OTHERS' VIEWS

OTHERS' VIEWS

In the course of delivering a lecture at Al-Hakim University in Ilorin, Kwara State, on Thursday, April 17, the Inspector General of Police, IGP Kayode Egbetokun, PhD, implored Nigerians to acquire Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) cameras to be installed in their residences and places of work.

He argued that it is part of the much-vaunted, but yet-to-be-implemented, state/community policing initiative.

My immediate reaction as soon as I read the news in the mass media was: Good idea, but how feasible is it for the average Nigerian to procure CCTV at such prohibitive cost, and how can it be operated without a stable supply of electricity?

Has the idea been put through the crucible of critical thinking?

Shortly after the IGP’s proposal, on Saturday, April 19, a highly respected former Defence Minister and ex-Chief of Army Staff, T.Y. Danjuma, took an extreme position by proposing that civilians should defend themselves because the government has failed to do so — and that they will perish if they do not resort to self-help. Addressing a large gathering, he reportedly told his people: “I once asked you to rise and defend yourselves. I am still repeating it today with more seriousness — rise and defend yourselves. The killers have obtained sophisticated arms; we don’t know where they got them. But you people should also ask to get arms wherever they got theirs. You must defend yourselves against the killers. You should know they are well-armed to kill you and ready to take your land. Be ready for them — they are also humans like you.”

Impliedly, the Army General is advocating that civilians should bear arms to protect themselves from the vicious invaders that appear hell-bent on killing them.

That is not the first time Gen. Danjuma has made such a call.

Based on records, he has done so twice.

My immediate reaction when I read his advice was: Has this idea of fire-for-fire been thought through? While it may appear like a plausible short-term solution, in the long run, would mutual self-destruction be an efficacious response to the seemingly intractable internal insecurity challenge?

To me, it echoes the era of nuclear bomb proliferation — a reckless enterprise — and the current non-nuclear arms proliferation agreement, which was reached when it became apparent that a nuclear arms race would result in the mutual destruction of mankind.

Could the license to kill or be killed be a reasonable solution to the killings by outlaws engaging in the orgy of slaughter in Nigeria’s countryside? Would solving one security challenge in that manner not trigger another?

Very importantly, have we, as a nation, taken a critical look at the experience of the United States of America, where the system of civilians bearing arms has resulted in a gun epidemic? One so debilitating that it has defied solutions, even by the leaders of the most powerful and wealthiest nation in the world such the death tally may be comparable to that of nations at war?

I think if we devote enough time to doing due diligence on the call for civilians to bear arms, more Nigerians will dread the prospect than those who desire it.

In any case, at least the IGP’s proposition on civilian CCTV ownership marks a shift in the position of the Police Force, which has long been opposed to the concept of state police.

This is based on the presentation made by the IGP in the past.

In making his case against the decentralization of the police force, the IGP had taken a position against the birthing of state police for the reasons of being prone to abuse by politicians amongst other factors.

However, in my view, the difference between the concept of state police and community police may lie in the fact that the former will be controlled by the respective state governors, while the latter will still be centrally controlled by the IGP in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja — at least there is a consensus that the current framework of policing in Nigeria is inadequate.

As such, there is a need for a paradigm shift.

Since the return of multi-party democracy in Nigeria in 1999, I have consistently advocated for a state policing system.

While President Olusegun Obasanjo (1999–2007) was the first to moot the idea — when criminality started rising around the country, a reflection of the freedom that came with nascent democratic rule after decades of military dictatorships — the idea has suffered a stillbirth, 25 years later.

By the same token, I have often wondered aloud why the Police Force, which is constitutionally charged with the responsibility of maintaining internal law and order, has been emasculated within the country’s security architecture.

Again, based on former President Obasanjo’s military background as an ex-military Head of State, it was a natural course of action for him to resort to the use of military force instead of the police to curb internal insecurity.

As such, the police—already defunded and hobbled by multiple military regimes to prevent it from posing a threat during Nigeria’s long period under military rule—had been rendered almost comatose.

Somehow, that military kinetic approach to enforcing internal security, as opposed to the more appropriate, less militarized, and non-kinetic method in which the police are adept and more efficacious, has been sustained—with a consequential deterioration in the level of security and safety of lives and property in our country.

We will delve into the apparent usurpation of the role of the police in internal security by the military, whose primary responsibility is to defend our country against external threats.

Yet, the armed forces have taken over the role of the police and, in the process, based on available records, have expended more than an estimated $16 billion between 2012 and 2018 on security—even though Nigeria has not been at war with any other country.

Rather, our country has been faced with the menace of non-state actors: religious insurgents exhibiting extremism; bandits who initially engaged in cattle rustling but have scaled up to kidnapping for ransom; and the perennial clashes between farmers and herders, whose animals destroy crops. This has been worsened by land-grabbing schemes of nomadic herdsmen, compounded by a new strain of fortune seekers stirring up insecurity, especially in areas rich in solid minerals. The agenda of this last category of outlaws is to cause mayhem in specific locations so they can illegally extract our country’s natural resources—such as rare earth minerals—after rendering the targeted areas ungovernable.

While the reality is that it is the police who have the mandate—and are specifically trained—to deal with the type of criminal activities wrecking our country, as highlighted above, the military has been executing the task of trying to maintain peace, a task for which it is ill-equipped. In my view, that is one of the key reasons the marauders have been having the upper hand and why insecurity in Nigeria has been on an upward trend.

For instance, while N6.11 trillion has been allocated to the Ministry of Defence in the 2025 budget of N49.74 trillion, only N1.1 trillion was provided for the Ministry of Police Affairs.

So, while the military is getting an elephant-sized allocation, the police have been given an ant-sized share of funds in the 2025 budget.

This is even though ensuring the internal security of lives and property is the police’s constitutionally assigned responsibility.

Be that as it may, one is not oblivious to the fact that the Ministry of Defence covers the Army, Air Force, and Navy, which explains its N6.11 trillion budget. Nevertheless, since internal security falls within the purview of the police, it should have received the lion’s share of the funds devoted to keeping Nigerians and their property safe and secure within the country.

Before delving further into the non-prioritization of police funding to take charge of internal security—while emphasis continues to be placed on funding the military, which has received the highest allocation in yearly budgets over the past 25 years—let us first examine the IGP’s proposition that Nigerians acquire CCTV as part of his concept of community policing and as a citizen contribution toward stemming the crisis of insecurity, which has reached alarming proportions in our beloved country.

To be sure, the idea of Nigerians acquiring CCTV is quite laudable. In fact, the cities of London, Dubai, and New York are practically forests of CCTV cameras, which have proven efficacious in crime control.

But from the point of view of affordability for Nigerians, it is very expensive to acquire and operate. As such, it may be an unrealistic expectation.

The challenge is especially compounded by the lack of a steady electricity supply that continues to plague our country.

Therefore, to make CCTV affordable for the average Nigerian—at least initially—the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) should remove the import duty on it.

Subsequently, the government should provide funding support for a few firms to begin assembling CCTV systems locally, thereby reducing costs.

The selection of the firms to be supported should be done through an open and competitive bidding process.

Imports should not be allowed to continue beyond 18–24 months, within which time the infrastructure and capacity to assemble the items locally would be expected to develop.

To boost local assembly, there must be a government support scheme to empower the same firms assembling CCTV cameras to also assemble solar panels and drones, as part of a bundled package.

They should likewise assemble electricity meters, Point-of-Sale (PoS) machines, and ATMs, using Completely Knocked Down (CKD) units imported and assembled by Nigerian workers.

The production of these items is not rocket science, and private firms can establish joint ventures (JVs) with European, North and South American, or Asian companies—including Chinese, Korean, and Indian manufacturers. It may recalled that back in the day, Adebowale Industries, a local entrepreneur was assembling radio, television sets, and other electronic gadgets here in Nigeria.

Government support—through subsidies, equity investments via the Ministry of Finance Incorporated (MOFI), tax holidays, and customs duty exemptions—must be guaranteed.

In the same vein, the newly established CreditCorp should be mandated to provide Nigerians with credit facilities to acquire CCTVs and solar panels assembled locally. This would not only enhance security but also create jobs and increase the country’s productivity quotient.

With a population of over 220 million, Nigeria has a sufficiently large market to justify local production.

I am convinced that this proposition is a win-win: security will be improved through widespread CCTV coverage, people will feel safe enough to return to farms and factories, job creation will rise, and, by extension, the economy will grow—ultimately boosting our GDP.

That is not all. There’s also the added value of technology transfer, as Nigerians working in these assembly plants will learn to build these gadgets through collaboration with foreign technical partners.

That said, one fact that must not be ignored is that with the IGP’s proposition for citizens to acquire CCTV, the responsibility for monitoring crime—to proactively prevent it or to track and apprehend criminals—is being shifted from the government to the people.

But perhaps this shift is justified, as it has been proven that public funds invested directly in citizens tend to yield better returns than those funneled through government contractors, which often fall victim to corruption.

As may be recalled, in 2012 or thereabouts, a contract was awarded to ZTE Corporation of China for $470 million to install 2,000 solar-powered CCTV cameras across Nigeria.

According to a House of Representatives ad hoc committee that investigated the deal, ZTE collected a $100 million upfront payment but only installed 40 cameras—most of which remain non-functional.

The committee described the project as a monumental failure, attributing the outcome to corruption and mismanagement. The goal of the initiative had been to monitor and deter crime in Lagos, the commercial nerve center, and Abuja, the nation’s capital.

Therefore, it’s perhaps a credit to the creative ingenuity of the current IGP that he is seeking to circumvent the well-known corruption associated with government contracts by pivoting CCTV ownership to citizens. I would add that such acquisition should be supported by the government.

Just imagine if the $470 million earmarked for ZTE in 2012 had instead been used to subsidize individual CCTV ownership under a model like the one now proposed by IGP Egbetokun and expanded upon here.

Had that approach been adopted back then, perhaps today’s alarming insecurity levels would either not exist or would be drastically reduced, as criminals would have had no hiding places.

Incidentally, the same scourge of corruption that scuttled the deployment of CCTV cameras in Abuja and Lagos has characterized the military’s kinetic approach to combating insecurity in Nigeria—a crisis now in its 25th year, having started during Obasanjo’s administration in 1999.

In the 2014 national budget, about $2.5 billion was allocated to security agencies under the supervision of then National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki.

Following the defeat of President Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP in 2015 and the takeover by Muhammadu Buhari and the APC, allegations surfaced that the security funds had been misappropriated and diverted to fund the 2015 elections.

At this point, it is important to examine how insecurity started and degenerated to the current dire state.

It began as a form of religious insurgency, following the adoption of Sharia law (a legal and moral code based on Islamic principles) in Zamfara State during Obasanjo’s presidency in 1999.

The religious extremism that accompanied the law was soon hijacked and transformed into a front for political thuggery and criminality.

