Columns

Why God disgraced Buhari!

Published

3 years ago

May 29, 2023

By Sunny Igboanugo

Nna anyi Pope di emefie-emefie. Isi ya wee bulu na Pope ama emenata njo. Unless you’re a Catholic and Igbo, you might not grasp the true depth of this, because it loses a lot of its mystics and mysteries along the way of translation and transliteration. To fully comprehend, you have to be, or assume the place of sub-10-year-old child in a nondescript village some four or five decades ago, whose mental skies, struggled to grapple with all manner of images and imaginations coming from personal experiences and teachings of the older generation.

So, while chanting at the catechism class, Nna anyi Pope di emefie-emefie. Isi ya wee bulu na Pope ama emenata njo, it meant far more than its English translation of the infallibility of the Pope, which the teacher, made the students recite repeatedly.

For me, as for virtually every child in those classes, the only picture comparable to the processing of that teaching of the Pope, his infallibility and sinless state, was the imagery of Christ sitting at the right hand of God – more so, when you had heard some fantastic stories about the Catholic Pontiff himself.

I recall my elder brother, whose story-telling skill, surpassed that of Chinua Achebe, narrating how the world would gather in Rome, on rare occasions, to watch the Pope bring out his hand from a tiny window and wave to a privileged crowd. For no human ever saw the Pope physically. With his propensity for adding salt and pepper to every of his alluring, but mostly, fantastically false, if not mischievous narratives, it is impossible to ascertain how much he knew himself and whether he did not believe those stories either.

How was I to know that so soon after, I would be among the privileged, not only to see the waving hands of the Pope, but his whole being, shaking hands and embracing people, not from a window, but in a crowd?

What is more? I have also since discovered that the teaching of the infallibility of the Pope is completely false in the manner it was presented to us by those catechism teachers, whom I assume, knew no better themselves or preferred to believe themselves out of piety for the Catholic faith.

It was much later that I got the context and concept of the teaching. The Pope is infallible only when speaking ex-Cathedra – when he mounts the Papal Chair of St. Peter to make pronouncement. In other words, papal infallibility, in Roman Catholic theology, is described as the doctrine that the Pope, acting as supreme teacher and under certain conditions, cannot err when he teaches in matters of faith or morals. This, some say, is derived from Christ’s promise to remain always with his church and to send the Spirit to “teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.” (Jn 14:26).

For this, there are four conditions: “When the Pope (1) intends to teach (2) by virtue of his supreme authority (3) on a matter of faith and morals (4) to the whole Church, he is preserved by the Holy Spirit from error. His teaching act is therefore called “infallible” and the teaching which he articulates is termed “irreformable.”.

What it means in clear terms is that the Pope, as an ordinary human being, is as vulnerable to sin as any other person. In other words, he could commit sins and indeed, commits sins. Further down the line, it also means that if the Pope, the only being, known to have been conferred with this status of infallibility, is himself a sinner, who most often admits to this fact, goes to confession, like any other Catholic. It means therefore that no human being is free from sin.

But Muhammadu Buhari, doesn’t appear to acknowledge this fact of life. My reading of him, both in public conduct and charactersation, conduces of one who had since, not only believed the godlike image conferred on him by a fawning group of followers, but appropriated same to himself. Unlike the Pope, who acknowledges his frailties as human, he appears to see himself as infallible, and seems to frown at any suggestion otherwise.

Granted that he might not have made himself God and did not confer the status on himself, but he not only grabbed it, he hugged it or so it seems. That, to me has proved fatal.

The Bible, reports that this was the sin of Lucifer. He was said to be so beautifully made and possessed everything that not only did pride set in but he became so possessed with and hugged his status, so much that the next move was to rebel against God and take His place. It was for this that he was cast into hell. But here on earth, the world is replete with numerous other examples of how pride and self-conceitedness had pushed people to fall from glory to perdition.

Else, what could account for Buhari being such a disaster in office? What could make Buhari become a reference pointer for monumental failure in all aspects of public engagements as President? What is it that he lacked? Arguably, no other President or indeed elected official in Nigeria enjoyed the type of acceptance that welcomed him to the seat of power eight years ago. Such was the ululation that a certain Dahiru Buba, had to trek from Gombe to Abuja in solidarity.

But what did Nigeria get in return? Woes and tales of woes – uncanny, bizarre and eerie outcomes – sorrow, tears and blood – weeping, wailing, mourning and gnashing of the teeth. Those who rolled out the drums to celebrate, now retreat into their cocoons, fasten their doors as they retire to daily supplications against the dangers outside, praying for an end to their nightmares. The din from the collective hissing as the people turn away their faces, bidding their ears be deaf, now echo resoundingly.

How else could a man be humbled? How else could a man be disgraced? The king, who was so impervious to counsel and forbade his subjects from advising him, has now become a pitiable object of mockery as the flies besiege him because nobody could tell him about the patches of elements from the toilet that have stained his royal robe. Perhaps a lesson to others coming after him.

