President Bola Tinubu is monitoring the #EndBadGovernance protests across the country, Atiku Bagudu, Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, has said.

For the third day running, Nigerians have been out on the streets, demanding reversal of fuel subsidy removal and other policies they tagged anti-masses.

The protest have degenerated into violence in some states, with more than 40 persons killed, according to the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).

Human rights activists, public commentators, politicians and other stakeholders have asked Tinubu to address the nation.

In a statement on Saturday, opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) said Tinubu’s silence was worrisome.

“It is worrisome that President Tinubu could remain silent as Nigerians are on the streets demanding for good governance, protection, security and welfare, which are the primary purpose of government, Debo Ologunagba, spokesman of the PDP said in a statement, on Saturday.

However, when he featured on a Channels Television programme, Bagudu, said the president is well aware of the situation and keeping tabs.

“Mr President has been monitoring the situation, as he ought to. Very responsibly, and alert. I am a minister. I also have responsibilities. I have also been monitoring this thing. I have been noting this thing so that I can make inputs.”

“We have been monitoring and listening carefully to hear what is being said and what noting them.”

[DailyTrust]

Nigeria Police Force on Saturday released an update on incidents recorded in the nationwide protests against economic hardship in the country.

The Police also dismissed a report by Amnesty International that 13 individuals have so far lost their lives in the ongoing protests, which began on 1st August, 2024.

This is even as the Force said it has also arrested a total of 681 individuals alleged to have committed various criminal offenses, recovering two AK-47 rifles and assorted live ammunition from protesters.

The Police warned that the ongoing protest has turned violent, and advised law abiding citizens to immediately withdraw from the protest.

In a statement by Olumuyiwa Adejobi, Force Public Relations Officer on Saturday, the Nigerian Police said the total number of deaths recorded so far during the protests is seven.

According to the statement, nine Police officers sustained various degrees of injuries during attacks by protesters.

Giving a breakdown of incidents from the first two days of the nationwide protests, Adejobi said: “In Borno State, four (4) individuals lost their lives and thirty-four (34) were severely injured in a terrorist attack by suspected Boko Haram/ISWAP elements who infiltrated the crowd of protesters and detonated an Improvised Explosive Device (IED).

“Additionally, an incident occurred involving an unregistered Honda Prelude car that ran into the protesters, resulting in the deaths of two (2) civilians.”

The police spokesman also said that there was another incident reported in Yauri Local Government Area of Kebbi State where a group of individuals mobilized to loot a shop, leading to a local vigilante man killing one of the looters.

He said there were no other recorded fatalities during the protests apart from those he mentioned.

However, Adejobi explained that incidences of armed robbery, arson, mischief, looting of public institutions and private businesses, destructions of both public and private property were recorded during the protest.

He said arrests were made with respect to the criminal incidences and a number of recoveries made from the suspects while the protest was going on.

Police operatives have fired teargas at protesters at the Moshood Abiola National Stadium.

Moments earlier, the protesters had engaged in a congress, allowing protesters of different ethnicities and tribe to air grievances and make demands on the government.

However, policemen fired teargas at the protesters, who on sighting them, sat on the floor, singing solidarity songs

Details shortly…..

[Nation]

Nigeria has secured at least $1.25 billion in loans from the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB) to boost electricity supply under the administration of President Bola Tinubu. 

On December 14, 2023, the World Bank approved the $750 million Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up (DARES) project in Nigeria. 

More recently, on July 31, 2024, the African Development Bank Group (AfDB) approved a loan of $500 million to the Federal Republic of Nigeria to help transform the country’s electricity infrastructure and improving access to cleaner energy sources.  

About the World Bank’s $750 million DARES loan to Nigeria 

The loan from the World Bank is structured into three distinct segments, cumulatively forming the $750 million total financial package. This package is segmented into credits of $350 million, $250 million, and $150 million, each earmarked for different facets of the project and subject to currency conversions as necessary. 

