The Pacesetter Frontier Magazine

Tag: Abdul Mahmud

  • The Release of Sunday Jackson

    The Release of Sunday Jackson

    -By Abdul Mahmud

    The decision of the Adamawa State Governor, Rt. Hon Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri CON, to grant pardon to Sunday Jackson marks a moment of relief in a country weighed down by grief and exhaustion. The announcement, framed as part of the Christmas and New Year commemorations, carries moral weight far beyond seasonal goodwill. For Sunday Jackson, condemned to death and confined at the Kuje Medium Security Custodial Centre, freedom now opens after years of fear and abandonment. For his supporters, scattered across Nigeria and the wider world, the pardon vindicates a long campaign anchored in conscience and faith. For many Christians of Northern Nigeria, the gesture brings a fragile sense of hope within a legal order that often appears hostile to their survival. The celebration surrounding Jackson’s release springs from more than personal sympathy. His case symbolised the collision between vulnerable rural communities and a justice system unable or unwilling to recognise the reality of constant threat. Jackson was sentenced to death for killing one of his attackers during a violent confrontation with Fulani herders. The facts, as widely reported and understood, pointed to self defence. A man faced with imminent danger acted to preserve his life. The law, designed to protect the innocent, turned instead into an instrument of terror against the very person it should have shielded.

    The Supreme Court’s affirmation of the death sentence remains a dark chapter in Nigerian jurisprudence. Courts serve as the final refuge for the powerless, the arena where facts meet reason and where moral judgement tempers rigid and formalist doctrinaire. In Jackson’s case, that refuge completely collapsed. The apex court chose formalism over justice, procedure over humanity. A ruling that ignored the context of persistent attacks on farming communities sent a chilling message. Self defence, when claimed by a Christian farmer in Northern Nigeria, carries little weight before the scales of justice. Such judicial blindness cannot be separated from the broader climate of insecurity. Across large swathes of the Middle Belt and the North, Christian villages endure repeated assaults. Farmers abandon their land, churches mourn their dead, families live under the shadow of displacement. These attacks rarely lead to convictions. Perpetrators melt into the landscape, shielded by silence or official indifference. When a victim resists and survives, the full force of the state often descends upon him. That inversion of justice explains the outrage that followed Jackson’s sentencing. The pardon therefore reads as an implicit admission that the legal process failed. Executive clemency steps in when the machinery of law grinds out an unjust outcome. While the governor’s action deserves commendation, reliance on mercy rather than justice exposes a dangerous weakness. A society governed by pardons instead of fair trials risks normalising injustice while celebrating occasional relief as generosity.

    The international community played a visible role in altering Jackson’s fate. The United States government, alongside faith based organisations and human rights advocates, demanded his release. That external scrutiny embarrassed Nigerian authorities into action. Such intervention raises uncomfortable questions about sovereignty and accountability. Why must foreign governments amplify the cry of a Nigerian citizen before his own institutions respond. Why did the moral authority of local churches and civil groups fail to move the system without global attention. The answer lies partly in the structural bias embedded within state institutions. Christians of the North frequently encounter a legal environment shaped by majoritarian assumptions. Policing, prosecution and adjudication often reflect the prejudices of dominant groups. Complaints from minority communities disappear into bureaucratic voids. Investigations stall. Trials drag on until hope evaporates. When verdicts finally arrive, they often deepen wounds rather than heal them. The Supreme Court bears particular responsibility. As the guardian of constitutional values, its pronouncements shape the moral compass of the nation. By endorsing Jackson’s death sentence, the court reinforced the perception that Christian lives count for less in zones of ethno religious tension. The ruling suggested that survival in the face of attack attracts punishment while aggression enjoys tacit tolerance. Such reasoning corrodes public trust in the judiciary.

    Christmas, a season that celebrates deliverance and peace, provides a poignant backdrop to Jackson’s release. For him and his family, the holiday arrives with tears of gratitude. For campaigners who refused to accept his fate, the moment affirms the power of collective witness. Their persistence challenged a narrative of inevitability. They reminded our country that silence equals complicity. Still, celebration must coexist with sober reflection. Jackson’s freedom does not erase the sufferings of countless others trapped within the same hostile system. Many languish in detention without trial. Others carry wrongful convictions without the benefit of international spotlight. The structural conditions that produced Jackson’s ordeal remain intact. A serious reckoning demands reform at multiple levels. Law enforcement agencies require retraining to recognise patterns of communal violence and to protect threatened populations impartially. Prosecutors must abandon selective zeal that targets victims while ignoring aggressors. Judges must interpret self defence within the lived reality of insecurity, not as an abstract doctrine divorced from blood-stained farm lands and burned homes.

    The death penalty itself warrants renewed scrutiny. Capital punishment magnifies judicial error into irreversible tragedy. In a system plagued by investigative failure and bias, execution becomes a tool of injustice rather than deterrence. Jackson stood within hours of such finality. His escape through pardon exposes the fragility of life under the law. Faith communities have played a crucial role in sustaining the campaign for justice. Churches mobilised prayer, advocacy and documentation. Their efforts countered narratives that framed violence as spontaneous clashes rather than organised aggression. This engagement must continue beyond individual cases. Advocacy rooted in moral clarity offers one of the few counterweights to institutional inertia.

    The state must also confront the political dimensions of insecurity. Armed herder attacks reflect deeper failures of governance, land management and conflict resolution. Treating each incident as isolated obscures systemic breakdown. Until authorities address these root causes, the cycle of violence and selective justice will persist. Governor Fintiri’s pardon extended to other inmates alongside Jackson. That gesture hints at a broader recognition of flawed convictions. Such recognition should evolve into comprehensive review mechanisms. Independent panels could reassess cases involving communal violence, ensuring that self defence claims receive fair evaluation. The release of Sunday Jackson stands as a rare moment when mercy interrupts injustice. Gratitude remains appropriate. Applause remains deserved. Still, a nation cannot survive on exceptions. Justice must become the rule rather than a seasonal gift. For Christians of Northern Nigeria, the episode underscores both vulnerability and resilience. The law often appears hemmed against them, aligned with forces that threaten their existence. Even so, faith and solidarity continue to generate resistance. Jackson walks free today because many refused to forget him.

    As the celebrations fade, the challenge endures. The Supreme Court must confront the moral consequences of its rulings. Legislators must reform laws that punish survival. Executives must act before foreign governments intervene. Only then can future Christmas seasons arrive without the bitter aftertaste of preventable suffering.

    Sunday Jackson’s freedom restores one life. The task ahead seeks to restore justice itself.

  • Do the Children Know It Is Christmas?

    Do the Children Know It Is Christmas?

    -By Abdul Mahmud

    Editor’s Note: Shortly after PACESETTER received this week’s column for publication yesterday, Sunday, December 21, 2025, the abducted students were released. We have gone ahead to publish this piece for historical and academic purposes.

    Four weeks ago, students of a Catholic school in Papiri in Niger State were seized along with their teachers. The country absorbed the news with a familiar mix of dread and fatigue. Abduction has become a steady feature of our public life. Then came silence. Families waited. Communities prayed. A nation listened for any sign that the state still possessed the will to protect its children. When words finally arrived, it came not from the parents or the school or a rescue operation, but from the National Security Adviser. He assured our bewildered country that the children were fine. Fine. The word landed with the weight of indifference. It assumed knowledge without evidence and authority without accountability. It poses fear in a country where comfort has given way, heralding a “new civilisation”. This is how I described it in my op-ed, ‘The Country Where Hostages Are Fine’, a few weeks ago: “In a country that has arrived ahead of other countries at the new civilisation. A civilisation where captivity becomes wellness. A civilisation where fear gives way to fear that becomes comfort. A civilisation where parents receive news of their abducted children with gratitude because the NSA has spoken”.

    I described that assurance as “a piece of miracle” which abolished the need for rescue because it treated terror as mere inconvenience and pain as an abstract concern. Days later, more than one hundred children were released. Relief followed, though it was tinged with suspicion.

    Many Nigerians believe the release followed a transaction. Money exchanged for abductees. If that belief is correct, then the state has chosen the path of accommodation. It has signaled that violence pays and that innocence carries a price tag. That message travels faster than any patrol or policy.

    As you read this, Christmas is three days away. Some of the children remain in captivity. No statement has explained why they were left behind. No timeline has been offered. No public accounting has been made. Parents wait with phones pressed to their chests. The rest of the country watches with the heavy knowledge that our shared moral calendar has slipped out of joint.

    Do the children know it is Christmas?

    That question is not sentimental. It is moral. Christmas speaks to care, love, shelter, and the dignity of the vulnerable. It asks adults to protect the young and the weak. In Papiri, the season arrives without its promise. The children are held by men who thrive on fear and profit from despair. Days stretch without schooling, without safety, without the reassurance of familiar voices. Hunger gnaws. Night brings cold and whispers. A child measures time by fear and hope by the sound of footsteps. The pain of the children is compounded by uncertainty. Captivity strips away the small anchors that steady the young mind. Routine disappears. Authority becomes menace. The body tenses at every command. Sleep fractures. Faith strains. Even those released will carry the memory forward, etched into how they trust and how they dream.

    Parents endure separate torments. They replay the morning their children left home. They scan roads and phones and rumours. They negotiate between hope and dread because surrender to either feels dangerous. Mothers and fathers sit with an emptiness that refuses consolation. No prayer is too small. No official word feels sufficient. Trauma settles into the body and does not wait for permission. The country shares the bewilderment. We have watched this pattern repeat across regions and years. Schools targeted. Villages raided. Assurances offered. Payments rumored. Consequences deferred. Each episode chips away at confidence in the state. Each denial or half truth teaches citizens to expect less and fear more.

    No country can be governed on reassurance alone. It requires truth, action, and accountability. Government has a duty that precedes politics. Protect life. Protect children. Speak honestly. When officials announce that captives are fine without evidence, they gamble with credibility. When releases appear transactional, they legitimise crime. When silence follows partial success, they abandon those still held and deepen the wounds of those left waiting. There is also the matter of equality. Which children are retrieved first and why. Who decides whose life carries urgency. The absence of answers invites a corrosive suspicion that power and proximity shape outcomes. Such suspicion undermines social trust and fuels resentment. Insecurity thrives where trust collapses.

