moment it is spoken.
The coastal highway is designed to protect Nigeria’s fragile shoreline from erosion, connect coastal states, unlock tourism potential, facilitate maritime trade, and open up new investment corridors across the South-South and South-West. It serves national economic interests, not regional sentiment. At the same time, substantial infrastructure investments are ongoing in the North, including roads, rail expansion, agriculture, power projects, and massive security spending concentrated in northern theatres due to ongoing insecurity. These realities are ignored because they do not serve the narrative of grievance. Bitterness has a way of narrowing vision.
The misuse of budget figures in the article is another example of deliberate distortion. Comparing the cost of a multi-year, multi-state federal infrastructure project to the annual budgets of individual states is dishonest, if not criminal. Federal projects are designed to last decades, serve millions of people across state boundaries, and are financed through layered funding mechanisms. State budgets, on the other hand, primarily fund salaries, pensions, healthcare, education, and basic services. They are not meant to deliver national-scale infrastructure. By the logic of the article, no country should ever build highways, bridges, railways, or dams, because such projects always cost more than provincial budgets can afford. That is not economic reasoning; it is propaganda aimed at stirring resentment.
The article also expresses sudden concern about poverty, insecurity, displacement, and low literacy rates in the North. These problems did not emerge overnight, and they certainly did not begin under President Tinubu. The obvious and uncomfortable question is: who governed Nigeria over the last forty years or more, who shaped national security policy, and who sat at the centre of power during that time? Rapscallion El-Rufai was not an outsider either. He was a key participant in recent history, hobnobbing and sneaking from one bedroom to another, backstabbing his fellow executives, according to former President Olusegun Obasanjo, alongside his catastrophic, inglorious, poverty-generating tenure in Kaduna. To speak as if he has just discovered northern suffering is political amnesia. You cannot preside over decline, contribute to policy failure, and then rebrand yourself as a shocked commentator when the consequences become undeniable.
The most dangerous aspect of the opinion piece is not its poor logic, but its intention. It seeks to reduce governance to ethnic arithmetic and development to regional rivalry. It attempts to pit North against South, Lagos against the rest of Nigeria, and geography against national unity. This is not statesmanship; it is mischief. It is the politics of division deployed by those who can no longer shape outcomes constructively.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is governing pragmatically. He is placing institutions where they function best, investing based on geography and economic logic, stabilising the economy, and confronting inherited challenges with realism. That approach is producing visible results, including relative fuel stability, improved market confidence, enhanced security, and renewed economic activity. That success is the nightmare that leaves our Man Friday frozen in envy, suffering acute erectile dysfunction, and the vertically, intellectually, and politically stunted El-Rufai completely unhinged.
Nigeria’s capital is not being relocated. Nigeria is being rebuilt. And that, more than anything else, explains the anger. El-Rufai is not fighting for federalism. He is fighting irrelevance. When a man loses power, he fights geography. When he loses arguments, he hires writers. When he loses peace, he posts at midnight on Christmas Day. Meanwhile, Nigerians are moving forward, shopping, travelling, celebrating, reconnecting with family, spreading love, and finding Renewed Hope. And that reality is the loudest rebuttal of all.
• Okebunmi is Senior Special Assistant (Publicity), Renewed Hope Global.
To state that there are gaps in the implementation of the 2024 and 2025 budgets is actually stating the obvious. One does not need to be an economist or an expert in fiscal matters to know this. Top government functionaries charged with budgetary matters have all made the point and confirmed that the budgets were not fully funded for apparent reasons. This admission reflects an attribute typically rare in government – transparency.
In August, at a stakeholders’ engagement on the implementation of the 2025 capital budget and related issues in Abuja, Dr. Tanimu Yakubu, the Director-General of the Budget Office of the Federation, pointed out that the Federal Government was funding the capital component of the 2024 budget using revenue accruing under the 2025 Budget. He also noted that the 2025 revenue projections in the budget had been underperforming because the country had not met the oil production quota.
Questions, therefore, arose in some quarters about the level of budget implementation. President Bola Tinubu’s announcement in August that the administration had met its 2025 non-oil revenue target even triggered more questions. What then was the issue regarding budget implementation?
It must be noted, however, that there are additional revenue sources for funding budgets beyond Internally-Generated Revenue. These include funding by development partners and foreign and domestic loans. If the IGR performs and there are gaps in other revenue sources, there could also be limitations in budget implementation. In that seemingly innocuous statement, President Tinubu was referring to the non-oil revenue component of the budget for the year.
Following the below-par performance of the 2024 Budget, the National Assembly approved the rollover of the budget into 2025. The parliament later also approved the rollover of 70 percent of the 2025 capital projects into 2026. Given this background of poor budget execution, some had suggested a holistic review of the budgeting process to upend the cycle of rollovers and non-implementation. Dr Muda Yusuf, the CEO of the Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprises, among others, proposed that rather than discard projects that were approved but not implemented, it would be more prudent to consolidate outstanding projects, clear the accumulated backlog and re-present them within a more coherent and credible framework.
Two weeks ago, President Tinubu moved decisively to address the implementation problems associated with the 2024 and 2025 budgets by using the practical template of the 2026 budget. Presenting the N58.18 trillion 2026 budget proposals to the National Assembly on Thursday, December 18, 2025, the President declared an end to budget rollovers and multiple budgets. Despite the challenges, the 2026 budget aligns well with the December-January budget cycle.
Aptly titled “Budget of Consolidation, Renewed Resilience and Shared Prosperity,” this new budget is essentially anchored on fiscal planning, discipline, resilience and sustainable development in line with the Renewed Hope Agenda. With the budget, President Tinubu plans to consolidate macroeconomic stability, improve the business and investment environment, promote job‑rich growth, reduce poverty and strengthen human capital development, while protecting the vulnerable.
But rather than appreciate the government’s challenge, the courage demonstrated in accepting the fact of poor implementation of the budget and the firm resolve to correct the anomaly, the opposition African Democratic Congress took the notoriously mischievous route to upbraid President Tinubu. The party described the new budget and the government’s remedial plans as “a copy and paste” of previous years’ spending plans. The party’s interim National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, said ADC’s economists reviewed the budget, claiming that “it reflects fiscal recklessness and unrealistic projections.” Propagating a doomsday theory, ADC opined that, like its predecessors, the 2026 Budget would end up as another unimplemented document.
