By Andy Ezeani
Until Donald Trump came along in the last quarter of 2025 with threats to recreate a cowboy scenario in Nigeria, “with guns ablazing”, the idea of the Nigerian government being accountable to anyone did not arise.
The government, led by Bola Tinubu, just like its predecessor under Muhammadu Buhari, awkwardly lived its sovereign status to a hilt. Having vanquished the legislature, the presidency is answerable to no authority but itself.
By Ugo Onuoha
A little over three months into the presidency of Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, on September 5, 2023, I wrote an opinion piece titled “100 days of Rehoboam” in this space and elsewhere. Rehoboam was a king of the divided kingdom of ancient Israel. He was the son of King Solomon and the grandson of King David, both of whom were also past rulers of a united Israel.
Rehoboam caused Israel to be divided through policies that inflicted pains on his people. He was reckless. He was proud. He was unfeeling. He took counsel from his scatter head fellow young men. He told the Israelites that the privations they suffered under his father should be regarded as a child’s play. And that while his predecessors chastised them with a whip, he would chastise them with a scorpion. And he verily proceeded to do so. Rehoboam and Tinubu share similarities and dissimilarities.
By Dianam Dakolo
It is exactly one month now since the appearance of the Trinidadian-American singer and actress, Nicki Minaj, at the United Nations to make a case for global action against genocide in Nigeria, perpetrated by Fulani bandits and herdsmen and Kanuri terrorists against Christian communities in the North of the country.
We have also had a United States Congressional Committee on a fact-finding mission to Nigeria. Snippets of its findings and conclusions are now public knowledge - that genocide in Nigeria is real and horrific, and that top government functionaries and the security agencies, particularly from the tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari up till date, have been manifestly complicit.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
It is extremely difficult to understand why President Bola Tinubu takes delight in insulting Nigerians at every turn. Or how else can one explain most of his actions other than that of a leader who does not care a hoot about what the people think or feel?
A few weeks ago, it was the issue of presidential pardon. It beggared belief that a president would demean a constitutional instrument, designed not only to temper justice with mercy but also give the Nigerian state a human face with the axiomatic milk of kindness flowing underneath near infinite executive powers.
By Ochereome Nnanna
President Bola Tinubu’s spokesmen have been oddly quiet over two very grave accusations which portrayed their principal possibly as a part of our security problems.
When 25 students of Government Girls’ Comprehensive Secondary School, Maga in Kebbi State were abducted about ten days ago, the state’s Governor, Mohammed Idris, made a shocking disclosure. He said his government received credible intelligence about a likely attack on the school.
By Olu Fasan
However much the Presidency tried to explain away President Bola Tinubu’s last-minute cancellation of this year’s Independence Day parade, it was clear that something was amiss.
By Olu Fasan
Pardon. An act so seemingly innocuous it should never be controversial. Yet, recently, a state pardon provoked public opprobrium in Nigeria. Why? Because it was wrapped in crude politics and stripped of morality. Pardons are much like gifts: they have a deceptive innocence.
For instance, gifts are rooted in customs and tradition, but they are also associated with bribery and corruption. Similarly, a presidential pardon loses its moral anchor when it is steeped in impunity and abuse of power. So, it’s understandable why President Bola Tinubu’s recent decision to pardon 175 people, most convicted of serious crimes, triggered a spontaneous public outrage.
By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu
When Olusegun Obasanjo took over in the middle of 1976 from the slain Murtala Muhammed as Nigeria’s military Head of State, the regime was already committed as a matter policy to transition power to an elected civilian administration in 1979. This was a big deal alright but not one over which he had much say as such.
As military Head of State, General Obasanjo identified two issues to define his personal legacy. One was food security. To address that, he launched “Operation Feed the Nation”, better known by the acronym (OFN). Those were the same initials of Obasanjo Farms Nigeria, the name of the company under which the General would later pursue his post-retirement vocation in agriculture. The coincidence was not lost on many.
