Category: Opinion

By Festus Adedayo

History records that the most fatal stabs always come from within oneself. In other words, there is a motif of proximity to stabs. Deepest wounds are often delivered, not by external rivals, but by those within the same household or friends.

On September 22, 1828, the reality of his above dawned on the Zulu of present day South Africa. Afflicted by a strange psychosis that struck him after the death of Nandi, his mother, King Shaka Zulu went berserk. He ordered a year-long mourning of Nandi, forbade planting of new crops, banned milk from the kingdom and ordered the execution of pregnant women, as well as their husbands.

How does the kingdom handle this? Shaka’s half-brothers, Dingane and Mhlangana, as well as his induna, (chief advisor/attendant) Mbopha, had immediate answers. As Shaka’s army embarked on a military expedition northwards, the conspirators saw a loophole. While Shaka slept at his royal kraal in kwaDukuza, the trio caught him off guard, stabbing him fatally with their spears. As he lay dead, Dingane seized the reign of the Zulu Kingdom.

If that example is too alien, lost in the bowel of two centuries, let’s come home, to a contemporary example on the African continent. Thomas Sankara and Blaise Compaoré were what Yoruba call Kòrí-kòsùn — bosom, intimate and inseparable soulmates who shared an extremely close, deep bond. That bond was to later become one of the most famous real-life political fratricides on the continent. While Sankara was Head of State of Burkina Faso, he and Compaoré were not just ideological allies; they referred to each other as “brothers in arms.” In 1987, Compaoré orchestrated the fatal coup that got Sankara executed. He then took over power, while systematically legitimizing his regime by deconstructing Sankara’s revolutionary legacy.

West African Mali empire epic griot recall themes of betrayal similar to the above. The epic goes thus: At the death of King Naré Maghan, his first wife, Sassouma Bereté and her son, Dankaran Touman, conspired against Sundiata Keita, Dankaran’s crippled half-brother. They did this out of envy and fear of Sundiata’s fame. An earlier prophecy had predicted Sundiata’s greatness. Both mother and son mocked Sundiata’s cripple state and then tried to eliminate him. The late King Maghan had in fact left a testament that the young, disabled Sundiata should take over the reign of the kingdom but Dankaran, who now usurped the throne, forced his crippled brother into exile.

Balla Fasseké, Sundiata’s devoted griot and advisor, took sides with Sundiata, leading to his exile, too, by Dankaran. In exile, Sundiata waxed stronger while, on the throne, Dankaran appeared to the people as a weakling. Then, when Soumaoro Kanté, Dankaran’s sorcerer, invaded Mande, out of fear, Dankaran fled. The void of a vacant monarchy led the Mande to send emissaries to Sundiata who, in a triumphant return, eventually became the king.

In both ancient and contemporary times, there is a huge literature of brothers stabbing brothers. From the biblical Cain killing his brother, Abel, out of jealousy of divine prosperity; to Julius Caesar being stabbed by his friend, Brutus, the literature drips of blood. Among the Igbo, there is a recurring motif of two brothers hunting or traveling together. One, the less-acclaimed/jealous brother plots to kill the other, so as to claim the crown or inheritance. Also in Igbo cosmology, extracting personal gains from one’s kinsman (Nwanne) at the expense of his life or well being, for personal gain, is considered a severe cultural transgression. Chinua Achebe’s literature is filled with such thematic warnings. He built a cultural archetype about fratricide as capable of breaking the fabric of Igbo community.

Again, traditional Igbo sees any attempt at breaking Umunna (kinship) values as cultural transgression. It questions the morality of exposing and externalizing home-front disputes as tantamount to handing over one’s kinsman to external political adversaries.

From whichever lens you may look at it, though framed as fiscal transparency and Anambra State governor, Prof Charles Soludo, claimed he was “setting the records straight” by releasing his Anambra brother, Peter Obi’s alleged debt claims, what he did was actually Brutus stabbing Caesar, simplicita. It is fratricide disguised as governance audit. After he stabbed Caesar, Brutus’ defence, too, just like Soludo’s, was that it was done out of duty to the Roman state.

The above stab is also a replica of what happened between joint Roman Emperors and biological brothers, Caracalla and Geta. It is one of Roman antiquity’s most brutal accounts of sibling rivalry. It is dubbed the story of political fratricide and paranoia. Both brothers were born only eleven months apart. Their parents were Emperor Septimius Severus and Empress Julia Domna. Both brothers grew up in the palace with mutual childhood hatred, up until their adulthood.

A contemporary historian, Cassius Dio, recorded that both men serially clashed over sports, music, and social circles. Their father, in his bid to stabilize his dynasty, made them co-emperors. History recorded that while Caracalla was emperor in 198 AD, Geta was in 209 AD. In 211 AD, as he lay dying on his deathbed in Eboracum, modern York, Severus’ famous advice to his sons was, “Be harmonious, enrich the soldiers, and scorn all other men.”

On the throne, however, the hostility of the brothers paralyzed Roman governance. They then mutually divided the imperial palace into two. To avoid being poisoned, they fortified their doors with bodyguards and employed food-tasters. They even attempted to divide the Roman empire into two, a plan that was thwarted by their mother who tearfully asked if they wanted to divide her body, too. In December 211 AD, Caracalla decided to eliminate his brother. He arranged a fake reconciliation for their mother’s apartment, a place that would raise no suspicion and make Geta feel safe. There, Caracalla’s guards pounced on Geta and, as he fled to their mother’s bosom, clinging to her neck, he was stabbed to death nevertheless.

After killing him, Caracalla ordered what was called condemnation memory – a damnatio memoriae – which removed his brother’s name from every inscription in Rome, including his images. Any contrary effort, he decreed, was an offence against the Roman State. He also executed about 20,000 of Geta’s palace staff, supporters, friends, and political allies all over Rome.

What Soludo did last week in Anambra State is comparable to damnatio memoriae. Just as Brutus stabbed Caesar under the guise of “doing it for the republic” and administrative duty, on the on-going loan brouhaha, Soludo is Brutus and Caracalla rolled into one. Through Dr Law Mefor, his Commissioner for Information, Soludo disclaimed Obi’s self portrayal as loans-repellant during his time as Anambra State governor. Mefor, in a statement, said Obi left unpaid loans from eight different external borrowings, the total balance of which, at the official exchange rate, stood at N127.4 billion.

To me, the veracity or otherwise of both men’s claims on the loans is secondary. My questions to Soludo are: Since the man he claimed is his “good friend” — for whose sake he is stabbing his Nwanne –left office in 2007, has Soludo ever heard a word of the humongous broad daylight theft done on that friend’s behalf in his home turf? Has Soludo ever since then heard successors of his “good friend” talk about the loans he took while in office? Does he know that putting a shroud on his “friend’s” dirty linen was done in the spirit of their own brand of Umunna?

My concluding question to Charles Soludo will then be — is this newfound “Et tu, Brute?” spirit of his, which propelled the stabbing of his Nwanne — a result of an ambition to be president of Nigeria after his Anambra tenure, or, is Charles naturally a grumpy Cain and a betrayer Judas, who sold his predecessor for 30 pieces of shekels?

-By Abdul Mahmud

In the foundational imaginary of Yoruba literature, the forest was never simply a collection of high-canopy trees and dense undergrowth, but rather a sacred and liminal grove of the spiritual where humanity confronted the supernatural.

When D.O. Fagunwa wrote his classic masterpiece, Ogboju Ode ninu Igbo Irunmale, translated beautifully by Wole Soyinka as The Forest of a Thousand Daemons, he invited generations of readers into a mystical landscape populated by ghommids and spellbinders; a terrain where the courageous hunter faced terrors to secure wisdom and cosmic equilibrium for his community.

In that literary landscape, the wilderness represented an inheritance of heritage, a deep well of ancestral memory, and an existential boundary that separated the civilised hub of human society from the untamed, magical wonder of the cosmos.