Already, the ubiquitous professional courtiers, jesters and entertainers, in Aso Rock Villa, at its corridors and elsewhere, who saw nothing wrong in the faux pass of the eight years of the locust, and who told him that he was the best thing to happen to creation, are fast disappearing, perhaps with their eyes on another target.

Yes! The cheerleaders, who chanted that it was the best that The Man of Wisdom – who sees tomorrow sitting in his comfortable couch, should take his time, when Nigerian practically descended into limbo from which it never woke up or recovered, are already shifting ground and brushing off all vestiges of vicarious responsibility of what they helped to create.

Yet, they were the ones that rationalised it when a bemused public began wondering what was happening, after the signs of danger started manifesting. They shouted down petrified compatriots, who dared raise their voice at the early inanities. Those who dared question the rationale of waiting for a whole six months to appoint a cabinet were called names. Even after it turned out that those appointed was an assemblage of funny characters after the world was made to believe that some strange beings from outer space were coming – opportunists, whose only interest appeared to be a seat at the table to share in the spoils of the game, those who complained were denounced and called – wailers!

With these early signs of failure not heeded and him being goaded and egged on, things could only get worse. The government had come in with a blazing record of fanfare and public trust with the mantra of Insecurity, Economy, Anticorruption on its lips. Alarmed Nigerians, who had been crying about the records of the government of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), especially that of President Goodluck Jonathan he displaced in 2015, had believed that he was going to wave his magic wand or release the genie out of the magic lamp to tackle the problems.

But like a possessed emperor, everything took the penchant for an uncanny pattern – policies decreed with a sort of brainwave. For instance, without warning, Nigerians, who had been encouraged to domicile their individua foreign currency accounts locally, woke up one morning to be told that they could no longer withdraw their money from their banks in Nigeria. The immediate result? Chaos and more chaos. Many citizens, believing that their lifesaving had vanished died of heart attacks and other debilitating ailments developed as a result. The bedlam that ensued as panicking customers rushed to the banks in search of a way out to reclaim their forex became the inevitable skyrocketing cost of forex and the crisis today.

By the time the policy was lifted, the value of the forex had hit the roof as Nigerians in panic, rushed straight to the banks to withdraw every cent they had saved and took their money elsewhere. Today, a dollar that stood at less than N200 is gradually inching towards the N1,000 mark. This was his idea of making the greenback stand at par with the naira.

You heard him boasting the other day how he closed the Nigerian borders some years back. Again, that happened without warning. Nigerians woke up one morning to hear that. What was the reason, you would ask? His answer was that he wanted to end smuggling of rice. The result? More foreign rice found their way into Nigeria, but at higher cost, because the fat cats in charge of the borders, responsible for the problem in the first place, who ought to have been called to question and checked through a fortified and deliberate means, grew fatter as they smiled to the banks, by simply upping the ante and raising the stakes for the rice smugglers. That was another of his fantastic ideas!

But there was more. Genuine businessmen, suddenly found it impossible to transact inter-border trades. Consignments they had ordered could not cross into Nigeria, while those to be exported outside got stuck back home. As their capital began to deplete and finally drained out, many obituaries were announced. Again, it was either heart-attacks or suicide induced illnesses. On the contrary, the cost of rice, both local and domestic soared to the level that many Nigerians took what used to be their staple out of their menus or looked for ways of making up. Again, another economic masterstroke!

In the end, for all his economic solution was worth, Nigeria became the poverty capital of the world, with all imaginable economic indices – inflation, employment level, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), life expectancy, money in the pocket, etc – going south.

Don’t forget that at the time he came in, the debate was that Nigeria was among the fastest growing economies in the world and the biggest economy in Africa and the capital for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Whether true or not, at least that was what was on the table by the time Jonathan was leaving office as President. But today, what is the debate all about? Nigeria hitting the bottomless pit – at the very nadir of its economic existence as a country.

Why? Don’t ask me! They have a ready answer to that. COVID-19! War in Ukraine! But in their haste to blight out original local memory, they forget that the nosediving economy of Nigeria formed the major issues of the nation’s debates far before these latter-day events. The presidential campaigns of 2019 was all about how the nation’s economy had hit the jagged rocks at the bottom of the valley.

But, as they blame the crises, other countries have since moved away and moved on, quickly. In the first place, they will not acknowledge the obvious – that no other countries across the globe engage in the clandestine and ugly lifestyle that became emblematic of their governance model during their years. Which and how many other countries in the world went about borrowing and spending same like drunken sailors within the period in question? How many countries used virtually every kobo or cent they earned for servicing debts?

How many countries gave open license to a group of people in their countries to kill compatriots, simply because they had recourse to a President, who would admonish the victims to live peacefully with your neighbours? Yet this was a General who went about the insecurity mantra and promised to tame troublemakers.

They would remind you readily that 14 local governments were in the hands of insurgents by the time they came into office. But ask them, was there any local government that election in 2015 did not hold before they took over? They sing a song about how the North East have been liberated from Boko Haram? But speak to experts and hear a somewhat more plausible explanations.

