The Pacesetter Frontier Magazine

Category: Opinion

  • Erosion is Killing Auchi, One Rain at a Time

    Erosion is Killing Auchi, One Rain at a Time

    -By Abdul Mahmud

    Just recently, photos of deep erosion gullies cutting through Auchi began circulating on social media. They are terrifying images. Stark. Stark enough to jar the conscience of any public official in Edo State with an ounce of duty. But, unsurprisingly, they haven’t. Auchi, the northern Edo town, one of the most important towns of the Afemai people, which now wears the look of a town falling into itself, is being eaten alive. Its red earth is pockmarked by holes and yawning gullies that stretch for metres. Gullies that now resemble open graves. Open graves. That is what Auchi’s erosion sites have become; gaping, growing pits that threaten lives, homes, memories. They spread like a slow poison. They don’t stop. They have no boundaries. They creep into compounds, under buildings, across streets. They swallow the land. They take trees, people, homes, hope.

    For decades, Auchi has battled the effects of erosion. But what began as seasonal floodwater carving paths across the town has today become a humanitarian and environmental catastrophe. Nature is no longer whispering. It is roaring. Though, Auchi is not an exception. In every part of the world, climate change announces itself in its own voice. Sometimes it is wildfires. Other times, floods. In Auchi, it has taken the form of massive gullies that now disfigure the landscape. While nature raises its voice in fury, tearing through land and life with devastating force, the State and Federal Governments respond with silence, as if deaf to the groaning earth. The Governor of Edo State, rather than confronting the crisis head-on, is busying himself with frivolous ceremonies and jejune receptions for dignitaries inside the Government House; or issuing petty threats to political opponents who decline the summons of protocol. At the federal level, the President and his men are adrift in the sea of re-election calculations, too absorbed in the arithmetic of power to reckon with the crumbling soil beneath their citizens’ feet. The tragedy unfolds, and those entrusted with responsibility look away, either blinded by ambition or numbed by indifference. No State and National Disaster Agencies have made perfunctory visits, at least to take photos and issue hollow promises as they always do.

    Meanwhile, the earth keeps shifting beneath Auchi. The people are afraid. And they have every reason to be. Houses now perch on the edge of gullies. Families wake up to discover the land beneath them has vanished. Roads once busy with motorcycles and schoolchildren have disappeared. There is no exaggeration here. What is happening in Auchi is a disaster. One that is both natural and political. Natural because the red Mars-like earth of Auchi is loose, vulnerable, and unable to withstand repeated assault by floodwaters. Political because those charged with protecting communities like Auchi have done nothing. A few interventions have been attempted over the years. But, they are far too little to address the problem. Auchi appears to have been abandoned to its fate. Auchi is what abandonment looks like in a country where the elites fly over disaster zones and do not walk through them. Auchi is a town on nobody’s priority list, rendered voiceless by the geography of power.

    But, Auchi matters to me. It always has.

    My provenance lies just across the expressway in Sabo, South Ibie clan. A community, once distinct, now inseparable from Auchi by the tides of time and traffic. The expressway from Benin to Abuja slices through both, but geography no longer draws the lines clearly. First-time visitors often ask: where does Auchi end, and where does Sabo begin? No one knows for sure anymore. The land has fused, as memory and place sometimes do. Auchi is woven into the fabric of my life. It is where my story turned the corner. I returned there at sixteen. An abrupt return occasioned by the death of my father. Auchi received my mum, my siblings and I like a relative waiting at the door. It became the ground of my becoming. The streets were my first library. Modest bookshops filled with promise stood proudly from Up-Garage down to the junction of Inu-Umoru Street. They drew me in. That was how I met books. That was how books met me. News vendors became my morning tutors. They stood in front of the old New Nigeria bank building, shouting headlines, turning the heart of the town into a public classroom. I began to see that education did not end in the four walls of a school. The world itself could be a blackboard. It was here, too, in the stirrings of student politics, that the future beckoned. November 1990. Delegates gathered for the NANS Convention at Auchi Polytechnic. The convention was botched by the military dictator, IBB, but something was born. The talk of my candidacy began there, whispered in the corners. Days later, I became President of NANS at the University of Benin. But the idea was seeded there. Auchi also carries grief. Beneath its red earth rests a friend, a brother, a comrade. Professor Abubakar Momoh – one of the finest political economists of his generation. He lived with courage and brilliance. He died with his integrity intact. His memory breathes in the soil of Auchi. Bless his soul. Auchi is not just a town. For me, it is a map of memory. A place of pain and purpose. It is where the past and the future shake hands.

    Yet, today, Auchi is being cut in half by gullies.

    Whole sections of the town are being disconnected. Roads linking the town’s quarters have become impassable. In some cases, the gullies have reached several metres deep. Some as deep as 25 to 30 feet, making them death traps for children and even adults. It is hard to imagine how a town this important could fall into this level of neglect. But it has. The images don’t lie. Photos show the town being gnawed from the inside. Videos show frightened residents looking at a growing abyss outside their homes. Some tell stories of neighbours who had to flee in the middle of the night when the ground cracked open beneath them. These are not scenes from a disaster movie. They are real. And they are a warning. A warning about what happens when climate change meets government indifference. For years, experts have said that Nigeria is vulnerable to climate disasters. From desertification in the North to rising sea levels in the South. From deadly floods to droughts. Yet, there is still no coordinated climate resilience plan. Auchi is paying the price. The gullies that once began as harmless rills have now turned into fullblown canyons. In some places, these canyons have reached homes, schools, and clinics. The town’s economy will suffer in the future if nothing is done today. No investor will build on land that might vanish. No school can function where access roads have become rivers of mud. No resident can sleep in peace when they fear the next rainfall might bring their house down.

    What Auchi needs is not a photo-op by a government delegation. It needs action. Urgent, technical, focused action. There is a National Erosion and Watershed Management Project (NEWMAP). There is a Federal Ministry of Environment. There is a Niger Delta Development Commission. And there are ecological funds. Where are they? What is the use of these institutions if they cannot stop a town from falling into the ground? But, Auchi is not alone. Even my provenance, South Ibie clan, is battling to save itself from the frightening gullies showing up. Other towns in southeastern Nigeria, like Agulu, Nanka, and Oko in Anambra State are facing similar gully erosion disasters. They are crying for attention.

    And that raises painful, even haunting, questions: Why are these people being condemned to suffer through neglect? Why does the Edo State government avert its gaze, in particular, as though willful blindness might erase the deepening wounds of the land? Is it that someone in power has shrugged off responsibility, consoling himself with the fatalistic notion that these terrifying gullies are mere acts of God?

    There is no sense in which this erosion can be called an act of God. It is the act of a system that looks the other way when danger builds up. It is the act of leadership that plans for ribbon-cutting ceremonies, not for long-term environmental protection. We cannot keep blaming the rain. We must blame our refusal to build drainages. Our failure to regulate construction. Our inability to act before disaster strikes. Every year, government agencies speak about climate change. They sign agreements. They attend international conferences. They talk about emissions and net zero. But in Auchi, and elsewhere, climate change is not a theory. It is a lived reality. It is the sound of the earth caving into itself. The scream of a child falling into a pit. The helplessness of parents watching their compounds dissolve into nothing. We must not allow Auchi to become a town of mourning. We must not let it become a cautionary tale. The time to act is now. Erosion doesn’t wait. Gullies do not pause. They grow. With every rain. Every storm. Every season. The gullies stretch across the land like wandering prophets gone rogue and cast themselves in the image of Diogenes with his flickering lamp, not in search of honest men, but probing endlessly for the next soft earth to devour.

    They move with a quiet, deliberate menace, carving their paths deeper into the yielding earth, as though animated by some unspoken philosophy of ruin. They do not rush, but open up slowly, as if conscious of their role in a slow and inevitable undoing. In their wake, they leave haunting images of absence and sad reminders of what once stood with pride and permanence. This is not progress; it is the architecture of decay masquerading as motion. Here, Auchi becomes a palimpsest of vanishing memory, a terrain where grandeur is not merely lost, but dismantled by the hands of water and time. Auchi is the theatre of sheer destruction which echoes the melancholic vision that the 18th century French philosopher, Denis Diderot, once conjured: a world that exists only as the broken remnants of what has been. In this philosophy of ruin, nothing is built; everything is unmade, and the silence that follows speaks louder than any storm.

    Erosion is Killing Auchi, one rain at a time.

    The people are pleading. They are not asking for miracles. They are asking for attention, for responsibility, for help. We cannot claim to be building a country while allowing its towns to collapse. We cannot talk about development while our earth gives way beneath our feet. Auchi is weeping. It is breaking apart. Will our leaders come to its rescue before it is too late?

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Justice for Sale

    Justice for Sale

    -By Abdul Mahmud

    When the Sultan of Sokoto rose at the just concluded Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Conference in Enugu to declare that “justice is now purchasable in Nigeria”, his words struck a raw national nerve. It was not merely an observation; it was an indictment. It was the voice of moral authority saying what Nigerians whisper under their breath in court corridors and in the dark alleys of daily life. Justice, once the hallowed preserve of principle, has become a commodity in the open bazaar of our democracy. The Sultan’s lament is not a hyperbole. It reflects a crisis that has eaten deep into the marrow of our legal system. Justice is not blind in Nigeria; it peers closely at the purse of the litigant. Those who command higher purchase power buy it. The poor man, unable to raise the Shekels, is left stranded on the steps of a courthouse that has become hostile to his hope. What should be the last sanctuary of the common man has mutated into a trading post of the powerful. No country progresses this way.

