Opinion
Let’s rescue Nigeria now or perish *Text of Peter Obi’s address at ‘Freedom Online’ lecture
Former Governor of Anambra State, Peter Obi, was the Special Guest at the Fourth Edition of Freedom Online Lecture Series, where he spoke on the state of the nation. Date was Tuesday, March 22, 2023, while venue was the Radisson Blu Hotels, Ikeja, Lagos.
As usual, the Vice Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in the February 23, 2019 election, spoke from the heart, without a prepared paper. Read the complete text:
The keynote speaker said so many things that are pertinent. He showed how great our country can be even when so many people doubt whether anybody will be able to turn it around, because it seems to be in a very bad shape. If you look at the dozen fragile states in the world, Nigeria is there. So, we’ve now cracked virtually all indices of a failed. Nigeria is no longer in control of its territory because nobody is sure now.
In my consultation with people, the big men are asking you, is this place safe? I say, I came into this man’s house and he has about 30 policemen and he’s asking me if this place is safe. So, what will happen to people who don’t even have one policeman if this man will start with, this place is not safe.
If you ask chairman (Ahmed Makarfi, former Governor of Kaduna State, Chairman of the occasion), he’ll tell you the same thing, because it’s not safe. I was in Niger on Sunday and they said 12 local governments have been taken over by bandits. The children have stopped school. Now this is a major thing that spells a failed state – when you’re no longer in control of your territory and security of your place. Everybody now lives in fear.
So, potentially, we have everything. We have gold, we have oil – even the Central Bank Governor, said one of the major problems is massive stealing of our oil. Then I ask, who are the people stealing this oil? Are they foreigners? What type of statement is this coming from government? Somebody is stealing our thing and we don’t know. Somebody steals our oil, then the one they’re able to sell, they steal the money. There must be something wrong.
But cumulatively, all we’re experiencing today is the collective effect of leadership failure over the years. And that’s what Gbenga Daniels touched on. It’s not about people making noise. We’ve seen so many good written papers and people have told us so many nice things. But, where are we today? We’re facing an uncertain future – a future I’m sure that all of you are worried about.
I’ve pleaded with people to stop comparing us with UK and US. Let us go and compare ourselves with countries with comparative trajectories and we’ll see how badly we’re doing. You can’t compare us with US. The US with a per-capita of $50,000 cannot be compared with Nigeria with $2,000. it’s like a businessman. The biggest state in America, California, has a GDP of $3.2trillion, eight times Nigeria GDP. So, we cannot compare. You can’t compare us with Britain with a per capita of almost $48,000. if you have $48,000 and I have $2,000, you know what you can do? You can decide that the price of an item is $3,000 and you remain $45,000 and my own is gone.
But, look at other countries like Ghana. Go to places like Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, compare and see how badly we’ve done. Following what the keynote speaker talked about, we have everything, but we lack one thing – leadership. Everything can be destroyed with poor leadership no matter what it is. After all, who has the highest number of oil deposits today? I’m sure you know a country in South America – Venezuela, has more oil deposits than Nigeria. But what is happening today? Poor leadership. Poor leadership can destroy everything. And that is the problem of Nigeria.
But why do we have that poor leadership? Because the recruitment process is poor. People say vote-buying – but I’ve been able to contest elections and won without giving anybody one naira. It is the people – all of us here are part of it. We don’t want to get involved – it’s not our business. So, it became a case of where lunatics took over the asylum. It has happened. The quality of leadership is poor, the selection process is poor.
People are contesting elections now and nobody is asking about their background, nobody is asking questions. Nobody is asking where they were doing, where they’re coming from, what were they doing 25 years ago and they’re now going about promising us that they’ll make one naira equal to one dollar. This is somebody who has never created wealth in his life, has never managed anything in life, has never done anything in his life and he’s promising you. By the time it starts, it’s going to be a mess.
Please, let all of us get involved – ask questions. Let’s look at what the person has managed before – his own private life, his business and everything. If he has been a local government chairman or a governor, let’s look at it. Let’s look at his character, his behaviour. This is because, when we talk about the wealth of a nation, it’s not just about the money.
