He is 64 and has spent nineteen years across four party platforms trying to convince Nigerians that the record he built in Cross River between 1999 and 2007 is a workable template for the rest of the country.

In 2027, the PRP gives him another chance at making that case.

Duke was born on September 30th, 1961, in Calabar. He was born into a family with a strong institutional footprint in Nigerian public service, with his father, Henry Etim Duke, having served as the second indigenous Chairman of the Board of Customs and Excise (the office now designated as the Comptroller-General of Customs). He is also a member of the Duke chieftaincy family of Duke Town, one of Efik Kingdom’s most powerful ruling dynasties.

Duke had his early education in Corona School in Lagos and FGC, Sokoto, before going on to read law at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, graduating in 1982. He was called to the Nigerian Bar the following year and proceeded to the University of Pennsylvania in 1984 to earn an LL.M in Business and Admiralty Law. He then went on to practice corporate and maritime law in Lagos, co-founding the firm Onyia & Duke before eventually moving to public service; first as Cross River’s Commissioner for Finance, Budget and Planning under Governor Clement Ebri between 1992 and 1993, before his tenure was cut short due to military intervention, prompting his return to private sector endeavours.

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He was then elected Governor of Cross River State on the PDP platform in 1999, becoming the 3rd Governor of Cross River and the first elected since 1993. He went on to serve two terms with a reelection in 2003. His records from those eight years in office are his strongest card to play heading into the 2027 elections and is the one where his campaigns return to most often.

To begin with, Calabar’s transformation into one of Nigeria’s cleanest state capitals is generally credited to the degree of sanitation and urban planning policy under his administration. Duke’s government built the Tinapa Business and Leisure Resort, a first-of-its-kind tax-free trade and leisure zone near Calabar that was reported to cost around $350 million. He overhauled the Obudu Mountain Resort and installed an international cable car system and golf infrastructure that turned this colonial-era cattle ranch into an eco-tourism destination. In 2004, he launched the Calabar Carnival, which went on to turn into the state’s largest annual revenue driver and is marketed even today as “Africa’s Biggest Street Party”. Additionally, his administration in 2005 set up a dedicated state reserve fund to cushion Cross River’s budget against oil price volatility and shortfalls in FG allocation.

Now, Duke’s record speaks for itself, but it also follows the same template. One where capital-intensive assets are built to generate revenue outside the state’s oil derivation allocation and are marketed aggressively to draw in outside capital and visitors. Whether that method/template, built and tested over 8 years in a single state, can hold up across 36 states and an economy roughly three times its size is not a question that either his record or this article can attempt to answer, frankly because no one, including Duke, has run said method at such a scale

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Duke entered the 2007 PDP Presidential primary and withdrew in favour of Umaru Musa Yar’Adua to honor the party’s zoning arrangement that ceded power to the North. Following this, he stayed out of frontline presidential politics for over a decade. In 2018, he defected from the SDP to the PDP, and in January 2019, the Court of Appeal affirmed him as the party’s presidential candidate. He lost the general election, polling 34,746 votes. In June 2021, he returned to the PDP, telling reporters the party had deviated from its core principles, signalling another Presidential run. He would get the chance at that Presidential run exactly 5 years later, but not with the PDP. In June 2026, he emerged as the presidential flagbearer of the Peoples Redemption Party at a primary in Abuja. He was cleared by the party’s National Working Committee after yet another appeal review. He has described his return to frontline politics as being driven by the “urgency” of Nigeria’s situation and has framed his candidacy as an attempt to unify and consolidate the opposition rather than merely add another name to the crowded list of presidential aspirants.

It is important to note that Duke’s platform of choice for this election carries its own historic and structural weight. People Redemption Party (PRP) was founded in the Second Republic and is the oldest surviving political party in Nigeria today. Founded by Aminu Kano in 1978, it was an offshoot of the Northern Elements Progressive Union with an anti-feudal, populist and socialist register, imbibing Kano’s popular philosophy of the empowerment of the Talakawa; the common masses of the North. Today, the PRP is far from its once illustrious heights in the 70s, as it is today a small party, with limited state-level structures and a ground machinery nowhere near what the APC/PDP can field.

Another interesting point is that the PRP’s ideological lineage is also at odds with Duke’s own record. He trained in law, founded a commercial law firm, and built his Cross Rivers legacy on tax-free trade zones and tourism infrastructure that pulled in outside capital, antithetical to the wealth redistribution mantra of Kano’s Talakawa philosophy. His campaign will now adopt the PRP’s populist language and rhetoric, without him necessarily engaging deeply with the socialist substance that defines the party. To his critics, the move will suggest that the PRP is less an ideological home than a platform of convenience; one available to a two-time governor whose record is, by most accounts, his strongest political asset. His 2027 run will therefore have to confront a harder question from the electorate: why does a governor with a record he believes is strong enough to replicate nationally still lack a political platform capable of carrying that record on its own terms?

It is at this juncture that we must also examine what Donald Duke has said the problems of Nigeria are, and what he intends to do about them. The bulk of his 2027 run rests on a single claim: which is that democratic legitimacy depends on material delivery. In his own words, “If the democratic government cannot deliver food for the mass of people, we can forget about democracy”. He has argued that the country’s economy has failed to grow in line with the country’s ever-growing population and that insurgency, banditry and kidnapping are symptoms of that dysfunction and not a problem that increased policing alone can solve.

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On the specifics of his plan, his public statements since accepting the PRP nomination in June have stayed very broad, which is expected as a formal manifesto is yet to be released. He has spoken about increasing investments in education, healthcare, infrastructure, security and the justice system alongside a reduced reliance on imports. “We must produce what we need,” he said at his flag presentation after the PRP primary, “We cannot keep the factories of the world producing while ours are shut down”. He has also called for a push toward affordable credit, productive investments, and a more business-friendly environment to support local manufacturing and job creation. Beyond this, he has urged opposition parties to set aside personal ambition and unite behind a single credible alternative to the ruling party.

Duke has also, in a nod back to his time as governor, framed Cross Rivers’s tourism and agriculture push as more than a state-specific project but as a transferable idea to the totality of Nigeria. “Each state in Nigeria has something to sell,” he says, opining that identifying each state’s comparative advantage and backing it with adequate infrastructure, financing, and policy support is the key to national development.

Four things ultimately are true about Donald Duke. Firstly, he has a governance record that is well documented and, on the metric of success, hard to dispute. Secondly, he has spent nineteen years since then unable to convert that record into a platform capable of carrying him to the presidency. Thirdly, his pathway to the State House remains tough, and his own rhetoric of “uniting the opposition rather than splitting it” concedes to this fact. And finally, his governing philosophy of finding comparative advantage and backing it with infrastructure and financing is both ambitious and progressive, but its viability at the national scale remains untested.

Still, Duke in 2027 takes another audacious chance and asks the electorate to take a look past the politics and judge him on the record he built. Ultimately, voters will have to decide what that record amounts to; the case for a technocrat with a plan whose achievements can stand on their own, despite his failure to build the political capital needed to reach the presidency, or the case against a politician whose inability to sustain a single political platform for two decades raises the more consequential question of whether he can actually hold Nigeria together for a full term.

Lanre,

For the Square

A week after 2026 International Youth Day, the more uncomfortable question is not whether Nigeria is doing enough for its young people. It is whether young Nigerians have become too accustomed to asking to be included, rather than insisting on being consequential.

Something is quite revealing about the way Nigeria talks about young people.

She calls them the leaders of tomorrow and invites them to youth summits, creates youth desks, youth programmes, youth funds and youth councils, and appoints youth ambassadors, youth delegates, youth representatives and youth leaders. Before she then gives them microphones, certificates, panels and photographs.

Then, when the meeting turns to the serious business (the budget planning, the political strategy, the allocation of capital, the architecture of institutions and the appointments that genuinely matter), they are quietly moved to another room.

Nigeria has, in a nutshell, simply become accustomed to treating her youth as people who should be “empowered” and “encouraged”, but not necessarily entrusted with any consequential responsibilities.

There is a term for it. Infantilization. And the uncomfortable part is that we keep signing the permission slip ourselves.

I’m not pretending that permission came from nowhere, because it came from political exclusion and from a patronage system that is simply too expensive for any young person to buy into. Which is fair enough. But another very uncomfortable truth is that we’re not just objects being acted on here. At some point one has to ask what we’ve actually done with the power we already have.

Because this infantilization was not always the Nigerian way.

The story of Nigerian nationalism is, among other things, a story of young people refusing to accept that history belonged to somebody else.

Anthony Enahoro was 21 when he became editor of the Southern Nigerian Defender. By 30, he was serving in the Nigerian Legislative Council, moving the 1953 motion for self-government by 1956. Nobody handed this man a youth ambassador badge before he began attempting to disrupt an empire’s calendar.

Nnamdi Azikiwe was 32 when he founded the West African Pilot in 1937. Beyond merely reporting the news, that paper began mobilizing a nationalist movement and helped a whole political class imagine a country that didn’t yet exist.

The Nigerian Youth Movement of the 1930s? Eyo Ita and Ernest Ikoli were around 31 when they built it. H.O. Davies was in his early twenties. These men weren’t sitting in a WhatsApp group debating whether youth deserved a seat. They simply went ahead and built the table.

Obafemi Awolowo founded the Action Group at 42 and became Premier of the Western Region at 44. By today’s standard, somebody that age is still “promising,” which is a buzzword to signify that they are just good enough for an SSA role in some capacity.

You see the pattern historically. Age never disqualified anyone from consequence. Youth didn’t mean you had to “wait your turn”; it was simply a signal that you had enough vigour to go ahead and act.

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Now, the military years give us an even stranger version of this, and let me be very clear before I go there: there is nothing to celebrate about a coup as a governance model. Soldiers seizing power cost this country dearly; bringing violence, authoritarianism, and institutional wreckage that outlived every single man involved. I am not romanticizing this era. But history is useful exactly where it makes us uncomfortable, and the ages here are worth sitting with.

Chukwuma Kaduna Nzeogwu was 28 when he became the most visible field commander of the January 1966 coup. Emmanuel Ifeajuna and Adewale Ademoyega were both around 30. Yakubu Gowon became Head of State that same year, at 31. Murtala Mohammed took over at 36. Obasanjo succeeded him at 38. Buhari took power at 41. Babangida became military president at 44.

Again, I am not making a case for coups. I’m making a case that this country once produced twenty- and thirty-somethings who genuinely believed the direction of the nation was theirs to shape, right now, not eventually. Sometimes that belief was courageous. Sometimes it was catastrophic. But it was never “too young for this.“

Compare that to our vocabulary today: youth leader, youth ambassador, youth delegate, youth adviser, youth champion. I don’t actually have a problem with the words. I have a problem with what they’ve come to mean in practice. The youth leader mobilizes people for somebody else’s campaign. The youth delegate shows up after the real decisions are made. The ambassador gets the photo. The adviser gets a little access. Nobody on that list gets the budget or the institution. And they certainly do not get the thing that actually defines adulthood in any serious system, which is the right/license to be wrong, and still get trusted with the next big thing anyway.

So what invariably happens is that we get to moderate all the panels but not run the institution. We get to protest the police vigorously but not sit at the table where police reform is actually drafted. We get to be “the future”; indefinitely. And on any sort of actual inspection, you come to find that “the future” has basically become a remarkably convenient place to keep an entire generation waiting.

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If this were happening in an aging society, fine, maybe there’s some logic to it. But Nigeria is one of the youngest countries on the planet. Afrobarometer puts 77% of Nigerians at 35 or younger, with a median age hovering around 17 to 18. Across the whole continent, roughly 60% of the population is under 25. So why are our institutions still treating young people as a niche interest group that needs special accommodation? We are not just a minority asking for a seat. We are a majority, and are supposed to be running the room already.

And the barriers aren’t just about who gets appointed; they’re baked into the price of entry itself. Not Too Young To Run, passed in 2018, dropped the constitutional age floor. Which was and still is great. But it did absolutely nothing about the machinery you still need to actually win. A 25-year-old can legally run for the House of Representatives with zero access to money or networks. And the 2023 numbers prove it: youth made up over 21% of House candidates, and yet overall youth candidacy actually dropped from 2019. Legally, we are eligible, yet structurally, we are locked out.

Same story economically. We get “youth entrepreneurship“ schemes while the actual credit constraints, infrastructure gaps, and institutional roadblocks stay exactly where they were. A grant is easier to hand out than ownership, and a youth council is a lot easier than actually being tasked with the responsibility of reforming a political party.

But — and I say this as a young Nigerian myself — we need to look in the mirror too.

A system can lock you out, and you can still be complicit in your own exclusion.

We are loud. God knows we’re very loud as a demographic. A minister says something foolish at 10 a.m. and by 10:15 it’s already been dragged across a dozen Twitter Spaces and forwarded on every WhatsApp broadcast list in the country. But being loud is not the same as being powerful. Power lives somewhere that is much less glamorous and visible. It lives in political party membership rolls, in the boring machinery of actual organizations. Power belongs to the people who sit through the ward meeting when there’s no camera around, who know the local party secretary’s name, who show up in November ward meetings 3 years before the actual elections and not just when there’s a crisis to be angry about.

And the numbers here are honestly a little painful: 87% of young Nigerians think the country is heading in the wrong direction, but 63% of us under 35 feel no closeness to any political party at all, and you can compare this to 51% of older citizens. We have the grievance, the diagnosis, the angst, the passion, and the frustration. What we don’t have, yet, is the organization.

And if you examine it critically, our generation’s defining political mistake is constantly confusing being heard with being powerful. Because a platform is not power. A viral tweet is not power. A photo standing next to a minister is not power. Getting appointed to a committee that can’t actually decide anything? Also not power. Even being invited into the room means nothing if you can’t change what happens in it. Power quite simply is the ability to shape decisions, control resources, build institutions, and hold those institutions accountable. Which is exactly why I’ve started to distrust the phrase “youth inclusion“ because it can quietly become a way of avoiding the actual problem. Merely “including” young people is and should never be the goal. Making them consequential is.

So here’s my honest ask, in both directions. Older Nigerians: stop demanding experience from people you refuse to ever hand real responsibility to. And young Nigerians: stop treating power like something owed to us because of our birth year. Earn it. Read the budget. Learn the legislation. Join the party (an actual party, with an actual structure or at least a roadmap to one). Raise the money. Contest the seat. Build something, an institution, a movement, that survives past the person who started it.

And honestly? Do the boring work. Ward meetings are boring. Membership databases are boring. Coalition building is spectacularly, painfully boring. But boring work makes for successful countries because at the heart of it, a successful country looks boring. Countries get transformed, shaped and managed by organized people doing tedious things, over and over, for years, without an audience.

So maybe the real question a week after the 2026 International Youth Day isn’t “how do we empower young people.“ Maybe it’s: how do we build a political system where an entire generation stops needing to be “empowered” as a special category in the first place?

Because frankly, Nigeria doesn’t need another youth ambassador. It needs young citizens who are ready to be consequential.

We’ve been demanding for a long time now. Maybe it’s time we started organizing instead.

‘Bami,

For the Square

His face has been on posters plastered all over Lagos walls since 2018.

In 2027, it goes up a third time.

Omoyele Sowore is the presidential candidate of the African Action Congress, the party he founded and, until May, chaired. He is fifty-five, a human rights activist and the publisher of Sahara Reporters. This is his third consecutive run for the presidency.

Omoyele was born in Kiribo, in the Ese-Odo area of Ondo State, in February 1971, and by his account, the first child of 15 siblings in a large polygamous family in the creeks of the Niger Delta.

He read Geography and Planning at the University of Lagos from 1989 to 1995, a degree stretched to six years by two expulsions. As President of the Students' Union between 1992 and 1994, he campaigned against campus cultism and against military rule, and marched for the restoration of Abiola's annulled June 12 mandate. In 1992, police opened fire on a student protest he was leading where he was arrested and beaten. The activism set the pattern for everything that has since defined Sowore’s public image: persistent and continued confrontation with the state.

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Sowore left for the United States, took a master's in public administration at Columbia University, and lectured in Modern African History at the City University of New York. In 2006, from a room in Manhattan, he founded Sahara Reporters. This citizen-journalism site pioneered digital investigative reporting on Nigerian corruption and became one of the most influential (and most controversial) outlets of its kind. Sowore also claims that Sahara Reporters only runs on grants from institutions like the Ford Foundation and the Omidyar Network and, by policy, takes no money or advertising from the Nigerian government or its affiliated entities. The online “newspaper” has famously made enemies across party lines, breaking stories that embarrassed PDP and APC administrations alike, from Umaru Yar'Adua's concealed illness to the photograph of the 2009 underwear bomber. Critics have long questioned its foreign funding and its methods, while many supporters credit it (and Sowore) with reporting news that the mainstream press will not touch.

Ideologically, Sowore sits to the left of every major contender. He has on record described himself as a “democratic socialist”, receives public support from Socialist leaning entities in Nigeria such as the Democratic Socialist Movement and the Socialist Workers and Youth League, rejects IMF and World Bank austerity, and calls for the redistribution of state wealth and a wholesale restructuring of the Nigerian state. His campaign language is deliberately and famously utopian: where he often speaks of replacing what he calls the "failed black economy" with green, blue, purple and orange economies, and promises to govern for women, widows and the disabled.

The colours, which form the agenda of his AAC outfit, borrow from a real vocabulary: green for renewables and farming, blue for the maritime economy, orange for the creative industries, purple for women’s inclusion. His plan ultimately is to turn Nigeria away from its existing oil-and-patronage economy toward the things it makes and grows. It is not, on its face, a fringe programme; the case for weaning the country off crude is one orthodox economists have pressed for decades. Where admirers and critics divide is on whether this “colorful” agenda amounts to a plan or platitude. To his admirers, he is the rare contender who has built his entire campaign solely on ideas, in a political ecosystem that mostly runs on the arithmetic of ethnicity and patronage, and who has held the same convictions for thirty-plus years. To his critics, however, it is the same old activist diagnosis without machinery. They claim that his monologues and campaign speeches are long on the sectors to build and the injustices to end whilst being short on the sequence, the financing, and the entrenched interests that would have to be broken to reach any of it. There is also the prevailing issue of him being an untested option, since he has never held an executive office. To said critics, his candidacy has never had to answer whether a politics this fluent in what is wrong can become fluent in how to fix it. Sowore has, in several quarters, become tagged with the persona of an “SUG President”, a perpetual activist and one whose politics, while being passionate and grassroots-led, cannot translate to the actual work of managing national interests as well as bureaucracy that governance entails. This is certainly a tag he seems eager to disprove with his 3rd running for office.

He built the AAC in 2018 as an explicit alternative to the APC and PDP, and gave its grassroots wing a name that doubles as a slogan: the Take It Back Movement. The party has not been without friction — a faction publicly disowned him in 2021 — but he has remained its centre of gravity and its only presidential face.