    In a previous op-ed, I noted that we now live with “judges who have become kings who sit on imperial thrones where they measure justice by the Shekels”. That is not a metaphor stretched beyond its shape. It is reality. We have enthroned judges as kings in black robes, surrounded by the rites and rituals of power, dispensing justice not by law but by patronage. Richard Joseph’s conceptual coinage, prebendalism, which Oby Ezekwesili deployed at the same conference to rebuke the legal profession, best describes the patronage-clienteleism within the bench. The gavel, that ancient symbol of fairness, no longer falls with the weight of principle but with the heaviness of cash. In this new order, judgments are not delivered; they are purchased.

    But how did we get here?

    Two forces sustain this decay. The first is the culture of unaccountability. In Nigeria, judges are rarely punished – in the real sense of punishment – for misconduct. A judge who’s found to have fudged his age is merely given a wrap on the wrists. Voila, he is compulsorily retired! The act of forgery, which is a crime, is thus overlooked. No trials. No convictions. Only newspaper reports of the NJC dismissing judges – which are, of course, framed as aberrations, not the failure of a judicial system which provides soft landing for errant judges. The result is a bench that behaves like an untouchable caste, shielded from scrutiny by the black robe. The judicial branch that bends to its obsequious convenience, with unbothered judges sitting as kings above the law. The second force is more pernicious: the politicisation of the judicial process. As I wrote in the same op-ed, “A politicised judicial process invites corruption. When judges are seen as gatekeepers to power, the temptation to influence them becomes overwhelming. The judiciary, once the last hope of the common man, has become a marketplace of elite bargains. Those who command higher purchase power buy justice”. Politics has corrupted justice because every election dispute, every transfer of power, every clash of political titans, ends at the altar of the court. The judge, in such moments, ceases to be an impartial arbiter. He becomes a broker in the grand bazaar of power.

    We are left with a tragic irony: the very institution meant to defend the law is now guilty of betraying it. And the consequences are grave. When justice is sold, the poor retreat from the law, and with them retreats faith in the social contract. When justice is sold, the rich grow more arrogant, convinced that the courts are but one more arm of their wealth. And when justice is sold, the very idea of the rule of law collapses. What replaces it is anarchy dressed in the garments of legality.

    This is why the Sultan’s words must not be dismissed as mere rhetoric. They are an urgent call to conscience. Nigerians already live with cynicism about every institution. The legislature is seen as self-serving. The executive is viewed as predatory. The only branch that once retained a flicker of reverence was the judiciary. But now that flame is dimming. Once the judiciary becomes an auction house, what remains of our republic? Let us remember that nations do not collapse first through war or famine. They collapse when their institutions lose legitimacy. Rome did not fall merely because of the barbarian invasion; it fell because its institutions rotted from within. Nigeria faces the same danger. A judiciary that sells verdicts undermines the very possibility of citizenship. It tells the ordinary Nigerian: you do not belong here unless you can pay. And a citizen who does not belong ceases to believe in the nation itself. We have seen this rot play out in high-profile cases. Gubernatorial elections decided not by ballots but by dubious rulings. Here is that familiar case in point: a governorship candidate who came fourth in a returned poll was subsequently declared by the judges as the winner! Billionaire politicians escaping accountability with a wave of a judge’s hand. Corruption cases dragging for decades, only to end in acquittals for the wealthy while petty thieves rot in jail. Each of these stories is a needle piercing the fragile fabric of trust between citizens and the state. Each confirms the marketplace that our courts have become.

    The question, then, is whether reform is possible. Can Nigeria reclaim its judiciary from this descent? Reform will require courage, courage from within the legal profession, and courage from the society that empowers it. Lawyers must refuse to be agents of manipulation, filing frivolous applications that clog the system and trading influence on behalf of their clients. Judges must be subjected to real accountability: transparent trials, open disciplinary records, and the removal of those who disgrace the robe. And above all, politics must be decoupled from justice. So long as the judiciary remains the final battlefield for political wars, it will remain compromised. But reform also requires something deeper: a cultural shift in how Nigerians think of justice itself. Justice cannot be reduced to transactions. It cannot be a trophy won by the rich. It must be a common good that protects the weak, restrains the strong, and binds society together. Without justice, there is no order; without order, there is no society. As the philosopher Heraclitus once said, “The people should fight for their law as they would for their city wall”. In Nigeria, we must fight for our judiciary as if our very survival depends on it.

    Surely, we won’t realise that our lives depend on it, until Nigeria happens to us!

    The Sultan’s cry at the NBA Conference is more than a passing lament; it is the cry of a nation wounded in its soul. His words carry the anguish of countless litigants who have knocked at the temple of justice only to be turned away by the gatekeepers of power. It is the voice of citizens who have been betrayed by the very institution meant to defend their dignity. It is the sigh of a democracy steadily hollowed out by corruption and elite bargains. In that moment, the Sultan did not speak for himself alone; he gave voice to the unspoken despair of millions.

    We deceive ourselves if we think this is only about the poor. When justice is commodified, it poisons the entire body politic. The wealthy may think they can purchase verdicts, but in doing so they dismantle the very foundations that protect their own power. A court that sells judgments to one bidder today can just as easily sell them to another tomorrow. What begins as the privilege of the powerful ends as the peril of all. A nation that abandons justice abandons stability, for injustice is a fire that consumes indiscriminately.

    History teaches us that when the courts fail, society itself unravels.

    Rome, in its decay, learned that law without justice is merely violence in disguise. Nations of our own time, scarred by authoritarianism, remind us that when courts become markets, the people cease to believe in the state. Nigeria stands dangerously at that threshold. The gavel, once a symbol of fairness, risks becoming a tool of oppression. If this collapse is allowed to continue, the people will no longer seek redress in the courts; they will seek it in the streets. And when lawless streets replace lawful courts, democracy dies. A nation without justice is not a nation; it is a mere marketplace of power. And in marketplaces, bargains are struck, but no one truly wins. The powerful may strut like victors for a season, but the erosion of justice eventually sweeps them into the same abyss as the weak. The warning of the Sultan, therefore, is not a cry to be ignored. It is a summons to conscience, a call to rescue the judiciary before the ground beneath us gives way. For without justice, we are not citizens bound by law; we are only traders in a soulless bazaar where, in the end, everyone loses.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Ashleigh, Identity, and the Diaspora’s Return

    Ashleigh, Identity, and the Diaspora’s Return

    -By Abdul Mahmud

    When Ashleigh Plumptre pulled on the green jersey of the Super Falcons, she was not just representing our country. She was performing a deeper act: an act of cultural reimagination. She was constructing a new identity. One that defies borders, blurs categories, and reclaims ancestral memory. Her decision to play for our country was not simply professional. It was symbolic. And a welcome. The same holds true for Michelle Alozie, though in a different sense. Her identity and cultural belonging are affirmed more directly. Her parents are Nigerians by birth. Their citizenship anchors her connection. Ashleigh’s case is further removed. Her story begins with her grandfather. She is third generation by blood, not by birthplace. Yet, both women, by different paths, have found their way to the homeland.

    In Morocco, during the just concluded Women’s Africa Cup of Nations, WAFCON, Ashleigh wasn’t the only one who showed up. Her white friends turned up too in the final game. In green and white. In song. In spirit. The country folks in the stands showed up for her, screaming: “Oyibo, Oyibo, Oyibo”. It wasn’t performative support. It was a collective ritual. Hers was a public reaffirmation of belonging to a homeland that once felt remote, but now stood close: immediate, intimate, and deliberately embraced. This is the emerging narrative of diasporic identity. It is no longer about return in the old nationalist sense, but about reimagining connection that is chosen and not inherited. It’s about the formation of the new self. A new selfhood. Rooted not in the soil, but in memory. Not imposed by geography, but spawned by cultural will. For many years, the children of African immigrants in the West lived in the liminal. They straddled two worlds. Often, they were forced to choose between assimilation and alienation. Many chose silence. Some chose denial. A few wrestled with duality in the few emerging multicultural European states, where the opposition of far right groups to multiculturalism is growing, for instance. Over the weekend, far-right agitators marched on the major streets of London, Norfolk and Essex, fanning the flames of hate and fears.

    But today, something new is happening.

    This generation is not simply identifying with the homeland. They are reconstructing the homeland within themselves. They are returning, not to a physical homeland; but to an imaginative one. They are engaged in the work of cultural reimagination, taking fragments of ancestral memory, mixing it with lived diaspora experiences, and shaping a composite identity that is both authentic and innovative. Ashleigh Plumptre’s case is instructive. Born in Leicester. Raised in English schools. Trained in English football academies. She could have followed the familiar path: play for the senior women’s team in England, lean into Euro-visibility, ride the institutional comfort. But she didn’t. Instead, she turned towards our country. Not because of nostalgia. Not out of charity. But because she saw herself differently. She reimagined the story of her lineage in a manner that her reimagination and story invariably don’t end up serving as a footnote to her Britishness, but as a foundational part of her identity. Her grandfather’s Nigerian heritage became a map. She traced it backwards, then forward again, into her own body, her own future.

    This re-rooting of identity is an active process. It requires intention. It requires curiosity. It requires the courage to be different. To live differently. And to live across cultural lines. Ashleigh’s identity is not a throwback. It is not mimicry. She does not need to “be more Nigerian than the rest of us” to prove belonging. Her very decision to claim the country of her grandfather’s birth on her terms, through football, is already a profound act of self-definition. Hear her: “I’ve just opened myself up to everything in the culture. I want to be able to encourage young people to do the same thing and identify with being mixed race”. And this is the core of the matter: diasporic identity today is performative, political, and deeply personal. Ashleigh’s decision is performance in the sense that it is enacted before a global audience. She performs belonging on the pitch. Her body moves in ways that express her allegiance, her pride, her conviction. But it is also political because she chooses to represent a country that has long been marginalised on the global stage. A country whose name doesn’t carry the same prestige as England’s, but whose history, culture, and resilience mean something far greater to her personal narrative.