    The school itself stands as a symbol. Education should be a sanctuary. When classrooms become hunting grounds, the social contract frays. Parents withdraw children. Teachers flee. Communities shrink their aspirations. The future dims because learning retreats under threat. The cost extends beyond Papiri. It reaches every family that wonders whether school gates offer safety or risk. Christmas sharpens the questions. It draws attention to absence. Chairs left empty. Songs unsung. Gifts unwrapped. The season exposes what governance has failed to secure. Celebration becomes a test of conscience. Our country must ask itself whether it can truly celebrate while children remain in captivity. Scores of them, including those abducted from the First ECWA Church in Ayetoro Kiri, Kabba, Kogi State just days ago, are still unseen and unheard. Over the weekend, a video emerged as grim proof of life, a haunting reminder that these children are not statistics but lives suspended in fear, held by evil men in a country struggling to find its conscience.

    What should be done?

    First, the government must speak plainly. Say who remains captive. Say what is being done. Say what will not be done. Ambiguity feeds rumor and fear.

    Second, the state must commit to ending the market for abduction. Paying ransoms, directly or indirectly, entrenches criminal economies. It invites repetition. A strategy that rewards terror cannot deliver safety.

    Third, there must be accountability within security institutions. Who assessed the risk to the school. Who failed to prevent the attack. Who authorised public statements that lacked grounding. Accountability is not vengeance. It is the discipline that prevents recurrence.

    Fourth, support for the families must be visible and sustained. Counseling, medical care, and financial assistance should not depend on headlines. Trauma lingers after cameras move on. The state must remain present when attention fades.

    Finally, there must be a national reckoning with the conditions that allow terror to recruit and operate. Policing, intelligence, community trust, and justice must align. Words alone will by not rescue children. Policies that center human life might. Do the children know it is Christmas? They may know the sound of distant bells carried by memory. They may count days by the return of light. They may hold on to a prayer learned at home or school. What they deserve is more than hope. They deserve a country that acts as if their lives matter. When Christmas morning arrives, it will not be enough to wish peace. Peace is built through protection and truth. Until every child is home, the season remains unfinished. The government must choose whether it stands with the children or hides behind assurances. Our country watches. The parents wait. The children endure; but the question which remains unanswered is: do they know it is Christmas?

    Editor’s Note: Shortly after PACESETTER received this week’s column for publication yesterday, Sunday, December 21, 2025, the abducted students were released. We have gone ahead to publish this piece for historical and academic purposes.

  • The Women Died – By Abdul Mahmud

    The Women Died – By Abdul Mahmud

    The photograph released by Amnesty International Nigeria of Mary Talmon, one of the women shot dead during a protest in Adamawa, confronts our country with a tragedy that demands collective introspection, if not accountability. The organisation posted her image on its X handle while calling for an impartial investigation into what it described as the horrific use of excessive force by the military.

    Her name symbolises a broader violence at the heart of state power. News reports offer conflicting figures. Some say seven women were killed. Others insist on eight or nine. The exact number remains disputed although the central truth stands firm. Defenceless women who invoked their constitutional freedom to assemble and speak were killed by armed soldiers in Lamorde Local Government Area on 8 December 2025. The lack of numerical certainty cannot dilute the moral gravity of the event. The killings echo a long and painful memory in Nigeria’s history.

    In 1929, British colonial police shot and killed scores of women during Aba Women’s protests. Those women took a courageous stand against oppressive taxation and unjust rule. They demanded dignity and fairness from a colonial system that viewed them as subjects rather than citizens. The colonial government responded with bullets. Nearly a century has passed since 1929, although the gulf in time has not weakened the thread that binds the past to the present. A similar instinct persists within the state’s reflexive reliance on force when confronted with dissent. The French writer Jean Baptiste Alphonse Karr famously captured this paradox with clarity when he wrote, “The more things change, the more they remain the same”. “Plus les choses changent, plus elles restent les mêmes”.

    Our country’s history presents an unbroken pattern that confirms this insight. The women of 1929 faced armed repression. The women of 2025 confronted the same logic. The protesters in Lamorde gathered to voice concerns over communal clashes that threatened their safety. Their protest sought state intervention and protection. They asked for peace. They demanded accountability. Their tools were words, bodies and solidarity. The military answered their calls with lethal gunfire. Such a response represents a profound inversion of purpose. State power should shield vulnerable communities. State power should support those who seek redress within lawful and peaceful means. State power should never turn its weapons against citizens who carry nothing but the weight of their fears and their desire for justice. When the machinery of force is unleashed against peaceful citizens, the social contract collapses. What remains is power stripped of legitimacy.

    The constitutional right to assemble and freedom of expression lie at the foundation of democratic society. Hannah Arendt described freedom as the capacity to begin anew and to act in ways that bring new possibilities into the world. Citizens engage in this creative act whenever they speak against injustice or join together in collective protest. Any state that responds to such actions with violence rejects this democratic potential. The freedom Arendt emphasised becomes meaningless when those who speak must weigh the possibility of death. A state cannot claim democratic credentials when its first instinct toward protest is to silence rather than listen. State violence against protesters continues to weaken public trust in institutions that should represent and protect citizens.

    Achille Mbembe offers a profound framework for understanding this descent through his concept of necropolitics, “the politics of death”. Mbembe argues that certain states organise power around the capacity to dictate who may live and who must die. This involves more than physical killing. It includes exposing specific groups to conditions where life becomes precarious and unsustainable. The women in Lamorde encountered this logic in its starkest form. They protested peacefully and were met with lethal force. Their deaths were not accidents. They were outcomes produced by a political order that continues to rely on violence as a method of governance. Mbembe’s argument deepens our understanding of the tragedy. He notes that modern states often treat marginalised communities as expendable. These communities exist in what he calls “death worlds”, zones where the state’s commitment to life becomes selective. The women of Lamorde lived in a region marked by communal conflict and insecurity. Instead of receiving robust protection, they encountered a state apparatus that met their vulnerability with indifference and force. Their deaths reflect a system where the distribution of security and dignity is unequal. Some lives receive the full protection of the state. Others are left exposed. The logic that allows soldiers to fire on peaceful women grows from this system of selective value.

    Wole Soyinka’s prison memoir, The Man Died, returns with sharp relevance. Soyinka warned that the death of the man begins with the suppression of truth. When the state silences voices through violence and intimidation, the moral fabric of society frays. A nation cannot flourish where fear outweighs freedom. The tragedy in Adamawa mirrors the environment that informed Soyinka’s reflections. The violence that confronted peaceful women in Lamorde follows the familiar path of repression that earlier generations knew. The uniforms have changed. The rhetoric has softened. The instruments of violence remain in place. The human cost of the killings extends beyond the headlines. Families must bury loved ones whose only act was to speak. Communities must learn to live with the absence of women who represented courage, solidarity and resilience. Their protest demanded that the government protect life. Their deaths reveal a painful truth about the fragility of that protection. Our country cannot claim progress when women die for exercising rights enshrined in the Constitution. A true constitutional order grows from respect for rights and from the consistent application of justice. Guns turned against peaceful protesters reflect disorder, not strength. The military’s role in national defence remains critical. This role does not extend to policing peaceful protests. Democracies rely on trained civil police, transparent rules of engagement and accountable oversight. When soldiers replace these mechanisms, boundaries collapse and abuses flourish. The tragedy in Lamorde represents not only a violation of rights but also a distortion of our constitutional purpose.

    Amnesty International’s demand for a transparent and independent investigation is not merely an institutional reflex; it is a constitutional imperative grounded in the state’s duty to protect life and secure accountability for its violation. The right to life in Section 33 of the Constitution is not couched in an aspirational language, it is a binding command on the state to refrain from unlawfully taking life while ineluctably establishing the culture in which state agents kill with impunity. When democracy loses the capacity to account for the blood spilled by its own security forces, it concedes moral authority. A credible investigation is therefore more than a procedural step; it is a test of whether Nigeria still aspires to constitutional government or has quietly surrendered to the normalisation of state-organised deaths. Accountability, in this sense, is not punishment alone; it is the architecture through which democratic legitimacy is renewed. Without accountability, institutions turn into self-serving bureaucracies insulated from oversight and indifferent to the citizens they exist to protect. The killing of unarmed women during a peaceful protest reveals, once again, how the distance between citizens and the state has widened into a chasm of fear. An unaccountable military becomes a killing machine rather than a constitutional instrument. Its failures, if unexamined, become dangerous precedents. Its abuses, if unpunished, become a doctrine. A democracy that tolerates this drift quietly teaches its security agencies that the Constitution ends where gun-a-blazing begins.

    This is why constitutional language must be understood not as an ornamental text but as a living discipline imposed on power. The guarantees of freedom of assembly, dignity, and expression are not decorative provisions; they are structural safeguards meant to restrain the arbitrary force of the state. When peaceful women are shot for gathering, the Constitution is not merely violated, it is humiliated. It becomes evident that constitutional promises are not self-executing; they require institutions willing to enforce them, leaders willing to be bound by them, and citizens determined to insist that they matter. A state cannot claim fidelity to constitutional order while presiding over a security culture that treats public protest as a threat to be neutralised rather than a right to be protected.

    The photograph of Mary Talmon thus becomes more than evidence of a crime; it is a moral and constitutional summon. It calls our country to confront the dissonance between the lofty ideals inscribed in itsconstitution and the lived experiences of its citizens. Her death, and the deaths of the women who stood beside her, forces a reckoning with what kind of country we desire Nigeria to become: one in which power is constrained by law and accountable to the people, or one in which violence by the state becomes a silent article of governance. Their memory demands truth; their courage insists on justice; their sacrifice challenges Nigeria to choose a future in which human life, dignity, and freedom are not theoretical aspirations but practiced commitments. Only then can the cycle of violence be broken, and only then can democracy claim to be worthy of its name.

    May the blood of the women of Lamorde haunt the killers. Amen.