By Olu Fasan
Earlier this week, President Bola Tinubu’s spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, announced that the president had cut short his two-week vacation in France and returned to Nigeria “to resume official duties”. Given that Onanuga previously described the president’s trip to France as a “working” holiday, one must wonder why Tinubu stopped working remotely from France.
Truth be told, President Tinubu was wrong to embark on that trip in the first place. Whatever forced him to truncate his stay in France already existed before he left this country: Nigeria was in a dire strait; insecurity was overly uncontrollable, acute poverty and hunger were dehumanising ordinary Nigerians, and the government was rudderless and bumbling. By choosing to travel abroad under those dreadful circumstances, Tinubu behaved like Nero who fiddled while Rome burned!
By Obi Nwakanma
As at this morning, dear reader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) remains a political prisoner, and a prisoner of conscience in Nigeria. Kanu continues to be held, against his will, and against the laws of the federation of Nigeria, whose courts have declared that he has broken no laws, and has no case to answer over the matter on which he is being held.
Kanu’s continued detention is now no longer a personal matter between Nnamdi Kanu and the Federal Government of Nigeria, it is now an insult to the Igbo. I will come to this in a minute. But let me quickly outline the Nnamdi Kanu story, for those who do not know, or who may have forgotten, or who have been absorbed by too much flux of time, and who may now be extremely fatigued by the drag of this case.
By Obi Nwakanma
A friend of mine sent me the link of the clip of my old buddy, Dr Reuben Abati, declaring that the civil war in Nigeria has not ended. Therefore the North will not vote for the likely candidacy of Peter Obi, an Igbo from the East. It of course struck me on two levels. Dr. Abati seemed deliberately to be lubricating tired and self-serving ideas.
The second part, where this hit very pointedly was at a very sudden realization! Dr. Abati is afraid of a Peter Obi presidency. He is not even hiding it. But for what reason? Why is the revanchist arm of the Yoruba in the Southwest of Nigeria a little too startled by the prospects of the Obi presidency? It is a question worth exploring.
By Adekunle Adekoya
A cursory perusal of the state of affairs in Nigeria today and how things are managed by the politicians in charge led me to one conclusion — we, the people of Nigeria, do not matter a jot to the politicians managing our affairs. In addition, the laws that we have in place to regulate our daily experience in many spheres of life also do not matter to them.
This is because preparations to get re-elected after the elections of 2023 began earnestly last year, a development unprecedented since the Fourth Republic was birthed in 1999. To me, that wasn’t just jumping the gun, it signalled a crazy obsession with, and yearning for power that even demagogues may not possess. Throughout last year, and continuing into this year, developments on the political landscape had to do in the main with who is defecting from which party, and to which. This year, most of the rumours became fact when the decampings started taking place, one after the other, like the sequence in a computer programme.
By Tonnie Iredia
Seventy-three (73) years ago, the Northern House of Chiefs made history when it passed a motion moved by the Emir of Gwandu mandating all native authorities to fight the disturbing trend of corruption among public officials in the colony. Other parts of what became Nigeria embraced the laudable motion.
From then till now, our successive political and military leaders have all taken several steps to continue with the fight, but the malaise has refused to go. To name just a few efforts, General Yakubu Gowon’s ‘Public Officer (Investigation of Assets) Decree’ of 1968, resulted in the forfeiture of corruptly acquired assets by culprits. The Murtala/Obasanjo military government sacked no less than 10, 000 public servants deemed to be corrupt. To invigorate our Code of Condict Bureau, President Ibrahim Babangida in 1989 added to it the Code of Conduct Tribunal.
By Ugoji Egbujo
Tinubu’s government has become a propaganda factory. A government obsessed with spectacle over substance and relentlessly pursuing self-congratulation. A governance style that prioritises the trivial over the transformative.