You would hear that after announcing their presence through bombings in Abuja and other cities in the North, terrorists, especially Boko Haram, which has since coalesced with the Islamic State of West Africa (ISWAP), simply changed gear, farmed out their soldiers and spread out across the country, such that today, no single day passes without records of kidnapping and slaughtering Nigerians in different parts of the country.

Today, the Genelismo, is leaving behind a record of close to 70,000 deaths – of his countrymen slaughtered in cold blood – in peacetime to boot? That is even the official record. Some argue that unofficially it is far worse, putting it at double or even triple of that. Recall that at the beginning, he had ordered the military to end Boko Haram in three months. But all that had to end in the damning picture of death and sorrow.

The rest of the picture is painted in the bombing of a Nigerian train and kidnapping of hundreds, the breaking into the best fortified jails in the country and releasing some blood-thirsty killers, who are today prowling through the forests and local villages, milling through the streets and roads to decimate the people to the extent that today road travels have become the worst nightmare of Nigerians.

Even the anti-corruption on which his entire personality derived its essence, he didn’t fare any better. In fact, it turned out a ruse. Under him was a systematic bastardisation of the entire concept and process of fighting corruption. While the institutions, erected by previous administrations became huge public theatres where macabre dramas were churned out almost every day, his own appointees in various positions, were no less ready to join in the circus.

That was when you heard of how men of the Department of State Services (DSS) broke into the homes of judges in the thick of the night and roused their scared lordships from their bed, some of them in their birthday suits with their spouses, while still asleep. It was a time the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), regaled an entirely stunned nation with their own version of the drama.

On occasions, it was either caches of dollars rolling out from conveyor belts at the airports or stashes of local and or foreign currencies discovered inside uncompleted buildings. The anti-climax was the discovery of a whopping N13billion hidden in a residential apartment in Ikoyi, Lagos. But wait for it, till date, the selfsame agency has continued to keep sealed lips over the identities of the owners. Just like in other cases.

Remember, that drama took place in 2017, six years ago. But since then, mum has remained the word. Instead, the next stage of the drama was that Ibrahim Magu, the theatre director and curator, became a character in the obscene drama himself, when he was suddenly arrested and hounded out of office in the most controversial manner.

In the end, just as his appointment became mired in controversy when, in spite of being denied confirmation by the Senate on the declaration of the DSS, which forbade it, his end, saw him practically being dragged on the floor to the Justice Ayo Salami panel, where he was made to face charges of monumental corruption. What an irony.

You did also hear more recently of how his successor, Abdulrasheed Bawa was accused of demanding a bribe of $2million from the Governor of Zamfara State, Bello Matawalle. The governor, who made the disclosure with his full chest out, in a BBC Hausa Service interview, had dared him to do his worst about it and face further revelations, with evidence. Have you heard anything else since then? Never! For all you might know, an olive branch must have exchanged hands to cease fire, for obvious reasons. That was the texture of the anti-corruption war.

If you were still at sea as to the colour of corruption a la Buhari, turn to the COVID-19 era. It was an ear-full! You’d hear all kinds of funny tales – how tens and hundreds of billions of naira, were disbursed to your fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts in your villages and how they danced in the streets thanking your Buhari – how your children and those of your relations were fed well on daily bases, with an egg a day in tow. The funnier part is you’ll be declared a liar and hater of the President, if you as much as asked for proof. If you asked which child and continued searching for the schools where the goodies were being distributed in your locality, you’re quick to be labelled a hater.

Didn’t you see that video where one Hajia Sadia Umar Farouq, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, had stacks of money, from which she was handing out stipends to those women dancing and singing in appreciation? We even heard on one occasion how about N2.6billion was shared out in one day. Funny?

In fact, the bazaar of that era became so widespread that tracking became almost impossible. Don’t even attempt to count the figures. Was it the N60billion for the revival of the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), N100-plus-billions for aviation, or the N30billion from Ca-COVID warehoused by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for infrastructure and essentials? Where would the counting start or end? It was a situation of the proverbial elephant meat where people came to take their own cuts. All you heard were billions and more billions.

It even got to a point where Nigerians, who could no longer wait started breaking into warehouses and started helping themselves. A particular warehouse in Lagos was actually invaded to retrieve cartons of palliatives meant for the people. Even in their various states of damage due to long storage, they were carted away all the same. The strange part was the same item was already bearing the image of a certain Lagos lawmaker and high society woman, preparatory as giveaways for her birthday. Of course, she was not alone. While moneys disappeared into thin air, most probably finding their ways into banks abroad, food items, medicals and other essential products, meant to be shared were taken to private homes or even repackaged and sold in the markets. Consequences? Find it!

What consequences could be meted out to those involved in mere pilfering of pittances when the main brigands who completely shut the nation out of its very economic livewire were neither identified nor punished? Or didn’t you hear that in the last three years, not a single kobo accrued to Nigeria from oil sales. They simply disappeared into oblivion. Every single cent of oil sold! During the period, oil thieves, said to have existed for decades, simply went haywire, graduating from mere piping of products into local barges to allowing shiploads coming into the country, lifting the oil and taking off to their destinations without batting an eyelid.

