Sir: Four years since the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, declared an illegal sit-at-home order in retaliation to the arrest and prosecution of their leader, Nnamdi Kanu, the now outlawed organization has held the entire east and their socio-economic and political well-being at the jugular.
Like a child play, the sit-at-home order has ballooned into a fixtual phenomenon, creating embarrassment and diversionary to people’s socio-economic wellness, including education, where schools and universities presently stand the severe threat of calendar derailment. The Nigerian Civil war ended over 50 years ago, but the monumental ripple effects of colossal damages to lives, properties, economies and human psyches, still litter the entire gamut of south-eastern states of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu and Imo.
Even if members of IPOB were either too young or not actually born during the war, today, they could see the extent of runs and degradations to which the once viable and prosperous patrimonies of their forebears have become, owing to the avoidable war. More than 50 years since the end of the civil war, lots of older Nigerians, not to talk easterners, seem to be scared of anything likely to remind them of the war or any war whatsoever.
Now, the four years of IPOB Monday sit-at-home is already crippling and making mockery of whatever gains the people have made in their strive to recoop years of loses and dehumanization caused by three years of an unfortunate civil war.
Now, unable to bear it anymore, university students who initially pretended not to see anything wrong in the IPOB sit-at-home order are now crying about the woes the order is inflicting on their studies with the possibility of derailing and truncating their future educational trajectory and development.
IPOB is an outlawed freedom fighters but their hold on the whole southeast in the past four years has become a great burden. It behoves the governors of the five states of southeast to unite with a view to finding a lasting solutions to the IPOB menace and excesses now fast becoming the nemesis of a whole race to guarantee their people peace and tranquillity, being their inalienable rights as a citizen of Nigeria.
The former Biafran war lord, late Odemegwu Ojukwu, the Ikemba of Nkewi, not only regretted the Nigerian civil war, but also admitted that the Igbos, his own people, do not need a second war. IPOB order is like a war that is self-inflicted and now ravaging and erupting like an active volcano. Nnamdi Kanu would invariably be released, but will the east be able to regain and recall their untold loses these past four years?
Sir: For decades, countless efforts have been made to diagnose and solve Nigeria’s problems, yet many have proven ineffective. The common explanations—corruption, unemployment, maladministration, poor leadership, decaying infrastructure, and lawlessness—are not the root causes. They are symptoms. The deeper issues run through the moral and cultural fabric of our society. At its core, Nigeria suffers from a weakened moral compass, unchecked greed, and erosion of ethical values.
To understand this more clearly, let us borrow from mathematics. Imagine two baskets of tomatoes: one filled with good tomatoes, the other with rotten ones. The probability of picking a fresh tomato from the first basket is almost 100 per cent, while the chance of selecting a rotten one is close to zero. In the second basket, the odds reverse. This simple model reflects our reality—our society’s “basket” determines the likelihood of producing citizens who act with integrity or corruption.
If the system is rotten, even well-meaning leaders and institutions struggle to thrive. This is why true transformation must begin at the cultural and ethical level.
Why does bottom-up change matter?
Some argue that cultural change must start from the top. But how can leaders who are products of a compromised culture effectively reform the very system that produced them? History has shown this is unlikely. Real change begins from the ground up—in our schools, homes, workplaces, and places of worship—before it can rise and influence the nation’s leadership.
This is where the “boiling water theory” provides a powerful analogy. As water heats, molecules at the bottom begin to move faster. They rise, fall back, and collide, transferring energy. Eventually, when enough molecules are in motion, the water reaches a tipping point: it boils. Cultural transformation works the same way.
Change may start quietly at the grassroots—among students, market women, youth, and civil society. But as these values rise, fall, and spread, momentum builds. When society reaches its critical mass, corruption and lawlessness will no longer be tolerated, and the culture itself will shift.
For Nigeria to reach this boiling point of renewal, we must invest consistently in values-driven change. This can be achieved through: Reforming the education system to include ethics, integrity, and moral instruction; promoting public awareness campaigns on transparency, accountability, and citizenship; using movies, documentaries, and media to shape cultural attitudes toward honesty and responsibility; and mobilising labour unions, youth groups, and market women’s associations to champion integrity at the grassroots.
It can also be achieved through replacing “state of origin” classifications with “state of residence” to strengthen national identity; teaching the importance of restitution before forgiveness and showing how small practices—like spraying money at parties—feed corruption; expanding the role of the National Orientation Agency and civil society in promoting ethical standards; and enforcing lifestyle audits for public officers to hold leaders accountable.
