Prof. Toyin Falola delivering the Masterclass at the University of Lagos on July 2, 2026.
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This short piece is part of the Masterclass delivered at the University of Lagos on July 2nd, 2026. Public pressure insisted that I circulate part of its contents. Three hours after the event, the phone would not stop ringing, and both email and WhatsApp communications were overwhelmed with requests. I appreciate the public demand, which suggests a hunger for valuable knowledge
People provide two simple explanations for the problems of African countries. Blame everything on colonialism or blame it all on African leaders. Both tales give everyone a free pass. The truth, however, is messier: colonial control established the stage, but the leaders who followed independence decided how to utilize it, and many opted to keep the worst elements operating, only with new names on the door. Go to a government office in Lagos, Accra or Kinshasa and the architecture may be modern, but the manner decisions are taken inside has not altered since colonial times. Each file has to go up a ladder of approvals. Nothing happens without a signature from above. This is not bureaucratic caution: it is the old colonial system of control, maintained because it benefits whoever happens to be on top now.
Since independence, African leaders have generally stayed in the same chair as their colonial overlords rather than constructing something new. While Kwame Nkrumah fought for pan-African liberation in Ghana, he kept most of the colonial civil service. Mobutu did not develop the technology that allowed him to steal the nation; Belgium’s King Leopold had already established it in Congo. He grabbed it. In Nigeria, almost everyone has a classic story of a small trader, following all the rules, waiting eight months for a routine government certificate. One phone call to the correct person, and the papers are cleared in a week. The formal procedure is on paper. Who you know is the true process. Such behaviour is euphemistically referred to by researchers as “neopatrimonialism,” or politics by personal favors rather than norms. This is not to say that African government officials are any less competent than anybody else. They operate in a system that encourages loyalty above rules.
It needn’t be like this all over the place. Botswana has had genuine elections since 1966, maintained its judiciary fairly independent and utilized its diamond riches to create roads, schools and a national savings fund rather than letting politicians pocket it. The difference was not a more benign colonial background, but a ruling class that exercised restraint. This one example is important because it shows that the old system is a choice, not destiny
When government promises seldom translate into roads or hospitals, accepting five thousand naira now is not stupid; it is the only sure return many voters would ever see. Branded t-shirts, free food and little folded currency notes discreetly given at the perimeter lure a throng during political rallies in Nigeria, Kenya or Zimbabwe. This is corruption, outsiders say, and the people are to blame for buying it. That’s missing the point. Nigerians have a term for this: “stomach infrastructure,” the food and cash politicians dole out in lieu of the schools and hospitals they promise.
Behind many candidates is a “godfather,” a power broker who selects who runs and who doesn’t, ignoring party regulations. Politicians transfer parties all the time, not because of philosophy but survival, since parties were seldom established on ideas in the first place. And the jobless young guys engaged as campaign muscle for a few thousand naira a day are not profoundly dedicated to any cause; they are accepting the only paid jobs on offer
In 1884–85, Europeans who never set foot on the continent drew Africa’s boundaries in Berlin, lumping together more than 250 ethnic groups inside Nigeria alone, just because it suited colonial administration. The British also ruled different regions on different logics; in the north they ruled through existing emirs, but in the southeast, they invented ‘warrant chiefs’ who had no real authority, a mismatch that sparked the 1929 Aba Women’s War and still echoes in how regions relate to central government today.
The colonial economy was to take raw commodities- cocoa, cotton, oil, minerals and process them elsewhere, and that pattern has hardly altered. Nigeria still derives most of its export revenue from crude oil, although it imports refined petroleum at a markup. Fourteen West and Central African countries still use the CFA franc, a currency historically related to and partially controlled by France, which critics argue even today inhibits these countries’ authority over their own economy
But we strongly reject the notion of colonialism as a permanent justification. More than sixty years after independence, it is no longer honest to blame Britain or France for today’s robbed budget or an election commission that can’t count ballots. In Ghana, Nkrumah strove to escape the colonial patterns of the past with nationalisation and the hope of pan-African unification. But his own administration became authoritarian, banning opposition parties and imprisoning critics, mirroring the colonial practices he despised. Good intentions are not enough. Building really new institutions is hard, unglamorous labor that independence speeches alone cannot achieve.