    Her act is not one of rejection, but of reconstitution.

    She hasn’t abandoned England. She is reassembling our country inside herself. She is expanding what it means to be a fellow compatriot within the frontiers of cultural reimagination. Diaspora children are not just “returning” to the homeland. They are remaking the homeland in new forms: through fashion, through music, through sports, through social media discourses, through literature and academic theory. You see it in the rise of Afrobeats in London, Atlanta, and elsewhere. In the Nigerian-infused slang of Toronto teenagers. In the names proudly worn by second-generation Americans. You see it in the TED talks, the Instagram bios, our country’s flags in bios, the poetry slams, the Nollywood TikToks. You see it in how Ashleigh plays. Calm. Composed. Tactical. In the “Never-Say-Die” attitudes, “Dia-Body-Go-Hearam” and “E choke” dispositions of our younger countryfolks. The attitude of the British in training, Nigerian in expression. She doesn’t fit into the old categories. That’s the point. She is rewriting them with clarity.

    For decades, the homeland treated its diasporas as lost. As footnotes to colonial displacement. The story was one of escape, of absence, of loss. But that’s not the story anymore. This generation is reimagining the diaspora not as a departure but as an extension. Not as lost children, but as bridge-builders. They are redefining what it means to belong. Not to one place. But to many. Simultaneously. What Ashleigh represents is this: post-postcolonial identity that is fluid, global, but emotionally anchored in the ancestral. She is not burdened by the nationalism of the first generation. Nor by the silence of the second. She is free to choose and she chooses this: that freedom is power. It allows her to say, “I am British, and I am a Nigerian. Not one before the other. Not one more than the other. Both. Together”.

    And this is perhaps the most radical thing. In a world still obsessed with purity of culture, of blood, of loyalty, Ashleigh and others like her in our national basket teams are dismantling those myths. They are proving that identity is layered, negotiated, and dynamic. They are not confused. They are composed. They are not torn. They are woven. And our country folks must learn to embrace this. Too often, the homeland struggles with diaspora returnees. Questions of authenticity arise. “Do you speak the language?” “Do you eat the food?” “Do you know the history?” But, these are the wrong questions. Ashleigh may not speak the Yoruba tongue of her grandfather. But she understands solidarity. She understands the burden of representing a black country in a white-dominated world. She carries the flag, wears and kisses the badge on her jersey with pride. That should be enough.

    Identity is not measured in jollof rice. It is measured in meaning. Then, what does it mean to claim the homeland? It means carrying its name with dignity. It means choosing it, even when it’s not the easier option. It means amplifying it on the world stage, when others are silent. Ashleigh is doing all of this. So are thousands of young people around the world. They are not waiting to be invited to adopt the identity of the homeland. They are claiming it. Reimagining it. Living it. And they are demanding that we expand the borders of belonging. That we make room for the hybrid selves. That we honour choice as much as bloodlines. That we embrace the return not just of bodies, but of imagination.

    Ashleigh’s return is not simply to the homeland. It is to a narrative that was once broken by colonialism, exile, and dislocation, that is now being fixed by a new generation. A generation that refuses to forget. That refuses to be strangers. That insists on its place in our collective story. Our grand narratives. Her story is just one example. But it speaks volumes. It tells us that return is no longer a physical journey. It is a spiritual reckoning. A political choice. A cultural rebirth. An invitation that we must accept as public intellectuals to rethink the way we frame identity. To shift our gaze from the narrow lens of ethnicity, which has long anchored our scholarship, toward new formations. Toward acts of reimagination that speak to a more fluid and inclusive understanding of who we are. It invites us to craft fresh discourses. To see our country not as a fixed terrain of bloodlines and boundaries; but as an imagined space that is open, evolving, and welcoming to all who choose to belong.

    Finally, and in summary, the homeland stands for more than geography. It is a place of love, of memory, of origin. It belongs to those born within its borders and to those born far away, who carry it faithfully in their hearts. Ashleigh carries it. So does Alozie. And in carrying it, they remind us of something profound: the homeland is not only a place. It is a people. It is a history remembered. It is a choice made. It is the quiet insistence that belonging can stretch across oceans and generations. In this era of evolving identities and cultural reimaginings, the homeland is also a future. One that the children of the diaspora are helping to shape through their voices, their music, their sports, and their return. One match at a time. One song at a time. One return at a time. All in pursuit of life’s many missions. Ashleigh and the girls fulfilled one of such missions. Mission X, accomplished.

    Congratulations are in order, country people!

  • Of Southeast Governors and the Rarely Issued Certificate of Occupancy

    Of Southeast Governors and the Rarely Issued Certificate of Occupancy

    By Sebastine Chukwuebuka Okafor 

    The Land Use Act of 1978 placed all lands in every state under the control of the governor, who holds the land in trust for the people. According to the law, anyone who occupies land in Nigeria must do so with the permission of the governor, and that permission is confirmed through a document known as a Certificate of Occupancy, often called a C of O. This document is supposed to be the legal proof that a person has the right to occupy and use a particular piece of land for a number of years—usually 99.

    In the South East region, it is difficult to find people who have genuine Certificates of Occupancy. Even those who try to get it are often discouraged by the long and frustrating process. From Enugu to Abia, Anambra to Ebonyi and Imo, the story is the same—applications stay unattended to for months, sometimes years, and in many cases, they never get approved.

    One of the major reasons behind this delay is the heavy bureaucratic process surrounding land administration in the region. Offices responsible for land matters are often disorganized, with files moving from one desk to another without any sense of urgency. There is little use of technology to track applications, and many of the processes still rely on manual documentation.

    What makes it worse is that several approvals must pass through the office of the governor, and unless there is a personal connection or political interest involved, the process simply stalls.

    There is also the issue of money. In many cases, land applicants are made to pay several fees—application fees, inspection fees, survey approvals, ground rent, and processing charges. Even after all these are paid, there is no guarantee that the C of O will be issued. Some are told unofficially that they must “settle” certain individuals before anything can move forward. This type of exploitation has discouraged honest land users from even starting the process at all.

    Another problem is tied to politics. Land in the South East is not just property—it is seen as power. There are cases where governments deliberately hold back the issuance of Certificates of Occupancy to keep control over certain lands. These lands are later given out quietly to political allies or influential individuals. In some communities, the lands that should be processed and titled for the benefit of the people end up in the hands of those who know how to play the political game.

    It is also important to mention the strong presence of customary land ownership in the region. Many families and communities still operate under traditional landholding systems. In such places, land is inherited and passed down from generation to generation without any formal documents. People do not see the need to go through government procedures because they believe their family history is enough to prove ownership. This belief has created a gap between what the law requires and what people are willing to do. As a result, many governors avoid pushing for full implementation of the land laws so as not to offend traditional institutions.

    Another reason for the low number of issued C of Os is the fear of legal commitment. Once a Certificate of Occupancy is signed, it becomes a binding document. The state cannot revoke it easily. Some governors prefer not to issue them at all so that they can always have the option of reclaiming the land in the future, especially when disputes or government projects arise.

    Many states in the South West have made efforts to reform their land systems by embracing technology, simplifying procedures, and cutting down corruption. In the South East, however, land matters are still trapped in old systems, personal interests, and administrative negligence.

    Until land administration is given proper attention in the South East, the people will continue to suffer. Without proper documentation, investors will remain hesitant, land disputes will increase, and the region will find it difficult to attract meaningful development. A Certificate of Occupancy should not be a favour or a privilege. It should be a right for every qualified land user who follows due process. That is how to build confidence, structure, and a better future.

  • Trump, House Negroes, and the Tragedy of African Leadership

    Trump, House Negroes, and the Tragedy of African Leadership

    -By Abdul Mahmud

    Two weeks ago, Joseph Boakai, the Octogenarian President of Liberia, stepped into the White House, the symbolic heart of American power, to meet Donald Trump who had literally summoned five African presidents from Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania and Senegal to a landmark summit on trade, investment and security. It was supposed to be moments of diplomacy in which sovereigns usually stand together as equals, even if power asymmetry hung visibly in the air; and in which the business of bilateral relations is conducted with utmost civility and mutual respect. President Donald Trump forgot all of this, carrying himself with a certain abrasiveness that offends sensibilities and imperils the dignity of the state he represents, and turning the summit into a Q & A session. A job interview, to put it mildly. By displaying such abrasiveness, President Trump simply lent credence to George Mason’s enduring observation: “A state is nothing more than a reflection of its citizens; the more decent the citizens, the more decent the state”. When the conduct of its leader falls beneath the threshold of civility, a nation begins to mirror that coarseness, blurring the lines between the individual and the institutional. The office loses its aura, and the republic begins to speak in the crude accent of its commander-in-chief. But, what unfolded before television cameras was a scene more telling than any press release could muster. A scene that peeled back the layers of old colonial wounds, racism, ignorance, and above all, the enduring failure of African leadership.

    So, what really happened?