It is fair to argue that the 2025 budget faced the challenge of transition and competing execution demands. But presenting the 2026 Budget to the lawmakers, President Tinubu assured that the budgetary situation would be different this time. The President said: “As of Q3 2025, we recorded: 18.6 trillion naira in revenue — representing 61% of our target; and 24.66 trillion naira in expenditure — representing 60% of our target.
“Let me be clear: 2026 will be a year of stronger discipline in budget execution. I have issued directives to the Honourable Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, the Honourable Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, the Accountant‑General of the Federation, and the Director‑General of the Budget Office of the Federation to ensure that the 2026 Budget is implemented strictly in line with the appropriated details and timelines.
“We expect improved revenue performance through the new National Tax Acts and the ongoing reforms in the oil and gas sector — reforms designed not merely to raise revenue, but to drive transparency, efficiency, fairness, and long‑term value in our fiscal architecture,” he added.
President Tinubu recognises the importance of fiscal guardrails, as evidenced by his clear directive to Government‑owned Enterprises and to the heads of all agencies to meet their assigned revenue targets.
To support this, he said: “An end‑to‑end digitisation of revenue mobilisation — standardised e‑collections, interoperable payment rails, automated reconciliation, data‑driven risk profiling, and real‑time performance dashboards — will be deployed so that leakages are sealed, compliance is verifiable, and remittances are prompt.”
These targets, President Tinubu noted, will form core components of performance evaluations and institutional scorecards. “Nigeria can no longer afford leakages, inefficiencies, or underperformance in strategic agencies. Every institution must play its part. In short: we will spend with purpose, manage debt with discipline, and pursue broad-based, sustainable growth.”
These are grand plans and clear directives from President Tinubu. The National Assembly, too, has a vital role to play in ensuring the successful implementation of the 2026 budget. Many of the unimplemented projects in the 2025 Budget, for instance, were constituency projects, the brunt of which was borne by lawmakers who tended to allocate the jobs even when the projects had not been cash-backed. Beyond approving the 2026 appropriation, therefore, the lawmakers must show greater restraint and prudence in handling their constituency projects.
The 2026 budget has other notable aspects. One, it re-presents a defining moment in the national journey of reform and transformation. The 2026 Budget, as President Tinubu said, “reflects the government’s determination to lock in macroeconomic stability, deepen competitiveness, and ensure that growth translates into decent jobs, rising incomes, and a better quality of life for every Nigerian.”
Two, in line with the Renewed Hope Agenda and the practical needs of Nigerians, the budget prioritises five critical sectors: defence and security – N5.41 trillion; infrastructure – N3.56 trillion; education – N3.52 trillion; and health – N2.48 trillion. As the President rightly said, these priorities are interlinked: “Without security, investment will not thrive. Without educated and healthy citizens, productivity will not rise. Without infrastructure, jobs and enterprises will not scale.”
To all intents and purposes, the government has drawn appropriate lessons from the drawbacks of the 2024 and 2025 budgets. That is why the 2026 Budget is guided by three basic principles: better revenue mobilisation, better spending by prioritising projects, and better accountability through strengthened procurement discipline, monitoring, and reporting. There is a strong optimism that it will yield outcomes that benefit all, which hopefully the perennial cynics would acknowledge.
• Rahman is Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media & Special Duties.
When the German writer Franz Kafka directs his narrative genius at the civil service – after spending a princely part of his working life in it – he leaves us with a dark and tragic vision of a bureaucratic system inexorably trapped in detachment from its duty to serve the people. This is inevitable since in his reckoning, the system that Max Weber brands the “iron cage” is bereft of the capacity to even cater to the interest of its loyal devotees who have been desouled per In the Penal Colony, The Trial, and The Castle. We appropriate the above backdrop to properly situate the reform trajectory of the Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission, Prof. Tunji Olaopa, who , like Kafka, spent a huge part of his working life in the civil service. But unlike Kafka, while admitting being confronted with what he has identified as bureau-pathologies which are markers of the resistance to reform, and thus the degeneration of the civil service, Olaopa does not consider it fated to a cul-de-sac. For Olaopa, what is embedded in these is an urgent summons for reform, rather than a wholesale consignment of the bureaucratic system to a mould of a machine that is insensitive to its handlers and those it is meant to serve. Olaopa is clearly alert to the fact that although the civil service is in need of reform, it remains what is commonly referred to as the engine room for translating government’s transformative values – which receive expression through policies and programmes – to realities for the people. This quest for the transformation of the civil service has been the leitmotif of Olaopa’s professional preoccupation whether in the civil service or in academia of his post-civil service life. Thus, whether by serendipity or a master stroke of an uncanny genius for identifying talent, President Bola Tinubu was able to recognise this throbbing reform impulse in Olaopa when he appointed him the Chairman of the FCSC and gave him the charge: Transform the Federal Civil Service Commission. This charge became two-year old on December 13, 2025. In this period, the prosecution of this charge has been manifestly expressed through the tripodal mandate of the FCSC, viz: recruitment, appointment and discipline. Before Olaopa’ leadership of the FCSC, it was bereft of a reputation that would allow the citizens and institutions to deal with it with a measure of confidence that their trust would be creditably requited . For those who knew it, it was perceived as a haven of corruption where only those with the right connections got government jobs. Olaopa has changed all that perception . The FCSC has become a government agency that citizens can trust with their quest to be employed in the civil service. The era of jobs being paid for is gone. Under Olaopa, there is the overarching quest to bring the best and brightest to the civil service, without undermining the federal character principle. His credibility has invested his leadership with an imprimatur of believability. Through credible promotion examinations, the career progression of the most qualified civil servants is guaranteed. Civil servants are no longer apprehensive that they need to look for millions to bribe their way to rise to the top. Olaopa has demonstrated the courage to stop the promotion of those who do not merit it no matter the pressure from different quarters. The avenues for questionable promotion examinations such as leakage and sub-standard examination questions have been blocked. This has saved the commission from wasting time, money and other resources on court cases. Those who fail no longer bother to contest the grades they have been awarded as they rest assured that the system is now credible. Olaopa’s streak of firsts at the FCSC has received a boon with the introduction of the computer-based test ( CBT) mould for the conduct of recruitment and promotion examinations in the civil service. This