Ask anybody in rural Benue State who they’d trust to handle a land issue properly, and most would say the traditional ruler or council of elders, not the courts. Not because courts are not capable, but because court proceedings take a long time, are expensive, and may easily be skewed in favour of whoever has money or connections. Local government, for all its inherent failings, at least seems proximate and answerable in a manner the state frequently doesn’t. In most of Africa, leaders are less assessed by the quality of the free and fair process and more by what they clearly provide. That’s why a governor with a poor human-rights record may remain popular by building roads and paying wages on time, while a president with a clear democratic mandate might be detested if life becomes more difficult under him.
Paul Biya of Cameroon, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo-Brazzaville have all changed their constitutions to remain in power much beyond intended bounds. The message people learn is not subtle: constitutions give way for a determined leader, which corrodes confidence in all institutions below it, courts, electoral boards, anti-corruption organizations included
Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency, the EFCC, has recorded some actual convictions, but is also frequently perceived as going after the political opponents of those in power with more vigour than their supporters, feeding into the notion that corruption enforcement is a political weapon rather than an even-handed rule of law
Scandals have been exposed on social media; a corrupt official or a harsh police encounter might reach millions in hours, but the virality seldom leads to resignations or convictions. It may expose the problem of trust. It has not cured it. Into that vacuum enter pastors, imams and traditional rulers who frequently have more true trust than elected politicians simply because their presence in people’s lives is consistent and evident
A lot of the seeming historical ethnic distinction was really solidified by colonial officials, who turned fluid, overlapping local identities into fixed categories for census and control purposes. Later, the colonial-constructed Hutu/Tutsi division was exploited with devastating effects in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda
The ‘federal character’ system of Nigeria aims to ensure ethnic balance in government employment and university seats. The intention is understandable, but the consequence has frequently been to solidify the same ethnic divides it was supposed to blur, making a people’s ancestral “state of origin” count more than where they really reside and pay taxes. If your family has lived and paid taxes in a location for a certain number of years, then you and your children should enjoy full rights there regardless of where your grandpa was born.
In Lagos, Nairobi and Accra, young people are spending an increasing part of their upbringing in mixed neighbourhoods, attending mixed schools and marrying across ethnic lines their grandparents would never have thought of. Even if many politicians keep doing it, old-style ethnic political mobilization is a tougher sell to this age. Young Nigerians went to the streets in October 2020 to protest police brutality in the #EndSARS rallies, which were mostly organised via social media and mutual help rather than established party or civil-society organizations. The state’s harsh response, which included gunshots at the Lekki tollgate, is still unsolved and contested. On the other hand, the protests were a reflection of something far larger: a generation that is becoming less and less willing to tolerate dysfunction just because it was inheritable. In recent years, Sudan, South Africa, and Senegal have all been shaken by uprisings headed by young people like these.
Regional commerce might be a quieter but more lasting transformation. The African Continental Free Trade Area, in operation since 2021, wants to increase intra-Africa trade over trade with Europe or Asia, directly challenging the colonial pattern of exporting raw cocoa and buying chocolate, exporting crude oil and importing gasoline. Progress has been sluggish, but the rationale is fundamental
A truly different African future would involve digital government systems that remove room for officials to demand favours; political parties with real internal democracy not godfathers; courts and election bodies that are independent enough to make rulings stick against a sitting government; citizenship rights based on where people live and contribute, not on ancestry; and economies that process their own oil, cocoa and cotton, rather than exporting them raw
We can’t continue solely on the assumption that younger leaders would necessarily make things better, with many politicians in their thirties and forties proving they can operate the same patronage networks as their elders, just with slicker social media. What counts is not age but how ready they are to construct institutions that can restrain their power, courts that can rule against them, anti-corruption organizations that can probe their own friends and election systems that can really remove them from office. The system was constructed by particular people and is perpetuated by specific individuals, meaning it may also be unbuilt by the people who refuse to accept it as permanent: the ones demonstrating, organizing, voting and demanding something better.
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Birth Of Nigerian Bandit Literature
Opinion
Birth Of Nigerian Bandit Literature
Published
22 hours ago
on
July 3, 2026
By
NewTimes
Prof. Tony Afejuku
By Tony Afejuku
On Friday, June 26, 2026, this composer travelled from a distant and not distant land to his city of Warri, his Waffi, land of lands and city of cities whose twin is Sapele, Safi, another fabulous land of lands (another) city of cities. In our boyish imaginations in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties these two significantly significant coastal lands were the only two “Papa’s lands” in our dear, dear country. Simply stated, they constituted our paradise. There were fantastic tales about Lagos – Lasgidi, Eko; Lokoja; Port Harcourt – Pitakwa; Ibadan; Jos; K.C. – Kano City; Osha – Onitsha; Calabar; and nearby Benin City, but none compared with our twin cities of cities!