The primary implementers of this project are the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) and the Lagos State Electricity Board (LSEB), with significant support from the Federal Ministry of Power, the Nigerian Electricity Management Services Agency (NEMSA), the Federal Ministry of Environment, the Nigerian Electrification Regulatory Commission (NERC), and the Federal Ministry of Finance. 

According to the press release announcing the loan approval, $750 million credit from the International Development Association (IDA), is being used to leverage more than $1 billion from private investors and additional funding from different partners. 

Contributions include $100 million from the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet and $200 million from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).   

Other collaborators in this initiative include the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the German Development Agency (GIZ), Sustainable Energy for All (SEforAll), and the African Development Bank (AfDB).  

This ambitious DARES project aims to provide over 17.5 million Nigerians with better access to electricity through distributed renewable energy solutions. The goal is to tackle the electricity access deficit.  

The DARES program will assist the Federal Government of Nigeria in coordinating and finance off-grid electrification efforts. It will also aid states in developing capacity and policies to promote rooftop solar energy. 

Nairametrics earlier reported that the federal government plans to provide subsidy to developers and operators of solar mini-grids in unserved and underserved areas in the country. The subsidy will be provided through a World Bank approved loan of $750 million under the Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up (DARES) project. 

About the AfDB’s $500 million electricity loan to Nigeria 

According to a statement from the AfDB, this funding will finance the first phase of the Economic Governance and Energy Transition Support Program (EGET-SP), aimed at transforming the country’s electricity infrastructure and improving access to cleaner energy sources.  

The statement also noted that the loan will help close the financing gap in the Federal Budget for the 2024/25 fiscal year, specifically supporting the implementation of Nigeria’s new Electricity Act and the Nigeria Energy Transition Plan. These initiatives are designed to decentralize the electricity supply industry and attract investments from subnational governments and the private sector.  

What you should know 

Nigeria has secured approval of nearly $2 billion in loans from multilateral organisations, especially the World Bank before Bola Tinubu became president. 

For instance, on June 23, 2020, the World Bank approved $750 million as a loan for Power Sector Recovery Operation (PSRO) project to improve the reliability of electricity supply, achieve financial and fiscal sustainability, and enhance accountability in the power sector in Nigeria. 

Nigeria also got approval of $500 million on February 4, 2021, for the Nigeria Distribution Sector Recovery Program (DISREP) aimed at improving Nigeria’s electricity distribution sector. This program performed below expectation, which led to World Bank planning a supervision mission, scheduled from July 8 to July 12, 2024, in response to the persistent challenges and underwhelming progress of the program.  

There is also the Nigeria Electrification Project (NEP), for which Nigeria got an approval of $350 million on June 27, 2018. The World Bank recently restructured the loan to Nigeria to ensure the completion of seven critical power plants in educational institutions, bolstering the nation’s energy infrastructure. According to the Restructuring Paper on this restructuring involves an extension of the project’s closing date, with the new deadline for the loan project set to December 31, 2024.   

Despite all the loans approved to Nigeria, the power sector still struggles as Nigerians faces poor electricity supply. 

[Nairametrics]

The Nigeria Labour Congress on Saturday called on the Federal and State Governments to stop the “massacre” of citizens during the ongoing #EndBadGovernanceInNigeria protest.

The NLC, in a statement signed by its National President, Joe Ajaero which was obtained by our correspondent in Abuja, said the deployment of security operatives to the venue where citizens were peacefully protesting instead of deploying them against bandits was thoughtless.

Ajaero said the police, not the citizens introduced violence to the peaceful protests.

Protesters have continued to hit the streets in Lagos, Oyo, Abuja and other states as they call for, among others, the reversal of fuel subsidy removal and the skyrocketing price of goods and services in the country.

The ‘End Hunger’ protest has, however, been marred with reported lootings by hoodlums in Kano and other northern regions with the police going after the culprits to recover some items.