Even when one of the ships was caught in the shores of another country and sent back to Nigeria, what did we hear? It was said to have completely burnt down, of course, with probable evidence destroyed. But don’t even bet on it. That could even be a decoy. The same ship in question, might have set sail again, this time under cover. The patrons of the banditry could have also procured an old carcass from somewhere and set it ablaze to confuse Nigerian. Even beyond the drama, have you heard anything again?

Don’t even talk about the case of oil subsidy. That has since become an old, worn-out story. What is new is that the thievery have become more pronounced and stakes gone higher. As the heist went on in the oil industry, other sectors were not spared. You probably didn’t hear about the can of worms opened up at the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), when the former Director General Hadiza Bala Usman launched her book, recently. Find and read her tales.

You’d also may not have heard how the Abacha loot controversies – how each of the millions of dollars returned from foreign countries became mired in a morass of inane tales – how they developed wings. The recent we’ve heard is how Abubakar Malami was being drilled by members of the National Assembly on the loss of $2.4billion unremitted oil revenue.

If you didn’t or have not been following, you’d certainly be unaware of the current case of the Nigeria Air, a project in which multiple millions of dollars were buried only for planes owned by another entity to be brought into the country. Read that up also. That would help you understand the damage of the Buhari regime.

What could be more petrifying than the 2023 general elections? In fact, Nigerians would have forgiven him if after destroying virtually all things he touched, he had bestowed the country with a credible election as he not only promised them but boasted to the world. But like Pharaoh, whose heart remained hardened in spite of the afflictions of his people of Egypt, he was determined to punish Nigerians further – the reason he conducted the worst election in the history of Nigeria.

As the curtains fall on his inglorious era, the world could only scoff at a Buhari, who got everything he needed to be great, but who is leaving the stage totally disgraced for failing to perform. It was with with his hands that he destroyed the mystery of a Spartan, no-nonsense nationalist, and replaced same with an unforgiving, petty leader, who went as low as to arrest and detain a compatriot for naming his dog Buhari. That’s his record.

He also would be remembered for running the most divisive and nepotistic government in history, where unless you were either a Fulani or Muslim, you must take the short end of the stick, where the likes of Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho would be hunted down, hounded and clamped into detention or sent on exile, for airing their opinions but Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen, who wiped out whole communities are released and handed down privileged positions.

As he exits power, it would be the end of an inglorious era – the end of body language which heralded the beginning – the end of Mai Gaskiya (the Man of Truth) – the end of deceit and lies. Hopefully, it will also be the end of the killins – the sorrow, tears and blood in Kaduna, in Jos, in Benue, in Owo, in Anambra and other places!

Yes! His aides and hangers-on will defend him and give him titles, but for millions of Nigerians, he remains the worst the country has ever witnessed. That fact will come home soon when the coterie of courtiers as cheerleaders must have disappeared and history begins to take its full count. Yes! The haze would soon disappear to leave a disgrace, lonely man who earned his place for not only being wicked to his people, but playing God!

Lessons? They’re already dressing Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the one on whom he conferred a stolen mandate with the same robe. They call him great names – lullaby him as The Wise Man of Bourdillon, The New Aso Rock Jagaban – the new God. Will he hug the title? We watch!

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Columns

The Three-Month Sprint (1): Philosophical Architecture of an Intellectual Trilogy of State Decay

Published

15 hours ago

June 14, 2026

Whirlwindnews

Last week on The Sunday Stew, we unveiled the Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI), a quantitative metric I developed as an extension of the Trinity of State Decay. It is meant to be a mathematical instrument for measuring the degree of separation between a state’s juridical sovereignty and its lived reality. I had planned to follow up today with the first instalment of a three-part series on the methodology and indicators of the DSI.

Then, from the middle of last week, there was a development that sent me into a sustained period of reflection.

On Wednesday, Zenodo — the open-access repository developed by CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, and the European Commission — published my 16,315-word theoretical treatise, ‘The Trinity of State Decay (Part 1): Sovereign Decoupling and Rival Sovereignty — A Theoretical Statement.’ On Thursday, Harvard Dataverse, owned and operated by Harvard University, published the same work. On Friday morning, an email arrived from the Social Science Open Access Repository (SSOAR), operated by GESIS — the Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Germany — confirming that they too had accepted, published, and archived the paper.

Late Prof. Edward Said

I sat with that for a while. It is exactly three months since The Sunday Stew made its debut. In those three short months, we have produced an original analytical framework (The Insecurity Triad), a comprehensive theoretical formulation (the Trinity of State Decay), and a quantitative index (DSI). Within the same period, the framework entered global scholarly circulation, and now the theoretical paper has been published by three of the world’s most respected scholarly repositories within seventy-two hours of each other. I found myself thinking about the symmetry of it: three months. A trilogy of original contributions. A triple publication in a single week.
Numbers sometimes carry meaning far beyond arithmetic. This one felt like it was trying to tell me something.

I. The Seed Planted in a Library

When The Sunday Stew was conceived, I did not set out to become a framework architect, a theorist, or an index creator. But looking back, I think the seed was planted much earlier — by accident, in the history section of the University of Calabar library.