novelty imposes on civil servants the salubrious necessity of computer-savviness that is reflective of technological developments in a world where those who have demurred at bracing for artificial intelligence and others are faced with the present danger of consignment to corporate and professional backwaters. It has also shrunk the space for the manipulation of examination results that impugn the credibility of the commission. Olaopa has also robustly activated the guardrail for a credible disciplinary process. There is a deliberate process to ensure that civil servants are not unduly punished and witch-hunted. The matters of discipline are thoroughly investigated and fiercely debated by Olaopa and his federal commissioners who represent the 36 States and the Federal Capital Territory before a conclusion is reached. No one is allowed to use their influence to frustrate their subordinates out of the civil service. Through a robust deployment of emotional intelligence, Olaopa has been able to forge an unequalled cordial working relationship with the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation ( HOCSF ). Indeed, Olaopa aptly captures his working relationship with the HOCSF as that of Siamese twins who operate with unequalled synergy. Unlike some agencies of government, there is no rivalry between these two agencies of the government that are responsible for the leadership of the nation’s civil service. They both adhere to their boundaries to ensure that the civil service delivers only only the best to the public. At the state level, civil servants have equally benefited immensely from Olaopa’s leadership. Drawing from his rich experience as a former federal permanent secretary and as a professor of public administration, Olaopa has offered himself as a mentor to many managers of state civil service commissions. This finds exemplification in Olaopa’s revitalisation of the National Conference of Civil Service Commissions after an over 10-year hiatus. The last two conferences which were held in Katsina and Abia states birthed declarations that outlined the challenges that state civil service commissions need to overcome to optimise their performance. Olaopa has also extended his mentorship to local government service commissions as he delivered the keynote address to them during their last yearly conference in Abuja. For years, the voice of the Nigerian civil service through the Federal Civil Service Commission was silent on the global stage. But within two years, Olaopa has forged alliances that have returned the voice of the civil service to the global stage. This is so especially at the continental level where under the leadership of Olaopa, Nigeria has become an active voice in the Association of the African Public Service Commissions (AAPSCOMS). In its last meeting in Kenya, Olaopa was elected the Vice President of AAPSCOMS for West Africa.To underscore Nigeria’s influence in AAPSCOMS through Olaopa, the country has been scheduled to host the organisation in 2026 in Abuja. Successful corporations like great nations have strategic plans that define certain directions that they would go in a given time frame. Yet the FCSC for over 70 years of its existence was bereft of such a strategic plan. But within the two years of Olaopa’s leadership , the FCSC now has a strategic plan that spells out the direction the commission would go from now till 2030. Beyond clinking glasses at two years in the saddle, Olaopa’s achievements within this brief period are an auspicious reminder of the gains that accrue to the society when the appointment of people to public office is blind to considerations other than their suitability on account of competence and their readiness to serve. They also signal a determination to bequeath to succeeding managers of the civil service a world-class bureaucratic system that has been made to yield itself to renewal in order to effectively deliver service to the public. Onomuakpokpo, PhD, former Acting Editor, The Guardian, is the Special Assistant on Strategic Communications to the Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s 2026 Budget Speech is remarkable, not only for its rhetorical flourish, it is remarkable, for something far more consequential in Nigerian public finance management: authority, realism, and enforcement intent.
This budget indicates where Nigeria is coming from, where it is, and—critically—what must now change.
1. A President Owning the Hard Truths,Powering Forward
The first strength of the speech lies in what it does not evade. The President openly acknowledges that:
•budget execution must be stronger,firm
•revenue assumptions were optimistic,
•and fiscal reality eventually caught up with projections.
This candour is rare in budget presentations, which often prefer abstraction over admission. By naming the problem plainly, the President establishes credibility and signals a shift from excuse-making to corrective action.
The clarification that the additional three months for 2025 budget execution is legal housekeeping, not fiscal indiscipline, further reinforces a leader who understands constitutional boundaries and chooses to explain them, not hide behind them.
2. The Boldest Line in the Speech: Command, Not Consultation
The speech reaches its most consequential moment at Paragraph 12:
“Let me be clear: 2026 will be a year of stronger discipline in budget execution.”
This is not rhetorical emphasis; it is executive instruction. Naming the Minister of Finance, the Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, the Accountant-General, and the Director-General of the Budget Office is deliberate. It does three things at once:
•fixes responsibility,
• removes ambiguity,
•and collapses bureaucratic distance.
This is presidential authority exercised without apology. It sends a clear signal that 2026 is not a negotiating year for fiscal laxity.
3. From Reform Rhetoric to Enforcement Architecture
The speech’s boldness deepens in its treatment of Government-Owned Enterprises (GOEs). The language shifts from encouragement to performance compulsion:
•assigned revenue targets
•digitised end-to-end collections
* interoperable payment rails
* eeal-time dashboards,
* performance scorecards tied to evaluations.
This is not merely reform language; it is institutional redesign. The President is explicit that underperformance will no longer be masked by opacity or manual processes. The subtext is unmistakable: systems will now remember who performed and who did not.
On national security, the speech abandons euphemism entirely. The declaration that any armed group operating outside state authority will be regarded as terrorists is a doctrinal reset. It removes political, ethnic, or semantic cover from violent non-state actors.
This is bold because it narrows discretion and widens accountability. It also signals to security agencies that ambiguity will no longer be an operational excuse.
5. Fiscal Numbers as Political Statement
The budget aggregates are presented not as defensive explanations, but as choices:
•a conservative oil benchmark
•realistic production assumptions
•a deficit framed within sustainability, not denial.
The repeated insistence that “these numbers are not mere accounting lines” reinforces the President’s framing of the budget as an instrument of national priority, not legislative ritual.
6. A Quiet but Firm Philosophy Shift
Perhaps the most important feature of the peesentation is its philosophical undertone:
Nigeria is moving from expansion without discipline to consolidation with enforcement.
The closing line captures it succinctly:
“The most significant budget is not the one we announce. It is the one we deliver.”
That sentence alone separates this speech from many of its predecessors.
Why This Budget Matters
This budget speech is bold not because it promises miracles, but because it sets consequences. It does not sell optimism cheaply; it conditions optimism on discipline, systems, and performance.