In the statement, Ajaero said, “With unconfirmed reports putting casualties at 40+ in two days of managing the EndHunger protest across the country, we have sufficient reasons (backed up by reports and video clips) to call to question the professionalism of our security personnel as this represents nothing but massacre of citizens. Had the security personnel deployed the same thoughtless brutal precision against bandits or other criminals, our country would have been an eldorado.

“As the lead agency in internal security management, the police bear the burden of this massacre. Kaduna State police command under the watch of Compol Audu Ali Dabigi represents the worst-case scenario in which one of the fleeing protesters was heard on camera desperately appealing to deployed police personnel to not shoot until his voice was drowned by a hail of bullets with the resultant death of a protester on the spot and several injured.

“In the same breadth, Edo State Police Command under the personal command of COMPOL Funsho Adegboroye represents the best in crowd management as he could be heard interacting and cajoling the protesters and almost effortlessly bringing them under control.

“It might be convenient to argue that the two states do have different socio-cultural milieus, however, an incontestable truth common to both, and indeed, all the states is that human life is sacred and should never be taken.
We are deeply saddened by this  wanton taking of life by trigger-happy police personnel.”

Speaking further, Ajaero recalled Abuja protesters’ experience with security operatives.

“In Asokoro, Abuja under the command of Compol  Bennett Igweh, protesters were heard querying why the police were shelling or tear-gassing them as they were marching solemnly without breaking a twig. One noticeable pattern was that once police personnel introduced violence, all hell broke loose in fulfilment of the credo that violence begets violence.

“We pause to ask, what happened to all the years of training or experience? No lessons learnt or was this a case of loss of human values on an industrial scale? Don’t our police personnel watch their colleagues in other parts of the world manage equally challenging (if not worse) situations?

“For a start, we demand that the cops with blood stains on their hands be fished out for appropriate disciplinary action. Ditto their commanders.

“Secondly, adequate compensations should be paid to the families of casualties while  the government should be responsible for the treatment and rehabilitation of the injured.”

The NLC warned that if the police failed to put a hold on violence, its members would be forced to act in protection of the ordinary citizens.

“In the days ahead, we look forward to a better crowd control mechanism even as the new directive from the IGP would sound to some of the personnel as a license to kill without reason.

“We will be monitoring closely as the situation unfolds.  The police as the lead-agency vested with power and authority on issues of internal security should not only lead by (a good) example but an inspiration to other services.

“However, if the police in self-righteousness consider this advice as meddlesomeness and persist in their slaughter,  they will be unwittingly creating a situation they were supposed to help avert in the first place. And we as members of organised labour will be left with no choice than the moral burden to act in protection of ordinary citizens,” the statement added.

[Punch]

Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Nkeiruka Onyejeocha has called for the suspension of the ongoing #EndBadGovernance protests.

Speaking to journalists in Abuja on Friday, Onyejeocha urged protesters to halt their demonstrations, citing concerns over the recent loss of lives and emphasising President Bola Tinubu’s commitment to improving living conditions for Nigerians.

“My heart goes out to those who lost their lives during the protests,” Onyejeocha said.

“It is quite unfortunate that these things have to happen this way. I plead that we should sheathe our swords, embrace peace, and stop at this moment.”

Onyejeocha reassured that President Tinubu has heard the public’s concerns and is actively working towards addressing them.

She urged protesters to trust in the president’s efforts and to support the government’s initiatives.

Similarly, Shuaibu Audu, Minister of Steel Development, urged protesters to trust the Renewed Hope Agenda and suspend the demonstrations.

In a statement issued by his Special Assistant on Media, Lizzy Okoji, Audu highlighted intelligence reports indicating that some individuals might attempt to hijack the protests and incite chaos.

Audu assured Nigerians that their expectations for good governance would be met by the end of President Tinubu’s first term in office, and urged patience and trust in the administration’s efforts.

Vanguard News

Alex Beard, the former chief executive director of Glencore, a British mining and trading group, has been charged to court in the United Kingdom, over alleged bribery in connection with oil contracts in West Africa.

Beard, a British billionaire businessman, was charged alongside four former employees of Glencore.