Sowore’s ballot record over the years is modest and declining. In 2019 he polled 33,953 votes, which made him fifth in a field of seventy-three, outrunning better-funded newcomers and establishing a national name. In 2023 he polled 14,608, an election he dismissed as a “selection.” Despite this downturn in form that would have perhaps triggered a change in candidacy in other legacy parties, on 26 May 2026 the AAC affirmed him unopposed as its 2027 candidate, and he stepped down as national chairman to accept the flag.

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Much of the intervening period between the elections he has spent in the custody, or the crosshairs, of the state. On 3 August 2019, days after he called for nationwide protests under the hashtag #RevolutionNow, the Department of State Services arrested him in Lagos and he was charged with treasonable felony, money laundering and cyberstalking the President. In December 2019, a day after a court granted him bail, DSS operatives re-arrested him inside the courtroom, an act condemned by international rights groups. He was confined to Abuja and barred from leaving the country for roughly five years, and was injured by a police tear-gas canister at an Abuja protest on 31 May 2021. The government withdrew the treason charge in early 2024. A separate police cybercrime case over his description of President Bola Tinubu as a “criminal” kept his passport seized until a judge struck it out and returned it in March 2026; further charges have followed. Sowore reads this record as political persecution: “We exist in what I call the Federal Republic of Injustice,” he says to Arise News.

For 2027, he has rejected the coalition-building that is consuming the rest of the opposition, arguing that his movement is itself the coalition. “We are the coalition,” he told the convention in a video that made the rounds on social media. This is keeping in character with a man who has always regarded himself as existing outside the established order.

Looking at it via an analytical lens, Sowore’s standing with the electorate is its own paradox, and it is the truest measure of where he enters this race. Few Nigerians running for president are better known, or command more “moral credit” among the young and the online; almost none convert less of it at the polls. Nigerians recites his story every day; the activism, the arrests, the courtroom, the five years grounded. It reads the investigative stories his newspaper writes and uses them to rally and critique the government. Yet on election day, it hands its votes elsewhere.

Part of the reason for this political dismissal by the voters is structural: any political analyst with any sort of insight will repeat that while admiration lives on the timeline and in the protests grounds, elections can only be won in the wards, and the AAC has simply never built there. Perhaps part of it is due to its own insistence on existing outside the established order, and perhaps part of it is the ceiling of protest politics in a contest decided by the machinery he has always refused to assemble. His supporters rally round this, though, and they call this integrity. His opponents, and even some of his sympathizers, however, call it futility.

In 2027, he asks the same electorate, a third time, to make his story a mandate. The electorate will ultimately have to decide what the ask from Mr. Sowore really is: the plea of a man who believes he has suffered enough on their behalf to be owed their votes, or the case of a man who has stood outside the system long enough to know the country will never be saved from within it.

Lanre,

For the Square

There was a Civic Education class at Saint Francis. I cannot for the life of me remember the teacher's name.

What I remember is this. She walked in one Tuesday morning and wrote Civic Education on the board. Then she turned around and did not open the textbook. She talked about Abiola. About June 12, 1993. About how Nigerians, from every corner of the country, across every line that had been drawn to keep them apart, went to the polls and chose the same man. She talked about the annulment. About the streets afterward. About the people who died in them.

The fan above us was broken. A boy named Ebenezer had fallen asleep in the back row. The sunlight was reflecting through the dusty louvers at an angle that made it hard to see the board.

The two words she emphasized were: Democracy. Gift.

I wrote them down. Underlined them twice.

She spoke about Nigeria the same way I’d imagine an angel speaks about heaven. With the certainty of someone who had seen the thing they were describing and wanted you to see it too. And I did. In that classroom, in that heat, with Ebenezer asleep and the fan broken and the sun in my eyes, I saw it. Nigeria as something handed to me personally. Something to be cherished. Something that, if I held it right, would hold me back. Something that belonged to us all.

I ignored the vastness between all that could be seen and all that we believed. I was in secondary school. The blinding light was on, and I did not think to look away.

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Back then, Democracy Day was May 29. This was the date Obasanjo was sworn in, 1999. The day the military handed over. It was administrative and uncomplicated. The date simply spoke about the ending of something rather than the cost of it.

On June 6, 2018, Buhari announced that Democracy Day would move to June 12. And that he would award Abiola the GCFR posthumously. He called the 1993 election the freest, fairest and most peaceful since independence.

He made this announcement eight days after Nigeria had already celebrated Democracy Day on May 29 of that same year. One year before a general election.

The ceremony was held at the State House. Babangida attended.

The man who annulled the election. In the room. Seated. And the ceremony proceeded, and the speeches were made, and Abiola received his honour, and Babangida went back home to Minna. The scarlet flags were there in the timing, in the guest list, in the particular convenience of honouring a stolen mandate in an election year. They just washed out in my mind, the way they always do when the blinding light is on.

I watched the coverage that evening and sat with something I could not name. The right thing had indeed happened, and June 12 finally meant what it should have always meant.

And still.

In February 2025, Babangida published his autobiography. In said autobiography, he confirmed that Abiola won.

This was thirty-two years after the annulment. Twenty-seven years after Abiola died in detention, waiting.

The book was reviewed, glowingly in some quarters and more critically in others. He gave interviews. There was a week of noise all over social media. Then something else.

No arrest. No inquiry. He had finally shown his true colours. In a book. From Minna. And the country read the chapter and turned the page.

I thought about my teacher that week, whether she had seen the news. Whether, somewhere, she was sitting with the same unnamed thing I was sitting with. Whether she would hesitate now before talking about democracy the way she did those years ago.

The months before the 2023 elections had been something. Nigerian youth on every timeline, in every group chat, a generation that had decided collectively that this time was different. That their numbers were too vast to be absorbed. That the distance between what Nigeria was and what it could be was finally, finally going to be crossed.

I’d have walked across the floor of any sea for it. We all would have. Not just that morning, but across the years of it. The tribunals and the transitions and the elections that delivered something other than what was voted for. And yet there we were. In the queues. In the heat. Still walking.

INEC’s results portal went dark that night.

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously, seven justices, that this was not sufficient grounds for nullification. A presidential election has never been overturned in Nigeria. Not once in thirty years.

The timelines went quiet. The group chats went quiet. The energy, that specific, expensive, collective faith, found nowhere left to go. I see it try to resurge every other day now, but I know something fundamental broke in 2023. Something we have been trying to mend every day since.

Today is June 12, 2026. The president sent his SGF to deliver his Democracy Day remarks at the National Christian Centre in Abuja this past Sunday. The service was themed “God of Hope, Actualise Our Dreams.” Democratic dividends were cited. Young people were told not to rent out their consciences.

Babangida is still in Minna.

Across several states, some Nigerians intend marching today. The same people who were also in classrooms once. Who wrote things down and underlined them. Who showed up in the “Elupee” era with all of that energy and faith and had it meet a portal that went dark. And came back anyway.

I do not know what to call that. I have been trying to find the word since 2018, when Babangida sat in the front row, and the country kept moving.

Maybe the word does not exist yet in any language I speak.

I still have the notebook from Saint Francis. Somewhere. I have not looked for it in years, but I have not thrown it away either.

Today is the day named for the wound those two words were built on. The freest, fairest election in our history. Annulled. Confirmed stolen thirty-two years later by the man who stole it, in a book, from his home in Minna, and then the page turned.

My teacher believed what she talked about that day many years ago in our Civic Education class.

So did I.

Rēs Pūblica. The public thing. The thing that belongs to everyone, to the woman in the queue, to the boy in the back row, to the ones who died in the streets for it, to the ones still marching today in twenty states. The thing held in common. Administered on behalf of all.

That was the promise. That was what I underlined.

And there are some things, love, where the knowing is the injury. Where you walked the full distance, across every disappointment, every portal that went dark, every ceremony with the wrong man in the front row, only to arrive at this: that the public thing, the thing that was supposed to belong to everyone, had never quite belonged to anyone at all. That Rēs Pūblica was always more promise than practice. More inscription than institution. Carved into the wall of a building that was never maintained.

And yet we keep walking. Toward it. Knowing what the knowing costs.

Lanre,

For the Square

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This is the detail that will not leave me. Michael Oyedokun was a mathematics teacher at Community High School, Ahoro-Esiele, in the Ori Ire Local Government Area of Oyo State. He was abducted on the morning of Friday, May 15, 2026, along with his colleagues and their students, by heavily armed bandits who arrived on dozens of motorcycles and moved with the precision of people who had done this before, or had been told, in sufficient detail, how. Two days later, on a Sunday, a video appeared online. His family has since asked Nigerians to stop sharing it. His children, they said, are currently sitting their exams.

I would like you to hold that sentence for a moment. Not the video, not the act itself, which is beyond language and should be, but the sentence about the exams. The ordinary life that was still being lived by people who loved him, continuing in the way ordinary life insists on continuing, even when someone at the centre of it has been taken into a forest in the Old Oyo National Park and has not, nay will not, come back. His children woke up that Monday and went somewhere to write an exam. Mathematics, probably. Or something else. It does not matter what the subject was. The point is that they went to write an exam.

The point is that Nigeria kept going too.

On the morning of May 15, bandits stormed three schools along the Ahoro-Esinle and Yawota axis near Ogbomoso. The schools were Baptist Nursery and Primary School, Community Grammar School, and L.A. Primary School. The bandits took over forty people: teachers, a principal, and children. The youngest were two years old. Before leaving, they set a stolen car alight at the forest line, a gesture that feels almost theatrical in its contempt, as if they wanted to mark the boundary between the Nigeria that still pretends to function and the territory where they have made other arrangements.

An assistant headmaster named Joel Adesiyan was killed during the raid. An okada rider who resisted when they tried to take his motorcycle was shot. The attackers spoke Yoruba, Hausa, and Pidgin. They were not from somewhere else. They were from here, or they had learned to be.

This is what has broken something in the public conversation about insecurity in Nigeria. For years, we organized our anxiety geographically. The violence was northern. It happened in Plateau, in Benue, in Zamfara, in Borno, places that the average Lagos or Ibadan resident had learned to process as a kind of permanent emergency happening at a safe narrative distance. We said "the North" the way people say "the weather", acknowledging it, resigned to it, fundamentally convinced it was not coming here.

Ogbomoso is in Oyo State. It is in the South-West. It is, in the cognitive map of middle-class Nigeria. And so when the bandits arrived at Baptist Nursery and Primary School and rounded up eighteen children, some of them two years old, something shifted, not because the lives lost in Plateau were worth less, but because the geography of denial had finally been breached, and there is no longer a safe distance for anyone to retreat to.

Online, the narrative was simple. “This could be anyone” was the rallying cry. And this is right. That is precisely what has changed. Not the violence, because the violence has been here for twenty years. What has changed is “the anyone”.

Nigeria, I want to speak to you now, directly, because I have found that speaking about you in the analytic third person, with the careful hedging of someone who wants to appear measured, now feels too dishonest in a way I can no longer afford.

You are a country where the Defence Headquarters has attributed the Ogbomoso attack to dislodged Boko Haram terrorists moving through border corridors, and in the same statement called it “an isolated criminal incident.” I need you to sit with that. The same institution that identified the attackers as Boko Haram affiliates, who have spent seventeen years demonstrating that no incident they are involved in is isolated, used the word isolated. This is not a failure of language, unfortunately. This is the specific verbal technology by which the Nigerian state uses in converting catastrophe into something it does not have to respond to at scale.

Meanwhile, in Zamfara State, 725 villages are currently under the control of armed bandits. There is a meaningful portion of Nigerian territory that the Nigerian government does not govern. This is the administrative reality of a country that is, at this moment, preparing for a general election in 2027 and has not yet adequately asked itself whether the communities being buried will even be around to vote.

Governor Makinde said there may not be quick fixes, but that the government would "push to the limit." The limit, so far, is a press conference. The limit is six arrests. The limit is a police AIG relocating his operational base to Ogbomoso. The children are still in the forest.

The children are still in the forest.

I have, since the unfortunate incident, been thinking about what it means to teach mathematics in Nigeria.

To teach mathematics in a public school in rural Oyo State is to participate in a form of faith so stubborn it borders on the irrational. The faith that abstraction matters. That a child who learns to solve for x will be better equipped for a world that is, in visible and daily ways, unsolvable. That the future is worth preparing for. That there will be a future worth the preparation.

Michael Oyedokun was a mathematics teacher. He went to school on a Friday morning in a country where this has always required a specific kind of courage, the quiet, renewable courage of people who show up anyway, who hold the chalk and face the class and proceed to do whatever it is they do, on the assumption that what they are doing is worth something, that someone will live to use it. He went to school on a Friday morning with this belief in mind and did not come back.

His family asked Nigerians to stop circulating the video of his killing. They said it was traumatising his children, who are sitting their exams. They asked that only official family photographs be used. They were asking, in the middle of an unspeakable week, for their father to be allowed to remain a person. Not a symbol, not a hashtag, not forty-eight hours of national outrage followed by the next news cycle. They were asking that he be allowed to exist as just a man, in a photograph, who taught mathematics and is now gone.

I think that is the most Nigerian sentence I have ever heard. The grief policing its own grief. The family managing the country’s response to their own loss. The dead man’s dignity being protected somehow by the people who are burying him, because no one else can be trusted with it.

We are a country that has converted suffering into resilience so many times that we have begun to mistake the conversion for progress. We say "Nigerians are strong" the way a doctor says "he's a fighter," meaning: the system has failed this person, and now we are depending on his personal fortitude to cover the gap. The fortitude is real. Mr Michael Oyedokun’s family’s fortitude is real. Their strength is real.

The gap is also real. And the gap is widening.

The Oyo State Government shut down schools in four local government areas following the Ogbomoso attacks. This is what protection looks like when the state cannot actually protect: the removal of the thing being targeted. Close the schools. Keep the children home. Teach them, implicitly, that the forest is more powerful than the classroom, that the men on motorcycles have already won the argument about whether education is safe.

The OPC, regional hunters, and local vigilantes have been demanding to be armed and authorised to enter the Old Oyo National Park and flush out the bandits. The federal government has not responded. The South-West governors have not responded. The forest remains. The children remain inside it.

Mrs Alamu Folawe, the principal of Community High School, is still in captivity as of this writing. Seven teachers. Thirty-nine students. Some of them two years old, which means they were born in 2024, which means the country they were born into and the country they are currently being held hostage in are the same, and it has not materially improved in the time it took them to learn to walk.

Nigeria, I am trying to pray for you. I have been trying since the 15th of May. The prayer keeps changing shape. Sometimes it starts as anger and becomes grief and then becomes something quieter and more embarrassing, something that feels, if I am honest, like love. The specific, painful love of someone who was born here and has thought about leaving and has not left and does not know, fully, whether that says something admirable about them or something foolish.

I cannot offer you a resolution. I cannot give you the framework or the policy prescription or the cautious note of hope that this kind of essay is supposed to end with. I am aware of what the ending is supposed to look like. I have read enough Nigerian political writing to know the shape of the pivot, the turn toward the future tense, the gesture at dawn, the reminder that we have been here before and survived. We have been here before. We always survive. And then we come back here.

What I can tell you is this: Michael Oyedokun’s children are sitting their exams. Somewhere in Oyo State, right now, in a hall that smells like chalk and bodies and the particular anxiety of young people who know their future depends on what they write in the next three hours, his children are sitting. They are answering questions. They are trying. They are doing the thing their father spent his life teaching them to do, proceeding, despite everything, on the assumption that the answer exists and can be found.

I do not know if that is hope or just inertia. I do not know if Nigeria can tell the difference anymore. I am not sure I can either.

What I know is that I am sending this prayer into the silence, the way you send a message to someone you know is dead and will not be responding, in your moment of grief. And you send it not necessarily because you expect an answer, but because the alternative is not sending it. The alternative is accepting a finality you know deep down you are weeks, months, and even years away from accepting.

And that is a different kind of death that I am not ready for, yet.

The children are still in the forest.

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Lanre,

For the Square.

A political leader governs a nation for four or eight years. In that time, he justly oversees the well-being of the citizens under him and grows the nation’s economy. On the day he hands over governance to the next elected leader, he leaves with no more wealth or property than he brought to the seat. It is not because he has no desire to enrich himself or personal restraint, but because the law does not permit it. A society where leaders are housed and fed by the state, but own nothing, this is what Socrates posits in Plato’s Republic.

When President Bola Tinubu began his campaign in 2022, his slogan ‘emi lo kan’ became a revealing expression of a political reality that’s been known more than said in Nigeria. Political office in Nigeria is perceived as a grand inheritance, the reward for years of work toward a position of near absolute power. However, it is not just the position that holds allure for many, it is the proximity to financial gain; And most Nigerians know that the belief is not unfounded.

In 2025, Former Governor, Yahaya Bello faced prosecution over allegedly diverting public funds ($750,000) toward his children’s school fees at a secondary school in Abuja. In recent years, the Federal Government has borrowed trillions in national debt, yet the country’s financial deficit continues to run into billions of dollars, even as the political elites continue to maintian visibly lavish lifestyles. When the lines between public and private property in governance blur to nothingness, we begin to see an inverted version of democracy: where the people serve their leaders.

Socrates presents a city he calls Kallipolis. In this ideal city, he makes many special provisions for the leaders of the people. The most relevant one for us is that those who lead the city hold no private property, live in a commune, and receive fixed stipends for their sustenance, but no more. He seeks to sever the link between governance and personal profit. He believed that positions of power, when shielded from accountability, present the temptation to prioritize personal gain over justice and due process. As such, removing the incentive for personal gain from political power could bring about better leaders.

This story of leaders who have given in to the temptation that Socrates talks about is one that Nigerians are all too familiar with. Too often, the enormity of the amount becomes startling and points to a problem bigger than just need.

Between 1993 and 1998, the former military leader, Sani Abacha is alleged to have looted nearly $5 Billion in public funds. Adjusted for present value, this is $11 Billion. This is roughly the market cap of 2-3 Tier One Nigerian banks, all embezzled for personal gain in 5 years. Further analyzed, at the average annual expenditure of upper middle class families, it could cover all yearly costs for 1.2 Million families at worst. Somehow that wealth became the private gain of a single family, and perhaps a dozen or three associated with General Sani. It helps to note that in the face of all this, millions of Nigerians crossed the poverty line during his regime and after, being unable to afford a daily meal.

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It is scenarios these absurd that often point us to alternative solutions to corruption in Africa. If a man claims to steal a loaf of bread to feed his family, he may earn empathy in some circles. If the same man claims to steal an island’s worth of bakeries to feed his family, we can assume that he has either birthed a herd of mammoths or that something greater is amiss.

Nigeria is a low-trust society for political institutions. It’s a place where the electorate appear to understand the appeal of a political position, and some would even justify the enrichment of people in office provided it’s not ‘excessive’.