    This is what happened. During the USA-Liberia bilateral meeting, President Donald Trump caught sight of the cameras and turned toward the Liberian President and offered what he perhaps thought was a compliment. “Such good English. Where did you learn to speak so beautifully?” he quipped, half in jest, fully in condescension. And how did the Liberian President respond? He nodded with the eagerness of a schoolboy desperate for approval. With the meekness of one unsure of his worth. With the servility of the “House Negro” Malcolm X once warned us about. “Yes Sir, from Liberia,” he said, bowing as though he stood in front of a master, not a counterpart or an equal. Even before the stage was set and the cameras began to roll, the youthful President of Senegal was also heard, almost breathlessly, begging President Trump to consider building one of his famed golf courses on Senegalese soil. It was a scene both painful and revealing: a sovereign leader reducing his office to the role of a supplicant in pursuit of the ephemeral. One could almost hear the echo of the colonial plea of yore. Moments like this confirm an unsettling truth that some countries do, indeed, have his kind: leaders who confuse servility for diplomacy, who mistake flattery for statecraft, and who forget that leadership is not about seeking favour, but about earning respect.

    There is, without doubt, more to be said about President Diomaye Faye. As a youthful politician who rode the cresting waves of youth agitation and popular discontent to ascend the Senegalese presidency, one would have hoped that his vision for investment would be shaped by both discernment and duty. His very mandate came from the restless streets and from young men and women demanding jobs, dignity, and a future. That he would, in a rare bilateral moment, use the occasion to plead for a golf course is not only disappointing but telling. Of all the investments he could have championed, including those that build factories, power tech hubs, fund vocational training, or stimulate agro-industrial growth, he chose leisure over labour, turf over tools. Golf is not the future the Senegalese youth marched for. It is difficult not to read his request as symbolic: an appeal not for sustainable development, but for prestige cloaked in links and fairways, sand traps and putting greens. A vision of Senegal where the young and unemployed citizens who imagined a different dawn would become caddies and buggy drivers under the blazing Sahelian sun, ferrying the clubs of foreign tourists is certainly not the vision the youths surrendered their lives for. But, a country that fought for change cannot be sustained by spectacle. Leadership, especially one born of youthful struggle, must rise above the temptation of ornamental investments. The real green Senegal needs isn’t manicured fairways, it’s fertile economic opportunity.

    Regardless, the Trump-Boakai moment captured everything that is wrong with African leadership in the 21st century. Everything that remains broken about post-colonial consciousness. And everything that still stinks in the corridors of foreign diplomacy.

    Here, I return to the question itself.

    “Such good English…”

    Trump’s statement, in its full ignorance, reveals something deeply rooted in the Western psyche. The inability, or refusal, to accept African sophistication unless it is filtered through European-American norms. English fluency becomes an achievement for an African, not a basic civic attribute. Like a dog that has learned to walk on two legs, the African is congratulated not for being intelligent or articulate; but for being surprisingly so. Here is the subtle bigotry that colonialism taught the West to internalise: that Africans are children of Babel, speaking in tongues and unfit for civil discourse, unless trained. The notion that any elegance, eloquence, or sophistication must be the result of exposure to Western values. Never innate. Never cultural. Never home-grown.

    Yet, even more galling than Trump’s remark was the Liberian President’s response. He should have been offended, or at least, diplomatically assertive. He should have reminded Trump that Liberia is an English-speaking country founded by freed African-American slaves. That its Constitution and institutions bear American fingerprints. That the flag of Liberia waves with a single white star against stripes drawn from the U.S. flag. That speaking English in Liberia is as natural as breathing.

    But, no. Boakai bowed. In that bow, he betrayed Africans. In that nod, he shrunk his office. He forgot the weight of the presidency. He forgot the millions of Liberians whose dignity he represents. And he forgot, most importantly, that African leaders must now speak not only as citizens of their nations, but as the voice of a continent long misrepresented and misunderstood. President Boakai became the embodiment of the “House Negro” Malcolm X described in his fiery speeches. Malcolm’s House Negro metaphor is what it is: the “House Negro” who lives in the master’s house. He eats the master’s leftovers. He wears the master’s clothes. And when the master falls sick, he asks, “What’s the matter, boss, we sick?” He loves the master more than he loves himself. That was the image that the Liberian President evoked with his reply. Not a partner. Not equal. Not a leader. But a grateful servant in the White Man’s house.

    This isn’t merely about one President and one moment. It is about a pattern. A chronic crisis of leadership in Africa. A ridiculous helplessness passed down through generations of post-independence elites who still bow to foreign powers. Our leaders seek validation, not partnership. They smile too quickly, nod too eagerly, and apologise when they should assert. They crave photo-ops with Western presidents more than they pursue meaningful outcomes for their people. The handshake becomes more valuable than trade deals. The state dinner more important than school funding. It is the politics of inferiority. Wrapped in Western suits, our leaders walk into foreign capitals unsure whether they belong. And because they do not believe in their own equality, neither do their hosts. The tragedy is that Liberia, of all countries, should have known better. Liberia’s founding is an anomaly in African history. Established by the American Colonisation Society in the 19th century for freed Black slaves, Liberia has always been tethered to the United States. Its capital, Monrovia, is named after a U.S. president. Its political and legal systems mirror those of the U.S. If any country should not be asked, “Where did you learn to speak English?”, it is Liberia.

    So, the ignorance of Trump was not only an insult, it was a statement of just how forgotten Africa remains in the imagination of the Western world. Even those countries with deep historical ties are reduced to caricature of the linguistically exotic. And unfortunately, too often, their leaders reinforce that caricature.

    How different things could be. What if the President had smiled and responded, “Mr. President, Liberia was founded by African-Americans. English is the language of our Constitution. Your nation helped shape our republic. So, I should be asking you, where did you learn to speak so beautifully?” That would have turned the moment into dignity. Into assertion. Into a quiet reminder that African nations are not guests in world affairs. They are equals.

    Instead, something else came to the limelight: the hollowness of diplomacy when it is not backed by self-respect. The collapse of historical memory. A leader who, in trying to please, diminished the office he holds. And Africans were thus reminded again that the worst of colonialism isn’t in the past. It lives on, in minds, in gestures, in words unspoken, and bows uncalled for. Africa doesn’t need leaders who seek to be liked. It needs leaders who know history. Leaders who speak with pride. Leaders who challenge ignorance with quiet firmness. Leaders who carry the continent on their shoulders when they step into global arenas.

    The time for doffing hats and nodding like the agama lizard is over. It is time for standing tall. For reclaiming the narratives. For teaching even the most powerful that African states are not curiosities. They are nations. With languages, with histories, with pride.

    If African Presidents forget that, then the shame isn’t Trump’s alone.

    It is ours, as Africans.

    Leaders like Boakai and Diomaye Faye represent Africa. And Africans must demand better from them.

  • AI Optimization: The New SEO Paradigm – By Dr. Samson Abanni

    AI Optimization: The New SEO Paradigm – By Dr. Samson Abanni

    How Brands Must Adapt for an AI-Mediated Digital Landscape

    Event those who live under a rock can feel that there is a fundamental change in the technology that moves the world. Artificial intelligence has upended all we know about all we know. And like all technology, once it arrives it must first have handshake with business.  Artificial intelligence has fundamentally altered the rules of digital discovery, and a stark new reality emerges: if AI cannot find you, you effectively cease to exist in the digital ecosystem.

    Introducing AI Optimization (AIO)

    AIO represents the natural evolution of search engine optimization for an AI-dominated world. It is a strategic paradigm focused on ensuring your brand, product, or content is featured, recommended, or cited in AI-generated responses from Large Language Models (LLMs) and other AI-powered search interfaces. The AI scene has been ablaze with the cut throat competition among leading AI firms to route all search through their AI agents. This has massive implications that ChatGPT for example,has five hundred million users. With this new trend fewer people will search for information via google search, and evn there, the search is now handled by LLMs. The implication is that in the nearest months almost all information search on the internet will be mediated by LLMs. SEO as we know it is dead.

    This shift is changing digital marketing because users increasingly depend on AI agents for information , news, and date rather than navigating traditional search results. AI tools now synthesize and recommend content—often without providing direct links to original sources. Being included in the AI’s response has become a critical competitive advantage.And soon customers would be able to make purchases directly and commerce is the lifeblood of the internet, now dominated by AI.

    The Rise of AI-Mediated Search

    Generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google’s Search Generative Experience are upturned search behavior. Research from BrightEdge indicates that AI-powered search features now influence over 60% of search interactions, with users demonstrating marked preference for summarized responses over traditional link-based results.

    Citation-Based Brand Authority

    Brands that achieve consistent citation in AI outputs gain authority and a broader appeal as users implicitly accept the steer of the LLMs. When an AI system references your brand in response to relevant queries, it signals to users that you are a recognized authority in your domain—similar to appearing in the featured snippet of traditional Google search, but with greater perceived credibility.

    The Zero-Click Future

    Contemporary user behavior increasingly favors immediate answers over exploratory browsing, wether for convenience or to save effort. Users consume AI-generated responses as final answers, integrating them directly into their workflows. In this environment, your brand must be embedded within the answer itself, or risk digital extinction.

    Strategic plan or AIO Implementation

    1. Content structure for AI Consumption

    Structure your content with AI processing in mind. LLMs favor clear, factual, well-cited information that can be easily parsed and synthesized.