Curiously, since that time, mineral-rich Zamfara has consistently been a hotspot for insecurity in Nigeria.

Arising from this, I believe that religion is another factor fueling insecurity in the country.

Some of the perpetrators of heinous crimes have used the pretense of jihad—a claim that many Islamic clerics have rightly denounced—to commit atrocities. These criminals have killed both Christians and Muslims indiscriminately.

Once those hiding under the guise of religion to perpetrate crimes bordering on genocide and ethnic cleansing are exposed and apprehended, our security agencies will be in a stronger position to restore peace.

In addition to religion, another major factor driving insecurity is external influence.

There are foreign interests behind the chaos in states rich in rare earth minerals. These actors fund criminal activities to make such areas ungovernable, thus enabling illegal mining and exploitation of resources.

They began in Zamfara and have now shifted their attention to Plateau State, which is rich in lithium and other valuable minerals.

One clear thing is that the same playbook criminals have been using in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for about 100 years is now being deployed in Nigeria.

Strikingly, what is happening in Darfur, South Sudan—defined by armed conflicts driven by external interests in fossil fuel resources over the past five decades—is not dissimilar.

Due to a gap in policing in our country, foreigners are roaming freely in our hinterlands, mapping out resources. In some cases, we’ve even seen trending videos of foreigners handing out cash to our police officers—presumably as compensation for favors.

In more security-conscious climes, foreigners are not allowed to travel into the hinterlands, let alone contest for resources with locals without proper licensing.

But in Nigeria, foreigners are present in our forests and solid mineral sites, extracting and carting away natural resources under the radar.

At one point, small propeller airplanes were landing on narrow paths in Zamfara State, carting away precious stones to unknown destinations for processing—allegedly in connivance with security forces.

Aside from their official duties of protecting public officers and Very Important Personalities (VIPs), some police personnel have been seen offering protection to individuals of questionable character—people they ought to be apprehending. These individuals then move around intimidating ordinary Nigerians with loud sirens and vehicle convoys while citizens go about their daily struggle to eke out a living.

With a paltry police strength of about 400,000 officers in a country with an estimated population of 220 million—and many of them engaged in VIP protection—there are not enough personnel to respond adequately where marauders strike.

As a result, there have been multiple instances where bandits return to previously attacked locations within days or weeks to wreak more havoc on unprotected victims.

One cannot fathom why the operationalization of state or community policing remains in abeyance and why the police force continues to be underfunded.

We have a youth bulge in this country. I do not understand why the authorities have not embarked on a massive recruitment drive to enlist and train young Nigerians into the police force to secure the hinterlands and repel marauders.

We also need a dedicated forest police unit—an idea previously proposed by the Minister of Solid Minerals, Dr. Dele Alake. This specialized force would patrol forests and protect our natural resources, which are the primary targets of criminal syndicates fomenting violence in resource-rich areas.

In addition to the regular police force, I would argue that it is time to reintroduce the National Guard—originally established by General Ibrahim Babangida—as an elite police unit to tackle the evolving security threats across the country.

The recent tragic events in Plateau and Benue States, where numerous lives have been lost, highlight the urgency of adopting extraordinary measures to combat insecurity.

Commendably, in his Easter message, President Tinubu, while felicitating with Christians, also commiserated with those who lost loved ones in the attacks, stating:

“Just as Christ triumphed over death, so too shall our country triumph over every challenge we face.”

He went further to reassure Nigerians:

“I have given clear directives to the Armed Forces and all relevant security agencies to end insecurity decisively and without delay.”

Given President Tinubu’s record of thinking outside the box, we can hope that his directive to the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu—himself a retired Assistant Inspector General of Police—will yield positive results.

That said, one pressing question remains: Will putting the police at the center of the renewed effort to restore peace lead to a lasting solution to the resurgent insecurity?

Well, we won’t know until we try.

Also, is this resurgence in violence connected to the politics of 2027, when the next electoral cycle begins?

Time will reveal the truth as the situation unfolds.

My argument for a more central role for the police in internal security is based on the fact that they are better trained in managing civil conflicts. How could the military have been involved in the infamous Lekki, Lagos toll gate killing of protesters in 2020 during the Endsars riots, if it was not involved in internal security? 

Some pundits argue that insecurity has persisted because the military—whose expertise is in kinetic warfare—has been overwhelmed, as what is truly needed are policing skills to handle banditry, inter-communal conflicts, and various criminal activities.

Even the military has admitted that non-kinetic approaches might yield better results than the military tactics they’ve traditionally relied on. In fact, they have begun shifting toward non-kinetic strategies.

So why is the police—naturally more adept at non-kinetic methods—not being empowered to take the lead in a combined military-police strategy?

Let me be clear: I have nothing against our brave military men and women. I greatly admire them.

My father, David Ebiye-Onyibe, was a soldier who fought in World War II and the Nigerian Civil War as a medic. He died in active service on December 28, 1970, when I was a toddler.

After his passing, I was taken to Benin City from Agbor to sit for the entrance exam into the Nigerian Military School, but I was underage and couldn’t be admitted.

Because of that history, I have an eternal admiration for the military, and I always feel a sense of pride when, at airports abroad, uniformed service members receive special recognition through public announcements and are offered privileges and perks.

That said, beyond the inability of the military to play the role of internal security agent effectively, another major reason insecurity persists in Nigeria is religion.

Some of the criminals behind these atrocities are deceived into believing they are engaging in jihad, not realizing they are pawns feeding the greed of a few powerful kingpins.

Fortunately, some traditional rulers and Islamic clerics in the North have taken a stand, distancing themselves from the terrorists and condemning the senseless violence that has devastated lives and properties in the hinterlands.

Once these impostors—those hiding under the cloak of religion—are exposed and held accountable, our security agencies will be better positioned to restore peace and harmony among Nigeria’s many ethnic groups.

More importantly, we must confront the external factors in the rising insecurity.

There are foreign elements funding criminality in areas rich in rare earth minerals—especially in Plateau State—so they can operate in lawless conditions.

This same method was used in Zamfara, and now the focus has shifted to Plateau, largely because of its lithium deposits.

It’s the same strategy that has been in use in the DRC for over a century.

And just as external powers once armed the Janjaweed militia in Darfur, South Sudan, similar external forces are at play here.

Although the Nigerian military has made gains—repelling some attacks and neutralizing notorious gang leaders—millions still live in fear, especially in remote areas where the government seems distant and unresponsive.

Clearly, there’s a gaping hole in our policing architecture.

I cannot fathom why the implementation of state or community policing is still pending, or why the police remain poorly funded.

We have a youth bulge and a high unemployment rate.

Why aren’t our leaders seizing this opportunity to train and engage young people in law enforcement, transforming them into productive contributors to national security?

I do not understand why a massive recruitment drive into the police force has not been initiated—complete with cutting-edge training, equipment, and high-tech tools to secure our forests and hinterlands.

We also urgently need the forest police unit that Dr. Dele Alake proposed—dedicated to protecting our natural resources and fending off criminal syndicates.

Furthermore, I believe it’s time to reintroduce the National Guard, created under Babangida, to serve as an elite security force capable of handling the evolving security challenges.

General T.Y. Danjuma’s extreme position—encouraging self-defense among his people—may have stemmed from a deep sense of helplessness and frustration.

His home state, Taraba, as well as Benue and Plateau, has seen consistent attacks and loss of lives.

While not disputing anything Gen. Danjuma said, a resort to self-help in the form of widespread armament among civilians may have unintended consequences.

If inter-communal conflicts arise, will these weapons not be turned against fellow Nigerians over land disputes or cultural disagreements?

This is why we must take seriously the IGP’s call for citizens to own CCTV systems, and Gen. Danjuma’s warning, both of which highlight the rising wave of killings in recent weeks.

If the situation improves through a new paradigm shift in security—placing the police at the forefront, bolstered by strategic military support—then perhaps the urgency for civilians to arm themselves will diminish.

Before then Nigerians can not wait to exhale by having the yoke of insecurity removed as part of the existential challenge hindering them from being productive to self and society.

ONYIBE, an entrepreneur, public policy analyst, democracy advocate, author, and development strategist.

April 14 was the anniversary of the abduction of the Chibok girls from a Government Girls Secondary School; 90 are still missing. Today is another anniversary: the abduction from Greenfield University. 20th April 2021 was like any other day for students of Greenfield University, Kaduna. Muslim students observing Ramadan prepared for iftar in the company of friends and classmates, while other students perambulated between hostels and the cafeteria.
 
At about 8.15 pm, gunshots rang out; for some, the sound was not perturbing. The school was close to a major highway where motorists were frequently attacked by armed robbers. This time was different - armed men, some in camouflage, that students mistook for Nigerian military personnel, rounded up 23 people - 18 students and five administrative staff - took their phones and herded them into the bushes. Some female students were half undressed; many had no shoes on. They trekked for hours, then were driven in twos and threes on waiting motorbikes to a camp where other kidnapped Nigerians were held.
 
Three days later, on Friday, April 23, the kidnappers told parents that they had a message for them: the remains of Dorathy Yohanna, Precious Nwakacha and Sadiq Yusuf Sanga left on the side of a road. Yohanna, a third-year student of Political Science, turned 23 days before she was kidnapped. The night before her death, she cried and prayed, fretting over her mother’s reluctance to let her go back to school because of security concerns. 20-year-old Nwakacha, in her third year of Accounting, was outspoken and articulate. This was why her classmates thought she was a good choice when she was selected by the kidnappers purportedly to take a message to the parents - they knew she would be a good ambassador for their cause. Sanga, who was in his third year of a cyber-security course, woke the morning he was killed to share his dream: three people were going home, and he was one of them.
 
In Nigeria, we often say: when you wake up, is your morning and you cannot wake a person pretending to be asleep. I did not know these details when I woke up to the news that three of the students kidnapped from Greenfield had been killed, but it was a morning of sorts for me. The Greenfield story was only one more reality of schools as soft targets for terrorists and mercenaries, and not more horrific than the murder of 59 students in Federal Government College Buni Yadi in 2014. Part of what shook me was that, unlike the attack on Buni Yadi, which was ideological terror, killing Yohanna, Nwachaka, and Sanga was part of a negotiation for money; calculated to put pressure on families to pay the 800,000,000 Naira (approximately 2 million $US) ransom.
 
Channelling the desperation that I imagined families were feeling, I reached out to Olubukunola Williams and Chioma Agwuegbo, feminist activists in civil society, to find out what could be done. It was unfathomable that Nigerians or women would not be mobilizing around this. Williams, Agwuegbo and I, conceived of responding to the Greenfield kidnapping by centering women as influencers in their homes and communities to organize Nigerians to demand that the Federal Government deliver on its responsibility to secure our lives in accordance with Section 14(2)(b) of the 1999 Constitution as amended: “the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government”. The campaign had a name, slogan and demand: #Secure our lives. Our goal was acknowledgement by the government of the toll kidnapping was taking on Nigerians and a response to bring an effective end to what had become an industry.
 