I was preparing a term paper on Nigerian history. Our lecturer was the late Dr. Erim O. Erim — a man you had to do your absolute best to satisfy. I was moving along the shelves when I stopped. What arrested me was a name on a spine: Sigmund Freud. His biography. I could not understand what such a book was doing in the history section. I took it anyway, borrowed it, and in one week read it cover to cover.

Of everything I read about Freud’s life, one idea lodged itself in my subconscious and has never left: Freud’s concept of immortality. He defined it simply but profoundly: immortality is being known by many anonymous people. Not a mystical phenomenon, but a psychological and systemic one. It is the act of leaving behind an intellectual footprint so distinct that your ideas are absorbed by millions of people who may never meet you, but who must use your language to understand their own reality.

Freud did not merely write a theory. He changed the global vocabulary. Because of Freud, anonymous people who have never read a page of psychoanalysis use the words ego, subconscious, projection, and defence mechanism every single day. They are operating within his architecture without ever knowing it. That, he argued, was immortality.

I was a young man in a university library who had come looking for Nigerian history and stumbled into a philosophy of intellectual legacy. I did not know, at the time, that I had been given a compass.

•Late Antonio Gramsci

II. The Book C.Don Handed Me

Several years later, when I lived in Lagos, I had someone who was (and still is) a friend, a big brother, and a mentor. The home of C.Don Adinuba — then at Ilupeju — was like my second home. I could walk in at any time. C.Don was the perfect host, and his wife a hostess of uncommon warmth. There was never a dull moment in that house. He knew I loved books, and he is himself one of the most intellectually deep people I have ever encountered.

On one of those days, he pulled a book from his shelf, handed it to me, and said: “Go and read this.” I looked at it. The author was unfamiliar. I asked: “Who is Edward Said?” He replied: “Just go and read the book.”

Representations of the Intellectual — which grew out of Said’s 1993 Reith Lectures for the BBC — turned out to be, apart from the Bible, one of the most impactful books I have ever read. In its pages I first encountered Antonio Gramsci, whose Prison Notebooks has made an enduring impression on my intellectual formation and theoretical development. Said’s argument — that the intellectual’s vocation is to speak truth to power, to represent the unrepresented, and to refuse the comfort of specialisation in favour of the discomfort of genuine engagement — became a way of understanding what journalism, practised seriously, is actually for.

And from Antonio Gramsci, particularly his broad conception of the intellectual, I came to understand that intellectuals are not confined to universities, research institutes, or academic titles. Gramsci argued that intellectual activity exists wherever people help shape ideas, interpret reality, organise knowledge, and influence how society understands itself. Through that lens, I realised that journalism is not merely a profession of reporting events; it is an inherently intellectual vocation.

As a journalist, I do more than gather facts and relay information. I help frame public conversations, interrogate power, highlight social challenges, preserve collective memory, and contribute to the global marketplace of ideas. This understanding deepened my sense of responsibility to society. It reinforced the belief that journalism carries a duty not only to inform but also to enlighten, challenge assumptions, encourage critical thinking, and provide citizens with the knowledge necessary to make informed decisions.

Gramsci’s perspective helped me see that the journalist occupies a vital bridge in the relationship between structured knowledge and public life. The responsibility is therefore not simply to report what happens, but to pursue truth rigorously, interpret developments thoughtfully, and contribute constructively to the intellectual and moral development of society. In that sense, journalism became for me not just a career, but a pure form of public intellectual engagement.

These two books — one stumbled upon by accident, one pressed into my hands by C.Don — formed the philosophical foundation on which everything that follows in this column rests. I did not know that at the time. I know it now.

Late Sigmund Freud

III. The Question That Started Everything

When The Sunday Stew made its debut on March 8th, I initially envisioned a column anchored broadly on faith, character, and the structural forces that shape society, with a focus on Nigeria and Africa in a global context. But the second edition on March 15 inspired our current trajectory. Entitled ‘A Country Without Earthquakes — Yet Shaken by Itself’, it explored the tragic reality of Nigeria manufacturing catastrophic man-made disasters while other nations contend merely with natural ones. The insights that came from writing that piece—drawing heavily from an expansive interview a former colleague and I conducted with the late Professor Jubril Aminu in 2012—inspired the rigorous analytical direction this column ultimately took, beginning with the development of The Insecurity Triad.

At the outset, I only set out to understand why Nigeria keeps bleeding. I wanted to discover why the same communities bury the same dead in the same circumstances decade after decade, while the state issues the same predictable condemnations, commissions the same redundant reports, and recommends the same superficial reforms that are never implemented. I set out, in other words, to do journalism.
What I did not anticipate was that the honest, uncompromising pursuit of that question would eventually produce what the academy calls a macro-theoretical framework—and that this framework would, in time, find its home at Harvard and other top-tier scientific repositories.