Nigeria’s transformation will not be delivered by decree or imposed from the top. It will rise from classrooms, markets, churches, mosques, and living rooms. It will rise when parents teach their children the value of honesty, when schools reward integrity over shortcuts, and when communities refuse to celebrate corruption in any form.
Just as boiling water cannot be stopped once the critical temperature is reached, so too will Nigeria’s renewal be unstoppable once her people demand integrity as a way of life. If we choose values over vice and accountability over apathy, we will not only solve today’s problems—we will build a future where generations can thrive.
Sir: When foreign voices amplify our pain, Nigerians must pause to ask: is this empathy—or exploitation?
For decades, Nigeria’s religious and security crises have been reduced to simplistic narratives: stories painted in black and white, often serving agendas far from our soil. The latest intervention comes from U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, who accuses Nigerian officials of “facilitating the mass murder of Christians” while pushing for sanctions and a new Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act (S.2747). Yet history urges us to dig deeper: why now, and whose interests does this serve?
Nigeria’s recent history reveals a long and complex story of conflict, far too layered to be captured by the “Christians vs. Muslims” frame. Under President Olusegun Obasanjo (1999–2007), Kaduna was scarred by the “Sharia riots” of 2000, which left up to 5,000 dead. In 2002, the Miss World riots in the same city killed about 250. Both Christian and Muslim communities suffered as authorities struggled to restore order.
During the Umaru Yar’Adua era (2007–2010), Boko Haram’s founder, Mohammed Yusuf, was killed extra-judicially in 2009—a move that pushed the group underground and radicalised its insurgency. The Northeast soon became the epicentre of escalating violence.
Similarly, under President Goodluck Jonathan (2010–2015), violence surged. Post-election clashes in 2011 left over 800 dead across 12 northern states. Boko Haram escalated its attacks during this period, bombing churches and killing civilians. The 2014 abduction of 276 Chibok schoolgirls—mostly Christian—shocked the world and exposed the government’s struggle to contain the insurgency.
Nigeria experienced new stages of conflict from 2015 to 2023 under the late President Muhammadu Buhari. Boko Haram splintered, with ISWAP emerging in 2016. The military reclaimed large swathes of territory, but insurgents adapted, shifting to new methods of terror. Both Christians and Muslims were targeted: the 2014 Kano Central Mosque bombing killed over 100 worshippers, while the 2018 abduction of Dapchi schoolgirls left Leah Sharibu in captivity for refusing to convert.
Since 2023, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has introduced security reforms, appointing new service chiefs and intensifying the war against Boko Haram and bandit groups. Yet attacks persist. Five suspects were recently arraigned for the 2022 Owo Catholic Church massacre, even as Boko Haram seized border towns and displaced thousands.
Are Christians alone being targeted? It is undeniable that Christians have borne a disproportionate share of brutal attacks—church bombings, abductions, and forced conversions. Yet history also shows that Muslims are frequent victims too. Mosques in Kano and Mubi were bombed. Imams were assassinated for preaching against extremism. Muslim villagers were massacred for resisting Boko Haram.
This is not exclusively a war on Christians. It is a war on Nigerians, waged by extremists who target anyone outside their fold. Framing the violence as genocide against Christians oversimplifies a national tragedy and risks dividing communities that have both bled under terror.
What we are currently witnessing is the danger of imported narratives. Nigeria is not the first stage where Washington has raised alarms over religion and human rights. The crises in Libya (2011) and Iraq (2003) both began with moral outrage and promises of freedom. Both ended as broken states, torn by sectarian wars that displaced millions. The lesson is sobering: once complex conflicts are reduced to black-and-white morality tales abroad, foreign interventions often follow—and the people are left to pay the ultimate price.
By branding Nigeria’s crisis as “genocide against Christians”, American voices risk opening the door to the same destructive meddling that tore apart Tripoli and Baghdad.
President Tinubu has charted a path that shows he is not a puppet of Washington. His economic reforms—removing fuel subsidies, liberalising foreign exchange—are driven by Nigeria’s fiscal survival, not American applause. His foreign policy has prioritised Africa and regional cooperation, rather than dependence on outside powers. That independence unsettles those accustomed to pliant African leaders. By stoking sectarian accusations, critics abroad risk undermining Nigeria’s unity at a moment when the nation is struggling to reset its economy and strengthen its security.
The world should stand with us, not divide us. And Nigerians must stand tall, knowing that the only lasting solution will be forged not in Washington, but in Abuja, Maiduguri, Kaduna—and in every community determined to live together in peace.