After a pretty long time that was not a pretty long time I was going home, to the homeland of new turmoil – by road – despite my promise to my good self never ever to embark on any journey on our dreadful roads to any town or city in this country – their country your country my country our country. Of course, we all must understand why I poured water on my vow when I journeyed to and from Warri on the – afore-said Friday, June 26 and Monday, June 29, 2026: The fear of bandits is the beginning of the new wisdom in President Bola Tinubu’s Nigeria! To be abducted or kidnapped in the Nigeria of the PON, in the Nigeria of the current President of Nigeria, is to accept an un-willing and inevitable, and eternal farewell to our lovely country that bandits and kidnappers are absolutely turning into a place, into a haven, of monstrosities.
Sooner than later, those of us who have the gift of creative words and who are lucky to avoid the clutches of the dare-devils that our Abuja lords cannot tame and bring to book, will absolutely begin to speak of “Nigerian Bandit Literature”. They will soon begin to create what the glitterer is calling now “Nigerian Bandit Literature” – that is, “Banditry, kidnap-for-ransom Literature”. As the glitterer is composing this composition the subject of mass abductions is deeply penetrating his creative consciousness, guiding his thoughts relating to how he should speak about and document with nacreous, beautiful words and sentences, akin to Wole Soyinka’s or Romanus Egudu’s or Olu Obafemi’s, trauma, geography, and state capitulation in the country now.
When the vehicle taking the glitterer to Warri got to areas projected as actual geographical flashpoints on the Benin-Warri Highway where bandits or kidnappers allegedly operate, his heart knew no fear. Instead his imagination was aglow with the desire to create and design, at the same time, a poetic and realistic cartography of banditry. The glitterer gave sincere thought to this up to the time he entered Warri. And in Warri the pace of his thought created further room for reflection when he remembered a friend of his in Zaria. He is a Professor of Fine Arts at the Ahmadu Bello University. In three years’ time the system will speak to him to retire voluntarily. He is ready to welcome the speech. But how is he ready to visit the years ahead?
In a telephone conversation with him, Professor Jerry Buhari intimidated the composer as follows: “My village is called Akwaya, Kachia LGA, Kaduna State. The village has been sacked by kidnappers and bandits – along with other neighbouring villages. I have no village to return to in three years’ time. I built my retirement home there. A very artistic house in my serene village which I cannot settle in at the behest of my people who don’t want me to be captured like a chicken. They don’t have the money to pay for a professor’s freedom. Where will a Professor’s ransom come from?”
Professor Jerry Buhari’s pathetic case was a pathetic case indeed. The last time he visited Akwaya, he meant to have a well deserved rest of at least three weeks. But barely after two days he heard a disquieting middle-of-the-night knock on his door – which was disquieting indeed to this mind. When he opened the door despite his severe worry and anxious thoughts, he beheld two physically well-endowed youths. He knew them handsomely. They pleaded with him to return to Zaria at the break of day. Bandits had taken over the land. They did not enter his house. They disappeared into the disquieting night after making their short plea. Jerry disappeared from Akwaya before the first drops of dew fell. He has never returned there since that time – two long years ago. And his retirement years are hurrying near!
When Jerry spoke to the narrator and authorised him to tell the story, what we perceived – both palpably and impalpably – was/is nothing short of a new wave of bandit literature now berthing in Nigeria’s cultural landscape. What the glitterer is saying, in other words, is that Jerry’s testimony is a perfect illustration of an emerging, new genre in Nigeria called “Bandit Literature”. There are other more than numerous examples to cite. But a simple but huge question that must be asked is this: Are the acts of banditry witnessed in several parts of the land not inspired and systematically programmed by corporate bandits? Are they not syndicated acts of banditry? Our poets, novelists, playwrights, essayists, literary journalists and columnists must pay heed to these questions – as they investigate and investigate and write and write and create and create what they present to the audience – investigating, writing and creating to reveal their truths to the audience – with this rider in their creative consciousness: “When villagers see scholars begging and thieves riding horses, children begin to question the narrow path to wisdom”.