Today, however, that ancient virginal tapestry has been violently stripped from our geography, replacing the enchantments of folklore with a terrifying material reality that desecrates our collective heritage.

The contemporary Nigerian wilderness has transformed into something profoundly sinister, morphing into a hideous sanctuary for bloodthirsty kidnappers and highly organised transnational drug syndicates.

The recent, unsettling disclosures by the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, delivered through the agency’s Director of Media and Advocacy, Femi Babafemi, must be understood as an existential alarm bell that shatters any remaining illusions about national territorial integrity.

Under the proactive leadership of Brigadier General Mohamed Buba Marwa, the agency’s painstaking, multi-month investigation has unveiled a sophisticated web of illicit enterprise that turns the deep foliage of Ogun and Oyo states into highly industrial narco-laboratories.

The arresting imagery of operatives infiltrating remote forest locations on May 16 to apprehend three Mexican nationals alongside seven Nigerians is compounded by the subsequent raid on June 17 in Tapa village, within the Ibarapa North Local Government Area of Oyo State, where a fifty-six-year-old Mexican chemist named Jose Villa Ochoa was caught operating a clandestine methamphetamine factory.

This is no longer a matter of petty border smuggling or localised transit trade; it represents the terrifying domestic institutionalisation of industrial-scale synthetic drug manufacturing right under our feet; and before our korokoro eyes as the streets would put it.

We must interrogate how global drug cartels from the Americas can seamlessly export their deadly technology, technical expertise, and operational footprints directly into the heart of rural southwestern Nigeria without triggering immediate local resistance.

The cold truth is that foreign chemical engineers like Jose Villa Ochoa do not simply wander into the forests of Tapa village or clear land in Ogun State by accident or sheer geographic coincidence.

These transnational merchants of death operate through an intricate, deeply entrenched framework of domestic collusion, facilitated by a powerful, highly influential class of Nigerian collaborators who trade the sovereign security of their homeland for immense financial returns.

These local collaborators provide the essential infrastructural scaffolding for this toxic trade, utilising their local networks to secure vast tracks of remote land, navigate rural traditional authority structures, and smoothly bypass formal regulatory frameworks.

Without this domestic elite acting as facilitators, financiers, and protective shields, a Mexican cartel would find it impossible to transport delicate laboratory equipment and highly controlled precursor chemicals through our ports and checkpoints into the depths of our forests.

This parasitic collaboration exposes a catastrophic moral decay within a segment of the Nigerian elite who are willing to turn the country into a toxic narco-state for their personal enrichment.

By financing the establishment of methamphetamine laboratories, these domestic actors are not just breaking the law, but are actively seeding an epidemic of synthetic substance addiction that will inevitably destroy millions of young Nigerian lives.

The devastation wrought by methamphetamine, commonly known on the streets as ‘mkpuru mmiri,’ is already well-documented across communities, tearing apart families and overwhelming our fragile mental health infrastructure.

To cultivate the industrial capacity for this drug within our own borders, using the natural cover of our ancestral forests to shield production from the law, is an act of supreme betrayal against the future of our country.

It turns our natural heritage into a landscape of death, guaranteeing that the poison manufactured deep inside our forests will return to devastate our urban centers, universities, and rural communities alike.

This forest invasion reveals a dangerous convergence between the operational methods of international drug cartels and the existing networks of rural banditry and kidnapping that have long plagued our rural populations.

For several years, our failure to effectively police, govern, and defend our massive forest reserves has allowed various criminal groups to establish autonomous fortresses where they hold citizens for ransom with absolute impunity.

By allowing these vast spaces to remain ungoverned territories, the Nigerian state has inadvertently created the perfect, low-risk ecosystem for international drug syndicates looking to build clandestine factories far away from urban law enforcement.

The frightening synergy between well-funded drug cartels and heavily armed kidnapping syndicates could create a self-sustaining criminal economy where drug wealth directly funds sophisticated weaponry, making these remote forest empires virtually impenetrable to conventional police forces.

Our forests are being stolen from us, transformed from symbols of natural wealth and cultural pride into dangerous, militarised enclaves of global criminality.

The federal government must therefore look beyond reactive law enforcement and recognise that this crisis demands a comprehensive, strategic re-occupation of our national territory.

We cannot afford to treat the discovery of these hidden methamphetamine laboratories as isolated criminal incidents to be managed by occasional raids and subsequent criminal trials.

The state must launch an aggressive, systematic campaign to permanently project authority into every forest reserve, national park, and remote borderland, ensuring that no square inch of Nigerian soil remains outside the sovereign reach of the law.

This requires deployment of advanced aerial surveillance, sustained rural patrols, and the active integration of local communities into a comprehensive territorial defense strategy.

We must rebuild the broken relationship between rural populations and formal security agencies, ensuring that local farmers and hunters become the primary defensive shield against foreign cartels and their domestic sponsors.

More importantly, the full weight of the state’s legal apparatus must be brought down upon the Nigerian financiers and facilitators who make these international criminal incursions possible in the first place.

The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency must expand its focus from the physical laboratories and foreign chemists to relentlessly trace the financial trails that lead directly back to comfortable boardrooms, political offices, and elite estates in Lagos, Abuja, and Ibadan.

True deterrence will only be achieved when these local enablers face total asset forfeiture, long prison sentences without the option of a fine, and complete public exposure of their treasonous activities.

They must be treated not only as accomplices to drug trafficking, but as existential national security threats who have actively invited foreign syndicates to set up criminal colonies within our borders.

The magical forests that once defined our collective cultural imagination, serving as spaces of ancestral memory and spiritual reflection in our classic literature, are being systematically erased by a dark, modern reality.

If we remain passive, allowing our wilderness to be permanently surrendered to the control of kidnappers, bandits, and Mexican drug cartels, we will witness the complete collapse of rural security and national sovereignty.

The demons that modern Nigeria faces are no longer the mystical, fictional entities of D.O. Fagunwa’s literary imagination, but are instead flesh-and-blood criminals driven by greed and enabled by local treachery.

We must reclaim our forests from these merchants of death, restoring our wilderness as a place of peace, productivity, and natural beauty, while ensuring that those who seek to turn Nigeria into a narco-state are utterly defeated.

​By Professor Ani Casimir

Driving Nigeria’s $1 Trillion Economic Agenda

​The successful launch of the Osara strategic project reflects Minister Udeh’s broader “Research to Revenue” framework as one of his national driving forces and motivational planks at the Federal Ministry of Innovation, Science, and Technology (FMIST), which seeks to convert domestic scientific research into commercial enterprises. By merging vocational education with cutting-edge technology transfer, the Barefoot Renewable Energy College provides a sustainable model for youth empowerment and industrial decentralization—proving that Nigeria’s clean energy transition is not merely an environmental goal, but an engine for economic growth.

​The commissioning of the Barefoot Renewable Energy College (BARECKS) at the Confluence University of Science and Technology (CUSTECH) in Osara, Kogi State, marks a structural shift in how Nigeria and the wider African continent approach energy expansion. Beyond serving as an academic institution, the college shall act as a catalyst across several key dimensions of sustainable development identified below:

​1. Closing the Critical Technical “Manpower Gap”

​For decades, green energy adoption across Sub-Saharan Africa has suffered from a shortage of indigenous technical expertise, often leading to reliance on costly foreign technicians or abandoned solar infrastructure.

​1.1. Institutionalizing Vocational Skills: BARECKS directly addresses this bottleneck by standardizing practical, hands-on training for technicians, engineers, and installers.

​1.2. Self-Sustaining Operations: Building a domestic talent pool ensures that off-grid and mini-grid installations can be assembled, repaired, and managed locally, dramatically extending the lifespan of clean energy assets across the region.