North Korea is widely known as the hermit state because it is unapologetically reclusive and cares next to nothing about world opinion. The leader, Kim Jong-un, does not have too many friends or allies internationally and hasn’t shown keenness looking for one. He rules his country by despotic, sometimes lethal, whims though the country is officially designated Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
Countries that have some friendly relations with North Korea are Russia and China, but that perhaps is because these themselves, though great economic and military powers, are treated like pariahs in the West-dominated world system. Russia forged closer diplomatic and military ties with North Korea since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022, with Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Jong-un visiting each other’s countries in recent times. Russia also engages North Korean troops to fight Ukraine that has the support of most Western powers.
It was like the axiomatic rural recluse coming to town when North Korea featured at the just-concluded United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York. The last time it participated in the yearly convocation of world heads of state and governments was in 2018 when its foreign minister travelled to New York for the event. Now, after six years of abstention, North Korea sent a further downgraded representation in Vice-Foreign Minister Kim Son-gyong, which in diplomatic culture could mean intensified disdain for the world body.
Son-gyong had his say for his country and told the global gathering North Korea would never give up its nuclear program. “Imposition of ‘denuclearization’ on the DPRK is tantamount to demanding it to surrender sovereignty and right to existence and violate the Constitution,” the official said, adding: “We will never give up sovereignty, abandon the right to existence and violate the Constitution.” He further said: “Thanks to our state’s enhanced physical war deterrent in direct proportion to the growing threat of aggression of the U.S. and its allies, the will of the enemy states to provoke a war is thoroughly contained and the balance of power on the Korean peninsula is ensured.”
United States President Donald Trump had in September said he wanted to meet Jong-un this year. According to reports, since the American leader’s January inauguration, Jong-un has ignored his repeated calls to revive the direct diplomacy he pursued during his 2017-2021 term in office that produced no deal to halt North Korea’s nuclear program. Son-gyong made known there was no reason to avoid talks with the U.S. if Washington stopped insisting his country give up nuclear weapons, because it would never abandon its nuclear arsenal to end sanctions.
North Korea has been under U.N. Security Council sanctions since 2006, and the measures have been steadily fortified over the years with the aim of halting Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. The message at UNGA is that it yet has a long road to travel.
Sir: On a single trip transporting agricultural products from Taraba to Kano, I paid over N170,000 in multiple levies and illegal collections. Nearly 20 revenue collection points stood between my goods and their destination, excluding the routine security checkpoints that also demanded “compensation.” By the time I reached Kano, the cost of simply moving food had become a burden too heavy to ignore.
This is not just my story; it is the story of every trader, farmer, and transporter who struggles to move goods across Nigeria. It is also the hidden story behind every inflated price you see at the market, every household budget stretched to breaking point, and every young Nigerian who wonders if farming or trading is still worth the sacrifice.
For decades, we have spoken of Nigeria’s rising food prices. We often blame oil price fluctuations, poor infrastructure, insecurity, or low productivity. While all these are true, the less visible culprit is the endless chain of local levies, multiple taxes, and roadside extortion that weigh heavily on the journey of food from farm to table.
Think of this: the farmer who harvests in Taraba may sell his produce at a fair price. However, by the time the goods reach Kano, Kaduna, or Lagos, the cost has tripled, not due to greed, but because the road is littered with tolls, each demanding a payment in the name of “revenue.” Nigerians believe merchants exploit farmers, but in reality, these hidden charges are quietly passed down to the final consumer.
It is frustrating to collect receipt after receipt, sometimes with the same charges under different names. In one journey, a transporter could be forced to carry multiple state revenue receipts, each one required just to pass through another state. This does not build trust or accountability; it breeds anger, corruption, and inefficiency.
The tragedy is that this long chain of collectors achieves the opposite of what Nigeria needs. Instead of encouraging agricultural productivity and food distribution, it discourages traders, weakens farmers’ earnings, and makes food less affordable. It is a silent attack on our food security.
As a young entrepreneur with less than three decades of life and a decade of business experience, I cannot stay silent. Patriotism is not only about flags, anthems, or election-day promises; it is also about advocating for the ordinary farmer, the driver on the road, and the consumer struggling to afford garri, rice, or beans.
Every Nigerian has felt the pain of rising prices, whether in the market, at the filling station, or on the road. When I speak of 20 checkpoints on one journey, I am speaking of a system that holds us all back. The dream of a prosperous Nigeria cannot exist when hidden levies choke the very lifeline of our economy, food.