  • The Ambassadorial Burden of a Failing Republic

    The Ambassadorial Burden of a Failing Republic

    -By Abdul Mahmud

    Nigeria has finally plunged into the depths of morass. Deep and troubling depths, difficult to climb out. The new list of ambassadorial nominees tells a familiar story. It is the story of a country that refuses to rise. A country that recycles its worst. A country that decorates failure and calls it service. The President has sent a fresh batch of names to the Senate. Thirty two in all. They join an earlier set of three. It should be a moment of pride for our country. It should be a moment to showcase our best. Instead, it is an embarrassing parade of deadwood and political survivors who have little business representing a country in need of credibility. Look closely at the list. Former governors who left no mark at home. Former commissioners who are remembered only for patronage. Former legislators who saw public office as personal property. Election riggers who supervised the erosion of trust in the ballot. People rejected by their states but rewarded at the national level. This is not a diplomatic corps. This is a retirement home for the politically displaced persons of dubious interest and politicians of particular concern.

    The diplomatic service is the face of a country. It is the voice of a people. It is the place where competence matters. It is the place where integrity stands firm. Countries rise or fall on the quality of the people they send abroad. That is why serious countries take diplomatic postings seriously. They understand the weight of consular and diplomatic representations. Nigeria does the opposite. We treat embassies as political rehabilitation centres. We treat foreign missions as consolation prizes. We reward political loyalty. We punish merit. We sideline career officers. We insult the service. We diminish the country.

    Look at how other countries behave.

    The United States sends seasoned diplomats with years of service. Sometimes it sends political nominees but even those are men and women with serious achievements. They are people with policy minds. People nuanced in policy. People who can open doors abroad, and in promotion of their countries’ national interest. France sends its finest administrators. China sends disciplined technocrats who understand the world. India sends highly trained officers drawn from its foreign service elite. South Korea sends competent professionals who understand trade, investment and technology. These countries understand diplomacy as a strategic asset. They understand that ambassadors carry the weight of national interest. They know that representation is a serious business. They know that no country rises when mediocrities carry its passport across borders.

    Nigeria stands alone in its contempt for excellence. Its rulers insist that political actors who have failed at home somehow succeed abroad. They believe that those who ruined local institutions will protect national interests in foreign capitals. This is an illusion built on arrogance. It is a tragedy built on notoriously poor habits. The damage is visible. Many of our missions are weak. Some are directionless. Some are barely functional. They cannot protect citizens. They cannot attract investment. They cannot sell the country. They cannot build serious bilateral ties. They cannot speak the language of global diplomacy. They cannot engage because they do not understand the issues. The result? Our passport is treated with suspicion across the world. Our missions cannot help. They lack the skill. They lack the influence. They lack the respect. Nigeria is big but its diplomatic voice is small. It whispers at foreign tables where others speak loudly. It watches while others act. The new list promises more decline. Rapid decline.

    There are career officers in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who have trained for decades. They understand protocol. They understand negotiation. They understand the UN system. They understand the African Union. They understand the slow and patient work of diplomacy. In pursuit of tokenism, a few career diplomats are thrown into the appointment mix, while many watch politicians with no knowledge of international diplomacy take positions meant for professionals. It is demoralising. It is destructive. It weakens an institution that is already fragile. But, there is a grave cost to mediocrity. Every bad envoy carries Nigeria’s weaknesses abroad. Every failed politician posted to a foreign capital worsens our country’s poor reputation. Foreign governments know who is serious and who is not. They know when a country sends its best. They know when a country parades deadwood and sends political handshake dealers abroad to man its missions.

    Nigeria keeps promoting payback tokenism. Nigeria keeps sending liabilities abroad.

    Worse still, Nigeria keeps sending men and women whose only qualification is their usefulness to the President. This is the tragedy of a country caught in the cycle of low expectations and low standards. There is a moral problem as well. Some of the nominees helped produce the electoral chaos that Nigerians now live with.  Some supervised flawed elections. Professor Mahmood Yakubu is one example. Some defended impunity with unmatched zeal. Reno Omokri and Femi Fani-Kayode stand as its most enthusiastic evangelists, men who turned public discourse into theatrics and acrobatics. They did not merely excuse the excesses of power. They flipped. They flopped. They flip-flopped. They somersaulted around truth, to the point of eating their vomits. They justified impunity. They amplified falsehoods as if truth were an inconvenience. They embraced propaganda as a vocation. In a country struggling to rebuild trust in its institutions, their voices have too often deepened cynicism and normalised the erosion of accountability. Some weakened public trust. To reward them with diplomatic postings is to endorse their conduct. It sends a message that the state has no ethical core. It signals that public office is not a service but a spoil of war.

    The world is changing. Diplomacy is now about technology, climate change, migration, security, trade and innovation. Nations that understand this are recruiting the brightest minds. They are building strong foreign services. They are investing in knowledge. They are preparing for a complex future. Nigeria is doing none of this. Nigeria is moving backward while others are moving forward. There are Nigerians who can serve well. Distinguished scholars. Former international civil servants. Former judges. Entrepreneurs who built serious institutions. Career officers who have risen through merit. Professionals who have excelled across the world. They are not on the list. They are not considered. They are not invited. They are not valued. They are simply not wanted by power. They are not listening to scholars and practitioners in the field. Even if they don’t want to listen to the former Indian diplomat and scholar, Kishan Rana, who has written extensively on diplomatic professionalism and appointment criteria, our country has the respected Professor Bolaji Akinyemi who has consistently argued that the selection of ambassadors should be grounded in merit, professionalism, and national interest rather than political patronage. In his view, diplomacy is a specialised field that demands competence, experience, cultural sensitivity, and a deep understanding of international affairs. He stresses that career diplomats, trained within the foreign service system, are best positioned to represent the state effectively and maintain continuity in foreign policy. While acknowledging that political appointments may sometimes be unavoidable, he warns that excessive politicisation weakens professionalism, erodes institutional memory, and diminishes a country’s global standing. His overarching position is that ambassadorial appointments must prioritise expertise and integrity to protect the country’s diplomatic credibility.

    These ambassadorial appointments are a mirror. They show us what our rulers think of Nigeria. They don’t take Nigeria seriously, as the poet, Odia Ofeimun highlighted with intellectual verve and flourish two decades ago. They show us how little is expected of our country. They show us how low the bar has fallen. A country that wants greatness must send great people to represent it. A country that sends its failures abroad will receive the respect such failure deserves. The Senate will confirm the nominees. It always does. It will ask a few questions. It will praise the list. It will claim that the nominees are qualified. Then, it will ask the ambassadorial nominees to “take a bow and go”. It will then move on. Nigeria will move on as well but in the wrong direction. Another opportunity for progress will be lost. Nigeria deserves better. Nigerians deserve better. The world deserves to see our country takes itself seriously. A country that knows that dignity and competence matter. A country that believes that representation is sacred.

    One day our country will rise above the needless elephantine burden it chooses to place on its own back. The weight is heavy. It is the weight of recycled failures. It is the weight of institutions drained of confidence. It is the weight of a country that keeps dragging the carcass of its worst habits into a future that demands clarity, courage and competence. No country grows by carrying the load of its own mediocrity. No Republic moves forward when it insists on hauling along with the same tired figures who helped slow its steps. Nigeria must learn to travel light. It must learn to shed the burdens that weaken its ambition. Only then can it walk with purpose among countries that have already learnt that progress begins with choices that honour the present and protect the future.

    Today is not that day for our failing Republic.

  • A Ruling Class That Eats Itself

    A Ruling Class That Eats Itself

    -By Abdul Mahmud

    Contemporary Nigeria feels like a country pulling against itself. Every day brings shock and surprises. Every night brings deeper worries. The country moves, but it moves without directions. It is not collapse, yet it is not order. It is something in between. Something that drags Nigerians down and wears them out. It resembles a place that has lost itself and the centre that no longer holds. A place where authority exists only in name. A place where power speaks loudly but acts weakly. Many Nigerians now describe the country in images borrowed from history. One of those images is China during its Warlord Era. It is not a perfect comparison. It is not even a comfortable one. But it is a useful frame for understanding the tragic drift of a country that cannot govern itself with clarity.

    China of the early twentieth century lived under fractured authority. Regional strongmen carved out fiefdoms. Armies answered to personal loyalty rather than the nation. Rulers acted like emperors. But they were actually terrors. Chinese struggled to stay alive between the shifting lines of conflict. Hope became a fragile currency. Trust disappeared. Nigeria today is not China of 1916. Still, it mirrors some of the same anxieties, the same sense of mercenary leadership, the same feeling that ruling elites no longer serve the people, the same mood of desperation among a population forced to improvise its survival; and the same suspicion that the state has become a shell that echoes emptiness, but never protects. Everywhere you look, you see a ruling class that feeds on the very system it was meant to sustain. It is a ruling class that eats itself. And in doing so, it consumes the country.

    Across Nigeria, the sense of safety has thinned to a whisper. Entire regions drift into insecurity. Armed groups take advantage of the vacuum. Communities mourn losses that have become too frequent to shock. The government responds with promises, yet the reality remains unchanged. Nigerians are stampeded with announcements, the type Fela once famously sang about as “government magic”, and endless condemnations. They hear everything except real solutions. Nigerians die on highways. They die on their farms. They die in their homes. They die while waiting for leaders who refuse to lead. It is a tragedy that repeats itself so often that it feels like part of the national routine. In China’s Warlord Era, leaders fought for territory. Control was the only ideology. The state became a broken vessel. Yet, something unexpected happened. Even in the midst of chaos, the Chinese clung to the idea of a future China. They nurtured the dream of a unified republic. They preserved their cultural memory. They produced thinkers, writers, and reformers who refused to surrender to the disorder around them. And when the warlords finally exhausted themselves, the country began the slow process of rebuilding. It was messy. It was violent. It was painful. But the idea of China survived.

    The idea of China survived because its deepest institutions outlived the warlords who tried to overthrow them. Local communities kept their traditions intact. Teachers educated children in classical texts. Merchants maintained networks that tied distant regions together. Reformers in cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou carried forward debates about national renewal. Newspapers, student groups, and emerging political parties kept alive a vision of a united republic, even when the country itself was fractured. These threads held society together when the state could not. The idea also survived because the Chinese never abandoned the belief that their destiny was collective. They experienced warlordism as a temporary betrayal of the national project, not its end. They protested fragmentation. They wrote against it. They fought against it. They imagined a future in which China would be whole again. This imagination created pressure that weakened the warlords’ grips, and when military exhaustion set in, the intellectual and cultural groundwork for rebuilding was ready. Out of that groundwork emerged the next phase of the Chinese state. As it was then, and as it had always been, the Chinese nation-state building was a fierce struggle for grounding visions and competing ideas, not a flippant appeal to sentiment or convenience. It required depth, conviction, and the hard labour of shaping a shared future rather than the easy pursuit of applause for the warlords.