While ideologies like these are very flawed, embezzlement and government corruption are not the only risks present. Those in power are in positions that make them privy to control and foreknowledge of policies and systems fundamental to the economy. This creates opportunities to manipulate and benefit from these privileges. From Insider trading to self-dealing, the list goes on.

In these contexts, the proposal for leaders to own no private property starts to feel almost necessary. While many have posited that democracy just rewards the most convincing candidate, rather than the best one, would taking away an opportunity for mass enrichment only bring forward candidates truly interested in the service of their nation? Or restrain those who think they can beat the system?

Keeping political leaders from holding private property may seem like a solution on the surface, but it invites the question of whether corruption is really a problem of weak legislation, or a cultural issue. If we take away the ability for public office holders to hold private property, do we remove the problem or simply watch it become a different version of itself?

When we set in place these legislations, can we truly strip away the desire for material gain? Or do we redirect their efforts toward breaking away at the systems that can enforce said regulations? It may not come as a surprise to see these actors find informal or hidden ways to hold private property or benefit in ways that cannot be cracked down on. It’s common knowledge that too often, public funds find their way into foreign hiding places outside of the country’s jurisdiction where it becomes difficult fo recoup these funds, or even to become aware that they were embezzled to begin with. If our policies focus on creating more barriers to ensure that governance can be fair and just, how do we account for unconventional methods of achieving the malicious goals nonetheless?

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There is also a more philosophical objection to Socrates’ radical proposition: Leaders who are completely detached from the economic reality of the people they serve. Not faced with any of the issues or economic changes resulting from their policies, they are likely to become impersonal, taking actions that may be pragmatic but are disconnected from the realities of the citizenry.

Although, some could argue that this is already the present situation. When Senate President, Godswill Akpabio in a 2024 meeting said “Those who want to protest can protest, but let us be here eating”, it would point to the idea that perhaps the detachment of rulers from the difficulty of the populace may show up in either scenario. Some would maintain that the outcomes may differ, because where the unattached leader may make seemingly unempathetic choices, they are not driven toward his personal gain in the way we often see with those with personal stakes involved. Aristotle’s Politics disagrees however, and believes that eventually human nature will be inclined to self-interest to some degree, and it puts Socrates’ postulation at risk.

This tension through Aristotle’s objection presents an interesting mirror to the morality of corruption in Nigeria, not just in governance but as a society. In Nigeria, when individuals sacrifice personal gain for a higher sense of morality, they may often be seen as foolish or non-strategic. You may come in contact with terms like ‘The guy no sharp’. In politics, it is largely understood that running for office is an investment, and the costs of even political forms are a testament to this. When an individual expends hundreds of millions to contest and campaign, the unspoken expectation is that he will recoup the cost through the public treasury when he wins. Yet, this acknowledgement of a flawed culture cannot take away the tempting nature of Socrates’ idea as a solution of sorts to political corruption.

However, it is not just the idea itself that is worth examining, it is the nature of how despondent things have become that an idea like this becomes one that if presented, any Nigerian would strongly consider.

To imagine that someday, in the oaths by which we swear in a Nigerian leader, they swear to have held no private property and to continue to hold none, is to see a culture that cannot trust itself, one that is in its final throes. It presents the realization that in a quest for a good country, we failed to find better people, and have instead resorted to finding better laws.

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Jesimiel,

For the Square

A familiar chill often accompanies mornings in Lagos, and so it is easier to argue at the newspaper stand without breaking into a sweat. For decades, the newspaper stand at every major bus stop has served as the average man’s space for political commentary. Although those present rarely stop to verify the claims often made there, these local symposiums serve their own purpose: to create relatable versions of those who rule over us, and give these avatars the opinions and motivations that best serve our expectations and unknown biases.

The papers may say one thing, but the opinions and often fabricated insights of a few men will form the version of these political events and figures that many will go on to believe in. More polished versions of these avatars often appear on social channels, and before long, the President himself may not recognize the version of him constructed by both followers and detractors.

This is a story that Nigerians are familiar with in our interaction with democracy. We often find too late that we do not truly know those we’ve elected; we are instead in bed with shadow versions that we or others have crafted. Too often, that disparity is not for the reasons we think, and there’s reason to believe that new technology like AI may worsen the issue, metaphorically blur the faces on our street lamp electoral banners for good.

Thanks to Artificial Intelligence, the abstract political avatars that live on in our minds may now be on the road to easy embodiment. Hypothetically, one man comes to the newspaper stand, days before an election, with a video of the leading opposition candidate making a statement so offensive that it would turn away his own supporters, and strengthen those who hate him. Nobody has verified the video, but it’s the image of the contestant, so it must be true. Before anyone can fact-check it, millions have seen it. In a new age of artificial intelligence, propaganda finds easy resources. The shadow versions of these candidates that make it easier to support or discredit them find a chance to become credible, but most dangerously, it costs little to nothing to weaponise.

Nigerians are no strangers to misinformation during tense periods. Fake news and conspiracy theories often flourish on platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook, where an uncle or someone you know from church is likely to reshare a lengthy post claiming the president is in fact a clone from a neighboring country, or that his campaign slogan was a secret code for a religious plot to take over the government. Basic research could dismantle these outlandish claims, but too often, it was already too widespread and lodged in communities where it fit the existing image people had built and polished of the political figure in question.

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In 2026, AI-Generated videos have become rapidly democratized. Anyone with a phone and the required know-how can easily generate convincing video footage of public figures. We already see earlier versions of these videos appear nearly indistinguishable from reality, more commonly present in humor-intended videos on social platforms, imitations performing some sort of task that we can be certain they did not engage in. While these tools may have been used in isolation by individuals for varying purposes, the onset of the general elections brings with it the threat of AI as part of organized tactics intended to distort the image of these candidates, for political advantage.

We are not the first country to face these issues. In 2024, just days short of the Democratic Primaries in New Hampshire in the US, thousands of voters received calls from an AI-Generated voice imitating then-President Joe Biden, telling them not to vote in the primaries but to save their votes for the November election. In the same year, Indian voters were targeted by AI-Generated videos of prominent celebrities urging them to vote for specific candidates.

While this issue is already present globally, our society is particularly vulnerable. Nigeria faces average literacy rates alongside high mobile penetration. This implies that while an approximated 70% of the country can barely read and write, according to World Bank data, 90% of the population actively uses mobile connections. Millions of voters use social media daily, with no incentive and little media training to fact-check or verify sources of information. We saw the consequences of this vulnerability during pandemics like the Ebola Virus and COVID-19, where false information spread rapidly on the internet resulted in numerous deaths and injuries. Nigeria has a fact verification problem, and the fault lines of our information distribution systems may allow AI to deepen these issues.

This issue does not exist in a vacuum. Nigeria’s political scene often remains charged during the election cycle, and even afterward, where candidates’ rhetoric tends to polarise along religious and tribal lines; the wrong association or attribution in speech can mean the downfall of a candidate at the polls. One could easily point to the internet’s conflict with Lagos Gubernatorial candidate, Gbadegbo Rhodes’s heritage and the tribal scrutiny of his family as one of the more prominent examples of these issues. Past these polarized lines that often make it easy for candidates to score points with those heavily aligned to identity politics, the issues of weak institutional trust and limited fact-checking infrastructure are foundational issues in building effective systems against electoral propaganda.

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Ahead of the general elections in 2027, we may expect Artificial Intelligence to amplify two major threats: false endorsements and character assassinations.

We may be bound to see videos of prominent religious, public, and political figures, so similar to the individuals they intend to mirror, endorsing one candidate or discrediting another. These videos would mostly flourish in small communities and social platforms already leaning toward these sentiments, where information is difficult to regulate and even harder to fact-check.

There is a greater danger, however. Bigger than just the appeal to authority and endorsement is the use of artificial intelligence to drive voter suppression through false announcements and fabricated information engineered to appear official, concerning the polls themselves. We may find many a deepfake video of governors, ministers or important federal officials announcing directives and changes to the polling process. It may cover information on who can vote, how to vote, and how to successfully choose the right candidate. In this, not only are the faces of our aspirants now distorted, but so is our democratic process.

The satirical TV show, ‘The Boys’ makes an exhibit of this conflict: prominent individuals disavowing video evidence of their wrongdoing as AI, and somehow it mirrors so much of what may be expected in governance and politics in the future. Individuals running for office may retract messages that don’t appeal to their audiences by attributing these media to artificial intelligence. Eventually, it sets the stage for the premise that once everything can be dismissed as fake, nothing can be proven real. Elections become theatrical populism, and democracy becomes dependent on how quickly and effectively any messages can be passed online, authentic or otherwise. The true image of the candidates becomes distorted even further than it ever was, and so many may never truly make an informed decision again.

At the core of it, it points to an important conflict. For decades, between overly complex manifestos, conspiracy theories, and now deepfake videos, most Nigerians may never have truly perceived the candidates and their policies as they truly are. When policies appear to leave us with the short end of the stick, we feel betrayed. Too often, it’s not because the candidate hid their agenda, but because we never truly perceived them as they were.

And in a world where AI can now manufacture versions of them that serve any given agenda, we may find that we never get the chance to.

Jesimiel,

For the Square

I will tell you exactly where I was when I understood what this country was.

I was ten years old. It was 2011, gubernatorial election day, and my father had gone to his polling unit in the morning the way he always did during election season. I stayed home. And sometime in the afternoon, before he came back, I heard the results on the television.

I did not fully understand the results. I was ten. But I understood my father’s face when he walked in the door later, and I understood that whatever he had gone out to do that morning, the television had already finished doing something else with it. He did not say much. He sat down. The two of us watched the coverage together for a while in the specific silence of a man who has just learned that his participation was noted and then set aside.

I voted in 2023, in the hopes that things would be different this time. That is my small complicity in everything that follows.

There is a Yoruba prayer I have been thinking about this past week. I got it off a Wole Soyinka Instagram post. It is not a prayer you say at the beginning of something. You say it after the thing you were hoping for has specifically, demonstrably, failed, and you are now negotiating downward. It is not a prayer for salvation, or a prayer for progress. It is not even a prayer for improvement. The prayer is simple;

“Òrìṣà bí o le gbè mí, se mí bí o se bá mí”

In English, it roughly translates to a deity that can’t help your situation should, at the very least, leave you as you are. Just leave me where you found me. Whatever you met here, intact. Don’t fix it. Just don’t make it worse on your way out.

I have been trying to locate the exact moment Nigeria started saying this prayer. Not out loud, we are too optimistic a people for that. But underneath every inauguration speech and every “this time will be different” and every excitable newspaper editorial about the dawn of a new era. Underneath all of it, for longer than I can precisely locate, the country has been saying: Orisa, if you cannot save us, at least leave us where you found us.

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I should say something about my position here, because it matters.

I did not vote in 1999. I was not born then. My entire understanding of what Nigeria was before democracy comes from what I was told, which means I understand it the way children understand things their parents survived: as a before. A reference point. A thing that was supposed to make everything that came after feel like relief by comparison.

My parents’ generation voted in 1999 with a specific kind of hope that I have spent a long time trying to understand. It was not a naive hope. These were people who had watched Abacha loot the treasury with the focused dedication of a man on a deadline, who had watched June 12 annulled with a straight face, who had spent the better part of three decades under men in uniforms who governed with a combination of brutality and incompetence that should have, by any reasonable measure, finished off the national capacity for disappointment. And yet in 1999, they lined up. They collected their cards. They voted. Not necessarily because Obasanjo was a visionary (although some could and still argue that he was), but because the alternative was more of what they had already survived, and survival, after a while, makes you willing to try almost anything.

I inherited that hope the way you inherit furniture. It was already in the house when I arrived. I grew up inside it. I did not choose it. And I watched, from inside it, what democracy proceeded to do with it.

In 2007, Obasanjo handed over to Yar'Adua after an election so thoroughly rigged that the legal tribunals reviewing it essentially confirmed the rigging and moved on anyway, because what else were they going to do? The INEC collation centres produced results with the serial numbers still visible on the forms, same handwriting across multiple states, suspiciously round numbers that suggested the person writing them had not felt the need to be creative with the malpractice. The argument at the time was that the transition itself was the achievement. Civilian to civilian. Nobody had staged a coup. The bar had cleared, barely, and we were invited to celebrate the clearance.

The prayer, at this point, was still said with some residual feeling.

In 2011, Jonathan won an election widely considered credible by the standards we had established for ourselves (which is to say the dead did not outvote the living in most states). There was something resembling hope. Jonathan had a lot of oil money. More of it than any Nigerian government had ever had, the crude price sat comfortably above $100 a barrel for most of his tenure. He had a popular mandate and enough goodwill from the 2010 sympathy rounds to do something serious.

The prayer was said out of habit by this point, not conviction.

In 2015, Buhari wins. And here is the thing about 2015 that we have to sit with honestly: we were genuinely excited. Not all of us, and not without reservations, but there was a real feeling in the air. Jonathan had conceded. The incumbent had lost and accepted it. Democracy was working. Change, as a campaign slogan, was coming. Buhari had two mandates from the people who voted for him: fix the economy and fix security. He spent eight years doing neither, with a consistency so complete it began to look deliberate.

The prayer, by 2023, was not even fully formed. It was just a sigh.

Then came Tinubu.

I want to be precise here because this piece is not, at its core, about Tinubu. He is not the origin of anything. He is the destination, the place twenty-four years of this cycle was always going, selecting at each iteration for loyalty over competence, connection over capacity, the ability to survive Nigerian politics over any discernible qualification to actually govern it. A machine running that selection process long enough will eventually produce its purest output. Tinubu did not happen to Nigeria. Nigeria, or at least the portion of Nigeria that makes these decisions, constructed him across several decades and then handed him the keys and expressed surprise at what he did with them.

I am not angry about this the way I might have been ten years ago. What I feel now is closer to recognition. The country said the prayer. The orisa answered, as it has always answered, by making things measurably worse and then scheduling a foreign trip.

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Here is the part that is quite interesting.

The proverb assumes there is still a “where you found me” to return to. Something of a condition that preceded the damage and could, theoretically, be restored. “Leave me where you found me” presupposes that where you found me still exists somewhere, intact, waiting.

I am no longer certain it does.

Some things were true about Nigeria in 1999 that are simply not true now. Not better things necessarily, (the military era was not a golden age, and anyone selling you that nostalgia has something to gain from it). But there was a middle class, however fragile, that has been substantially liquidated by inflation and devaluation and the accumulated cost of living in a country that provides nothing and charges for everything. There were institutions. from the EFCC in its early years, the gradual INEC reforms, and even the judiciary in isolated moments, which had acquired some marginal credibility. That credibility has since been methodically, almost professionally, dismantled. There was a generation of young Nigerians who believed, or were at least willing to try believing, that the system could be engaged, reformed from within, and improved by showing up. That generation organised EndSARS in October 2020 and was answered with live ammunition at Lekki tollgate, and the belief did not survive the answer. The ones who could leave, left. The ones who stayed renegotiated their relationship with hope into something smaller and more defensive.

The prayer asks to be left where we were found.

We are not where we were found. The twenty-six years have moved us, and not forward, and the coordinates of the starting point are becoming harder to recover.

Made Kuti, Fela's grandson (which means this family has now been asking Nigeria the same question across three generations), has a song called "Your Enemy" that asks: if civilians are suffering and police are suffering, then who is causing the suffering? It is not a complicated question. It is, in fact, a very simple question. The fact that it remains, in 2026, as unanswered as it was in 1977 when his grandfather was asking it, is either a testament to the question's depth or an indictment of everyone who has been asked it. Probably both.

My parents are still waiting. They have gotten very good at it; waiting is one of the things Nigerians are genuinely world-class at, the ability to wait with dignity for things that show no signs of arriving. They waited through Obasanjo. They waited through Yar’Adua. They waited through Jonathan, his hat-wearing successor, and the man who came after. They are waiting now. There is something in their waiting that I find, depending on the day, either deeply moving or quietly devastating. I have not decided which.

I did not stop voting. I will not stop voting. That is still my small complicity. I will vote again in 2027, probably, because the alternative is a different kind of answer to the same question, and I have seen what that answer looks like. And in 2027, regardless of the outcome, I will hold my breath and quietly pray.

Orisa, if you cannot save us, at least leave us where you found us.

We will say it again. We always do.

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Olanrewaju,

For the Square

Let me tell you something about Nigerian electricity that you already know.

It doesn’t work. It has never worked. And not in the “well, nothing’s perfect” sense that we usually extend to failing infrastructure in good faith, but rather in the “the national grid has literally hit zero megawatts twice already this year” sense. January 23rd. January 27th. Zero. Nothing. The whole country. Dark.

We know this. We have always known this. Most of us have structured entire portions of our lives around this knowledge. You wake up, check if there’s light. You don’t make plans that depend on there being light. You budget for fuel. You budget for the inverter financing plan. You budget for the guy who fixes the inverter. You do mental math about what time NEPA usually comes in your area, so you can charge your laptop before they take the light again, as if electricity is something that can be startled and scared off if you are too obvious about needing it. You learn which appliances to run first when the light comes back. You develop a hierarchy of urgency. Fridge first. Washing machine second. Everything else as time permits. You have internalised a whole logistics system for living inside a failure, and you do it so gradually that you no longer think of it as unusual.

Open Nigerian Twitter for the last month and you will find, running alongside the usual discourse about politicians and football and whatever thing someone said that everyone has decided to be angry about, a parallel and entirely serious conversation about solar inverter systems. Kilowatt ratings. Battery capacity. Lithium-ion versus tubular. Whether the 5kva system is sufficient for a two-bedroom or whether you need to go to 10. Financing plans. “I’m paying ₦180,000 a month for 18 months.” “Which company gives the best warranty?” “Don’t buy from those people. My system developed a fault in month three, and they have been giving me the runaround since.” It reads, if you squint, like the consumer electronics conversation that happens in normal countries when a new phone drops. Except it is not about a phone. It is about people trying to solve, with their own money and their own research and their own monthly instalments, a problem that their government has had fifty years and trillions of naira to address and has not.

This is not a country of 200 million people that has a power problem. This is a country of 200 million people who have individually accepted, on a personal and spiritual level, that power is not coming. And then proceeded to organise their lives accordingly.

So when the government says they are “reforming the sector”, I want you, after reading this article, to understand what they mean by that. Not what you hope they mean. What they actually mean. Because these are two very different things, and we have been confusing them for the better part of thirty years.

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Let me go back a bit.

Before 2013, NEPA or PHCN, or whatever name it was going by that week, was a government monopoly. Decades of it. By the time the millennium rolled around, Nigeria was generating less than 2,000 megawatts for a population of over 120 million people. The entire country. Less than 2,000 megawatts. For context, a single smelting plant in the United States uses more than that. We were powering 120 million people with what an aluminium factory uses on a slow day.

