Columns
Why God disgraced Buhari!
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!
I will always refer to the encounter I once had with Kenneth Idiodi. He was then the leader of the Rosicrucian Society in Nigeria, otherwise known as Amok. It was a sit-down at Zodiac Hotel Enugu. Then, I was the reporter of The Guardian in the Coal City.
You know the Amok faith bases its philosophy or belief on the law of Retributive Justice – the law of Karma. That is to say, everything you do in life has its rewards or punishment in equal measure – much like the measure you give, the measure you receive.
I don’t know how much this society draws or links this belief from or with the Bible, but I do recall Jesus Christ warning Simon Peter – return your sword to the scabbard – for he who kills by the sword, dies by the sword.
As a child growing up I listened to one of the epics of Oriental Brothers with the lyrics – ogbu mma ga-esi n’mma na, ogba egbe ga-esi n’egbe na ooo! Translated – he who kills by the sword will die by the sword, he who kills by the gun will die by the nozzle of the gun.
Now, here is where this is relevant in present Nigerian reality – the reason I’m putting details of that encounter out publicly once again, having done so previously.
During that encounter, Idiodi used one event in Nigeria to illustrate his point. He told me of a Nigerian leader who commanded the troop that carried out the Asaba massacre in the heat of the Nigerian civil war – an episode, said to have claimed over 2,000 able-bodied men who had come out to welcome the Nigerian soldiers with songs and dances only to fall in the hail of bullets that descended on them like rainstorms – was not spared by fate.
That commander was to meet his own death in a hail of bullets even as a Head of State. He never mentioned the name of the military top brass. But I used my tongue to count my teeth to come to the answer. You could also do same – use your tongue.
Now, how does this relate? You may have followed the outing of General Yakubu Gowon at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre, Abuja, where he presented his autobiography titled: My Life of Duty and Allegiance, that contained what seemed his memoir on the Nigerian civil war, which he prosecuted as Head of State.
I’m sure you must have been observing the debate therefrom that event. Now, I’m not so much enamoured of the debate as I’m of the nuances surrounding that unfortunate episode and the role of Gowon in it, given my takeaway from that Idiodi encounter some two decades ago.
Does Gowon, now a nonagenarian really believe that presenting a pious, if not saintly account of himself to the world as snippets of his book, which I picked up here and there suggests, truly suffices for the atrocities of that period?
Take the Asaba massacre for example. Was that the handiwork of Odumegwu Ojukwu, the Biafran leader, whom the former Head of State seems to blame for everything that went wrong. Was he also the one that commanded that mass slaughtering of innocent men?
Under your nose as Head of State, you watched citizens slaughtered mercilessly like infested herds in the streets – you watched young girls corralled into leprosy colonies and wantonly raped before being wasted – you watched as train coaches bearing people fleeing the scene were stopped and their human cargoes thrown alive into River Benue like rotten goods for fishes to feast on – you watched all these and didn’t lift a finger.
Then as Head of State, you not only supervised but watched millions of children with distended stomachs, tiny feet, glazy eyes, heavy heads on ropelike necks, practically begging for death to come quickly and save them from further punishment.
You supervised and watched the cataclysmic eruptions from the blitzkrieg on churches, markets and hospitals – all to keep Nigeria together. In your mind the brutal and merciless butchery of innocent people who were not soldiers and had nothing to do with the war could be explained away just like that?
O! It was Ojukwu that caused it. Ojukwu was the one who released the bombs, caused the blockades that led to the kwashiorkor that killed millions or other atrocities thereof? What a pity!
Now, I return to Idiodi. How else could anyone interpret today’s Nigeria without introducing the law of retributive justice that the Amok leader spoke of? How do you fault the link of the commander who massacred over 2,000 souls dying by the barrel of the same gun, even as Head of State?
How could anyone fail to relate what is happening to our Gowon today with the past? This is a Geneal that wakes up to see hundreds of his brothers and sisters being buried in mass graves as was done during the onslaught he supervised against another people and he still thinks it has nothing to do with him?
Now, the story you told at that event in Abuja on Tuesday, is not new. You simply repeated yourself. My interpretation of that event is that you’re a man undergoing daily torture. You wouldn’t be a human being otherwise, given what is before you, which didn’t start today.
You’re probably trying to escape your fate by appealing to public sympathy. How helpful could that be in the face of the clear evidence of your culpability in the deliberate wasting of more than three million souls? Nobody would believe you.
Yes! They could humour you. But that’s the best anyone could do for you. I hear money rained like a fountain and that you left the scene with billions of naira in your kitty. At 90? Haba General!
Now, here is the thing General. None of these would help.
None would work. You have tried prayers. But you forget that the prayer of sinner is an abomination and a reproach before God, unless he repents. You have also written the book. Surely, this too would end up in the trashcan of history – meaningless piece of conjectures, propaganda, half-truths and outright lies – perhaps!
But, why don’t you try the one thing you have been running away from, for more than five decades – go on your knees in total supplication and surrender, repentance and penance – then rise, call all Nigerians and empty yourself with the truth.