The Trinity of State Decay did not arrive fully formed. It emerged from a profound frustration—the frustration of a scholar-journalist who has spent years watching analytical frameworks imported wholesale from external academic traditions fail to explain the immediate reality happening in front of his eyes.
Failed state theory, useful as far as it goes, describes a static outcome. It names the corpse but completely fails to trace the actual cause of death. The Fragile States Index produces superficial comparative rankings but isolates no mechanisms. What was missing was an indigenous framework that could explain the operational process—the structural logic by which sovereign authority fractures and is progressively displaced by rival formations.

The insight, when it came, was disarmingly simple: states do not lose control randomly. They lose it systematically along three specific axes—Money, Land, and Mind. When the state loses its command of fiscal and economic legitimacy, when it loses territorial authority over its physical space, and when it loses ideological and psychological hold over the behavioural psyche of the population, something else moves in. Not chaos. Something far worse than chaos: a disciplined, purposeful Shadow Order, which is often more efficient at its enforcement functions than the formal state it is displacing.
This is what the Trinity of State Decay theorises. Not the mere failure of the state—but the active production of an alternative to it.

The geography of legitimate knowledge production has long maintained a centre and a periphery. The global centre produces the theoretical frameworks; the periphery receives them, submissively applies them, and occasionally pushes back against them in minor footnotes. What is happening right now with the Sundiata Post Intelligence Unit (SPIU)—with The Insecurity Triad already circulating in global academic repositories and the Trinity of State Decay now anchored across multiple institutions—is a clear demonstration that intellectual rigour does not possess a postal address.

The publication of the Trinity of State Decay on global scholarly platforms is not an end point. It is the formal opening of a conversation three decades in the making. If in the months, years, and decades to come, a professor at Harvard, a post-doctoral fellow in Legon, a PhD candidate in Oxford, or an undergraduate in Makerere writing a term paper finds it useful and engages with it, our purpose will have been fulfilled. None of them may ever know me personally, just as I never knew Freud, Gramsci, or Said.

Coda: The Symmetry Completes Itself

I began this reflection thinking about the symmetry of three: three months, a trilogy of contributions, a triple publication. But symmetry, I have come to understand, is not always visible at the beginning of a journey. It reveals itself exclusively in retrospect—which is, incidentally, also how Sovereignty Decoupling becomes visible to those who are living through it.

A young man borrowing a biography of Freud by accident in a university library. A mentor handing him Edward Said across a table in Ilupeju. Several years of frontline journalism asking the same stubborn questions about why our nation bleeds. A column that began as political commentary and rapidly transformed, by structural necessity, into a site of deep theoretical production. And now: Harvard, Zenodo, GESIS-SSOAR, all in a single week.

Three months. A trilogy. A triple publication. And with SSOAR’s confirmation arriving on Friday morning, our overall global archival footprint expands to seven critical institutional repositories when we include the foundational papers of The Insecurity Triad: SSRN, Harvard Dataverse, Zenodo, SocArXiv, SSOAR, ResearchGate, and Academia.edu. The symmetry, it appears, was not done with me yet.

The Trinity of State Decay is now available on Harvard Dataverse (doi:10.7910/DVN/ZQWEM7), Zenodo (doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20580627), SSOAR (nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-110533-8), ResearchGate, and Academia.edu. Read it. Push back against it. Apply it. Find its limits. That is exactly what it is there for.

Trust is sacred. Stay seasoned.

•Dr. Max Amuchie is a Scholar-Journalist, Media CEO, and Lead Researcher at the Sundiata Post Intelligence Unit (SPIU). He is the architect of The Insecurity Triad framework for African security analysis, the Trinity of State Decay theory, and the Decoupling Sovereignty Index (DSI)—original, indigenous analytical frameworks for understanding, categorising, and measuring conflict, state decay, and sovereignty in the Global South. He writes The Sunday Stew, a weekly syndicated column on faith, character, and the structural forces that shape society, with a focus on Nigeria, Africa, and the Global South in a changing world.

X (formerly Twitter): @MaxAmuchie | Email: max.a@sundiatapost.com | Tel: +234(0)8053069436

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Columns

Atiku-Amaechi tag-team: An indication of ADC’s hideous plan for Obi

Published

2 weeks ago

May 31, 2026

Whirlwindnews

Have you been watching the drama happening in ADC? I have, and I have been thoroughly amused doing so. Have you been following the television appearances of Rotimi Amaechi recently? Did you see how the former Governor of Rivers State had been vibrating, assuring of his victory at the party’s presidential primaries?

Did you hear him boasting how he was going to vanquish Atiku Abubakar, former Vice President and now the presidential candidate of the party, indicating that ADC members would prefer him over the seventh-time election-contesting Nigerian record holder, because of his (Amaechi’s) records?

Did you see the vehemence with which he warned that television host, to “stop that nonsense,” for suggesting that he could end up as the VP candidate to the same Atiku? Did you see how he rolled his bulging eyes and how angry he sounded?

Did you read the statement of the former Minister of Transportation, rejecting the outcome of the ADC presidential primaries, even before it was finally announced on Wednesday.

Now, pan the camera to the Abuja home of the same Amaechi – by the way – I could swear the ambiance could compete with the palace of the Sultan of Brunei – how did he do it – but how could I forget his wife is a money-minting machine!