We must do better. Nigeria urgently needs a unified revenue system that allows traders to move goods across states with a single receipt, digitally integrated and recognised nationwide. One charge, clearly accounted for, and transparent to both government and citizens.
This reform would not only eliminate duplication and extortion but also make it easier for businesses to plan costs, partner with logistics providers, and stabilise food prices. Most importantly, it would give Nigerians confidence that the government stands with them, not against them, on the road to economic recovery.
We have a long way to go, but every reform, every checkpoint removed, and every levy harmonised brings us closer to a fairer Nigeria. The future of our nation depends not only on oil or infrastructure but on the dignity of labour; on the ability of farmers and traders to move food freely, and for families to afford it without despair.
Twenty checkpoints should not stand between Nigeria and its future. The cost is too heavy, and the burden is one we can no longer ignore.
Sir: So, Goodluck Jonathan is said to be eyeing a return to Aso Rock — again. The man who presided over one of the most rudderless, corrupt, and visionless administrations in Nigeria’s democratic history now thinks he deserves a second bite of the apple. It’s almost comical, if it weren’t tragic.
Let’s be clear: there was a reason Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was booted out of office in 2015. He didn’t lose because Nigerians suddenly fell in love with Muhammadu Buhari. He lost because his government had become a byword for chaos, corruption, and crippling indecision. His reign was a tragic experiment in what happens when a man with neither backbone nor boldness is handed the keys to a volatile, complex nation like Nigeria.
Jonathan governed like a man afraid of his own shadow. He was perpetually “consulting,” constantly “studying the situation,” and forever “setting up committees.” Meanwhile, Nigeria burned. Under his watch, Boko Haram morphed from a ragtag group of extremists into a full-blown terrorist army, capturing territories, overrunning military bases, and hoisting their black flags over Nigerian towns.
The Chibok incident occurred under Jonathan, and his initial reaction was one of denial, dithering, and deafening silence. While young girls were being kidnapped and the world screamed #BringBackOurGirls, Jonathan and his kitchen cabinet were busy politicking and accusing opposition voices of exaggeration. Leadership failure doesn’t come more glaringly.
But it wasn’t just security. The Jonathan years were a festival of corruption. Billions of dollars vanished into thin air — oil revenue unaccounted for, subsidy scams that would make Hollywood blush, and a central bank governor (Sanusi Lamido Sanusi) who blew the whistle and got the boot for daring to speak the truth. The fuel subsidy racket under Jonathan was legendary — a gravy train for cronies and cartels who laughed all the way to foreign banks while ordinary Nigerians queued for petrol.
The 2012 fuel subsidy fiasco, which triggered mass protests across the country, was a symbol of everything wrong with Jonathan’s government — tone-deaf policy, confused communication, and total detachment from the realities of ordinary Nigerians. And when the dust settled, the same subsidy regime he sought to reform became even fatter, darker, and leakier.
And who can forget the farce of the Transformation Agenda? It was all slogans, no substance. Ministers and special advisers and assistants turned their portfolios into private estates. Contracts were inflated, accountability evaporated, and governance was reduced to a “share-the-money” circus. It was chop-I-chop governance, pure and simple — a cash-and-carry carnival masquerading as democracy. The barn door was wide open, and the hyenas had a feast.
The Jonathan era was the golden age of impunity. Everyone dipped their hands into the till — from fuel marketers to politically connected businessmen, from civil servants to security chiefs. When whistle-blowers tried to raise an alarm, they were hounded, suspended, or smeared. Under Jonathan, corruption wasn’t an aberration — it was the operating system.
Jonathan’s biggest sin, however, wasn’t just corruption — it was weakness. He wasn’t in charge. Everyone knew it. His ministers ran rings around him. His political godfathers pulled the strings. The cabals called the shots. Jonathan wasn’t leading Nigeria; he was watching from the side-lines. A president who cannot say “No” to his friends will always say “Sorry” to his people. And Jonathan’s Nigeria was one long apology — a helpless shrug from a man clearly overwhelmed by the magnitude of the office he held.
But perhaps Jonathan’s most glaring flaw was his chronic lack of judgment — his inability to read the room or recognize when the tide has turned. If he truly believes that Nigeria in 2025 is the same as Nigeria in 2015, then he has learned nothing. The political landscape has shifted dramatically. The era of the “Otuoke boy with no shoe” playing the role of accidental messiah is over. Today’s Nigerians are not seduced by humble origins but by honest governance.
