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Category: Opinion

  • Tinubu’s Tax Reset and the Rising Cost of Living: Who Really Pays in 2026?

    Tinubu’s Tax Reset and the Rising Cost of Living: Who Really Pays in 2026?

    By the start of 2026, the Nigerian economy had crossed a critical psychological threshold. For millions of households, survival, not prosperity, had become the central economic concern. Food prices climbed relentlessly, transportation costs ballooned, electricity tariffs rose, and the naira’s weakness continued to hollow out purchasing power. Wages, meanwhile, remained stubbornly stagnant. In one word: Nigeria’s cost-of-living crisis swirl.

    This is the economic terrain into which President Bola Tinubu’s administration has launched Nigeria’s most aggressive fiscal overhaul in decades. Framed as reform, sold as necessity, and defended as inevitability, the new tax regime arrives not as a technocratic adjustment but as an additional burden on a population already stretched to its limits.

    The question confronting Nigerians in 2026 is no longer whether reform is needed, but who bears the cost, and who decides how much pain is acceptable.

    Reform in the Middle of Hardship

    The removal of fuel subsidies unleashed a cascade of price increases that reverberated through every sector of the economy. Transport fares surged, food inflation accelerated, and informal businesses, already operating on thin margins, struggled to survive. Electricity tariff hikes followed, further eroding household incomes and raising production costs. Currency policy adjustments compounded the crisis, making imports more expensive and local substitutes scarcer.

    Rather than pause to stabilize living conditions, the government pressed ahead with sweeping tax reforms. For many Nigerians, the timing alone felt punitive: a state demanding more at the precise moment its citizens had less to give.

    A New Tax Regime, Old Trust Deficit

    The overhaul rests on four major laws that replace Nigeria’s chaotic tax framework with a centralized, digitally monitored system. On paper, the logic is compelling: fewer taxes, better enforcement, broader compliance. In reality, centralization without trust risks becoming coercion by another name.

    Progressive tax bands and exemptions for low-income earners are cited as evidence of fairness. Yet the lived experience tells a different story. Middle-income Nigerians comprising, civil servants, professionals, and small traders, are watching their take-home pay shrink as inflation bites and long-standing reliefs disappear. What remains is a widening gap between what the state demands and what it delivers.

    “Widening the Net” or Tightening the Noose?

    Officials insist the reforms are about widening the tax net rather than increasing the burden. But a net cast over a struggling economy does not magically become lighter because it is broader. When energy costs soar, food prices spike, and wages lag inflation, taxation, no matter how elegantly designed, feels punitive.

    The promise that higher revenue will eventually translate into better schools, hospitals, and infrastructure rings hollow in a country where decades of oil wealth failed to produce durable public value. Nigerians have heard this argument before. Each time, they were asked to be patient. Each time, patience yielded diminishing returns.

    VAT and Regional Fault Lines: Old Battles, New Weapons

    No element of Tinubu’s tax reset better exposes Nigeria’s unresolved national question than the proposed restructuring of the Value Added Tax (VAT) sharing formula. Presented by the government as a neutral, efficiency-driven move toward derivation, the reform has instead resurrected the ghosts of Nigeria’s most bitter fiscal conflicts, conflicts never resolved, only postponed. By tilting VAT allocation more decisively toward where consumption and economic activity are recorded, the reform overwhelmingly favours Lagos and a handful of commercially dominant states in the South-West. Lagos’s outsized contribution to VAT revenue is frequently cited to justify this shift. The logic is straightforward: where revenue is generated, revenue should remain.

    But Nigeria’s history warns that straightforward logic often produces dangerous outcomes. In the First Republic, a strong derivation principle allowed regions to retain up to 50 percent of revenues from cocoa, groundnuts, and palm produce. That system collapsed not because derivation was inefficient, but because widening regional disparities turned it into a political weapon. The fiscal tensions it generated contributed to the instability that ended civilian rule.

    After the civil war, military governments centralized revenue sharing not out of ideological preference, but because national survival required redistribution. Oil revenues were pooled to hold a fractured country together, not to reward efficiency. The VAT debate now retraces that path, without the trauma that once forced compromise.

    Many Northern states, heavily dependent on VAT allocations to fund basic services, see the reform not as fiscal federalism but as fiscal punishment. Their argument is blunt: productivity cannot be rewarded fairly in a country where productivity itself has been shaped by decades of uneven federal investment, insecurity, and policy bias. When ports, rail lines, industrial clusters, and financial infrastructure are concentrated in one region, derivation ceases to be neutral, it becomes structural exclusion.

    The echoes of the Niger Delta struggle are unmistakable. For decades, oil-producing communities watched wealth flow to Abuja while bearing the environmental and social costs of extraction. Today, roles appear reversed: commercially dominant states demand to keep what they generate, while poorer regions warn that redistribution, the glue of the federation, is being quietly dismantled.

    The federal government’s response, that states should simply “grow their economies,” rings hollow in regions battling insurgency, banditry, collapsing education systems, and mass poverty. Growth is not summoned by rhetoric; it is enabled by security, infrastructure, and human capital, public goods that require funding in the first place. History is unambiguous: Nigeria’s most destabilizing crises often begin as revenue disputes disguised as technical reforms. When groups feel fiscally cornered, resistance follows, political, legal, and sometimes worse. Wether anyone agrees or not, a VAT regime that sharpens inequality without robust equalization mechanisms is not reform, it is deferred instability. The question therefore becomes, wether Nigeria is prepared for another combustive civil disorder?

    The Lagos Model Goes National

    The reforms unmistakably bear the imprint of the Lagos model that is notorious for its centralized authority, digital surveillance, and uncompromising enforcement. In Lagos, this model thrived on a dense commercial base and a large formal sector. Nationally, it risks flattening Nigeria’s economic diversity into a one-size-fits-all template.

    Equally corrosive is the perception, fair or not, that fiscal power is increasingly concentrated within a narrow regional and ideological circle. In a federation where legitimacy depends on balance as much as performance, perception alone can be politically fatal.

    A Dangerous Gamble

    The tax reforms underpin President Tinubu’s ₦58 trillion 2026 Budget of Consolidation, a document that demands sacrifice now in exchange for promises later. But for Nigerians already suffocating under inflation, those promises feel remote and uncertain. This is the administration’s gamble: that Nigerians will endure sustained hardship on faith. Yet faith is precisely what the Nigerian state has depleted over decades of broken promises, opaque governance, and squandered revenues. Moreover, who shall have faith in your promises when it amounts to telling an economically distressed populace to fast while you, your family members and a few rogue elite feast?

    Tax reform without visible accountability is extraction.

    Ultimately, the success of Tinubu’s tax reset will not be decided in policy papers or revenue charts. It will be decided in markets, transport hubs, and households where people calculate daily whether survival is still possible.

    Without transparency, fairness, and immediate, visible improvements in public services, this reform risks doing more than failing. It risks hardening public cynicism, weakening compliance, and pushing an already fragile social contract toward a breaking point. As it is often asserted, Nigeria does not lack reform ideas. What it lacks is a state that convinces its citizens that reform is being done with them, not to them.

  • Traumatized travellers, broken highways, and coastal road

    Traumatized travellers, broken highways, and coastal road

    By

    UGO ONUOHA

    The 1999 Constitution of Nigeria is unequivocal: the security and welfare of all Nigerians must be the primary purpose of government. Yet, decades of neglect, poor planning, and elite indifference have turned the nation’s highways into deathtraps, exposing citizens to danger, delays, and economic loss. Federal roads, meant to connect communities and enable commerce, have crumbled under the weight of neglect and overuse, while successive administrations have prioritized grand projects over the basic maintenance that ensures safety and wellbeing. This failure on the part of those in power reflects a deeper disregard for the constitutional mandate and the everyday lives of Nigerians.

    For the avoidance of doubt, we will reproduce aspects of the relevant constitutional decree. Yes, decree, because the prescription was made to be obeyed. It did not make room for any administration to offer excuses in lieu of compliance. Under the headline The Government And The People, Chapter 2 of the Nigerian Constitution states in part: (1) The Federal Republic of Nigeria shall be a State based on the principles of democracy and social justice. (2) It is hereby, accordingly, DECLARED (emphasis mine) that: (a) sovereignty belongs to the people of Nigeria from whom government through this Constitution derives all its powers and authority; (b) the SECURITY and WELFARE of the people SHALL BE THE PRIMARY PURPOSE OF GOVERNMENT…(again emphasis mine).

    It is unlikely that the intention of the framers of the prescription of the “primary purpose” clause in the constitution was that the government would spoon feed the citizens. No. But even in its severely distorted form, this country can still lay a modicum of claim to operating a capitalist economy. In effect, the least expectation is that this regime as well as preceding administrations should provide an enabling environment at all times for Nigerians to thrive. This should not ordinarily be difficult for any service – driven government to deliver. Here are a few things that will qualify any administration to be said to have met the constitutional prescription. Ensuring security of life and property is at the core of the matter. Without security every other thing will be virtually impossible to accomplish. Then there’s the issue of providing access to affordable and quality education. This should be a matter of priority for any administration that understands that human capital is key to the development of a country, and not necessarily the abundance of natural resources buried under the ground. Of course, next but not necessarily in that order, is access to health care. Sickly people translate to a sickly society.