​2. Grassroots Energy Inclusion & Gender Empowerment

​Modeled on inclusive educational frameworks, the “Barefoot” concept prioritizes demystifying technology for marginalized, rural populations.

​2.1. Rural Electrification: By training local youth and women from off-grid communities, the college creates clean energy ambassadors who bring solar power, clean cooking technologies, and micro-grid solutions straight to remote areas.

​2.2. Bridging Inequality: Training programs targeted at women and underserved demographics directly support UN Sustainable Development Goals—specifically SDG 5 (Gender Equality) and SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy).

​3. Economic Diversification & Green Job Creation

​Nigeria’s economy has historically relied heavily on fossil fuel revenues. The establishment of BARECKS aligns with the country’s broader transition toward green industrialization.

​3.1. Youth Employment: Clean energy installation, component assembly, and mini-grid management offer scalable avenues for youth employment and entrepreneurship.

​3.2. “Research to Revenue” Pipeline: Situated near pilot facilities such as the Green Hydrogen Research and Demonstration Plant, the institution serves as an incubation hub, turning indigenous innovation into commercial products.

​4. Direct Contribution to Net-Zero 2060 Goals

​Nigeria has committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2060 while expanding electricity access to over 85 million currently unserved citizens.

​4.1. Reducing Fossil Fuel Reliance: Replacing diesel generators with solar micro-grids and green hydrogen applications substantially lowers carbon emissions across industrial, agricultural, and residential sectors.

​4.2. National Grid Stabilization: Technical innovation coming out of Osara provides practical templates for hybrid power architectures, supporting national grid resilience.

​5. A Blueprint for Sub-Saharan Africa

​Positioned as Africa’s pioneer Barefoot Renewable Energy College, the Osara complex serves as a regional prototype.

​5.1. South-South Cooperation: Neighboring African nations face identical challenges: high solar irradiance coupled with inadequate local technical capacity. BARECKS provides a model for regional cross-border training, technology transfer, and joint research tailored specifically to African climatic and economic environments.

​6. National Impact Matrix of the Osara College Commissioning

6.1. Human Capital: Shifts Nigeria from a technology consumer to a skilled, self-reliant clean energy workforce.

6.2. Economic Development: Nurtures green micro-entrepreneurship and reduces national dependence on foreign experts.

6.3. Climate Action: Accelerates decentralized clean power adoption to meet national Net-Zero targets.

6.4. Pan-African Leadership: Positions West Africa as an active contributor to global green technology innovation.

The commissioning of the Barefoot Renewable Energy College (BARECKS) at Osara serves as a key indicator of the Honourable Minister, Dr. Kingsley Tochukwu Udeh, SAN’s operational competency and his strategic alignment with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda. This strategic ministerial milestone reflects his administrative leadership and political commitment across three main areas of the ministerial vision and strategic mission he articulated upon his appointment.

​It is evident from his body language that he is fully committed to the consistent implementation of this presidential vision across every level of his Ministry. This evidence-based commitment is attracting daily global, regional, and national visibility for Nigeria.

​7.0. A New Biotechnology Ecosystem for Nigeria

​Dr. Kingsley Udeh, SAN, is moving Nigeria toward building a stronger, innovation-driven, and globally competitive economy through major policy decisions in the biotechnology and bioenergy sectors. With Mr. President approving the Revised National Biotechnology Policy as the national framework for the development, application, regulation, and commercialization of biotechnology in Nigeria, the implementation of this revised policy will position Nigeria to better harness opportunities presented by the rapidly expanding global bioeconomy, strengthen national competitiveness, attract investment, improve food and nutrition security, and accelerate sustainable economic growth.

​Furthermore, Nigeria’s membership in the Global Bioenergy Partnership (GBEP) provides an important platform for international cooperation, knowledge exchange, and the advancement of sustainable bioenergy development. Under the leadership of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, the Federal Government remains committed to translating science, technology, and innovation into practical solutions that improve lives, strengthen our economy, and create opportunities for Nigerians. In furtherance of this presidential directive, Dr. Udeh is ensuring that Nigeria does not merely participate in the emerging global bioeconomy, but develops the scientific capacity, regulatory environment, partnerships, and commercial ecosystem required to compete effectively within it.

​7.1. Proof of Ministerial Competency and Action-Oriented Leadership

​Delivering a flagship, complex infrastructural and educational project—spanning solar technology, biomass, and green hydrogen pilot infrastructure—demonstrates strong administrative capability. It highlights Minister Udeh’s capacity to translate federal policies into tangible investments.

​7.2. Bridging the Legal-Technological Divide

​As a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) leading the Federal Ministry of Innovation, Science, and Technology (FMIST), Udeh’s legal and policy background equips him to navigate complex institutional frameworks, public-private partnerships, and regulatory governance required to launch national science infrastructure.

​7.3. Operationalizing “Research to Revenue”

​The Minister has consistently advocated for turning academic and scientific research into commercialized, high-impact products. Grounding this college in practical, hands-on technical assembly directly executes that vision.

​7.4. Alignment with President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda

​The Renewed Hope Agenda rests on key pillars: economic diversification, energy security, job creation, and youth empowerment. Minister Udeh’s championing of this project directly advances these mandates:

​7.5. Energy Transition & Security: By establishing local capacity for off-grid renewables and green hydrogen, the Ministry directly supports the President’s goal of modernizing Nigeria’s power mix, expanding electricity access, and hitting Net-Zero 2060 decarbonization targets.

​7.6. Job Creation and Youth Inclusion: Rather than relying solely on imported technology and foreign consultants, the “Barefoot” vocational model builds indigenous technical capacity, equipping young Nigerians with market-ready green skills.

​7.7. Industrial Decentralization: Locating Africa’s pioneer barefoot energy college in Osara, Kogi State, aligns with the administration’s policy of decentralizing infrastructure and spreading federal investments beyond primary urban centers.

​For the Honourable Minister, Dr. Kingsley Tochukwu Udeh, SAN, this project validates his stewardship of the Science, Technology, and Innovation portfolio. It demonstrates that under his leadership, the Ministry is moving beyond abstract policy formulation toward concrete, revenue-generating, and human-capital-building outcomes that advance the President’s vision for economic renewal.

​Nigeria possesses immense talent, natural resources, and scientific potential. Our task now is to support the strategic vision of the Honourable Minister as he works to convert that potential into innovation, enterprise, and sustainable national prosperity.

​Professor Casimir Ani is the Director/Team Lead, Ethics, AI, and Higher Education Strategic Projects (EAISTRAP), University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He is also a Member, UNESCO Technical Working Group on Ethics of AI for Nigeria (since 2022).
Email: casimir.ani@unn.edu.ng

By Sebastine Okafor, Ph.D.

A few days ago, various media platforms were filled with reports of the withdrawal of one of the gubernatorial aspirants of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Enugu State Chapter, Prof. Enenwannaji, following his alleged truce with one of his fellow aspirants, Sir Chinyeaka Oha. The Prof. is said to have emerged from what many described as an “illegal primary” conducted by the state chapter of the party, led by Dr. Johnpaul Anih, whom they claimed was not recognised. However, after a series of peace talks, he decided to step down for Sir Oha, whom he described in the media as his brother.

That act was seen by many as a welcome development, to the extent that many media houses reported that the crisis bedevilling the party was over. But, in reality, it may only be the beginning of the main crisis.

Where there are two allegedly disputed processes and one person decides to step down, the withdrawal of one does not, by itself, cure the alleged legal defects surrounding the process that produced the other. In law, a disputed process cannot simply become valid because one of its participants has withdrawn.

It is a well-known fact that the National Working Committee of the party did not conduct any primary election in the state, while the state faction recognised by INEC, led by Dr. Johnpaul Anih, conducted what it described as one of the best primary elections to be held by any opposition political party in the state.