The explanation for this is not complicated. A monopoly with no competition and guaranteed government bailouts every time it runs out of money is simply not going to invest in infrastructure. There is no reason to. The losses become everybody’s problem, and the salaries remain somebody’s personal arrangement. The capital expenditure budgets get approved and then redistributed, quietly, in directions that are not transformers. This is how NEPA worked for decades. This is the institutional culture that PHCN inherited wholesale, new acronym and all. If you needed evidence, you needed only to look at a transformer. Or try to find one that was working.

In 2013, the government privatised the sector. The Jonathan-led government broke PHCN into pieces: 11 Distribution Companies, known as DisCos; 6 Generation Companies, known as GenCos; and one Transmission Company, the TCN, and sold off the DisCos and GenCos to private investors. The theory was that private capital would do what public money couldn’t: fix the infrastructure, improve billing, and get the lights on. Competition and accountability and all of that capitalist yarns. The invisible hand, finally, was sorting out what the visible and extremely sticky hand of government had made a mess of for forty years.

Here is what actually happened.

Most of the investors bought the DisCos and GenCos with HUGE loans. Not their own money. HUGE Bank loans. Which meant that whatever they collected in revenue went, first and immediately, to servicing debt. There was nothing left for new transformers, new meters, and new cables. Nothing for the engineers. Nothing for the infrastructure that was already falling apart before they arrived and continued falling apart after. The decay did not pause to respect the change in ownership.

And because the infrastructure continued to deteriorate, power was unreliable. Because power was unreliable, people bypassed meters and stole electricity rather than pay for something they weren’t receiving. Because people stole electricity, the DisCos collected less revenue. Because the DisCos collected less revenue, they couldn’t pay the GenCos for the power they were distributing. Because the GenCos weren’t paid, they couldn’t pay the gas suppliers for the fuel they were burning. Because the gas suppliers weren’t paid, they reduced supply. Less gas, less generation, longer blackouts, more theft, less revenue. Round and round, tightening. The sector had constructed for itself a perfect, self-sustaining trap, and it has been sitting inside it ever since.

Meanwhile — and this is the part that deserves its own paragraph, its own moment of silence — nobody privatised the grid. The Transmission Company of Nigeria, the infrastructure through which every unit of generated electricity must pass before it reaches anyone, stayed with the federal government. 100% government owned, 100% government managed. Which would be fine, theoretically, if the government had taken the responsibility seriously and invested in it. They did not. The result is that Nigeria’s installed generation capacity, at various points, has approached 13,000 megawatts. The grid, however, frequently collapses if you push more than 5,000 megawatts through it. So the question of how much electricity Nigeria can generate is, functionally, a hypothetical. We do not have the infrastructure to move what we can produce. We built more generation capacity than our grid can carry, and not enough people in positions of authority found this worth urgently addressing. New plants were commissioned. Press releases were issued. The grid remained what it was.

This is the inheritance of 2013. Not reform. A rearrangement.

Now. Current situation.

The sector is carrying ₦6.8 trillion in debt. Let that number sit for a moment. ₦6.8 trillion. Of that, ₦4.4 trillion accumulated before 2024; the legacy of every unpaid bill, every shortfall, every year in which the gap between what the sector collected and what it owed was papered over with government assurances and promissory arrangements. Then ₦2.4 trillion was added in 2025 alone, at roughly ₦200 billion a month. Every single month. The sector is not recovering. It is not stabilising. It is not “in transition.” It is accumulating debt the way a sinking ship accumulates water: continuously, with gathering momentum, and in one direction only.

Gas suppliers who power approximately 70% of the national grid are currently providing less than 43% of what is needed for optimal generation. They are not doing this out of spite or solidarity or any form of coordinated protest. They are doing this because they have not been paid, and at some point, even gas suppliers develop opinions about continuing to provide a service for which nobody is settling the invoice. The logic is impeccable. You don’t have to like the consequences to understand them.

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There is a Band A tariff now. Customers who pay around ₦225 per kilowatt-hour are supposed to receive 20 or more hours of electricity daily. This is the promise. The premium tier. The acknowledgment that some Nigerians can pay more and should, in exchange, receive a functioning service. Some Band A customers do receive this. Many of them do not. Many of them are paying Band A prices for Band D service, five hours, six hours, sometimes less, because the local equipment serving their area has failed, and repairing it requires capital that does not exist, because see above, ₦6.8 trillion in accumulated debt and ₦200 billion added every month. The premium tier of a structurally broken system is still a structurally broken system. You are not buying reliability. You are buying a slightly better position in a queue that is not moving.

The one structurally interesting development (and I mean interesting in the narrow, technical sense, not in the “reason for excitement” sense) is the Electricity Act of 2023, which for the first time gives states the authority to license their own power markets. Lagos, Ondo, Edo, Oyo, and nine others have taken over regulatory oversight from the federal Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission. This means, in principle, that states can develop independent power projects and mini-grids entirely outside the national grid. You do not need federal permission. You do not need to wait for the TCN to be rehabilitated or for the DisCos to be recapitalised or for the gas situation to resolve itself. A state government with genuine competence and genuine political will could, theoretically, just go and do it.

In principle.

The distance between claiming regulatory authority and actually building functional independent power markets is, in Nigeria, a very specific kind of distance. It is not geographical. It is institutional. It is the distance between a press conference and a transformer that works. Between a gazette notice and an engineer on the ground. Between a governor announcing that his state is “taking charge of its energy future” and anyone in that state actually experiencing a different future. Thirteen states have made the claim. How many will cross that distance is not yet clear. The track record of Nigerian state governments in converting regulatory authority into operational reality is not a source of unqualified confidence.

It is the most significant structural reform the sector has seen in a decade. I want to be precise about what that means and what it doesn’t.

The debt is not going down. The gas supply is not going up. The grid has already collapsed completely twice this year, and it is just March. The DisCos are carrying obligations they cannot meet, the GenCos are owed money that is not arriving, and the gas suppliers have made the entirely rational decision that principles about payment matter more than continued participation in an arrangement that does not work for them. The Band A experiment has established, as a data point, that Nigerians will pay more money in exchange for a service that remains unreliable, which tells you something useful about the desperation involved and nothing reassuring about the direction of travel.

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Meanwhile, Nigerians are spending (nobody has properly measured how much, because measuring it would require looking at it directly, and there is apparently an institutional preference for not doing that) billions annually on generators, inverters, solar panels, battery systems, cables, extension runs, and the labour to install and maintain all of it. A private electricity infrastructure, built household by household, compound by compound, office by office, running parallel to the official system because the official system is not a serious undertaking. It is not counted in any government electricity statistics. It does not appear in any reform roadmap. It is simply the cost that 200 million people have absorbed into their budgets and their routines and their understanding of what life in this country requires.

And increasingly, the private infrastructure of choice is the solar inverter system. The Twitter conversations have moved from complaining about NEPA to comparing lithium battery warranties. People are not waiting anymore. They are calculating. A 5kva system with lithium batteries, financed over 18 months. A 10kVA setup for a small business, split between three partners. The generator is increasingly a backup for the solar inverter, which is itself a backup for the grid, which provides the occasional surprise of light that nobody was depending on anymore anyway. The Nigerian energy stack, in 2026, has quietly inverted itself: the official system is now the last resort, and the private system that individuals financed from their own pockets, researched on Twitter, and had installed by a guy recommended in someone’s comment section, is the thing keeping the country operational.

If someone added all of it up — the aggregate annual cost of Nigeria’s private electricity sector, the one that actually keeps the country running — the number would be very large, and people in government would find it very uncomfortable to discuss, so we do not add it up.

The light at the end of this tunnel is not the Electricity Act. It is not Band A. It is not thirteen state regulators of varying seriousness who may or may not turn their new authority into something real. It is not the master plan that somebody, somewhere in Aso Rock, presumably has but has not shared with the rest of us.

It is your neighbour’s solar inverter system. The one he financed at ₦180,000 a month for eighteen months after that Twitter thread convinced him to finally just do it. The one that hums quietly through the night while everywhere else is dark. The one that works, not because any government made it work, but because he was tired of waiting and did the math himself.

He is not extending the cable to your flat. But at least one of you has light.

And that certainly should count for something,

Or doesn’t

I don’t know, nor do I have the time to examine it. I need to turn my laptop off now. There’s no light to charge it.

Olanrewaju,

For the Square

Our 2025 Faces of the Republic series examines 25 key individuals shaping this moment, not to praise or condemn, but to ask more probing questions about power, responsibility, and consequence. It is a cross-section of those shaping this moment, figures whose decisions, mandates, and scale continue to define the republic as it is being negotiated.

The Man In Charge

Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu - President of Nigeria

President Tinubu’s 2025 defined the perilous politics of reform—pursuing structural transformation while hemorrhaging political capital. His boldness is undeniable: removing fuel subsidies on day one, floating the naira, pushing comprehensive tax reforms despite northern opposition, and commissioning the SEDC after decades of delay. These moves required political courage that previous administrations lacked. By year’s end, macro indicators showed improvement—GDP growth reached 3.98% in Q3, inflation moderated for seven consecutive months, foreign reserves climbed, and credit rating upgrades validated the reform direction. The Dangote Refinery’s operations and rising oil production suggested his energy strategy was working.

Yet Tinubu’s 2025 was also defined by governance failures that undermined reform achievements. The N30.1 trillion revenue shortfall exposed catastrophic fiscal planning—either his economic team misled him with wildly optimistic projections or political pressure produced budgets detached from reality. Either scenario reflects a governance breakdown. Allegations that gazetted tax laws differed from what the National Assembly passed sparked a constitutional crisis, with opposition parties demanding suspension and investigation.

On security, Tinubu's record remained deeply troubling. Despite declaring states of emergency and appointing General Christopher Musa as Defence Minister, kidnappings persisted across multiple regions, banditry ravaged the Northwest, and farmers remained afraid to access their land. The killing of Brigadier General Musa Uba in Borno and mass student abductions in Kebbi State underscored the government's struggle to protect even military personnel and schoolchildren. While oil production increased partly due to improved Niger Delta security, this success only highlighted failures elsewhere. Critics charged that security deterioration contradicted reform narratives—what good are economic gains if citizens cannot safely travel, farm, or send children to school?

Additionally, Tinubu failed to adequately cushion the reform’s impact on ordinary Nigerians. While direct benefit transfers reached 20 million people, implementation remained slow and many felt abandoned by reforms that seemed to favor big business over common citizens. Food inflation, though moderating, remained punishingly high. Pump prices and cost of living continued to squeeze households. Opposition figures, particularly Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, effectively weaponized economic hardship against the administration, forming coalitions for 2027.

Critics charged that Tinubu’s policies amounted to ‘class-based systems where the wealthy enjoy VIP treatment and the rest are left behind,’ pointing to passport fee hikes and healthcare deterioration. By year’s end, Tinubu faced a paradox: economists praised his structural reforms while millions of Nigerians experienced deepening hardship. His message remained consistent—reforms are inevitable, pain temporary, payoff transformative. But patience was wearing thin. The political question heading into 2026 is whether macroeconomic stabilization translates into improved livelihoods before public frustration erodes the political coalition needed to sustain reforms.

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The Four Horsemen of Nigeria’s Finances

Wale Edun — Minister of Finance & Coordinating Minister of the Economy

Wale Edun’s 2025 was defined by stark contrasts—impressive macro gains shadowed by devastating revenue misses and organizational turbulence. On the positive ledger, Edun coordinated policies that helped stabilize the economy, with GDP growth reaching 3.7% in H1 2025 and inflation beginning its downward trajectory. His alignment with CBN Governor Cardoso and FIRS Chairman Adedeji demonstrated the power of fiscal-monetary coordination. International institutions recognized the progress, with the IMF upgrading Nigeria’s outlook and Moody’s improving its credit rating. Yet December 2025 brought a crushing blow: Edun revealed Nigeria would collect only N10.7 trillion of the projected N40.8 trillion in 2025 revenue—a staggering 281% shortfall that raised fundamental questions about fiscal planning. The revelation triggered a major ministry restructuring, with sources claiming President Tinubu has reassigned key revenue-generation and debt-management functions to Minister of State Doris Uzoka-Anite, effectively curtailing Edun’s oversight.

Critics questioned whether wildly optimistic revenue projections reflected poor economic modeling or political pressure to present rosy scenarios. The shortfall exposed the fragility beneath the macro-level improvements and cast doubt on the sustainability of reforms funded by borrowing against revenues that never materialized. For Edun, 2025 ended not with vindication but vulnerability; praise for policy design yet held accountable for implementation failures that threatened the entire reform agenda.

Yemi Cardoso — Governor, Central Bank of Nigeria

Yemi Cardoso’s 2025 narrative oscillates between institutional restoration and painful trade-offs that left many Nigerians worse off. His achievements are undeniable: foreign exchange reserves climbed to $46.7 billion (a seven-year high), the naira stabilized after initial volatility, and the gap between official and parallel market rates narrowed from 50% to under 2%. By mandating capital enhancements for banks and ending the CBN’s quasi-fiscal adventures, Cardoso restored orthodox central banking and international credibility. Nigeria’s exit from the FATF grey list vindicated his institutional reforms.

Yet Cardoso’s monetary tightening—keeping the MPR at 27%—created crippling conditions for the productive sector. The Manufacturers Association of Nigeria warned that lending rates of 30-37% made manufacturing unviable, strangling investment and competitiveness. Critics argue Cardoso prioritized attracting speculative portfolio investors over supporting domestic production, a strategy that stabilizes exchange rates but fails to build productive capacity. His declaration that Nigeria had ‘turned a decisive corner’ rang hollow for millions facing food inflation that remained structurally high despite moderation. World Bank projections that Nigeria would maintain double-digit inflation through 2025 contradicted Cardoso’s medium-term single-digit target, raising questions about the realism of his goals. For all his technical competence, Cardoso’s 2025 legacy is a financial system that appears healthier on paper while ordinary Nigerians struggle to access affordable credit or basic goods.

Taiwo Oyedele — Chairman, Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms

Taiwo Oyedele navigated Nigeria’s most politically volatile reform in 2025—overhauling a tax system that had remained largely unchanged for five decades. His comprehensive proposals consolidated over 60 separate tax laws into single-digit legislation, reduced withholding tax rates from 10% to 5% for Nigerian companies, and introduced zero-based budgeting principles. The Nigeria Tax Act 2025 represented the first fundamental restructuring of Nigeria’s fiscal architecture in generations, raising thresholds for low-income earners and creating more progressive rates. Oyedele’s technical brilliance shone in designing a system that could theoretically broaden the tax base while reducing harassment of compliant taxpayers.

However, his proposals ignited fierce political resistance, particularly around VAT revenue-sharing formulas. Northern governors opposed changes that would give states 60% of taxes they generate (up from 20%), arguing the reforms favored industrialized southern states at the expense of agrarian northern regions with 80% poverty rates. The controversy forced President Tinubu to water down the distribution formula from Oyedele’s original proposal. Allegations emerged in December that gazetted versions of the tax laws contained provisions different from what the National Assembly passed, triggering calls for suspension from opposition figures. While government officials denied the claims, the controversy exposed the political landmines embedded in comprehensive tax reform. Oyedele’s challenge extends beyond technical design to political viability—building consensus in a federation where states have vastly different economic capacities and where any redistribution creates winners and losers who mobilize resistance. His 2025 achievement lies less in perfect solutions than in advancing a necessary conversation Nigeria had avoided for decades.

Zacch Adedeji — Chairman, Federal Inland Revenue Service

Zacch Adedeji faced perhaps the most unenviable position in Nigeria’s economic team in 2025: collecting revenues to fund ambitious reforms while implementing major tax policy changes mid-year. As FIRS Chairman, Adedeji worked closely with Minister Edun and Governor Cardoso to align tax collection with broader fiscal-monetary policy. He embraced technology and data analytics to improve compliance while reducing taxpayer harassment, understanding that sustainable revenue growth requires broader compliance and simplified processes rather than higher rates or aggressive enforcement.

Yet Adedeji’s 2025 ended under the shadow of the massive revenue shortfall that left Nigeria N30.1 trillion short of projections. While oil revenue underperformance explained part of the gap, questions arose about FIRS’s collection efficiency and whether earlier assurances about exceeding targets reflected genuine assessment or political pressure to report favorable numbers. The challenge of implementing new tax regulations while maintaining revenue targets exposed the tension between reform and fiscal necessity. Adedeji must now navigate 2026 with both new tax laws to implement and steep revenue targets to meet—all while managing taxpayer expectations that reforms should make compliance easier, not harder. His success will determine whether Nigeria’s tax modernization improves revenue collection or merely rearranges a dysfunctional system without addressing fundamental enforcement and compliance challenges.

The Third (Second?) Force

Peter Obi - 2023 Presidential Candidate, Labour Party & Opposition Leader

Peter Obi remained Nigeria’s most visible opposition figure in 2025, using widespread economic hardship to build momentum toward 2027 while navigating fragile coalition politics. After his strong third-place finish in 2023 mobilised millions of young Nigerians, Obi cast himself as a moral counterweight to the government—calling out governance failures, questioning reform implementation, and amplifying citizens’ economic pain. His July alliance with Atiku Abubakar and other opposition figures under the African Democratic Congress banner produced the most consequential opposition coalition in recent memory, even as it triggered backlash within the Labour Party. Obi framed the move as a coalition against “hunger, poverty, and ill health,” a message that resonated with urban youth and middle-class Nigerians bearing the costs of reform, but also raised questions about whether his opposition politics offered a clear governing alternative.

The defining tension of Obi’s 2025 lay between principled advocacy and political viability. Supporters saw a necessary moral voice confronting inequality and state failure; critics argued he capitalised on economic distress while offering limited policy specificity. As Labour Party infighting deepened, doubts persisted about whether the Obidient movement could mature into a durable governing platform. Whether Obi represents Nigeria’s political future—or another opposition cycle strong on critique but light on execution—remains an open question as 2027 approaches.

Regional Development

Mark Okoye - Managing Director, SEDC

Mark Okoye assumed leadership of the South East Development Commission in February 2025 with a mandate that had been 54 years in the making. At just 38, the former Anambra State Commissioner for Economic Planning brought unprecedented dynamism to a role meant to address post-civil war reconstruction and development disparities. Within his first 100 days, Okoye launched three transformative initiatives: the South East Investment Company targeting a $1 billion asset base by 2035, a $50 million Venture Capital Fund to fuel startups, and the SEGRID program restoring grassroots sports infrastructure. His vision extends beyond infrastructure—Okoye aims to grow the South East’s economy from $40 billion to $200 billion by 2035, positioning it as a critical pillar of Nigeria’s economic transformation.

Working closely with state governments, private investors, and development partners, he has demonstrated that effective regional development requires more than government funding—it demands strategic partnerships, innovative financing, and relentless execution. His approach represents a new model for Nigeria’s development commissions, prioritizing bankable projects over political rhetoric and measurable impact over ceremonial launches.