    Can we say of a truth that this has been the lot of our people since the return to democracy in 1999? Certainly not. Yes, there may have been flashes of sanity in how our rulers treat the commonwealth, but the image we have of our rulers has been that of marauding bandits. The majority of our rulers have been what my Igbo people call “ikiri”, the tenacious animal that never lets go of its prey, or “usu biara orji ntagbu”. Our rulers fit those that the Good Book (Holy Bible) refers to as devourers. And because of our shortsighted and extremely selfish rulers, Nigeria is virtually on its knees. It has been laid bare and belly up.

    The insensitivity, nay wickedness, of any regime can be gleaned from how it treats its citizens in prioritising the provision of basic infrastructure. And the regime of Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu lived up to its reputation as an uncaring government in the days before, during, and after the celebrations of Christmas by Christians. I am not unmindful of the fact that Christmas has become a global cultural phenomenon which celebration transcends Christians, and incorporates people of other faith. In spite of its global stature, Christmas remains essentially a key and sacred event in Christendom.

    For the avoidance of doubt, Christmas has fixed date in the calendar irrespective of the variant of the sect. The Eastern Orthodox church marks Christmas around April while the majority of Christ followers where Nigerian adherents belong celebrate Christmas in December. So, it has not been unusual for successive governments to make special preparations for ease of celebrations ahead of time. Christmas does not depend on the sudden sighting of the moon or the occurrence of other elements in the cosmos. This is not to denigrate the practices of other faiths, but it is to emphasize that Christmas celebrations in the modern era do not depend on the whims of any person or authority.

    This may be the reason why late in November of 2024 works minister, Dave Umahi, (a self acclaimed professor of practice) assured the country that all federal roads would be made motorable before Christmas of that year. It appeared he worked furiously to deliver on the promise, but he failed. Miserably. If we are to be charitable, we have to admit that his failure was not for lack of trying. What, however, we can not say for certain is that his promise to do remedial work on federal highways was imbued by manifest sincerity. For a regime that’s essentially driven by propaganda and hollow promises, he might have been playing games with Nigerians. Those who thought that Umahi’s word was his bond believed him, took to the roads, especially the very busy Lagos – Sagamu – Benin – Onitsha expressway. To varying degrees, users of that highway passed through the valley of the shadow of death. But most of the travellers that year made it to their destinations unscathed in comparative  terms.

    So ahead of this December Umahi kept his cool. He refused to run his mouth. He made no such promise in spite of the fact that federal roads including the Lagos – Onitsha road had gotten worse. Last year, the contentious portion of the highway was mainly the Benin bypass. This year almost the whole stretch of the road had deteriorated badly. Travellers from Lagos to all parts of the east and parts of the south south zone started to contend with traffic jams from Sagamu (construction work), then Okada just before Benin where a vehicle-swallowing manhole in the middle of a bridge had remained unrepaired for going to one year. After surviving the Okada broken bridge complete logjam, travellers would then start the tortuous manoeuvring and meandering through the Benin bypass. If hell in the Holy Bible is a place of torture and gnashing of teeth, then Benin bypass was hell on earth for users of that road this season. Many did not make it through. Some spent hours and days for a travel time between Lagos and Onitsha of normally six hours. Any driver on that road this season will spend a minimum of 15 hours to make. I was among the fortunate people on Sunday, December 21.

    Unlike in the past years, the same travelling nightmare was visited on commuters plying the Abuja – Lokoja – Benin highway. That so-called expressway is already notorious for being a haven for kidnappers, bandits, and terrorists. The trauma of road users trapped and made sitting ducks on that highway this Christmas and New Year season is better imagined than experienced. A senior journalist who has had a stint working in the presidency recently related the experiences of a cousin who plied that route days before Christmas. Of course, the traumatized cousin barely it on time for Christmas in Lagos from Abuja. Lagos – Sagamu – Benin – Onitsha – Enugu – Owerri – Aba, and Abuja – Lokoja – Benin highways are not peculiar in terms of torturing road users. The truth is that virtually all federal roads are broken. They are deathtraps. They constitute clear and present dangers to lives, limbs, and livelihoods of Nigerian road users. And our rulers know about the state of these roads, though they do not use them.

    If you ply this country’s highways, at any period and more so in the rainy season, you will not need to be persuaded that our rulers are “thoroughly wicked”, to borrow the words that bishop emeritus of Ondo Anglican Diocese, the late Emmanuel Gbonigi, once used to describe former head of state, the late Gen. Sani Abacha.

    It may be uncharitable to heap the blame of the sufferings of road users on Umahi and Tinubu. But they should take the flak because they are the people who are now in office and in power. If Nigerian roads are broken, and they unmistakably are, it is the result of years of neglect and especially of lack of vision by successive rulers.

    Certainly, our highways are broken, they are seldom repaired and maintained, they are hardly reconstructed, and they hardly met the minimum global standards at the time of their construction. But our freeways fail essentially to lack of vision. The roads are exposed to all manner of traffic. Our roads are the major mode of transportation of humans and cargoes. Articulated and heavy duty vehicles constitute menace and hazards on our roads. They bear the burden of transporting everything from logs (wood) to petroleum products to cement to iron rods and everything in-between. Given this situation, the roads that are ab initio poorly constructed collapse under the weight of trucks. Of course, these vehicles which have seen the better days of their lifespan in Europe, North America and Asia before being dumped in Nigeria suffer frequent breakdowns on the highways and become accidents waiting to happen to cars and buses and hapless road users.

    For the life of this country since 1960, our rulers have neglected and failed to develop the rail and the rivers/seas as alternatives to travelling by road. Are travel has been made the exclusive of the elites. The ruling elites have also conspired to develop only the seaports in Lagos. Recently, the relevant authorities announced multi trillion Naira impending further investment on Lagos ports. Meanwhile, the seaports in Koko near Warri, Calabar, Port Harcourt, and Onne are underdeveloped and underutilized. The potential for a seaport in the south east is an anathema to the ruling elite who are the winners of the civil war (1967-1970). The net effect of this visionlessness or wickedness is that almost all container goods come into the country through the ports in Lagos. And they include containers meant for manufacturers and markets outside Lagos and the south west. Studies have since established that many of the containers that are shipped through Lagos ports are destined for the south east. This means that they have to be trucked by road to the east and to destinations elsewhere. Meanwhile, the Lagos ports are perennially congested and ineffective. They routinely lose business to the seaports in neighbouring countries.

    Indeed, bad roads were responsible for the traumatic experiences of travellers this season, but the situation was compounded by the fact that broken down trucks littered the Lagos – Onitsha highway. Some of the articulated vehicles tumble and rest on their backs because of the bad roads. And these trucks included petroleum products tankers which spill their inflammable liquids on the road. Such vehicles and their spilt products constitute obvious danger to other road users. They are incinerators waiting for victims. Many travellers have been so incinerated.

    It is in the midst of this state of the highways that the Tinubu regime embarked upon a N15 trillion Lagos – Calabar coastal road. All entreaties to the administration to prioritise the recovery of the broken roads nationwide before the coastal road project fell on deaf ears. To demonstrate how much the regime holds Nigerians in utter contempt, it proceeded to award the coastal highway contract to a long-standing business partner of President Tinubu, without public tendering, without competitive bidding, ahead of determining the route of the road, without budgetary provisions at the beginning, without firm assurance funding sources, and without environmental impact assessment report. The president and his Kept Man, Umahi,  rode roughshod over Nigerians in their desire to forge ahead with the project that had opacity and numbing corruption written all over it. It’s tempting to say that a people get the kind of leadership they deserve, but for the fact that the extant regime assumed office in 2023 under a cloud. And it has had to contend with legitimacy problems ever since.

    UGO ONUOHA, A Veteran Journalist and reknown columnist was the Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief, Champion Newspapers Ltd

  • Forgeries, taxations and the reign of Rehoboam

    Forgeries, taxations and the reign of Rehoboam

    By UGO ONUOHA

    “A profligate regime should not expect Nigerians to willingly submit to a new tax regime that looks like an exercise in extortion. The administration gets its priorities wrong. At a time that virtually all federal highways have collapsed and become deathtraps, this government prioritises the construction of a N15 trillion coastal highway from Lagos to Calabar.”

    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. Rehoboam was a monarch. Tinubu is not a king in spite of his pretending to be one. Rehoboam was born into royalty. Tinubu was not. Indeed Tinubu’s birth and early years are still subjects of conjectures and controversies. Rehoboam was a young man when he ascended the throne of his fathers, and so could be excused on account of youthful exuberance. Tinubu was an old man when he was installed as president of Nigeria though his true age is only known to himself and himself alone. There’s no verifiable evidence of when he was born and where. Unlike Rehoboam, Tinubu takes no counsel from anyone. He said this much himself when, without consultations and without a Cabinet, he unilaterally removed the so-called petrol subsidy.