    Nigeria is inching close to the point where it must reclaim itself from its own violent fragments. The danger of fragmentation continues to grow. The ruling elites continue to fight among themselves. They continue to chase influence and access while the country burns. They chase the next election cycle. They chase everything except the wellbeing of Nigerians. They do not confront the insecurity that terrorises ordinary Nigerians. They do not confront the poverty that reduces life to a miserable hustle. They do not confront the corruption that empties public coffers. They do not confront the decay of institutions that once held the country together. What they confront instead is each other: “Someone once said you are supposed be kept away in the zoo. Sincerely that’s where you belong”. And in that confrontation, they devastate the very system they claim to defend. The judiciary is hijacked. The legislature is compromised. The executive is swollen with power but thin on capacity. Agencies clash. Serving governors accuse past governors. They deflect; and when they are not deflecting on the real issues, they are busy abusing fellow Nigeria: “Go and die”. The federal state stumbles along as the subnational states burn. This is how a country eats itself. Not through dramatic implosion. But through constant erosion.

    China’s Warlord Era ended through exhaustion. Nigeria cannot afford such an ending. The cost in lives would be unbearable. The social damage would last generations. The economic ruin would push millions into irreversible poverty. Though the world is different now, populations are larger, weapons are deadlier, and the interdependence of communities is deeper, a Nigerian collapse would be disastrous. It would be a continental earthquake. So the question is simple. When will our ruling elite realise that it has consumed too much of the country’s vitality? When does it understand that its survival depends on the survival of the country? When does it learn that power cannot be sustained on the ruins of public trust? These lessons appear obvious. Yet they seem to escape those who hold office. A country cannot run on improvisation. It cannot survive on announcements. It cannot endure on propaganda. It needs a moral centre. It needs a political vision. It needs leaders who understand that governance is not performance. Governance is responsibility. It is a duty. It is courage. It is the ability to stand between citizens and danger. And it is the humility to know when the state is crumbling and must be rebuilt.

    China recovered because its people refused to let the idea of China die. Nigeria stands at a similar crossroads. Nigerians still believe in the idea of Nigeria. They show it every day. They show it in their stubborn resilience. They show it in their refusal to give up. They show it in their search for work, for safety, for dignity. They show it in their prayers. They show it in their grief. They show it even when the state ignores them. But belief is not infinite. Resilience is not eternal. Hope is not immortal. There comes a time when citizens look at their leaders and see nothing but hunger for power. There comes a time when they recognise that the ruling class feeds on the country like a parasite. There comes a time when they see that those who govern have no interest in building a future. At that point when the ruling class begins to devour itself, the people begin to chart a course of their own.

    If Nigeria is to avoid that fate, its ruling class must act now to save the country and itself. It must restore security. It must strengthen its institutions. It must clean its politics. It must rebuild public trust. These are not lofty ideals. They are basic responsibilities. They are the foundation of every functioning state. Without them, the country slips deeper into the logic of the Warlord Era. Disarray. Fragmentation. Fear. The tragedy of Nigeria is not that it lacks resources. It is not that it lacks ambition. It is that it lacks leaders who understand the moral weight of stewardship. Leadership is not enjoyment. Leadership is a burden. Leadership is sacrifice. Leadership is the understanding that every decision shapes the lives of millions. China’s past is a warning. Nigeria’s present is a plea. The ruling class can still step backwards from the path of self-destruction. It can still choose purpose over plunder. It can still rebuild the fragile trust that binds the country together. But it must act. It must reform. It must confront the insecurity, the corruption, the disorder, and the decay. A ruling class that eats itself leaves nothing behind. Nigeria deserves better. Nigeria deserves leaders who build. Nigeria deserves a state that protects. Nigeria deserves a future that is not swallowed by the failures of today.

  • New Week, More Abductions and More Deaths

    New Week, More Abductions and More Deaths

    -By Abdul Mahmud

    Another week has opened in Nigeria with blood on the ground and fear in the air. The country wakes up each morning to new tragedies. Each day closes with fresh accounts of death, kidnappings, and retreats. Nigeria is living inside a vortex of violence. Nothing breaks it. Nothing interrupts it. The state has become pusillanimous, a timid spectator.

    The abduction of more than twenty five girls from Government Girls Comprehensive Senior Secondary School, Maga, in Kebbi State, is another grim reminder of how far the security collapse has travelled. The killing of the Vice-Principal in the attacks showed the brutality of the terrorists. These were girls preparing for a future that is constantly denied them. In that region, the education of girls has long been contested by extremists and patriarchal norms. The state promised to protect these children. It failed. Again.

    Across the north, the same story unfolds. In Tsafe Local Government Area of Zamfara State, entire families were taken. Women and children disappeared into forests controlled by terrorists. Homes were emptied without resistance. Communities now live under criminal rule. Citizens whisper not to provoke those who control their roads, markets, and farmlands. The state is absent. In the north east, the shock is deeper. The reported capture and killing of General Muhammed Uba, who the Army High Command assured the country was safe within his battalion, has shaken the country. A General of the Nigerian Army. Seized. Dragged away. Made to sit on the ground by his snatchers. Killed by terrorists who move on motorcycles. A military built on decades of training and investment was breached by a band that holds no formal command structure. It is shameful. It undermines morale. It raises a painful question. Is the Nigerian military still capable of fighting?

    Everywhere Nigerians turn, the failures of the state stare back at them. The military is stretched. The police is overwhelmed. Intelligence gathering is weak. Communities report danger and no one comes. Criminals move from state to state. Terrorists set up camps. They impose taxes. They administer their own justice. The state protects no one. It barely protects itself. The government keeps promising a turning point. Instead, we watch a point that turns in on itself, spinning without direction, circling like the widening gyre of WB Yeats’s The Second Coming. The turning point never arrives. Operations are launched with loud declarations of victory. The terrorists regroup. They reorganise. Villages burn. Schools fall. Families mourn. The cycle continues.

    Our country has normalised tragedy. Nigerians now expect bad news. They wait for the next report of abductions. They wait to hear which community has fallen. Prophet Amos once asked, “When will the new moon be over, so we can sell our corn?” It was a lament about a society rotting from inside. It was an indictment of leaders who worshipped power but abandoned justice. Nigeria carries that lament today. Nigerians now ask when this cycle of death will end. They now ask when the government will act with urgency. They now ask when rulers will remember that the first duty of the state is protection. Instead of answers, Nigerians see a president who governs from behind high walls. The fortress of Aso Rock grows more secure while the rest of the country grows more vulnerable. Terrorists move freely. Terrorists spread across territories untouched by government authority. Villages have no police presence. Cities shrink into islands of guarded estates. Nigerians travel only by daylight. Even then, they travel in fear.

    Nigeria cannot continue this way. Our country cannot survive when its armed forces appear unsure of their own strengths. The military once carried the weight of national pride. It was the symbol of unity. It was the institution that projected the authority of the federal government. Today, Nigerians ask if it is still primed for battle. They ask how a General can be captured. They ask why battalions retreat. They ask why weapons fall into the hands of those who seek to destroy the republic.

    These questions are fair. They must be asked.

    The military needs honest scrutiny. This government needs accountability. Nigerians deserve truth. If the armed forces are under-resourced, Nigerians need to know. If corruption has weakened capacity, the offenders must be punished. If political interference has crippled operations, it must be exposed. The attitude of silence, denial, and deflection is no longer acceptable.

    Nigeria and Nigerians are now trapped between the rock and the hard place. Some cling to patriotism, patience, and faith in the government’s ability to defeat the terrorists, mocking any notion of foreign assistance. Others insist that the country must seek help from beyond its borders. When President Donald Trump promised that he would send troops to our country to wipe out terrorists wherever they found them, Nigerians wondered what such intervention would mean here. They now ask when he intends to send help, since their own President cannot secure the country. It is a question born out of despair. A question rooted in frustration with a state that has abandoned its duties.

    The despair is not only in the number of dead. It is in the absence of hope. A country loses part of its soul when children are stolen from classrooms. A country loses its dignity when Generals are captured. A country loses its direction when leaders stay silent or offer empty speeches. Nigeria is losing too much. The new week has already brought more deaths. More abductions. The next week may bring the same. Nigerians pray it does not. Nigerians ask for a leadership that understands the urgency of the moment. They ask for a military that fights back. They ask for a police force that responds. They ask for a country that feels like a country.

    Nigeria must reclaim its security. It must rebuild its confidence. It must restore the bond between the state and the citizens. It must treat every abduction as an assault on the republic. It must treat every killing as a national injury. It must confront the terror networks with strength and strategy. It must do these things because no country can survive on a wing and on a prayer. The clock is ticking. The country is bleeding. The Nigerians are watching. The world is watching. The Nigerian state must show that it still has the will to protect itself. It must show that it can defend Nigerians. It must show that it is not a defeated republic.

    A new week has begun. The country cannot afford another filled with grief. While Nigerians sink deeper into despair, the pressing question remains: when will President Trump act, if at all, so that Nigerians can once again tend their farms, sell their corn, and bring their wheats to the market without fear? Nigerians are weary of waiting for rescue, yearning for the day they can live without daily encounters with violence, abduction, and the absence of security.

  • Misreading Realities -By Abdul Mahmud

    Misreading Realities -By Abdul Mahmud

    There are times when ideas become prisons. When ideology blinds those who hold it. When conviction turns into a wall that shuts out reality. This is what has happened to some of the comrades on the Nigerian Left. They have chosen to see the world only through the prism of anti-imperialism. So much so that they can no longer see the blood that stains the Nigerian earth in Benue, Plateau, and Taraba. Two Comrades stand as examples of this blindness. Femi Falana, a lawyer and long-time human rights advocate. Owei Lakemfa, a trade unionist and columnist. Both men have done admirable work in the past. Both have fought the military. Both have defended the weak. But, on the question of the slaughter of Christians in northern Nigeria, they have become prisoners of old dogmas. Falana says Donald Trump’s claim that Christians are being exterminated in Nigeria is false. Lakemfa goes further. He says the killings are not genocide but the outcome of land grabbing. Both Comrades take comfort in argument. They seek refuge in needless semantics. They forget that while they debate definitions, human beings are being wiped out in their ancestral homes. Perhaps not referring to both, Tunde Aremu, a respected member of the Nigerian Left who has devoted much of his adult life to development work, captures what is essentially a cry of moral frustration at the intellectual dishonesty of denial. Hear him: “You understand now, my brother, why some of us grow infuriated when people paid to deny the reality of our people sit behind their computers, in air-conditioned comfort, spreading falsehoods”.