It’ll surprise you that the greatest contributor to the GDP and growth of a nation is the intangible asset, which is law and order, behaviour and character of the leaders, because if you have a leader who talks anyhow, he can cause trouble like we’re seeing in Ukraine now. It’s simple. You must have a leader who is competent, has the capacity and his behaviour and character can match everything. We have a country that is so divided now that we must have someone who can understand the law and show compassion and bring everybody together.
We need orderliness. Today the GDP of all the western world is controlled, about 60 per cent by intangible assets – law and order. There is nothing in the western world except that you can go home and sleep, except that you’re sure that if you call the police, that if you go to court, somebody will answer you. These are the things that make them tick. These are the things we need to look into in order to hire the best people to manage us out of this.
We must be able to bring leaders that will generate and know what development is all about. That’s what the keynote speaker said. Because, here, we seem not to know what development is all about. So, you ask somebody, what did you do and he’ll say I built bridges, I built flyovers. Flyover to where? Where is that road going to? There is already a clear, defined, accepted development yardstick – human development indices. Invest in it. Invest in education, invest in health, bring people out of poverty.
You wake up in the morning in this country and somebody says, we have a revenue problem. Why won’t you have a revenue problem? You have almost 100million people living in poverty and you want them to pay tax. From where? They’ve not eaten food. It’s like somebody going to the bank to cash money when he has not paid anything in.
You have to pay in first, so you can have a withdrawal note. But the government wants to withdraw without paying in. Where did you invest in education, where did you invest in health, where did you pull people out of poverty? The keynote speaker said people are looking for money to start small businesses, but it’s not there.
You borrow money! Nobody has seen anything like what we’re seeing now in terms of debt. I hasn’t happened anywhere, where somebody’s company is valued for 100million and he went and borrowed at 500million and his company is now valued at 90million. It hasn’t happened anywhere. And nobody is asking any question. And the same people who borrowed it want to continue, so that by the time they borrow another one you may have just 10million left.
In 2010, Nigeria’s debt was below $30billion, because PDP under Makarfi had paid off our debts. Because they paid off everything we had below $30billion and the per capita then was $2,250 with a GDP of about $3.5billion. But in 2021, our debt was over $100bllion and per capita of $2,000. So, what happened to the money we borrowed? The people are telling us, we used it for capital projects. Where are the capital projects? What is the impact of the capital project on growth? What did you do with the money. More people have been thrown into poverty.
As at 2014, the working population of Nigeria, was about 60million. But today, it’s about 36million. So, more people have lost their jobs. We’ve become one of the highest places of unemployment. We have the highest mortality rate, our poverty rate is the highest in the world. So, what happened to this money? And when you ask that question, people are looking. That’s why I said, compare us with countries that work.
In Bangladesh, because I don’t want to talk about China again, because they’ve since passed us, had a per capita of $780, when we’re $2,250 with a GDP of $115billion, theirs was about $43billion. Today Bangladesh GDP is about $345billion and their per capita is $2,015. So, they’ve tripled and their debt has also tripled to $117billion. But you can see that the money they borrowed, was invested.
In our own, it was consumed, because we hired people, like the chairman said, who write good papers and in the end, we’re finished. My contribution today is let us know that we’ve no other country. We’ve no other place to go. We all collectively have to be involved to stop this abuse. I say this everyday that the country we abuse, the nation we abuse, will take its revenge on all of us.
Posted by Editor | 23 March 2022, 06:59pm |
By Bayo Onanuga
With politicking intensifying ahead of the January 2027 election, opposition politicians have escalated their campaign of misinformation and calumny to diminish the impact and achievements of this administration over the last three years.
Two years ago, when the administration was struggling to deal with the unintended consequences of its historic reforms, the campaign would have made sense. But not anymore, as the administration can rightly claim bragging rights for what it has achieved against all odds and why the international community is applauding it for putting Nigeria irrevocably on the path of growth and development.