    Tinubu at 100 days in office] has been like that proverbial bird that perched on a tree branch—the branch has remained unsettled and the bird can’t stop dancing to unheard sounds. Since his inauguration on May 29, 2023, exacerbated hopelessness has been the lot of Nigerians. Tinubu himself can only pretend to have peace of mind…”

    On September 5, 2023, I wrote this about Tinubu and Rehoboam. “[Tinubu at 100 days in office] has been like that proverbial bird that perched on a tree branch – the tree branch has remained unsettled and the bird can’t stop dancing to unheard sounds. Since his inauguration [as president] on May 29 [2023], exacerbated hopelessness has been the lot of Nigerians and Tinubu himself can only pretend to have had peace of mind. If he has had the presence and prescience of mind, he would not have been enmeshed in serial fumbling from one policy somersault to another from the removal of the so-called petrol subsidy, [devaluation of the Naira], student loan and [the] proposed payment of N8,000 per month for six months to a specified number of poor Nigerian families, and planning to lead the Economic Community of West African States [ECOWAS] to war on Niger Republic [when the military in that country seized political power]”… In Igbo Tinubu is a classical case of ‘akwu rere ere n’ikwo puru epu’ which transliteration in English language will roughly read: rotten palm fruits being pounded inside a decayed mortar. The finished product is better left to the imagination…”

    When Rehoboam became the king, the older advisers in the palace pleaded with him “to heed the cry of the people and lighten the heavy load of labour and taxes that Solomon had laid on them, but the younger elements who had grown up with the new king counselled otherwise. He took the counsel of his mates. The consequences of the actions of the new and rash King Rehoboam are well documented in the chronicles of the kings of Israel in the Holy Bible book of 1Kings. In Tinubu’s rash and irrational decisions [on] the first day and [subsequent] weeks of his reign, he appears to have borrowed a leaf from the wicked and unthinking  King Rehoboam”. One of the undoings of Rehoboam was that he insensitively raised taxes on his people and so lost more than half of his kingdom. The northern part of Israel split away, taking its own path separate from the southern kingdom of Judah. But Nigeria is not a monarchy and bears no resemblance to the old kingdom of Israel. Does that mean that Nigeria splitting is unthinkable?

    With the new tax laws set to come into effect in a matter of days, Tinubu who rules like a monarch may yet be treading the path of King Rehoboam. Rehoboam raised taxes on his people at a time they were already complaining of privations and pains, Tinubu is poised to also raise taxes on Nigerians at a time the people are groaning under the weight of a multiplicity of harsh economic policies of the regime. And he appears not to be bothered. He is irritated by wise counsel that he steps on the brakes and allows Nigerians to breathe. Instead, he empowers the relevant agency of government to execute a secret contract with a so-called tax consultant in France which may lead to handing over Nigeria’s tax data to a foreign company. Tax data is a national security issue that should not be traded as a favour to a friend. Tinubu and the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, are known to be buddies. The frequent ‘working visits’ of our president since he assumed office a little over two years ago had been to Paris, France, unlike his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, who made London his tourism and medical destination, and the former archbishop of Canterbury his bosom friend. And a go-to man.

    A profligate regime should not expect Nigerians to willingly submit to a new tax regime that looks like an exercise in extortion. The administration gets its priorities wrong. At a time that virtually all federal highways have collapsed and become deathtraps, this government prioritises the construction of a N15 trillion coastal highway from Lagos to Calabar. To add insult to injury, the contract for the road was not subjected to an open and transparent bidding, no public tendering, no definite and finite route, and no environmental impact assessment report. To cap it up, the highway contract was awarded to a known long time friend and business associate of Tinubu. The president’s son, Seyi, is alleged to be a significant shareholder in some of the companies in the Chargouri Group which owns Hitech construction company which was awarded the opaque Lagos – Calabar highway contract. This is a classic and glaring case of abuse of office. The argument by the regime that much of the money for the execution of the road contract would be borrowed does not make the smell of the contract less pungent and offensive. Even the money to be borrowed will still have to be paid by Nigerians. By you. Or by me. Or by our children and grandchildren.

    As the government preps to extract more taxes from us, it is telling us that we should be the people to fund their ostentatious, obscene and provocative lifestyles including, committing billions of Naira to build or to refurbish mansions for the president and vice president, buy hundreds of foreign manufactured sport utility vehicles [SUVs] for ministers, a coterie of advisers, lawmakers, local government chairmen, and even for the wife of the president whose well appointed office of the first lady is not known to any law in the land. Members of the boards of MDAs [ministries, departments, and agencies] are usually not left out of the largesse. Ours is probably the only country in the world where government computers, vehicles, websites, and the like, are replaced every year. The debauchery includes procuring a fleet of armour – plaited presidential limousines every four years with the advent of a new president and a presidential jet in tow. Of course, the issue of looting the public treasury has been normalised. It’s so brazen that public servants routinely send their children to schools abroad where the fees are charged in millions of the United States dollars. If you want to be reminded of how decadent the system is, do not look further than the annual budget provisions for the feeding of our president and his family. It runs into multiple billions of Naira. We give the president a rent-free accommodation, we afford him and his family pro bono top rate round-the-clock security, gift him a fleet of high-end luxury vehicles, fuelled and maintained at our expense, top it up with a presidential jet, and then turn around to pay him millions of Naira every month as salary. Not even the United States of America, the biggest economy in the world, does that.

    In spite of the foregoing proclivity of this regime to extort citizens, it still cannot be satisfied and appeased. It is a leopard that cannot change its spot. The information last week was that the administration had allegedly fiddled and rigged the tax reform laws passed by the national assembly [NASS]. Last week Rep. Abdulsamad Dasuki  [PDP, Sokoto] raised the alarm, alleging discrepancies between the tax laws passed by NASS and the versions subsequently gazetted and made available to the public. He said the rigging of the laws should be concerning because some provisions were deleted and strange and terrifying provisions illegally inserted. Hon. Dasuki had said during plenary on the floor of the House that his legislative privilege had been breached by the fact that the content of the tax laws as gazetted by the executive arm of government did not reflect what lawmakers debated, voted on, and passed on the floor of the House. “I was here, I gave my vote and it was counted, and I am seeing something completely different”. He said that he obtained copies of the gazetted laws from the ministry of information and found them to be inconsistent with what was approved by both the House and the Senate. Dasuki said that there had been ”a serious breach”, and warned that allowing laws different from those duly passed by the national assembly to be presented to Nigerians would undermine the integrity of the legislature and violate the Constitution.

    “Mr. Speaker, I will be pleading that all the documents should be brought before the Committee of the Whole [House]. Thank you. The whole members should see what is in the gazetted copy and see what they passed on the floor so that we can make the relevant amendment. Mr. Speaker, this is a breach of the Constitution”. Consequent upon the alarm, the House raised a committee of seven persons to probe the allegations. However, Nigerians are not fooled. The current administration across board, from the executive to the legislature and the Judiciary, is populated by people who are adept at rigging and forgery. The NASS and the executive, working separately or in collusion, routinely rigged our national budgets. The 2025 fiscal document is the latest of fiddling with budgets. It was reported and never denied that about 6,000 illegal projects were inserted into the budget with accompanying billions of Naira allocations. We complained and grumbled and then moved on as usual. In effect, the NASS is the least morally competent to cry foul on the issue of rigging and forgery of documents. The same can be said of the judiciary where court judgements, especially of political hues, are routinely awarded to the highest bidder or to the most powerful and connected. So our system thrives on rigging or “mago mago” or “wuru wuru” to use the local lingo.

    But whether rigged or not the implementation of the new tax laws should be suspended, if it cannot be scrapped. It’s inhuman and inhumane to tax poverty. The majority of Nigerians are dirt poor. The other day, a top federal government official said that about 80 million citizens do not know where their next meal would come from. And a little over two years ago, the national bureau of statistics [NBS] determined after its study that over 130 million Nigerians were dimensionally poor. Certainly, the figure should be higher today given what Nigerians have been subjected to since May 29, 2023. And by the way, there has been no concrete evidence that any country has engendered or engineered economic recovery by taxing the poor. Instead putting more money in the pockets of citizens could help to reflate the economy as long as it is done in a manner that will not trigger inflation.

    UGO ONUOHA, a Veteran Journalist, was the Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief, Champion Newspapers Limited

  • Winning the Reform Battle, Losing the Street?

    Winning the Reform Battle, Losing the Street?

    Inside the FIRS–France Tax Deal and Nigeria’s Trust Deficit

    By Wale Alonge

    President Bola Tinubu’s administration is pursuing the most ambitious macroeconomic reform agenda Nigeria has seen since the return to democracy. Fuel subsidy removal, exchange-rate liberalisation, tax reform, and renewed conversations around state police and fiscal federalism have pushed long-avoided issues into the centre of governance.

    But while the reforms may be economically sound, the administration is struggling with a more elusive challenge: public trust. Nowhere is this tension clearer than in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Nigeria’s Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and France’s Direction générale des Finances publiques (DGFiP)—a technical agreement that has ignited political anxiety and public suspicion far beyond its actual scope.

    At its core, the controversy reflects a familiar Nigerian paradox: reform momentum without narrative control.

    A Country Conditioned to Distrust Power

    Nigeria’s democratic history has left citizens deeply sceptical of the state. Decades of corruption, policy reversals, and unfulfilled promises have eroded confidence in public institutions. The optimism of independence collapsed with the First Republic, while the democratic experiment many fought to restore has delivered uneven dividends.

    The depth of this disillusionment is stark. In recent years, some Nigerians have openly expressed nostalgia for military rule—mistaking authoritarian decisiveness for competence. It is within this environment of collective trauma and suspicion that all reforms, however rational, are judged.

    Bold Reform, Weak Storytelling

    President Tinubu has shown rare political courage. Fuel subsidy removal—long regarded as a political third rail—was implemented within weeks of his inauguration. The naira was floated, local government autonomy was judicially affirmed, and tax reform legislation survived fierce resistance, particularly from northern political blocs.

