Opinion
Still on Sam Omatseye’s obituary
When a friend of mine called on Monday afternoon to ask if I had read Sam Omatseye’s obituary in The Nation newspaper, my heart skipped a beat.
I have not seen The Nation newspaper’s editorial board chairman this year and not being one of my favourite columnists because of his penchant for puerile exuberance and indecency, I hardly read him. His solecism in the guise of intellectualism puts me off. Did I miss any news of his ill-health? I wondered.
But I was relieved when I was told he was hale and hearty. The obituary was the title of his column this week. My friend urged me to read it.
I did. And what I read was typical of Omatseye’s asinine, zany predilection. It was beneath contempt. Was I offended? Yes! But I also pitied him because it amounts to self-hatred for anyone to put his name to such beyond the pale piece all in the name of waging a proxy political battle.
I would have shrugged it off, having no appetite whatsoever to suffer fools gladly, except for the fact that he upped his impolitic ante on Tuesday with a tweet calling out the major target of his unprovoked vitriol on Monday, Mr. Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party.
“Mr. Peter Obi, call your supporters to order. They are calling and issuing death threats. If anything happens to me, you will be held responsible!” Omatseye tweeted. What impudence! Apparently, he is beginning to take himself way too serious. Such exaggerated sense of self-worth fueled by insouciant hubris is a deadly brew that leaves victims inebriated.
I wasn’t going to respond initially despite Omatseye’s deliberate and unprovoked denigration of the entire Igbo race just to pander to the whims and caprices of his benefactor because in idolatrously fawning over his god, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, he had also insulted venerable personages like late Mama H.I.D Awolowo and Pa Ayo Adebanjo in the past.
Just as he did with his obituary article, in June 2011, Omatseye, to the revulsion of all, launched an unprovoked attack on the Awolowo family in an article titled, “Awo family without an Awo.” He disparaged the entire Awolowo clan and dismissed them as nonentities who were too worthless to step into their patriarch’s big shoes, a lofty height he claimed Tinubu had clambered on, but he had the harshest words for Awo’s ‘jewel of inestimable value.’
“I wrote once that this woman whom Awo once described as the jewel of inestimable value has lost value to his cause. If he came back to life, he would have committed the extraordinary act of divorce after death. Even his newspaper, The Tribune, has so stumbled and fallen that it swims in Awo’s vomit,” Omatseye, an Itsekiri, wrote about the wife of a man who the Yoruba regard as next to Oduduwa in their leadership pantheon.
What crime did the Awolowos commit? None, other than having the audacity to choose their friends and refusing to fawn over Omatseye’s god.
Providing justification for his harebrained piece, Omatseye wrote: “The Awo son that many expected to take after the father was Olusegun, who unfortunately died in a car crash. We shall never know if he could have pulled it off. But the others have not shown much of the paterfamilias’ brio and depth. In the past decade, under this republic, they have blended with the wrong crowd. Even H.I.D hobnobbed with Alao-Akala, who brought illiteracy to governance; with Oyinlola who turned the grace of office into a hell-hole of despots; with Daniel who could not arrest his quick fall into megalomania.”
A distraught Mama Awolowo lamented thus: “At 95, I have lived long enough to expect common civility from younger ones, assuming that they received and imbibed proper home training. Having just lost my daughter less than two months ago, I also expect that normal people would spare me the kind of vitriolic attack that was unleashed on my person and my family; particularly as such an attack was entirely unprovoked.”
But the old woman expected too much from her traducer. Obviously, Omatseye had no home training, proper or otherwise, which explains why he is so uncouth. It is an abnormal behaviour for anyone to address a 95-year-old woman so derogatorily, no matter the circumstance, as Omatseye did. But Sam sees such unedifying capers as a badge of honour as long as they serve the narrow political interest of his small god. Because he is harebrained and unhinged, on April 16, 2018, he meted out the same condescending treatment to the indefatigable Pa Adebando, an Awo protégé, in his piece, “Adebanjo: Not my progressive. “That he chose the man’s 90th birthday to write the piece, labelling him a “turncoat” is hard to believe.
Like Mama Awolowo, Pa Adebanjo’s crime according to Omatseye was that he “was part of the unblushing train of Goodluck Jonathan,” in the 2015 election campaigns, and both attacks were prompted by Tinubu, the self-acclaimed Awo-incarnate, in furtherance of his deleterious agenda of pulling down the house that Awolowo built and becoming the leader of the Yoruba.
Being in the crosshairs of Tinubu’s vaunting political ambition is the only excuse that Omatseye needs to assume the role of a vicious attack dog. It is that absurd. He has crossed the Rubicon. Omatseye is no longer a fan or an admirer of Tinubu. He is now a Tinubu devotee, fanatical and zealous in his worship of the god he made for himself.
The fact that he willingly lends himself to such inelegant exertions makes his situation pathetic. A man who, without any qualms, eviscerates nonagenarians as he did to Mama Awolowo, Pa Adebanjo and many others, just to ingratiate himself with another man is lost.
The tragedy of the Sam Omatseye malady is that at 61 years and a grandfather, he is no longer a spring chicken and should not be associated with this hideous rascality. Such smarmy conduct is beneath contempt.
Omatseye’s obsession with the candidacy of Peter Obi is a perfect study in historical revisionism that should worry every well-meaning Nigerian. Obi is only one out of the motley crowd of presidential candidates. So far, he has run a clean campaign based on issues. So, why is Omatseye and his patrons so obsessed with his candidature? Yes, Obi is Igbo, just as Tinubu is Yoruba and Atiku is Fulani. Some other ethnic nationalities have also registered their presence in this titanic battle. But Obi is neither running as an Igbo candidate nor is he gunning for the presidency of the Southeast. If anything, it is Tinubu that from the onset adorned his quest in ethnic garbs. He made it clear that it is the turn of the Yoruba and he is the only one the cap fits.
It is amazing that those who ridiculed Ndigbo only yesterday as people lacking in political sagacity and worth are today wetting their underthings just because an Igbo man is on the 2023 ballot. But the 2023 election is not a war between the Yoruba and Ndigbo. It is a battle for the soul of Nigeria.
And Nigerians who are disenchanted with the status-quo understand what is at stake. It is this realization that informed the principled stance of Yoruba leaders such as Pa Adebanjo who have thrown their considerable moral weight behind Obi’s aspiration and ultimate rejection of Tinubu’s entitlement mentality.
This is the reason for his rage against Ndigbo and Omatseye’s acerbic piece. They want to draw the Igbos out by provoking a fight between the two ethnic nationalities. Ndigbo will not fall for that bait because what is at stake in 2023 is far bigger than Tinubu and Obi. It is about Nigeria and ‘Kept Men’ like Sam Omatseye (apologies to Uzor Maxim Uzoatu) are too inconsequential.
Amaechi, a journalist, wrote from Lagos
First posted August 04
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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