Energy Security

Olu Verheijen — Special Adviser to the President on Energy

Olu Verheijen emerged as 2025’s most effective policy architect, translating presidential directives into concrete investments that reversed decades of energy sector decline. Her Presidential Directives 41 and 42, issued in May, became transformative policy instruments—eliminating rent-seeking, slashing project timelines, and restoring investor confidence through clear frameworks. Under her guidance, Nigeria secured three of Africa’s four Final Investment Decisions in 2024 (valued over $5.5 billion) and positioned itself for more in 2025. She championed the data-driven security framework that stabilized the Niger Delta, enabling increased production. The $590 billion Power Sector Bond launched in December addressed legacy debt to generators and gas suppliers, marking a strategic reset. Whether at ADIPEC, the G20 Africa Energy Investment Forum, or African Energy Week, Verheijen articulated Nigeria’s vision: leveraging oil and gas wealth for development while transitioning to cleaner energy. By year’s end, her reforms had attracted over $8 billion in new investments.

Yet challenges remain. Nigeria’s oil output, while improved, still underperformed 2025 budget assumptions, contributing to the massive revenue shortfall. The power sector bond, while necessary, highlighted years of policy failure that accumulated N4 trillion in debt. Critics note that attracting investment is merely the first step—projects must be executed, revenues must materialize, and benefits must reach ordinary Nigerians. Verheijen’s regulatory genius must now prove itself in implementation. Can Nigeria sustain policy clarity long enough for investments to mature? Will increased production translate into improved energy access for citizens? The test of Verheijen’s legacy lies ahead—not in policies designed but in projects delivered and lives transformed.

Aliko Dangote — President/CEO, Dangote Group

Aliko Dangote’s $20 billion refinery moved from promise to reality in 2025, fundamentally reshaping Nigeria’s energy landscape while exposing the political economy that resisted transformation. By mid-year, the Lekki facility was supplying approximately 60% of Nigeria’s petrol demand, slashing the import bill and stabilizing pump prices. Nigeria transformed from sub-Saharan Africa’s largest fuel importer to a potential regional exporter. In November, Dangote announced plans to double capacity to 1.4 million barrels per day by 2028 through a $5 billion partnership with Honeywell, promising $55 billion in annual revenue and strengthened foreign exchange reserves. These achievements vindicate Dangote’s vision that domestic refining beats sending dollars abroad.

Yet 2025 also exposed the battles Dangote fought—and the questions his dominance raises. He openly acknowledged fighting entrenched interests that profited from the old import-dependent system, navigating regulatory obstacles that critics say reflected capture by those interests. His public disputes with regulatory agencies revealed the power dynamics at play when Africa’s richest man challenges established systems. Some question whether Dangote’s near-monopoly position in refining merely replaces one form of market concentration with another. His pricing decisions, while lower than imports, still left many Nigerians struggling with fuel costs. The broader question is whether Dangote’s success represents a model for Nigerian industrialization or an exception dependent on his unique resources and political connections. Can other Nigerian entrepreneurs replicate his feat, or does success at this scale require Dangote-level capital and influence? The answer matters for whether Nigeria builds broad-based industrial capacity or remains dependent on a few well-connected champions. Dangote’s achievement is undeniable—he proved domestic refining is viable when others said it was impossible. But transforming Nigeria requires systems that enable many Dangotes, not just rewarding the existing one.

Social Services

Uzoma Nwagba — Managing Director/CEO, CrediCorp

Uzoma Nwagba’s CrediCorp represents a critical bridge in Nigeria’s financial inclusion journey, providing credit access to underserved populations. In 2025, as economic reforms stressed household finances, alternative credit platforms became lifelines for millions navigating rising costs. Nwagba’s work demonstrates how fintech innovation can democratize financial services, using technology and alternative data to assess creditworthiness beyond traditional banking criteria. CrediCorp’s model—leveraging digital platforms to offer affordable credit—addresses a fundamental constraint on Nigerian economic mobility: lack of capital for entrepreneurs, students, and families to invest in their futures. As Nigeria’s economy evolves, leaders like Nwagba prove that inclusive growth requires not just macro reforms but also micro-level innovations that put financial tools in the hands of ordinary citizens.

Akintunde Sawyerr — Managing Director, NELFUND

As Managing Director of the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, Akintunde Sawyerr oversees one of the most impactful social programs launched under the Tinubu administration. In 2025, NELFUND became operational, providing interest-free loans to Nigerian students who might otherwise be excluded from higher education due to financial constraints. The program recognizes that human capital development—not just infrastructure—determines Nigeria’s future competitiveness. By removing financial barriers to tertiary education, Sawyerr’s NELFUND invests in the next generation of Nigerian professionals, entrepreneurs, and leaders. The fund’s impact extends beyond individual beneficiaries to entire families and communities lifted by educational opportunity. In a country where poverty increasingly constrains social mobility, NELFUND represents hope that merit and ambition—rather than family wealth—can determine educational outcomes.

Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo — Honourable Minister of Interior

Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo brought digital transformation to the Ministry of Interior in 2025, revolutionizing Nigeria’s passport issuance process while sparking controversy over pricing. The achievements are significant: digitization reduced processing times, increased transparency, and curtailed rent-seeking by middlemen. The improvements demonstrated that Nigeria’s governance challenges often stem from poor systems rather than resource scarcity. However, the August 2025 passport fee hikes—doubling five-year passports to N100,000 and ten-year passports to N200,000—drew sharp criticism. While Tunji-Ojo justified the increases as funding automation and enhanced security, critics noted this came as Nigerians faced severe economic pressure from other reforms. The episode exposed the tension in Nigeria’s reform approach: should the government absorb costs to cushion citizens during economic transition, or should users pay for improved services even during hardship? Tunji-Ojo’s broader work on digitizing national identity infrastructure supports financial inclusion, security, and effective delivery of programs like cash transfers. His challenge is ensuring technological improvements translate into affordable, accessible services rather than creating new barriers for struggling citizens. The passport fee controversy illustrated that even necessary modernization requires sensitivity to citizens’ economic realities during reform transitions.

Bosun Tijani — Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy

Bosun Tijani’s 3 Million Technical Talent program represents Nigeria’s most ambitious effort to prepare its youth for the digital economy. In 2025, as global demand for tech skills surged and AI transformed industries, Tijani’s initiative positioned Nigeria to be a supplier rather than just a consumer of digital talent. The program’s scale and ambition—training three million Nigerians in software development, data science, cloud computing, and other in-demand skills—could reshape Nigeria’s economic trajectory. With tech services representing one of the few globally competitive sectors where Nigeria can compete on merit, 3MTT addresses youth unemployment while building national capacity for the 21st century economy. Tijani understands that in an increasingly digital world, a nation’s most valuable export may not be oil or agricultural products but trained technical talent that can work remotely for global companies while earning foreign currency. If successful, 3MTT could spawn a generation of Nigerian tech professionals whose remittances and innovations drive economic transformation.

Abisoye Coker-Odusote — Director General, National Identity Management Commission (NIMC)

Engr. (Dr.) Abisoye Coker-Odusote’s 2025 showcased both transformative achievement and troubling defiance. Under her leadership, NIMC reached 120 million National Identification Number enrollments, cleared ₦280 million in inherited debt, and reduced corruption by 40% through digitization. She implemented salary adjustments, promoted 523 staff members, and launched the NINAuth verification system alongside plans for a digital National ID card. Her strategic partnership with the World Bank’s ID4D project and deployment of Frontier Partners to enroll citizens in remote communities demonstrated innovative approaches to scaling identity registration. By May, she received the Outstanding Performance in Public Service award and later represented President Tinubu at the UN General Assembly on trusted identity systems.

Yet from February through March, Coker-Odusote repeatedly ignored House of Representatives summons regarding the termination of a software licensing agreement with Truid Limited. The House Public Petitions Committee threatened arrest warrants, with Chairman Mike Etaba criticizing how “an official of government could treat constituted authority with such levity.” While defenders argued she inherited questionable contracts and was fixing them, critics questioned whether ignoring legislative oversight set dangerous precedents. Her operational achievements are substantial and measurable—120 million enrollments speak for themselves. But the unresolved Truid dispute raises questions about whether results justify circumventing accountability, or whether even effective executives must submit to institutional oversight.

Ali Pate — Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare

Ali Pate faced perhaps the most challenging portfolio in Nigeria’s cabinet in 2025: delivering healthcare improvements during a global aid funding freeze and domestic fiscal constraints. His mandate—taking healthcare to the last mile—required innovative approaches to extend services beyond urban centers to rural communities where maternal mortality, child malnutrition, and preventable diseases remained tragically high. Pate’s background in global health and policy made him uniquely qualified to navigate Nigeria’s complex healthcare landscape, but success required more than expertise. It demanded creative financing, improved supply chains, better-trained health workers, and community engagement to ensure services reached those most in need. As Nigeria’s population continued growing and climate change exacerbated health challenges, Pate’s work would determine whether health outcomes improved or deteriorated. His challenge embodied a fundamental question facing Nigeria: Can a country aspiring to continental leadership provide basic healthcare to all its citizens?

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Team Get It Done

Hadiza Bala Usman — Special Adviser on Policy Coordination & Head, CDCU

Hadiza Bala Usman may hold one of Nigeria’s most important but least understood roles—coordinating and managing government performance through the Central Delivery Coordination Unit. In 2025, as the Tinubu administration’s ambitious reforms faced implementation challenges, Usman’s CDCU became critical to tracking progress, identifying bottlenecks, and ensuring commitments became reality rather than press releases. Her background in successfully running the Nigerian Ports Authority prepared her for this role, requiring both technical competence and political savvy. Usman understands that governance isn’t just about policy design but execution—the unglamorous work of monitoring projects, convening stakeholders, resolving inter-agency disputes, and holding officials accountable for delivery.

In a system where grand announcements often exceed actual achievement, Usman’s CDCU represents an attempt to instill performance management and results orientation into government operations. Her success or failure would significantly impact whether the Tinubu administration’s reforms translated into tangible improvements in citizens’ lives.

Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan — Kogi Central Senator

Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan’s 2025 was defined by courage, consequence, and resilience. As Kogi State’s first elected female senator, she began the year delivering results—commissioning roads, distributing 5,000 digital learning devices to schools, lighting 30 kilometers of roads, and reconstructing the Ihima Police Station. Her legislative agenda focused on revitalizing Ajaokuta Steel Company and establishing a Federal Medical Center in Ihima.

Then came February’s reckoning. Akpoti-Uduaghan publicly accused Senate President Godswill Akpabio of sexual harassment, alleging unwanted advances in December 2023. The Senate’s response was swift—her petition was dismissed without investigation, and she was suspended for six months, stripped of salary, office access, and security. The suspension, ostensibly for protesting seat reassignment, was widely seen as retaliation. She took her case to the UN Women in Parliament session and filed a ₦100 billion lawsuit. In July, Justice Binta Nyako declared her suspension “excessive and unconstitutional,” ordering reinstatement.

Akpoti-Uduaghan returned in October, immediately resuming legislative work and project commissions. Critics note contradictions in her account—including deleted social media posts praising Akpabio the day after alleged harassment. Yet the broader pattern is undeniable: Nigeria’s political system remains hostile to women who refuse deference. Whether her allegations are entirely accurate matters less than what her suspension revealed—that challenging powerful men carries consequences designed to silence. Her 2025 made her a symbol of the battles women face in Nigerian politics.

Make the Markets Great Again

Temi Popoola & Jude Chiemeka — Nigerian Exchange Group

Temi Popoola and Jude Chiemeka’s leadership at the Nigerian Exchange Group focused on deepening Nigeria’s capital markets and making them more accessible, efficient, and attractive to both domestic and foreign investors. In 2025, as Nigeria’s economic reforms created volatility, strong capital markets became essential for channeling savings into productive investment, enabling companies to raise capital, and providing citizens with alternatives to bank deposits. Their work supported broader efforts to financialize Nigeria’s economy—moving from cash-based transactions toward more sophisticated financial instruments and intermediation. The NGX’s performance also served as a barometer of investor confidence in Nigeria’s economic direction. By improving market infrastructure, ensuring transparency, and maintaining regulatory standards, Popoola and Chiemeka helped make Nigeria’s capital markets more resilient and credible.

Emomotimi Agama — Director General, Securities and Exchange Commission

As Director General of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Emomotimi Agama served as Nigeria’s chief markets regulator, responsible for maintaining integrity, protecting investors, and ensuring fair dealing in securities markets. In 2025, his role became particularly important as market volatility increased amid economic reforms. Agama balanced the dual mandate of enabling market growth while preventing fraud and manipulation that could devastate retail investors. His regulatory philosophy would shape whether Nigeria’s capital markets could attract the long-term institutional investment needed to finance infrastructure and industrial development. Strong, credible regulation—neither too lax to invite abuse nor too restrictive to stifle innovation—represented the sweet spot Agama needed to find. Nigeria’s economic transformation depended partly on whether its capital markets could efficiently allocate capital, and Agama’s SEC played the crucial role of ensuring those markets functioned fairly and transparently.

Babajide Sanwo-Olu — Governor, Lagos State

Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu made history in 2025 by successfully raising ₦244.8 billion through capital markets to finance Lagos State’s critical infrastructure. This landmark achievement demonstrated that Nigerian states need not rely solely on federal allocations, internally generated revenue, and traditional bank loans—they could tap institutional investors through bond markets. Sanwo-Olu’s approach represented fiscal innovation at the subnational level, showing how states with credible governance and viable projects could access patient capital for long-term investments.

For Lagos—Nigeria’s economic powerhouse facing immense infrastructure deficits—the capital raise enabled investments in transportation, power, water, and urban regeneration that bank loans’ shorter tenures wouldn’t support. More importantly, Sanwo-Olu’s success created a template for other states, potentially revolutionizing how Nigeria finances the estimated hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure needed. His willingness to subject Lagos to capital markets discipline—with its requirements for transparency, financial reporting, and investor accountability—also raised governance standards.

Media & Civil Society

Yemi Adamolekun — Executive Director, Enough is Enough (EiE)

In 2025, Yemi Adamolekun marked a decade leading Enough is Enough, Nigeria’s prominent civic advocacy organization mobilizing citizens for good governance and accountability. Throughout this period, EiE evolved from organizing protests to building sustained civic engagement infrastructure—voter education, budget tracking, policy analysis, and digital advocacy. Adamolekun’s leadership during the #EndSARS protests cemented EiE’s role as a voice for Nigeria’s frustrated youth demanding better governance.

In 2025, as economic hardship intensified, Adamolekun continued pressing government on transparency, efficiency, and responsiveness to citizens’ needs. Her work represented the essential democratic function of civil society—holding power accountable, amplifying citizens’ voices, and demanding that government serves public rather than private interests. In a political system where patronage and ethnicity often overshadow competence and accountability, Adamolekun’s decade of advocacy reminded Nigerians that they needn’t accept dysfunction as inevitable. Her persistence embodied the principle that democracy requires vigilant citizens willing to challenge power and demand better.

Reuben Abati — Journalist & Political Analyst

Reuben Abati remained one of Nigeria’s most influential media voices in 2025, providing incisive political commentary that helped citizens navigate complex policy debates. His background as former Special Adviser on Media to President Goodluck Jonathan gave him insider understanding of power’s mechanics, while his return to journalism provided the distance necessary for critical analysis. Through columns, broadcasts, and social media, Abati decoded policy decisions, interrogated political motivations, and held leaders accountable to their promises. In an era of information overload and disinformation, credible analysts like Abati served a vital democratic function—helping citizens understand what government actually does versus what it claims, identifying whose interests policies serve, and maintaining historical memory of past failures and successes. His work represented quality journalism’s irreplaceable role in democracy: not as propaganda or opposition but as independent, informed analysis helping citizens make sense of power and hold it accountable.

Seun Onigbinde — Co-founder, BudgIT

Seun Onigbinde’s BudgIT continued its pioneering work in 2025, making Nigeria’s public finances accessible to ordinary citizens through data visualization and accessible analysis. In a country where government budgets often seemed designed to obscure rather than illuminate spending priorities, BudgIT served as an essential watchdog tracking how public money gets allocated and spent. Onigbinde’s innovation lay in recognizing that transparency alone wasn’t enough—information must be presented in ways citizens can understand and act upon. By tracking projects, exposing waste, and highlighting disparities between budgeted and actual spending, BudgIT created accountability pressure on government officials. As Nigeria grappled with resource constraints and difficult trade-offs, Onigbinde ensured that debates about public spending proceeded on factual rather than rhetorical grounds. His work embodied a simple but powerful principle: citizens cannot hold government accountable for money they cannot see being spent. By illuminating Nigeria’s public finances, BudgIT empowered citizens to demand value for their taxes and question priorities that served politicians rather than people.

Segun Awolowo — Country Coordinator, AfCFTA (Posthumous)

Segun Awolowo dedicated the swansong of his career to advancing the African Continental Free Trade Area, working to break down barriers inhibiting intra-African trade and economic integration. His passing in 2025 robbed Nigeria and Africa of a passionate advocate for continental unity through commerce. Awolowo understood that Africa’s fragmentation into 54 national markets—many quite small—constrained the continent’s economic potential and bargaining power globally. AfCFTA’s promise of a 1.3 billion-person single market could enable African industries to achieve scale, attract investment, and compete globally. Yet realizing this vision required navigating complex negotiations, addressing capacity constraints, and overcoming nationalist instincts favoring protection over integration. Awolowo’s work represented vision beyond Nigeria’s immediate interests toward Africa’s collective prosperity. His legacy challenges Nigerians to think continentally—recognizing that Nigeria’s future prosperity depends partly on Africa’s success, and that leadership requires championing regional integration even when short-term domestic interests suggest otherwise. In remembering Awolowo, we honor not just his achievements but his vision of an economically integrated, prosperous Africa.

Across the Western world, stricter immigration policies are taking hold. Portugal’s parliament has yielded to far-right pressure, implementing tighter immigration laws. In Greece, rejected asylum seekers now face potential imprisonment. Even under a Labour government thought to be seemingly more progressive and pro-migration, Britain has enacted harsher settlement rules, a response to the far-right’s growing electoral influence. Meanwhile, in the United States, Donald Trump’s political resurgence has intensified the crackdown on migrants, leading to legal challenges for sanctuary cities and a daily constriction of asylum rights. And all this is happening even as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports that forced displacement has reached record highs, with over 120 million people uprooted worldwide as of 2024. Yet borders, rather than opening in solidarity, are narrowing.

In an age where passports decide dignity, Nigerians are discovering that the world is less welcoming than it once seemed. As far-right nationalism gains ground globally, the world is quietly sending a message: build your home, or be homeless everywhere.

This is not a new challenge. On November 16, 1960, in his inaugural address as Nigeria’s first President, Nnamdi Azikiwe declared:

Azikiwe, to his credit, believed independence was more than the design of a new flag or the composition of a new anthem; it was the urgent project of restoring dignity to a people who had been told for centuries that they were less than human. For him, Nigeria’s existence was proof that Africans could stand equal in the community of nations.