Going by the legal questions surrounding the process, NDC may be heading into a deep electoral problem in Enugu State. The party, for instance, swore affidavits to protect some of its earlier fielded candidates, including Hon. Emeka Aba for Igboeze North/Udenu Federal Constituency, Barr. Agubuzo of Udi/Ezeagu Federal Constituency and Bishop Oscar Ossai of Enugu North Senatorial District, among others, before somehow removing them.

In those affidavits, the party allegedly confirmed that it did not conduct any primary, while filing a series of conflicting documents. In one document, the party stated that the chairman of the electoral committee, Chief Teddy Obey, conducted the primaries with his team. In another affidavit, the party denied that Chief Teddy Obey was the chairman of the electoral committee.

The reason for this is not far-fetched. Chief Obey is the Zonal Vice Chairman of the party in the South-East Zone and also a member of the 20-member National Selection Committee and Screening Committee. Chief Teddy’s alleged involvement in these different capacities has raised substantial questions about compliance with the party’s guidelines, especially where the party itself appears to have attempted to remove his name from the list of those who conducted the primary election.

It is also a known fact that, even where the party claims to have conducted a primary in Enugu, questions remain about the existence of a clear and verifiable list of electoral committee members who conducted the alleged primaries across the senatorial zones, federal constituencies and state constituencies.

This is important because the courts have repeatedly held that a party’s primary process must comply with the law, the Constitution of the party and its own guidelines. In APC v. Nelson & Ors (2023) LPELR-59758(CA), the Court of Appeal stressed that evidence must establish that the primary was actually conducted by the competent organ of the party before other issues surrounding it can have legal effect.

As it stands, the party has about 40 cases challenging the outcome of the primary in the Federal High Court, Enugu, and more than 11 doing the same at the Federal High Court, Abuja.

One clear position running through these disputes is the allegation that the NWC of NDC did not conduct any primary election in Enugu State and that even the primaries the party claims to have conducted are not supported by a clearly established INEC monitoring report.

The courts have recognised that the conduct of party primaries is not completely beyond judicial scrutiny where statutory or party rules are alleged to have been breached. In Mansur v. PDP & Ors (2023) LPELR-59791(CA), the Court of Appeal considered the legal consequences of an alleged failure to conduct a valid primary, while in Agi v. PDP, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the courts can intervene within the limited area created by electoral law when the nomination process is alleged to have violated the law or party guidelines.

Another angle to this is that, in some cases, the party would allegedly deny the involvement of the plaintiff in the pre-primary election process, claim that its candidate emerged through affirmation and still publish the names of those it claimed never participated, with the names appearing in certified copies of its primary election result sheets reportedly signed by the same Chief Obey whose involvement the party had denied.

These conflicting positions are not matters that can simply be wished away through political negotiations. They raise questions of evidence, credibility and the legal foundation upon which any candidate seeks to stand.

The Supreme Court has made it clear that the political party plays a central role in the sponsorship of a candidate. In Ozomgbachi v. Amadi & Ors (2018) LPELR-45152(SC), the Supreme Court addressed the relationship between political parties and their candidates in electoral contests.

It is a known fact that a series of allegations have been flying around about the party in Enugu, but the truth remains that you cannot build something on nothing. You cannot collect money from people, write names of candidates, create conflicting records and expect those affected not to seek justice.

Where a party wants its candidate to appear on the ballot, the foundation of that candidacy must be legally defensible.

A settlement between two aspirants may resolve a personal disagreement, but it does not automatically extinguish the rights of other aspirants who have approached the courts, nor does it erase questions concerning the legality of the primary process.

The courts have repeatedly treated the statutory and party-guideline requirements as relevant where a genuine aspirant challenges the nomination process. As the Court of Appeal noted in Labour Party v. Nnaji & Anor (2023) LPELR-59426(CA), disputes surrounding party nomination can turn on whether the party complied with the applicable legal and internal requirements.

As it stands, the party in Enugu State may find it difficult to escape the legal tussle in which it has allegedly found itself because just one successful suit out of the many pending cases could have serious consequences for its candidates and its participation in the election.

This is why the question is no longer simply whether Prof. Enenwannaji has withdrawn for Sir Chinyeaka Oha. The bigger question is whether the process that produced the candidate who remains can survive judicial scrutiny.

If a court finds that the relevant primary was not conducted by the competent organ, was not properly monitored or was otherwise not conducted in accordance with the Electoral Act and the party’s guidelines, the withdrawal of one aspirant cannot rescue the process.

In that situation, the real possibility is that NDC may be left without a legally sustainable candidate in Enugu State and, consequently, may not find its name on the ballot for the affected election.

The only potentially sellable candidate for the party in the state, therefore, remains Peter Gregory Obi, but even that political strength cannot substitute for compliance with the law.

–By Abdul Mahmud

There are countries that build monuments to their heroes because they understand something that Nigeria appears to have forgotten: a nation does not preserve its memory by allowing history to remain in books, archives and speeches alone, it gives memory a physical address, places the faces of its heroes in the public square and tells succeeding generations, through bronze and stone, that these are the men and women whose lives enlarged the meaning of the country they served; Nigeria should begin such a conversation with Tobi Amusan, and I would go further, I think Nigeria owes her a statue.

The argument has little to do with athletics alone, and even less to do with the transient excitement that accompanies victory on a track, for Amusan did something considerably larger than win a race: she placed the Nigerian flag at the summit of world athletics, became the first Nigerian world champion in an athletics event, broke the world record in the 100 metres hurdles in Eugene in 2022 with 12.12 seconds, and returned almost immediately to win the world title in a manner that transformed her from a gifted athlete into part of the country’s permanent sporting history. The world record has now been taken from her by America’s Masai Russell, but records move, champions change and sporting history keeps rewriting itself; what cannot be erased from Nigerian history is that Amusan was the first Nigerian athlete to hold a world record and win a World Athletics Championships title.

A statue would therefore not be a reward for a race, nor an ornamental gesture towards a successful sportswoman, but a public declaration about the kind of citizenship Nigeria chooses to honour; in a country where too much public space has been appropriated or effectively privatised by people whose careers have left the country poorer in both material and moral terms, there is something almost radical about returning the public square to the public and filling it with the likenesses of people whose achievements belong to everyone. Nigeria has become remarkably generous with the elevation of political power into public memory, with the names and images of officeholders appearing on roads, buildings, and institutions, while their records remain contested, but the people who have given the country reasons to feel proud are too often left with medals, photographs and the fading applauses of ceremonies. Other countries understand the difference. Britain has placed Nelson Mandela in Parliament Square in London, among figures whose public lives have become part of the moral language of the country and the wider world; India has filled its public spaces with monuments to Gandhi, Ambedkar and other figures whose lives are inseparable from the country’s history;

Such monuments do something more than preserve likenesses. They tell a nation what deserves remembrance.

Nigeria has no shortage of people deserving such remembrance. The country has produced writers who enlarged the African imagination, scientists whose work travelled beyond our borders, athletes who made the Nigerian flag visible on the greatest stages of world sport, soldiers and civilians who paid the ultimate price in moments of national crisis, teachers who spent entire lives educating children without receiving anything approaching the honour accorded to less deserving public figures, and ordinary citizens who performed extraordinary acts of courage without cameras, government delegations or ceremonial titles. Joseph Blackson should belong to this conversation. In 2018, when a passenger boat capsized in Rivers State, Blackson, a 36-year-old diesel supplier and father of two, repeatedly entered the water and rescued 13 people; he was attempting to rescue the 14th when he died. There is something deeply unsettling about the fact that such a man can disappear almost completely from national memory while the names and faces of men who have done considerable harm to the public good remain permanently reproduced across Nigeria’s civic landscape.