    • Structure your content for AI consumption Use clear, factual, cited, and structured authentic information. LLMs love structured data as it makes their job easier. Answer questions concisely and with domain authority (like a smart human expert). Format: use FAQ-style pages, comparison tables, and how-to content with clarity and rich metadata as this gives rich data at a glance.
    • Get featured in trusted sources LLMs scrape from LLMs don’t read your website directly as humans do—they read: High-authority sites (Wikipedia, news sites, journals). Product reviews (Amazon, G2, Capterra, etc.). Social signals (Reddit, Quora, Twitter threads). Your content on Medium, Substack, or editorial partner sites. This means you have to have a digital proof of life on these important platforms and inspire robust engagement there. Strategy: Get quoted or mentioned in trusted sources that LLMs use as training material or plugins (like Perplexity, Bing, or ChatGPT web browsing mode).
    • Publish AI-friendly content Use schema markup (especially for product, FAQ, and article content). Prioritize simple formats and organic information that is generated in-house. Write content that is clear, neutral, balanced. Include statistics, summaries, and references.
    • Prompt engineer your way into visibility Reverse-engineer AI answers. Study the way AI produces answers and ask AI to explain what it prioritizes when searching for information in your brand area, in your country. Ask it what it looks out for and why. Tweak your content and brand positioning to align with your new knowledge. For example:

    Ask Perplexity or ChatGPT: “What’s the easiest online media platforms in Nigeria for you to read and cite?” If you’re a news media and not in the answer—you’ve got work to do. The good thing is that you can share link to your site and ask for ideas on how to improve.

    The First-Mover Advantage

    Early adopters of AIO strategies are establishing significant advantages now things are in more of a flux. Brands achieving consistent presence in AI responses for target queries create new competitive moats—barriers that become increasingly difficult for competitors to overcome as AI systems reinforce their authority through repeated citations.

    This advantage is particularly pronounced because AI systems often exhibit consistency in their responses, meaning brands establishing early epistemic authority tend to maintain positioning across multiple queries and platforms.

    Future Considerations

    As AI systems become more sophisticated, emerging trends include personalized responses based on user context, real-time information integration, and AI-driven purchasing decisions. Brands must prepare for these developments while mastering current AIO fundamentals.

    Advanced AI systems now process images, charts, and PDFs, requiring multimodal optimization strategies that include visual content with descriptive metadata and properly formatted documents for AI extraction.

    Conclusion

    AI Optimization represents a fundamental shift in how brands must approach digital visibility and authority building. Unlike traditional SEO, which focused on algorithmic rankings, AIO demands genuine expertise, authoritative content, and strategic positioning within the information ecosystems that AI systems trust.

    The brands that master AIO early will establish sustainable competitive advantages in an AI-mediated world. This isn’t about manipulating systems—it’s about becoming the definitive answer when artificial intelligence seeks authoritative information in your domain.

    Dr. Samson Abanni, MBA, is a business consultant with over a decade of experience in helping startups navigate the changes of business childhood. He’s also a member of the Board of Editors of Pacesetter Frontier Magazine.

  • Burying Buhari – By M.O Ene

    Burying Buhari – By M.O Ene

     

    Humans are made up of body and soul. The body is of the earth. The soul is divine. The body dies. The soul lives. The body is buried to dissipate the distress. The soul is a spirit; no one knows better. Faith enters the equation: Don’t speak ill of the dead. The death of one diminishes humanity. Such cultural mumbo-jumbo emissions help to heal the heart of the grieving.

    I understand not speaking ill of the dead. It is of no use. The deceased has lost the physical ability to counter. Yet, the memories of life cannot be swept away. Interestingly, the speed with which we forget the dear departed is alarming. Lucky are those of whom the living still recall just months after they leave the scene. Therefore, the focus is on learning the lessons of the life lived—not rehashing rabidly the actions of the deceased.

    So let it be with Muhammadu Buhari.

    It is not easy to recall the good deeds that Buhari did with the great opportunities he had. As a military muscleman, his laudable ‘war against indiscipline’ turned into draconian decrees, including ludicrous long jail terms for political prisoners, muzzling of mainstream media, and shocking retroactive public execution of petty drug dealers!

    On his second coming, Buhari dashed the hopes of Nigerians by unleashing more corruption, bandits, and terrorist herdsmen with AK-47. He visited his signature violence of dogs and baboons on EndSARS protesters. He was particularly harsh on the Southeast, “the dot” in his warped ethnic estimation, which is to be visited with threats of another genocide. When censored for the vile statement, he banned Twitter (now X). Not even on his way out would Buhari forgive Nnamdi Kanu, Sunday Adeniyi Adeyemo (Igboho), and El Zakzaky, the Shi’a Muslim cleric. On the other hand, he treated the butchering Boko Haram terrorists with mittens!

    Buhari died peacefully in London, where he had spent many moons receiving good medical attention. His wife, who had been living in Dubai, reportedly relayed a plea for forgiveness. Fair enough: forgiven, not forgotten. Meanwhile, MNK (whom courts in Kenya and Nigeria have freed) languishes in jail because Buhari would not forgive a simple juvenile insult. What will it take for men to accept mistakes and make amends while the good gods guarantee life! I hope that Yakubu Gowon is listening and learning, not adding more insults of lies to injuries he caused and failed to heal.

    When the present emotions ebb, Nigerians must rise against medical tourism. It is ridiculous that Nigeria cannot set up topnotch medical facilities to treat its top executives. Putting Nigerian leaders at the mercy of foreign pharmacological firms is a screaming shame and a stupid security risk. Ironically, Nigerian medicos who offer commendable care abroad can offer better care in Nigeria.

    President Ahmed Bola Tinubu should establish decent hospitals at which prominent politicians get great care and die peacefully when the time comes—as it will come inevitably. We had two former heads of state in London, possibly getting care from exiled Nigerian doctors they could not keep in the country. The cost of retrieving the remains of Buhari and transporting people to and from the UK is enough to equip a set-aside standard clinic in Abuja, FCT.

    Before he jets out to France again, President Tinubu must learn the lasting lessons of the current bala-blu (hullabaloo) and think of legacy, a bequest for the memory of ex-President Muhammadu Buhari.

     

    #moe, 7.15.25

  • Africa Is a Cemetery for Africans

    Africa Is a Cemetery for Africans

    -By Abdul Mahmud

    The phrase, “Africa is a cemetery for Africans,” falsely credited to Vladimir Putin, has long taken a meaning that goes beyond the dubiety of its source. But, whoever couched it and pushed it into the virtual space, acquiring its virality in the process, must have seen further than most of us. It isn’t just a phrase about the continent’s history of slavery, war, famine and the brutality of tyrannical rulers. It isn’t even just about the millions who die needlessly from hunger or curable diseases. It is, more sharply, a commentary on the kind of men who govern the continent. Men who live off their people and die in lands far away from them. Men who snatch the people’s hope, supplanting it with indignity, and burying their future.

    To call Africa a cemetery is to point fingers at the power-holders who turn statehouses into slaughterhouses. At men who transform democracy into dictatorship, and public trust into private holdings. It is to hold the mirror up to the likes of Jean-Bedel Bokassa, who ruled the Central African Republic like a butcher, crowned himself emperor in a lavish ceremony modelled after Napoleon, then died quietly in exile. Or Paul Biya of Cameroon, who has ruled from Geneva’s five-star hotels longer than from his country’s capital in Yaoundé. Kamuzu Banda of Malawi, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Edgar Lungu of Zambia, and our own Umaru Yar’Adua and Muhammadu Buhari. These men, whose names merely make up one half of the cycle of rulers, ran their countries into the ground and found their final comforts abroad. And the other half of the cycle is squared by current rulers who not only have ruined what is left and are making weekly and monthly detours to foreign lands as medical tourists. President Tinubu are you there?

    It is a tragedy. A continent that raised these men must now bury them in soils they once betrayed. They left in luxury. They returned in caskets. In many ways, these rulers are a symbol of something far more enduring and sinister. They represent a political culture that rewards oppression and celebrates impunity. In their hands, power isn’t a tool for service, it is an instrument of self-preservation. Here, governance becomes nothing more than the extraction of value from the state to feed a narrow circle of cronies. The people? Forgotten. Their suffering? Just background noise to the wailing of sirens and the clinking of champagne glasses at state dinners.

    The facts have been consistently laid bare in the public space. Let’s recall a few here. African presidents are some of the most travelled in the world. Not for diplomatic shuttles; but for healthcare. They build no functioning hospitals at home, but they travel to London, Paris, Berlin and Dubai for treatment. They abandon their people in crowded and understaffed clinics, but they fly first-class overseas to seek the best medical attention money can buy. And when their bodies fail them, as all bodies must, they breathe their last far from the people they ruled. Far from the streets they never fixed. Far from the schools they underfunded. Far from the hospitals they refused to equip.

    What else can one call it but medical tourism, the grim betrayal dressed as privilege? The brutal irony lies in this: men who, in life, denied their citizens the dignity of basic healthcare, now claim in death the full embrace of global medical excellence. It is a perverse reward system, where rulers who left their nations gasping for breath are themselves intubated in sterile wards abroad. Since the days of Bokassa, Banda, and Nyerere, whose memories now live mostly in footnotes and faded eulogies, a new figure has emerged to personify this legacy of abandonment. Buhari. His memory stands today as the emblem of that cold, clinical disregard. He will forever remain the poster child of the paradox: a ruler absent from his people in sickness, yet ever-present in their sufferings. In his eight years in power, he spent over 200 days in London receiving medical treatment. No one knew the nature of his ailment. No one knew the cost. He never spoke of it. But the planes flew, and the presidential entourage never grew smaller. At home, doctors were going,  coming, and going on strikes – in that endless cycle of going. Patients were dying. Hospitals were gasping for life support. But the president was always in the UK, wrapped in the quiet of Harley Street clinics. When he eventually left office, he slipped out of the country again, reportedly for medical treatment. He died there. In a land not his.

    What kind of man does that? What kind of ruler spends more time receiving treatment abroad than fixing what’s broken at home?