We need leaders with vision, courage, and clarity — not those who float through office like startled tourists, clutching prayer books while their lieutenants loot the treasury. Jonathan had his chance. He squandered it. History gave him the opportunity to be great, but he chose to settle for comfort instead.
Goodluck Jonathan’s presidency was a cautionary tale — a lesson in what happens when luck replaces leadership. Nigeria must not make the same mistake twice.
Sir: In 1975 at Dodan Barracks, an iconic photo was taken. In that frame stood three young men already carrying the weight of the nation on their shoulders: Adamu Ciroma, 41, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, 37, Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, and Murtala Muhammed, 36, Head of State.
They were young, sharp, ambitious, and responsible. Just five years before that moment, Nigeria had fought a brutal civil war. At only 33, Obasanjo took the surrender of Biafra. And even earlier, Yakubu Gowon became Head of State at just 31. These were young Nigerians who carried heavy responsibilities with courage.
Mr. President, where are we today?
At age 30, millions of Nigerian youths are jobless, roaming the streets with certificates that mean nothing. Many of us have no employable skills because our education system is broken. Some have fallen into crime—cultism, fraud, kidnapping, banditry, and terrorism. Others risk their lives crossing the desert or drowning in the sea, chasing the Japa dream, only to end up stranded in foreign lands.
We are not lazy. We are simply lost in a system that has failed us. We are tired of being called the leaders of tomorrow when our today has already been stolen.
We are trapped in bad schools and poor education, hospitals without medicine or equipment, insecurity that keeps farmers from their land and families from sleeping in peace, darkness because of lack of electricity, hunger everywhere—more than 85% of Nigerians cannot afford three meals a day, and joblessness—over 95% of youths have no chance to grow or contribute to this country
This pain is real, Mr. President. It is why crimes keep rising. It is why peace is broken. It is why our youths are angry, desperate, and hopeless.
I am almost 30, and I write this with tears as a voice for millions of young Nigerians. We believe in your Renewed Hope agenda. Your Excellency, every day it seems life only gets harder.
We need action, not promises. We need jobs, not slogans. We need food, not hunger. We need schools that work, hospitals that heal, and electricity that stays on, and leaders who care.
Mr. President, history has given you this chance. Please do not fail us. We need a rebirth of Nigeria. We need discipline, education, patriotism, and above all, leadership that put people first.
Sir, hear our cry. Hear the cry of your youths. If Nigeria fails us again, the future will be lost. But if you act now, history will remember you as the leader who saved a generation.
Look into the opposition camp and what do you see — a winning strategy or just blind panic?
That’s a very interesting question, with the ADC huff-and-puff; and PDP’s seeming very difficult rebirth — and just as well, with the havoc it wreaked during its best-forgotten ruling years! Karma never forgets!
But first, the antics of the opposition leading voices — and the “I’m hungry” burlesque of Rotimi Amaechi, ex-passionate Transport minister, credited with Nigeria’s rail renaissance and former Rivers governor, is a fitting starting point.
A “hungry” Amaechi, with a bulging pouch, and designer clothing, talk less of cars, is one riveting comedy image of the age! He has moved from that to yammering about how outgoing INEC chairman, Prof. Mahmoud Yakubu, is the “worst” INEC chair ever! Even the dullest of political dunces know that’s eternally reserved for Maurice Iwu!
Someone should tell Amaechi, decent Rivers governor and energetic “rail” minister, that his present whining, as living patron saint of the “Ebi npawa” — we’re hungry — orchestra, ill defines his political essence. But then, that’s what desperation brings to the table.
Desperation? Take a dart, the tragic Goodluck Jonathan, the man that snatched redemption from conceding a presidential election defeat — first in Nigeria — to push at gobbling the old vomit of disgrace, by seeking a forlorn electoral “rofo-rofo” encore!
Desperation — and maybe cynicism? — is solidly defined by Jonathan seeking automatic presidential ticket from his old party, PDP, and its new clone, ADC! Which gores most: Jonathan’s taunting of his old phalanx, PDP? Or romancing new mirage, ADC? Quintessential Jonathan!
Peter Obi? The more that one opens his mouth, the more he de-markets himself! With his China stats — and good helpings from Argentina, Egypt and Bangladesh: pray, how did Nepal miss out! — he establishes a pattern, hardly flattering.
He used and dumped APGA, despite eternal commitment vow to Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu. He left PDP after a vice-presidential defeat. His latest tryst with LP seems headed to end in tears, as he shops for a new platform to pursue his opportunism!