Abuja offers us an extraordinary opportunity to correct this imbalance. The Federal Capital is a city of hills, and those hills already give the capital a natural scenery from which to contemplate the city below. I would like to see Nyesom Wike, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, consider turning one of those hills into a national place of remembrance, perhaps the hills around the intersection of the road beyond NICON Junction and the expressway running from the AYA Junction towards Gwarimpa, into what might appropriately be called Heroes’ Hills. Or the hills overlooking the city gate. Imagine approaching Abuja and seeing, rising above the metropolis, the statues of Nigerians whose lives have given the country something larger than political office: Amusan standing with the quiet authority of an athlete who carried the Nigerian flag to the summit of world sport; Blackson looking towards the city whose citizens he once risked his life to save; and, alongside them, the men and women whose courage, intellectual achievement, sacrifice, or service have enlarged the grand Nigerian story.

The idea has an appealing symbolism because Abuja was conceived as the capital of a nation that sought a common centre, a place that could stand above the claims of particular regions and speak to the idea of Nigeria as one country. What better place, then, for a hill of heroes? From such a height, the statues would look over a city that represents the Nigerian idea of unity, while the city below would look upwards towards people whose achievements belong to no single ethnic group, religion or political party. Heroes’ Hills could become a place where a Nigerian child from Sokoto stands beside another from Rivers and sees in the monuments a shared inheritance; a young athlete from Edo could encounter Amusan’s story and imagine a future of her own, while the story of Blackson could remind another child that heroism does not require office, wealth or fame. A visitor to Abuja would encounter not another monument to political power, but a hillsscape devoted to the memory of people who gave something to the nation without demanding the nation in return.

A country should know the difference between power and heroism. Power can purchase a billboard, commission a portrait and name a road; heroism does not need an office before it deserves remembrance. Amusan ran for Nigeria when the world was watching, Blackson entered a river when people were drowning, and the moral value of their acts does not depend on whether either of them possessed political influence. A child walking past a statue of Amusan would encounter the image of a Nigerian woman who reached the highest level of her sport; a child standing before a monument to Blackson would encounter the story of a Nigerian who saw strangers in mortal danger and entered the water until his own life was lost.

There is also a deeper reason for putting Amusan in bronze. Her world record may have been taken from her, but the passing of a record should strengthen rather than diminish the case for preserving her place in Nigerian memory. Records belong to the present; monuments belong to memory. Another athlete may run faster, another generation may produce a greater hurdler, but nobody can become the first Tobi Amusan again. Her 12.12 seconds in Eugene belongs permanently to the history of Nigerian sport, just as her world championship belongs to the country’s history. The statue should stand somewhere Nigerians actually encounter it in the course of ordinary life, somewhere young people pass on their way to school, work or sport. A monument should interrupt the ordinary movement of a city and ask the passer-by to remember. Heroes’ Hills would offer precisely such a setting.

Let us build the hill where Nigeria’s real heroes can look over the country they helped make proud. Let us put Tobi Amusan in bronze.

Under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC), Nigerians have experienced an abhorrent failure of governance.  Eight years of Muhammadu Buhari was a disaster. In its aftermath, and four years of President Tinubu’s presidency, nationalism, governance, unity, peace and security have foundered progressively.  Patriotism is all but dead.

APC’s leadership -in the three arms of government – has behaved so capriciously that rule of law and, our entire democracy is at stake.  Tinubu’s administration, has mortgaged the future of Nigerian children, including the unborn. Our lives and our governance modalities are broken. That’ is sufficient grounds to vote them out in 2027.

Under Tinubu’s watch Nigeria has borrowed itself into a huge debt trap; so much so that our national economy and fiscal profile are unsustainable.  Presently, Nigeria owes a whopping N160 trillion in debt. Meanwhile, the government has squandered N9.3 trillion saved from fuel subsidy on salaries and other non-capital and non-generative expenses.  The government now wants to raid the N270 billion in dormant accounts and unclaimed dividends belonging to private citizens.

As a nation, Nigeria has never been this weak and this exposed. This explains why the government is running national budgets from three fiscal cycles concurrently. Budget padding has become the norm. Due process, savings or the sovereign wealth fund is not their priority. APC has been so fiscally profligate that there is neither a firewall nor a safety net for the national population.  And there are no proper guardrails against official malfeasance. Nigeria is now a crime scene. The evidence abound.

Then there is the blatant failure in delivering basic education and primary healthcare, resulting in 20 million out-of-school children and a globally high rate of infant and maternal mortality.  Pervasive insecurity nationwide, threatens communities, livelihood, food security, manufacturing, and has resulted in 350,000 civilian deaths and over 900, 000 internally displaced persons (IDPs).

Overall, the government has failed in its primary responsibility to protect Nigerians. Hunger and poverty stand weaponized. Ungoverned spaces are expanding. Cost of governance and cost of living have spiraled sky-high.

Tinubu’s government is audaciously undemocratic. Constitutional violations abound in its actions. Budget padding and whimsical alteration of legislative bills is now the norm. A case in point, the presidency altered provisions of the 2025 tax reform bill passed by the National Assembly.  The presidency by subterfuge arrogated to itself authoritarian powers like seizing and selling of taxpayers assets without court orders.  This is not just criminality; it is authoritarianism writ large.

All our national development indices now point southwards.  180 million Nigerians are strapped in multidimensional poverty. We have 20 million out of school children, the highest globally. A bulge of our national youth population falls within the NEET cadre-Not in Education, Employment or Training.

Tinubu’s Nigeria represents the classical case of leadership hubris and arrogance. Tinubu’s leadership is so fraught with hubris that our national psyche is egregiously damaged. The president’s personal and leadership credentials continue to demarket Nigeria. Bigotry, nepotism, and tribalism in governance, appointments, projects and resources distribution has worsened our deep-seated challenges in ways hitherto unimaginable.

Disconcertingly, the present cadre of leaders does not only display extreme false pride, but also a false sense of superiority.  Their groupthink deludes them into believing that they know best; they refuse expert advice and often contend that the rule of law is not applicable to them.  It’s hardly surprising that the government’s top hierarchy as well as the APC presidential campaign team is replete with public officials with pending criminal cases.

Tinubu’s government has wittingly become fascist. The present administration is driven by precepts rather than best practices. Government’s purpose and possessiveness are tribe-driven. So despite visible and indisputable infrastructural blight and palpable broad disenfranchisement, such gross domestic disapproval has been muted by bigotry and tribalism.

Tinubu and the ruling APC are the very antithesis of clean governance. What is most troubling is that the leadership seems insensitive or clueless as to how bad things are in Nigeria.  They also seem oblivious that price hikes of over 20% on commodities like medicine, food and fuel induce adverse shock on the society.

For most Nigerians, there is no aspirational quality to national life. Indeed, life under Tinubu is short, brutish and cheap.  Bloodletting and death becomes us. Things are so bad that if APC were a manufactured product, it would have been pulled off the shelves and banned for being detrimental to human existence.

Clearly, Tinubu’s governance modality is off-kilter and his administration is so undisciplined that the government has no compassion or moral compass. Misaligned policies elicit toxic legacies. As such, a patent glaring distrust and distance now exists between the Presidency and the national population. This is the result of a perversely broken system, broken lives, and Tinubu’s toxic legacy. This is a disaster for Nigeria. The status quo cannot stand. It cannot continue, not when Nigeria faces an existential threat.

Year 2027, will serve as Nigeria’s meeting moment. Presently, most political discourse in Nigeria revolves on bad governance, excessive borrowings, and excessive cost of governance; the parlous economy, pervasive insecurity, impunity, blinkered corruption and diametric State Capture.  These are undemocratic dividends under Tinubu that must end.

Already public criticisms of Tinubu’s government and open dissent are on the rise.  Public anger is also simmering, especially amongst Gen Z youths. Some scrimmages have occurred publicly. The situation seems fragile and ready to snap at which point the anger might spill into the streets.  As things stand, Nigeria runs the risk that an electoral incident, a faux electoral outcome or a mere happenstance, might be catalytic to such an uprising.  Those who deem that possibility unlikely are living in a fool’s paradise. They should be thinking of how to avoid or react to the type of violent Gen Z uprising that occurred in Bangladesh in 2024 and Nepal in 2025.