In tone, structure, and substance, it signals a presidency that is no longer merely reform-minded, but execution-driven. If followed through, it marks a transition point: from reform as intent to reform as enforcement.
In that sense, this budget is less a fiscal document and more a governance marker—and its boldness lies precisely there.
I think Nigeria is a disgrace. The whole thing is a disgrace. They are killing people by the thousands. It is a genocide and I am really angry about it. The Government has done nothing. They are very ineffective and they are killing Christians at will. We will come in guns ablazing and it will be short, vicious and sweet”- President Donald Trump, 21st November 2025.
Is it not strange that each time this ill-bred, ill-informed, racist and recalcitrant war-monger opens his foul mouth more attacks, killings and abductions take place in Nigeria?
Has it not occurred to anyone that he is actually fuelling the insurgency with his words and constant denigration of our people, our Armed Forces and our Government?
Is this not an attempt to create a clear justification for what they really wish to do to us: namely invade and bomb us to kingdom come and then divide our country.
This is the same way they demonised the Government of Sudan before unleashing the UAE-funded Janjaweed militia known as the RSF on them and creating carnage in Darfur.
This is what they did to Congo DRC too before releasing the Rwanda-funded M23 militia and the butchery started.
Is it not strange to you that the man that says he wants to deliver and protect Christians in Nigeria welcomed into the White House with open arms the greatest butcher of Christians on earth by the name of Ahmed Al Sharaa (AKA Julani) who is the newly-installed President of Syria, only the other day and even gave him and his wife a bottle of “sweet” perfume in the full glare of the media.
Apparently he loves the Christians of Nigeria but hates the Christians of Syria.
He also hates the Christians of Gaza and the Palestinian West Bank who have suffered immensly in the hands of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Zionist State of Israel.
What an interesting paradox and contradiction this is and only a village idiot will be fooled by it.
Claiming that the King of Mar A Lago cares about Nigerian Christians is like claiming that the proverbial “big bad wolf” cares about Little Red Riding Hood or that Count Dracula cares about beautiful women. Believe such balderdash and poppycock at your own peril.
The Orange Man’s motivation for expressing concern about the plight of Christians at the hands of the terrorists in Nigeria is gain and not love and as for the plight of the Muslims he couldn’t care less.
The script is clear: stoke, provoke and fund chaos, discredit and weaken the sitting Government, incite the people, engender regime change and spark off a civil war which will enable you to pick up the spoils and plunder the nation dry.
Their evil eye is now on Nigeria. They say we have done nothing to stop the killing but they won’t tell you what they have done to stop supporting, enhancing and encouraging it for the last fifteen years?
They won’t tell you why they do not sell us the arms we need to fight the war or share the necessary intelligence with us.
They won’t tell you why they refused to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organisation until 2015.
They won’t tell you why they imposed an arms embargo on Nigeria.
They won’t tell you why they have refused to offer even the smallest assistance to our Armed Forces in this war over the last few years and up till now.
They won’t tell you why USAID was funding ISWAP and Boko Haram.
They won’t tell you that they covertly established and utilised Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, the Taliban, Al Shabab, Al Nusra, Ansaru, ISWAP and Lakurawa right from the outset whilst pretending to fight them.
They won’t tell you the carnage that they unleashed on Libya, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Congo, Sudan, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Gaza, Yemen, Palestine, Ukraine, Central African Republic, Venezuela, Mali, Chad, Niger, Burkina Faso and elsewhere either directly or through their local proxies and sponsored militias.
They won’t tell you why they have now focused on Nigeria and why they are attempting to do same to South Africa.
Nigeria’s case is even more pitiful and alarming and we are clearly being set up for the kill.
Every time we make progress economically those that do not wish us well from outside our shores undermine the efforts of our Government and they do so in collaboration with members of the opposition.
It happened when President Olusegun Obasanjo, President Umaru Yar’adua, President Goodluck Jonathan and President Muhammadu Buhari were in power and now it is happening under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
These dark and sinister forces which are led and supported by what the Holy Bible describes as “bloodthirsty and evil men” have no loyalty and offer no fidelity to any African nation or leader.
As a matter of fact they hate us with what the Holy Bible describes as “a perfect hatred”.
Consequently for the last 65 years Nigeria has been the victim and target of a vicious, well-planned, well-funded, well-orchestrated international conspiracy and the ugly events of the last fifteen years and particularly the last few weeks and months prove that.
During Obasanjo’s time when I was in Government the American State Department even went as far as to publicly and boastfully proclaim that by 2015 we would no longer be one nation.
That was their projection, hope and aspiration and they did everything in their power to achieve it but God, in His infinite wisdom and mercy, kept us together and put them to shame.
Today as we attempt to cosy up to them despite their threats and insults my advice and counsel is that we guard our hearts jealously for we trust them at our own peril.
Men of blood and violence are incapable of honoring agreements and reciprocating friendship. And when they do they cannot sustain it.
In this respect the words of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, are instructive.
A few days ago he said, “the war in Ukraine started because of U.S. interference and now they are imposing a 28-article plan on the country they themselves dragged into the war. The Americans BETRAY even their own friends. They support the Zionist criminal regime, are ready to ignite wars anywhere in the world for oil and underground resources and today this war has reached Latin America. Undoubtedly, such a state is unworthy of having a Government like the Islamic Republic seek ties and cooperation with it.”
Can anyone dispute the veracity of Khamenei’s words?
The truth is that the Americans are pathologically unreliable and unscrupulously treacherous. What this means is that if, God forbid, things get out of hand in our country they may end up supporting the head of Boko Haram and ISWAP as our President. As far as they are concerned today’s terrorist is tomorrow’s leader. It really is that bad and if anyone doubts it they should find out what happened in Syria and Afghanistan!
Yet no leader has encapsulated the American disease better than President Gustavo Petro of Colombia when he said,
“A clan of pedophiles wants to destroy our democracy. To keep Epstein’s list from coming out they send warships to kill fishermen and threaten our neighbor with invasion for their oil. They want to turn the region into another Libya, full of slaves.”
This insightful and incisive contribution cannot be dismissed or ignored because it is rooted in truth.
To those that still trust the Americans despite all these observations I say “caveat emptor” which, for those who never had the privilege of learning or studying latin, means “buyer beware”.