The impact of the three-year-old government is best felt at the subnational level – state and local levels. States that hitherto were unable to pay salaries by May 2023, with months of unpaid obligations to their workers and pensioners, are now doing so with ease and dreaming big about infrastructure. In every state I have visited, I have seen this development. Ogun, my state, Oyo, Nasarawa, Enugu, Ebonyi, Kaduna, Kano, Kebbi, Katsina, and others have witnessed development projects spring up, thanks to President Tinubu’s re-engineering of the federation’s finances and increased allocation to the states. When local councils begin to receive their allocations directly from the Federation Account, the Tinubu effect will ensure that more governance cascades down to the 774 local councils.
State governors who have benefited from this policy have openly admitted that increased allocations have enabled them to bring social and infrastructural development to their states. Many opposition PDP governors who joined the APC did so for this reason—not for the baseless claim that President Tinubu bribed them. Governor Abdulrazak said in December 2024 that his administration embarked on more projects in the first 18 months of Tinubu’s presidency than in his first four years. The Governor of Ebonyi, Nwifuru, who is building iconic underpasses and overpasses in Abakaliki, credited his ambition to President Tinubu. Governor Peter Mbah similarly attested to this, crediting the Naira rain from the centre for his programmes. And Nasarawa State Governor Abdullahi Sule, who understands how Tinubu’s financial re-engineering and the end of the subsidy regime have increased the states’ fortunes, said President Tinubu “has taken the bullets for all of them.”
In May 2023, President Tinubu inherited acute petrol scarcity, an unsustainable petrol subsidy regime due to expire in June 2023, multiple exchange rates, arbitrage, and low revenue, with at least 30 states unable to pay workers, let alone fund infrastructure and social projects. Debt servicing consumed 97 per cent of Federal revenue. Additionally, food scarcity and inflation plagued the country as farmers abandoned their fields, recording massive losses amid the currency squeeze introduced by former CBN Governor Godwin Emefiele.
President Tinubu, guided by the Renewed Hope Agenda, wasted no time. He threw the ruinous subsidy out of the window from Day One. Days later, he floated the Naira and ended the artificial fixing of the Naira-to-dollar exchange rate, a system that had enabled well-connected individuals to profit effortlessly. Tinubu declared a food emergency and announced the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms to examine our outdated tax laws, some of which date back to the colonial era. Immediate gains included encouraging dry-season farming, with subsidies and inputs provided for farmlands abutting dams and irrigation sites in at least 14 states.
Even by President Tinubu’s admission, the early months and the first year were tough as the government implemented its programme. The cost of living went up, and businesses claimed the harmonised exchange rate had put them in the red. A few companies even closed shop and left our shores. On the streets, some Nigerians claimed that the policies have left them hungry, a sentiment the opposition still parrots to this day, without any empirical proof. If not sure of the salience of his reforms, President Tinubu would have taken a reverse gear in fright and abandoned all the new reform policies amid the avalanche of attacks from critics and opposition elements in the media. Instead, he persisted.
Two years after the first challenging year, the story has changed for good. However, some opposition elements are stuck in the sentiment of 2023/24, unyielding and adamant about acknowledging the many gains and milestones achieved by the Tinubu administration. But only the blind will fail to admit that this government has taken the country miles away from the state it inherited in 2023.
The stock market is clear proof of the administration’s economic success. In May 2023, Tinubu met the All-Share Index at 53,000 points and the market capitalisation at N30 Trillion. Today, the ASI has risen five times, to a record 250,000 and a market capitalisation of N160 Trillion. Blue-chip companies, including those initially negatively impacted by government policies, are declaring record profits and dividends. Equally, foreign portfolio investors are flocking in to partake in the Nigerian boom. This is not a bubble. It shows that a fundamental paradigm shift has occurred in the economy, all thanks to the Tinubu administration’s policy direction.
In recent weeks, I revisited the manifesto and policy ambitions that won us the election. The Tinubu administration has faithfully implemented its Renewed Hope Agenda, striving to resolve in three years the cumulative problems of decades.