Despite presumed sectional gains and coveted advantages, President Tinubu has done enormous political damage to his tribe in the context of Nigeria. Nonetheless, only Nigerians can redress their national plight. As such, Nigeria’s political opposition must rally to the common cause of voting out Tinubu and the APC.  Another four years of Tinubu and the APC means that we won’t have a nation called Nigeria. 2027 might be Nigeria’s tipping point.

———-

Obaze is MD/CEO, Selonnes Consult – a policy, governance and management consulting firm in Awka.

By Professor Ani Casimir, KC

​Osara in Kogi State, Nigeria, has turned into another Jerusalem and a history maker for the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, administration in the critical sub-energy sector. The Honourable Minister of Innovation, Science, and Technology is chalking up huge creditable records that are increasing his validity and positive visibility in the eyes of the Presidency—something never witnessed before by his predecessors in office. He is a record breaker, as Osara has made national history under President Tinubu’s watch as the new vista of sustainable energy generation. In a historic leap toward sustainable power and green economic growth, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, has commissioned the Energy Commission of Nigeria (ECN) Complex and the pioneer Barefoot Renewable Energy College in Osara, Kogi State, Nigeria. Described as the first of its kind in Africa, the project stands as a strategic cornerstone of the Federal Government’s commitment to energy security, technical capacity building, and clean energy transition under the Renewed Hope Agenda.

​The Honourable Minister waxed poetic as he hailed the commissioning of BARECKS and the Green Hydrogen Pilot Plant, which President Tinubu reaffirmed as a practical manifestation of his commitment to innovation-led development. The elated President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, represented by Vice President Senator Kashim Shettima, GCON, commissioned the Barefoot Renewable Energy College (BARECKS) and the Green Hydrogen Research and Demonstration Pilot Plant in Kogi State. The Honourable Minister of Innovation, Science, and Technology, Dr. Kingsley Tochukwu Udeh, SAN, beaming with patriotic pride, described the landmark projects as a bold demonstration of the Federal Government’s commitment to innovation, renewable energy, and sustainable national development. While giving his keynote address at the commissioning ceremony, the Minister said the twin projects reaffirm the Federal Government’s resolve under President Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda to build a knowledge-driven economy where Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) serve as catalysts for industrialization, job creation, economic prosperity, and sustainable national development. He noted that the Ministry remains focused on translating research into practical solutions, innovation into commercial opportunities, and scientific discoveries into national wealth.

​The National Strategic Investment for a Sustainable Energy Future

​Highlighting the transformative vision behind this historic development, the Honourable Minister of Innovation, Science, and Technology, Dr. Kingsley Tochukwu Udeh, SAN, described the complex as a strategic national investment designed to bridge Nigeria’s technical skills gap and power its renewable energy infrastructure. “The Energy Commission of Nigeria Complex and the Barefoot Renewable Energy College perfectly align with and project the Renewed Hope Agenda of Mr. President,” Minister Udeh stated after the successful commissioning of the Osara Energy Project. “It will promote job creation, economic diversification, improved energy access, poverty reduction, and sustainable development.”

​The Barefoot Renewable Energy College is structured to deliver hands-on, practical training in solar technology, biomass, and other decentralized renewable platforms. By equipping technicians, youth, and rural innovators with market-ready skills, the institution will nurture and sustain a massive concentration of an indigenous workforce capable of installing, maintaining, and scaling clean energy systems across West Africa. The Honourable Minister and the Presidency have spent quite some time ensuring that everything is in place for the success of the commissioning. Now that it has taken place, we need to highlight the insider details of this strategic breakthrough in Nigeria’s sustainable renewable energy institutionalization.

​Key Highlights of the Osara Complex

​1) Each facility and unit in the College is an innovative project initiative with core functional impact for Nigeria’s technological transformation and development. Nigeria is on the move in Africa as a core driver of technological innovation. A conceptual clarification of the complex’s separate units will illustrate this strategic benchmark with the Osara College curriculum layout:

​2) Barefoot Renewable Energy College: Practical vocational training in solar, biomass, and renewable technologies to build a skilled workforce.

​3) Green Hydrogen Research & Demonstration Pilot Plant: Decentralized green hydrogen testing as a clean alternative to diesel generators.

​4) National “Research to Revenue” Alignment: Translating home-grown indigenous scientific innovation into commercialized, market-driven energy solutions.

​5) Net-Zero 2060 Commitment: Targeting greenhouse gas reduction across the industrial, transportation, and power sectors.

​Pioneering Green Hydrogen Innovation

​The four core functional areas go beyond vocational training. A technical layout identifies the Osara complex’s technological innovative energy project that houses the Green Hydrogen Research and Demonstration Pilot Plant. The facility serves as a testing ground for decentralized green hydrogen systems—a zero-emission alternative designed to offset heavy reliance on diesel generators, particularly in regions with fragile grid infrastructure. Dr. Udeh emphasized that diversifying Nigeria’s energy mix with green hydrogen directly advances the country’s pledge to attain net-zero carbon emissions by 2060. The Ministerial vision mirrors the President’s Renewed Hope vision that cascades to many functional divisions: first, the Barefoot Energy College, and second, the Green Hydrogen Facility. In the first place, the Barefoot College will generate and activate practical training, workplace upskilling, and local technical assembly. On the other hand, the Green Hydrogen Facility will establish a diesel alternative for Nigeria, increase grid stabilization, and help Nigeria achieve the 2060 net-zero target set by Mr. President.

​As the Honourable Minister, Dr. Kingsley Tochukwu Udeh, SAN, assured: “Osara will empower Nigeria and Mr. President to achieve this strategic energy target for the nation.”

​…to be continued in the next part.

By Festus Adedayo

In 1969, legendary Yoruba Sakara music lord, Yusuff Olatunji, serenaded and celebrated the sterling qualities of the Seriki of Egbaland, Chief Abdul-Wahab Amódemájá. Amodemaja held an Egba high-ranking military-derived civil title. In his Volume 3 album entitled Amódemájá, using a twin engine of dense metaphor and vivid imagery, Olatunji advocated for the place of good people as templates of a good society. The man he called “Abudu Amodemaja” was his prime example. He sang: “If you behold some people gaily and expensively dressed, sitting in royal poise on elegantly embroidered horses, unbeknownst to an enraptured world taken in by these adornments, these men are merely decorated swindlers.” Olatunji’s raw Yoruba rendering was: “B’óo r’òmo elòmíìn l’órí esin, jìbìtì l’ó fi ñs’èsó.”The paradox of esin (horse) and èsó(adornments), set against jìbìtì (swindle), was a potent literary tool this Sakara legend deployed to teach the virtues of the noble citizen.

Are there still good people in Nigeria? Are there good people in Nigerian politics? Can they be found anywhere in Nigerian government circles?

Yusuff Olatunji sang this song barely nine years into the Nigerian post-colony. It was an era when personal honour was paramount, and dishonorable people were treated as social rejects and villains. Olatunji himself had carved a remarkable niche in the social cosmos. A musical hippopotamus, his feat in popularizing traditional Yoruba music across Nigeria and the West African coast was adjudged legendary. Deploying profound poetic lyrics, philosophical reflections on existential matters, and a mastery of the single-headed frame drum called the Sakara, Olatunji denounced societal ills while celebrating impeccable character.