    Yet these reforms have largely been rolled out without sufficient public preparation. Nigerians often encounter the pain of reform before understanding its purpose or trajectory. In the absence of a coherent communication strategy, opposition voices and conspiracy theories have filled the vacuum.

    Governance, however, is not just about policy execution; it is also about persuasion. On that front, the administration has struggled.

    Confidence as a Double-Edged Sword

    Tinubu’s political persona, defined by supreme confidence, has long been an asset. From the now-famous “Emilokan” declaration to his audacious inauguration speech, he has projected certainty in a system often paralysed by caution.

    At his inauguration, he warned Nigerians not to pity him, declaring that he knew exactly what he was signing up for. He even invited voters not to re-elect him if he failed to deliver constant power within his first term—a daring pledge in a country where power sector reform has humbled generations of leaders.

    But in government, that same confidence risks turning into strategic blind spots. Rolling out reform after reform without managing public psychology underestimates the emotional toll on a population already battered by inflation, currency shocks, and rising insecurity.

    With the removal of aggressive informal defenders from the media battlefield and the approach of the 2027 election cycle, information warfare, not policy design, may prove decisive.

    The FIRS–France MOU: A Case of Bad Timing

    Nigeria’s governance culture is historically Anglo-centric. English is the official language, British administrative models dominate public institutions, and the United Kingdom hosts the largest Nigerian diaspora.

    Against this backdrop, Nigeria’s growing engagement with France has unsettled sections of the elite—particularly at a time when France is grappling with domestic unrest, declining geopolitical influence in Africa, and the erosion of its former Francophone alliances.

    When news emerged of an MOU between FIRS and France’s DGFiP to support Nigeria’s new tax architecture, alarm bells rang. Tax reform is arguably the most sensitive economic overhaul of the Tinubu presidency, touching directly on citizen income, business survival, and state legitimacy.

    Even if the partnership is technically sound, the manner of its disclosure proved politically clumsy.

    Why France—and Why the Fear?

    Nigeria undeniably faces capacity gaps. Building a modern, digitally integrated national tax system requires secure IT infrastructure, advanced data analytics, and robust cross-border data governance—areas where Nigeria still lags.

    France’s DGFiP is administratively formidable, employing roughly 94,000 staff and operating an integrated tax–treasury–accounting system. From a purely technical standpoint, cooperation makes sense.

    However, France’s tax system is often criticised for its low international competitiveness, even if its collection capacity is strong. More importantly, partnering with a foreign sovereign tax authority, rather than a neutral multilateral institution or private technical vendor, raises unavoidable concerns in a low-trust environment.

    The Embedded Risks

    Analysts identify several risks inherent in the MOU:

    • Data sovereignty exposure: Taxpayer data processed or hosted abroad could fall under foreign legal jurisdictions.
    • Institutional dependency: Prolonged reliance on foreign systems may weaken Nigeria’s long-term autonomy.
    • Cybersecurity vulnerabilities: Cross-border data flows expand the attack surface for breaches.
    • Contextual mismatch: French administrative tools may not align with Nigeria’s legal structure or vast informal economy.
    • Public trust backlash: The perception of foreign involvement in Nigeria’s tax system threatens legitimacy and voluntary compliance—the most dangerous risk of all.

    How Government Can Salvage the Reform

    None of these risks are insurmountable. But managing them requires deliberate political strategy, not technical assurances alone.

    Policy experts argue the government should urgently:

    1. Ring-fence data sovereignty by publicly guaranteeing that all taxpayer data will be hosted and controlled exclusively within Nigeria.
    2. Define scope and exit clearly, limiting the MOU to time-bound technical assistance with explicit knowledge-transfer clauses.
    3. Institutionalise transparency by publishing the full MOU, safeguards, and oversight mechanisms.
    4. Build local capacity in parallel, investing heavily in Nigerian IT, data science, and cybersecurity talent.
    5. Reclaim the narrative through a coordinated communication strategy explaining why tax reform is necessary and how citizens are protected.
    6. Leverage the Nigerian diaspora, recruiting global Nigerian experts in tax architecture to domesticate and supervise the partnership.

    Reform Needs Trust to Succeed

    The FIRS–France MOU may ultimately prove defensible on technical grounds. But in Nigeria’s current climate, technical logic divorced from political psychology is a recipe for backlash.

    President Tinubu may be winning the macroeconomic reform battle. Without intentional trust-building and narrative control, however, he risks losing the street, and with it, the political war that determines whether reform survives beyond the spreadsheet.

  • Corruption: Going to equity with unclean hands

    Corruption: Going to equity with unclean hands


    Selective prosecutions, moral contradictions, and the crisis of legitimacy in Nigeria’s anti-corruption war

    ABUBAKAR Malami was the minister of justice and attorney-general of the federation. He served under former president, the late Maj-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, between 2015 and 2023. Buhari’s tenure must rank among the worst years of the country. They were not only wasted, but he took Nigeria back by at least 30 years.

    For all of last week, at least up to Sunday, December 14, Malami was in jail in the custody of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in Abuja. Like Buhari, Malami cannot be credited with exceptional skills, intellect or administrative sagacity.

    He is not associated with any landmark reforms of the country’s judicial processes and system in the eight years of his stay. He is not known to be a brilliant lawyer though he is a senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN).

    He came. He saw. But he was not known to have done anything that could be said to be beneficial to the majority of litigants or the administration of justice.

    Malami has remained in relative obscurity in the over two years he had been out of office and power, except for once when he claimed that the convoy of his cars was attacked by bandits under the direction of his political enemies.

    He is of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), but it appears he is not of the branch headed by Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

    Indeed, he had been linked to the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) faction of the late Buhari whose leading lights were said not to be favourably disposed to the reelection of Tinubu for a second term in 2027.

    In addition, Malami is reported to be angling to contest for governor of Kebbi state on the ticket of an opposition party, African Democratic Congress (ADC).

    Malami is yet to be arraigned in court. But if public media reports are to be believed, he may likely face grave charges which operatives of the anti-graft agency were reported to be framing.

    There are reports that the former minister could face charges on alleged terrorism financing; questions over the handling of the former Head of State, late Gen. Sani Abacha’s part-loot of $322 million retrieved from Switzerland and the island of Jersey; money laundering involving his alleged link to 46 bank accounts; abuse of office including findings on decisions over asset recovery, seized asset disposal, and contract approvals during his tenure.

    There are also other suspicious transactions in connection with N10 billion investment in his home state, Kebbi, as well as involvement in a $419 million judgment debt.

    Malami has denied the allegations. His lawyers have argued that his continued detention was unlawful and unconstitutional. They claimed that the former minister had been cooperating with the government investigators.

    That same last week, towards the end of it, another of Buhari’s ministers who was in charge of labour and employment, Dr. Chris Ngige, was arrested and taken into custody by the EFCC.

    It was reported that he was still in his night gown (pyjamas) when he was whisked away in the early hours of the morning on that fateful Thursday.

    Ngige was a former governor of Anambra state on the ticket of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). His victory was annulled after about three years in office.

    He defected to the then opposition party and was made a minister when the APC stormed to power in 2015.

    The ex-minister also spent last weekend in prison to await his application to be granted bail on Monday (yesterday). By the time you are reading this, he may have been sprung from jail and preparing for his day in court.

    Ngige is charged with abuse of office; awarding seven contracts worth N366 million to Cezimo Nigeria Limited, a company alleged to be linked to his associate Ezebunwa Charles.

    He is also charged with contract fraud for awarding eight contracts worth N583 million to Zitacom Nigeria Limited, also linked to Ezebunwa.

    There are allegations of bribery; receiving N38.6 million from Cezimo Nigeria Limited, N55 million from Zitacom, and N26 million from Jeff & Xris Limited through his campaign organisation and scholarship scheme.

    He is accused of granting unfair advantage; awarding contracts to Olde English Consolidated Limited for N664 million, and Shale Atlantic Intercontinental Services Limited for N161 million, linked to another of his associates, Uzoma Igbonwa.

    There are other contracts; awarding N362 million worth of contracts to Jeff & Xris, owned by Chukwunwike Nwosu.

    Ngige pleaded not guilty to all the charges which the EFCC described as offences which violated sections 17(a) and 19 of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000.

    So Ngige was cooling his heels at the weekend in Kuje prison.

    Ngige is also of the APC but he is not known to be full-throated in supporting the extant president of the country produced by his party.

    He is not also known to be publicly antagonistic of his kinsman, Peter Obi, who was the Labour Party candidate in the bitterly contested and controversial 2023 presidential election.

    Obi has been the nightmare of the APC for more than two years, probably because he defeated Tinubu in Lagos state in the last presidential election.

    Tinubu was a two-term governor of Lagos and he was until 2023 touted as unbeatable in the state he holds by its jugular.

    Olu Agunloye was a minister of power and steel under the PDP administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo. Though his trial did not originate with the current regime, he is facing prosecution by the EFCC over alleged $6 billion fraud related to the Mambilla Hydroelectric Power Project.

    He is facing an amended seven-count charge on corruption, abuse of office, forgery, and disobedience of a presidential directive. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

    Justice Jude Onwuegbuzie is in charge of the federal high court in Abuja where his trial is being heard.