Yet sixty-five years later, as Nigerians queue at foreign embassies or risk their lives in deserts and on seas, the irony could not be sharper: the dignity Azikiwe envisioned abroad is still denied to many Nigerians, and the home that was meant to guarantee it remains unbuilt.

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Just days ago, Nigeria was shaken by the tragic death of Sommie Maduagwu, a 29-year-old lawyer and Arise TV anchor. Having returned home of her own volition to help build the country she believed in, she lost her life in a robbery at her apartment in Abuja. Her friends grieved not only the passing of a brilliant young woman, but the irony that she died at the hands of the very failures she had hoped to change: insecurity, inadequate healthcare, and a system that too often abandons its people.

Sommie’s story is more than personal tragedy; it is emblematic of Nigeria’s dilemma. Our brightest minds leave, longing for safer shores. Those who return to help rebuild face a nation that sometimes devours its own. If the world is shutting its doors, as we see in Europe and America, then the urgent question becomes: will Nigeria itself be a refuge or a graveyard for its citizens? As the Yoruba say, “The bird that abandons its nest will find thorns wherever it rests.” But what of the bird that returns to its nest, only to find the thorns waiting there?

Today is another Independence Day, a celebration of 65 years of self-rule and governance. A day to remember Azikwe’s charge and a threshold where a people, once shackled, would finally step into their destinies, bolstered by the collective build of a nation that catered to their interests and enabled their self-actualization. Instead, what we have is a country that has simply become a place for her citizens to escape from. The prayer point “Nigeria will not happen to you” now becomes more widespread as the days go by.

The figures tell the story: millions have left in the past decade, driven not only by dreams of prosperity but by desperation. Desperation to flee insecurity, unemployment, failing hospitals, and an education system that struggles to keep pace with its own children. Those who stay live with daily anxieties: that a simple journey home may end in a road ambush; that a medical emergency might be a death sentence; that justice belongs to the wealthy and the well-connected.

It is a bitter irony, a bitter one. Colonial chains fell in 1960, and new ones took their place. New ones forged by Neglect, Crime, Corruption, and Insecurity. Forged by the incompetence of elected officials and the general apathy of the electorate.

Nigeria’s Independence Day should be a celebration, yet for me it feels like a requiem. Each passing year, the parades grow hollower, the speeches more detached, the flags more like decorations masking decay. What is the worth of freedom if freedom itself has become indistinguishable from survival?

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Azikiwe’s dream of a nation standing equal in dignity among the nations of the world was supposed to be our inheritance. But what we inherited instead is an endless improvisation of endurance. We survive power cuts and fuel queues, bandit attacks and failed hospitals, economic shocks and political betrayals. But survival is not life, and certainly not dignity. Fela sings about this in “Shuffering and Smiling”, a bitter ballad that chronicles the Nigerian experience.

The Nigerian tragedy is not only that the house remains unbuilt, but that every attempt to raise its pillars seems to collapse under the weight of selfishness and neglect. And so the country limps forward, draped in the colours of independence but haunted by the reality of dependence. Dependence on the resilience of its citizens and on “prayers for the country” whispered by those who also secretly hope that “Nigeria will not happen to them.”

There are nations where homecoming is joy. In Nigeria, homecoming too often feels like surrender. Sommie’s fate is not isolated; it is a symbol. The best of us leave, or are lost. The rest of us wait, wondering when the next collapse will arrive at our doorsteps.

Sixty-five years on, Nigeria is less a nation than an inheritance squandered. Independence was meant to give us back our dignity. Instead, it has left us to wrestle with a bitter question: What do you call a country that eats its young and still expects to be celebrated?

There’s a quote by the Igbos: Mmadụ anaghi anọ n’ụlọ ya nọta mkpụmkpụ n’azụ. It opines that one cannot stay in one’s home and grow a hunchback.

And yet, in Nigeria, even that has become possible.

"Be ye never so high, that the Law is above you."

—Thomas Fuller

On a cloudless afternoon in 1986, screams pierced through the humid air. The heaving body of Dele Giwa lay on the wooden floor of his study surrounded by a growing pool of blood and his flesh. Minutes earlier, he has been in the company of Kayode Soyinka, Newswatch’s London Bureau Chief, enjoying a late breakfast. As life slipped from his sunken eyes, he told his wife Funmi, "Won ti pa mi,". Once again, the Federal Government had taken out a fighter just as the match was about to begin.

His death—assassination by letter bomb—was one of many assassinations carried out by post-independence military governments to stifle free speech and cover up crimes. Over the next few years, many would be sent to early graves due to their involvement in Nigerian politics.

Now, over 30 years later, Nigerian elites and politicians are still stifling free speech under the cloak of defamation and treason. Activists and journalists now live in fear of being whisked away by the DSS to Abuja, oftentimes never seen again—or even worse, being released and recaptured and tortured until they concede.

For how long will we continue to keep up this censorship under the façade of free speech

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According to Section 4, Chapter 39 of the Nigerian Constitution, "Every person shall be entitled to freedom of expression, including freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart ideas and information without interference."

Ironic? I know. However, this speech can be limited in the following instances:

• To prevent the disclosure of information received in confidence.

• For maintaining the authority and independence of the courts.

• As a result of occupying a certain office in the government.

• For belonging to the military, police, or any other security agencies.

• In the interest of security, public safety, public order, public morality, and public health

• To protect the rights and freedom of other people

From the above, we should be able to conclude that under the above limitations, as a Nigerian Citizen, you should be able to exercise your human rights without fear of intimidation or harassment. Right?

Unfortunately, not always. No matter how hard you try, the Federal Government and the Nigerian elite are one step ahead of you. Their favorite weapon? The Nigerian Judiciary.

Dele Farotimi’s book, Nigeria and its Criminal Justice System is an honest appraisal of how the Nigerian judiciary has made a mockery of itself by playing along to the tune of private individuals and offering sentences in favor of the highest bidder. However, Farotimi, on account of his exposé, was arrested on December 3rd, 2024, for acts of ‘defamation’ and ‘cyberbullying’ against the reputed Chief Afe Babalola and also on a petition by billionaire banker, Tony Elumelu. Since then, Farotimi has spent days in custody, and a bail of ₦50 million was posted to his name for a crime that does not exist.

The Ekiti Criminal Laws of 2021, in all its 429 sections and 10 pages, do not include the crime of criminal libel or defamation. This means Mr. Farotimi is being persecuted in Ekiti State for a crime that does not exist within its laws.

To me and many other Nigerians, the Dele Farotimi libel case proves everything he said in his book and goes to show how deeply corrupted our judicial system is, attempting to portray innocent Nigerians exercising their human rights as criminals.

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Dele Farotimi is not the first of his kind. Earlier this year, Chioma Okoli faced a three-year jail term, which was later reduced to a ₦5 million bail, due to a negative review she made on Facebook about Erisco Tomato Paste, part of the Erisco brand of foods owned by Eric Umeofia. She was later released but not before meeting stringent bail conditions.

However, Yahaya Bello, former Kogi State governor, was involved in a money laundering case of ₦80.2 billion. After being declared wanted and playing hide-and-seek with EFCC officials for months, he pleaded not guilty and was granted bail of 500 million naira—just 0.62% of the alleged laundered amount. Furthermore, there is no photographic evidence or documentation to confirm Bello spent a day in the Kuje Prison before his bail hearing despite the EFCC’s claims.

As poignantly put by Peter Obi, former governor, and 2024 presidential aspirant:

"The Nigerian Police Force exists to protect the rights of citizens, not suppress them. The police must recognize that their allegiance is to the constitution and the people of Nigeria—not to narrow interests at the behest of those in power."

Though these issues glare ever so clearly at us, the government will not address them. Instead, they engage in verbal wars, fiercely defending institutions that are not in place. They sit in a house that’s on fire, and when the world tries to alert them, they shout back and close their eyes to reality.

Our government remains exceedingly talented at public relations—a feat so impressive it’s nearly ironic. They remain staunchly against anything that could dampen their already diminished national image, even if it means silencing the voices that matter.

Even on a global stage, our leaders engage in internet wars about the national image without addressing the issues these critiques expose.

Kemi Badenoch is one of these opposition voices. The leader of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party, she made several disparaging comments about growing up in a post-independence, military-era Nigeria in her opening speech to parliament. She spoke about times when she had to fetch water from a borehole, do her homework by candlelight, and live in a world where, in her own words, "everything was broken."

The Vice President of Nigeria, Kashim Shettima, took great offense to her statements, claiming she was ashamed of her country and unappreciative of it.

She responded sharply, stating she is not Nigeria’s PR representative, and referred to Shettima’s state as a Boko Haram haven.

Her statements caused a stir on the internet. Many Nigerians agreed with her, citing her words as truthful and urging the Vice President to leave her alone. Others argued her statements were politically motivated and would hurt Nigeria’s trade relations with the UK, asking how she could effectively interact with a government she openly criticized.

However, I remain of the opinion that Kemi’s words are true. Focusing on the harshness of her words and their supposed damage to our nation’s image ignores the truth they reveal.

Perhaps if our leaders heeded the Biblical advice to be "quick to listen and slow to speak," we would make more progress.

Nigeria has passed the point of public relations. We no longer need spokespeople attempting to maintain a positive image among the nations. Our words are empty; our actions and economy have spoken volumes that our lips cannot match.

It is about time our government turned its away from individuals who dare to speak the truth—no matter how bitter or harsh it may sound—and focused on the substance of their critique. The pain behind these words is where many Nigerians are coming from. That is where their words emanate: from hurt.

The bitter words of 44-year-old Kemi Badenoch are the aches of her 16-year-old self, who felt unsafe, betrayed, and deserted by her country of origin.

As a 14-year-old myself, I can relate very strongly to 16-year-old Kemi. The exchange rate has snatched once-in-a-lifetime opportunities from me, left my friends struggling to eat, and placed many of my peers in precarious situations, doing whatever they can to survive.

So, the next time a Nigerian raises their voice to speak against the injustice in her nation, let us not barrage them with case files, burden their struggling families with fines higher than their bungalows, or suffocate them with endless legal visits. No. Let us listen. Let our ears touch the ground and our hearts remain open to hearing the people's hurt. Only then—when we truly listen—will change begin.

By Inioluwa Oke

For the ‘Square

On June 12th, 1993, The General Elections were held in Nigeria in a contest between the popular option, MKO Abiola, and his opponent, Bashir Tofa. Popularly touted as the fairest election in Nigeria’s democratic history, it presented little wonder that the date was then selected as the annual date for the celebration of Democracy Day in Nigeria in 2018. Of course, at the time, the decision was simply food for the crows, and crumbs for the screaming children. In the face of a failing economy and blatant insecurity, perhaps the people could be sated with a change in Democracy Day to honor one of the heroes of democracy.

There is some irony in the fact that even at the celebration of the event six years after it was declared, it appears again to be crumbs for the screaming children. Just a week before, the Nigerian Labor Congress had embarked on a nationwide strike, impacting power, airport activities, and fuel supply in the country with the aim of brokering an increase in the minimum wage for workers in the country.

The labor congress navigated negotiations with the Federal Government past a flimsy offer of N60,000 as minimum wage - That is, $41 a month for the minimum wage earner, easily dooming anyone in this earning bracket beneath the UN declared metric of $60 a month as the abject poverty marker. It perhaps helps to also note that in contrast to the alleged remuneration of 38 Million Naira ($260,000) monthly for members of the House of Representatives and Senate, the proposed minimum wage by the government is abysmal.

The secretary to the Federal Government, George Akume appears to be one of those who believes that the flimsy offer is viable, with his comment: ‘I Can’t Afford To Pay My 4 Drivers N100,000 Salary Each’. The more important question would be how pertinent his transportation is, that he requires four drivers to transport him from place to place. A recommendation for the secretary could be a personal bicycle instead, saving the cost of governance from both his transportation and health expenses.

The conflict with the Labor Congress however barely scratches the surface of all the places where the administration may be tripping and falling in managing the failing economy. In 2023, the Nigerian Naira stood out as the worst-performing currency in Africa, and third from last place in the globe. The Central bank’s President, Cardoso would win praise briefly in April and May of 2024 as the Naira found strength briefly and stood out as the best-performing currency globally; While this is good news for residents of the country, not only is an unstable currency nothing to boast of, but the flowers accorded the Bank’s president may need a return policy as the currency began an upward dive again in following months.

The exit of multinationals like Microsoft, Guinness, and GSK from the Nigerian market highlights an economy reflecting President Tinubu’s missteps, further strained by inconsistent financial policies. This situation raises the question: Is the problem that the Tinubu administration hasn't been given enough time to address Nigeria’s challenges, or are they merely experimenting with different approaches, like Edison until their time runs out?

President Tinubu’s address to the country on the June 12 celebration however deserves some accolade, promising a palpable future to Nigerians, and not ignoring the issues faced by the administration and country in recent times. He highlighted an understanding that the country continues to face hardships, and points to his reforms as foundational for future progress. Finally, he promised to send an executive bill to the national assembly cementing the agreements made with the Labour Congress, although not noting that the conversations with the body remain inconclusive.

In previous years, when Nigerians were informed of a President’s trip, it was often assumed it was a medical tourism visit as President Tinubu’s predecessor was often akin to, so perhaps there was some respite in hearing that he simply slipped without harm. The concern for his well-being however is also a concern for the well-being of the country, in hopes that it recovers as swiftly as he did.

Uncertainty has definitely been the recurring theme of the Tinubu-led administration over the past year. And while I’d hate to flog an already dead and buried horse, it’s a rather worthwhile exercise to reflect on the past year of said administration and examine what sort of promise or hope lies for the future. If any lay, at all.

Uncertainty being the theme of this government was evident even before the government itself. Right from the early days of the presidential campaign and eventual election, there was widespread uncertainty on whether Mr President would contest. And then after his eventual victory at the APC Primary in 2022, uncertainties around his educational background and criminal history were huge concerns; concerns that were chucked up by party members to mere propaganda and identity politics. And then came the uncertainty around how he intended to govern; famously being the last of the “big 3” candidates to release a manifesto. Uncertainty around his choice of a vice presidential candidate; questions around whether he would tow the safe and secure route of selecting a Muslim Northern VP candidate or the more “inclusive” option of selecting a Christian one, seeing as he was also a Muslim. And then came the uncertainty around his campaigns. Videos emerged attempting to create a narrative that the then-presidential candidate was either unfit or unwell to carry out the job of governing the country. Confusion around whether or not he would participate in Presidential debates, uncertainty around the things he was actually saying in those campaigns and town hall meetings, and then more confusion about his real reasons for contesting for this election; the famous “emilokan” slogan coming to mind.

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But you see, a leopard is famous for one thing only. And this is never changing its spots. More uncertainty was on the horizon as an over-ambitious attempt at ending fuel subsidy and putting all those billions to more productive use led to the most famous pronouncement of that swearing-in speech. And then uncertainty on whether or not the effects of the subsidy removal were immediate or gradual. Fuel queues came back as Nigerians struggled to understand what the implication of this very abrupt move meant. More uncertainty came with the floating of the currency, a move that was expected to stabilize the naira but has only helped to usher in the most dramatic exchange rate changes in Nigerian history—with the USD trading as high as ₦1,800  one day and nearly ₦1,200 the next. More uncertainty started to form on what the Central Bank led by one of Mr. President’s most important policy drivers; Olayemi Cardoso, was really doing to drive down this rate; with some rumors and news reports that the bank was using the country’s reserves to fund BDC operations. More uncertainty again around the President’s movement and foreign visits. Questions around why his sons were first in line on the row to greet members of the Saudi contingent, while not being elected or appointed officers of the government. Uncertainty around whether or not the visa ban to Dubai had actually been lifted following contradictory press releases by the State House and Foreign news reporters. More and more uncertainty on a reported $600 million investment by Maersk to expand Nigeria’s port infrastructure, a statement released by the State House that was later refuted by the “investors” themselves. More uncertainty around his choice of Ministers, with confusion around several round peg in square holes appointments—leading up to the eventual suspension of Betta Edu for a ₦40 billion fraud. Further uncertainty this past month around a cybersecurity levy on a wide range of internet banking transactions, a levy that would lead to trillions in revenue and was expected to be remitted to the National Security Adviser’s office for “bolstering the cybersecurity war”, a vague and unclear description of what this money was actually supposed to be doing. More and more uncertainty about Mr President’s plan to save the economy that is currently as chaotic as it is volatile.

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You see, one can go on and on. And I wouldn’t be the first. There have been thousands of opinion pieces on hundreds of Tinubu-led policies and agendas. But the common denominator of all of these pieces is simply this; there’s hardly anyone that sees what his vision is. Whether it be a new tax or a new levy, there’s hardly anything to point to as a North Star. An expected return on these hard times. 

And hard times would be plenty, even his most loyal supporters accept. “Nigeria is a unique case. We would have to go through the fireplace to get the gold” is the popular quip by this group of people. And while I am open to accepting this idea of growing pains, it is very difficult to not be uncertain about whether or not these pains are indeed effects of actually growing. Given that millions of Nigerians have had to cut back on living expenses in one way or another to survive while the President takes the largest possible contingent to a climate change conference on taxpayers money or while public calls are made by the senate for a new Presidential jet. It is more and more uncertain whether or not Mr President actually has a plan or whether this whole presidency gimmick is simply in his words an “emilokan” moment, an attempt to fulfill an age-long fantasy.

I’ll be honest in saying that I was never the most fervent supporter of Mr President during his campaigns. But as a Nigerian and a patriotic one, I am constantly on the lookout for good news. Ultimately his success is grudgingly my success. However, I haven’t seen anything to be excited about. And when some report or grand move emerges that is intended to stir up hope, it is barely 3 days before the propaganda of it all emerges, shredding whatever hope I had before. And this has been the recurring theme for the past 365 days. Questions, unanswered questions, doubt and uncertainty.

It’s also very difficult to ascribe a grade or a score to the last 365 days. On one hand, the surface level is a resounding “disaster class”. The last year has not seen a single uptick in the living standards of the average Nigerian and has also been filled with enough propaganda to make the pigs from Animal Farm extremely jealous. On the other hand, there’s almost this deluded belief that a man who “built Lagos” (whatever that means) cannot just sit idly back and watch the entire country fall into unprecedented ruins. And that his master plan has already accounted for these bad times. It is pure fantasy if one were to critically look at this train of thought, but it is one parroted by people who claim to know Mr President “quite well”, which to be fair is every half-baked political jobber from Daleko to Wammako. But still, it is a resounding sentiment that just manages to stick to every public discourse. One may even be tempted to think that Mr President hopes to ride on this “he has a plan” gimmick for the remainder of his 4 or 8 years rule, only doing enough for a “see, things will get better” acknowledgment.

One thing is clear, however. It is not yet clear to anyone what Tinubu plans or hopes to do. Even to those willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the next 365 days would cast some much-needed light on the shadow that is this “master plan”, but till then the rest of the country would have to be content in knowing what we know. Which is that there’s nothing at all. 