For the record I am aware of the formation of the U.S./Nigeria Working Group which was established a few days ago.
I have implicit confidence in the National Security Advisor, Malam Nuhu Ribadu, who leads it and it’s other members who, in my estimation, are loyal and distinguished patriots like my old friend and brother and our Foreign Minister, Ambassador Yusuf Tuggar.
Despite the confidence I have in them I urge them, for all our sakes, to be cautious of those they are working and collaborating with from the American side.
As they say, when you dine with the devil it is wise to do so with a long fork and knife.
Again as the Roman poet Virgil wrote in his literary masterpiece thousands of years ago titled ‘The Aeniad’, “beware of the Greeks, especially when they bring gifts”.
The Trojans learnt that lesson the hard way: let us hope that we do not.
What makes it worse is that now that they are reviewing the ‘Green Cards’ of nationals of all the ‘Countries of Concern’ as a result of the tragic shooting of two National Guard officers (one of whom has died) by Afghan nationals near the White House, this makes the matter even more dicey and complicated.
The Americans are now literally foaming at the mouth and looking for who to blame for their many self-inflicted woes so we must be cautious.
The bitter truth is that every time we take ten steps forward they band together with their local co-conspirators and take us twenty steps back because their greatest nightmare is a strong, independent, united, flourishing Nigeria that brings pride and dignity to Africa and the black race.
Any Nigerian that takes pleasure in the security challenges we are facing in our country today is either a sadist, a masochist, insane or simply naive and unpatriotic. This is not about Tinubu but about our country.
The terrorists are being funded and supported by a dark, sinister and relentless foreign force that seeks to tear us apart, destroy us, humiliate us, rob us, occupy our land, steal our resources, pillage our rare earth minerals, erase our identity, distort our heritage, re-define our history and control the entire globe.
They are doing the same thing in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, South East Asia and much of the world.
Those that applaud that evil force and encourage it to enter our shores “guns-ablazing” and bomb us in the name of trying to help us fight the terrorists that they themselves are funding do not understand world politics and have no knowledge of modern history.
There is not one country that the Americans have entered with bullets, bombs and violence and left better than the way they found it.
Outside of that once we lose our sovereignty we will never get it back.
Once we rely on another country to fight our battles for us we are no longer a nation but a vassal state of cowardly slaves.
The solution to the problem is to support and encourage our Government and Armed Forces to face the challenge squarely and win this war.
Whatever it takes it is their obligation and duty to do this and with our support and understanding they surely will.
There is room for criticism and even anger but there is no room for disloyalty to the national cause or betrayal and collaboration with those that want to bring our country to her knees.
Things are tough and the enemy appears to be gaining ground but we must keep faith with God and have confidence that our President can and will turn things around.
This is a time to pray for Nigeria and to pray for our leaders and Armed Forces and not to gloat or cheer on those who mock, despise, undermine and insult us and seek to subvert their efforts.
This is a time to show those that have described us as being “a disgrace” that we are more than able to handle our own affairs and solve our problems despite their obvious malice and acts of sabotage.
This is a time to have faith in our country and our people and remember God’s promise and word that Nigeria shall be great again.
This is a time to line up behind our President and let him know that despite all that is happening we still have confidence in him and that he is not alone.
Thankfully there is light on the horizon. For example it is great news that the 24 female students that were abducted by terrorists from Government Girl’s Comprehensive Secondry School in Maga, Kebbi state have all been rescued.
Kudos to President Tinubu, our Armed Forces and our security agencies.
When we couple this with the fact that just a few days earlier every single one of the 33 worshippers that were abducted by terrorists from a Church in Eruku, Kwara state were also rescued and 50 of the 303 male and female students that were abducted from St. Mary’s school in Papiri, Niger State regained their freedom it rekindles our joy and gives cause for hope.
We still have a long way to go and our joy cannot be full until every single person that has been abducted is rescued and regains their freedom and until every terrorist has been killed but these efforts are promising and noteworthy and put a lie to the tactless assertion by Trump that we are a “disgraced country” which should be shamed, insulted, threatened and brought to her knees before the entire world.
Anyone that believes that a man like that who violates international law and all the norms of decency and civilisation by bombing and blowing small fishing boats out of the Atlantic ocean and murdering innocent, defenceless and faceless Venezuelan fishermen in cold blood on the grounds that they are supposedly carrying hard drugs into his country, is sane or capable of fighting for Christians in Nigeria is uninformed and unintelligent.
Again anyone that believes that if and when Trump starts dropping bombs on Northern Nigeria in the name of delivering Christians from terrorism and persecution that he will make a distinction between Christians and Muslims when those bombs start flying is a dullard.
A few days ago Professor Wole Soyinka, the literary giant and Nobel Laureate, described him as a “mad man”.
He went further by saying “Trump said he would come to Nigeria ‘guns ablazing’ and that it would be ‘fast, vicious and sweet’”.
He concluded by asking, “do these words sound like those of a sane person to you?”
On another occassion he referred to him as “a petty dictator” and “a white version of Idi Amin”.
Soyinka is absolutely right.
On his part Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, a respected former Minister of Foreign Affairs said,
“when the most powerful man in the world threatens you with his own troops the devil is at the door knocking. We don’t want that devil to come in.”
I concur.
To compound the point one of the few intelligent and rational American commentators left on earth, Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Colombia University, in his reaction to Trump not turning up to the G20 meeting in South Africa, said the following to a South African audience the day before the meeting started.
He said, “why isn’t Donald Trump coming tomorrow? Because he has a four year old mentality and he is having a tantrum”.
This is apt.
Imagine a man with a “four year old mentality” that is given to “tantrums” having control over the worlds largest arsenal of nuclear weapons and being the Commander in Chief of the most powerful army in human history.
Only God can save us from such a creature.