    An investigator and other witnesses have testified that Agunloye allegedly forged the contract papers for the award in favour of Sunrise Power and Transmission Company Limited.

    The contract was said not to have budgetary provision, no approval, and no cash backing. The former minister was alleged to have collected kickbacks totaling about N5 million.

    Agunloye is free on a N50 million bail with two sureties in like sum.

    There are a few other high-profile cases involving some APC party men who appear not to be enamoured to the presidency of their current party leader.

    The same disposition to prosecution by the regime cannot be said to be the lot of other party faithful who had been alleged to have committed crimes.

    One such person is Betta Chimaobim Edu. She was the pioneer minister of humanitarian affairs in the first Cabinet of this administration.

    On January 8, 2024, Tinubu directed the suspension of Edu from office. Almost two years later, the former minister is still on suspension though her position has reluctantly been given to another.

    Edu was accused of financial misconduct involving huge sums of money meant for vulnerable groups.

    The main allegations included the transfer of N585 million to a private bank account which allegedly belonged to one Bridget Oniyelu.

    The money was supposedly for vulnerable groups in Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Lagos, and Ogun states.

    There was also an alleged fraud of N44 billion at the National Social Investment Programme Agency (NSIPA) which was under her ministry.

    In addition, there were questions raised about a controversial N438 million consultancy contract awarded by her ministry to New Planet Project Limited, a company allegedly linked to her colleague minister of interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo.

    Edu denied any wrongdoing but remained sacked. Tunji-Ojo also denied any wrongdoing and remains in office.

    If the anti-graft posturing of this regime is to be taken seriously, it must indict and prosecute Edu, or formally clear and rehabilitate her. The same treatment should be meted to Tunji-Ojo.

    There was also the issue of the director of NSIPA, Dr. Halima Shehu, whose travails coincided with that of her supervising former minister, Edu.

    She was suspended as the national coordinator of NSIPA over alleged financial impropriety involving billions of naira.

    She was subsequently arrested by the EFCC and placed in the agency’s custody while it allegedly investigated the movement of N17 billion from NSIPA accounts to suspicious beneficiaries.

    As usual, Shehu was promptly released from custody. As far as information in the public domain is concerned, the N17 billion payments to alleged phantom beneficiaries are still being investigated by the EFCC two years on.

    In 2015, the EFCC investigated the current president of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, over alleged fraud and looting of Akwa Ibom state funds when he was governor.

    A petition by a lawyer, Leo Ekpenyong, accused Akpabio of using aides to steal N18 billion from the state’s treasury.

    Akpabio was grilled by the anti-corruption agency before he was installed as the president of the Senate and chairman of the National Assembly.

    But he was neither indicted nor cleared.

    Even in his present post there have been allegations of improper conduct. We know that even in his present position he has no immunity against indictment and prosecution if found culpable.

    There are serving ministers who have allegations of fraud and money laundering against them prior to their appointments by this regime.

    The defence minister who just resigned his appointment and the defence minister of state who is still in office have been accused of having links with bandits and terrorists.

    The budget minister was accused of being a bagman for Abacha.

    No Nigerian in their right senses would oppose the fight against corruption. The excesses of office holders across the board and nationwide are so brazen and egregious.

    Their proclivity and capacity to loot the commonwealth are unfathomable. Their tendencies to steal border on the abnormal.

    For instance, why would an office holder in his 50s steal N1 billion, a sum he cannot exhaust in one lifetime no matter how profligate he might be.

    By the way, life expectancy in Nigeria is barely 55 years.

    But we read reports of not just looting billions of naira but billions of dollars.

    So Nigerians and their government should be angry and fight such corrupt lunatics with every fibre in their body that they can muster.

    However, that administration that should mobilise Nigerians to battle the looters of the commonwealth is not the Tinubu regime. It has no moral standing. Its credentials are sullied.

    For this regime, mmiri siri n’isi gbaruo (the stream was polluted from the fountainhead).

    As the Good Book asked, if the foundation is destroyed, how much can the righteous few do?

    This government is led by a man whose name is mired in mystery. And this is being generous.

    The parents that Tinubu claimed are said not to be his. The schools he allegedly attended including primary, secondary, and university are still subjects of controversy.

    He was the man who graduated from a secondary school in Lagos four years before that school was founded.

    In 2023, he fought spiritedly in law courts in the United States and Nigeria to ensure that the certificate (diploma) which he claimed was awarded to him by the Chicago State University was not made public.

    He had been accused of forging the diploma which he had been using as a qualifying document in his contests for political offices since 1999.

    A lawyer, Festus Keyamo, once battled Tinubu on the authenticity of his credentials for office as governor.

    The same Keyamo is now a minister in the administration of Tinubu whom he accused of malfeasance.

    In light of the antecedents of Tinubu, it has not come as a surprise that he runs an opaque regime.

    His government has been accused of spending over N17 trillion on contracts for crude oil pipeline security in just one year.

    There is no evidence yet that the money was appropriated by the National Assembly.

    He has neither debunked the grave allegation nor provided evidence to the contrary.

    The regime is adroit in deflection and propaganda, but its most potent tool when cornered is to ignore.

    That is the tool it has chosen on the bogus, if not rogue, N17 trillion pipeline protection contracts.

    Now the opaque regime has cranked the engine of wholesale auctioning of the country and its citizens.

    The Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) has reportedly signed a memorandum of understanding with France’s DGFiP to “modernise tax administration”, ensure “data-driven enforcement”, and “information exchange”.

    When you strip the jargon, this simply means Nigeria has surrendered the engine room of its tax system to France at a time Nigeria boasts of some of the best brains in fintech.

    Nigeria’s taxpayers’ data is being exposed to a French firm ahead of the commencement of the tax reform laws next month.

    In every other country, tax data is a national security issue. Not in Tinubu’s Nigeria.

    Under Buhari, the country of first call was Britain. With Tinubu, France is home.

    It has even been alleged that Tinubu’s recent military intervention in Benin Republic to foil a coup was at the instigation of Emmanuel Macron.

    This government that is pretending to be fighting corruption is the same that awarded a N15 trillion contract for the construction of a coastal highway from Lagos to Calabar without appropriation, without public tendering, without competitive bidding, and without environmental impact assessment.

    And to the business partner of the president.

    His son is also alleged to be a shareholder in a company associated with the contractor.

    Meanwhile, the regime keeps prevaricating on how much the road would cost per kilometre.

    Even the N15 trillion project cost is bogus.

    If the government is unsure of the cost per kilometre, then it cannot claim to know how much the 700km road would cost at the end of the day.

    The route for the road is not certain.

    Reports suggest the president extended the highway coverage to Ebonyi and Edo states, which were not in the original plan.

    Ebonyi is the home state of the minister of works supervising the contract. Edo is governed by the president’s Man Friday.

    These are the bona fides of the man who is prosecuting former government officials.

    Again, as the Holy Bible says, it would be helpful if the president first removed the speck in his own eyes before…

    Ugo Onuoha, Veteran Journalist, was the Managing Director, Editor-in-Chief, Champion Newspapers Limited. He writes in from Lagos.

  • How to Make Nigeria Work, If Still Possible

    How to Make Nigeria Work, If Still Possible

    By Ugo Onuoha

    It will be difficult, probably impossible, to make Nigeria work the way it is presently structured and governed. In theory, we are running a federal system. In practice, it is a unitary structure where operatives in Abuja determine who gets what, how, when, and where.

    The Osun Example and a Flawed Federal System

    Until recently, Osun State, governed by the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), became the latest victim of this distorted arrangement. The Supreme Court had ruled in July 2024 that local government funds must be paid directly to councils, not through state governments. It also declared that only democratically elected councils are entitled to federal allocations.

    Yet, that judgment has largely been ignored. Some states have passed laws effectively nullifying it, and in many others, it remains business as usual.

    Ironically, the same federal government that sought the ruling, under President Bola Tinubu, has itself been accused of flouting it. For months, Abuja withheld Osun’s local government allocations, claiming that PDP-controlled councils were illegitimate. The state was forced to rely on Governor Ademola Adeleke and his nephew, musician Davido, who reportedly contributed funds to pay council workers’ salaries.

    When Osun challenged the federal government at the Supreme Court, the court struck out the case for lack of standing but condemned Abuja’s action as “illegal and egregious.” Both sides claimed victory, but Nigerians were left with the same lesson: partisan politics trumps governance.

    Politicians vs. Statesmen

    The Osun case typifies a larger truth, partisan politicians cannot build nations. They are fixated on winning the next election, not on laying enduring foundations. Any country dominated by politicians rather than statesmen will struggle on the lower rungs of global development. That, sadly, has been Nigeria’s reality since the military sacked the First Republic in 1966.

    Nation-Building: A Process, Not an Event

    Nigeria will not work until we are intentional about making a nation out of the country. Building a sustainable nation requires a shared vision that fosters unity, common values, and inclusive governance. It also demands:

    • Transparent and accountable institutions
    • Security and the rule of law
    • Diversified economic development beyond oil
    • Investment in education, healthcare, and innovation
    • Social cohesion and citizen participation

    Without these, our quest for progress will remain an illusion.