Final Grade: F

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Over the past few months, I’ve taken some time off away from political conversations in real life and on social media, akin to the same sort of cowardice I intend to “attack” in this article. Part of my reasons for doing so were very simple; I was and still am a lowly part-time political commentator who writes articles for a small-time social action organization that makes political content for whatever Gen-Z is looking for some sort of stimulant outside of Instagram Reels, and who manages to score a few viral tweets and posts here and there. I wasn’t and still am not anyone “big” or “significant” in the massive web that is Nigerian Politics and Social Advocacy. Nothing I said, wrote, tweeted, posted, commented about, or shared mattered. And this was more apparent post the 2023 elections, where I had watched men with real power collude to rob millions of people of their franchise. 

To me, I was, and still am, an absolute nobody.

Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. And in hindsight, I’ve now come to realize that this was, and still is, a very stupid thing to have thought.

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Paul Freire, a Brazilian educator and philosopher who wrote the book “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” once shared a thought on the idea of “neutrality”. He said, that to “wash one hands off the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means taking sides with the powerful, and not to be neutral”. Dante Alighieri, the writer of Inferno, said that the “hottest place in hell was reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict”. Gandhi also spoke about how silence was cowardice when the occasion demanded speaking out the whole truth. There are a thousand and one quotes, books, articles, and poems written on how knowledgeable people have a moral responsibility to stand up for what is right, true, and fair. 

It’s quite unfortunate, however, that most Nigerian intellectuals and elite simply forgot to read any of them.

“Nigerian intellectuals are perpetual fence sitters”  is a running commentary you’d find in most social conversations. There’s almost a general consensus that the average Nigerian intellectual, the supposed bastion of knowledge, wisdom, and enlightenment, is nothing more than a tool for propaganda, perpetual fence-sitting, and ambiguous, pseudo-prophetic pronouncements devoid of substance when subjected to any form of scrutiny. And this “intelligentsia” type is prevalent everywhere you turn. On social media, on our news channels, in newspapers, on bookshelves with their poorly put together books and autobiographies, in religious houses, in the entertainment space, in corporate buildings, and even down the street. Everywhere you turn, they are present. They go by many monikers; captains of industry, technocrats, professors, investigative journalists, spokesmen to spokesmen, SANs, presiding pastors and chief Imams, and Heads of Presidential Committees. In all shapes and forms. With one underlying characteristic. 

Utterly, and completely spineless.

There’s almost nothing more hilarious to me than when I read my daily newspaper cuttings, scroll my timeline or read a book by one of these types and see these half-assed attempts at providing a case for why maintaining the status quo of patience and long-suffering is key to creating a country that actually works. With their many inside knowledge, self-confidence and guarantee that “so and so” actually has a plan without attempting to slightly suggest what the plan happens to be. The subtle statements and actions that thinly veil what is actually an anachronistic subterfuge. Or the other type, the more edgy and bold-faced liars. The ones who are quick to call any and everyone who believes that the present situation the country faces is bonkers, a “mob”. The type who believes that standing firm on their misguided convictions somehow makes them victims of this “mob” they are so quick to call out and set themselves up as martyrs and patron saints of sheer idiocy. The ones who talk about how a lot of anger at the government is misguided propaganda aimed at dwarfing the achievements of said government whilst tweeting from Marylebone, London. 

There’s another type. The silent type. The one who says nothing. Perhaps my least favorite type. And maybe I’m the problem here. Maybe I’m at fault for policing what people should be expected to say. And maybe they’ve earned the right to their silence; or maybe they make their moves away from the public, in the hidden places as Christ so rightly advised. It is a very strange sort of thing to call out. These type do not say anything to defend or oppose the status quo. “There’s nothing wrong with silence” is the general sentiment. “Maybe they’re just not that interested in politics. People have that right you know?” is yet another sentiment. And I’ll be the first to admit that there’s some credence to it.

But yet, there’s a problem when our entire society is made up of low IQ intellectuals and elite whose silence isn’t much a reflection of their own personal decisions than they are a genuine ignorance about what is right. You see, I can forgive apathy for apathy's sake. The problem for me is apathy directly resulting from ignorance. It is okay to ignore the problems you know exist because then we can simply deduce that you’re just a terrible person and be done with it. But to ignore the problems, because you don’t think there is one, even though you have been provided with enough privilege and access to understand what the problem is, is the bigger problem. To be completely fine with taking trips to Canada or to the UK to enjoy government-sponsored healthcare services while never thinking or wondering for once why those services aren’t available back home. To be okay with 1-hour gridlocks along the express in your overpriced SUVs by 1 pm on a Tuesday while being flanked by out-of-school children with trays of sweets and biscuits without for once wondering why this is the case. To live in houses worth upwards of ₦500,000,000 with a clogged drainage system right in front and a refuse bin overflowing with maggots, flies and cow shit adjacent said homes and seeing no problem. To be constantly bombarded with DMs and comments seeking financial aid to “pay the balance of a ₦40,000 school fee” or the rest of a medical bill for a broken toe and have absolutely no thought in your head that this is a problem. To attend parties and networking events run and sponsored by politicians with pending EFCC cases and allegations of corruption, and see absolutely no problem. An entire intelligentsia and elite class sorely lacking any sort of ability to see beyond their nose.

Several findings and studies explore the role of intellectuals and the elite class in creating social change and revolution. As catalysts of change, by shaping ideologies and discourse, mobilizing masses, organizing movements and even providing moral and ethical leadership. From Voltaire and Rousseau in the French Revolution to anti-colonial thinkers like Nehru, Frantz Fanon, and Leopold Sedar Senghor. To Leon Trotsky, Lenin, Daniel Ortega, and the Che. Or to writers like Claude Ake and Walter Rodney. Be it for the better or for the worse, intellectuals and members of the elite class have always played a pivotal role in shaping thoughts, thoughts that in turn shape actions. It’s then very unfortunate that the Nigerian elite class is more content with fraternizing with the ones who control power for some sort of political reason. Whether it be the appeal of government appointments, an impulsive need to be on their good side, or whatever distorted reason it is, we’re plagued with a lack of constructive and critical thinkers. We’re burdened with an ever-reducing number of people willing and able to point out idiocy within society. We’re challenged with an ever-rising tide of ignorant morons who do not recognize their role in society as thinkers, advocates, and social leaders.

And to the ones who have seen no need to have a voice, including people like myself with their perceived insignificance, here’s a thought from Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” 

“Woe is woman!” is a narrative that holds true, at least in Nigeria, and especially today; in light of the Minister of Women's Affairs' statements. According to several reports, she advised women to “keep their mouths shut during conflicts with their spouses to prevent assault”. Very intriguing! And this coming from a woman who by her portfolio is tasked with the responsibility of advocating for the freedom of Nigerian women to speak up and not be mistreated. It’s a strange sort of quagmire;  having your voice stifled by the person who is supposed to amplify it. 

What exactly is the state of women’s participation in Nigerian politics today? Let’s start with the current facts. Women’s representation in Nigerian politics has reduced since 2011, and the 2023 elections in Nigeria confirmed the poor outcomes for women. Right now only 3% of seats in the Senate and 4% in the House of Representatives are occupied by women. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), Nigeria ranks in the bottom ten globally in women’s representation in national parliaments. 

The simple truth is this; Women’s involvement in politics is essential. As cliche as it sounds, representation is crucial. In a society where women still account for the majority of uneducated people, where gender equality is a far-off myth, and where topical issues around breaching pay gaps and increased representation in the workforce, academia, and business are often met with disdain and disinterest, there is an ever-increasing need to put more women in positions of authority and positions of advocacy. The fact that the percentage of women's representation in Nigerian politics continues to fall year on year and election cycle after election cycle is a major problem that we cannot continue to ignore.  

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To help you grasp this, let me break out how the government operates. The government operates primarily on rules and regulations that touch everyone, regardless of tribe, religion, or gender. Policies and regulations are created as answers to issues. There are debates and discussions about the highlighted concerns, and the remedies are referred to as laws or policies. The absence of female participation in government influences the thoughts and deliberations before these policies are implemented.

A great example is the issue of women’s health. There is a limit to what science can say about a woman’s health. Some things are just better understood by personal stories and experiences. Having female voices speak up during discussions about these issues goes a long way. 

However, it is not just about having voices; it's also about the quality of those voices. This brings me to Mrs Uju Kennedy, who boldly stepped into the political arena as the first female candidate for the presidency in Nigeria under the All Progressives Congress (APC) during the 2023 general elections. Unfortunately, she later opted to step down in favour of Bola Tinubu. I find it difficult to forgive her for this decision.

By stepping down, Mrs. Kennedy inadvertently reinforced the stereotype that women in politics lack the determination to pursue their goals independently. Her withdrawal not only diminished the significance of her candidacy but also sent a message that a woman's place in Nigerian politics may be conditional or secondary. Women like Mrs. Kennedy must recognize the impact of their decisions on the broader narrative surrounding female participation in politics. Only by standing firm and advocating for their ideas can women challenge and reshape the prevailing perceptions, ensuring that their voices are not just heard but also valued for their substance.

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Why is writing this article important for International Women’s Day? 

It is simple. To move forward as a nation regarding women's empowerment and inclusivity, the policies that govern us have to be inclusive. History is only important as long as we take inspiration from it. Read about stories of individuals and communities like the Abeokuta Women's Union, which played a crucial role in advocating for women's rights and socio-political issues. Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, a prominent women's rights activist, played a crucial role in advocating for women's rights and was involved in the anti-colonial struggle. The first female senator, Franca Afegbua marked a milestone in women's political participation in 1982. These are some of the few women who made historical changes in Nigerian politics. Learn about their struggles and continue the work they started to build a future for a new generation of women. 

As much as we want to celebrate being a woman, we must remember our place in the grand scheme of things. We have the power to change our current narratives. We can up voter education among women, we can encourage more intelligent and experienced women to join politics. We can no longer sit back and let others decide our future. 

We need to empower women in Nigerian politics. There has to be more education and awareness and support networks and mentorship programs for bright female minds interested in politics. There was to be an increase in advocacy for policy changes regarding women’s issues.

We need to empower women in Nigerian politics on multiple fronts. First and foremost, there must be a concerted effort to enhance education and awareness surrounding the intricacies of political engagement. Providing platforms for discussions, workshops, and seminars can equip aspiring female leaders with the necessary knowledge and skills to navigate the political landscape.

Support networks and mentorship programs are equally crucial. Creating spaces where experienced women in politics can guide and mentor emerging leaders helps bridge the gap and fosters a sense of solidarity. These mentorship initiatives should not only focus on career development but also on building resilience and navigating the unique challenges that women often face in the political arena.

Additionally, advocating for policy changes is paramount. There needs to be a sustained effort to address and rectify gender disparities in existing policies. From issues related to women's health and education to ensuring equal opportunities in the workplace, comprehensive policy changes can pave the way for a more inclusive and equitable political environment.

However, the call for empowerment doesn't stop at the political level. Grassroots movements play a pivotal role in creating societal change. Ordinary citizens can contribute significantly by raising awareness, fostering dialogue, and challenging traditional norms that hinder women's progress. Grassroots initiatives serve as a powerful force for societal transformation, creating a ripple effect that reaches the highest echelons of political power.

In essence, the empowerment of women in Nigerian politics requires a multifaceted approach, encompassing education, mentorship, policy advocacy, and grassroots movements. By addressing these aspects collectively, we can foster an environment where the voices and contributions of women are not only acknowledged but also integral to shaping the future of Nigerian politics.

On May 29th, 2023, Bola Ahmed Tinubu at Eagle Square in Abuja echoed the dreams of many supporters, loyalists, and party faithful as he ended his inauguration speech stating that he was going to set about accomplishing everything he had promised during his campaigns and the inauguration speech itself  “with full confidence in his ability”; as well as a firm reminder that he was going to this because he  is “Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria”

100-and-something days later, there are a lot of dissenting views on the veracity of these promises.

It is a common practice in many democracies to review a leader's first 100 days in office. This milestone offers a valuable opportunity to evaluate their demeanor, approach, and early policies. By this point, it is expected that key appointments such as Ministers and advisors have been made and are relevant to the leader's agenda. More often than not, a leader’s positioning in the first 100 days signals how the rest of their term will go.

For Mr. President, as expected, there have been a lot of differing perspectives on his initial 100 days. Bola Tinubu quite often comes across as a polarizing figure; a figure of hope, progress, and quality leadership to some, and a wasteful, deceitful despot to others - there’s almost never a middle ground. It is for this reason that public discourse around his leadership so far is always so chaotic.

Facts of the case

Bola Ahmed Tinubu inherited a terrible situation to be in. The previous President - Muhammadu Buhari - will probably go down as one of the most unpopular Presidents in Nigerian history. By the end of his 8-year rule, he managed to hand over by most established metrics and indices the worst Nigeria ever to President Tinubu. A common talking point of most political analysts was that both Tinubu and Buhari belonged to and were founding members of the same political party, and could not be so ideologically different from one another. However, the common sentiment from Tinubu supporters, or BATists as they came to be called was that his precedent as a one-time Lagos State Governor more than spoke to his love for diplomacy, economic foresight, and selecting sound advisers. It is on this premise, therefore, that I will be reviewing the Man in Aso Rock.

Appointments

Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s appointments have been so far average at best; mediocre even considering the pre-election narrative of his acclaimed talent scouting network. From his 45-man list of Ministers, a controversial choice given the over-bloated state of the government, to the choice of Ministers themselves. Nyesom Wike a very controversial figure to head the FCT - a choice that has been touted as being more of a settlement for his “good work” during the election than being based on anything else, Festus Keyamo - who faced a very unforgiving Senate during his ministerial clearing process amidst allegations of misappropriation and dissent during his time as a Minister under Buhari - to head the Aviation sector, a sector he seemingly has zero experience in, a perceived snub of the South East with a measly 5 appointments out of 45, and many other round peg in Square holes nominations like that of Dele Alake, a journalist,  to head the Ministry of Solid Mineral Development and Bello Mattawale as Minister of State for Defence. The nominations struck most as being Tinubu “taking care of his people”. His perceived Yoruba bias in other key appointments (which is a bit ironic given the previous leadership’s position as well) also seems to irk quite a number of people ever so slightly. On the other hand, his appointment of Bosun Tijani as Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy was a popular one among young people. While it is too early to make a judgment call on the performance of these appointments, it still leaves a lot to be desired. 

Rating: C-

Economy

A major talking point during the campaign season was how the major candidates were going to revamp the epileptic Nigerian economy. A 100 days after, as Olu Fasan of the Vanguard, so succinctly puts it, there have been “plenty activities but no credible action”, with the living standards of average Nigerians deteriorating since he assumed office. 

From his ill-timed fuel subsidy removal announcements that sent Nigerians into a frenzied panic for fuel and PMS, to his (and the CBN’s) decision to float the currency without any sort of visible plan to increase foreign currency remittances and make Nigeria more appealing for Investors and their FDI which has seen the currency go from N450/$ to nearly N1000/$ in just under 3 months, there has been a lot of confusing actions from the man himself. In addition, JP Morgan in a recent publication penned Nigeria’s FX Reserve at a disappointing figure of  $3 billion, a far cry from the $37.08 billion in reserves we were once led to believe. Our daily oil output of 1.1 million barrels, is a long way off from the OPEC recommended quota of 1.7 million barrels also reflects on this ever-dwindling reserve. 

Aside from these macroeconomic concerns, the daily lives of many Nigerians seem to be no better off than it was under the previous leadership. A report by DW details many concerns that Nigerians share on the worsening standard of living. In addition, his promises to increase the minimum wage which was met with popular acclaim when it was first pronounced is yet to achieve any sort of traction. There have been a lot of talks on subsidy payments and palliatives from the government to alleviate the sufferings of most Nigerians in light of these “necessary inconveniences” as many of his supporters put it, but nothing yet. This is a far cry from the expected doings of the man who many claim was the “architect of modern Lagos”. 

On a more positive note, however, there has been an upward spiral in revenue generation by the government (mostly down to many of these market reforms with negative effects on socio-economic conditions).  Nearly N2 trillion was allocated to the FAAC in July, a huge amount considering accrued sums in recent years

Rating: E

Diplomacy

Tinubu has his way with people, this is a sentiment that even his strongest opponents will agree with. A man whose entire road to power was preplanned and lined with dealings, engagements, relationships, and a wide network of loyalists and followers. To his supporters, he’s the most charismatic leader this nation has ever seen. It is therefore no surprise that his first few months have been filled with meetings; with loyalists, former and even current detractors as well as international visits. His entire demeanor seems to be that of a man with a mind to “listen”. 

He has held engagements and been more visible to the media than the former President. However while this seems to be a welcome development, the underlying fact remains that engagements and rhetorics are purposeless if not backed by action. The action seems to be the missing ingredient here. It is also a bit upsetting to see several of his supporters hail visits to other world leaders such as the Indian PM as some sort of groundbreaking achievement. There was also a lot of supposed fanfare around his ringing of the NASDAQ trading bell; with several news outlets as well as official government accounts running headlines tagging him the first African Leader to ring those bells, a statement that has since been disproved. Not to add the embarrassing release from the spokesperson to the President on the Dubai visa restriction lift following a visit to the UAE leader; news that more reputable news outlets have also addressed as being false. In addition, his conduct as the ECOWAS Chair during the early days of the Niger crisis did not go down well with Nigerians and Nigeriens alike; with video footage from the Niger showing protests against him and the very comical “Ebola Tinubu” taunt. Many of these goofs diminish the relevance of his diplomacy and create a sense that perhaps he got more hype than he was entitled to.

Rating: C-

Looking Forward

The first 100 days of any leader are usually very decisive. It signals what to expect by the conclusion of the term in office. For Bola Ahmed Tinubu, it’s indeed clear that the work is still long and arduous. It’s also clear that the start isn’t the best, or even anything remotely close to what is needed for a grand finale. For a man who his supporters guarantee to be the only solution to the Nigerian predicament, we’ll need more than grand rhetorics and fancy photo ops to justify his promotion to the highest office in the land.

We must also recall that Tinubu in his inauguration speech had definitively proclaimed “don’t pity me — I campaigned for the job”. It is in this practice that we have an obligation, backed by the man himself, to do away with excuses and hold him to the high and lofty standards his supporters have set for him — and wait for him to meet those standards.

Then, and only then, can the rest of us start to rate Bola as highly as some others do.

Overall Rating: D

Olanrewaju, for the Square.

On Friday the 9th of July 2023, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu ordered the suspension and probe of CBN Governor in a statement from Willie Bassey the Director of Information, Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. The statement also mentioned that he would be immediately handing over his role to Folashodun Adebisi Shonubi, the Deputy Governor (Operations) while investigations into his office and financial reforms continued

But for the political and economic greenhorn, the question of why Emefiele is so unpopular is one that needs answering. There are a number of them that I’ll be discussing in simple terms. 