If anyone has any doubts about the accuracy of Sachs’ categorisation of Donald Trump’s infantile and fragile state of mind I urge them to consider the following words which he posted on his X handle on November 28th, after few days after the successful conclusion of the G20 meeting in South Africa, and which graphically reflects his vindictive, petty and puerile disposition. He wrote,
“The United States did not attend the G20 in South Africa, because the South African Government refuses to acknowledge or address the horrific Human Right Abuses endured by Afrikaners, and other descendants of Dutch, French, and German settlers. To put it more bluntly, they are killing white people, and randomly allowing their farms to be taken from them. Perhaps, worst of all, the soon to be out of business New York Times and the Fake News Media won’t issue a word against this genocide. That’s why all the Liars and Pretenders of the Radical Left Media are going out of business! At the conclusion of the G20, South Africa refused to hand off the G20 Presidency to a Senior Representative from our U.S. Embassy, who attended the Closing Ceremony. Therefore, at my direction, South Africa will NOT be receiving an invitation to the 2026 G20, which will be hosted in the Great City of Miami, Florida next year. South Africa has demonstrated to the World they are not a country worthy of Membership anywhere, and we are going to stop all payments and subsidies to them, effective immediately. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
If this vile, disrespectful and nonsensical verbiage does not betray the mindset of a spoilt, ill-bred and delusional four year old brat whose toys have been taken away from him then I don’t know what will.
Jeffrey Sachs, together with men and women like Colonel Douglas Macgregor, Lt. Colonel Scott Ritter, Chris Hedges, Abby Martin and Candace Owens are amongst the few that have the courage to call out Trump and his MAGA movement and still speak truth in America today.
They are the saving grace and redeeming factor of the American intellectual space.
The rest are mostly Yankee cowboys and cowgirls with little or no intelligence that are only interested in extending the boundaries of American hegemony and that present a very real danger to the peace and stability of the civilised world.
Recent events in Gaza, Darfur, Congo, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Venezuela prove that.
When it comes to his threats against Nigeria we must consider the fact that such is the level of Trump’s utter depravity that he is quite capable of blowing up a whole town with ALL the people in it, both Christian and Muslim, in the name of targetting and killing terrorists and saving Nigeria’s Christians.
His agenda is not hidden. Trump is attempting to demonise and dehumanise us ALL so that he can come in and slaughter us without consequence.
That is what we are toying with when we urge him to come and have his wicked way with us.
In case anyone is in any doubt about this I urge them to consider his words, spoken on the 5th of November.
He said, “we don’t lose wars. Sometimes, we don’t fight to win. We’ll stay around a country for 15 years, just bomb the hell out of everybody, make everybody miserable. Nobody knows why we’re there. You know the wars that never end — that wasn’t me. That was the stupidity of the people before me”.
He says that wasn’t him and describes the people that were in power before him as “stupid” but frankly none of them has been as brutal and brazen as he has been when it comes to killing innocent people and deploying military force and economic coercion against not just his own people but also the rest of the world.
Even his countries’ traditional allies have not been spared of his insults, threats, mockery and blackmail.
Those that believe his “that wasn’t me” mantra do so at their own peril.
Those that are praying for Trump to come and “save us” in Nigeria remind me of the proverbial turkey that is praying for Christmas and the proverbial ram that is praying for Sallah.
In the end, after their prayers have been answered, they will be slaughtered and devoured on that day but due to their low intelligence quotient they don’t see it coming despite all the evidence.
There is a reason that Rev. (Dr.) Munther Isaac of the Orthodox Church, Bethlehem in the West Bank said, “we Palestinians prefer to die and be martyred than to have someone like Trump defending us”.
I urge every Nigerian Christian, especially the excitable ones that claim to love Trump, that see him as their saviour and that insist on calling themselves Biafrans, to ponder on this.
You do not invite satan in to solve your problems. You do not invoke a demon to provide a solution for your challenges.
It is better for us to solve our problems ourselves and fight our own battles as Christians than to rely on Trump and the Americans to come and fight them for us.
A word is enough for the wise.
Before ending this contribution permit me to address the fundamental issues.
The question is whether we really do have a Christian genocide problem in Nigeria and the answer is ‘yes, we do’.
Again the question is whether we have a Muslim genocide problem in Nigeria and again the answer is ‘yes we do!’
Both Christians and Muslims are the victims of the terrorists and anyone that says otherwise is a pernicious and specious liar.
Any assertion that seeks to deny this incontrovertible fact is nothing but perfidy and deceit.
The final question is what can we do to solve these problems and the answer is as follows.
Firstly, we must resolve to kill every single terrorist and make it a criminal offence punishable by death to assist, collaborate, encourage, support, negotiate or pay ransoms to them.
Secondly we must resist every attempt by the Americans or any other group of foreigners and their local collaborators to drive a wedge between Christians and Muslims in our country.
Thirdly we must get the Federal Government to provide the necessary security, do their job properly, keep them on their toes and hold them to account.
Fourthly we must inspire, motivate, encourage and equip our soldiers and security agencies and give them all the weaponry, resources and support that they need to do the job.
Fifthly we must urge our President to reach Lt. Colonel Eebyn Barlow, the highly acclaimed, celebrated, experienced and respected retired South African Special Forces officer that scored great successes against Boko Haram when President Goodluck Jonathan brought him and his company, Executive Outcomes, into our country in 2014 to assist and support our Armed Forces.
And finally we must get President Tinubu to reach out to President Vladimer Putin, enter a defence pact with the Russian Federation and urge the Russians to assist our Armed Forces in our fight against the terrorists.
We must also build greater, deeper and stronger economic ties with China and consolidate our friendship and diplomatic ties with the United Kingdom, Germany, France and the European Union.
What we must NOT do is trust the Americans or rely on them for ANYTHING.
We cannot trust a nation whose President has publicly referred to ours as “a shithole” and “a disgrace”, who has contempt for us, who constantly threatens us and says he will withdraw all the aid they have been giving us and who has a clear and distinct psychopathic disposition.
This seems to me to be basic logic.
Let us hope that someone is listening.
Permit me to end this contribution with the words of Trump himself which will give even his greatest and most ardent supporters in Nigeria and indeed throughout Africa and the Global South pause for thought and an insight into just how dark and sinister the inner recesses of his complex mind really are.
In a long post on his X page on Thanksgiving Day he wrote, inter alia,
“even as we have progressed technologically, Immigration Policy has eroded those gains and living conditions for many. I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country, end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization. These goals will be pursued with the aim of achieving a major reduction in illegal and disruptive populations, including those admitted through an unauthorized and illegal Autopen approval process. Only REVERSE MIGRATION can fully cure this situation. Other than that, HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL, except those that hate, steal, murder, and destroy everything that America stands for: you won’t be here for long!”