How can any good, on nation-building, come from eternal opportunism, spiked with cynical deceit of projecting with zeal what you’re not? That’s the Obi conundrum!
Atiku Abubakar? Perhaps the most delusional of the whole lot! From an unfazed candidate of the “North” in 2023, he’s posturing as a born-again nationalist but still running on that same anti-South non-power-sharing anchor, with which he wiped out, almost wholesale, the PDP southern base in 2023! He carries out as if all is normal!
This pitiable ensemble — challenging for power on such slippery grounds? The Tinubu government will answer own “hunger” problems. But is this funny bunch helping in that challenge at all?
Again, is this sound strategy or just blind panic? Year 2027 beckons!
As a very critical part of her 65th birthday celebration, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, the First Lady of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, restructured the usual pomp that attend the birthday celebration of the political class as we know it. Rather than submitting herself to the numerous treats, felicitations and pageantries that would be sure to have been deployed to mark the auspicious occasion, she demanded that anyone who needed to celebrate her should focus their largesse on the furtherance of the National Library project, and possibly its final completion. And that appeal has generated a beautiful sum of N20b. This is all so grand, and noble but unusual. It is an unusual gesture because a member of the political class, rather than the government itself, is the one championing the resuscitation of the National Library project. Maybe it is the government by association, but then the gesture is not the result of an intentional and deliberate policy commitment that enable the government to connect the library to the larger goal of national development. How do we read this strange but commendable gesture into the overall development status of the Nigerian state?
The current state of the Nigerian National Library speaks tremendously to the possibilities and failures of the national development project in Nigeria. In many nations of the world, from the Library of Congress in the United States to the Bibliotheque de France and also the National Library, Singapore, the national library signals the single repository of books, manuscripts, orature, archival materials that connects cultural heritages, knowledge production programmes, critical ideas and paradigms, historical documentation and national memories. Adolf Hitler perfectly understands this fundamental significance of the knowledge base of any nation. And this is why, in a most pernicious manner during the Second World War, he ordered the massive destruction of books and materials that were considered to be subversive of, or even contrary to, the ideals of the German Third Reich project. And quite fortunately and pragmatic enough, the allied forced, led by the United States thought it significant and strategic to fight back by making the book resurgent from their crematorium.
This speaks to the indomitable spirit of ideas, ideals and knowledge that books embody. It is in this critical sense that books and library connect a state to not only its historical and cultural knowledges and heritages, but also signal the state’s willingness to project itself into the emerging knowledge and information society that ultimately define the progress and wealth of nations. Libraries connect reading and learning culture, the dynamics of literacy, educational projects, human capital development and the generation of ideas, as well as paradigms fashioned purposely for creative innovation and policies especially in sociopolitical, socioeconomic, development and governance contexts. Libraries therefore connect a state’s willingness to become a legitimate participant in the evolving fourth industrial revolution while also keeping alive its own credentials as an entity that keeps generating culturally and historically relevant knowledge.
Knowledge, ideas and books—indeed the entire educational structures—reinvigorate the ways a state keep reengaging its problems, challenges and the solution and resolution frameworks for understanding and undermining them. Education is the fundamental bedrock that instigates individual, collective and national enlightenment and progress. And this therefore ultimately connects not only with the creative policy intelligence that is enabled by the availability of knowledge preserved in libraries (especially as it denotes the repositories of global knowledge, ideas and paradigms), but also how leaders connect with these ideas and knowledge through what they read. When I wrote my op-ed piece on the reading habit of HE Vice President Senator Kashim Shettima, I opened up the possibilities for a nation that an enlightened leadership embodies.
Unfortunately, Nigeria does not have a national library. Or more precisely, the national library project that was formulated in 1981 has refused to materialize into a symbolic and concrete structural manifestation of Nigeria’s willingness to join the global knowledge society. The idea of the national library was muted in 1981, but it took the next twenty-five years for the idea to get an enabling contract in 2006. And yet forty-three years later, the structure remains a pipedream that refused to take off. And so, while it was all too easy to build the National Ecumenical Centre and the National Mosque within which the dilapidated library structure located, this significant element of Nigeria’s progress has remained uncompleted. This is simply just emblematic of the general institutional and structural dysfunctional experience that characterize the Nigeria Project right from independence to date. Knowledge production and the entire educational structure in Nigeria have faced significant limitations that derive from the myopic inability to connect development with an enlightened human development capital. There is also the tightrope of anti-intellectualism that the Nigerian political class has always been walking in its relationship with the institutions and structures of knowledge production and idea generation in Nigeria. The ongoing adversarial industrial relations between consecutive Nigerian governments and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) over transforming universities into a significant force in nation building efforts in the state is a clear evidence of this a-developmental elite orientation.