The others are Andrew Gibson, Paul Hopkirk, Ramon Labiaga, and Martin Wakefield.

In a statement published on Thursday, the UK’s serious fraud office (SFO) said the five Glencore employees have been charged in “connection with the awarding of a range of oil contracts variously spanning Cameroon, Nigeria and the Ivory Coast from 2007 to 2014”.

The SFO said Gibson and Wakefield have also been “charged in relation to the falsification of invoices to Glencore’s London office marked as service fees to a Nigerian oil consultancy from 2007 to 2011”.

The hearing of the case has been scheduled for September 10 at Westminster magistrates’ court.

Speaking on the development, Nick Ephgrave, director of SFO, said bribery damages financial marketers, adding that it causes lasting harm to communities.

“Today’s action is an important step towards exposing overseas corruption and holding those who are responsible to account,” Ephgrave said.

Glencore was involved in oil contract deals with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited and other oil corporations in West Africa.

GLENCORE’S BRIBERY COURT CASES

In May, the federal government said Glencore is expected to pay Nigeria a $50 million penalty for bribery.

Lateef Fagbemi, attorney-general of the federation, had said the resolution was reached after the federal government entered a settlement agreement with the British firm.

In May 2022, the United States department of justice said Glencore, and its UK subsidiaries, entered into multiple agreements to purchase crude oil and refined petroleum products from the NNPC through shady deals.

In Nigeria alone, the department said, Glencore and its subsidiaries paid more than $52 million to the intermediaries, intending that those funds be used — at least in part — to pay bribes to Nigerian officials.

In the same month, the trading firm agreed to pay about $1.5 billion in total to resolve investigations in the US, United Kingdom, and Brazil — of which $1.06 billion was payable to agencies in the US and Brazil.

Glencore had pleaded guilty to five counts of bribery totalling $26.9 million, which was paid “primarily to officials in state-owned oil companies” in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, and Nigeria.

The company also admitted to two charges of failing to prevent bribery over payments of approximately $1 million to agents in Equatorial Guinea and South Sudan, to secure “valuable oil contracts”.

[TheCable]

The controversy around women’s boxing at the ongoing Olympic games revolves around the participation of two athletes, Imane Khelif of Algeria and Lin Yu-ting of Taiwan, who had failed gender eligibility tests in the past. These two have long competed as women, but were disqualified from the 2023 women’s world championships by the International Boxing Association (IBA) for failure to meet “eligibility rules”. But the current Olympic organizers got that reversed. The rest, and the fallouts, remain an onfolding world drama today.

In the following dialogue between Celeste and her friend, Jasmine, take up the twin issues of sexual orientation and gender confusion.

Jasmine: I would like to start today’s discussion by saying that we are no longer sure who is a man or a woman. Gender switching is going on; and this is all being promoted under the LGTBQI+ movement. What is one to make of growing same sex relationships?

Celeste: What I think is going on is that we are no longer in touch with our true essence as human beings today. It goes beyond what is generally called the global gender crisis, one aspect of which is the widespread promotion of gay relationships. For the sake of clarity, perhaps we should start by you explaining to me what the term LGBTQI+, which you mentioned, means. 

Jasmine: Yes, that is very important.

Celeste: It stands for Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender, Queer, Intersex and others. The acronym is even sometimes written as LGBTQIA, to include asexual groups, where ‘queer’ is an umbrella term for non- straight people.

Jasmine: But we all grew up knowing gender to refer to the two sexes. That was before the term got expanded to cover many things that do not fall under established ideas of male and female. That is the problem for us today, as far as I am concerned.

Celeste: Of course, it is to some of us. Think, for instance, of those who say that they are Pansexuals, that is people who could be sexually attracted to animals, little children, or whatever catches their fancy at any point in time.

Jasmine: Pansexuals?

Celeste: Yes. And all these now-freely-advertised sexual orientations, like the Asexual, Polysexual, Agender, Bi- gender, Ecosexual, Intersex, Androgynous, Gender Fluid, Non-Binary, Gender Queer, Transspecies, Transaging and Transable, are demanding the right to freely exercise their sexual preferences.