    The Foundation Is Broken

    The biblical question in Psalm 11:3 asks: “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Nigeria’s foundation, fractured by the 1966 coup and deepened by years of military rule, remains defective. The 1999 Constitution, hurriedly drafted by the Abdulsalami Abubakar junta, was designed to serve narrow interests—not the people. For nearly three decades, we’ve been trying to erect a nation on a bogus foundation.

    To move forward, Nigeria must start afresh, with a people-driven constitution that reflects true federalism and equity.

    A Case for Restructuring

    Many credible voices, including The Patriots led by Chief Emeka Anyaoku, have long called for a new national arrangement. Their proposals include:

    • A new, people-driven Constitution drafted by a non-partisan Constituent Assembly and approved through a referendum
    • True federalism with six or eight federating zones, each with its own constitution
    • Fiscal federalism and devolution of powers
    • A smaller federal cabinet and unicameral legislature
    • Electoral and judicial reforms, including technological voting and specialized courts

    These ideas, if sincerely implemented, can provide a roadmap to rebuild Nigeria.

    Structural Inequities and Centralized Power

    The existing federal structure, largely created by military fiat, is riddled with inequities. For instance, the old Kano State was split into Kano and Jigawa, now boasting over 70 local councils combined—while Lagos, with a similar population, has only 20. This imbalance affects representation and resource distribution.

    Power is dangerously centralized in the presidency, making elections a do-or-die affair and fueling corruption. The figures involved in federal scandals have ballooned from billions to trillions of naira, yet Nigerians no longer express shock. The presidency has become a “golden calf”, an object of worship.

    Unchecked power breeds inefficiency, arrogance, and impunity. The signs are visible everywhere.

    The Way Forward

    To make Nigeria work, we must:

    1. Rebuild the foundation through a new constitution anchored on fairness and true federalism.
    2. Shift from partisan politics to statesmanship, focusing on national unity rather than party victory.
    3. Strengthen institutions and make them independent of political interference.
    4. Diversify the economy and ensure infrastructure, power, and education receive sustained attention.
    5. Restore security and trust between citizens and the state.

    Until these steps are taken, Nigeria will continue to move in circles—rich in potential, poor in leadership, and crippled by structure.

    In conclusion, Nigeria’s tragedy is not that it lacks talent or resources, but that it is burdened by a defective system and a political class unwilling to change it. The challenge before us is to summon the courage to rebuild from the ground up. Otherwise we will keep trying to place something on nothing and expecting it to stand.

    Ugo Onuoha is a journalist, public affairs commentator, and former Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief, Champion Newspapers Limited. He writes from Lagos.

  • Nigeria’s War Within: Why Force Alone Can’t Defeat Insecurity

    Nigeria’s War Within: Why Force Alone Can’t Defeat Insecurity

    November 2025

    As Nigeria prepares to inaugurate a new Minister of Defence, General Christopher Musa, recently pulled from his position as Chief of Defence Staff, the appointment highlights a familiar pattern: leadership reshuffles and reconfigurations of the security architecture that have so far failed to address the nation’s deepening insecurity.

    Despite record defence budgets and years of military operations, Nigeria’s war against insurgency, terrorism, and violent crime remains far from won. Behind the official rhetoric of “decisive action” and “renewed hope,” the figures tell a sobering story: the country is spending more on security than ever before, yet becoming less safe.

    An Internally Displaced Persons’ (IDPs) camp in Benue State

    Between May 2023 and April 2024, at least 614,937 Nigerians were reported killed in violence linked to insecurity, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics and independent research groups. Amnesty International estimates that more than 10,000 people were killed in the northern states alone during that period. Villages have been razed, farmers displaced, and highways turned into hunting grounds for kidnappers.

    For 2025, the Federal Government earmarked ₦6.57 trillion for defence and security, nearly equivalent to the combined budgets of education, health, and agriculture. Yet insecurity persists. From Boko Haram’s remnants in the northeast to bandits in the northwest and separatist militias in the southeast, violence has become a permanent feature of daily life.

    Nigeria’s insecurity cannot be solved by military might alone. “Nigeria’s security crisis is systemic, not merely operational,” a recent Counter-Insurgency and Anti-Terrorism Plan notes. “You can suppress conflict with soldiers, but you cannot kill an idea, or desperation, with bullets.” The country’s challenges go beyond insurgents and bandits; they are rooted in economic inequality, governance failures, and social exclusion, problems that no army, no matter how well-funded, can solve.

    The Price of Peace Without Justice

    Decades of economic inequality, corruption, and exclusion lie at the heart of the crisis. Wealth and resources are concentrated in the hands of a few, leaving large portions of the population marginalized. Communities excluded from decision-making or denied access to the country’s resources often turn to violence as a form of protest.

    Other forces exacerbate the problem: mass illiteracy, youth unemployment, religious manipulation, and climate-induced displacement. Across northern Nigeria, desertification has swallowed farmland, forcing herders southward and triggering deadly clashes with farmers. In the mineral-rich central states, illegal mining networks, sometimes backed by foreign interests, have transformed into armed militias.

    The insecurity is not merely a question of security operations; it reflects a broader governance failure, where political neglect, corruption, and impunity have created fertile ground for violence to thrive. Without addressing these structural issues, any attempt to suppress insurgency with force alone will remain temporary.

    Spending More, Achieving Less

    Nigeria’s defence spending has ballooned over the past four years: ₦966 billion in 2021, ₦1.2 trillion in 2022, ₦1.38 trillion in 2023, and now ₦6.57 trillion in 2025. Yet insecurity has worsened. World Bank data shows that the country’s military expenditure has risen faster than that of many African peers, without a corresponding reduction in violence.

    Bigger budgets have meant more equipment, more contracts, and more commissions, but not necessarily more safety. Observers note that the country continues to fight the same war with the same tactics, expecting different results. High-profile military campaigns have occasionally neutralized specific threats, but the absence of complementary development and governance reforms has allowed insecurity to regenerate.

    A New Strategy for a Broken Nation

    Recognizing that force alone cannot deliver security, the counter-insurgency plan advocates a multi-dimensional approach that blends immediate security measures with long-term social, economic, and governance reforms. It is founded on the principle that lasting peace requires both containment of violence and addressing the root causes of unrest.

    A central feature of the plan is the proposed Geopolitical Security and Development Summit. This high-level forum would bring together the Presidency, service chiefs, and state governors to coordinate priorities, share intelligence, and integrate human capital development into security planning. By aligning national and sub-national efforts, the summit aims to create a cooperative framework in which security operations respond to local realities rather than operating in isolation.

    Education, rural empowerment, and healthcare are reimagined as tools of national defence rather than afterthoughts. By addressing poverty, unemployment, and social exclusion, the plan seeks to reduce the vulnerabilities that violent actors exploit. Economic opportunities, skill development, and access to services strengthen communities, making them less susceptible to recruitment by insurgents, bandits, or criminal networks.

    Complementing this is a Stakeholders’ Summit involving religious leaders, traditional rulers, youth organizations, and civic groups. The forum is intended to promote interfaith dialogue, encourage conflict resolution at the community level, and empower citizens to take part in building peace. By fostering trust between communities and the state, the summit aims to prevent minor disputes from escalating into large-scale violence.

    The plan emphasizes a shift in mindset: security is not just the absence of attacks but the presence of justice, opportunity, and inclusion. “Peace cannot be sustained through force alone,” it stresses. “It must be built on trust, understanding, and shared values.” Military interventions may suppress violence temporarily, but without addressing structural weaknesses, the gains remain fragile.

    Reforming the Fault Lines

    Several structural reforms are prioritized in the plan. Modernizing animal husbandry is one key step, including regulated ranching and strict enforcement of anti-open-grazing laws, paired with economic support for pastoralists to prevent marginalization.

    Illegal mining, now a major source of funding for armed networks, is another critical target. The plan calls for a nationwide crackdown, formalizing artisanal mining into regulated cooperatives while reclaiming illegal mining corridors with security support.

    Central to all reforms is restoring the rule of law. Impunity has become a pervasive issue in Nigeria, where political influence often shields offenders. The failure to prosecute crime erodes public trust and perpetuates violence. “A nation that does not punish crime inevitably rewards impunity,” the plan notes, emphasizing accountability as a cornerstone of sustainable security.

    From Force to Fairness

    At its core, the strategy envisions a paradigm shift in how Nigeria approaches security. True national security is not measured solely by military victories or the neutralization of threats; it is reflected in the ability of citizens to live without fear, access opportunity, and trust their government.

    Political instability compounds insecurity. A culture of “do-or-die” elections fuels tension, undermines institutions, and perpetuates violence. Ensuring credible, peaceful elections is essential for creating a foundation on which sustainable security can be built.

    The fight against terror and insurgency, the plan argues, will not be won solely in forests or creeks but in classrooms, farms, and courtrooms, where education, justice, and economic opportunity can finally triumph over despair.

    “The time has come for Nigeria to prove that it can not only defend its territory but also heal its society,” the plan concludes.

    Dahiru Ali: Journalist, academic, writes on governance, national security, and development policy. He is passionate about evidence-based reform and inclusive approaches to peacebuilding in Nigeria.

  • Why Nigeria is not working

    Why Nigeria is not working

    By

    UGO ONUOHA

    THE safe thing to do is to say that Nigeria is not working at its optimal best. But that will amount to playing the ostrich. Because the reality is that our country is not working, not at all, not even for the ruling political and economic elites who currently think that they are having a swell time. If only they knew how much more they would be better if the right things were to be done to make this country work for the majority of its citizens. Sadly, the understanding of our elites (and this is a wrong label for them) is limited, warped, myopic, and parochial.