Maybe we were unconsciously tapping into the culture of women for hire for claps and cries; the exploitative narrative of women as nurturers of the nation who cannot be relied on for formal power in government, but are useful for tugging on emotions. We thought only of inspiring histories of women championing social justice reforms such as the often-mentioned Aba Women’s War and Abeokuta Women’s revolt against excessive taxation during Britain’s colonial rule, the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace that brought an end to Liberia’s brutal civil war and other inspiring examples of women mobilizing effectively across the world.
 
Six weeks after we started the process, the campaign received donor funding. By then, two more students had been murdered: Feso Osunlalu, a third-year student of International Relations, tall, witty and irreverent and Shaheed Abdulrahaman, a first-year student who arrived in school the day he was kidnapped. On May 29 2021, all the survivors of the Greenfield kidnapping were released, reportedly after a ransom of 150,000,000 Naira (375,000 $US) and eight new, fuelled motorbikes had been paid.
 
We built a coalition of feminist, civil society, media and faith-based organizations involved in security, gender equity, human rights protection, and access to education to plan how best to capture the attention of the public and government. We agreed on a day of mass action with millions of Nigerians making noise, at a particular time of the day reminiscent of banging pots during the pandemic. We would also use artistic expressions to engage i.e., a poem (‘how much blood will this land drink before we say enough’) by Dike Chukwumerijie, a renowned spoken word and performance poet and installations of rows of shoes or cups in public places to speak visually to passersby who were outside our circle of communication about the human costs of kidnapping.
Finally, we decided to create and publish a red list of Nigerians who were killed and unaccounted for from kidnapping and disappearances, because, as we planned, kidnappers continued to attack schools.
 
The day of action - July 28 2021 - came and went with various activities across the country, but the impact came not even close to what we had initially imagined and eventually settled for. We continued advocating through online activities on X Spaces, anchoring our engagement to global recognition days such as International Day of the Girl Child and 16 Days of Activism and by end of 2021, the campaign petered out. There was still a balance from the first tranche of funds, which, with funders’ approval, we contributed to the 2022 campaigns for the passage of five gender bills in the National Assembly, which were aimed at closing gender inequality gaps.
 
“Why is it difficult for donor/philanthropy-funded organisations to build organic movements?”
 
Years later, my reflections about this campaign and the escalating insecurity in Nigeria have been partly shaped by continued observation of attempts to organise around insecurity (and other issues) and reading the works of Anthea Lawson (Entangled Activist), Prof. Issa Shivji (Silences in NGO Discourse) and others. Lawson theorises that, “activists are part of and injured by and survivors of the very problems that we are trying to change in the world and our tactics and organisations often mirror the same frameworks for operating that we say we want to change. Some of those entail “how we centre ourselves as subjects and see those we are trying to help (with our superior knowledge) as objects”. Shivji identifies NGOs as handmaidens of a neo-liberal purpose, i.e., replacing a degraded state no longer charged with social goods and welfare and pretending to be ‘pro-poor’ while maintaining the capitalist globalisation hegemony.
 
Why did our #Secure Our Lives campaign make little impact, and why is it difficult for donor/philanthropy-funded organisations to build organic movements?
 
The first challenge is tied to Shivji’s accusation that activists try to change the world without understanding it. ‘How can you make poverty history without understanding the history of poverty?’, he asks. In our case, how could we successfully demand that the government secure our lives without understanding the nature of our state and the sources of insecurity? Assessing the roots of insecurity in Nigeria would have intersected with another observation of Shivji’s that NGOs ignore geopolitical realities. In our case this would be the breakdown of governance in Nigeria; deep state capture for plundering public resources; the politics of West Africa and the Sahel in the context of the Cold War and foreign military bases; decades long conflict with jihadists in north-east Nigeria indoctrinated in Saudi Arabia; and the impact of global warming on traditional economic activity.
 
In 2021, we were reacting to a fire of sorts and in retrospect, we would probably have agreed that we did not have time to build theoretical knowledge about the extractive, neoliberal nature of the Nigerian state and the influence of geopolitics. We might have argued that we did not have to interrogate the drivers of insecurity and why the raison d’etre of our security forces is regime security, not securing citizens - we live the realities. Besides, civil society has hosted dozens of conferences since 2010, some in collaboration with the military, about the drivers of insecurity in Nigeria, including the massive defence budgets, which no one accounts for. If we had taken time for this analysis, we might have ended up with a different strategy for how to engage on insecurity.
 
The second challenge to organising by NGOs comes from the observation of both Shivji and Lawson about the politics of aid and funding, which create dependencies and, in some cases, make it harder for people and institutions to collaborate. This was our experience. When the #Secure Our Lives campaign received funding, we agreed not to spend on individually mobilising citizens to join the activities. We partly sealed the failure of the campaign with this decision, but we were not going to follow industry norms or politicians and organise people by paying them. We wanted an organic campaign, like #Bring Back Our Girls, where people went to the sit-ins and marched because of shared humanity and experience, not because they had been promised 1000 Naira. Civil society justifies paying people to organise: ‘people earn daily; they should be compensated for that loss of income; they need to eat’. What this does is attract widely, without building a base of conscious citizens.
However, because there are no secrets in the civil society space and people follow the money, our plans became political, by virtue of funding and focus. As Almut Rochowanski in Rethinking Foreign Aid says, “Money is never just money. It is power incarnate.”
 
Soon our strategy sessions became battles about representation and identity, and the pathologies of organising in a traumatised community where everything mirrors the political economy of power rose to the surface: subterfuge, competition for power intertwined with who gets resources and recognition, co-option and infiltrators.
 
In this, Shivji is right about paying attention to existing power structures around which societies are organised. For instance, in hindsight, our attempt at drawing in the Catholic Women’s Organisation (CWO) and the Federation of Muslim Women's Association of Nigeria (FOMWAN) was misplaced and mishandled. Misplaced because religious influencers in Nigeria tend to defend the status quo and eschew anything radical. I might have botched our chances of signing up CWO by leading that engagement. ‘I hope our sisters in the north have joined’, the CWO’s president said to me the first time we spoke. I understood the concern and should have made way for other women in the coalition to lead on this.
 
As a Muslim and from the middle belt, which has historically, for political reasons, been captured as geographically North, I was probably not the best interlocutor for building an alliance with catholic women, but I was not successful with FOMWAN, so being of the same religion did not help either. Possibly, regardless of all we could have done better, including meeting with them in person and not relying on the COVID recovery sense of the virtual being equal to the physical, they would not have joined us.
 
Our campaign barely made a dent in the consciousness of women that we claimed as our primary target. Is the daily wage earner, the one civil society pays to attend meetings and protests, the same person that Shivji and other advocates for grassroots campaigners expect to lead organically and to theorise? The women outside the formal NGO sector, who took part in the actions, were largely affiliated with civil society organisations working in urban and rural areas. Were we preaching to the converted, or were our messages unwittingly designed for them? Whatever the case, we could hardly say that educated, professional women supported the action in larger numbers than working-class women.
 
“Money is never just money. It is power incarnate.”
 
The recent suspension of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) puts aid politics in focus. As one of Africa’s major recipients of U.S. foreign aid estimated at $US1.02 billion in 2023 alone, the suspension has sparked debates in Nigeria about the politics of aid. The positions range from blaming international aid for dulling and dissipating civic dissent and lowering citizens' expectations of government to provide public goods, to aid being a form of repayment of the debt owed from colonialism, neocolonialism and neoliberalism. Others insist on acknowledging the positive impact of aid, particularly on public health services, while others point out that the U.S. is the biggest beneficiary of its aid, building global soft power and supporting U.S. businesses and organisations. For instance, in 2017, 60 per cent of USAID funding went to 25 U.S. organisations.
 
The third challenge is tied to an assumption that we made, which has been a popular theory of change of civil society for decades: that informed citizens act. It is why millions of dollars have been spent on various ways of informing citizens and raising awareness. Wrong! Most Nigerians have no faith that the government will ever act as it is supposed to. So near complete is the government’s abdication of responsibilities, that some Nigerians have no concept that government is supposed to provide public goods.
 
My orientation towards liberal, representative democracy i.e., one based on a social contract where as a taxpayer and voter, I can demand accountability from my elected representative, is a fiction in practice and not the reality for many Nigerians. As a primarily resource-based economy reliant on the extraction and trade of raw mineral resources, our government revenue does not depend on the well-being of Nigerians, and as much of the tax is informal, there is no sense of a contract with the majority.
With this understanding, I had at least one answer to an unresolved question that has nagged me for years: if funded NGOs are a corrupting influence, what prevents the majority of people outside the NGO bubble from mobilising and organising?
 
I had been unable to explain the inertia from citizens uncorrupted by donor funds who presumably had aspirations for a better society. But it is not apathy, that was my framing. Those who want better security, for instance, are not demanding anything from a government they have no expectations for; they are hiring vigilantes, bandits, sometimes groups like Lakurawa, designated terrorists by the government, to protect them.
 
2024 started with the murders of 13-year-old Folorunsho Ariyo and 21-year-old Nabeeha Al-Kadriyar. They had been kidnapped from their homes on January 2. When their families failed to meet the deadline to raise millions for their release, they were killed and their bodies left on the side of a road. It was morning for a few more people in Nigeria. Ariyo and Al-Kadriyar lived in the Federal Capital Territory, mere kilometres away from the Presidency. If the home of the federal government is unsafe, how is the rest of the country faring? Across WhatsApp groups, I observed people waking up (could be Groundhog Day for some) and attempting to organise around the new year 2024 kidnap and murder spree. 'Let women lead the charge', someone said. I closed my eyes.
 
Within the first 10 days of January 2025, close to 300 Nigerians had been kidnapped. Despite generous defence budgets ($US4.47bn in 2021) and global support to tackle insecurity, Nigeria has remained among the top 10 countries most impacted by terrorism since 2011. In 2014, it was ranked third globally for the impact of terrorism, and in 2015, when President Muhammadu Buhari was sworn in, it was second. By 2021, Nigeria’s rating had improved two places, but while terrorism declined, kidnapping was rising. Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics reported recently that between May 2023 and April 2024, 2.2 million Nigerians were kidnapped, over half a million were killed by kidnappers, and 2.2 trillion Naira (1.4 US$ billion) was paid as ransom.
 
As insecurity ramps up - with Boko Harm attacking in Borno daily and Benue and Plateau in the news for fresh waves of cyclical terror, it is clear that it is impossible to address insecurity as a single issue. Kidnapping is only one arm of insecurity in Nigeria. Cattle rustling, armed robbery, terrorism, gang violence, illegal gold mining, secessionist movements, police predation, crude oil bunkering and drug smuggling, defence contract abuse, government corruption, and corporate fraud are happening across the country, feeding into each other.
 