Jasmine: All of that? Please what do all these categories you just referred to mean?

Celeste: Polysexual refers to anyone who is sexually attracted to more than one gender including the unconventional, then there are the Bisexuals who are attracted to regular male and female, while Agender are people who do not identify themselves as belonging to any particular gender at all. The latter are different from the Bi-gender, who are sexually attracted to two genders outside the Cisgenders.

Jasmine: Just a moment, what do you mean by Cisgender? You used the term just now.

Celeste: Cisgender refers to people like you and me.

Jasmine: But we are perfectly normal people. How do we come into the gay movement?

Celeste: We are not part of the gay movement; I beg your pardon! People who are deemed to be men or women in the traditional sense at birth and who also have no problem seeing themselves as such, like you and I, are said to be cisgender men and women. Cisgender is the opposite of transgender, ecosexual and all the others.

Jasmine: I see. That is good to know, before one is surreptitiously smuggled into some strange classification, or association. Now what is the ecosexual one you just mentioned?

Celeste: These are people who are sexually attracted to the earth, nature or the ecosystem.

Jasmine: People who are sexually attracted to the earth, nature or the ecosystem?

Celeste: Yes! They may use sex toys and materials inspired by nature. They could also have sex with the earth, in the belief that they are helping to heal it of natural disasters and diseases. There are also even some people who believe that they are animals imprisoned, or incarnated, in human bodies.

Jasmine: Now, that is silly!

Celeste: But they are perfectly serious about it. And they are different from the Intersex, and ‘hermaphrodite’ have male and feminine characteristics combined into an ambiguous form.

Jasmine: Male and female characteristics combined?

Celeste: Yes. This may be due to birth defects caused by mutation, inappropriate medication or other causes. Some of such cases can be corrected by surgery; usually with the dominant sexual characteristics retained.

Jasmine: Well, that is good to know.

Celeste: But some promoters of the LGBTQI+ agenda are against such surgery, insisting that such people should be identified as intersex and allowed their ‘rights’.

Jasmine: But what could possibly be the cause of all this? I mean both the strange conditions and the mindset of those who promote them.

Celeste: First there is the simple matter of medical impropriety and natural birth defects; which must also invariably have their roots in the karma and spiritual history of the people concerned. But that is a matter for another day.

Jasmine: Well, I suppose so. But, for now, let us continue with the various sexual orientations of what I consider a depraved world.

Celeste: Yes, let us continue. Did I mention cases of people who feel that they are of a different sex, even though they are born as another?

Jasmine: No, you did not.

Celeste: Oh, there are such people and they are referred to as cases of Androgyny. They are different from the Gender-fluid, who do not identify themselves as having a permanent and fixed gender.

Jasmine: Quite frankly, this has really gotten out of hand!

Celeste: The terms Non-binary and Genderqueer are sometimes used interchangeably to refer to people who prefer, or appear, not to be exclusively masculine or feminine at any time. They are also different from the Transspecies, who claim preference for anything whatsoever that catches their fancy.

Jasmine: Some people want anything, not just any person, that catches their fancy?

Celeste: Yes. Then you have those called the Transaging, who claim to feel younger/older than their actual age and wish to be recognized and associated with their age of choice. 

Jasmine: Wow!

Celeste: The transaging are also different from the Transracials, who wish to be associated with, and be recognized as belonging to, a race other than the one into which they were born. These are still different, yet again, from the Transable, who are physically able people that choose to be associated with any particular disability they are attracted to.

Jasmine: But this is outright insanity making the rounds! What could possibly be responsible for all of this, I still wonder? What do the people pushing for a reclassification of human beings really want? Why are they pushing back on everything we know and causing what, to me, is unmitigated confusion everywhere?

Celeste: The right question, perhaps, is: what are the hidden forces behind these people and what do we see them doing? Is it all part of the events of the Last Judgment, or not? Are these things the manifestations of many spiritual issues that the people trying to deal with them do not understand? 