Amodemaja was equally known by the moniker, “A. B. Council” due to his massive influence in First Republic’s Abeokuta Council local administration. Musicians of the era took turns celebrating this incredibly influential powerhouse of Egbaland. Yet, Amodemaja was a prominent Ogboni secret society leader for whom the Edan – a sacred, highly revered pair of cast brass/bronze figures clipped by an iron chain that served as membership emblem and spiritual authority in the indigenous Yoruba Ogboni society – was his bond. In an emerging post-colony where Christianity and Islam had colonized the religious consciousness of the people, how did that society reconcile this complex reality?

Amodemaja spent a lengthy period as the Adelé Oba (Regent) of Egbaland before the coronation of Oba Oyebade Lipede as the 9th Alake of Egbaland. His character must have been the reason why, when he passed in the late 1970s, his death caused a seismic rupture in the social fabric of Egbaland. Indescribably hurt by the shock of his passage, his fellow Egba son and Apala music spellbinder, Ayinla Omowura, composed an evergreen tribute in his honour. In it, Omowura deconstructed death as a “disheveled idiot with ugly, black, and dilating eyes” for its audacity in stealing the crème de la crème of society. Suddenly, as Omowura sang, the cadence of his drums shifted. His drummers masterfully infused the solemn, heavy rhythmic beats of the Ogboni traditional dance into their drumming. It was a final salute to a man for whom neither the Bible nor the Quran, but the cylindrical Edan, was his bond – a tribute that led critics to submit that Omowura himself was likely an initiate.

Forgive the digression. The offering today is not music, traditional worship, or a tribute to departed heroes. It is politics – raw Nigerian politics in its most roiling, unfiltered form. The focus today is the dwindling values of Nigerian politics and politicians, alongside the elaborate swindle racket that governance in the country has become.

Look around you today. Even before they officially mount campaign podiums, Nigerian politicians have begun regaling us with grand promises. In real terms, these are simply an assortment of lies in which they do not believe and which will never materialize.

What is the precise place of lies in Nigerian governance? A vast body of literature exists on lying as a political weapon. The Nigerian electorate should, as usual, prepare to be treated to a confetti of falsehoods as we travel the 2027 election road. Worldwide, debates on social and political lies continue to engage public discourse. Are political lies symptoms of a systemic cancer, or are they mere political sports that should be excused? In the 2022 Annual Billy Dudley Memorial Lecture he delivered, Prof. J. A. A. Ayoade, dwelt extensively on this phenomenon. It is a paper that remains an essential reading.

Lying, Ayoade noted, is “ubiquitous and prevalent in human society.” He defined a political lie as one “purposely constructed in the politician’s heart to deceive the public with a view to gaining and/or maintaining political power.” He observed further: “Studies say that Americans lie an average of 11 times per week. This is in contrast to Donald Trump, who, according to the Washington Post, logged 20,055 falsehoods in 1,207 days – an average of fifteen lies per day. The average politician, starting at age eighteen, would have lied 33,747 times by age seventy. At 30,000 false claims attributed to Trump in his four-year term, he told 88.9% of the lies the average citizen would tell in fifty-three years.” This reality likely drove Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka to dub Nigeria “the Republic of Liars” in his 2015 work, InterInventions: Between Defective Memory and the Public Lie.

The maths above does not diminish the toxicity of political lies or the sheer scale on which politicians deploy them. The liar, Ayoade argued, “opts to lie because he calculates that the truth cannot deliver the expected reward to him in that particular case.” He cited Adolf Hitler, who concluded that “it is not truth that matters, but victory.” Ayoade set this side-by-side with former Aviation Minister Femi Fani-Kayode’s boast that he would rather die than defect to the APC. When Fani-Kayode eventually defected, he justified eating his words by stating, “There is no point having principles without power” – a sentiment echoed by American politician, Robert S. Strauss, who famously remarked, “If you’re in politics, you’re a whore anyhow.”

In Nigeria’s contemporary political landscape, the petroleum subsidy has become the lowest-hanging fruit of national mendacity. It is a convenient bait dangled like worms on fishing hooks to catch unsuspecting fish. Aware that the subsidy removal is the hemlock Nigerians have been forced to drink in 39 months under Bola Tinubu, with severe effects on their daily existence, politicians view it as the primary path into the electorate’s hearts. Both President Tinubu and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar have boarded this convenient vessel to secure prime space in the public consciousness. Yet, the truth remains that neither figure holds the masses as their main concern; the primary objective is the preservation of their elite status and personal political empires.

As the whistle blows for the commencement of the 2027 political campaigns, Nigerians are once again in for a seasonal roulette of tears, sorrow, and blood. It is a season of sabre-rattling, damaging rhetoric, and a dangerous descent into political anarchy. The dress rehearsals are already being served à la carte across the nation. Politicians are painting the dais red with do-or-die rhetoric. If I’m asked for examples, myresponse remains that once an okra farm is within reach, harvesting it before it becomes overripe need not be a complex enterprise. Yoruba say this as “Bí oko ò jìnnà, ilá ìí kó”.

One example holding Nigerians on tenterhooks is the ongoing drug allegation debate -a humiliating spectacle for the nation. It is humiliating because, regardless of guilt or innocence of the charge, it is a shame that a Nigerian president is subject of a drug inquisition. After all, Yoruba say if one does not walk in the manner of an Òkété, the African giant pouched rat, no one would offer one the rat’s palm kernel favourite meal.

The central dispute, whether evaluated in American court dockets or in the court of public opinion, centers on whether the Nigerian president was involved as a baron or courier of illicit narcotics. In recent statements, the Washington-based lobbying firm hired by Atiku Abubakar, Von Batten-Montague-York, claimed that FBI files link Tinubu to a criminal organization smuggling heroin during the 1980s and 1990s. As the firm presses its claims, the presidency’s efforts to distance itself from the matter have only drawn more attention to the allegations. It then will seem that, the more it tries to pull its horse from this dirty manger, the more messy dung this heroine drama pelts on its face. The American lobbyists, in a most recent X post, claimed that Tinubu would face international embarrassment at the UN General Assembly. Looks like, in the hands of Atiku, our president is carrying on his head a faggot enveloped by a notorious beehive (ó ti ru igi oyin).

Through this evidentiary search — what some have termed “legal tourism” — Atiku Abubakar appears to be pursuing a Samson option: the total destruction of what he views as a political house of cards built by his former friend and ally.

Tinubu and Atiku, friends-turned-foes, risk treating the nation to an equivalent of a Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) — the Cold War military doctrine where a full-scale nuclear attack by one power guarantees complete annihilation for both sides. For both men, this dynamic represents a destructive equation. Francis Bacon’s reflection on friendship underlines the tragedy of this dispute: “Age appears to be best in four things: old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.” Even Yusuff Olatunji, in the album referenced earlier, sang that the deity in a friend’s house should not seek one’s ruination: “Òrìsà ilé òré eni, kò gbodò run ni.” Both gladiators seem deaf to that counsel.

Yet, this destructive chess game continues between men vying for the ultimate political prize. As this piece was about going to press, news filtered in that a regime fawner has called for an exhumation of Atiku’s 2006 indictment by the EFCC. He has thus issued a 14-day ultimatum to the EFCC to reopen and prosecute these historical corruption allegations against the Wazirin Adamawa.

Seasons of political campaigns in Nigeria remain seasons of vitriol and drama. Painfully, everyday citizens are regularly drawn into these partisan conflicts. To be fair to contemporary politicians, rhetoric, exaggeration, and underlying tension have long been part of the nation’s political lineage. Like Tinubu and Atiku, when the relationship between erstwhile friends, Western Region Leader Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Premier Chief S. L. Akintola, broke down irretrievably in the 1960s, the region was consumed by incendiary rhetoric. Campaign grounds became arenas of ethnic anxiety and personal insults, where hostility was openly weaponized.