    This is the paradox: they die abroad. But they are always buried here. They want our earth, but not our air. Our soil, but not our service. They want the glory of being mourned by the people they abandoned. State burials, public holidays, military salutes and obsequious rituals designed to lend dignity to the undignified. Even in death, they take from the people. But, come to think about it, which country buries its own betrayal with such fanfare? Nigeria. There’s a point to note just as well about a good number of these rulers who die nameless deaths in luxurious suites abroad. Their final breaths are heard not by the nurses in their own public hospitals, but by foreigners whose names their citizens will never know. Then, after death, the surreal drama begins: the flag-draped coffins, the sorrowful national broadcasts, the endless condolence registers. The body returns. But the damage remains.

    The story always morphs into a drama that repeats itself. Over and over. New rulers emerge, promising change. Promising health reforms. Promising to stay at home. But in time, the lure of the nanny-state; the state that pampers and provides for their every private need draws them in. They forget the people. They remember only their pleasures. Governance in Africa, to these men, is not duty. It is privilege. The State becomes the nursemaid. It feeds them, bathes them, tucks them into presidential suites, and sends their children abroad to elite schools. It handles their birthdays and bankrolls their funerals. Even in retirement, the State remains their slave.

    This is what all Africans must call out. This nannyhood. This warped conception of public office as a private inheritance. This sucking of the breast of the nation until it runs dry. There is no nobility in dying abroad, far from the people you led. No honour in returning as a cargo on a presidential jet. No dignity in a life that denied others theirs. Yet, how many more must we watch go this route? How many more African leaders will fail to understand that leadership is not about luxury? That power is not about self-protection?

    Africans know what good governance looks like. They see it in countries that invest in their people, in their institutions, in their futures. They see it in leaders who die among their people, not above them. But Africa has been denied this reality for too long. Too many of its rulers rule like monarchs and flee like fugitives. Their names decorate airport lounges and stadiums. But their legacies rot in the ruins they left behind.

    Africa needs a new kind of leadership. One that sees the presidency not as an escape, but as a service. One that understands that a hospital bed in Lagos is worth more than a thousand hospital visits to London. That education for all is better than scholarships for the few. That the real measure of leadership is not in miles travelled, but lives touched. Until then, the cemetery metaphor remains. And the burials will continue. Not just of bodies. But of dreams. Africa deserves more than being the final resting place for men who ruined it. Africa deserves leaders who will live for her, suffer for her, and if they must, die with it. Not in exile. Not in a foreign suite. But on the soil they swore to serve.

    That, perhaps, is how Africa must escape the cemetery.

  • Nigeria’s Ruling Class and the Collapse of Decency

    Nigeria’s Ruling Class and the Collapse of Decency

    -By Abdul Mahmud

    In a country starved of dignity, the conduct of members of the political class becomes akin to the conduct of wayward sailors staggering on the deck of a sinking ship. Call it the Titanic. They stagger through public spaces, like the character, Juda Pesa, the self-proclaimed market philosopher in the Kenyan writer, Meja Mwangi’s novel, ‘Striving for the Wind’, who, while heavily inebriated, staggers and lectures his fellow villagers in the market square of Kambi, their tongues loosed by hubris, their minds empty of ideas, and their mouths brimming with insults.

    What ordinarily should be spaces for sober public discourses have become arenas of farce, disrespect, and sheer moral bankruptcy.

    Take, for instance, the appalling behaviour of Clement Jimbo, a member of the House of Representatives from Akwa Ibom State. Last week, he took to the social media and desecrated it. In a misguided attempt to attack the newly proposed coalition party, the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Jimbo likened its fate to that of the ADC airline that crashed into the Lagos lagoon many years ago. In doing so, he not only revealed a stunning lack of emotional intelligence, but also insulted the memory of those who perished in that national tragedy. Such a comparison is not just insensitive; it is utterly inhumane. It reflects the deepening rot within a political class that sees human suffering as a metaphor to win cheap political points. It was neither a slip of tongue nor the exaggeration of a man caught in his own rhetorical flourish. It was deliberate. And it was cruel. Disgraceful. Jimbo’s words betray a disturbing disregard for the solemnity of human life and the rights of association and assembly guaranteed by the Constitution. For what is the ADC coalition but a constitutional expression of political will? In mocking it with the imagery of death, Jimbo abandoned reason, embraced the vulgar and displayed bitter animus. No man, and no less an elected representative, with a sober mind, would write such a nonsense.

    But Jimbo is not alone in this descent.

    Please, welcome the former Governor of Rivers State and current FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, who, on his own part, has since embarked on a media roadshow of abuse and puffery. Like a man possessed by the ghost of Dionysus, he spares no one. His language, coarse. Elder statesmen who should be honoured are dragged into the portorportor of his invectives. Colleagues are treated as some objects of oddity. Wike’s verbal outbursts are not only unbecoming, they are offensive. They reflect a broader cultural decline where the values of restraint, humility, and honour have been replaced by noise and braggadocio. His public tantrums are not those of a statesman. They are the antics of a man too drunk on power to distinguish office from the theatrical circus. On this point alone, the late French thinker, Guy Debord was right when he described those, intoxicated by their authority, who turn power to a spectacle, mediated by performances that reduce governance to a public circus. Unfortunately, brilliant as Debord was, his life, shaped by heavy drinking, reflected what he critiqued, suggesting a definitive parallel to the self-destructive intoxication of power that was the oeuvre of his scholarship.

    Ours has become the republic of the vulgar. Our rulers have normalised vulgarity and the kind of rulership that promotes staged circuses over substance. Rulers now speak before thinking. Their followers cheer, not for the wisdom in their words, but for the damage done to perceived enemies. There is no decorum. No civility. No depth. Only spectacle. What is worse is that this malaise is not confined to individual outbursts. It has become commonplace. From legislative chambers, social media, to press conferences, from campaign rallies to the marketplace, public communication has been stripped of thoughtfulness and replaced with buffoonery. Public discourses have collapsed under the weights of ego and idiocy. This is no accident. It is the consequence of a country that no longer rewards intellect or insists on virtue in governance. Today, political office is often the reward of wealth without work, noise without nuance, ambition without direction. Men and women who should never be entrusted with the responsibility of representing constituencies find themselves in charge of states. Those who should be in motor parks soliciting passengers for taxi drivers are making laws. Those who should be practitioners of virtue have instead become performers on the stage of vice.

    The result is a tragic comedy. Ours, a country of famed thinkers and scholars, now finds itself led by jesters. A country that once inspired the continent with the intellect of its statesmen is now mocked by the vacuity of its present custodians. Our rulers do not read. They do not listen. They do not reflect. They hurl words the way savages hurl stones. Blindly and destructively. Aristotle, in his reflections on ethics and politics, reminds us of Eudaimonia and the idea of human flourishing through virtue. Leadership, he argued, should strive towards the good life, a life rooted in moral excellence. But our rulers appear to inhabit a different moral universe; one in which the basest instincts are rewarded, and vulgarity is taken as strength.

    But, this is not just a problem with bad manners. Or of rulers or the rest of us behaving badly. It is a problem of ethics. When rulers lose the capacity for shame, the republic suffers. When elected public officials dance naked in the marketplace of ideas, citizens lose faith. When the elites speak like urchins, then what hope remains for street hawkers? Or for children coming after them? Yet, our citizens must ask: How did their country get here? How did men of such hollowness rise to such prominence? The answers lie partly in the decay of our civic institutions, in the ghettoisation of democracy, in the commodification of politics, and in the retreats of citizens from moral engagement. When elections are bought or stolen, not won; when godfathers select, not the voters electing their representatives; when loyalty to power replaces loyalty to principle, this type of rulership emerges.

    All is not lost. No country weeps forever over its losses. It can recover. And it does recover what it loses. But recovery demands courage. It demands that citizens cease to excuse bad behaviour from leaders. It demands that voters look beyond ethnic and party lines. It demands that young people, women, professionals, and thinkers enter the arena, not with the weapons of insult, but with virtue, intellect, service, and vision.

    Today’s rulers may act like drunken sailors, but they do not represent the totality of who the citizens truly are. They are a symptom of our collective complacency. If our country is to correct this course, it must recenter its values and reimagine its politics. It is not enough to pity these men of Brobdingnag. It is not enough to laugh at their tantrums. Citizens must demand better. Citizens must rebuild the moral spine of their national life. They must raise the ethical bar. Leadership is not the theatre of the absurd. It is a responsibility. It requires the mastery of the finesse of governance, empathy, and restraint. A country doesn’t achieve greatness or rise above the pedestrian through the actions of straw men and women; but by the character of those it entrusts with power.

    The time to restore dignity is now.

    As virtuous citizens sound the resonant bugle of conscience, summoning the wayward sailors of state back to the shore of reason and rectitude, our country must steady its helm and chart a new course of moral clarity and purpose across the calm waters of virtue and public decency, while it unyields to the tempests that may come.

    A word is enough for the wise.

  • [SPONSORED] From Green Checkered Shirt to Excellence: The Journey from Health Prefect to Doctor of Philosophy

    This picture holds a very special place in my heart. It was taken in the year 2000 during my final year (SS3) at Sardauna Memorial College, SMC, Kaduna. I was the Health Prefect at the time, a role I held with pride and responsibility. Standing on the school grounds, dressed in my green checkered uniform with the school prefect badge pinned neatly and firmly to my chest pocket, a badge of honour worn with purpose. Around my neck hangs a modest silver cross, symbolizing faith, resilience, and identity. I had no idea that this single photo would one day serve as a powerful reminder of how far I’ve come.