Jasmine: The forces behind them? What forces? These people are just low-grade social nuisances that should not be taken seriously.

Celeste: I am not so sure about that, Jasmine. You can see that there is an upsurge of evil everywhere. There is also confusion about right and wrong, all over the world. So, the global sexual orientation crisis and gender crisis is only just one dimension of the avalanche of strange ideas confronting human beings everywhere. 

Jasmine: It is?

Celeste: Yes, it is! 

Jasmine: But the entire thing seems so well mapped out, well planned, well- funded and is being pursued with great singleness of purpose. 

Celeste: Yes. All resources are flowing to those operating on the fringes of normalcy. Look, Jasmine, the spiritual foundations of our current problems, as well as their implications for our future here on earth, should be the most important concern of everyone now.

Jasmine: Is there a specific meaning, or special significance, to all that is going on? I mean, what does the Last Judgment got to do with it?

Celeste: It seems to me that the pressures of the Last Judgment is forcing many things out from their hiding places to face the Ray of Judgment.

Jasmine: I just don’t know what to say right now, Celeste. Please continue, I would like you to recap on how this whole thing is presumed to be leading all human beings astray.

Celeste: When people are made to redefine what makes them human, what makes them male, what makes them female, they are already on the path to something they do not know yet. But one of the things that will follow is that they will turn all values on their heads. 

Jasmine: Oh yes, that is a very likely consequence.

Celeste: Once that happens, the difference between right and wrong will also become nebulous. Anyone who does not know right from wrong, and who does whatever he likes in the belief that he has every right to do so, is clearly operating in the realm of official insanity; but without knowing it. Such a person is also, thereby, replacing the Will of God, who created everything to function in a certain way, with his own human will.

Jasmine: Indeed! But, sorry to still take you back to the sexual orientation issue, how do people hope to achieve such a no-mean feat of making us all to accept their aberrant doctrines?

Celeste: The matter is an intricate one. In fact, we can describe it as a ‘project’ that is designed and structured to succeed on a grand scale, as a global agenda. Let us make this, as well as other spiritual dangers of this period of the Last Judgment, the subject of a fresh discussion.

Jasmine: Are you sure?

Celeste: Trust me, Jasmine, there is a lot more to it than meets the eye. So, do we defer the discussion to another day, when we shall have enough time to really dig into it?

The above dialogue, prefaced with the raging Olympic controversy, is taken from my coming book in The Dialogue Series titled; ‘Signs of the Last Judgment’.

The nationwide #EndBadGovernance protests that are convulsing the neoliberal fundament of the Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration are redefining and redrawing the contours of protests in Nigeria in many significant ways. Although I’ve been on the road since Thursday, here are lessons I’ve learned from the protests.

One, there is now a profoundly consequential decentering of the locus of protest culture in Nigeria. In the past, protests against unpopular government policies used to be conceived, constructed, and carried out by a self-selected class of professional protesters based mostly in Lagos who earned activist bona fides from their anti-military, pro-democracy, human rights advocacy in the 1980s and 1990s.

These careerist agitators are now either in government, in bed with the government, or have suffered significant contraction of their symbolic and cultural capital. Most Gen Z Nigerians whose vim and vigor power the ongoing protests either don’t know them or know them but have no use for their guidance.

So, the conception, planning, and execution of the protests have neither a recognizable locale nor any identifiable dramatis personae. A lot of the known names identified with the protests merely joined and amplified it. They didn’t start the revolt and can’t stop it. It’s effectively a leaderless rebellion.

It started life as anguished, discordant murmurs on social media in response to the increasingly unendurable but relentlessly unabating neoliberal, IMF/World Bank-sanctioned economic and social terror of the Tinubu administration. Many of the young people who can’t feed now and whose future is being perpetually deferred have enough education to know that the delayed gratification the government promises them from removing subsidies and from devaluing the naira has never materialized anywhere in the world.