2023 Cash Crunch

In October 2022, the CBN Governor announced that the country would be changing her N1000, N500, and N200 notes, citing a number of reasons for this sudden change. According to him, the naira redesign was to target criminals and other unscrupulous elements who preferred cash-based transactions to avoid detection by the regulatory authorities. However, a February 2023 deadline met with an immense level of unpreparedness and the unavailability of the new Naira notes created an economic standstill for the nation. Despite Emefiele’s estimation that the cash crunch would drive the use of digital payment services, the country was still a cash-driven economy. And it is for this reason that long queues and even occasional riots were commonplace around ATMs, Banking Halls, and other Financial Institutions. Additionally, downward revisions of ATM and Over-the-Counter limits meant that those Nigerians who could in fact access cash were heavily restricted to how much they could get in a day, with several banks limiting OTC payments to N5000 to deal with the teeming crowd of customers. This cash crunch certainly did not endear him to Nigerians who were being held to a ransom for a policy they regarded as unnecessary, to begin with. There were also moves by several State Governors to pursue legal means to either postpone or completely discard the policy change. 

Banking Regulations

Emefiele had a very interesting reputation in the banking and financial sector; with fears of the weekly Friday circular becoming a real and valid concern. There have been a number of criticism of his treatment of Nigerian Fintechs with some even remarking that he was directly responsible for the failure of many of such startups with his draconian policies that earned him the title of “The Emperor”. In addition, unpopular and contradictory policies such as his insistence that Nigerian Banks holding must hold 32.5% of their deposits as reserves while still extending 65% of their deposits as loans to stimulate credit. This hawkish policy that Emefiele hopes will curb inflation is however undermined by the CBN’s continued financing of fiscal deficits; with the CBN funding budget shortfalls to the tune of N23.7 trillion ($51 billion)  over the past 8 years through ways-and-means, increasing money supply and inflation as a result. 

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N89 trillion Stamp Duty Allegations

There is also the controversy around an N89 trillion stamp duty income diversion that surrounded the CBN Governor. In the narration that was later debunked by the then-presidential spokesperson Garba Shehu, the Secretary of the dissolved Presidential Committee on Reconciliation and Recovery of Stamp Duty Revenue, Kazaure Gadauji, had stated that Governor Emefiele was at the heart of the misappropriation and diversion of nearly N89 trillion in Stamp Duty Charges. According to him, this committee was secretly set up by Former President Muhammadu Buhari and constituted individuals such as the Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed, the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, the Director General of the Department of State Services (DSS), Yusuf Bichi, Mohammed Wakili, a retired commissioner of police and one Mr. Okafor, a retired staffer of the National Intelligence Agency. 

Cryptocurrency Ban

In a CBN circular dated February 5, 2021, the CBN directed all banks to “desist from transacting in and with entities dealing in cryptocurrency”. The circular also mandated that the banks close the accounts of entities and individuals involved in cryptocurrency transactions within their systems. In what was effectively a ban on cryptocurrency transacting in Nigeria, the CBN cited concerns about terrorism financing and money laundering as the basis for their decision. Of course, this was an unpopular development in a country like Nigeria that according to a 2023 Bloomberg Report had about 45% of its population holding some digital asset or the other. The circular effectively mandated all DMBs, NBFIs, and OFIs to identify individuals transacting in cryptocurrency in their system and close up their accounts; a move that effectively dealt a huge blow to the growing Web3.0 market in Nigeria at the time.

Ways-and-Means

Between 2021 and 2022, the CBN lent over N4.5 Trillion to the Federal Government to offset budget deficits. This amount amounted to nearly 100% of the total revenue generated by the Government during this period. This act directly contravenes the CBN act that stipulates that Ways-And-Means loans must not exceed 5% of public revenue during that period. This move effectively put serious pressure on the money supply and contributed greatly to the ever-rising inflation figure

Inflation

Emefiele ranks poorly on the scale of CBN Governors on the management of Inflation with the inflation rate averaging over 14.1% over the past 9 years. The inflation rate which currently sits at 22.04% way above the CBN mandate of 9% is a direct result of Emefiele’s aggressive expansion of money supply, moves which have yet to bear developmental fruits as the economy has only grown at about 1.4% since 2014. 

Exchange Rate and Dollar Supply

The most apparent failures of the Emefiele-led CBN have been the instability of the exchange rate. According to a Businessday report dated June 9, 2023, “the past nine years have been the most challenging since the late‘80s with regard to the stability of the exchange rate. Since 2014, the Naira has depreciated by over 15% yearly; the worst since the late ‘80s, excluding the 1999 adjustment. Between 2020 and 2022, the depreciation has been 21.9% annually, the worst of any three-year period between 1999-2001. The CBN’s management of the currency has created room for arbitrage and corruption, with the parallel market premium averaging N65.8/$ over the official rate between 2015 and 2021, much higher than the N5.1/$ premium between 2004 and 2014.”. In addition, the CBN Governor has maintained a tight leash on dollar supply with unpopular moves such as restricting importers of 42 items from accessing dollars at the official rate giving him a bad reputation in that industry. This tight leash has basically made the parallel market and arbitrage real concerns. Restrictions on monthly dollar spending have made Nigerians look for creative ways to pay for basic subscriptions for everyday products like Netflix, Spotify, iCloud, etc. 

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Party Politics

One of the most interesting issues and perhaps the one that has the most relevance to President Tinubu would be the brief and uneventful foray into party politics by Governor Emefiele. On the 6th of May 2022, it was reported that the Governor had picked up his interest and nomination forms from the office of the APC’s organizing secretary in Abuja. This form, which cost about N100 million, sent murmurs of discontent all around Social Media with questions of the CBN Governor’s eligibility to even contest the elections while still in office posing as major concerns. It is also interesting to note that he contested under the All Progressives Congress (APC), the same party that would later select President Tinubu as its flagbearer, and win the 2023 Presidential Elections. This action would later come to prominence in 2023 with allegations that the cash crunch was a way to get back at his “political rival” Tinubu.

Implications

President Bola Tinubu in suspending Emefiele will have to contend with Section 11 of the CBN act that only allows the removal of a CBN Governor with the consent of ⅔ of the Senate. This stipulation exists to protect the independence of the CBN and ensure that security of tenure is guaranteed in a role that is constantly bombarded by political will and agenda. It is also worth noting that in 2014, then-President Jonathan removed Governor Sanusi as CBN Governor, a move that was challenged by several members of the APC Senate Caucus and disputed in court. A precedent was later established that the Governor could be disciplined by the President as he is a public servant, one that till today constitutes a vague and opaque ruling.

Still, not many would not be unhappy to see the backs of a man once feared on the financial streets of Nigeria. It remains to be seen what the way back would be for Mr. Godwin Emefiele, and if this constitutes a permanent end to his unpopular stay in public life. And I’m sure that Meffy, as he is popularly known, would in some way be glad to take a step back from the hustle and bustle of life as a CBN Governor; a job that not many would be enthusiastic about, knowing its very divisive history.

Olanrewaju, for the Square

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In recent years, I have reached a disheartening conclusion: the Nigerian Constitution seems to be nothing more than a mere suggestion, at best, for governing the country. Despite the optimistic beliefs of some, I have witnessed enough disregard for constitutional provisions throughout my life to accept the hypothesis that the Constitution is an afterthought. The words uttered by Hon Mudashiru Obasa, during his acceptance speech as the three-time Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly, serve as a stark reminder of this reality.

The Veiled Threat:

Obasa's statement, which sent shockwaves across social media, appeared to take a cheap jab at the "non-indigenes" of Lagos, particularly those of South-Eastern origin. His words implied that the Yoruba majority in Lagos would now safeguard their interests, rights, property, and livelihood against these perceived outsiders. This rhetoric can be linked to the outcomes of the recent Presidential and Gubernatorial elections, which witnessed surprising defeats for the All Progressives Congress (APC) in previous strongholds like Alimosho and Ikeja, as well as unexpected victories in supposed "Igbo settlements" such as Ojo and Eti-Osa. The ensuing populist "Us vs Them" narrative, fueled by ethnic and tribal loyalties, became more pronounced, with statements from the APC Youth Leader and subtle threats from MC Oluomo, the Head of the Lagos NURTW. Furthermore, cheap and baseless jabs were made at the heritage and roots of the Labour Party Governorship Candidate, spreading rumors of his alleged support for an Igbo Insurrection in Lagos and his supposed affiliation with IPOB. It would be deceitful to pretend that these issues did not and do not still persist.

Implications and Ironies:

What are the implications of the Speaker's statement? Why does it matter? The reality is that he merely echoes the intentions of a vocal minority among Lagosians who vehemently oppose the idea of Lagos being a "No Man's Land." They argue that the Commonwealth of Lagos belongs exclusively to a select group of pure-blooded Yoruba indigenes, relegating outsiders to the status of visitors who must respect this fact. While acknowledging the noble intentions behind preserving traditions and cultural identity, some of the narratives that emerge from this purist culture veer into xenophobia and populism. Moreover, the ideas surrounding indigene rights become paradoxical and arbitrary. For instance, during the last election, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour faced mockery and questioning of his indigene status, despite having a well-documented lineage to early settlers on Lagos Island. Simultaneously, the Speaker of the House, by all records, hails from Ogun State. The ever-changing criteria for Lagos State citizenship raise questions about the motivations behind such shifts and whether they serve to accommodate certain narratives or convenience. Is being a Lagos State citizen defined by social constructs? If so, what are these constructs? Is it language proficiency, financial power, or the number of years spent in Lagos? The metrics that classify an Osun-born individual as a Lagos State son seemingly hold no sway over other individuals born and raised in the state. Does my Efik friend, who speaks fluent Yoruba, attended school and works in Lagos, pays taxes to the LIRS, and possesses a LASRAA ID, no longer have the right to consider himself a citizen of Lagos State? The ever-shifting definition of a Lagos State citizen only serves to empower an Ogun State indigene to arbitrarily decide who belongs in Lagos.

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Embracing Diversity and Preserving Tradition:

Let me be unequivocal: I do not view Lagos as a "No Man's Land." Such a statement disregards the rich culture and traditions of the people who settled and established their homes in the state long before it gained prominence. Lagos has its indigenes, well-documented and diverse. From the Aworis, the Yoruba subgroup who initially named the area "Oko" and settled in what is now known as Iddo, to the Eguns (Ogus) predominantly found in Badagry, to the Ijebus in the Ikorodu and Epe area, and even the Saros who settled alongside Afro-Brazilians in Ebute-Metta and Yaba. Nevertheless, there exist multiple conflicting accounts regarding the true indigenes of the state.

For me, however, I view these accounts as a testament to the essence of Lagos, a truly metropolitan city. Denying this reality would contradict the spirit of Lagos itself. Even the name "Lagos," a Portuguese word meaning "Lakes," acknowledges the influence of external cultures. Not even the true indigenes had exclusive rights to name their own dwelling place; that privilege was bestowed upon the Portuguese. This multicultural blend of colors, cultures, ideals, and strengths shaped Lagos into the first and foremost metropolitan city in Nigeria while respecting its origins. The progress witnessed in Lagos stems from the unwavering belief of millions of Nigerians that it is a state where anything is possible and anyone, regardless of their background, can achieve success. The towering skyscrapers in Marina, bustling markets in Ikotun, idyllic resorts in Epe, and vibrant culture in Ikeja did not materialize on their own. They are the fruits of imagination nurtured by opportunities. It is for this reason that Lagos holds cultural significance akin to other global metropolises like New York, London, Johannesburg, and Stockholm. Succumbing to populism and xenophobia that one can ascribe to the Speaker’s statement would only serve to undermine and weaken the development of Lagos. 

As elite power brokers play with the idea of spreading hate and resentment for their own self-interest, one can only hope that the citizens of Lagos see beyond such divisive narratives and choose the path of unity and progress.

Preserving Indigene Interests:

Section 43 of the Nigerian Constitution grants every Nigerian citizen the right to purchase property anywhere within the country. Thus, the Speaker's diatribe about reversing such provisions clashes with this constitutional provision. There are numerous ways to protect the interests of indigenes without resorting to divisive measures. Affirmative action in political appointments, education, healthcare, and job creation are just a few examples of creative and less divisive approaches to acknowledging those who have opened their homes to the world, doing so without malice or bias. There are ample opportunities to safeguard indigenous rights that do not threaten the economic and social development of the state we all wish to see flourish. 

While the Speaker may genuinely believe that he is protecting the rights of his definition of indigenes, he must recognize that the only No Man's Land he should fear creating is one that is desolate, bitter, and filled with resentment and hate—a kind that nobody desires, nobody needs, and nobody deserves.  

In the words of Harold Pinter, 

“You are in no man's land. Which never moves, which never changes, which never grows older, but remains forever, icy and silent.”

Conclusion:

The Nigerian Constitution stands at a crossroads—either a fragile framework that succumbs to political expediency or a guiding force that upholds the principles of justice, inclusivity, and progress. It is crucial to recognize the multicultural fabric of Lagos, embracing its rich history while nurturing a spirit of unity and acceptance. Preserving the rights and interests of indigenes can be achieved through equitable and progressive policies, rather than divisive and exclusionary rhetoric, and a Lagos that thrives as a beacon of hope, where the dreams of every citizen can flourish, regardless of their origins.

Olanrewaju as always,  for the Square

Fuel Subsidy Removal

On May 29, 2023, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the newly inaugurated President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, made the following statement as part of his inauguration speech:

In a continuation of the policy initiated by former President Muhammadu Buhari, the new President reiterated that the Nigerian Government is no longer interested in subsidizing fuel costs, as it has proven to be an expensive measure that primarily benefits the wealthy, rather than the general population.

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What is Subsidy?

Let's begin with an analogy. Imagine a father with many children who have an insatiable craving for ice cream but lack the means to afford it. The father strikes a deal with local ice cream shops to pay a percentage of the cost, enabling his children to purchase ice cream at a reduced rate. If an ice cream cone costs N10, the father agrees to pay N6, so his children only need to pay N4—the subsidized rate. The N6 paid by the father represents the subsidy.

For a long time, the Nigerian Federal Government has subsidized a significant portion of the cost of petroleum products, particularly Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), allowing the general population to purchase fuel at a lower price than they would otherwise.

Why Remove the Subsidy?

While this may seem like a positive social welfare program, it places a substantial financial burden on the government, especially for a country that heavily relies on petroleum imports. Trillions of Naira have been spent servicing these subsidies, funds that could have been used for infrastructure development and other capital projects. Moreover, some importers have been known to claim large sums in subsidy payments and then smuggle the products into neighboring countries for higher profits, depriving the intended Nigerian market. Additionally, the absence of modular refineries means that most of the petroleum products come from international suppliers who charge in dollars, further adding to the government's costs.

The primary opponents of fuel subsidies argue that Nigeria has a cost optimization problem, spending more than it earns. They claim that these subsidy programs, including healthcare, education, and fuel subsidies, waste a significant amount of money.

However, I disagree with the argument that fuel subsidies only benefit the wealthy since petroleum plays a crucial role in the daily lives of Nigerians, from transportation to electricity and cooking. It could even be argued that lower-income individuals spend more on fuel consumption compared to the wealthy. Nonetheless, that is a topic for another discussion.

Despite the justifications for removing fuel subsidies mentioned earlier, the Muhammadu Buhari government's decision and the emphasis placed on it by the new Tinubu Administration have faced significant backlash and reservations, mostly regarding the timing and the sensitivity of the decision.

Hoarding and Panic Buying

To be fair, this is not the first time fuel subsidies have been removed or discussed for removal. On previous occasions, fuel stations have engaged in hoarding due to panic buying. It hasn't taken long for this to happen again, as queues at fuel stations have already increased following President Tinubu's speech. The opposition to this government has criticized the announcement as lacking tact and being more of a display of strongman tactics by the President. They believe that a more controlled and managed rollout of this policy would have made more sense and reduced panic to a minimum. However, the removal of subsidies had already been scheduled to begin in June 2023, and no provision was made in the budget for fuel subsidy payments beyond May 2023. Consequently, there was little that could be done to facilitate a more controlled implementation.

Lack of Alternatives

Another concern regarding this decision is the lack of alternative measures to alleviate the impact on the Nigerian people. Considering the country's heavy reliance on fuel consumption, an increase in fuel prices, which some marketers have suggested could reach as high as N800 per liter, will undoubtedly affect the general price of goods and services. The cost of transportation and commuting, in particular, will bear the brunt of this increase. Given the inadequate transportation infrastructure in Nigeria, it raises the question of how Bola Tinubu intends to address this issue.

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Minimum Wage

Nigeria's minimum wage is currently set at about $67, which starkly contrasts with other OPEC countries. For instance, Saudi Arabia has a minimum wage of $800, the Republic of Congo has $170, Libya has $325, and even Gabon has $255. While it is true that the cost of living varies across these nations, the Buhari administration often argued that fuel prices in Nigeria were low and should ideally be aligned with other OPEC nations. If Nigeria is expected to pay the same fuel prices as these countries, it is reasonable to expect comparable wages.

The minimum wage serves as a crucial indicator of the earning and purchasing power of ordinary Nigerians. According to an NDIC report, less than 1% of Nigerians have less than N500,000 in their bank accounts. The 2022 MPI survey by the NBS also reveals that 63% of Nigerians live below the poverty line. Additionally, a Statista report from December 2022 states that about 40.1% of Nigerians do not have more than N87,800 to spend on food in a year. These statistics paint a picture of multidimensional poverty in Nigeria, and it raises concerns about how the shrinking middle class will cope with the increased expenses resulting from this policy without a subsequent increase in wages.

Corruption

One of the significant challenges facing President Tinubu is the perception of corruption surrounding his administration. Unlike his predecessor, who was known for his anti-corruption stance, Tinubu's campaign was marred by allegations of corruption and impunity. Many Nigerians now wonder if his commitment to channeling subsidy funds into developmental initiatives will hold true. Historically, resistance to subsidy removal has been fueled by the desire to "steal but still buy fuel at a lower price." It remains to be seen if the fuel price will increase while corruption persists. If there are no visible and credible benefits from the removal of fuel subsidies within a few months of his tenure, significant questions will need to be answered.

Final Grading: Opinion

The removal of fuel subsidies carries both advantages and potential disadvantages. Therefore, I would give this policy a C+ grade, as its success and acceptance nationally are yet to be determined. One of the significant challenges for Tinubu will be managing public perception, especially considering that he was a major opponent of this move when it was initially proposed by former President Goodluck Jonathan in 2014. This opposition resulted in nationwide protests and, ultimately, his loss in the 2015 elections. Thus, it remains to be seen how the President intends to handle the situation and appease his supporters, the 36% of people who voted for him in the last election. One can only hope Nigeria is better, in some way, for it.

Olanrewaju, for the Square.