    It has to be acknowledged that the roles of elites, whether political, economic, or intellectual, in nation-building anywhere can be a mixed bag of the good, the bad, and the ugly. The sad reality in our case is that the impacts of Nigeria’s elites on the country over time have gravitated between the bad and the ugly. Any semblance of the elites doing good to the society started and ended in the first republic, 1960-1966. In varying degrees the political elites in that republic represented by the numero uno, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, and Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, among others, were the elites who significantly positively impacted the country. Their impact was not just in wresting independence from Britain, but in growing the regions through healthy rivalry and dedication to serving the public good. In this category of service we had Dr. Michael Okpara (Premier of the Eastern region), Chief Dennis Osadebay (Premier of the Mid-Western region), Chief Awolowo (Premier, Western region), and Sir Ahmadu Bello (Premier, Northern region). They have not come any better since then.

    The first republic had its own drawbacks and a plethora of crises one of which led to the military coup and counter coup of 1966, and then to a bloody civil war. But in many respects that period could be described as Nigeria’s golden era. The respective political elites took governance seriously and drove the development of their regions. For instance, the Western region under Awolowo was renowned for the introduction of universal free education at the primary and secondary school levels, a policy which still resonates up till today and which transformed the lives of many, especially the indigent. It was also during that period that the Eastern region with Okpara at the helm was acknowledged as the fastest growing economy of any subregion anywhere in the world. Each region had something that was going for it. Many of the enduring institutions in the country currently can be traced back to that era including universities and teaching hospitals, stadiums, industrial layouts, housing estates, and many more. Of course, human capital formation through access to quality and affordable education at home and abroad remained unrivalled.

    We need to accept that the coups of 1966, and the long stretch of military dictatorships over about 33 years with civilian rule interregnums, took a heavy toll on the building of civil political culture. The lack of trust by the politicians in the military rulers compounded the problem. For instance, in the late 1990s when the last military dictator, Gen. Abdusalami Abubakar, promised to hand over power to civilians, not many people in the political class believed him. The nightmare of the shifting or fluid hand over dates of the military president, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, and the attempted transmutation of Gen. Sani Abacha from a military dictator to a civilian president made the political class doubt the sincerity of the juntas. In the wake of the unbelief of traditional politicians in the military’s transition programme ahead of the 1999 elections, some charlatans moved in and seized Nigeria’s political space. Motorpark touts, advance fee fraudsters [419ners], loafers, jetsams and floatsams, persons of dubious and questionable characters, and sundry elements moved in and filled the void. Has it not been proven that nature abhors vacuum.

    These characters got themselves elected into offices wherever the superintending military rulers of the transition, such as the presidency, had no preferred candidates. Early in this republic, a retired ranking police officer who was also a lawmaker said that many of his erstwhile colleagues in the national assembly [NASS] were fraudsters. He claimed that he had participated in probing and arraigning some of them in court. It was also during that period that some Nigerians fled from the United States and other places to Nigeria as fugitives. They contested and won elections mostly into governorship and legislative offices. Once inside government, they started looting the commonwealth, amassing wealth, and consolidating power. Overtime, more of the criminal types joined the early birds in their vice grip on politics, power, and government. Twenty – six years after the start of this dispensation, there are still criminals, especially advance fee fraudsters and fugitives from the law from the US embedded in Nigeria’s Three Arm Zone which houses the National Assembly, Presidency, and the Judiciary. The same applies in some governors mansions in many of our geopolitical zones and state legislatures. This is one other reason why Nigeria is not working.

    Yusuf Musa is the CEO of the Kaduna – based Centre for Contemporary Studies [CCS]. He wrote recently that “nations do not collapse merely because a global power intervenes” as American president, Donald Trump, has been threatening to do to Nigeria. He said that they collapse “because their internal foundations had weakened so badly that intervention (becomes) possible, profitable (and) convenient”. Musa submitted that vulnerable nations were usually first “hollowed out by their own internal contradictions and domestic mismanagement”. If Nigeria is at the precipice, and all indications are that it is, then the problem has to be down to lingering internal contradictions and gross mismanagement of its diversity by the successive ruling political elites. For instance, more than half a century after, the wounds of the Nigeria – Biafra civil war are still festering. Reconciliation has been difficult to attain simply because there has been no commitment to it by the victors. The same applies to rehabilitation of the defeated Biafrans. Of course, lip service had been paid to the reconstruction of the areas devastated by bombs and other munitions during the war.

    Every major component of the country bears one unresolved grudge or the other against the other components. The northern region still will not let go of the killing of their political and military leaders in 1966; untill recently the western region grumbled about being left out of political power in the centre for years; the Midwestern region is suspicious of everybody; and, the many minority nations of the country are perpetually under the fear of being dominated by their bigger neighbours. So Nigeria is essentially made up of centrifugal forces pulling in different directions. Nobody trusts anybody. A nation cannot be forged from a collection of peoples who do not trust one another, a people with almost irreconcilable world views, a people with diverse and contradictory cultural and religious backgrounds, and a people with self-serving and predatory political and governing elites. Primitive accumulation appears to be the only common thread binding the elites.

    How do we expect this country to grow when there’s no Nigerian in the true sense of the word. We are first of all Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Efik, Ijaw, tiv, Idoma, Ika etc. before becoming Nigerians. Our rulers do not help the matter. If an Hausa man is born and raised in the heart of Igbo land, say Owerri in Imo state, goes to school there, work in a paid employment or founds a business, marries an Igbo woman, raise a family, pay his taxes there, he remains an Hausa person. He will never be from Imo state. Indeed, the government constantly reminds us of who we are and where we come from. To illustrate, if you have a need to fill a form for any public or private institutions, one of the requirements is likely to be a question on your state of origin. The same applies when filling out a questionnaire for national census or headcount. You may have been born and resident in Maiduguri, Borno state all your life, but you are compelled to write and identify with a state you may not have been to simply because your parents were originally from that state. If as a Yoruba man you’re married to an Igbo woman, and your wife desires to contest for elective position, she will by law including the 1999 Constitution (as amended) be required to go back to her so-called state of origin and seek out the appropriate constituency to consummate her political aspiration. A similar thing also obtains in appointive offices. How do we forge a nation from this incongruities?

    But the more damning evidence that Nigeria is not working is the prevalent attitude of Nigerians to Nigeria. This attitude is worse among the younger generation. To an extent it also applies to the middle aged and the older folks. Nigeria as a country counts for little or nothing in the hearts and minds of many so-called Nigerians. There’s no sense of belonging. There’s no sense of ownership. There’s no stakeholder mentality. To many, Nigeria is a strange place, and there’s a growing feeling of being trapped in a space that’s increasingly becoming unfamiliar and troubling. And our rulers, by commission or omission, do not help the citizen to make a sense of the situation. The prevalent feeling is that this country might just be on a journey to nowhere. In Igbo it appears to be “ebe oku nyuru awusa owa”, or wherever the candle light flickers out, we drop the stick and move on.

  • Is Nigeria Beginning to Shut Down?

    Is Nigeria Beginning to Shut Down?

    By UGO ONUOHA

    The prospects for the future wellbeing of this country, Nigeria, are not looking good, the pretenses of our rulers to the contrary notwithstanding. And this is not about its distant future. It’s about the near future. Nigeria is rapidly deteriorating from not working to falling apart.

    The assertion that the country is not working is a notorious fact, but the claim that it is falling apart could be treated as crying wolf. It may not be out of place if we reassure ourselves that we have been at the precipice on more than one occasion in the past.

    The country was barely seven years old from independence when it was plunged into a fratricidal civil war during which millions of lives were lost in the space of three years, 1967–1970. Some commentators, rightly or wrongly, regard that civil war and the events that preceded and precipitated it as the beginning of genocide on the Igbo, a significant nation inside this country.

    Others, especially from the side of the victorious Yoruba nation of the southwest region, Hausa, Fulani and other minority nations of the northern region, regard the war as a necessary conflict to Go On With One Nigeria (Gowon). Yakubu Gowon, now in his 90s, was the military head of state who led the triumphant federal side.

    History Written by the Victors

    The dominant history of any war, which also passes as the authentic one, is usually written by the victors and their collaborators. So it has been with the Nigeria–Biafra war.

    The victors claim that between 200,000 and 300,000 people died on the Biafran side, but the victims put the figure at between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 deaths. The victors say that one of the events that snowballed into the bloody war — the January 1966 military coup — was plotted and selectively executed by the ultimate losers, wherein their (victors’) military and political leaders were gruesomely murdered.

    The victors’ collaborators, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), was in overdrive to propagate and perpetuate the falsehoods. Fifty-five years since that war, the BBC has not relented. It has become more sophisticated, more daring, and more demonic. Its record at distortion and baiting genocide is in public sight.

    Some British taxpayers who fund the corporation and prominent politicians have seen through the evils of the BBC and are now demanding that it be scrapped. The BBC may yet get its deserved comeuppance if the U.S. President, Donald Trump, delivers on his vow to sue that corporation for billions of dollars.

    The BBC had reportedly interviewed Trump and then fiddled with his responses to convey a different message and portray the American leader in poor light. It’s the corporation’s stock-in-trade. It has been begging Trump for forgiveness ever since. It has sacked at least two of its top executives, including the CEO. Thus far, Trump, who revels in court litigations, appears implacable.