It’s time to create flowers earnestly, emitting pearls of wisdom about our current circumstances in the land
Afejuku can be reached
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Opinion
Akara, Corn, And Kuli-kuli: All Hail Remi Tinubu
Published
2 days ago
on
July 1, 2026
By
NewTimes
Dr Promise Adiele
My Promise Adiele
The recent nationwide outrage against Nigeria’s First Lady, Mrs Oluremi Tinubu, affirms that Nigerians are ungrateful people. Instead of them to grovel, prostrate, and kneel, despite their agonizing economic conditions, and thank the First Lady for her first-class microeconomic advice, they are busy hurling insults at her. What kind of impudence is that anyway? The Delta State-born former Senator recently advised Nigerians to embrace frying akara, roasting corn, and selling kuli-kuli as their ultimate road to profound economic prosperity. What is wrong with the advice? Kilode!!! In simple terms, the First Lady asked Nigerians to set aside all their aspirations to digital tech hubs, forget all about ICT-inspired start-ups, tear up their university degrees, and embrace roadside entrepreneurial collective salvation. Nigerians must be grateful that such a wonderful National Poverty Initiative (NPI) is coming from the First Lady at a time when the populace is frolicking in surplus and overflowing economic conditions.
We must adhere to this advice because Aso Rock tenants are beneficiaries of this magnificent business idea – they feed on akara, corn, and kuli-kuli every morning. In fact, President Tinubu and his aides carry corn in their pockets anywhere they go. It is their favourite snack. All the Senators and Honourable members of the House of Representatives are desperately searching for akara, corn and kuli-kuli. All political office holders in the country are not left out. They feed on these delicacies every day. We must appreciate the First Lady for finally diagnozing our excruciating fiscal malaise and prescribing the solution to the country’s unemployment disaster. She has provided the missing link in the suffering machinery of Nigerians by revealing the billions that abound in the flipping of greasy akara, rotating roasted corn, and vending brittle kuli-kuli by the roadside. At last, Nigerians can walk straight to economic prosperity.
The First Lady didn’t claim to have attended Harvard Business School. Still, her latest advice to Nigerians would make any Harvard Business School graduate turn green with envy. Although many people consider her latest entrepreneurial advice condescending, insensitive, wicked, and deeply insulting, I think she should lead Nigeria’s economic policy formulation team. Dr Okonjo Ngozi Iweala should also pay attention and learn from our First Lady. I heard that the World Trade Centre and the World Bank are sending delegates to learn this new economic policy advice from the First Lady. How lucky can Nigeria be? Finally, the country is negotiating the last bend away from poverty.
While underdeveloped countries like Singapore, India, Malaysia, Canada, and the United States are wasting their national budgets funding silicon fabrication plants, semiconductor research, advanced aerospace networks, and upgrading their electricity supply, Nigeria’s Renewed Hope Agenda has somersaulted backwards into the Stone Age. Many people have argued that frying akara, roasting corn, and selling kuli-kuli were profitable business enterprise in Nigeria in those days when the naira had value and our environment was secure, but now, the naira still has value and our environment is very secure. So, there is no difference between now and then and that is why I think we should celebrate our First Lady. Who needs an industrial master plan, a stable electrical grid, or a functioning currency when you have a rusty, blackened iron tripod, a steady supply of toxic charcoal smoke, and a basin of peeled beans? Did Aliko Dangote, Mike Adenuga, Tony Elumelu, Femi Otedola, Allen Onyema, Cosmas Maduka and other billionaires in Nigeria not rise to the top by frying akara, roasting corn, and mixing kuli-kuli? Indeed, Nigerians are ungrateful people. Haba!!!
The wonderful thing about the First Lady’s Hades-inspired akara, corn, and kuli-kuli start-up advice is that it is spectacularly cheap and simple. Since it is cheap to start, Nigeria does not need to worry about lowering staggering inflation, rescuing the drowning naira, tackling searing unemployment, or attracting foreign direct investment. The real solution is for starving Nigerians to pull themselves up, find a corner by the street where no rent is required, and make billions monthly. Under this glorious fiscal framework, we must immediately overhaul our national educational priorities. For too long, Nigerian youths have been distracted by dangerous, unproductive illusions like software engineering, biomedical research, acting, creativity, financial literacy, and other modern entrepreneurial endeavours. The First Lady’s timely, bizarrely intervention reminds us that true national growth looks like a smoke-filled, potholed street corner.