Did you see the selfsame man with Atiku? Did you notice the difference? Did you notice the robustness, the comicalness? Did you watch the chumminess and the camaraderie? What meaning did you read into it? You actually have to be an initiate to correctly read everything perfectly.

Just wait for a few days to hear the announcement. I won’t be the one to tell you that the huffing and puffing, the air-punching and the table-banging is all for one thing – the VP position.

For those who had advocated that Obi stayed back and contested with Atiku, it would have been a fatal gambit. He would have come a distant third in the contest, competing with Mohammed Hayatu-Deen. Not because it will be so by the desires of the members, but the goons, wanted it so and would have made it so.

Even the position of the VP which hitherto had been bandied as his for the asking, would have eluded him. Amaechi was there to pick it up.

You heard Dele Momodu an accomplice in that plot telling you that Amaechi was more experienced than Obi in that interview with Charles Aniagolu on ARISE NEWS Television’s Prime Time.

It was all figured out. If Peter Obi had fallen to the plot he would have been the greatest political mugu of the century. He would have rubbished the rock-strong foundation on which his profile was built and stands today – as businessman and politician.

Indeed the plot appeared skewed towards not only making him wave goodbye to politics forever, but caast a huge slur on his exhilarating credentials that account to his being celebrated as one of the most successful Nigerian business tycoons today.

Only a few seconds and the trap would have snapped. Had he waited a few days more in that ADC environment, it would have been over. He would have been trapped in the odd situation of point of no return.

By now he would have become an object of mockery and an item of sport for his enemies. Tons of them would be having a bellyful of laughter over his ordeal by now – had he wasted a second more.

But having that laugh would mean that the eagle has lost its lustre. Obi isn’t Obi just by name. Now, here is the Obi they wanted to trick into a trap. Still in his early 20s, he drove three cars he bought with his own money before graduating from the university.

First year – a Volkswagen Beetle (today’s Venza) – second year a Peugeot 505 (today’s Prado) – third year – a BMW (Today’s Maybach). Now think of yourself as a student then. Think of your children that are students today. That would bring you closer to the persona in question.

It didn’t end there. Still as an undergraduate, he owned the supermarket on campus. There was more. He built residential houses and became a landlord to students and locals in the university community – one of them, said to be Abubakar Sa’ad, the current Sultan of Sokoto, who was then a military officer.

De hear o! This same Obi, was among the 1,000-ONLY, UK customers the American Express Bank gave their Platinum Cards. You know what that means. In the whole of the UK – including oyibo people of all nationalities doing business.

Before his 33rd birthday, this Obi, had become Chairman of a commercial bank and director of other blue-chip companies. At the same age when his colleagues still clutch files in their armpits in pursuit of jobs, he was already heading a conglomerate of firms dealing with supplies and distribution of goods.

So, add all these up! Imagine the number of intriguing situations he must have dealt with in this long journey. Imagine the boardroom politics. Imaging the various business tricks he must have survived.
In politics, this same Obi practically cut off the head of the political monster prowling Anambra for years.

Before his arrival, the whole of the state was one huge conflagration and cataclysm. Elements sponsored by patrons of evil had razing down structures including the Government House of governor’s residence. Anambra was all chaos – a huge bedlam!

But all these Obi faced and conquered, arresting the tempest, quietening the tide and smoothening the waves – not without battles – there was a deluge of them – but with willpower, wisdom, tenacity, consistency, and above all – courage.

He battled the electoral heist that stole his original mandate, won, then impeachment, triumphed, then abrupt tenure termination, challenged it and returned to power – battled entrenched interests in the labour unions – teachers, doctors, workers – et al – prevailed and handed down a new Anambra sitting on the foundation of sobriety and good behaviour.

Now this was the man they wanted to trick. Obi’s case would have been that of the late John Chukwu, the hero in the tragicomedy, Isubru Ekperi – described as the crab which swam across the mighty ocean, but fell in the woman’s pot of soup.

Had Obi, stayed in ADC to contest against Atiku, his fate would have mimicked Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, whom for fear of being thought weak, destroyed his own destiny by killing Ikemefuna and ended up committing suicide! But providence was on his side;

Thankfully, he did not. And today, NDC provides a new horizon. Nigerians are being provided the opportunity of a new country, that could rise from the ashes of the old order – a clean break from the past – a new hope of awakening the sleeping giant!

The Tiny Voice!

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Columns

Jonathan 2027: Between honour of national duty and shame of self-interest

Published

3 weeks ago

May 28, 2026

Whirlwindnews

By Sunny Igboanugo

On Wednesday, April 22, 2026, Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria’s 14th leader and the fourth elected President was at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, on a visit to President Bola Tinubu. Nobody knew the content of that visit because discussions were conducted closed doors.

However, knowing Tinubu, would anything concerning him ever be free of politics, especially given the nuances of the season? Would the snake ever give birth to a creature that is short?

Naturally, as it is wont with Nigeria where one event takes over from the other in quick successions, the Jonathan visit, naturally disappeared – buried inside the reservoir of public consciousness.