    If Trump sues for defamation and wins billions of dollars, that could help to quickly bury the BBC and erase the evil the corporation represents. In spite of whatever some people might think, the world will surely be better for it. If Nigeria is unravelling for the worse, the fingerprints of the BBC have been on it from the beginning.

    The Signs of a Failing Nation

    There’s no doubt that Nigeria is seriously beginning to shut down after many years of protracted abuse by insiders and outsiders. The unravelling has been noticeable since 1960, and even before.

    The signals were obvious at the various negotiations and constitutional conferences that led to self-government at different times for different regions of this country. They were there when some of the country’s founding fathers from the north made violent vows to dip the Koran in the ocean and to ensure that the emergent country became the estate of their forebear, Uthman Dan Fodio.

    The Fulani hegemons also boasted that they would never allow the infidels of the southern regions to rule over them, and the minorities in their midst in the north to be in control of their own destiny.

    The signs were there when elections were rigged, violence unleashed, and politicians induced to cross carpet in the southwest to stop a victorious non-son of the soil from forming and heading the regional government in Ibadan.

    The schism led to the dislocated non-indigene moving to Enugu, his ethnic base, which ensured that the premiership of the defunct eastern region was wrestled from a minority politician to accommodate the returnee ‘big man’. Bad blood started spreading.

    A History of Ignored Warnings

    The January 1966 military coup and the July 1966 counter-coup, and the acrimonious killings that ensued, were clear signs that the Nigerian construct or project was a sham. “Araba,” the violent chant of the separatist agitators of the north, was unheeded.

    Historically, elements from the north were the first to demand the dissolution of Nigeria. Indeed, they did not want independence when it happened. It’s instructive that the British were reportedly the people who persuaded the north to remain in the federation, which was structured to favour them.

    In the period that “araba” lasted, an opportunity to deal with a fractured and flailing federation was lost.

    Before independence in 1960, the man who saw tomorrow, Obafemi Awolowo of the Yoruba stock, had vigorously canvassed for a very loose federation, but Nnamdi Azikiwe, the pan-Nigerian, Pan-Africanist, and incurable optimist, argued to the contrary.

    Given what has been happening in this country for so many years, it would be hypocritical to argue that the jury is still out on whose vision would have served this now-benighted country better.

    The bestiality of the civil war and the scorched-earth tactic in punishing the losers, and in the sharing of the booties by the winners, were also markers that all was not well. We papered over the cracked walls and pretended to be moving on.

    When, after the war, the slogan of “reconciliation, reconstruction, and rehabilitation” failed to materialize, we shrugged our shoulders and moved on in the belief that the defeated people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

    It would be their misfortune if they couldn’t, and didn’t. We probably were convinced that we had perfected the act of ignoring iniquities and inequities and the structural defects of the federation. In reality, we were stacking the odds against building a nation out of a country.

    The Chickens Coming Home to Roost

    Now it should be obvious that the chickens are coming home to roost. Tragedies have become the byword for our country.

    In the 1980s, a celebrity journalist and columnist, the late Dele Giwa of the National Concord newspaper, and later Newswatch magazine, which he co-founded, wrote an opinion article in which he said that Nigerians had become “unshockable.” And to think now that those were the years of innocence.

    Today Nigerians are inured to shock, with the lived experience of multiple tragedies of monumental proportions every day.

    This is a peek into the picture of our country in the last week, and not every tragedy was reported or captured.

    A serving general in the armed forces and three of his men were captured and executed by terrorists in Borno State on Friday, November 14; 64 people, including women and children, were abducted by terrorists in Tsafe Local Government Area of Zamfara State on Saturday, November 15.

    The next day, Sunday, November 16, 25 female students and their principal were abducted from their school in Maga, Kebbi State, by terrorists. The vice principal was shot and killed.

    Soon after, terrorists invaded a Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) in Eruku, Kwara State, killing two worshippers and abducting 38 others. The terrorists are reportedly demanding ₦100 million for each of the abductees.

    Elsewhere, one policeman was killed by terrorists in Geidam, Yobe State; eight members of a civilian security taskforce were killed by terrorists and three others abducted in Gwoza, Borno State; terrorists abducted 15 persons, including four nursing mothers and babies, in Sabon Birni in Sokoto State. Two persons were killed by the terrorists in that operation.

    Back in Kwara State, terrorists killed four rice farmers in an attack in Edu; and on Friday, November 21, terrorists invaded St. Mary’s School, a private Catholic college, in Papiri, Niger State, and abducted more than 300 pupils, students, and staff.

    The Looming Abyss

    This past week could be the worst in terms of insecurity in our country thus far. But the likelihood is that it could get worse.

    The American president has been threatening to use the military to attack Islamist terrorists in Nigeria, who he accused of committing genocide on Christians. He repeated the threat last weekend, and he has reportedly gotten approval from Congress to do whatever pleased him in that regard.

    Now imagine this scenario: Islamist terrorists increase the spate of kidnapping Christians and non-fundamentalist Muslims, who they would use as human shields against American drone strikes if the situation deteriorates further.

    In effect, the expectation of a spike in abductions — as is beginning to manifest presently by sectarian terrorists — should not be treated as far-fetched or as a red herring.

    Nigeria is unravelling, and the prospects are foreboding. The situation will not be helped by the position of Nigeria’s president, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, that he is depressed by the country’s worsening security situation.

    He was not installed in the presidency to throw up his arms in seeming surrender and to leave citizens to the devices of terrorists and sundry violent non-state agents of evil.

    Ugo Onuoha is a veteran journalist, former Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief, Champion Newspapers Ltd, columnist, and public affairs analyst. His works often explore governance, power dynamics, and civic accountability in Nigeria’s evolving democracy. He writes from Lagos.

  • The Misuse of “Genocide” in Nigeria’s Public Discourse

    The Misuse of “Genocide” in Nigeria’s Public Discourse

    Contextualizing The Horrific Killings in Nigeria Within The International Convention Against Genocide

    By Wale Alonge

    Since President Donald Trump’s 2020 threat to “invade Nigeria” to stop what he called “the targeted genocide of Nigerian Christians by Muslims,” the term genocide has gained sudden, viral currency across Nigerian social media. It is now used casually, cavalierly, and often without any understanding of its historical roots or the international legal framework that defines it.

    When such a morally charged word is used loosely, it dilutes its moral and legal force — and makes enforcement far more difficult in genuine cases of genocide. That is why it is critical to define and apply it precisely, something sorely lacking in Nigeria’s public conversations.

    It is deeply ironic that the same President Trump who refuses to describe the state-sponsored mass killing, starvation, and displacement of Palestinians in Gaza as genocide was so quick to use the word for Nigeria’s communal violence.

    I am a Christian, so this is not a case of a non-Christian downplaying the killings of Christians. There is no doubt that many Nigerian Christians have been victims of murderous attacks by Islamist jihadist groups — often targeted specifically in their houses of worship. Only yesterday, reports emerged from Kwara State of Christians being slaughtered and kidnapped in church.

    But so have Muslims — indeed, in larger numbers according to widely available data — including many attacked in mosques. These killings are largely random, carried out by non-state insurgents and criminal militias using hit-and-run, opportunistic tactics, often also targeting government forces. There is no demonstrated element of state-sponsored intent to destroy a protected group, which is central to any credible genocide claim.

    What “Genocide” Actually Means

    The word itself derives from the Greek genos (“tribe” or “race”) and the Latin caedere (“to kill”). Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined it during World War II, and in 1946 the United Nations General Assembly first recognized genocide as an international crime. It was later codified in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

    Article II of the Convention defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group:

    • Killing members of the group
    • Causing serious bodily or mental harm
    • Deliberately inflicting conditions of life aimed at destroying the group
    • Imposing measures intended to prevent births
    • Forcibly transferring children to another group

    The most difficult and crucial element is intent. Genocide requires a proven intention to physically destroy a protected group — not merely to displace it, weaken it, or target individuals for other reasons. This “special intent” (dolus specialis) distinguishes genocide from other international crimes.

    Nigeria’s Reality

    Every innocent life unjustly taken is one life too many. Nothing in this analysis minimizes the suffering of Nigerian Christians killed or displaced by jihadists or murderous Fulani militias that have devastated farming communities — particularly in the Middle Belt — through cycles of violence stretching back decades.

    But as horrific as these crimes are, to call them genocide is to misapply the term. The Genocide Convention arose from the ashes of the Holocaust — the targeted, systematic, state-orchestrated extermination of millions of Jews by Nazi Germany. That context matters.

    Nigeria’s insecurity is a grave humanitarian crisis, but not one that fits the legal or moral definition of genocide. The danger in misusing the word lies not just in linguistic carelessness, but in the erosion of its power to mobilize international justice where it is most needed — in places where governments, not bandits, plot the destruction of entire peoples.

    If we are to confront Nigeria’s violence meaningfully, we must name it for what it is: terrorism, mass atrocity, and state failure — not genocide. To do otherwise cheapens both the suffering of the victims and the gravity of one of humanity’s most serious crimes.

    Adewale Alonge, PhD, Founder & President, Africa Diaspora Partnership for Empowerment and Development. www.adped.org, writes in from Dadeland, Miami, Florida, USA.