We must immediately restructure our academic institutions to begin to award Bachelor’s degrees in Akara Flipping (BAF), replacing obsolete degrees in Catering and Hotel Management. We must also award a PhD in Corn Roasting Analytics to complement a Master’s degree in Food Technology. We must replace International Trade with a degree in Advanced Kuli-Kuli Logistics. All university Vice-Chancellors in Nigeria should take note of these excellent educational ideas. Imagine the sheer efficiency of a country where every citizen is an independent roadside food vendor. Graduates of biochemistry will no longer look for nonexistent laboratory jobs. Instead, they will apply their knowledge of chemical heat transfer to master the exact frying point of akara soaked in cheap vegetable oil, roasted corn and heated kuli-kuli. A certified chartered accountant will find supreme fulfilment in calculating the precise profit margin of a single corncob, a cup of beans for akara, and a bucket of groundnut for kuli-kuli over a gruelling, twelve-hour shift in the exploitative, capitalist financial market.
Nigerians must appreciate this government for its wonderful economic masterpiece which has finally been revealed. We can also export these products because I hear world powers are increasingly demanding Akara, Corn, and Kuli-kuli (ACK). It will grow our GDP astronomically and revive the comatose Nigerian economy
As Nigerians wallow in the dirty corners of the street, frying akara, inhaling the poisonous smoke, roasting corn, and selling kuli-kuli, our amiable First Lady, family and cronies are ensconced in posh air-conditioned houses, dressed in gold and expensive clothes with the full complement of servants. That is what makes her economic and survival blueprint a flawless entrepreneurial ecosystem. In this new National Poverty Initiative business, you do not require stable electricity or clean pipe-borne water because you can fetch water from a borehole in plastic buckets. You do not need to worry about the soaring, prohibitive price of cooking gas, because the charcoal seller down the road is always available—assuming you can afford the newly inflated price of wood.
The brilliance of this model is its self-sustaining circularity. If Citizen A fries akara, Citizen B roasts corn, and Citizen C rolls kuli-kuli, they can simply spend the entire day trading these three delicacies among one another. The economy becomes completely insulated from global market shocks. The crashing value of the naira matters little when our primary currency is the transactional value of crunchy akara, corn, and kuli-kuli. The World Bank and other mega global financial institutions can keep their derivative markets. Nigeria will soon emerge as a leading economic superpower through flourishing roadside carbohydrates and protein enterprise. Of course, some ungrateful, cynical internet commentators have claimed that this advice feels somewhat insulting. They point out the glaring, nauseating irony of a leadership class that travels in multi-billion-naira presidential jet fleets and drives armored SUVs, telling the masses to find economic joy in a charcoal grill.
The galling contrast is beautifully personified in the dazzling, jet-setting lifestyle of the First Son himself, Seyi Tinubu. While the First Lady commands the sons and daughters of ordinary Nigerians to sit on dirt floors turning akara in boiling oil to survive, her darling son bravely navigates the crushing economic hardships in Nigeria from the plush leather seats of private jets, expensive BMW and Mercedes cars. While the average youth is told that ₦200,000 is an immense fortune to start a street-vending empire, the First Son’s wrist is frequently adorned with expensive timepieces worth thousands of dollars— watches that cost more than the entire capital required to set up an akara stand on every single street corner in West Africa. The First Lady visualizes a nation of smoky, low-income labourers, while her son sits atop a glittering, multi-billion-naira empire of premium billboard advertising, tech investments, and corporate monopolies. It is a flawless division of labour – the masses provide the smoke, and the first family provides the mirrors.
We must abandon the antiquated, hectic aspirations of structural industrialization, digital innovation, and infrastructural development. They require a functional government, transparent resource management, and visionary policies. These things are far too complex and cumbersome to orchestrate. Why bother building working refineries, fixing the national grid, or creating high-paying corporate jobs for the youths when the path to survival is as simple as lighting a match underneath a pan of oil? We must lift our voices in gratitude for this matchless policy direction. The next time you see the thick, black smoke rising from a roadside frying pan, do not see a tragic symbol of systemic poverty, mass unemployment, or the crushing failure of economic governance. See it for what it truly is – the glorious, charcoal-scented, grotesquely unequal realization of the Renewed Hope Agenda.