Roads that will outlast this generation are being built nationwide. I recently went home to Ijebu-Ode, Ogun State, and was amazed that the highway to my town from the Shagamu intersection now has a concrete pavement, thick enough to withstand the traffic of trailers from the West to the East. The most audacious road projects ever undertaken by any administration since independence are the Illela-Sokoto-Badagry and the Lagos-Calabar coastal superhighways. President Shehu Shagari conceived the Sokoto-Badagry highway in the early 80s. Succeeding administrations, afraid of the huge cost, abandoned the road. The Lagos-Calabar has also been on the map for decades, but no leader has ever dared to turn the idea into reality. President Tinubu has proven to be a transformative leader who has decided to turn the roads into reality, adding new roads to our road network for the first time, beyond those we inherited from the colonialists. Myopic critics of the two roads have assailed the Tinubu administration for taking loans to accomplish them. How else could the roads have been built if we rely only on FG’s share from FAAC? Relying solely on federal allocations would mean waiting 50 years or more, with costs ballooning out of reach, as in the metro-rail to nowhere started by presidential aspirant Rotimi Chibuke Amaechi in Port Harcourt, Rivers State. In the states, governors are building roads of similar standards. I saw some of these in Ogun, Kaduna, Ebonyi and Enugu.
As with roads, the Tinubu administration is also investing heavily in rail transportation, with the Kaduna-Kano-Gusau-Maraadi rail network scheduled for completion next year. City rail networks in Kaduna, Lagos, Kano and Enugu have been approved for construction, along with the Lekki-Ibadan rail.
When historians write about the Tinubu administration in 2031, they will not remember it only for audacious road and rail networks, but also for historic reforms. The oil and gas sector is one area in which the administration has impacted the country. Apart from ending the regime of wasteful subsidies, the government has instituted reforms that have made the sector attractive to fresh investment. International Oil Companies(IOCs) that once shunned our country are returning with billions of dollars in investment. Domestic refining and the innovative Naira-for-crude policy are ensuring energy security, thereby avoiding acute scarcity arising from the disruptive war against Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. More recently, the administration enacted a policy requiring the NNPC to remit oil sales proceeds to the Federation account.
Confronted by the administration’s stellar performance, the opposition and media propagandists dredged up a campaign video of the President promising a 24/7 power supply. They distorted his words. What he actually said was: “Whichever way, by all means necessary, you will have electricity, and you will not pay for an estimated bill anymore. A promise made will be a promise kept. If I don’t keep the promise and I come for a second term, don’t vote for me, unless I give you adequate reasons why I couldn’t deliver.”
What the distorters failed to admit was that the Discos, privatised since 2013 by President Goodluck Jonathan, are responsible for delivering power to the end consumers, not the Federal Government. What this government has done in the last three years has been to address the problems hindering the capacity of Discos to deliver, such as bringing Siemens to strengthen the grid, activating idle GENCOs, and planning to clear the N4 trillion legacy debts owed to GENCOs and GASCos, which will encourage new investments in the sector. The government has also massively implemented its metering policy, providing over 2.5 million meters to homes. Recently, the Tinubu administration announced the establishment of GAMCO, the Grid Asset Management Company, which will optimise power supply and activate idle facilities.
One of the administration’s impactful programmes, apart from issuing passports in less than a week, is the introduction of NELFUND and CREDICORP in 2024. While Credicorp is making loans available to civil servants to buy Made-In-Nigeria products, NELFUND, with N282 billion committed so far, has made tertiary education more accessible for our children. About 1.6 million Nigerian students have benefited. Payment of school fees and stipends is assured for the children, and the government has also renegotiated the 2009 ASUU-FG agreement, such that in the last three years, our universities, along with the Polytechnics and Colleges of Education, have been spared the disruptive academic strikes. Let’s give the Tinubu government some slack: a four-year programme is now a four-year programme. He promised it during the campaign and has delivered. The government has also invested in technical schools, offering students pursuing vocational education allowances. In the universities, TETFUND is once again funding research grants for dons willing to pursue ideas that will be useful to our society.
Among impactful programmes, apart from issuing passports in less than a week, are NELFUND and CREDICORP, introduced in 2024. Credicorp makes loans available to civil servants for Made-In-Nigeria products, while NELFUND, with N282 billion committed, has made tertiary education more accessible. About 1.6 million students have benefited. School fees and stipends are assured, and the government has renegotiated the 2009 ASUU-FG agreement, sparing universities from disruptive strikes. Today, a four-year programme in the universities, polytechnics and colleges of education is completed in four years. Technical schools offer allowances to vocational students, and TETFUND is funding research grants to academics.