It is possible, as deduced in security analysts' reports, that kidnapping funds other transnational organised crime, but it is plausible and there is anecdotal support that, as the economic situation in Nigeria worsened, kidnapping became a business. The recent rise in the kidnapping of medical personnel, some say, is an indication that the kidnapping industry is evolving, requiring the services of doctors and nurses for kidnap camps.
 
“If funded NGOs are a corrupting influence, what prevents the majority of people outside the NGO bubble from mobilising and organising?”
 
It is unlikely that there will be successful attempts to organise around insecurity in Nigeria as we tried to do. Aside from Nigeria being more politicised and polarized - which results in us being less organised, typical donor funding is unlikely to provide a critical requirement to successfully organise time. If many Nigerians have given up on or never held the belief that the government owes them a duty of care, information alone cannot wake them up. Without an anchoring, magnetising ideology or philosophy that provides a culture around which people identify and organise, appeals to enlightened self-interest and an assumption that ‘we all want to be secure’ will not be enough.
 
However, organising and mobilising a critical mass of citizens is still one of the few ways to exert pressure to reform systems and structures, maybe more so during these times of global upheaval. As civic spaces constrict and social media algorithms and cacophony make it harder to engage, reaching into our past of organising tactics might be necessary, but also accepting that it can take years to organise people effectively, especially when part of the process is trying to wake people who do not know what it means to be awake
 
Ayisa Osori, Director, Executive Vice President’s Office, Open Society Foundations, is the author of Love Does Not Win Elections.
 

Caleb Muftwang, the Governor of Plateau, made a grave mistake by hosting the Ambassador of Israel, an ethno-fascist, genocidal, child-killing, terrorist & apartheid nation in his state. I watched the show of shame & almost threw up. 

As a Christian how does this Muftwang feel about receiving mass murderers, ethnic cleansers & religious bigots in his official residence? 

More importantly, as a human being, how can he sleep at night after doing this? 

Outside of that does he not know about the role that Israel & her strongest allies are playing in the killings in the North & even in his own state? 

Does he not know who is really behind the terrorists that have plagued our nation both North & South? 

Does he not know who is really benefiting from the carnage & land-grabbing? 

Does he not know that their objective is to plunge us into a civil & religious war whilst they pick up the pieces? 

Someone tell him to ask his Zionist friends who created, founded, funds and arms ISIS, ISWAP, Boko Haram, Al Shabab, Al Qaeda & virtually every other terrorist organisation in the world. 

Tell him to ask them who uses these evil forces to divide, destabilise & destroy the foreign nations which they seek to control & dominate. 

Tell him to ask them why none of the terrorist organisations mentioned above have EVER attacked Israel or targetted the Israelis? 

Tell him to ask them who funded and sold arms to the Biafrans more than anyone else during our civil war. 

Tell him to ask them how African Jews from Ethiopia (known as the Falashas) that are seeking to become Israeli nationals are treated in the Zionist state and how they are subjected to and injected with strange and toxic chemicals in order to prevent them from having children and "contaminating" the white/European bloodline of the non-semitic Ashkazi Jews that rule that dark and accursed country. 

Receiving the emissary of an insensitive & callous beast, a bloodthirsty tyrant, a feral psychopath & a delusional meglomaniac like Bibi Netanyahu & showering accolades on him is an insult to the martyred women & children of Gaza & a big slap on the face of those that are fighting Israeli occupation in Palestine.

Worst still in doing so the Governor has inflicted a deep spiritual wound on himself & his Government. 

Bringing a Jewish snake into your house will not help you to solve your problems in Plateau state no matter what they promise to do for you: it will only make them worse. 

As they say,  "beware of the Greeks, especially when they bring gifts!" The Trojans learnt this lesson the hard way! Let us hope the same fate does not befall you. 

Meanwhile did your guest tell you that they spit on Christians in his country? 

Did he tell you that according to their holy book known as the Talmud, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was a liar and a rogue and is now burning in hell whilst swimming in a pool of human faeces? 

Did he tell you that they discriminate against both Christians and Muslims and that they detain and slaughter them like flies? 

I learnt that the day after he left Plateau state no less than 100 more people were killed by the terrorists: why am I not surprised? 

This Muftwang has much to learn!

 

(Chief Femi Fani-Kayode is the Sadaukin Shinkafi, the Wakilin Doka Potiskum, the Otunba Joga Orile, a former Minister of Culture and Tourism, a former Ministerof Aviation and a former Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs to President Olusegun Obasanjo)

I found myself inventing that verse as today’s headline. The verse came sounding like “The Lord is my shepherd/ I Shall not want…” The twenty-third Psalm. Yesterday was Easter Sunday; today is Easter Monday. All Judases are shamed.

Life here is bitter as brine. The green pastures are withered. The still waters are poisoned. More and more, victims fall in undeclared wars in Benue and Plateau. Terrorists rebrand and relaunch in Borno and Niger and Zamfara. The Commander-in-Chief is absent in flesh, in body and soul. But I must be quiet, because the president is my brother.

Some twenty-something years ago, one of us (I can’t remember who the person was) blurted out a question:

“The name of your governor, ‘Alamiyeseigha’, reads like a tongue-twisting clause. What does it mean?”

Our guest was the Bayelsa State Commissioner for Information.

The guest sat up, grinned and looked round the Tribune boardroom. She then smiled out the answer.

 
 
“It means God is never wrong. Just like my name, ‘Benamaisia’, means brother is never wrong.”

I thought that was deep. I quickly got it stored in the depth of my brain. True. God is never wrong. But brother? An argument would have ensued but that commissioner, Mrs Ruth Benamaisia Opia, went into an intelligent analysis of how and when a brother is deemed not wrong: She said a brother is never wrong in the presence of outsiders. She might be right. Among her audience were a people whose own culture instructs them to first deal with the fox before spanking the cock. They also say you don’t sell your brother cheap; if you do, you won’t be able to buy him back expensive.

“Kin-blood is not spoiled by water.” That is how 12th-century German poet, Heinrich der Glîchezære, couches it in his epic, Reinhart Fuchs (Reynard the Fox). I am supposed to love and be loyal to the king because he is my brother. Is my brother, the king, supposed to love and be loyal to me? Christian scholar, T. L. Westow, in his ‘Who is my Brother?’ published in May 1964, declares that “nobody can eat for somebody else.” That may be true in biology; it is not true in politics. What do you think my brother, the president, is doing on my behalf in Europe? He has been there for the past two weeks.

Because my brother is the president, he can do anything and get away with it. And he has been doing it. The president is the law. He keeps a very good company in the US President Donald Trump. Last week, Trump complained about his country’s Federal Reserves chair, Jerome Powell. “I’m not happy with him. I don’t think Powell is doing the job. He will leave if I ask him to.” An American reacted: “Why has anybody but Trump run anything? Just get rid of congress, senate, Supreme Court, etc. He’s so smart; he can run everything.” It is too late to recommend the same here. President Bola Tinubu is the smartest somebody ever created. He had been the law long before he became president. Presidential powers have only enlarged his coast, and we are happy and grateful for the answered prayers.

 

I have no problem with Tinubu staying put abroad. The only issue I have with it is that in his absence, Muhammadu Buhari’s eunuch is having an erection again. I don’t like that. It is risky. While I agonise over the resurgent eunuchs, I will not stop stopping critics from hampering my president with the constitution and all its provisions. Scrap the law, scrap the courts, the legislature, everything; sack the governors, give the president their functions and budgets. Make him President and Governor General of the federation. Trash all the scrapped. Scrap Abuja and let the super man reign from wherever he finds comfort. Why not?

My brother, the president, is in Europe, running the country effectively unseen like an unseen poem. It is my duty as a brother to expose the ignorance of critics who say the president residing abroad is immoral and illegal. I should tell such critics that the people who created Nigeria started Nigeria with that arrangement. When the two Nigerias were brought together in 1914, the first ‘president’ (nicknamed Governor General) reigned six months in Nigeria; four and a half months in London; one and half months cruising on the high seas. Lord Lugard gave his employers that condition and he got it, he maintained and enjoyed it for several years. A befitting office with full complement of competent staff was even provided for him righ  t inside the colonial office in London. That is our history.

Shakespeare says there is no darkness but ignorance. Ignorant critics say my brother does not delegate as the constitution dictates. They should read history. Our president’s ancestor, Lord Lugard had two deputies called Assistant Governors. From 1914 when he took charge till he left in 1919, he delegated neither power nor responsibility to any of them. There were complaints and grumblings, home and abroad; the Governor-General ignored them all. Nothing happened. Nothing will happen if President Tinubu keeps that foundational tradition alive. He has a duty to run his government undisturbed from the Moon, even from inside the Sun.

If my brother is not ready for home, it is my duty to beg him to stay back wherever he is. It is also my duty to attack his attackers here. He should not rush home after these Easter holidays simply because sibling rivalry is pushing some of our bad brothers to demand his immediate homecoming. The president should work harder in London – or cross the English Channel back to Paris, and continue where he stopped.

Last week, from wherever he was, the president set up an eight-man committee on his pet census project, five out of the eight members are from his sitting room. Because he is my brother, I am not supposed to mention this and say he was wrong to use his household to rule the whole world.

For those who are not happy that five brothers out of eight make the list of Tinubu’s census committee, I recommend, in the spirit of this Easter season, ‘The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard’. It is a Bible passage:

“Then the mother of Zebedee’s sons came to Him with her sons, kneeling down and asking something from Him.

“And He said to her, ‘What do you wish?’”

“She said to Him, ‘Grant that these two sons of mine may sit, one on Your right hand and the other on the left, in Your kingdom.’” (Mathew 20:20,21).

What you just read is a brother to the right; his blood brother to the left. The Master was number one. The brothers would be numbers two and three. And there were twelve disciples. The two brothers were John and James. Whose cousins or nephews were they? Find out whose sister their mother, Salome, was.

Some neighbours are already saying that without them in 2027 my brother will be sent back home empty-handed. They should shut up, and go and listen to Juju music Commander Ebenezer Obey. He warns that no one should vow that without them their friend won’t find food to eat. They should not say that again  Sustenance is God’s. He is the only provider. If they want war in 2027, my brother will give them. I will watch the bull fight; my popcorn is ordered.

So, those who are not happy with my brother’s nepotism should go drink iced water. They should wait for their own time. Nigeria is a tripod. Every good and every bad must get entered in the country’s balance sheet. Muhammadu Buhari had his own fill. We shouted, but Bayajidda II pointed us to his kurmo (deaf) ears. Goodluck Jonathan had aides who helped him do his own so well that he became Azikiwe.