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Opinion
Insecurity On The Move: Politics As A Powering Fuel
Published
3 days ago
on
July 1, 2026
By
NewTimes
Prof. Andrew A. Erakhuemen
By Andrew A. Erakhuemen
“Stop waiting for the system to be fixed. The extreme, unyielding brutality, the agonizing poverty, and the endless, engineered wars are exactly how the machine was designed to function. It is not failing; it is working flawlessly.”
With sincerity and humility, there is little we have left to say regarding the unceasingly raging insecurity that should be annoying to any sane Nigerian. This is because much has been said when insecurity was not this terrible; except if we are to honestly repeat what is/are already in the public domain. Even in doing this, with open mind, there are silly characters out there whose interest is to read political meanings to whatever is being opined instead of sensibly picking out the wisdom from the comments for the benefit of the country! To them, it is all about their dirty politics and associated “cursed bread/butter”. They also decidedly spew absurdities by themselves and through willing shameless megaphones! They will do these until Nigeria happens to them! We do believe that they will also be victimised by Nigeria’s negativities!
Nevertheless, we have stopped bothering ourselves about inferior minds whose motivation is the accessibility to illicit extractions. They are “anywhere belle face” as said in pidgin. We will also not discontinue from ventilating our opinion; that is what we have left with us since those in government, at all levels, have failed in securing the safety of the common people except themselves! What is happening today, in terms of heightening level of insecurity, should not be surprising because all of us should have seen it coming! Some of us envisaged it! We talked about it severally! In fact, we did say, in April, 2021, that “…..insurgency and banditry, which started, seemingly small, in parts of northern Nigeria, have grown, at a geometric progression, with ‘our eyes wide open’, to become an industry – a lucrative crime industry – ravaging the whole northern part of Nigeria and boldly moving southwards, unchallenged…..”
In the same way, in May, 2021, we said that “…..It is as if the insurgency in the north-east is a done deal for the insurgents. Similarly, bandits and other criminals are overwhelming north-central and north-west of the country. Criminals have challenged the Nigerian State and are fearlessly in locomotion north-southwards…..In these criminals’ confident and seemingly uninhibited movement southwards, all the states along their route such as Benue, Kaduna, Niger and Plateau, just to mention a few, are now at their mercy…..the eastern, south-southern and south-western geo-political zones of the country are experiencing their various security challenges. There are really no safe havens anymore in this country…..” What a reality! The excerpts above are from two of our articles in April and May of 2021.
When those excerpted words were written more than five years ago, we encountered attack dogs (then in the form of Buhari’s men and women) that were politicising those comments! Of course, the attacks were not mainly because of ethnicity, religion, and region but for what pidgin speakers will refer to as the case of “man must wack”. These “professional” politicians with no other office address are still in government today! We will use pidgin to ask those permanent members of “Any Government in Power Party” (AGIPP) and others: how market? What is the true situation of things regarding insecurity by early July, 2026? The same ridiculous politics played in 2021 and earlier, is what is still being played as at when terrorists got to Kwara, Oyo and other south-western states! Terrorism, in this instance, is defying geopolitical boundaries! Clearly, these criminals, in various forms, are not looking back as they have targets to be achieved! As said in pidgin, “Naija don enta one chance”. Who will save it from this mess?
When children as young as below two years old and adults are seized, mainly from schools, and whisked away into forests – Nigerian forests – for weeks and months, with clearly-stated shameful hopeless unguaranteed hope of their safe return, in this twenty-first century world that has undoubtedly become a global village digitally mapped and increasingly monitored, then something must be terribly wrong with the country – north, south, east and west; it is either those in governments at all levels are not really in charge of the vast (ungoverned?) spaces they claimed to be superintending over or they have been having hands in what is referred to as insecurity in Nigeria! Or both! Hence, we find it difficult to not believe the conspiracy theory that Nigeria’s apparently unrestrictable aggressively mobile insecurity is powered by politicians/politics. This belief is strongly in line with the quotation serving as this article’s opening. The said excerpt has been attributed to Gorge Orwell whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair (1903–1950).
Although, after fact-checking the quotation, using some internet tools, it was discovered that “…..while it strongly echoes the dystopian, anti-authoritarian themes found in Orwell’s famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the specific wording is a modern internet adaptation…..” Nonetheless, irrespective of the discouraging tune of the above-stated quotation attributed (correctly or otherwise) to Orwell, and the outcome of our online fact-checking of the quote, nothing in it (quote) can be trashed or discarded when analysing what obtains concerning causality between deliberate human actions and Nigeria’s escalating insecurity. Do not take our words for it. Listen to two political office holders (Senate President Godswill Akpabio and Edo State Governor Monday Okpebholo) privileged to possess classified security reports.