    There is a difference between skepticism and denial. The Left generally thrives on skepticism. It questions power. It exposes imperial propaganda. But when skepticism becomes denial, it becomes cruel. When Falana dismisses the idea of genocide, he denies the testimony of survivors. He denies the bones of the dead. He denies the evidence that lies scattered across the valleys of the Middle Belt. Lakemfa too misreads the tragedy. He sees it as a struggle for land. As though land, not faith, is the reason villages have been emptied out and churches burned. As though northern Christians are being violently turned on without the ideological poison of jihadism. To call it land grabbing is to flatten reality. It is to erase the religious hatred that fuels the violence.

    The Nigerian Left once prided itself on standing with the oppressed. But some of its comrades now stand not with the people but with rhetoric that is ideologically dishonest, slogans that serve dogma rather than truth. Everything America says must be wrong. Everything the West condemns must be exaggerated. So, when Trump or Western observers describe the killings of Christians as genocide, the instinct of some members of the Left is to dismiss it outright. They would rather defend their ideology and be wrong than confront the enemies of the people and be right. This is not new. A few scholars of the Left have long called out this intellectual arrogance. The late Polish philosopher, Leszek Kołakowski, wrote that the tragedy of Marxism was not only political but moral. He argued that the Left had become so fixated on its struggle against capitalism that it lost the ability to see evil elsewhere. Terry Eagleton, the Marxist literary critic, later warned that the Left’s obsession with imperialism made it blind to new forms of domination, whether religious, cultural, or ethnic. In the same way, Falana and Lakemfa display what the prominent US political theorist and philosopher, Michael Walzer, once described as “the moral blindness of the sectarian Left”. They see imperialism everywhere except where it is absent. They read northern Nigeria as a chessboard where America moves pieces and fabricates narratives. They cannot accept that local actors masquerading as ethnic militias, religious fundamentalists, and entrepreneurs of religious conflicts can produce violence on their own.

    But they are wrong. The massacres in Benue, Taraba, Plateau, and southern Kaduna are not Western fiction. They are not stories written by the CIA. They are realities witnessed by those who bury their dead in mass graves. Reporters, missionaries, aid workers, and local NGOs have documented the killings. Satellite images have shown razed villages. Survivors tell of attacks that begin with chants of Allahu Akbar and end with burning crosses. These massacres are not mere accidents of land disputes. They are the result of deep-seated religious hatred fueled by a violent ideology.

    To call the massacres anything less than genocide is to play with words. Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide, defined it as the destruction of a group in whole or in part. He did not say that the group must be annihilated completely. Nor did he say the motive must be purely political. He said it is enough if the intention is to destroy the group’s existence, culture, or faith. By that standard, the targeted killings of Christians in northern Nigeria fit the definition. The Marxist suspicion of religion adds another layer to the blindness. For many on the Left, religion has always been the opium of the masses. A distraction from material struggle. So, when Christians are killed, they see not believers but pawns. They reduce faith to false consciousness. They cannot imagine that people might die for belief, not for land. They forget that even Marx, in his later writings, softened his stance on religion as he observed the social sufferings of real people. There is also an element of moral cowardice. To acknowledge genocide would require confronting the failure of the Nigerian state. It would mean admitting that ideology cannot explain away every atrocity. It would mean standing with victims who may not share the Left’s worldview.

    The Nigerian Left has not always lacked empathy. It has long combined careful analysis with genuine compassion, dissecting suffering while identifying with those who endure it. So what has gone wrong? Some of its leading cadres seem to have ignored Mark Lilla, who, in The Reckless Mind, warned that intellectuals who subordinate morality to ideology become servants of abstraction. These intellectuals defend ideas at the expense of real people. That is where Falana and Lakemfa now stand. They frame every argument through the lens of anti-imperialism, even when the subject at hand does not warrant such a perspective. They cling to a narrative that has become disconnected from the immediate suffering it ought to address.

    But, one must ask: what does it profit some cadres of the Nigerian Left to win an argument against Trump but lose its moral compass? Trump may be cynical. He may exploit Christian persecution for political gain. But his cynicism does not erase the truth of the persecution. To reject his statement simply because it came from him is to mistake the messenger for the message. It is to allow hatred of the West to become hatred of truth. The violence in northern Nigeria has roots in history, religion, and state failure. Colonial boundaries, demographic pressures, desertification, and elite manipulation all play their part. But to deny the religious dimension is to deny the essence of the conflict. When priests are beheaded at the altar, when worshippers are burned inside churches, when attackers shout Islamic slogans, the motive speaks for itself. Some Comrades on the Left must learn to see, and learn to glimpse realities. They must learn that reality is not what ideology permits it to see. The poor and oppressed they claim to defend are not abstractions. They have names. They have graves. Falana and Lakemfa have misread this reality. In their zeal to challenge imperial narratives, they have joined the list of Comrades who confuse skepticism with denial. The result is a moral failure. It is time for them, and others like them, to lay down the old dogmas and face the facts. The truth is simple. People are being killed for their faith in northern Nigeria. That is not a Western script. It is a Nigerian horror. The Nigerian Left once called on society to speak truth to power. Today, it must speak truth to its own ideology.

  • The Ambassadorial Burden of a Failing Republic

    The Ambassadorial Burden of a Failing Republic

    -By Abdul Mahmud

    Nigeria has finally plunged into the depths of morass. Deep and troubling depths, difficult to climb out. The new list of ambassadorial nominees tells a familiar story. It is the story of a country that refuses to rise. A country that recycles its worst. A country that decorates failure and calls it service. The President has sent a fresh batch of names to the Senate. Thirty two in all. They join an earlier set of three. It should be a moment of pride for our country. It should be a moment to showcase our best. Instead, it is an embarrassing parade of deadwood and political survivors who have little business representing a country in need of credibility. Look closely at the list. Former governors who left no mark at home. Former commissioners who are remembered only for patronage. Former legislators who saw public office as personal property. Election riggers who supervised the erosion of trust in the ballot. People rejected by their states but rewarded at the national level. This is not a diplomatic corps. This is a retirement home for the politically displaced persons of dubious interest and politicians of particular concern.

    The diplomatic service is the face of a country. It is the voice of a people. It is the place where competence matters. It is the place where integrity stands firm. Countries rise or fall on the quality of the people they send abroad. That is why serious countries take diplomatic postings seriously. They understand the weight of consular and diplomatic representations. Nigeria does the opposite. We treat embassies as political rehabilitation centres. We treat foreign missions as consolation prizes. We reward political loyalty. We punish merit. We sideline career officers. We insult the service. We diminish the country.

    Look at how other countries behave.

    The United States sends seasoned diplomats with years of service. Sometimes it sends political nominees but even those are men and women with serious achievements. They are people with policy minds. People nuanced in policy. People who can open doors abroad, and in promotion of their countries’ national interest. France sends its finest administrators. China sends disciplined technocrats who understand the world. India sends highly trained officers drawn from its foreign service elite. South Korea sends competent professionals who understand trade, investment and technology. These countries understand diplomacy as a strategic asset. They understand that ambassadors carry the weight of national interest. They know that representation is a serious business. They know that no country rises when mediocrities carry its passport across borders.

    Nigeria stands alone in its contempt for excellence. Its rulers insist that political actors who have failed at home somehow succeed abroad. They believe that those who ruined local institutions will protect national interests in foreign capitals. This is an illusion built on arrogance. It is a tragedy built on notoriously poor habits. The damage is visible. Many of our missions are weak. Some are directionless. Some are barely functional. They cannot protect citizens. They cannot attract investment. They cannot sell the country. They cannot build serious bilateral ties. They cannot speak the language of global diplomacy. They cannot engage because they do not understand the issues. The result? Our passport is treated with suspicion across the world. Our missions cannot help. They lack the skill. They lack the influence. They lack the respect. Nigeria is big but its diplomatic voice is small. It whispers at foreign tables where others speak loudly. It watches while others act. The new list promises more decline. Rapid decline.

    There are career officers in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who have trained for decades. They understand protocol. They understand negotiation. They understand the UN system. They understand the African Union. They understand the slow and patient work of diplomacy. In pursuit of tokenism, a few career diplomats are thrown into the appointment mix, while many watch politicians with no knowledge of international diplomacy take positions meant for professionals. It is demoralising. It is destructive. It weakens an institution that is already fragile. But, there is a grave cost to mediocrity. Every bad envoy carries Nigeria’s weaknesses abroad. Every failed politician posted to a foreign capital worsens our country’s poor reputation. Foreign governments know who is serious and who is not. They know when a country sends its best. They know when a country parades deadwood and sends political handshake dealers abroad to man its missions.

    Nigeria keeps promoting payback tokenism. Nigeria keeps sending liabilities abroad.

    Worse still, Nigeria keeps sending men and women whose only qualification is their usefulness to the President. This is the tragedy of a country caught in the cycle of low expectations and low standards. There is a moral problem as well. Some of the nominees helped produce the electoral chaos that Nigerians now live with.  Some supervised flawed elections. Professor Mahmood Yakubu is one example. Some defended impunity with unmatched zeal. Reno Omokri and Femi Fani-Kayode stand as its most enthusiastic evangelists, men who turned public discourse into theatrics and acrobatics. They did not merely excuse the excesses of power. They flipped. They flopped. They flip-flopped. They somersaulted around truth, to the point of eating their vomits. They justified impunity. They amplified falsehoods as if truth were an inconvenience. They embraced propaganda as a vocation. In a country struggling to rebuild trust in its institutions, their voices have too often deepened cynicism and normalised the erosion of accountability. Some weakened public trust. To reward them with diplomatic postings is to endorse their conduct. It sends a message that the state has no ethical core. It signals that public office is not a service but a spoil of war.