Everywhere in the world—from South America to the Pacific and from Asia to Africa—from the 1980s (when the IMF first forced Structural Adjustment Programs on developing countries) until now, there is not a single example of a country that has escaped irreversible devastation and decline as a result of subsidy removal, currency devaluation, destruction of social safety nets for the poor, abandonment of the welfare of citizens—all IMF policies that countries are forced to implement as conditions to secure World Bank loans. 

The only countries that have developed outside the West are precisely the countries that have repulsed the IMF, that have strategically deployed subsidies to buoy their economies and uplift their people, and that have guarded their national currencies. Many young Nigerians now realize that the idea that the pains they are suffering are mere temporary birth pangs that will deliver a bouncing baby is a damned, soulless, conscienceless, self-centered lie. They’ve had enough.

So, they resolved to band together and fight peacefully.  They chose to demand the restoration of petrol subsidies, among other demands, because they see that the people who took away petrol subsidies from them are themselves luxuriating in unimaginably opulent elite subsidies. Their cries quickly gained traction. 

For the first time in a long time, northern and southern youth found common ground. Northern agitations for “zanga zanga” and southern push for #EndBadGovernance protests, though gestated independent of each other, somehow converged. It’s a unity forged in diversity and adversity.

The second lesson is a derivative of the first, and that is the unexampled collapse of the cultural, political, and social power of the Northern Nigerian Muslim clerical establishment. Northern Nigerian clerical elites, known as the ulama, had been constituted in the region’s moral imagination as the apotheosis of probity and the unquestioned source of moral and political guidance. 

They have used this power, this priceless symbolic capital, to keep the masses perpetually in a state of suspended animation. They have programmed northern Nigerian masses to not resist, protest, rebel, much less revolt, against bad governance. They socialized them into accepting their economic suffering with equanimity. The only thing the clerical elites have conditioned the masses to be implacably roused and animated over is real or perceived slight against religion.

 For example, amid the inexorably intensifying breakdown of security in the region during the Muhammadu Buhari administration, the clerical establishment also intensified fraudulent theological rationalizations for the rise of kidnappings and exculpated Buhari of responsibility for this. That was why Buhari got away with murder for eight years.

However, although there was a ground swell of anti-zanga zanga sermonizing among the region’s notable clerics in the aftermath of their meeting with officials of the Tinubu administration, northern Nigeria is erupting in communal convulsions. It is also instructive that protesters in Daura took their anger to Muhammadu Buhari’s doorsteps. No one is immune now. The genie has been let out of the bottle.

The #OccupyNigeria protests in 2012, which the North also actively participated in largely, some would say precisely, because of the religious and regional identity of Goodluck Jonathan, had the moral imprimatur of the clerical establishment. 

This is the first major example in recent memory I am aware of in the North where the masses of the people not only bucked the impassioned counsel of their ulama but have openly labelled them as unreliable and mercenary charlatans not worthy of respect. This is a culturally seismic shift.

The third lesson is that the federal government is in more trouble than it realizes. It invited civil society leaders, traditional rulers, religious clerics, and certain audible voices in the protest movement in an effort to thwart the protest. It was inspired by the mistaken belief that these hitherto esteemed opinion molders had the capacity to use their conversational, symbolic, political, and cultural currencies to influence people to back out of the protest.

It didn’t work because the habitual order of things has shifted, and the government hasn’t come to terms with this reality. We call it decentering in humanities and social science scholarship. "Decentering" involves challenging and moving away from traditional centers of authority, meaning, or truth. It means a shift of focus from dominant cultures, narratives, or perspectives and the amplification of marginalized, peripheral, or alternative voices.

The government’s cluelessness about this social media-enabled decentering of traditional ways of seeing and knowing manifested in its mutually contradictory claims about who was sponsoring the protest—and in its counter-intuitive displays of persecution complex. 