I read Keith Ferrazzi’s ‘Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success.’ But I will not join outsiders to quote that book and warn the solo man that he “can’t get there alone” and “in fact, can’t get very far at all.” I will also refrain from reading ‘What do you think of eating alone?’, a recent piece written by The Korea Times’ senior advisor, Park Moo-jong. There is a spice in that piece. It is from Desmond Morris, English zoologist, ethologist and author of ‘The Naked Ape’: “One may eat alone in the privacy of one’s own home, but to eat alone in a public place is to invite suspicion of personal failure at best and deviancy at worst.” If the president were not my brother, I would have expanded that verdict to accommodate what critics say of him here. I would have said that Nigeria is a public, multi-regional, multi ethnic entity and that no group, no matter how smart, or wise or vicious can kidnap Nigeria and hold it hostage for long. But the president is Yoruba and Muslim like me, so I won’t undermine my brother. I won’t join those who say that even the British who created the country did not succeed in putting it in purdah for as long as they wished.

President Bola Tinubu is a brother to some because he is a Muslim. To some others he is a brother because of the language he speaks — his mother tongue – Yoruba. Still, to some others, he is a brother because of the fraternity of politics he leads. Common to these concentric circle of brotherhoods is the charge that his wrong must not be said from any mouth there. Scores killed in Plateau, 56 murdered in Benue, the Commander-in-Chief is rocking the cities of Paris and London. He must not be accused of playing Nero while his Rome burns. Our brother must never be said to be wrong.

This president campaigned and pledged to renew our hopes in a better Nigeria. Where are the promised “sparkling springs” and the “babbling brooks”? A brother has no right to question his brother, the president. If he is your brother, tell him not that he lives in an illusory world where failure is praiseworthy success and poverty is wealth. The people’s suffering notwithstanding, rejoice with your brother.

A brother is never wrong. Like the anonymous American army major said in the Vietnam war, there is nothing bad to have my brother destroy the town in order to save it. The king can invent his own reality and call us to project it for the world to admire and applaud. We will obey him; he is our brother.

Poverty unravels homes; policies upend businesses. But what is real is unreal because the president is my brother. We hear politicians of various ailments hail the president for making Nigeria great again. Even some opposition governors are rushing into his Noah’s Ark. Reality has different versions. When it is bad as we have it, regime washers create a positive one and command me to praise it. They say we must celebrate their reality because it is done everywhere, even in America where we borrowed this system that sells the freeborn into slavery. If that sounds interesting to you, read ‘Bad for Democracy: How the Presidency Undermines the Power of the People’ by Dana D. Nelson. It was published in 2008 long before Donald Trump came with his ideology of alternative truth.

You see them on TV boasting of unprecedented achievements and daring you to contradict them. They did and do it where we copied our constitution. Towards the 2004 presidential election in the US, a Bush administration official with the swag of a conquistador told a New York Times reporter, Ron Suskind: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality judiciously, as you will, we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” This sounds like what my brother’s government can say in Nigeria. The government is a pack of confidence men. We – you and I – exist to only study, write and talk about what they do.

My brother is dining alone somewhere across the Mediterranean Sea. Some people say he is in Paris, France; some say he is in London, United Kingdom. I am supposed to thank him for eating on my behalf abroad while I yawn at home. As I do that, I should also ask what will end anyone’s ‘eat alone’ regime if they do not change? An Arabian proverb speaks on the consequences of fencing off others from a communal feast. They say he who eats alone vomits alone. They also say he who eats alone chokes alone. The Tigrigna of Eritrea and northern Ethiopia say: He who eats alone dies alone. The NURTW has a more radical version. Its members shout: “Eat alone, Go away!”

China and Nigeria, two continental giants that entered the late 1970s with similar per capita incomes, have since taken opposite economic trajectories. In China, the decisive moment was Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 decision to “open the windows” and let the world’s capital know-how to blow in. In Nigeria, the same decade ushered in the oil boom that encouraged governments to depend on volatile export rents rather than the hard grind of production. Nearly half a century later, the contrast is stark: China ships $3.58 trillion a year worth of merchandise each year to the US, runs the world’s biggest high-speed rail and electricity networks, and has reduced extreme poverty to the low single digits, whereas Nigeria still relies on diesel generators to power most factories and holds the unfortunate record of hosting the planet’s largest pool of people living on less than $3 a day.

I was recently in China as part of a Nigerian business delegation that wanted to revolutionise rail freight. We toured Chinese rail manufacturing factories and saw the cumulative effect firsthand. At Yiwu, a market city once famous only for cheap toys, outbound trains roll directly into the customs yard, clear export formalities in hours and join a trans-Eurasian schedule that reaches Madrid in eighteen days. We counted five layers of the process—terminal handling, port queue, ocean leg, inland haulage, and warehouse sorting—that would each add days and dollars back home. We also noticed that the Chinese yard foreman carried a tablet tracking real-time wagon diagnostics; the Nigerian equivalent would be on a clipboard waiting on a generator to restart the Wi-Fi.

The macro numbers simply crystallise what we observed on the ground. Manufacturing generates roughly twenty-seven per cent of the Chinese GDP and employs more than one hundred million people. In Nigeria, the share by 2024 has slid below ten per cent and continues to fall. Chinese logistics costs average seven to nine per cent of a retail item’s final price; Nigerian goods often surrender a quarter to a third of their value to the road, the checkpoint and the generator. The pertinent question is, what made China succeed and Nigeria fail?

Policy consistency is the first, and perhaps most underrated, source of that divergence. Beijing’s five-year plans differed in detail but never in direction: everyone sought deeper industrialisation, more export capacity, and a higher rung on the technology ladder. By contrast, Lagos, Abuja and the thirty-six state capitals have veered from import substitution to outright deregulation to state-owned “transformation agendas,” each abandoned as soon as the next political cycle arrives or the oil price slumps. For investors deciding where to put a steel mill or a chip assembly plant, the difference between a twenty-year horizon and a four-year horizon is the difference between “build” and “walk away.”

Infrastructure magnified that gap. Beginning in the early 1990s, China poured roughly eight per cent of its GDP every year into roads, ports, airports and—most outstandingly—rail. A lattice of 45,000 kilometres of 250 to 350 km/h track now links almost every provincial capital; freight versions of those lines move 10,000-tonne trains from Chongqing to Shenzhen in a single day. One academic study finds that high-speed rail access lifts a connected city’s GDP by more than fourteen per cent within five years, mostly by slashing logistics times and widening labour catchment areas for firms. Nigeria, meanwhile, rehabilitated a few colonial-era lines and launched several standard gauge projects, but even its showcase Abuja–Kaduna and Lagos- Ibadan routes move fewer passengers in a week than China’s busiest corridor handles before breakfast. Most cargo still crawls along cratered highways where police checkpoints and kidnappers impose an unofficial “fear tax” on every bag of cement or basket of tomatoes.

China achieved rapid growth by heavily investing in manufacturing. This is unlike Nigeria, where manufacturing contributes less than 12.68% in Q2 2024 and more than 8.21% in Q3 2024. China’s investment in High-Speed Rail (HSR) has led to a significant drop in the cost of goods. Recent initiatives like “Made in China 2025” focus on advanced manufacturing sectors such as robotics, aerospace, new-energy vehicles, and biotechnology to increase the value chain and reduce reliance on foreign technology.

Reliable energy is the next Faultline. Guangdong province alone generates more electricity than the entire Nigerian grid, and it does so continuously; Chinese aluminium smelters, textile mills and data centres are designed around the assumption that the power will stay on. Nigerian manufacturers assume the opposite. They buy diesel gensets, pay triple the Asian price for each kilowatt hour they consume, and pass that cost on to consumers—who already face some of the steepest logistics markups in the world. When energy constitutes thirty per cent of a product’s ex-factory price, no patriotic marketing can keep that product competitive abroad.

China’s factories also had people who could keep the machines running. A high school graduate in Jilin can programme a PC and interpret a process control chart because technical and vocational colleges occupy a place of prestige that academic-heavy universities once monopolised. As a result, Chinese employers can field 3,000-strong shifts of technicians able to retool a smartphone assembly line on the weekend. Nigeria’s educational culture remains firmly certificate-oriented; private surveys suggest that more than four-fifths of recent university graduates lack basic spreadsheet or coding competence. The mismatch forces multinationals to fly expatriate engineers into Lagos or—more often—to put the factory in Ethiopia, Vietnam or Guangdong instead.

Automation sharpened the divide still further. In 2024 alone, Chinese firms installed nearly 300,000 industrial robots—more than Europe and the Americas combined. Robots weld car bodies and ship parts, insert smartphone cameras and package frozen dumplings; the technicians who maintain them earn multiples of the average urban wage. Nigeria ordered only a few hundred units that same year, primarily for soft drink bottling plants in Lagos and Ogun. Without automation, productivity plateaus; without productivity, wages stagnate; without rising wages, the domestic market stays too shallow to justify mass production. The cycle feeds on itself.

Oil dependence made everything worse. Crude accounts for well over half of Nigeria’s government revenue but employs fewer than one per cent of its labour force. When Brent prices soar, ministries hire, contractors splurge, and imports surge; when prices crash, capital projects halt, debts pile up, and Naira devaluations wipe out household purchasing power. Chinese planners did court commodity cycles—the country still consumes half the world’s copper and iron ore—but their fiscal lifeline was value-added, not raw rents. Tax receipts rose in tandem with factory output, giving Beijing a steadily expanding pool of local currency resources to finance the next port or rail line.

Insecurity compounds Nigeria’s structural costs. Hundreds of lives and thousands of work hours vanish each year due to armed robbery, terrorist attacks or kidnaping along the Lagos–Kano highway. Firms pay for private guards, convoy fees and kidnap insurance; those outlays translate directly into higher shelf prices and lower margins. China indeed grapples with crime and corruption, but industrial zones in Shenzhen or Suzhou are patrolled, litigated and powered in ways that let a container leave the factory gate and reach the port with minimal friction or added cost. Logistics is the key enabler of manufacturing.

Yet none of these gaps is destiny. Nigeria’s poverty is a product of a mix of bad leadership and bad choices. Nigeria’s heavy reliance on oil causes economic vulnerability. Nigeria’s education system emphasises certificates over practical skills, creating a gap between what is taught in schools and what employers need. Over 85% of Nigerian graduates lack digital skills, making them less competitive in the job market. The SMART schools championed by the Enugu State government aim to start closing the IT gaps, and other states in Nigeria are expected to create more of these schools.

Nigeria still has an unreliable electricity supply, inconsistent fiscal policies, shifting regulations, and excessive bureaucracy. Years of focus on ease of doing business have improved things, but we are far from average. Nigeria’s service-led growth has benefited the educated middle class and corrupt government officials and is less employment-intensive. Despite having a young population, massive arable land and growth potential, Nigeria has remained a country of poor people.