According to Akpabio, “…..If you realise what is happening recently, when they [opposition] realised they can’t talk about projects, performance, good laws, transformation in the petroleum industry, subsidy removal that have been promised Nigerians for decades, they can no longer talk about the high-rises in Abuja such as the NRS building, they resorted to paying young people and recruiting them to cause mayhem in the country…..” In the same vein, Okpebholo asserted that “…..There is no vacancy in Aso Rock. They can even kidnap all of us – yes, there is no vacancy in Aso Rock. What is happening today [concerning insecurity] is the handiwork of the opposition…..” We hope that the reader is reading between the lines and endeavouring to connect the dots. To paraphrase an African saying, “a stolen item may never be found if the person(s) responsible for stealing it is/are member(s) of a search party for it!”
The implication of the statements above by Akpabio and Okpebholo is that they may know the troublers of Nigeria! These political office holders are saying that they are powerless regarding tackling insecurity! Therefore, there is no need to waste precious time in waking someone who is pretending to be asleep. This is the regrettable situation Nigeria has found itself regarding insecurity. Are we, as a people, really bothered about how the kidnapped children (and adults), that were/are held in captivity for a long duration of time, will see Nigeria in a few years time? Are these children, in particular, being given sound reasons to fully believe in Nigeria? Will they perceive Nigeria, and truly see it, as their country (their sovereign Motherland to be handed on to their children) or as a mere geographical space they have choicelessly found themselves in? Will they be proud of Nigeria that has failed, and is still failing, them? What type of story will the abducted children, (if they survive the kidnapping woe), tell their own children later in life?
What explanation is available for the real/imagined conclusion in public that governments with monopoly of legitimate use of force know those behind terrorism in Nigeria but are unable, and/or unwilling, to do anything about them? Nigeria has now become so used to this and other types of steady lunacy that after a day or two of a hue and cry, it (Nigeria) moves on as if nothing bad did happen in the first place, to be expecting the next unfortunate victim(s) to be descended upon by the already programmed-to-fail system, for all manner of maddening noise to be made again! Some people, including AGIPP members, have even gone ahead to be insanely rationalising this insanity using some kidnapping cases that were reported in the dailies of 1950s/60s! This is how low Nigeria has sunk, today, and with the way things are going, it does not appear that this condition will not worsen in the nearest future if people decide to remain the way they are, currently! What we refer to as insanity, here, is what politics can inflict on some human beings! This is one of the sad realities used in describing how inhumane certain individual Homo sapiens can be!
Currently, Nigerian politicians – especially holders of political power at the levels of federal, states and local government areas – are preoccupied with the upcoming 2027 general elections and the shenanigans associated with them! This is not new; it has always been the case with the politicians because Nigeria is just a captured mining field to them! Insecurity, (if it is seen as a problem at all), is the least on the mind of those claiming superintendence over a directionless Nigeria! As we said in one of our 2023 articles, “…..the actions/inactions of those in power in Nigeria depicted, and still depict, them as foreigners…..they are dark-skinned colonialists of today…..They loot Nigeria’s treasury and stash away the illicit wealth in foreign lands. They, their family and other loved ones treat themselves abroad. Their children/wards are trained in institutions abroad using resources illicitly obtained from Nigerians’ collective patrimony…..”
In other words, those untrustworthy characters that a substantial number of Nigerians senselessly, mistakenly, gullibly or coercively accept as their political leaders are citizens of other countries where insecurity is not a serious challenge. Those characters will swiftly abandon Nigeria for those other safe countries, if need be for them! Whereas, the majority – especially those foolishly following these scoundrels – have nowhere to go if there is a cataclysmic crisis in Nigeria! This is one of the reasons that make us laugh at the simpletons supporting these scoundrels to the extent of agreeing to die in their wars in every part of the country! Should people still be dying in these scoundrels’ wars at this age and time? These simpletons are ozuor as the Esan people of Edo State refer to a dunderhead! We sincerely send apologies to those having their name spelt this way! We will continue to insist that Nigerians should wake up from their slumber to fix their politics as those involved in their insecurity cannot, and will not, end it!
Erakhuemen is a professor in the Department of Forest ReCity, Nigeria
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