The State Security Service said it knew the “sponsors” of the protest, but the police asked the “sponsors” to identify themselves as a precondition for protection. High-profile government officials fingered foreign mercenaries as the organizers and funders of the protest. They all can’t wrap their heads around the possibility that distraught, depressed, and disgruntled young people, without prodding from anybody, can organize protests to ventilate their frustrations at foreign-inspired policies that kill their present and deny their future.

Unfortunately, the government’s response follows the same miserably familiar template: whine like over-indulged crybabies about fictive “sponsors,” induce or intimidate people thought to be behind the protests, deploy strong-arm tactics against protesters, and do nothing about the conditions that instigated the protest in the first place—until it happens again another time.

The fourth lesson is that there is a relationship between how security forces respond to protests and how they turn out. In such states as Edo, Osun, Oyo, and Ogun, the police were admirably polite and even-tempered. 

I saw a video of the Edo State police commissioner addressing protesters in the kindest, most empathetic way I’ve ever seen any senior law enforcement officer addressing aggrieved people. The protesters reciprocated the police commissioner’s mild-mannered and conciliatory speech with chants of his praises. That warmed my heart. Tinubu can learn from that.

But in places where law enforcement officers treat protesters as enemies of the state and visit unprovoked violence on them, things easily escalate into violence and bloodshed. We saw that in Kaduna, Kano, Abuja, and many parts of the North.

It should be admitted, of course, that there are many criminal elements who cash in on protests to loot the properties of innocent people or destroy government properties. I saw heartrending videos of criminals stealing or destroying private and government properties in Kano and Abuja. Such outlaws deserve no mercy. It’s elements like that who justify the government’s apprehensions about protests always devolving into chaos and destruction. 

Finally, although many people from the Southeast supported the protest, the region was the only place, as of the time of writing this column, where almost no protest took place. Was it the culmination of the ethnic baiting of the honchos of the Tinubu administration who said the protests were planned by the people of the region as a payback for their electoral loss in 2023? Whatever it is, it does not give a good account of our efforts at nation-building.

Well, President Tinubu has just one option left for him if he doesn’t want to govern in disabling tumult: address the nation in a solemn national broadcast, acknowledge the unprecedented hurt people are nursing, announce the restoration of petrol and electricity subsidies, and reverse the disastrous “floating” of the naira. 

Tinubu’s loyalty should be to Nigeria, not the racist economic hitmen at the IMF and the World Bank.

On Wednesday, 31st July, the world woke up to the devastating news that our mother, the music legend, thespian and journalist, Onyeka Onwenu had passed away. 'The elegant stallion', as she was famously known in the entertainment circle, reportedly slumped after a private performance in Lagos on Tuesday night. 

She was promptly rushed to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead, aged 72. We understand thst our mother was healthy and literally full of life before the unfortunate incident. She obviously bowed out of earth stage like a legend, doing what she loves most, which is putting smiles on people's faces through music and entertainment. 

The news sent currents of grief around the globe as fans and well wishers have praised her contributions to music, entertainment and politics in Nigeria. From the president to the ordinary citizen, we appreciate all the tributes and encomiums that have come in our time of mourning. We also take solace in knowing that our mother was a standout musician, thespian, broadcaster, politician and a social crusader. She was vocal, assertive, passionate and brilliant.

We are overwhelmed with all the well wishes. We also recognize that it is the joy and memories that she gave to Nigerians that has afforded us such an immense outpouring of love. We are very aware of her diverse and multitalented nature. An icon, a musical legend, a movie star, a journalist, a humanitarian and a politician, our mother was a world-class performer who serenaded and blessed multiple generations with the beauty of her voice while preaching unity and love.

We are honored and deeply touched by all the kind words, condolences, and gestures of support from Nigerians of all ages and from around the world. The expressions of love and admiration for her now extends to us and they have brought much comfort and solace at this most difficult period for us. The impact of her life and legacy will always be felt, especially by us, as we continue to draw inspiration from her lifelong advocacy of peace, unity, and One Love.

Tijani and Abraham Ogunlende.

Sons of Onyeka Owenu