    The world is changing. Diplomacy is now about technology, climate change, migration, security, trade and innovation. Nations that understand this are recruiting the brightest minds. They are building strong foreign services. They are investing in knowledge. They are preparing for a complex future. Nigeria is doing none of this. Nigeria is moving backward while others are moving forward. There are Nigerians who can serve well. Distinguished scholars. Former international civil servants. Former judges. Entrepreneurs who built serious institutions. Career officers who have risen through merit. Professionals who have excelled across the world. They are not on the list. They are not considered. They are not invited. They are not valued. They are simply not wanted by power. They are not listening to scholars and practitioners in the field. Even if they don’t want to listen to the former Indian diplomat and scholar, Kishan Rana, who has written extensively on diplomatic professionalism and appointment criteria, our country has the respected Professor Bolaji Akinyemi who has consistently argued that the selection of ambassadors should be grounded in merit, professionalism, and national interest rather than political patronage. In his view, diplomacy is a specialised field that demands competence, experience, cultural sensitivity, and a deep understanding of international affairs. He stresses that career diplomats, trained within the foreign service system, are best positioned to represent the state effectively and maintain continuity in foreign policy. While acknowledging that political appointments may sometimes be unavoidable, he warns that excessive politicisation weakens professionalism, erodes institutional memory, and diminishes a country’s global standing. His overarching position is that ambassadorial appointments must prioritise expertise and integrity to protect the country’s diplomatic credibility.

    These ambassadorial appointments are a mirror. They show us what our rulers think of Nigeria. They don’t take Nigeria seriously, as the poet, Odia Ofeimun highlighted with intellectual verve and flourish two decades ago. They show us how little is expected of our country. They show us how low the bar has fallen. A country that wants greatness must send great people to represent it. A country that sends its failures abroad will receive the respect such failure deserves. The Senate will confirm the nominees. It always does. It will ask a few questions. It will praise the list. It will claim that the nominees are qualified. Then, it will ask the ambassadorial nominees to “take a bow and go”. It will then move on. Nigeria will move on as well but in the wrong direction. Another opportunity for progress will be lost. Nigeria deserves better. Nigerians deserve better. The world deserves to see our country takes itself seriously. A country that knows that dignity and competence matter. A country that believes that representation is sacred.

    One day our country will rise above the needless elephantine burden it chooses to place on its own back. The weight is heavy. It is the weight of recycled failures. It is the weight of institutions drained of confidence. It is the weight of a country that keeps dragging the carcass of its worst habits into a future that demands clarity, courage and competence. No country grows by carrying the load of its own mediocrity. No Republic moves forward when it insists on hauling along with the same tired figures who helped slow its steps. Nigeria must learn to travel light. It must learn to shed the burdens that weaken its ambition. Only then can it walk with purpose among countries that have already learnt that progress begins with choices that honour the present and protect the future.

    Today is not that day for our failing Republic.

  • Nigerians and the Affliction of Stardom

    Nigerians and the Affliction of Stardom

    -By Abdul Mahmud

    There is a strange affliction that festers in our land. It is the compulsive habit of adorning the ordinary with grandiose labels, of dressing the barely local in the borrowed robes of the global and international. Here, words are stardust sprinkled on names, banners, and signboards to confer false importance. The humblest of ventures is elevated, not by substance, but by description. This obsession is more than a quirk of language; it is a symptom of a deeper malaise: the insecurity of a country and its people uncertain of their own worth. Instead of nurturing what is authentically ours, we mask our limitations with inflated adjectives, as though the mere invocation of international and the global will transform our realities. In doing so, we cheapen language and deceive ourselves, while the world looks on, unconvinced.

    Drive through any Nigerian city and you will see it. A third-rate hotel perched on a dusty street in the backyard of a city declaring itself “international”. Never mind the broken tiles, the rattling ceiling fan, and the tasteless menu. What matters is the word “international” nailed to its signpost. It is the magic word that makes mediocrity pass for ambition. Even small village schools, with wooden benches and overworked teachers that struggle to provide basic teaching aids proudly carry the tag of “international”, “global”. Parents are seduced by both words. They assume their children will step into a universe of excellence, when in truth the schools struggle to afford chalks and exercise books. The word international becomes the uniform of deception. Hotels and schools aren’t alone in this. Churches, too, have turned to the trick. A small church ordinary parish with a leaking roof now brands itself “Global Fire Ministry”. The congregation believes the church has cross-border tentacles, even if the General Overseer has not stepped outside the neighbourhood. He believes the name confers spiritual weight. What is lacking in discipline and doctrine is compensated for with vocabulary.

    Governments have not been spared. In fact, they lead the parade. A state government announces a “global summit” in a backward European city with no strong connection to Europe’s commercial and investment market. The stage is set. The banners are printed. The governor flies out with aides. There is a retinue of photographers. And what do we find? A handful of young diaspora Nigerians in autumn jackets, attending for the thrill of proximity. They are not investors. They are not entrepreneurs of global repute. They are mostly immigrants struggling through day jobs, suddenly transformed into delegates. This is the tragedy of Edo State. The governor, who has for long disappeared from the serious business of governance in the Dennis Osadebay House, resurfaced in Dublin to stage what was called the “Global Edo State Investment Summit”. But, there was nothing global about it. It was a local show staged abroad. The audience was thin. The impact was thinner. The word “global’ was the disguise.

    Why does this happen? Why does every local activity crave the stamp of international? The answer is simple. We live in a country where names are more powerful than standards. Where labels count for more than substance. In such a place, the quickest way to escape scrutiny is to adopt foreign symbols. Words like “global, international, world-class” are deployed as camouflages. They mask the poverty of service and the absence of quality. It is also a symptom of inferiority. We are not content with our own names, our own standards, our own worth. We feel validated only when we attach the foreign. A hotel that calls itself “Afemai Hotel” feels local, and therefore cheap. But, call it “Afemai International Suites” and it sounds grand. We are trapped by our own insecurities. We measure worth by appearance, not performance. This culture of false ascription is dangerous. It dilutes standards. It creates a society of pretence. Investors are not fooled by banners. Parents are not forever deceived by names. Worshippers soon discover that miracles do not multiply with adjectives. And citizens, sooner or later, realise that their governors cannot deliver development by flying abroad to stage hollow events.

    Edo is not alone. Other states have staged “global summits” in London, Washington, New York, or Dubai. The results are always the same. They return home with glossy photographs, with Communiques drafted by consultants, with videos uploaded on government websites. But the schools remain broken. The hospitals remain empty of drugs. The roads remain cratered. What was gained in the trip? Nothing but another false ascription.

    So, we must ask ourselves, what is wrong with the local? Why must the local be dressed in borrowed robes before it is accepted? True development begins with an embrace of the local. Japan did not rise by calling its factories “international”. South Korea did not transform itself by organising “global summits”. They built from within. They named their products with pride. They competed on quality, not adjectives. Nigeria and Nigerians must learn this lesson. They must begin to value authenticity over ascription. Schools must be proud to be called Community Primary Schools if that is what they are. The true measure of their worth is not the “international” in their names, but the quality of teaching. Hotels must be content to be called City Lodges if that is what they offer. The true measure is whether their guests return satisfied. Churches must not proclaim themselves “global” before they become faithful to their missions. The true measure is the depths of the doctrines and the character of the flocks. Governors, above all, must resist the temptation of linguistic cosmetics. The people are not hungry for “global summits”. They are hungry for jobs, for safety, for hospitals that function, for schools that teach. The word “global” on a banner in Dublin does not fill an empty stomach in Benin City. It does not heal the sick in Auchi. It does not light the street in Uromi. It is vanity dressed as vision.

    There is dignity in the local. There is worth in what we build with our own hands, with honesty, with competence. When we pursue excellence, the world will notice. We will not need to shout international. We will not need to add global. The substance will advertise itself. Investors will come because they see opportunity, not because a governor staged a summit abroad. Parents will enrol children in schools because they see quality teaching, not because the school borrowed a foreign label. We deceive ourselves with these false ascriptions. Worse, we waste scarce resources. Every “global summit” costs millions of naira. Flights, hotels, allowances, banners, media coverage. All spent for a show that yields little. What if those funds were spent at home? What if the millions went into equipping schools, rebuilding hospitals, supporting small businesses? That would be development. That would be governance. That would be global in the true sense: creating value that speaks across borders.

    The time has come to strip our language of these pretensions. Let us call things what they are. Let us demand quality, not adjectives. A country that is serious cannot afford the delusion of ascription. We must be content to be local, but excellent. We must summon the courage to be Nigerian, authentically so, but with competence as our guiding star. True greatness will not come from borrowed titles or inflated claims; it will come from the quiet labour of building institutions that work, nurturing excellence where we stand, and trusting the worth of our own creations.

    It is in the depth of our local strength that we shall, one day, speak with a global voice. Not through the false banners we hang upon our failures, but through the substance of what we can offer the world. Until then, every “international’ hotel planted on a dusty street, every “global” academy tucked into a backyard, every “global summit” staged abroad will remain what it truly is: a masquerade of words, a costume draped over mediocrity.

    The mask of deception is as troubling as the hollow absence of standards that exposes our pretensions and ridicules our borrowed grandeur. The more we hide behind empty banners and labels, the louder the laughter of mediocrity rings against our claims. To rise above this, we must choose authenticity over adornment, competence over slogans. Only then will the Nigerian story shed the garb of mimicry and assume the dignity of originality by transforming words into substance and pretence into mastery.

  • For Sommie and For Our Country

    For Sommie and For Our Country

    -By Abdul Mahmud

    I did not know Somnachukwu Maduagwu. I never met her in the studios of Arise Television in Abuja, where I have gone many times for interviews. But her death touched me deeply. She was young. She was bright. She was a lawyer. She was a news anchor. She was her parents’ pride. Now she is gone. She died in the hands of armed robbers. Another life wasted in a country that treats life as disposable. Another dream crushed before it could take flight. Another family left to grieve in public. Her parents did not deserve to hear of their daughter’s death as a breaking news item. No parent deserves that. I am a parent. I have a daughter of Somnachukwu’s generation, only a few years younger. Like her, she worked hard to be called to the Bar. I look at her and I imagine what Somnachukwu’s parents now feel. I imagine the grief, the confusion, the anger. To lose a daughter that way is to lose the future. To bury a child is to bury hope. Nothing can console her parents. Nothing can restore what was taken.