As the 1964 general elections and the 1965 Western Regional elections approached, Premier Akintola formed an alliance with the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) led by the Sardauna of Sokoto, Ahmadu Bello called the NNDP. Action Group also aligned with Nnamdi Azikiwe’s NCNC to form UPGA. Akintola accused UPGA of facilitating an Eastern takeover of the West, using campaign tropes that framed the opposition as an ethnic vehicle designed to disenfranchise the Yoruba. He frequently repeated names like “Okafor” and “Okeke;” “Ikejiani” which he inflected to “Ekini-ani” to highlight claims of Igbo domination of western region civil service appointments. He used this logic to justify his alliance with the NPC. Conversely, UPGA labeled Akintola a feudal puppet and traitor who sold Yoruba to Hausa-Fulani hegemony.

Akintola, an orator par excellence, who used to be labeled by Adegoke Adelabu as “Osanyin Awolowo” – “Awo’s deity” due to his tiny voice like that of an Orisa deity – deployed the Yoruba language to great effect at campaign rallies. Veterans of that era recall that during campaigns in the Ekiti district – where Awolowo’s reputation was held in high regard – Akintola openly mocked the opposition’s emphasis on formal education. He joked that only in Ekiti could one find professors named after birds, playfully altering the name of the renowned economist, Professor Aluko, to “Professor Agbe and Professor Atioro.” In the Bendel area, he derided Awolowo’s prominent supporters like Dennis Osadebey, declaring: “Bí Òrìsà bá d’ébè, a ó f’òkò tu ká!” – meaning, even if a deity manifested as a farm mound, his party would level it with hoes.

In the Eastern region during the Second Republic, political contests were equally fierce. In old Anambra State, the primary struggle was between Jim Nwobodo of the NPP and Christian Chukwuma (C. C.) Onoh of the ruling NPN. As both sides competed, language became a central weapon. Campaign strategists satirized opponents using localized humor and wordplay. Nwobodo’s supporters mocked Onoh’s name through deliberate homophones, calling him ‘Onoh ono Okpa,’ meaning “Onoh who swallows Okpa,” – a popular, protein-rich traditional food pudding made from ground Bambara nuts – while Onoh’s camp portrayed their rival as desperate for political survival. Figures like Nnamdi Azikiwe were surrounded by elaborate political mythologies, with supporters attributing near-mystical resilience to him to rally voters.

When political engagement is reduced to manufactured promises, historical grudges, and calculated character assassination, governance loses its moral compass. Just as Yusuff Olatunji warned his listeners 57 years ago not to be deceived by the grand adornments of riders on horseback who conceal fraudulent intent, the contemporary electorate must learn to look past the elaborate pageantry of the political class.

Until citizens demand genuine integrity and accountability over strategic deception, the nation will remain trapped in a paradise built on falsehoods – a system where power is pursued as an end in itself, and public good remains a secondary consideration.

August has ended, but it has left behind the peculiar silence that follows the departure of people whose lives had become part of our own the landscape. It was, for me, an August of deaths, arriving not as a single calamity but as a succession of personal encounters with mortality, each death reopening the same age-long question that humanity has asked in different languages: what does it mean to be alive when those with whom we shared portions of our journey suddenly cease to be?

August had barely travelled halfway of its own calendar when the news of the death of my younger colleague at the Bar, Rockson Igelige, who was introduced to me many years ago by my Comrade and fellow poet, Ogaga Ifowodo, filtered into the social media space. Rockson was then pursuing his law degree at the Metropolitan university in London when he was introduced to me, and we spoke a few times while I was still living in England. Our paths became more closely connected after I relocated to Nigeria, and we subsequently collaborated on a few trademark and intellectual property matters. There are professional relationships that remain simply professional; but there are others that acquire, almost imperceptibly, the warmth of friendship and intellectual companionship, and Rockson belonged to both categories. The news of his death therefore arrived like a thunderbolt, not by the mere announcement of the end of a life but the abrupt closure of a future that, until the moment of death, seemed to belong naturally to him.

No sooner had the shock settled than the news of the death of Dotun Oladipo broke out. I knew Dotun only fleetingly, but his work as one of Nigeria’s pioneer digital publishers was sufficient to register his name in my memory. There is something particularly poignant about the death of people whose work helped shape a world that continues to exist after them, because their absence is measured not only by those who knew them personally but also by the persistence of the institutions, ideas and practices to which they contributed. Death removes the person while leaving behind the consequences of the person’s labour of love, creating that strange human paradox in which someone can be gone and still remain present in the things he helped bring into existence. Then came the death of Comrade Emma Ugboaja, General Secretary of the Nigerian Labour Congress, and with it came the sorrow that accompanies the departure of a Comrade. Emma was ever smiling, possessing a manner of deference that often made me appear to be a much older Comrade whenever we met. “You be senior Comrade,” he would say whenever I resisted the reverence. His death diminishes an already dwindling tribe of Nigerian activists, those men and women whose political lives were formed in an era when activism demanded something more than the convenience of commentary, and solidarity was often sustained by personal sacrifices rather than the transient excitement of social media. The death of an activist-tribune, another voice of courage and conviction, was yet another painful blow.

The month ended with the death of Dan Orbih. As a young man just out of school in 1985, I knew Dan as the manager of his late father’s Hilltop Hotel at the time. He was also one of the young men who occasionally turned up at my mother’s saloon in Auchi for drinks, a lively and urbane youth, sufficiently memorable to remain in the mind of a young man watching, with the curiosity of youth, the young men who gathered there to entertain themselves in revelry. Close to two decades later, he attended my wedding in Auchi, where there was the happy reunion with my mother, who was delighted to reintroduce me to him. Our relationship had, interestingly, been forged at another level through  my in-laws who have shared a family relationship with the Orbihs stretching back into time. In fact, my wife lived in his house in Port Harcourt during her NYSC year. His death, therefore, arrived not simply as the death of a political figure I had known, however distantly, but as the disappearance of someone woven into different strands of a personal story.

Perhaps, this is what death does to humanity: it converts the living into memories and memories into questions. Epicurus famously argued that death should not trouble us because when we exist, death is not present, and when death arrives, we no longer exist to experience it. There is an austere logic to this Epicurean point, but human beings have never experienced death as a mere proposition in logic. They experience it through the empty chair, the unanswered telephone, the photograph suddenly acquiring a different meaning and the familiar name that can no longer be attached to a living voice. Martin Heidegger understood human existence through what he called being-toward-death, suggesting that mortality is not an incidental event at the edge of life but a condition that shadows every human possibility. Death gives urgency to existence precisely because our time is finite. The tragedy is that we usually understand this only when someone close to the circumference of our lives dies. The dead do not only depart from us; they alter the meaning of our own remaining time.

Shakespeare was more explicit when he captured this fleeting human existence with extraordinary economy: “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage. And then is heard no more.” There is something unsettlingly contemporary about those words. We spend our lives acquiring professional distinctions and reputations, influence, friendships, grievances and possessions, still death possesses the ultimate power to flatten these distinctions without negotiating with their owners. Then, the lawyer, publisher, labour activist and politician are heard no more. While death does not entirely defeat us, it reveals the extent to which a human life exceeds the biological fact of its ending. Rockson remains in the professional memories of those with whom he worked; Dotun’s memory remains wholly in the Nigerian digital news world he helped create; Emma and Osaretin remain in the memories of comrades who shared the struggle with them; Dan remains in the recollections of families, associates and friends whose lives intersected with his. The dead therefore continue to inhabit the living, not as ghosts but as memories, stories and unfinished conversations.

August has passed, and September has since arrived with the ordinary demands of life, reminding us with cruel efficiency that the world does not stop because someone died. Perhaps, this is the final lesson that death painfully conveys to us: that mortality does not take people from us, it asks the living to reconsider what they are doing with the time they still possess. For those of us who knew these men, however briefly or intimately, August will never again be just another month on the calendar; it will remain a reminder that life is temporary, memory is fragile, and every human encounter may one day become elegy.

May the memories  of the faithful departed be a blessing.