By Obi Nwakanma
Let me begin here by saying that Mr. Femi Adesina is a very dishonest interlocutor of Nigerian history. I really do wish to emphasize the word “dishonest.” Perhaps a stronger word might even suffice, but I am in no mood for invention. I would like it to be as clear, and as plain as possible, that Adesina, a one-time newspaper editor is bent towards hagiography. Buhari found his Shadwell in Adesina. His memoir of his time as Buhari’s factotum, for whom he spent eight in Aso Rock as Spokesman, Working With Buhari, is an annoying insult on Nigerians. In this book, Adesina launched an EMP on truth in aid of Buhari.
*Adesina and Buhari
Nigerians cannot recognize the Buhari in that book, nor fathom the credentials of the writer of that tome full of all kinds of subaltern cliches that no serious writer should now be caught using, e.g. “ straight as an arrow…clean as a whistle” Very elementary use of language. Too many tired phrases that to me, indicate the stasis in which Adesina lived. But that is not the real point. The real point is that, that book, as much as its subject is a lie. When a book is a lie, it marks its time on the shelf. Eventually, it will end up in the dustbin of history; certainly not among the great chronicles of an era.
By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu
“Sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through this Constitution derives all its powers and authority.” Section 14(2), Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999.
In 2007, the contest to rule Nigeria was between two sons of Katsina State. From the Katsina Emirate, Umaru Musa Yar’Adua ran on the ticket of the then ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) to succeed outgoing president, Olusegun Obasanjo. His elder brother, Shehu, had served as Obasanjo’s second-in-command during military rule from February 1976 to October 1979. From the Daura Emirate, also in Katsina State, Muhammadu Buhari who also served alongside Obasanjo and Shehu Musa Yar’Adua in that military government, was the leading opposition candidate on the platform of the All Nigeria Peoples’ Party (ANPP).
By Olayinka Oyegbile
When the news of the death of Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s immediate past president broke, the first thing that came to my mind were the immortal words of the poet John Donne, who wrote years ago that: "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”
The death of anyone affects people in different ways. People cannot feel the same emotion no matter how alike they look. That is the reason why the death of a parent always affects siblings in different ways and manners. The same with the death of Buhari. We cannot all feel it the same way. His family, close friends, associates, good-weather friends, et al, would all feel his death in different ways from the common folks. It is as Leo Tolstoy put it in one of his books Anna Karenina. He wrote: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
By Ray Ekpu
Dele Giwa and I were close friends and colleagues at Concord and Newswatch. At Concord some colleagues called us Ray Giwa and Dele Ekpu, an attempt to emphasise the closeness of our relationship. And when Dele was badly treated by Chief MKO Abiola, the sole proprietor of Concord, I resigned my appointment as the chairman of the Editorial Board even before Dele did. And when Dele was assassinated, I lost 10 kilogrammes within two weeks and lost my memory for one year.
That was how deep the relationship was. But at the 10th anniversary of his assassination, we, his colleagues, decided that despite the depth of the loss, we needed to forgive those who killed him and move on.
However, the former president, Ibrahim Babangida has laboured to explain in his autobiography, A Journey in Service, why, according to him, the investigation of his assassination was not concluded by his government. But his explanation has produced more questions than answers, while he was trying to defend the officials in his security services who were fingered for the crime.
By Obi Nwakanma
I have made this point at various points in this column, that for a nation to claim “independence,” or legitimacy, it must have sovereign control of its state institutions.
It should never be a transactional or “contract state.” Is Nigeria a sovereign state? I do not think so, because, currently, Nigeria does not seem in control of its sovereign institutions. As a nation, Nigeria is not governed by her leaders. It is under state capture. Those who parade themselves now as the leaders of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, are in fact, not answerable to the citizens of this republic.
By Ikechukwu Amaechi
Today, May 29, 2025, is exactly two years since Bola Tinubu took the oath of office as President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Federal Republic of Nigeria. And it is more than enough time to assess his stewardship.
Even those who said, as Professor Wole Soyinka did in 2023, that the traditional 100 days was too short a time to make such an assessment will hardly have any excuse now. For those who may have forgotten, on December 24, 2023, Soyinka paid a visit to Tinubu in his Lagos home. Asked to assess Tinubu’s performance, the Nobel Laureate claimed that three months was too short a time to assess any government.