    Somnachukwu was my colleague at the Bar. Her career was just beginning. She had walked the long road of law school, survived the interviews and the newsroom, built a place for herself in a country where young people are made to struggle for everything. And then she was cut down. Just like that. No warning. No second chance. This is not just about her. It is about our country. A country where lives are lost daily to the carelessness of leaders and the boldness of criminals. A country where public safety has collapsed. A country where families are broken by grief too often and too easily. The Constitution is clear. Section 14 says the security and welfare of the people shall be the primary purpose of government. That is not decoration. It is duty. It is the first obligation of any state. Without safety, there is no life. Without life, there is no country. Nigeria has failed in that duty. We are not safe anymore. Not in our homes. Not in the streets. Not on the highways. Not in the markets. Not on the farms. Not in our schools. Not in our places of worship. Not even in the studios of television stations where journalists come and go. We live in fear. And fear is now the air we breathe. Armed robbers shoot at will. Bandits operate unchecked. Kidnappers turn highways into hunting grounds. Terrorists bomb villages. Ritual killers prey on the vulnerable. Every week brings new names, new faces, new tears. Somnachukwu is one of many. This country eats its young.

    What country eats its young? What country allows its brightest to die so cheaply? What country leaves its children unprotected while the old feast on privileges and power?

    The answer is Nigeria. The human cost is unbearable. Behind every headline is a family broken forever. Behind every statistic is a mother who will never hear her child’s voice again. Behind every killing is a father who has lost the reason to live. Behind every abduction is a household plunged into debt and despair. We must not forget that these are people. Sons. Daughters. Brothers. Sisters. Dreams. Futures. Somnachukwu’s parents will never forget. They will grow old with her picture on their walls. They will remember her voice on television. They will remember the day she wore her wig and gown at the call to Bar. They will think of the grandchildren who will never be born. They will live with the emptiness that Nigeria gave them. That is the price of insecurity.

    How did we get here?

    Our policing system is broken. We have too few police officers for a country this large. The ones we have are badly trained, poorly paid, and ill equipped. Half of them are guarding politicians, businessmen, and their families. The rest are left to improvise with worn-out vehicles and ancient rifles. Criminals know this. Citizens know this. That is why nobody trusts the police. That is why people feel abandoned. So, every killing is proof of neglect. Every robbery is proof of state failure. Every kidnapping is proof that our rulers have priorities other than us. Billions are allocated for security every year. Yet the killings continue. Where does the money go? Who accounts for it? Who takes responsibility? Nobody. The result is fear everywhere. We fear the night. We fear the fork of the road. We fear the knock at the gate. We fear the silence of government. We fear because we know the police will not come. We fear because we know even when criminals are caught, justice will not follow. We fear because we know it could be us tomorrow. This is not how a country should be. Citizens should not live this way. Parents should not bury children like this. Dreams should not be extinguished on the highway. Talent should not be wasted in gunfire.

    We must say this clearly. Enough. Nigeria must choose life. We must reform the police. We must insist that community policing is not a slogan but a system that protects. We must insist that governors take real responsibility for the safety of their states. We must insist that politicians cannot keep police officers as personal guards while citizens die in the streets. We must insist that every naira budgeted for security is used for security. We must insist that justice is not selective. This is what it means to honour Somnachukwu. Not just with words, but with action. If her death passes without consequence, then we have failed her. If her parents’ grief becomes another headline that fades, then we are guilty of indifference. If her name is forgotten, then we too are lost. Her story should not end with silence. Her story should make us angry. It should make us demand more. It should make us ask why young people must die for nothing. It should make us confront the truth: Nigeria has become a country that eats its young. But it does not have to stay that way. We can build a country that values life. We can build a country that protects children and gives parents peace of mind. We can build a country where the brightest are allowed to shine, not to bleed on the roadside.

    For Sommie. For her grieving parents. For my daughter. For yours. For every child of this land. May her memory live as an unanswered question to a country that devours its young. How many more must fall before Nigeria admits its guilt? How many more must die before the state understands that its silence is complicity, and its failure is blood on its hands? The truth is simple. A country that cannot protect its children has already written its own obituary. Nigeria is walking that path. Every unpunished killing deepens the grave. Every unresolved murder is a pointer to another death, if not more deaths. Every life wasted by neglect widens the gulf between government and governed. Every parent burying a child is a monument to national shame. We must face it squarely. There are no more excuses. There are no more evasions. The time to act is not tomorrow but today. Leaders who fail to secure lives must be held accountable. Budgets that vanish without protecting anyone must be traced. Security that serves the few at the expense of the many must be broken and rebuilt. We cannot continue to weep and move on. If we fail, then Somnachukwu’s death will be one more in an endless list, and our lament will be wasted breath. But if we rise to demand safety, justice, and reform, then her memory will not be in vain. Her voice will still speak. Her promise will still live. And her loss will mark the point where a broken country finally said: no more.

     

  • Love in the Time of Banditry

    Love in the Time of Banditry

    -By Abdul Mahmud

    They dress it up as negotiation and baptise it as dialogue, but it is nothing more than doublespeak. A masquerade of words. Behind the velvet of their language lies deceit. To call surrender by another name does not change its essence. To dignify capitulation with the vocabulary of peace is to mock both truth and justice. What they parade as dialogue is often a transaction of power, a bargain struck in whispers, where the people, unseen and unheard, are the coin of exchange. Yet, they justify it as the only path to peace. When northern governors sit across from bandits and terrorists, what unfolds is not negotiation in any true sense. It is courtship. It is a series of dates. It is love in the time of banditry. A theatre of intimacy staged under the shadow of violence. A ritual that strips empathy of its nobility, reducing what should be the compassion of leadership to the self-serving whispers of survival and convenience, which recalls obsequious intimacies that surface in times of adversity, only to blur the line between fear and affection. Gabriel García Marquez, in his literary opus, Love in the Time of Cholera, wrote of a love that endured through decay, war, and pestilence; love that was obstinate, enduring, and almost absurd in its persistence. But, what we are witnessing here is its inversion: not fidelity through ruin, but complicity masquerading as affection. It is surrender disguised as closeness; it is the twisted parody of love, showcased as reconciliation. Not love shaped by hardship.

    The first date was awkward. In Zamfara, officials drove into Shinkafi and Dansadau forests to meet warlords who had already massacred villagers and burned farmlands. The state came clothed in the uniform of authority. The bandits came with blood on their hands. Victims were not invited. There was no room for mothers who lost children in Anka or for fathers who buried their sons in Maru. The girls kidnapped from Jangebe Secondary School were absent too. Instead, the state leaned across the table, desperate for calm, while the bandits leaned back, aware of their power. In Katsina, the dates were even more surreal. Former Governor Aminu Masari presided over gatherings in Faskari and Safana, asking men who roamed the forests with Ak-47s to sheathe their swords. He offered them amnesty. He promised them a chance to return to normal life. He said forgiveness was the only way forward. The bandits promised to stop attacks. Weeks later, children were abducted from Kankara school. The romance soured, but the cycle continued. In Niger State, the story was not different. Officials met with gunmen in Shiroro and Rafi, pleading for the release of students kidnapped in Kagara and Tegina. The bandits named their price. Parents sold farmland. Traders emptied their savings. Communities gathered ransom. And still, the killers smiled at state officials, knowing that power sat firmly on their side of the table. Here’s the Babanla of it all. El-Rufai once confessed to sitting with bandits. He called it negotiation. But in truth, it was an act closer to courtship, a ritual of appeasement that gave men of violence the recognition they craved. And like all bad romances, it ended with betrayal of citizens who were left abandoned while the suitors walked away unharmed.

    Every courtship has its rituals. Ours, between the state and bandits, has acquired a disturbing familiarity. It begins with what GenZ lovers now call the talking stage – the tentative exchanges where boundaries are tested and each side pretends to listen. Soon it drifts into the season of promises. Governors, with anxious smiles, place their offerings on the table: amnesty, cash, reintegration into a society they once helped to fracture. Bandits, in turn, whisper their vows of restraint: to slow the killings, to reduce the kidnappings, and to hold their fire for a while. These are not promises of love, but pacts of convenience. They are not born of conviction, but of fatigue. It is less negotiation than seduction; and less about peace than about buying time. And like all rituals of courtship gone wrong, the words exchanged are designed not to bind hearts, but to mask betrayal. Both sides know these promises will be broken. Yet they return to the table again and again, like lovers in a toxic affair. This romance is costly. Citizens are the ones who pay the bill. In Sokoto, villagers in Isa and Sabon Birni sold goats to rescue their daughters. In Kaduna and Abuja, families borrowed money to pay ransom for their sons seized on the Abuja – Kaduna highway. When the ransom was paid, when the family was ruined, when the dead were buried, the government still appeared in public with the men who caused the pain. The same killers were photographed shaking hands with officials. The logic of this courtship is simple: violence seduces. The bandits hold power. They can stop attacks or restart them at will. They control vast forests. They instill fear more effectively than the police. The state, weak and insecure, clings to them in the hope that kindness will tame them. But kindness never tames abusers. It emboldens them. Each meeting shifts the line of what is normal. What once outraged citizens now barely raises eyebrows. A mass abduction? There will soon be talks. A massacre on the highway? Another round of dialogue. The extraordinary has become ordinary. The courtship is now part of our political culture that has taken its own linguistic ascription. Listen closely to the language officials use. They speak of “understandings”. They speak of “forgiveness”. One Zamfara governor once urged citizens to “show love” to bandits. These are not the words of justice. These are the words of romance. They reveal the dangerous intimacy between the state and cold-blooded murderers, while citizens stand abandoned.

    The Constitution does give not blessings to this romance, nor does the Terrorism Prevention (Prohibition) Act, 2022. The law does not say: dine with terrorists. It says: arrest, prosecute, punish, and protect. Yet, governors bend the law in the name of expedience. Federal law enforcement and state security officials who should protect the state and the law do more than keep quiet. They drape a cloak of protection over such encounters, ensuring that the lovers are not disturbed. Their silence is never neutral. Their silence is both complicity and consent. But, here’s the kernel: each time Abuja averts its gaze, it does more than ignore such encounters. It blesses the rendezvous. It sanctions another tryst between power and violence, another betrayal recorded in the register of statecraft. The flashing convoys, the armed escorts, and whispered briefings are not signs of resistance, they are choreography. They turn meetings that should be interrogation into consecrations shielded by the very institutions sworn to protect citizens. And so, with every silence, Abuja redraws the map of loyalty: not to the governed, but to those who terrorise them.