All these dysfunctional issues are surprising given that the Nigerian state is very concerned about both her geopolitical status and credentials as a democratic and developmental state in the world—as the Giant of Africa—and also to achieve a stable and empowering economic growth that measurably improve the life prospect and economic lives of her citizens. However, efforts at making the lives of Nigerians better are usually concentrated on purely economic, econometric and macroeconomic indices of development. If reading and education come into reckoning, it is strictly to the extent that they are inescapable to the fruition of any particular human capital development policy. And yet, the quality of a nation’s human capital is measurable only to the extent of the place of an enlightened reading culture, symbolized by a functional and efficient library systems.
Thus, a state is instigated not only by the economic but also informational and educational resources at its disposal. In other words, the availability and the rate of access to the information resources and the extensive reading rate per capita are the development indices of a society. The number of published books, journals, libraries, readers, writers, translators and publishers of a country are all indices and fundamental criteria of its development. Extending the culture of studying and book reading, developing libraries, publications and distribution of books and utilizing these unrivaled cultural instruments are therefore the requirements and necessities of each society’s growth. This connects the functional and efficient library system to a reading culture that stimulate the young people into the consumption of ideas and paradigms that enable creative and critical thinking.
Building a Nigerian national library—that possibly will be replicated in all the states of the federation—signals a symbolic aspiration by the government to ground learning and reading as a key variable in the determination of the quality of the human capital that Nigeria needs for her development process. It also determines the quality of Nigeria’s democratic experiment founded on the enlightened status of the Nigerian citizenry. Thus, a lot is riding on Nigeria’s capacity to build a functional and efficient national library as a repository of local, national, regional and global experiences, histories, ideas, paradigms, ideals, perspectives and creative innovation. So, does it matter who lead the crucial initiative to jumpstart and crystallize the national library project as long as it is done? The First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, saw what should be considered a national embarrassment, and responded to it while also ensuring that the gesture is funneled through government institutions, like the Federal Ministry of Education. Having woken up the nation from its slumber on this unarguably defining project with deep essence, it is now an all-stakeholder national challenge to get the noble gesture by the First Lady concluded and put into use. That seems like a long stretch given the forty-three years of policy and implementation inactivity. And I think we should all support this very unique and very ardent attempt to push a significant dimension of Nigeria’s development effort to bring to life what ought to have been alive and kicking many years ago.
However, whether we like it or not, the fact that it is an individual and not the government that is pushing for the realization of this project is an indictment of national proportion. One way to read this is that the National Library project is happening on the sideline of whatever consecutive Nigerian governments considered to be significant policy initiatives that aligned with development visions and implementation frameworks. But then, the redemption comes from the fact that the Nigeria Project, unlike the national library project, is a work in progress. And this allows for the government to pick up where there is any glaring historical and political failure and provide redemptive policy reclamation and reconstruction. I think this is the most important lesson that Senator Oluremi Tinubu’s gesture towards the National Library project has provided us. The government and other stakeholders cannot afford to have this project to remain at the individual level. This gesture has therefore become an instigator in terms of what the citizenry can do to push the government to implementing the general will. And this is even all the more crucial because it is coming from a bona fide member of the government itself. This then implies that the government is now instigating itself to action on behalf of the Nigeria Project.
When he announced the abolition of the fuel subsidy regime on May 29, 2023, Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu listed the potential benefits of the measure to include the prospect of increased allocations to the country’s subnational entities (states and Local Governments) for use in strengthening their economies via spending on infrastructure and social services. A long-standing advocate for stronger federating units with robust financial autonomy, the President followed through by approving exponential increases in allocations (comprised of improved earnings from oil exports, a revamped tax code, and other statutory allocations) to the country’s 36 states and 774 LGAs.
Last month (August 2025) alone, according to the office of the Accountant-General of the Federation, the Federation Account Allocation Commission (FAAC) disbursed a total of N2.23trn among the three levels of government. This comprised the following: N1.48trn in statutory revenues; N672.90bn in Value Added Tax (VAT); N32.34bn in Electronic Money Transfer Levies (EMTL); and N41.28bn in the form of Exchange Difference. A breakdown of the allocations shows that from the distributable statutory revenue of N1.48trn, the FG received N684.46bn, states got N347.17bn, and LGs N267.65bn. An additional N179.31bn (representing 13% of mineral revenue) was shared with oil-producing states as derivation. For VAT revenue distribution, the FG received N100.94 bn, while states and LGs received N336.45bn and N235.52bn respectively. From EMTL collections of N32.34bn, the FG received N4.85bn, states got N16.17bn, and LGs took N11.32bn. The N41.28bn Exchange Difference was also shared, with the FG receiving N19.80bn, states N10.04bn, LGs N7.74bn, while N3.70bn was paid as 13% derivation revenues to oil-producing states.