Nigeria still possesses assets China would envy: a median age under twenty, vast swathes of uncultivated arable land, abundant sunshine for solar power and a coastline perched between the Atlantic trade lanes and Africa’s interior. What it lacks is the deliberate sequencing that China pursued. Reliable baseload power and a north-south freight rail spine must precede, not follow, any talk of mega parks or local content mandates. Technical colleges must receive the same prestige and funding as universities. We applaud the efforts of the Minister of Education in creating and masterminding the technical and vocational school strategy. Special Economic Zones must specialise in textiles in Kano, agro-processing in Benue, and light engineering in Aba so suppliers and toolmakers can cluster rather than scatter. Nigeria must adopt Industrial clusters as a potential strategy. Industrialisation breeds employment, alleviates poverty, and creates high income and GDP growth, which creates wealth and a better quality of life for citizens.

If those choices are made and sustained, the virtuous cycle that lifted China is also ready to spin in Nigeria: hard infrastructure lowers cost, factories sprout, wages rise, domestic demand deepens, tax receipts multiply, and the next round of infrastructure becomes easier to finance. History shows that such cycles do not begin with genius inventions or windfall resources; they start when governments decide that electricity at midnight and freight trains at dawn are more important than oil rents at noon. China made that decision decades ago and grew rich. Nigeria still can. President Widodo of Indonesia grew their economy within ten years by furthering an export-oriented strategy with in-country value addition, embarking on expansive infrastructure development, reducing poverty to 1%, and almost doubling per capita income. Can we do this in Nigeria? Yes, we can! Today’s dismal rankings will look like a brief preface to a more prosperous chapter

Adelabu Adegoke was one of the most flamboyant and charismatic politicians in      pre-independence Nigeria.    When one day, the press asked him about deliberations in the Western Region    House of Assembly, he replied that it was a “peculiar mess”. He pronounced the words with a Yoruba intonation making the two words sound like “Penkelemesi”. So, his sobriquet became Penkelemesi.

Today, his grandson, Adebayo Adelabu, is the  Minister of Power who rather than do the job he is paid for, prefers serving Nigerians peculiar mess as menu.    Under his watch, the national grid  in 2024 on  average, collapsed monthly  and, power supply remains  epileptic while tariff is astronomically increased.  In other words, Nigerians under him pay astronomical electricity tariff for the darkness supplied.

However, rather than be quiet, Adelabu insults Nigerians at per second billing.  For those who may not be aware, Nigerians  as customers buy everything in the hope of being supplied electricity. We    buy all: from    wires, poles, transformers to    meters with which we are billed. Despite these, Adelabu adds to the injury with insults and loads of Trump-like alternative truths. For instance, in April, 2024, Adelabu  needed to astronomically increase electricity tariff in line with the biddings of the International Monetary Fund, IMF, and the World Bank who falsely claim that the cost of electricity is too cheap in Nigeria.  

So, the grandson of Penkele spins a tail in which he blames and insults Nigerians for the epileptic power supply and why they had to be punished with high tariff increases. He said:  “A lot of people will come back from work, they want to have dinner, or they want to see their colleagues down the road, they switch on the AC for the room to be cooling before they come back. Some people will be going to work in the morning, a freezer that you left on for days, they will still leave it on when all the items in the freezer are frozen and five, six, eight hours of their absence will not make it to defreeze, they will still leave it to be consuming power just because we are not paying enough.”

In his 2024    Independence      Day message which also marked his one year in office, the Minister    told Nigerians that over 40 per cent of us are enjoying 20 hours of electricity daily. The truth is that while some    Nigerians have less than four hours of electricity supply    daily, many have less. There are actually towns that were not supplied electricity at all within that period.  In fact, as at April 18, 2025 areas in  Kaduna metropolis like Romi and Sabo, for weeks, have had less than two  hours power supply daily!

In any case, where did the increase in power distribution come from when for decades our maximum power  distribution  capacity remains  4,000 megawatts? Nigerians    knew Adelabu was lying because that was not the reality of their existence. Also, Adelabu    knew he was lying because as the Yorubas say, two persons cannot be deceived simultaneously; if the person being deceived does not know, the      deceiver knows what game he is playing.    However, Nigerians were too hungry to be bothered about debunking such optics by a man belching at the nation’s table. This spin by Adelabu on hours of power supplied is not original.    It is an old template in the files of the Power Ministry. It was used on June 9, 2020 by one of his predecessors,    Mamman Kwagyang Saleh, who on June 9, 2020 on    the Nigerian Television Authority, claimed Nigerians were  enjoying  18-24 hours of power supply every day.

Adelabu had also    tried to play on the intelligence of Nigerians. While not increasing  power distribution above the  4,000MW  we have had for over a decade, he categorised consumers into what he classified as Band A, B, C.    Under this false categorisation, he billed those in Band B,    N63 per kilowatt-hour and those in Band A N209 per kilowatt-hour.      After achieving the tariff increase, the    Ministry decided to “regularise electricity tariffs” which is an euphemism for tariff increase and obliteration of the deceptive ‘Band’ system.

In his latest outing on April 17, 2025,  Adelabu held a long, sonorous press briefing with no verifiable statistics to back his claims.  He told Nigerians: “We have increased our generation to 6,003 megawatts, up by 1,700 megawatts in one and a half years since President Tinubu assumed office. It took Nigeria over 40 years to achieve an incremental 2,000 megawatts of average energy; we achieved this in less than two years.”

The claim by Adelabu that it is the Tinubu government that has increased power generation to 6,003MW    is contradicted by facts from the supervisory Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC. In    its    “Daily Energy Watch” for January 28, 2015, the agency stated that power generation    was 6,421 MW. In January, 2017, Buhari’s Minister of Power Babatunde Fashola announced a power generating capacity of 7,000MW. When Fashola in his    Monday, July 9, 2018 press briefing    made similar claims as an indication of progress, the eleven distribution companies under their Association of      Nigerian Electricity    Distributors, ANED,    issued a statement accusing the government of lying as    the country had almost hit that mark before Buhari came to power on May 29, 2015.  

So,    Minister Adelabu’s    claims ten years later, that due to hard work the Tinubu administration had significantly increased power generation to 6,003 MW, cannot but be a fallacy. Generally, contrary to the claims of Adelabu, our power sector is in a sorry state and urgent steps need to be taken. One of them is the overdue review of the demonstrably fraudulent 2013 privatisation which handed over the sector to mainly incompetent distribution companies some of which have  gone  bankrupt. The review has statutorily been due since 2018.    

If need be, the privatisation should    be reversed. The Dominican Republic did so in 2003, the German cities of Berlin and Hamburg    also did,    and  California with a $3 trillion economy equally did. This led to the liquidation of Enron    on July 16, 2005. Nigeria which began to generate and distribute electricity in 1896, has one of the    best experiences in the world. Along with    public power supply, we also had an independent or private power company called Nasco which was established in 1925. The latter was quite efficient and reliable. But the    Federal Government smashed Nasco on the basis that no company should compete with    NEPA/PHCN. Along with the reversal of the privatisation swindle, the Nasco model remains a viable one.    Anybody interested in further reading  can pick a copy of the    2020 book: “The light in the tunnel may be an oncoming train:   A Research      on Privatisation in Nigeria focusing on electricity”, which I co-authored with Ahmed Aminu Yusuf. 

Two boys were playing together in the garden. Soon, the play degenerated into an argument, and they engaged in a shouting match. From afar, the father of the boys cautioned them to stop arguing and continue their play, but they wouldn’t budge. Shortly after, they lunged at each other and almost engaged in fisticuffs. The father, at this point, wades in. He ordered one of the boys, his step-son, to go to the naughty corner and face the wall for six minutes while he told the other boy, his biological son, to continue his play in the garden.

The above scenario aptly captures the developments in Rivers state. President Bola Tinubu on March 18 2025, declared a six-month emergency rule in the state, following the political crisis that pitched the state governor, Siminalayi Fubara, against the FCT minister, Nyesom Wike, on one hand and the state house of assembly on the other.

The disagreement was primarily between Wike, the immediate past Rivers state governor, and Fubara, one of his long-standing allies whom he installed as his successor. Wike’s angst was that he might lose his political status in Rivers as Fubara was allegedly trying to bring down the structures that helped him to become governor. After almost two years of unending strife without any headway, President Tinubu, as the father of the nation, decided to wield the big stick by suspending Fubara and his deputy for six months. He also suspended the members of the Rivers assembly, but every right-discerning person knows they are not the major gladiator in the battle, just a pawn in the game. He left Wike to continue his job in his cabinet.

Of course, the president’s action has elicited mixed reactions from Nigerians. While some have argued that based on the provisions of sections 1(2), 14(1)(c), 176(1) (2) and 305(1) of the 1999 Constitution, the suspension of democratically elected officials in Rivers state is unlawful and unconstitutional, others have justified the suspension, saying no responsible government will fold its hands and allow Rivers State, a major economic lifeline of the country to go up in flames.

 

However, the majority of Nigerians share the view that to be fair, the president should have also suspended Wike, who is a major player in the crisis rocking the state. This would have made him sober and take a deep introspection over the issues at stake. But that is not to be the case, as Fubara’s temporary displacement seems to have given Wike the feeling that he has the upper hand. He has been granting interviews with his characteristic bumptiousness while Fubara is at home licking his wounds and brooding over the incident.

In the latest media parley he had with some select journalists, Wike even expressed dissatisfaction with the presidential declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State and suspension of the governor, saying what he wanted was outright removal.

Hear him: “As a politician, I am not happy with the declaration of Emergency Rule in Rivers state. I wanted the outright removal of the governor. But for the interest of the state, the president did the right thing to prevent anarchy in the state. The matter is in court, but people must say the truth. The governor was gone. It is not on my place to make it good for the governor. As a politician, my business is not to make him comfortable and that is why there is power plane.”

 

Wike’s remarks are grossly unacceptable, a direct affront to the president, and one would have expected the presidency to call him to order, telling him to face the task assigned to him in the FCT. Whether his intervention is constitutional or not, the president has acted in what he considers the best interest of Rivers. Fubara, who was at the receiving end, has quietly accepted his fate, but Wike continues to talk garrulously and pour petrol on fire. His comments, if left unchecked, can infuriate the supporters of Fubara, many of whom have been made redundant by the sole administrator, Ibok-Ette Ibas, who appears to be pursuing an ‘obliterate anything Fubara’ agenda.

Wike was even seen in a video last week in London, where he hosted the suspended lawmakers. Of course, that is one of the consequences of his not being suspended. In the recent media parley, he even said he is ready to forgive Fubara if he apologises to him. Except if he truly knows from within his heart that he wronged Wike, but if not, I think it will be very idiotic for Fubara to offer any apology at this point. If his fight with Wike is not because of any breach of agreement (Ngige-Chris Uba saga), if it is for the interest of the good people of Rivers state, then any apology from him will amount to utter wimpishness.