It has not been all rosy the past three years, especially in the area of making our people safe from the band of bandits and terrorists. While the armed forces have been locked in an asymmetrical war against these heartless elements, neutralising their leaders and foot soldiers in several theatres of conflict, the displaced terrorists are attacking vulnerable areas in some of the states, killing and kidnapping. The government is unrelenting in providing the armed forces, intelligence agencies, and police with the tools they need to wage the war. With support from friendly governments like the US, France, and the UK, there is hope that the menace of kidnappers and their political sponsors will become history. The man who has taken the bullets to make Nigeria survive a fiscal disaster is even more willing to take additional bullets to make all Nigerians safe.
Onanuga is Special Adviser to President Tinubu on Information and Strategy
By Hon Eseme Eyiboh
Let us begin with a confession. There is something unsettling about a politician who no longer appears to struggle.
In the turbulent theatre of Nigerian politics, where noise is often mistaken for relevance, where primaries resemble wrestling contests and delegate management demands the instincts of a hostage negotiator, a man who walks in unopposed does not merely win. He transforms the entire contest into a rehearsal.
On Monday, May 18, 2026, at Methodist Primary School, Ukana, in Essien Udim Local Government Area, Senator Godswill Akpabio did exactly that. No contest. No drama. No nervous counting of votes. He simply emerged as the candidate of the All Progressives Congress for the Akwa Ibom North West Senatorial District without a single challenger.
While many politicians remain trapped in the exhausting rituals of horse trading, factional bargaining, and survival politics, Akpabio’s good works delivered something far rarer in Nigeria’s political environment than gold itself. Absolute consensus.
To the casual observer, an unopposed return may suggest the absence of competition. That would be a dangerously shallow interpretation.
Those familiar with the political phenomenon long associated with the “Uncommon Transformer” understand the distinction clearly. An unopposed ticket does not mean nobody desired to contest. Politics naturally attracts ambition the way light attracts insects. Power always generates interest. Influence always provokes aspiration.
What an unopposed return truly means is far more significant: potential challengers surveyed the landscape, studied the numbers, weighed the networks, measured the emotional connection between the man and the political structure around him, and quietly concluded that the road to victory simply did not exist.
There is a profound difference between lack of opposition and the collapse of viable opposition
Why is there no road to victory for others? Because what Akpabio has built in Akwa Ibom State in general and Akwa Ibom North West in particular is no longer merely a political structure. It is a fortress. Its walls are not made of concrete. They are made of cultivated loyalty. Enduring networks. Strategic generosity. And the unspoken understanding that confronting him politically is not simply difficult. It is often futile and absurd.
The atmosphere at the ward centre resembled less a political exercise and more a carnival of affirmation. Supporters, community leaders, women groups, youths, and party faithful gathered not to determine an outcome but to endorse a grace carrier already settled in the public imagination. The votes were counted without end. The votes were celebrated.
Here is the remarkable part.
The whispers surrounding Akpabio’s dominance do not come only from admirers. They come from seeming opponents too.
They do not fear his voice. They fear his results. They do not tremble at confrontation. They confront something more sobering: the recognition that within his political territory, the arithmetic has been solved with almost clinical precision.
While others are still assembling coalitions, Akpabio consolidated his long ago. While rivals continue calculating delegate figures, he has already moved to the next question: what happens after victory? How does political power translate into enduring relevance and measurable impact?
That is the distinction between a career politician and a political architect. One chases office. The other shapes the terrain on which the chase itself occurs.
Since assuming office as President of the 10th Senate, Akpabio has projected a measure of stability within the Red Chamber. That should not be understated.
The Nigerian Senate has earned a reputation for turbulence over the years. Leadership rebellions. Internal fractures. Floor dramas that generate headlines while weakening governance and social democratic structures. Against that backdrop, a Senate President capable of maintaining institutional stability without recurring crises becomes more than merely effective. He becomes uncommon.