After reading this if you still believe that Donald Trump is our friend I wish you luck!
May the Lord defend and protect the Federal Republic of Nigeria!
(Chief Femi Fani-Kayode is a former Minister of Culture and Tourism, a former Minister of Aviation, the Sadaukin Shinkafi, the Wakilin Doka Potiskum, the Otunba of Joga Orile, the Aare Ajagunla of Otun Ekiti and a former Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs to President Olusegun Obasanjo)
World leaders of about 197 countries, and with European Union, making 198, began holding early November what may turn out to be a most important summit in a long while, given the theme of the conference. The theme is “Climate Action and Implementation.” What brings them together yearly is the future of the earth in the light of devastation and the incalculable abuse to which it has been subjected largely in the pursuit of modern living. The Vice-President, Kashim Shettima, was at the meeting in Belem, Brazil, standing in for President Bola Tinubu.
The climate summit is a product of a 1987 report by a 22-member UN’s World Commission on Environment and Development. The Brundtland report, captioned “Our Common Future,” worries about the state of the planet earth and what will be left of it for the future generation, what The Times of London at the time called “this fragile earth.” The report stresses that never should an economic decision be taken without regard to its consequences on the environment.
The devastation to the environment borne out largely of economic activities, has come in various guises—pollution, deep and extensive damage to the earth-crust, emission of hardly quantifiable amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and destruction of vegetation and rivers. Already, scientists have discovered that the carbon dioxide emission has altered the stratospheric balance, perforating the ozone layer such that there is unshielded release of harmful ultraviolet radiation, which apart from inflicting skin cancer on man, escalates atmospheric warming. Deformities in fish and animals linked to radiation increases were reported. The scientists also discovered the largest ever hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic. The ultraviolet rays deplete the community of planktons which absorb carbon dioxide. When added to that the devastation of vegetation, plant life in general that absorbs carbon and through photosynthesis in the activities of Nature Beings also called Elemental Beings, turn it into oxygen which man and animals need, it leads not only to warming, it engenders shortfall in the quantity and quality of oxygen available. Indeed, it is a tragedy in no small measure. The harm is unspeakable. With the gradual extermination of planktons, increased heat and pollution are released into the environment resulting in climatic changes.
The warming is laden with the danger of melting Ice-lands which is calculated will swell water level by as much as 20 centimeters (8 inches) come the year 2030 which as of today is only five years away and 65cm in 2100. By that time as scientists predict, many coastal lands will be washed off or completely submerged, places such as Bangladesh and parts of Britain and West African coastline. Pray that the prediction of Professor Ijeoma formerly of Ambrose Ali University that Victoria Island may be hit does not come to pass. At the time he made the prediction he was dismissed as exhibiting deficient knowledge of oceanography and land reclamation. The severity of the climate change even now cannot go unnoticed.
Each year, the climate summit is seen as raising hope of a giant leap for mankind even if at the end of the huge gathering not more than rhetorics and huge piles of presented papers, over which not much action is taken, come out of it. It arouses world consciousness to the apocalyptic future facing mankind. The awareness is imperative for nations, corporate organizations as well as individual attitude to the casual manner the earth and, by extension, the environment has been treated. This newspaper, The Guardian, on 01 August, this year, painted the troubling picture of the seriousness of the climate crisis even here in our land, Nigeria. In what the paper referred to as “…the dangerous circle of climate crisis and insecurity” and how to break it, the paper stated in an editorial: “As climate extremes tighten their grip across the globe, Nigeria finds itself at a pivotal crossroads. In 2024, the hottest year ever recorded, Nigerians from Maiduguri to Bayelsa experienced a convergence of environmental catastrophes: extreme heat, crippling floods, desertification, deforestation, and oil pollution. These are not isolated events but glaring symptoms of climate crisis spiraling out of control, and Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is dangerously underprepared.
“Nowhere is this more evident than in the Lake Chad region, where rising temperatures and decades of water mismanagement have reduced one of Africa’s largest lakes by over 90 per cent. This ecological collapse has not only ruined livelihoods but fuelled migration, armed insurgency, and deepened poverty. Across the North, desertification is encroaching on farmlands, threatening food security and inflaming farmer-herder conflicts. In the South-East, gully erosion swallows homes and infrastructure. In the Niger Delta, oil spills continue to poison soil, water, and people.”
Some years back, an Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change consisting of 300 leading scientists drew together the results of new studies which indicated that global warming was real. The studies showed that snow cover sharply decreased in the second-half of the 80s as the climate warmed up, that glaciers have shrunk and sea ice had melted. Between 1972 and 2023, according to Climate Change Indicators, the average portion of North America covered by snow decreased at a rate of about 2,083 square miles per year. Land gripped by permafrost was thawing and that was supposed to speed up global warming by releasing vast amounts of defrozen carbon dioxide and methane, another green-house gas. The studies predicted that harvests in the United States and Russia would be decimated as green-house effect takes hold. Food exports from the US that usually helped to feed no fewer than 100 nations could fall catastrophically. The forecast further said that the African savannah would dry out to resemble the Sahel. Sheep would become scarcer in New Zealand. Rice, soya beans and maize harvests would be devastated in Indonesia and Malaysia and nearly a third of the country may no longer be able to grow rubber.
Yet, in spite of the grim situation staring mankind in the face, there is bickering and buck-passing between the developed and the developing nations. There is the belief that the position the developing nations at the summit are to push is grant-in-aid to preserve the environment considering the fact that the amount of pollution by the industrialized nations is 10 times what is emitted by the Third World countries. Businessmen in the developed countries are frowning at what they see as the attempt to curtail the amount of carbon dioxide being spewed out as it would tantamount to reduction in their economic activities and, therefore, economic well-being.
The famous Paris Agreement comes to mind. It was a promising potent tool that world leaders agreed upon to tackle climate change and its negative impacts. According to online publications, the leaders reached what was regarded as a breakthrough at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 21) in Paris on 12 December, 2015. The Agreement sets long-term goal to guide all nations to:
*substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to hold global temperature to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial age levels and strive hard to limit it to 1.5 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels, believing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.
*Periodically assess the collective progress towards achieving the purpose of this agreement and its long-term goals.
*Provide financing to developing countries to mitigate climate change, strengthen resilience and enhance abilities to adapt to climate impacts.