I am not in support of Fubara. He keeps creating an impression of a flawless ‘Sim’ple man, but that appears to be a mere facade. In fact, I was alarmed last week when I read reports that he donated the sum of N300 million to the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) to hold a conference in Rivers State. Only God knows how much of Rivers’ resources he has donated so far, yet he created the impression of a man who places a premium on frugality and is judiciously using taxpayers’ money. Nobody would have known this if not for his suspension from office and the fact that the NBA moved the conference away from Rivers state, which prompted the sole administrator to ask for a refund.

What, however, impresses me about Fubara is the maturity and dignified silence he has maintained since his suspension. One inciting word from him to his supporters could have set the state on fire. He has, however, remained silent, allowing Nigerians, especially Rivers women, to fight the battle on his behalf. That is quite commendable, and his silence shouldn’t be taken as a sign of weakness.

 

On the other hand, Wike too should have a sober reflection. The current face-off between him and Fubara, is it karma at work? The law of karma states that your deeds and actions, whether good or bad, will eventually return to you. I read an old news item recently where former governor of Rivers state, Rotimi Amaechi, was more or less lamenting his recommendation of Wike, who was his former chief of staff, to be a minister.

Amaechi while addressing clergymen of the Niger Delta Bishops’ Forum who visited him in Government House, Port Harcourt in August 2013 said: “I hear you also visited Nyesom Wike. I try not to talk about Wike. I say so because he is my subordinate, I try not to talk about him but I hear you visited him. Why I won’t talk about him is that Nyesom Wike, his second tenure as Obio Akpor council chairman was by the grace of God, but I was the architect of that second term. Nyesom Wike was appointed chief of staff by me. Nyesom Wike, as a minister of state, I nominated him. I was under pressure from the president to drop him, but I refused. The president persuaded me to drop him and bring a woman, but I refused. I hear he is going all over town saying I didn’t appoint him. I didn’t appoint him, the president appointed him, but I nominated him to be a minister as the chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum. I did, but you know, character doesn’t come easily, character is a very difficult thing, and I am a man of character.”

In writing this article, I sought the opinion of a senior lawyer on why the president didn’t suspend Wike. Though he chose to remain anonymous, he said: “It will appear that the president has taken a side in the Rivers crisis. Much as he tries to put up a face, it is very evident that he has leaned in the direction of Wike. For a balance of the situation, something should have been done to Wike to show a kind of fairness, but the presidency does not see it that way. Their view is that if Wike was suspended, it will seem like a punishment.

“They believed that the suspension of democratically elected institutions in Rivers is not seen as a suspension but as a temporary solution to the crisis. According to them, the governor would have been impeached and the crisis would have escalated, but by suspending him, the president has saved him from impeachment. However, that argument does not gel with the average Nigerian who thinks that Wike, being a major player in the crisis, would have also been awarded a penalty.”

 

In conclusion, there are pertinent questions to ask, which are very germane to the Rivers crisis. Will the president’s intervention bring a permanent solution to the crisis in the state? After the six-month suspension is over, what next? With no peace-making efforts in sight, will the president extend the suspension, thereby technically keeping Fubara out of office till almost the end of his tenure?

With Wike still firing from all cylinders and saying he wants an outright removal of Fubara, will that improve or worsen an already bad situation? Eleven PDP governors are challenging Fubara’s suspension in court; if they triumph, will the president respect the court order and terminate the reign of the sole administrator?

 

What happens if, after six months, the president restores Fubara to his position and the lawmakers loyal to Wike still go ahead and impeach him?

Akinsuyi, former group politics editor of Daily Independent, currently studies sustainability communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

 
 

 

On the evening of 5 April 2012, the prime-time bulletin on the television news of the Malawi Broacasting Corporation (MBC), announced to the country that the president, Ngwazi Professor Bingu wa Mutharika, “had been taken ill and had been flown to South Africa for specialist treatment.” At another end of the capital city, Lilongwe, a presidential convoy was on its way to the Kamuzu International Airport (KIA) where an air ambulance awaited with instructions to fly to South Africa a president who was supposedly alive but unwell.

Earlier in the day, around 11:00 in the morning, Ngwazi Professor Bingu had collapsed while receiving in audience the Member of Parliament representing the south-east constituency of the capital city, Lilongwe, Agnes Penemulungu. The judicial commission of inquiry which later investigated what transpired thereafter received evidence which showed quite clearly that the presidential court had not prepared nor practiced for the possibility of a life-and-death emergency involving the president. Elton Singini, a senior judge, chaired the inquiry.

The commission of inquiry established as a fact that the president died earlier in the day inside the ambulance en route to Kamuzu Central Hospital in the capital city. According to the inquiry report, “the President was brought in dead (BID) at Kamuzu Central Hospital [KCH] at around 11.25 in the morning” of 5 April.
At the time of the news bulletin announcing that he was to be flown to South Africa later on the same day, President Bingu had been dead for over eight hours. Despite being aware of this, the presidential retinue instructed staff at the hospital to apply cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on the presidential remains for over two hours. In the process, they crushed his rib-cage.

More was to follow. At the airport, the air ambulance pilots from South Africa declined to board the body, citing the fact that their permission was to fly with a patient not a dead body. High level conversations ensued between Lilongwe and Pretoria. It may have helped and was certainly relevant that Malawi’s Foreign Minister at the time was Peter Mutharika, President Bingu’s younger brother who was also intent on stepping into the shoes of his just deceased brother. Peter needed time to set the wheels in motion to leap-frog Vice-President, Joyce Banda in the succession stakes.

 

South Africa’s President, Jacob Zuma who had retired for the day had to be woken up to personally authorize the flight. Shortly after mid-night on 6 April 2012, the air ambulance took off for South Africa. In Malawi, the people were told their president was headed to South Africa for medical attention. In South Africa, the authorities knew that the air ambulance on its way from Lilongwe would arrive with the dead body of Malawi’s president. Shortly after 02:30 on 6 April, the aircraft landed at South Africa’s National Defence Force (SANDF) Waterkloof Airbase on the outskirts of Pretoria. From there, it was transferred to a mortuary.

The authors of all this malign chicanery designed to deceive the people of Malawi, however, forgot to also notify the processes of bio-chemistry. By the time the body arrived the morgue in South Africa, it had been “in the open without refrigeration for about 18 hours after death.” As a result, the very important and high profile invitees to the state funeral of President Bingu which took place on 23 April, 2012, had to endure the uncomfortable company of flies, as well as the majestic fragrance of human of putrefaction. As the report of the Justice Elton Singini Commission of Inquiry recorded, “the body had started decomposing as evidenced by the smell and a few flies hovering around.”

Four years earlier, in August 2008, Levy Mwanawasa, the president of neighbouring Zambia, died in a military hospital near Paris in France. While attending the summit of the African Union in Cairo, Egypt, on 29 June 2008, President Mwanawasa had collapsed following what was later understood to be an aneurysm (Stroke). He was stabilized there before being transferred to France where he died two months later. At his death, it came out that two years earlier, during his first term as president in 2006, President Mwanawasa had suffered an earlier stroke.
For that, he received extended treatment in the United Kingdom. No one told Zambians.
The year after the death of President Mwanawasa, in June 2009, Omar Bongo, who had ruled Gabon for 41years died in hospital in Spain. When he left Libreville at the beginning of the previous month, his compatriots believed that their president, the doyen and favorite of France Afrique, was away on a working visit – a phrase all too familiar to Nigerians – to his favorite haunts in Europe. At his death, it emerged that more than one month before his death, President Bongo had been hospitalized for cancer treatment in Spain.

 

President Bongo was not the last long-serving African president to die in Spain. On 8 July 2022, former Angolan president, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, died also there after prolonged cancer treatment. Following his death, a family crisis broke out over his funeral, which delayed the repatriation of his remains to Luanda for more than one month. Six weeks after his death, in the third week of August 2022, a judge in Spain finally authorized the return of the body of President dos Santos to Angola for burial.

When he departed Nigeria on 2 April, the presidency in Abuja issued a statement claiming that Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Nigeria’s president, was off to France on a “short working visit”, during which he would “retreat to review the progress of ongoing reforms and engage in strategic planning ahead of his administration’s second anniversary.” They barely stopped short of telling Nigerians that their president was headed to Lourdes for the grace of its historic apparitions. President Tinubu is a Muslim; it was in the middle of the Christian season of Lent and no one had apparently bothered to advise him or his image makers that it is usually Christians who undertake two week-long retreats in the middle of this season.

The day after the end of the initially announced 14 days, the same presidential retinue disclosed that the president had relocated from France to the United Kingdom, from where he was doing an excellent job as Nigeria’s president in Europe.

The evidence seems inescapable that President Tinubu has significant health challenges and needs regular medical attention from doctors overseas. For this, his destination of choice is clearly France. In 22 months as president, Tinubu has made at least eight trips to the country under different guises for a cumulative period of over 60 days.

 

While that he’s been away this time, hundreds – if not more – had been killed in massacres in different parts of Nigeria. As president, Tinubu is also the Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria’s armed and security forces. Yet, from Europe, he is reported to be passing the buck to state governors to do that which only he has the tools to accomplish under Nigeria’s constitution.

Excluding the five years and three months of the presidency of Goodluck Jonathan from February 2010 to May 2015, Nigeria has had a presidency in near-permanent occupancy of sanatoriums overseas for 15 years. The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), which Tinubu led, was aggressively voluble in asking for candour on the health status of a terminally ill President Umaru Yar’Adua.

After going into marriage with Muhammadu Buhari’s Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) to create All Progressives Congress (APC), they made virtue of unlooking when Buhari took up residence in foreign hospitals for much of his presidency.

It should be no news that a man of President Tinubu’s age is unwell. Those invested in concealing that reality from Nigerians are more interested in protecting their present perquisites than in the wellbeing of their principal or of the country.

 

The presidency is more than just an office. For those around the occupant of the office, it also means money, power, and privilege. To preserve it, most people in and around the presidency take liberties, sometimes, even with the wellbeing of their principal or with accountability to the people in whose name he holds office. For the country and even for the president, the wages of this interminable subterfuge are prohibitive.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at chidi.odinkalu@tufts.edu

 In a recent media outburst, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Mr. Nyesom Wike taunted me for losing a case which he had won at the Supreme Court. Even though, I appear regularly in domestic and regional courts in Africa, Mr. Wike dubbed me "a television lawyer". 

I did not join issues with him on that occasion because Mr. Wike is the only life bencher in Nigeria who has never handled a case in any trial court or appellate court. Another reason for ignoring Mr. Wike's vituperations is that it is no crime if a lawyer loses a case in any court. In other words, only a corrupt lawyer wins all cases in all courts. 

A couple of days ago, Mr. Wike subjected me to another scurrilous attack in a press conference held in Abuja to showcase the Ministry of Federal Capital Territory. In the course of the press conference, he veered off and was alleged to have accused me lying about the defection status of certain legislators during an appearance on Channels TV.