    In the photo, my right hand is resting casually, not on a desk or a railing, but on the Vespa motorcycle of my physics teacher, Mr. Sidi. That detail might seem small, but it brings back a flood of memories. Mr. Sidi was one of those rare teachers who made complex science topics feel relatable. His Vespa was iconic, it symbolized movement, energy, and a kind of quiet authority. I suppose I leaned on it that day not just for balance, but as a subtle reflection of my admiration and connection to the world of science and innovation.

    Back then, I was known among my classmates for being firm yet approachable, committed to discipline, hygiene, and the general well-being of the student body. I took my responsibilities seriously. Being Health Prefect wasn’t just about monitoring, it was about setting an example, creating awareness, and promoting personal responsibility.

    Academically, I was driven by a deep curiosity, especially in subjects like chemistry, physics, and mathematics. I wasn’t satisfied with just learning formulas. I wanted to understand the why and how behind everything. That inquisitive mindset, combined with the encouragement of some great mentors, laid the foundation for what would later become a lifelong journey in engineering.

    After graduating from Sardauna Memorial College, I pursued my undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering with the same determination I had in secondary school. The road ahead was not always smooth. There were financial hurdles, academic challenges, and moments of self-doubt. But every time I was tempted to quit, I reminded myself of that boy in the green checkered uniform – confident, hopeful, and standing tall in front of a future he could barely imagine.

    Years of hard work, research, and sleepless nights eventually led to a crowning moment in my academic journey; I was awarded a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering by the prestigious Enugu State University of Science and Technology. It was more than a certificate or a title; it was the fulfillment of a dream seeded in the dusty classrooms of SMC, Kaduna and watered by years of discipline, faith, and resilience.

    Looking back now, that photo isn’t just a school memory. It represents a beginning, a quiet declaration that I was ready to take on the world. From leaning on a teacher’s Vespa to contributing to cutting-edge research in chemical engineering, the journey has been nothing short of remarkable.

    To every young student out there: your present doesn’t define your limit, it defines your starting point. Stand tall in your green shirt, whatever it may be, and don’t be afraid to dream beyond what you see.

    Dr. Onyebuchi Emmanuel Nnaji

    Ph.D. Chemical Engineering | Scholar | Engineer | Lifelong Learner

  • Africa’s Ethnic Diversity and the Search for a Home-Grown Democracy

    Africa’s Ethnic Diversity and the Search for a Home-Grown Democracy

    -By Abdul Mahmud

    I must begin with a confession. I write two columns weekly. One for this magazine and the other for the People’s Gazette. After finishing my piece for the People’s Gazette, I found myself staring into that graveyard of silence familiar to writers: the sudden and barren wasteland of the mind, the dreaded place called writer’s block. My Muse had packed her bags. Without a whisper. Without a rustle of inspiration. Perhaps, as the GenZs say with half a chuckle and half a fear, my village people had finally located me. So, I resolved not to place my fingers on the keyboard this week; and to retreat in quiet surrender to emptiness. But fate, or perhaps the gods of public engagement, had other plans for me.

    I posted a short prelude to my other column on Facebook; just a few lines excerpted from my other column. It elicited reactions. But one reaction in particular arrested me. It came from my dear friend and Nigeria’s former Ambassador to Guinea-Bissau, John Usanga. His words were warm, but they carried a troubling question, foregrounded by that kind of humility that makes one pause and think: “I love your write-up, great comrade! But my problem is this: Given that Africa – and I mean no disrespect to us as a people – is tribal in composition, what would be the proper home-grown democratic structure that will accommodate the diversity of ethnic groups in Africa to the satisfaction of all Africans?” His question haunted me. It tugged at my conscience. It lingered, even as I told myself I had nothing more to say this week. So here I am, struggling still with the Muse who has refused to return, but compelled to respond to a question too important to ignore. For at the heart of it lies Africa’s oldest dilemma: how to reconcile her many tongues, her many nations, her many peoples, into a shared political life that is just, inclusive, and truly democratic.

    Before I venture into the heart of the matter, a brief detour is necessary as an interrogation of Ambassador Usanga’s use of the phrase, “tribal in composition.” Though likely used in good faith, the phrase carries a heavy historical burden. It echoes the vocabulary of early sociologists and anthropologists like Levi-Strauss, Durkheim, Malinowski whose positions were tainted by racist prejudices. In their writings, Africa’s ethnic nations were flattened into “tribes”; a term that became the shorthand for the primitive, the pre-political, the undeveloped. These so-called “tribes” were not seen as evolving cultures with histories, institutions, and systems of governance. They were imagined as static relics of humanity’s past that were exotic, chaotic, and in need of external order. The description may have served colonialism, but it does violence to the richness of African identities. To call African nations “tribal” is not simply to misname them; it is to diminish them. It is to cast them outside the realm of the modern. And that, let it be said plainly, is racist.

    Africa’s nations are complex. They are multi-layered. They are diverse. They are dynamic. They are not “tribes” in the sense of the colonial. To continue to describe them as such is to remain trapped in that colonial imagination.

    Now, I return to the main themes of this piece.

    In 1957, as Britain’s colonial project began to collapse, the Colonial Office in London released a troubling Report. Democracy, it stated, would not travel well in the colonies, especially in Nigeria. Its reason? Widespread poverty. Ignorance. And, in more guarded colonial-speak, the “tribal” character of the Nigerian.

    It was a cold dismissal. A quiet warning that democracy, imported wholesale, would break under the weight of ethnic diversity. The Report wasn’t entirely wrong. It was, however, short-sighted. The late Claude Ake, the renowned Nigerian political economist, would later put it more clearly. In his book, The Feasibility of Democracy in Africa, Ake wrote that democratisation must precede democracy. In effect, he meant that democracy cannot exist without it being practised. It cannot take root in an environment where it is not nurtured. It cannot be wished into being. Today, nearly 70 years since that colonial report, Africa still struggles with democracy. The question remains: what form of democracy can truly work for Africa? One that respects the continent’s ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity. One that Africans can call their own.

    This isn’t a question plucked from the sheaf of the abstract. It goes to the heart of Africa’s failures and its hopes. Across the continent, post-independence governments inherited the Western liberal model. Parliaments. Presidents. Political parties. Constitutions. They adopted Westphalian and European legal systems and bureaucracies. But they did not dismantle the colonial state, as Professor Chidi Odinkalu argued recently at a webinar. Nor did they adapt these systems to the realities of the continent. In many cases, they simply exchanged white rulers for black elites. Or they simply masked their black skin with white masks- with apologies to Frantz Fanon.

    The result? Electoral violence. Ethnic competitions. Winner-takes-all politics. Fragile institutions. Military coups. The problem isn’t that democracy is foreign. The problem is that African societies are structured differently. Identity is local before it is national. People trust their kin before they trust the state. Allegiance to clan, ethnicity, and religion runs deep. This is not inherently bad. Diversity is not Africa’s curse. It is the character of those who run the state that implicates the operationalisation of democracy in terrible ways. But when the operators ignore the essential character of representation of democracy, it leads to conflict. When states impose uniformity, people resist the imposition in many conflictual ways. When political systems fail to give space to different groups, people feel excluded.

    So, what is to be done?

    First, we must accept that Africa cannot copy and paste democracy. We cannot take the American presidential model or the British Westminster system and expect it to thrive in our societies. We need to build democracy from the ground up. Based on our own histories. Based on our own realities.

    Perhaps, a hark to the past will help provide some clarity.

    Before the advent of European colonialism, African societies governed themselves. Many had systems of consensus. Kings and chiefs ruled, but often in consultation with the people. These governance systems were participatory. They were inclusive. They recognised diversity. Modern democracy must learn from these traditions. It must be rooted in African social structures.

    Second, we need to embrace federalism. True federalism. Not in name, but in substance. Many African countries are artificial states, with colonial borders. The colonialists bundled together dozens, even hundreds, of ethnic groups; and expected them to coexist under a centralised government that has turned out unrealistic. The unitary model has failed in places like Sudan, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. A genuine federal system allows communities to govern themselves while remaining part of the national framework. It provides autonomy. It reduces ethnic tension. It encourages participation. Take Nigeria, for instance. With close to 600 ethnic groups, its problems are partly structural. The current quasi-federal system concentrates too much power at the centre. It breeds resentment and unhealthy competition. A restructured federation that returns power to the regions may offer better stability.

    Third, Africa needs inclusive institutions that must reflect the plural character of society. Power must be shared. Representation must be guaranteed. This goes beyond ethnic balancing. It means building systems that represent every voice. Minority protections must be enshrined in the basic law.

    My position doesn’t mean that the past must be romanticised. Some traditional systems are patriarchal or discriminatory. But a hybrid of modern state institutions working alongside reformed traditional authorities can enhance legitimacy. Rwanda’s Gacaca courts offer one such example. Though controversial, they blended customary law and community justice to address post-genocide reconciliation and enthroned restorative justice. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is another example. Though not perfect, it reflected Ubuntu.

    Fourth, democracy must be localised. Too often, elections are national rituals, far removed from ordinary people. Controlled by money. Captured by elites. But real democracy starts at the local level. In the ward. The village. The township. When people feel they have a say in their everyday governance, democracy begins to make sense. Democracy is a verb; people learn democracy by doing democracy.

    But we must also go deeper. Political education is key. People must understand that democracy is not just about voting. It is about dialogue. Debate. Compromise. More importantly, democracy cannot thrive on empty stomachs. The Colonial Office was partly right: poverty undermines democracy. So does unemployment. Illiteracy. Disease. People who are desperate do not care for ballots. They care for bread. Building home-grown democracy requires investing in people. Education. Health. Jobs. Infrastructure. These are not luxuries. They are necessities. When people are empowered, they can participate fully in governance. When citizens are informed, they can hold their leaders accountable.