But then, things have begun to unfold that people are not only now returning to that April visit, but are taking notes as well as connecting the dots.

Nothing yet seems definite, except in the realm of the popular local saying that when a witch cries at night and the baby dies in the morning, the people know where to look.

Indeed, the droppings of the caterpillar on the ground is making people look up to the tree to see if they are actually eating the green leaves on them. Naturally, events around the 14th President, do not look ordinary – at least not that ordinary to escape more than a scant public scrutiny.

So, when on Thursday May 7, 2026 youths stormed the Abuja office of the ex-President urging him to run for the office he left in 2015, after his historic defeat by Muhammadu Buhari, it elicited a deeper interest from the previous attempts. Yes! It wasn’t the first time Nigerians would be making the pitch. Several groups had tried in the past, even as far back as the 2023 elections.

So, the attempt three weeks ago, was not new. But, this time, eyebrows were raised all the same because it seemed to conduce more intriguing interpretations. Therefore, instead of mere passing interests, Nigerians are now interrogating deeply, putting two and two together.

How much did the former President know about that visit? Did those youths ambush him or was he in the know that such a visit would take place? Was it what is known here as an arrangee – a well-crafted political facade?

Then came the angle of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). A long time ago, when speculations were rife that Peter Obi, was being courted by the former ruling party to return and run for the 2027 presidential election on its platform, Jerry Gana, a stalwart of the party had served notice that they even had a more seducing and deliverable option. It turned out to be Jonathan.

So, long before the Nyesom Wike devastating blow on the party that has kept it in its prostrate state, Jonathan had been on the cards as the number one option for the party. Therefore, it follows that the current steps the party is taking to draft him in, to run as its candidate in the election, is normal. But is it?

The argument in PDP quarters for the Jonathan choice is because he is the only one constitutionally barred from contesting a second term, he is the most fitted to satisfy all shades of political interests in Nigeria today, especially the North eager to return to power. Quite scintillating.

But seducing as this appears, there is a hugely compelling argument against the move. A groundswell of analysts swear that the ex-President is being pushed into the ring as an instrument to stop Peter Obi, the current moving train threatening to crush the ambition of Tinubu to remain in office beyond 2027. In other words, the sole reason is to play the spoiler role.

Supposing this is the reason. Then what is before us is more fatal than critical. This is the same Jonathan whose singular act of calling Buhari that morning on March 31, 2015 to concede defeat, suddenly catapulted him to a global democratic icon – the same that hops into presidential planes to other countries in Africa to straighten crooked democratic roads.

Now, would the same Jonathan swear with his church mind that Tinubu’s model of democracy is what he would prescribe even for an enemy country, let alone Nigeria? What aspect of the country has Tinubu not damaged. So, what would make him a Tinubu’s ally in the further destruction of Nigeria, if he truly loves the country?

This was the same Jonathan who swore that his ambition was not worth the blood of any Nigerian. Is he not aware that the land on which he’s standing is already soaked with the blood of the same citizens by the sheer butchery that is happening daily in the country under the nose of the most underwhelming President yet? Isn’t this the issue now?

Indeed, not a few people have argued that Jonathan should be in the forefront of the Obi project. For one, Obi was once his appointee apart from being a sworn ally. So, he would be in a position to ascertain his true qualities first hand and confirm that he’s the only one among the lot that could fix the country. Even an imbecile knows that Obi would create the clean break from the past that Nigeria needs today to build the future everyone desires.

Besides, he Jonathan, if anything is substantially part of the reason the South East is in its current state at the moment, the level of support the area gave him throughout his tenure is part of the reason the late Buhari increased his hatred for the Igbo a million times more – a phenomenon he transferred through the APC to Tinubu – and which the current President has been unable to extricate himself from.

Okay, is the former President not aware that the position Tinubu is sitting on today belongs to the South East – the zone that took him like one of them that they even gave him an Igbo name – Ebele. If everyone else shortchanges Ndigbo, would he also join, given the foregoing? What manner of ingratitude would that be?

O yes! He has had his Villa meeting. PDP has adopted him as their candidate. Even the legal barrier that would have stopped him, was cleared on Monday when Justice Peter Lifu of the Federal High Court, Abuja, handed him the all-clear sign. He has told the world that he is consulting. While at it, hopefully, more people would tell him the home truth.

Fortunately, he was the one who said it is easy to wake someone that is actually asleep than someone pretending to be asleep. Regrettably, by his silence since the obscene drama began, it appears he prefers the latter. Therefore, his action would not derive from ignorance.

If he finally bites at the apple, it wouldn’t be because he didn’t know how much Tinubu has messed up Nigeria and the implication of reinforcing him with another four years.

His complicity wouldn’t mean that he doesn’t know what to do to reverse the trend. It would only mean that personal interest has taken the better part of him and not the love of the country.

If he deliberately makes that choice, with both eyes open, then he’s welcome in the hall of infamy rather than honour. Fortunately, there is still a window to prove that the foregoing was a mere political nightmare and not reality. But otherwise, it would be apposite for Nigerians to say in unison – GOODLUCK?

My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!

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