While referring to a recent Supreme Court ruling that addressed the issue of defection, stating, “A few days ago, the Supreme Court settled this matter of defection." He then said that, "If someone of Femi Falana’s caliber can go on national television and lie, it’s very serious. Lies can cause a lot of crises. He expressed concern that such misinformation, especially from a respected legal figure, could escalate tensions if not addressed."

Specifically, Mr. Wike accused me of lying against the Supreme Court over its decision on the defection of 27 members of the Rivers State House of Assembly. Contrary to Mr. Wike's assertion, I did not lie against the Supreme Court in respect of the judgment in question. All I said was that the matter of the defection of the 27 legislators was raised _suo_ _motu_ and determined by the eminent Justices of the apex court. 

My comment was based on the undeniable fact that the vexed issue of the defection of the 27 legislators was pending in the Port Harcourt judicial division of the Federal High Court at the material time. In addition, there are video tapes and a sworn affidavit where the 27 legislators had confirmed their defection from the People's Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressive Congress. 

It is public knowledge that Mr. Wike had praised the Supreme Court to high heavens and held a thanksgiving service to celebrate the decision on the defection of the 27 legislators. However, he decided to attack me for commenting on the same judgment without any legal justification.  

I wish to state, without any fear of contradictions, that my fundamental right to criticise the decisions of courts is guaranteed by Section 39 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 as amended and article 9 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights. 

I would have ignored the minister's latest gratuitous attack but for the fact that he had recently called on the Body of Benchers to discipline lawyers who have the temerity to criticise the judgments of Nigerian courts. 

However, unlike Mr. Wike who calls judges names whenever they disagree with his politics of opportunism, I have always criticised the judgments of domestic and regional courts with utmost decorum and in good faith.

While Mr. Wike believes that it is a professional anomaly to criticise the decisions of Judges, the Supreme Court of Nigeria has always welcomed the criticism and review of its judgments because the Justices believe that they are prone to make mistakes like all mortals. It is undoubtedly clear that Mr. Wike is not familiar with the case of Adegoke Motors Limited v Dr. Babatunde Adesanya 2 1989 3 NWLR (Pt 109) 250 at 274 where Oputa JSC of blessed memory said that, "We are final not because we are infallible; rather we are infallible because we are final”.

About five years ago, the then Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad said to lawyers, “As critical stakeholders in the task of justice delivery, you have the responsibility of drawing our attention to where things are going wrong or on the verge of going wrong." Justice Muhammad further stated that It would not be out of place for lawyers to subject Justices in the country to criticism where necessary as a step to ensuring improvement in the justice delivery system.

From time to time, many respected Justices commend my criticism of the judgments of courts and the defence of the Judiciary. It is on record that at a recent valedictory service held in Abuja, a retiring Justice of the Supreme Court referred to one of my critical comments pertaining to the Nigerian Judiciary. 

In the light of the foregoing, Mr. Wike delibetately set out to incite the Supreme Court against me as the allegation levelled against me by him is spurious and tendencious in every material particular. Since he has become the unsolicited defender of the Judiciary, I challenge him to report me to the Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Committee for professional misconduct.

No doubt, the minister's latest gratuitous attack but for the fact that he had recently called on the Body of Benchers to discipline lawyers who have the temerity to criticise the judgments of Nigerian courts. 

However, unlike Mr. Wike who calls judges names whenever they disagree with his politics of opportunism, I have always criticised the judgments of domestic and regional courts with utmost decorum and in good faith.

No doubt, the decision of the Supreme Court is final on defection of legislators from the political party that sponsored them to another political party. In their wisdom, their Lordships said that defection can only be proved with the production of the register of members of political parties. My fear is that this decision will be waived by unpatriotic politicians to justify political prostitution in Nigeria. 

In the interest of political stability and national morality, I have respectively called on the Supreme Court to continue to rely on 

the cases of the Attorney-General of the Federation ?. Abubakar (2007) 10 NWLR (PT.1041) 1 at 178, Dapialong v Dariye (2007) 8 NWLR (Pt 1036) 332 and Abegunde ?. Ondo State House of Assembly & Ors (2015) LPELR-24588(SC) where it had been held that the consequence of a defection by a legislator is the automatic loss of his or her seat in the legislative house.

While Mr. Wike believes that it is a professional misconduct to criticise the decisions of Judges, the Supreme Court of Nigeria has always welcomed the criticism and review of its judgments because the Justices believe that they are prone to make mistakes like all mortals. It is undoubtedly clear that Mr. Wike is not familiar with the case of Adegoke Motors Limited v Dr. Babatunde Adesanya 2 1989 3 NWLR (Pt 109) 250 at 274 where Oputa JSC of blessed memory said that, "We are final not because we are infallible; rather we are infallible because we are final”.

About five years ago, the then Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad said to lawyers, “As critical stakeholders in the task of justice delivery, you have the responsibility of drawing our attention to where things are going wrong or on the verge of going wrong." Justice Muhammad further stated that It would not be out of place for lawyers to subject Justices in the country to criticism where necessary as a step to ensuring improvement in the justice delivery system.

It may interest Mr. Wike to know that from time to time, many respected Justices commend my criticism of the judgments of Nigerian courts and the defence of the Judiciary. It is on record that at a recent valedictory service held in Abuja, a retiring Justice of the Supreme Court quoted with approval one of my critical comments pertaining to the Nigerian Judiciary. 

In the light of the foregoing, it is indubitably clear that the allegation levelled against me by Mr. Wike is spurious and tendencious in every material particular. To that extent, he 

has failed in his desperate bid to incite the Justices of the Supreme Court against me without any basis whatsoever. However, it is high time that Mr. Wike was prevented from further parading himself as the unsolicited defender of the Nigerian judiciary.

 
To avoid getting into trouble, the conventional wisdom for many is not to get involved - mind your business. It is also a convenient excuse for pro-establishment or politically correct individuals who dread rocking the boat.
 
Persons with these tendencies abound in all strata of society, corporate establishments, social groups, religious establishments, in politics and government. They shy away from responsibility but might be the first to criticise those who speak out or make efforts.
 
In many cases, this group of persons would rather stand by for others to pull their chestnuts out of the fire, while they sit comfortably and enjoy.
Researchers in psychology have continued to interrogate the Bystander Effect or Bystander Apathy, a phenomenon where “individuals are less likely to help a victim when others are present.” This is mainly because “the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely any one of them is to intervene in an emergency or assist someone in distress… because individuals often assume that someone else will take action, leading to a diffusion of responsibility.”
 
Similarly, Herd Mentality, the tendency for people’s behaviour or beliefs to conform to those of the group they belong to, is a typical research topic. The concept has been studied and analysed from different perspectives, including biology, psychology and sociology and shown to have profound impacts on human behaviour.
On the other hand, passive spectators make up the numbers, but their passivity also has implications, especially on governance policies.
The passive spectator and bystander phenomena are not new. However, the action/s or inaction/s they spew continue to impact human behaviour and decision-making in societies and nations, particularly with the advent of digital technology, and the attendant implications on human progress and development.
Many of the images shared on social media today, including from life-threatening incidents, are generated by people who are part of the crowd and, in some cases, instead of assisting victims, are busy snapping shots or video recording the incidents.
 
In this Special Season, dear brothers and sisters, I wanted us to reflect on these concepts and how they can be transformed into positive energy for human development.
Incidents of herd mentality, bystander effect and passive spectator syndrome are recorded in the Holy Book.
Take the example of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:25-37. Many passers-by, including a Priest and a Levite, saw the traveller, attacked by armed robbers on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho. None of them stopped to help the victim, except the Good Samaritan. The others considered their interests or missions more important or did not want to get into the trouble of taking care of a man at the point of death.
 
Also, Acts 8:1 tells us that Saul, before his conversion, was present and even approved the stoning of Stephen to death, making the latter the first martyr.
In the same vein, in the parable of the adulterous woman in John 8:1-11, the crowd was ready to stone her until Jesus asked who among them had not sinned to cast the first stone.
And what about the crucifixion of Jesus Christ? Every group in the three concepts of herd mentality, bystanders, passive spectators and active participants, was represented in the spectacle.
The then-Roman Governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, was rather ambivalent. He had the authority to free Jesus, but chose to play to the gallery.
The same crowd, which had hailed Jesus as a King a few days earlier, called for his crucifixion.
Also, while some women wept and lamented the treatment meted out to Jesus, some Roman soldiers tried to outdo each other in tormenting Him.
Of the two criminals crucified with Jesus, one taunted Him to save Himself, if He was truly Christ, the Saviour as He claimed, while the other pleaded with Jesus to remember him in His Kingdom (Luke 23:39-43).
 
There were some at the crucifixion scene who could not be bothered, and those who did not bother to attend.  Even Jesus’ disciples abandoned Him.
The concepts of bystander, herd mentality and passive spectator syndrome can also be extrapolated to modern politics, to explore their implications on governance systems and possible remedies.
Today, many citizens, top-flight politicians and celebrities follow the Joneses to support any government in power. Others erroneously believe that politics or government business is not their business. Still, some citizens are intimidated into apathy or passivity.
Some describe politics as dirty, whereas it is the practitioners/politicians who play dirty.
 
The tragic irony is that it is because of or despite these negative tendencies that politicians and the political class thrive on to enjoy their booty unchallenged.
The citizens have the power, but are not using it, and the politicians and political elite know this.
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (1890-1970), the French general and Statesman who led the Free French Forces against Nazi Germany in World War II is a reference point in the advocacy for citizen participation in politics, an antidote to bystander effect, herd mentality and passive spectatorship.
 
He chaired the Provisional Government of the French Republic (1944-1946) to restore democracy in France, and in 1958, amid the Algiers putsch, he came out of retirement when he was appointed Prime Minister by President René Coty to rewrite the French Constitution, founding the Fifth Republic after approval by referendum.
Charles de Gaulle was elected President of France in 1958, a position he held until his resignation in 1969. Under the Socratic Method, which he popularised, the French Statesman affirmed: “Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.”
 
This quote acknowledges the “collective responsibility each individual holds in shaping the political landscape. It calls for an active participation in political decision-making processes, urging citizens to involve themselves…”
Like de Gaulle, Albert Einstein (1879-1955), a Jewish, German-born theoretical physicist and 1921 Nobel Laureate, best known for developing the theory of relativity, is also remembered for another famous quote against passivity.
 
According to Einstein, “The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”
Responsible citizens must eschew the bystander effect, herd mentality and passive spectatorship in secular and non-secular ecosystems.
Merely complaining is not a solution. It is better to stand for something than to fall for everything.
Since the decisions made/taken by politicians and the leadership in every system affect active and passive spectators, citizens must endeavour to discharge their civic responsibilities by taking an active part, asking critical questions and demanding accountability, to shape policies and contribute to the good of society, nation and the World.
 
I wish everyone a Happy Easter and Wonderful Holidays!
 
*Paul Ejime is a Media/Communications Specialist and Global Affairs Analyst