    The human cost is huge. Schoolgirls from Jangebe were abducted with hundreds of classmates. They returned shaken, hungry, and traumatised. When they heard that the governor negotiated with the same men who abducted them, they asked: “Why are they free? Why did they do this to us?” There was no answer. Comrade Muhammad, one of the passengers abducted from the Kaduna-bound train in 2022, once told a chilling story. He said he encountered Abubakar, one of his kidnappers, not in a forest or a hideout, but in a mosque in Kaduna. Face to face. In the open. Among worshippers. The implication is terrifying. For a man who once held a gun to his head to stroll so casually into a mosque suggests more than mere audacity of courage. It suggests assurance. It suggests the confidence of someone shielded by invisible hands. Perhaps, Abubakar had just emerged from one of those secret meetings with the state, the kind where promises are exchanged in whispers and guarantees are offered in silence. Perhaps, he knew he had little to fear. That encounter captured the paradox of our times: victims carry scars into prayer halls while perpetrators walk in with a swagger, as though their crimes had been baptised by power itself.

    There is a point that renders these grotesque courtship tragic, and it is this: the closer the state draws to the bandits, the farther it drifts from its people. Each gesture of appeasement towards killers deepens the abandonment of citizens who look to the state for protection. Every deal struck across the table with gunmen is not a negotiation, it is a betrayal carved into the memory of widows and orphans. Every handshake extended to men of violence lands as a slap across the faces of the grieving, a cruel reminder that the state has chosen to share intimacy with those who spill blood rather than solidarity with those who shed tears. In such rituals of compromise, power becomes complicit, and the line between protector and predator begins to blur. The tragedy further deepens in the symbolism of such encounters. To romance bandits is to abandon the living for the company of death. It is to sit in a room perfumed by the ghosts of the slain, and choose intimacy with murderers. Every concession to the gunmen becomes a mirror in which the people glimpse the frailty of the state that prefers to keep company with killers rather than stand vigil with victims. And so the people learn, slowly but bitterly, that the state is not a fortress built for their defence, but a stage where betrayals are performed in plain sight, leaving citizens to wonder: when their protectors embrace their tormentors, who is left to stand with them, the powerless?

    This toxic romance has no future. The bandits are not changing. They are growing richer and bolder. Each meeting gives them legitimacy. Each promise emboldens them to demand more. The state, meanwhile, grows weaker. With every compromise, it loses moral authority and public trust. If this continues, the state risks becoming indistinguishable from its new partner; a willing accomplice in crime. Nigeria must end this romance. The state cannot keep dating its killers. It must return to its first love to the people. That requires justice, not appeasement. It requires prosecutions, not reintegration. It requires investment in security forces, reform of intelligence, and development in villages long abandoned. Citizens must feel the presence of the state not only through uniforms, but through working schools, safe roads, and real jobs. The only “dates” worth keeping are with survivors, victims, and communities that still hold faith in Nigeria. They are the true partners of the state. They are the ones who deserve love, not the men who burn villages and steal children. What the government has called peace talks are not peace at all. They are surrender disguised as negotiation. They are betrayal dressed as dialogue. The Nigerian state must choose where its heart lies – with citizens or with cold-blooded murderers.

    The dates with bandits must end.

  • The Schools’ Graduation Ban

    The Schools’ Graduation Ban

    -By Abdul Mahmud

    A few States have announced the ban on graduation ceremonies in public and private schools. Ekiti State, in particular, the ban affects pupils in kindergarten, nursery, primary, and secondary schools. These states say the practice is unnecessary, costly, and distracting. They insist that schools should focus on learning rather than ceremonies. On the surface, the ban sounds like discipline. In reality, it raises troubling questions about constitutionality, overreach, and the role of the State in shaping childhood experiences. At its heart, this ban is about memory. For many parents, school celebrations are not frivolous things. They are part of the social fabric. In the 1970s and 1980s, primary schools’ leavers were sent forth with assemblies, plays, prize-givings, and little parties. The schools gathered to applaud their efforts. Parents brought food and drinks. Teachers gave certificates of merit and School Leaving Certificates were handed out to pupils who performed plays and dances in turn. There was no degree involved. No official qualification. Yet, it was an important rite of passage. Those ceremonies marked a transition. From childhood to adolescence. From primary to secondary. From one stage of life to the next.

    That is why the ban cuts deep. It tells families and children that memory and joy do not matter. It tells them that the state knows best how childhood should be experienced. It puts the government’s heavy hand where it should not be. The 1999 Constitution provides a clear framework for the limits of state power. Section 36 guarantees the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and expression. Section 40 protects freedom of assembly and association. Section 42 guarantees freedom from discrimination. The ban raises issues under these provisions. If parents, teachers, and pupils freely choose to organise an end-of-school celebration, does the state have the power to stop them? Is that not a violation of freedom of assembly? When the state prevents children and families from gathering to mark milestones, is it not infringing on rights that the Constitution protects? Supporters of the ban argue that many schools abuse the idea of graduation. They impose heavy financial levies on parents. They turn ceremonies into money-making events. They stage elaborate occasions, with expensive clothes and pageantry. There is truth in this complaint. Some schools exploit parents’ desire to celebrate their children. But is banning the answer? Must the government always reach for the instrument of ban when regulation or guidance could suffice? Couldn’t the states simply issue rules to prevent exploitation? A cap on levies. A code of conduct. A requirement that participation be voluntary. Instead, it reached for the axe.

    This is not the first time our states have chosen prohibition over engagement. We live under governments that see control as the first reflex – a certain reflexivity which lies at the heart of ill-thought public policy. From banning Okadas to banning street processions to banning social gatherings, the instinct is the same: to stop, not to guide. But societies evolve. And when they evolve, governments should respond with care, not with bans.

    But, how did we get to this point? In the 1970s and 1980s, our country was different. Schools were simpler. Communities were close-knit, and tighter. Parents came to watch their children march or perform a drama on the last day of school. Nobody called it a graduation. Yet, it was a celebration of achievement. These small events mattered. They created memories that stayed with children long into adulthood. They gave children a sense of recognition. A sense that their efforts were noticed. Fast forward to today. Society has changed. Education is more competitive. Families want to acknowledge their children’s progress. Celebrations have become more elaborate. Some are excessive. Some are modest. But at the root, they are about joy. A child leaves the crèche for nursery; and then for primary school. A girl completes junior secondary and moves to senior secondary. A boy finishes his WAEC examinations. Parents want to mark these steps. They are not trivial. They are phases in a child’s growth.

    So the question arises: are these States responding to this evolution in the wrong way? Should governments tell families how to celebrate their children? Should they insist that childhood must be stripped of public markers of achievement? When governments deny children these moments, they risk creating a sterile environment where joy is suspect. This is why the ban feels cruel. It is not about education. It is about control. The state says: “We know what is best for your child”. Parents and proprietors of schools say: “We know how to mark our children’s and pupils’ growth”. The Constitution sides with parents and proprietors, not with arbitrary public policies and the whimsical actions of States’ governors. Unless a celebration violates public order, governments have no business forbidding it.

    Critics will say, “But children are underage. They do not decide for themselves”. That is true. But parents and guardians do. And under Nigerian law, parents have rights to bring up their children in line with their values. The state should not interfere except where harm is clear. There is no harm in a modest school celebration. There is only joy.

    To humanise this debate, we return to Ado-Ekiti and see the folly of the ban through the eyes of a ten-year-old girl, or picture it in the experience of an eight-year-old child in Orlu. She has finished primary school. She has worked hard. She has learned to read and write. She has made friends. On the last day, she expects a party. A small event where she will sing a song, receive a prize, and take photographs with her classmates. That memory will carry her forward. It will give her confidence as she enters secondary school. Now, imagine telling her: “No. There will be no party. No gathering. The government says it is banned”. What message does that send? That her effort is invisible? That joy must be regulated? That memory must be denied? What memory will that leave her with? What does she learn from this? That her progress is unworthy of celebration? That even childhood joy lies at the mercy of state decrees?

    This is not trivial. Psychologists remind us that rites of passage are essential to human growth. They help children make sense of transitions. They provide closure and anticipation. They bind communities together. By banning them, the state undermines children’s social and emotional development. But, the larger issue is constitutional in my estimation. Our country is a federation. States have powers to administer schools. But those powers are not unlimited. They do not have authority to outlaw private gatherings of parents and children in schools. When they do so, they trespass into rights protected by the Constitution. They mistake administration for ownership. This is the heart of the problem. Our states often behave like masters of society rather than servants of it. They imagine they can dictate how citizens live their lives. But, governments exist to enable, not to disable. To guide, not to control. To facilitate joy, not to ban it.

    The schools’ graduation ban is a small example of a larger malaise. The creeping idea that the state is wiser than the society. That citizens cannot be trusted to organise their lives. That every excess must be met with prohibition. It is a philosophy of fear. And it is wrong.

    What should be done instead?

    Governments can regulate without banning. They can set rules to stop exploitation, and to enthrone the regime of transparency in levies. They can encourage modesty in celebrations. They can even partner with communities to make events educational as well as joyful. Plays that teach history. Prizes that reward academic excellence. Speeches that inspire. That is how societies evolve. By guidance, not by prohibition. Come to think of it, how do governments that inaugurate every flyover and bridge with extravagant fanfare, that turn ribbon-cuttings into carnivals, and that dress up the most routine achievements as if they were feats of civilisation, suddenly presume to teach parents restraint? Is this not hypocrisy dressed as virtue? The same officials who convert public duty into private spectacle now lecture families about the dangers of celebrating their children. It is the old parable of the physician who refuses to heal himself. For what is more excessive, parents buying cake and fabric to mark the passage of childhood, or governments spending millions to stage ceremonies for projects already funded by taxpayers?

    Truth be told, this is not just about graduation ceremonies. It is about how governments see  citizens as children to be placed under control? Or as partners to be engaged? If the former, then bans will multiply. If the latter, then society will flourish.

    Those governors rubbing their hands in premature triumph should stop and reflect on the shortsightedness of such a ban. Childhood is short. Memory is precious. Education is not just about books. It is also about community, recognition, and joy.  States’ governors that deny this deny their own future. For today’s children will remember. And what they will remember is whether their society celebrated them, or silenced their joy. Think.