The above figures, mind you, are for August 2025 alone. Now, multiply that by the over 25 months since mid-2023, when these disbursements took effect. From 2023, in fact – when total monthly allocations for states and LGs stood at an average of N760bn – the figure surged to N3.2trn in 2024 (an almost threefold increase!). For the first time since the 1960s, the sub-nationals – combined – got more money than the FG, ending the top-heavy arrangement that had prevailed before the Tinubu administration came on board.
Two years on, though, Nigerians are, for the most part, yet to see the tangible benefits of those increases to sub-nationals – whether in new or rehabilitated infrastructural projects, or in the quality of public sector service-delivery, or in the area of social investments. They are, in short, seeing little or no improvements in their standard of living, let alone their quality of life. And across the length and breadth of the country, they are wondering: Where and how is this money actually being utilized? More importantly, what form of accountability mechanisms are in place to ensure that these funds are spent judiciously? For them, these funding increases have become what the street calls ‘audio money.’
No thanks to the dramatic spike in inflation occasioned by President Tinubu’s initial action in pulling the plug on the subsidy regime, Nigerians are asking their respective state Governors to justify the increased allocations. According to them, the majority of state Governors have simply not done enough to cushion the impact of the fuel subsidy removal on their citizens. “If anything,” says a spokesman for the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) “things are getting worse. The quality of life is degenerating at an alarming rate. There is clear and present danger ahead unless [the Governors] change their trajectory.”
On his part,a spokesperson of the Joint Service Council had this to say: “Even those of us who are working, our salaries cannot cope with the situation … You can imagine the plight of those who … are jobless.”
No thanks to the sorry plight of the average Nigerian, some stakeholders have now gone as far as questioning the very rationale for the increased (and increasing) allocations in the first place. Why throw money, they ask, at people who are not – by their nature and the lack of strong accountability mechanisms – accountable? It is a sad example, they say, of flushing money down the sink into bottomless pit of corruption.
The recent behaviour of a large number of these state Chief Executives has led critics to charge that most of them are now prioritizing personal luxuries– in the form of choice real estate (in foreign lands), private jets and other personal indulgences – over public welfare. The stark contrast between the lavish lifestyles of Governors, their aides and other associates and hangers-on, on the one hand, and the poverty-stricken nature of the states they’re supposed to be governing, on the other, is too glaring to ignore. As we speak, 20 out of the 36 Governors (accompanied in most cases by their entire families) are reportedly abroad on vacation – jamborees fully funded by their impoverished (but cash-rich) states.
To some observers, most of the monies have also disappeared down the rabbit-hole of patronage networks. “Most of the time,” said one analyst, “the money is a consolation prize for political allies through procurements and contracts … State Governors are using these funds to build their political enterprises, not to provide quality basic services …”
Other observers have blamed this cavalier, bull-in-a-china-shop attitude of state Governors and their lackeys to public funds on the lack of strong institutions to monitor disbursements and utilization of the funds – and to hold the culpable to account. As long as there are no consequences for mismanagement of these funds, they say, this malfeasance would not only continue, it will grow into another hydra-headed monster populating the Hobbesian jungle that life in Nigeria has become for the common man. This situation is not helped, they say, by the prevailing perception that even the FG does not appear to show any interest in enforcing accountability at the level of states and LGs.
Though President Tinubu has, on various occasions in the past, appealed to Governors to utilize funds responsibly – to “let the poor breathe” in his own words, and to “spend the funds, not the people” – there is little he can do, short of declaring a state of emergency, or withholding funding to offending states, at least for a while. Even then, he would have to contend with the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, which mandates that the country’s funds be distributed among its constituent units (without pre-conditions).
For the time being, then, he – and the vast majority of hapless Nigerians – can only ask the million-dollar question: “Where’s the money?”
The answer, as the old song goes, is blowing in the wind.
• Keem Abdul, a public relations guru, publisher and writer, hails from Lagos. He can be reached via text on +2349046303816 or Akeemabdul2023@gmail.com