    Across Africa, the civic space and freedoms are under attack. Governments shut down the internet. Arrest critics. Clamp down on protests. But history shows that democracy often comes from below.

    In 2020, Nigerian youths mobilised for #EndSARS. In 2023, Senegalese students led demonstrations for justice. Last week, Kenyans protested new taxes and forced their government to retreat. The Togolese weren’t left out. These are signs of democratic awakening. Young Africans are no longer waiting for perfect systems. They are demanding accountability. They are building platforms. They are using technology to organise and mobilise. They are showing that democracy is not a concession. It is a fight borne out of courage of conviction. But, in the end, the question isn’t whether Africa is fit for democracy. The question is whether democracy can be made fit for Africa.

    And the answer is yes.

    But it will not come through mimicry. It will come through imagination and struggle. Through bold reforms. Through the reforms of the African mindsets. Through the reinvention of local traditions. Through federal structures. Through inclusive governance. A home-grown African democracy must rise from the soil of the continent. It must speak its languages. Honour its cultures. Embrace its complexities. Only then can democracy take root. Only then can it flourish. No more.

  • PDP Problems Require Legal and Not Political Solution

    PDP Problems Require Legal and Not Political Solution

    By Godswill Eketabubu

    The above caption appears strange given the well advertised succession of political problems that have afflicted the PDP since 2015; problems that became exacerbated during the 2023 presidential election cycle. Yet, as grave as these political maladies appear, they currently pale into relative insignificance in relation to the complex legal challenge the party is facing. My theory of the case is thus very simple: tackle and resolve this knotty legal challenge and the party’s political pathologies will begin to disappear rapidly but ignore it, throw it under the bus or attend to it half heartedly and the envisaged political solution canvassed for will only bring temporary relief.

    PDP’s 2023 Political ‘Wahala’

    The enormity of the crippling political crises that the PDP faced during the 2023 presidential election season are very well known. From the party’s ambiguous decision over the zoning of the presidential ticket, the refusal of Dr. Iyorcha Ayu, then National Chairman of the party to resign and the open rebellion mounted by the Nyesom Wike led G-5 Governors, the party’s fate and fortune was quickly sealed. Its perennial candidate, Atiku Abubakar, lost the presidential election, Wike landed the top job as President Bola Tinubu’s minister of the FCT, and a vicious political war was levied at the heart of the party’s functioning as a coherent political apparatus. Those angry about the party’s behaviour in 2023 were then resolved to get their pound of flesh and to achieve this, the party must be taught a lesson and made to suffer so much so that it would have broken into many pieces before 2027- thus paving the way for President Tinubu’s leisurely re-entry into office.

    At this stage the driving force in the party’s persistent crises was political contestation – who will control the party’s institutional machinery, determine its direction and to what use it will be put to. There are three forces engaged in this political rofo-rofo: those who insist that the party must remain an autonomous political entity, free from external control so that it can wage and possibly win the political war of 2027; those who want the party to be tied to the apron strings of President Tinubu and the ruling APC; and those who neither want the party to be strong, firm and united because “they have no portion in it again” nor want Tinubu to have anything to do with it. Without a shadow of a doubt, the Governor of Bauchi state and Chairman of the PDP Governors’ Forum, Sen. Bala Mohammed best exemplifies the first tendency. He has of late been joined in that space by the Ag. National Chairman of the party Amb. Illiya Damagun whose loyalty to the party was initially perceived to be questionable.

    PDP Lands Itself in a Legal Quagmire

    The noise over these political challenges was so loud and heavy that scant attention was paid to the legal challenge that sneaked into the party’s core: what has now become the epic battle over the National Secretary position. Why this struggle is existential to the party is not merely the perception of institutional disorder but that unless it is resolved the future of the party will be in grave danger. The matter is fairly straightforward. There are three claimants to that throne- the elected National Secretary, Sen. SamDaddy Anyanwu; Comrade Ude Okoye who the South East Caucus of the party nominated to takeover the position when Sen. Anyanwu contested for the Governorship of Imo state; and Setonji Kosheodo, the Deputy National Secretary who emerged as the Ag. National Secretary to resolve the fight between two brothers.

    Any member or leader of the party who fails to recognize the centrality of this legal tussle to the future survival of the party is either being mischievous or is downright clueless and politically idiotic. If this tussle is resolved speedily, the party will be able to hold a valid and legally sound NEC, ratify the appointment of valid and legally tenable convention and zoning of elective positions committees, hold a valid and legally sound National Convention where it will elect a new NWC, and thereafter in 2026 hold presidential primaries that will produce its Presidential Candidate for the 2027 general elections. If the party does the wrong thing with regard to the National Secretary position, retain the wrong person and proceed to unleash the processes I enumerated above thereof, the fate that befell APC in Zamfara state in 2019 will befall it. This will not only be with regard to all PDP candidates in off season elections but indeed all its governorship, senatorial, House of Representatives and State House of Assembly elections in 2027. Period.

    INEC Holds the Ace in Resolving PDP’s Legal Problem

    There is a loud noise out there that it is unbecoming of the party to call upon INEC to help resolve its problems, that INEC has no business interfering in its affairs or summoning its leaders to a meeting, that the June 30th NEC meeting is sacrosanct and must hold and that Sen. SamDaddy Anyanwu can never return as its National Secretary. While it may be necessary to let off steam and hold onto this kind of outlandish immature political reasoning approaching and tackling the reality on ground must be done devoid of this kind of emotion and sentiment. Only by such a deliberate, rational and logical mode of reasoning and acting will the party come out this mess and solve its problem.

    In Nigerian Constitutional democracy and with regard to multiparty political practices, INEC is the Alpha and Omega. As awful as this sounds, it is the truth. As a regulator INEC has powers that few people comprehend. INEC’s legal team is deep and formidable because of the nature of its work and the legal challenges it faces on a daily basis. I will rather go with INEC’s interpretation of the Supreme Court ruling on the question of who the National Secretary of the party is than that of 100 SANs combined! On this matter INEC has spoken and as regrettable and odious as it may sound to many people, this stance is FINAL. If the PDP does otherwise, trust me, it will be the end of the party, not today but after the 2027 elections – especially if it succeeds in dethroning President Bola Tinubu.

    What is this INEC position? Simply put and devoid of sentiment it is this: that the 30th June NEC meeting was illegally convened and thus cannot hold; that the National Secretary ought to have co-singed the notice with the Ag. National Chairman; that Sen. Anyanwu remains the party’s National Secretary till its next elective convention; and that anything to the contrary will spell legal doom for the party down the road. This picture is stark and clear whether INEC has said so directly or not. A visit to INEC secretariat and a perusal of its records will attest to this loud and clear.

    Gov. Bala Mohammed’s Rescue Mission

    The Governor of Bauchi state and the Chairman of the PDP Governors Forum appears to have recognized this fact given his tenacity, relentless drive and immense sacrifices in hosting countless meetings of the various organs of the party in the search for solution to this problem. He appears to have recognized that Sen. Anyanwu’s moral conduct in refusing to resign when he became the party’s flag bearer in the Imo governorship election or the kind of friends he keeps are irrelevant in the task of saving the party. His embrace of Sen. Anyanwu is thus a logic of common sense and wisdom that emotions and sentiments don’t win legal arguments. The Ag. National Chairman appears to have embraced this position given his stance on the postponement of the 30th June NEC and Sen. Anyanwu’s restoration as the party’s National Secretary. Sen. Bukola Saraki, the Chairman of the Reconciliation Committee appointed by the Gov. Bala Mohammed led PDPGF and other stakeholders appears to be working towards this sound outcome.

    My charge to all members of the party, sympathizers like myself and indeed all lovers of multiparty democracy which is under severe pressure by a frightened APC and its vauntingly ambitious Presidency is to rally round those working day and night to salvage it. If the likes of Gov. Bala Mohammed is to turn his back on the party as this point in time, one wonders what its fate will be. Rather than being vilified and called names, patriotic party faithful will gain more by chipping in their bit in the urgent task of rescuing the party from the jaws of APC sharks.

    Plea to South East Party Leaders

    My plea to the South East leaders of the party, particularly to the dynamic, high performing Gov. Peter Mbah of Enugu state and Sen. Adolphus Wabara who is the Chairman of the party’s BOT, as a neighbour from the South South and a long time PDP sympathizer, is to calm down, rise above your righteous anger over Sen. Anyanwu’s apparent betrayal of trust and unethical conduct and allow peace to reign. You cannot destroy that which you created. You cannot win this case in the eyes of INEC and the eyes of INEC is ultimately the eyes of the law in this regard. This may sound harsh and defeatist but it is the truth. Trust me. Unless you have some other reason why you want to leave the party which you formed that will be fine. It cannot be because of Sen. Anyanwu, whose tenure will lapse in November of this year.

    What will it profit you to ruin it all because you cannot stomach your anger for three or four months and demand that the party re-zones the position to the South East at the next convention so that you can finally get your person in for four years.

    The South East leaders of the PDP has everything to gain by working with the likes of Ag. Chairman Damagun and Gov. Bala Mohammed to put to rest, once and for all, the vexatious issue of the National Secretary, abandon the delusion of a NEC meeting on 30th June 2025 and see that gathering as an Expanded National Caucus during which the party can resolve the date of the next NEC and the upcoming National Convention. To do otherwise is to play into the hands of the enemies of the party and partake in its ultimate ruination.

    Dr. Eketabubu wrote from Port Harcourt Rivers state