His admirers see in him a politician who has consistently combined institutional authority with emotional loyalty from his base through the National to International arena. From Governor to Minister to Senate President, his rise is framed as the journey of a man who understood tomorrow before others arrived there. A politician deeply conscious of timing, alignment, and the delicate craft of converting social capital into durable influence and uncommon power (political capital).
This point matters enormously. Political capital is easy to squander. This point matters enormously. Political goodwill is easy to destroy. Many politicians exhaust it through arrogance, exclusion, or the endless pursuit of personal advantage. But Akpabio appears to understand something deeper about leadership: goodwill grows when people genuinely feel seen, valued, included, and carried along.
Over the years, he has cultivated relationships not merely through politics, but through accessibility, generosity of spirit, loyalty to associates, and an unusual ability to make people feel remembered even in the midst of high office. That is why his support structure often appears less like a coalition held together by convenience and more like a community bound by shared experience and enduring personal connection.
What some interpret merely as political dominance may actually be the long-term harvest of sustained human investment.
And perhaps that explains the ease with which the field gradually cleared around him. Not because opposition was forcibly silenced, but because many within the political environment saw little wisdom in disrupting a consensus built around continuity, stability, experience, and an existing relationship of trust.
His commitment to continue working closely with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and Governor Umo Eno reinforces a broader message of continuity and strategic alignment. At a time when fragmentation remains the temptation of many ambitious actors, Senator Akpabio has chosen coordination. That is not a weakness. It is political arithmetic.
And this is where the conversation shifts from the present to the near future. The same political capital that secured his senatorial return without resistance is not a one-use currency. It accumulates. It compounds. The goodwill he has cultivated, the equilibrium he has maintained, and the pragmatic preference for results over rhetoric are not merely tools for another Senate term. They form the foundation of something larger and forthcoming.
The crystal ball is not required to observe the trajectory. A Senate President who secures his own return effortlessly, stabilises a chamber historically associated with instability, aligns himself with the centre of national power grid while maintaining grassroots legitimacy, is a Senate President who has solved one of Nigerian politics’ most difficult equations.
He has demonstrated to his colleagues that he can deliver. He has shown the party hierarchy that he can be trusted. He has reassured constituents that proximity to power has not disconnected him from them.
This combination is rarer than any single attribute standing alone. So when the 11th Senate eventually convenes and the question of leadership emerges once again, the conversation may prove shorter than many anticipate. Not because there will be no interested contenders. There always are. But because the arithmetic of loyalty, institutional experience, strategic alignment, and demonstrated political capacity will already have completed its quiet work.
Akpabio has not formally declared interest in leading the 11th Senate. He does not need to. The declaration already exists in the pattern of his movements, the stability of his stewardship, and the political field he has cleared without visible strain. It is simply the discipline of reading political signs as they present themselves* .
In the end, Nigerian politics rewards those who understand the people more deeply than those who merely master performance and noise.That is not sentimentality. It is a political reality.
A politician capable of delivering his constituency without violence, panic, or emergency intervention is a politician who understands something fundamental: power is never truly declared. It is demonstrated. And it is demonstrated most convincingly when nobody steps forward to challenge it.
On that Monday in Ukana, the drums rolled. Praises echoed across the gathering. And the political message arrived without ambiguity. In Akwa Ibom North West, the conversation has moved beyond opposition. What remains is an audience waiting to see the next chapter unfold without ceasing.
Senator Godswill Akpabio has once again reminded observers that in certain political spaces, dominance is not always loud.
Sometimes, it is simply complete. And in the intricate chessboard of Nigerian politics, where many players are still learning how the pieces move, that level of mastery remains rare, consequential, and deeply potent.
The man who saw tomorrow understood something else too. The loudest voice in the room is rarely the one that prevails.
The one that prevails is the one that no longer needs to shout because everybody already understands. And that is what Senator Godswill Akpabio has demonstrated that he is the man who saw tomorrow.
Rt Hon Eseme Eyiboh mnipr is a former member and Spokesperson of the House of Representatives and currently Special Adviser, Media/Publicity and official Spokesperson to the President of the Senate
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