The agreement is a legally binding international treaty. It came into force on 04 November, 2016.
The Nigerian brief that VP Shettima has in his briefcase is to take part in the inauguration of Tropical Forest Forever Fund. According to his aide, Nwocha the Vice-President will also participate in two roundtables chaired by the President of Brazil on energy transition as well as “in the review of the Paris Agreement with focus on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and Financing.”
All of the conferences are necessitated in the time of great perplexities and they point to no other thing than the consequences of what man has brought upon himself. And he is unable to see the way forward because he focuses on only one of two-sided coin of life. What has generally been understood as a danger to the environment has been confined to the devastation to land, rivers and vegetation, as well as industrial pollution through burning of fossil fuel. This, in itself, arises from limited definition of environment. What is understood by environment? Where does it start and where does it end? If in the definition of man, it is not considered complete if due cognizance is not taken of his external as well as his internal features, the description of the environment cannot, similarly, be considered complete without reference to the internal features which may not necessarily be physical. Can he be regarded as a man without his soul and the animating core inside him, the spirit encased in the soul, both of which cannot be seen? Our environment constitutes that part into which thoughts and speeches and their forms are deposited. The pollution and the devastation of this finer part of the environment are greater than those with which the world seems familiar. And it is activities in these finer parts that constitute the driving force of devastation and despoliation that eventually manifest physically.
The consequences of this later kind of pollution have constituted unintended weight on the earth and pushed it down. The push has brought about a shift in its orbital movement with concomitant striking climatic changes and gravitational pull. As one thing leads to the other there is imbalance in earth and atmospheric movement causing plane crashes and earthquakes in places which have fallen out of rhythm. Human beings are unable to think straight and errors are committed from shrunk horizon. The world summit on climate change, therefore, is useful only to the extent that it awakens world consciousness to the state of planet earth today. A turn-around, however, is possible only with man lifting his gaze higher and as in individuals who, having come to the awareness, resolving to keep their thoughts first and foremost, pure. All selfishness, economic woes, harm and devastation will disappear in accordance with the law. That is the time the question can be meaningfully answered: “What kind of planet will our children inherit? Will they have space and room to roam, air to breathe, and food to eat? Will they ever see an eagle flying free and enjoy the solitude of a pristine mountain lake?”
Man is the most singular destructive agent in the whole world full of learning but bereft of knowledge, victorious knowledge. He must change and become a new person. If he conceitedly and stubbornly clings to the old way he will soon find out that his days are numbered. He will be hit like any pestilential vermin in reciprocity of the harm he had caused the earth meant to give him abode and provide him a school. Creation is both a home and a school for man. The earth provides his cloak and the materials—food and herbs—which he needs for his nourishment and strength.
Who is unaware of the extraordinary, unassailable achievements of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) and the superlative performance it has delivered over the past two years alone? We are talking about an unbroken string of signature successes and unrivalled pace-setting milestones that crystallised in 2024 as an absolute blockbuster year for the Commission—soaring revenues, massive production increases, and a ferocious investment drive powered by systematic transparency, aggressive containment of oil theft, and the near-elimination of routine gas flaring.
Production has climbed from 1.46 million barrels per day in October 2024 to 1.78 million barrels per day in 2025, with the ambitious Project 1 million barrels per day now firmly on track to deliver an additional full million barrels daily above the baseline.
Unfortunately, rather than celebrating the achievements of the NUPRC, some people who are expected to know better, out of mischief, have chosen to rubbish the body.
Truth is sacred, but when a man descends so low as to turn truth on its head, then there is a problem.
With his training and education, Toyin Akinosho, a geologist by training, who later turned writer and publisher, is expected to know better when it comes to the issue of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission; unfortunately, his recent piece has negated that.
His resolve to distort an article lifted from the website of the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) so he could pad out and sell copies of his magazine, The African Oil and Gas Report, is a bit worrisome.
Rather than publishing the fact, out of mischief or otherwise, he ended up publishing a month-old gossip in Festac News and Community Tabloid.
Is he somehow unaware of the explosive rig-count surge from a pathetic eight active rigs in 2021 to thirty-six today—and heading toward seventy, with more than forty already drilling—putting the Commission comfortably on course to hit its fifty-rig target by the end of 2025?
Does he pretend not to have noticed the revolutionary data and transparency reforms, the upgraded National Data Repository (NDR) now enriched with 11,000 square kilometres of fresh 3D seismic data (part of the monumental 56,000 sq km Awalé Project) plus information from more than 10,000 wells? Or the forthcoming licensing round launching on 1 December 2025, universally praised in advance for being fully digitalised and transparently run? Or the staggering 2024 revenue haul of ₦12.25 trillion—an eye-watering 182% leap over 2023 and a full ₦5 trillion above projection—publicly celebrated by the prestigious Energy Governance Alliance for single-handedly restoring regulatory credibility to Nigeria’s upstream sector?
Do I really need to jog his memory about the masterstroke regulatory reforms anchored on the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) of 2021—reforms that have delivered crystal-clear fiscal terms, investor-friendly processes, and a suite of gazetted regulations on gas flaring, royalties, and production curtailment that industry stakeholders have openly applauded?
While people like Toyin Akinosho rush to publish half-baked, poorly researched jobs, the rest of the world has moved on, showering praise on the NUPRC and restoring rock-solid investor confidence through landmark partnerships with TGS-PetroData, multi-client seismic campaigns, a $20 billion field development pipeline, and much more.
Yes, challenges remain—legacy infrastructural bottlenecks, the enforcement of gas-flaring penalties (₦391 billion collected against a ₦126 billion target), occasional murmurs about data-release timelines—but the Commission is surmounting every single one at speed and repositioning Nigeria as the undisputed data-rich, investment-ready powerhouse not just of Africa’s upstream sector but of the entire global industry. The numbers speak for themselves: deliberate, progressive, and impossible to argue with.
In 2024 alone, revenue hit ₦12.25 trillion—up 182% from ₦4.34 trillion in 2023 and ₦5 trillion above the projected ₦6.93 trillion. The same year delivered an 84.2% year-on-year growth rate—the highest in three years. Crude output averaged 1.65 million barrels per day and continues climbing, propelled by the Project 1 Million Barrels per Day initiative that is targeting 2.5 million barrels per day by 2027.