Thereafter openly apologise to the millions of souls whose tormenting wailing you probably hear every day during your disturbed sleep and in your quiet moments, but choose to suppress with these baby tales. Ask them for forgiveness, genuinely and see. There may lie the answer you seek.
Try that and see if it wouldn’t be a more efficacious cure for this decades-old wound than this Ojukwu-bashing and those wasted prayer sessions. You might not only have atoned for the past, but saved the future. May God guide you.
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice
By MAX AMUCHIE | The Sunday Stew
In the last two weeks, Parts One and Two diagnosed a structural mutation in the Nigerian state: a dual sovereignty system in which the Institutional Mirage performs authority while the Shadow Order exercises it, sustained by The Insecurity Triad as a mechanism of mutual reproduction.
What remains is the hardest question in political theory: not what is happening, but whether it can be reversed.
The answer is yes—but not through reform.
Systems that reproduce decay cannot be repaired within their own logic. They must be structurally interrupted.
The Trinity does not collapse. It is displaced.
From Ritual Governance to Peripheral Presence
The first reversal targets the geography of illusion.
The Institutional Mirage is concentrated in the symbolic centre—where governance is performed through summits, communiqués, and administrative ceremony—while dissolving at the periphery where authority is actually tested.
This produces a distorted state: visible in Abuja, absent in the borderlands.
To reverse the Trinity, the state must abandon Ritual Governance—the substitution of performance for presence—and return to the empirical occupation of territory.
This is not military occupation. It is administrative presence as sovereignty.
A state exists not when it speaks in the capital, but when:
a child attends a functioning school without paying a parallel tax of fear;
a farmer harvests without negotiating with non-state authority;
a dispute is resolved by a recognised court faster than an armed intermediary.
Governance is not restored by declaration. It is restored by continuity.
Where state presence becomes routine, the Shadow loses its monopoly on predictability.
From Pacification Bargaining to Sovereign Integrity
The second reversal confronts a deeper failure: negotiated sovereignty.
The state has increasingly drifted into a system of Negotiated Sovereignty sustained through what may be described as Pacification Bargaining—the purchase of temporary calm from rival authority structures through ransom logic, amnesty arrangements, protection payments, or informal accommodation.
This is not strategy. It is dependency disguised as pragmatism.
Every bargain strengthens The Insecurity Triad by:
monetising abduction economies;
legitimising territorial extraction;
reinforcing the Shadow’s role as a negotiating sovereign.
The result is a system of self-financing violence in which each concession funds the next cycle of coercion.
Pacification Bargaining does not resolve insecurity. It institutionalises it.
Each transaction deepens the perception that coercion is profitable, territorial pressure is negotiable, and sovereign authority is conditional rather than absolute.
Sovereign recovery therefore requires rupture in this economy.
The state must reassert a non-negotiable monopoly over:
taxation;
adjudication;
legitimate force.
Integrity, in this context, is not moral posture. It is institutional refusal to participate in markets of coercion.
A state that bargains over its coercive authority is not managing insecurity—it is outsourcing sovereignty.
The Critical Break: Dismantling the Insecurity Triad
To dismantle The Insecurity Triad is to break the loop between performed sovereignty and enforced sovereignty.
This cannot be achieved through security operations alone, though coercive force remains an essential and non-negotiable instrument of restoring empirical sovereignty. It requires something deeper: the reconstruction of institutional credibility in the very spaces the Institutional Mirage has abandoned.
It requires the state to stop performing governance and start delivering it. To stop negotiating the terms of its own authority and start enforcing them.
To recover the map—not in abstraction, but in detail: name by name, community by community—that armed actors are actively redrawing through coercion, taxation, and enforced renaming.
Dismantling the Triad is therefore not only a security task. It is a reversal of political geography itself.
The Cartographic Re-occupation of the Republic
The Shadow Order does not only occupy land. It reorganises meaning.
Through what may be understood as Constitutional Erasure, it renames territories, restructures local identity, and replaces the symbolic map through which authority is recognised.
Once this occurs, sovereignty is no longer contested physically alone—it is contested cognitively.
Cartographic Re-occupation is therefore not symbolic politics. It is structural restoration.
It requires three coordinated acts.
First, administrative re-anchoring: the immediate restoration of functioning institutions—schools, clinics, courts, and local administration—under continuous state presence.
Second, symbolic restoration: the reassertion of original geographic and civic identities through formal public renaming and constitutional recognition.
Third, cognitive consolidation: governance must cease to appear as intervention and become the default condition of life.
The state is not restored when it returns to territory. It is restored when territory returns to the state’s cognitive map.
Intellectual Closure: The State After Fragmentation
The deeper insight of this architecture is that sovereignty in Nigeria is no longer singular.
What has emerged is a fragmented order in which authority is distributed between competing logics of governance—one performed, one enforced, both partially functional, neither complete.
This is where African political thought clarifies the structure beneath the surface.
The logic of adaptive survival described by Jean-François Bayart explains why the state persists even as it weakens. Achille Mbembe explains how survival itself becomes managed rather than guaranteed.
Together, they clarify the central claim of the Trinity: this is not collapse. It is reorganisation.
Closing Movement
Nigeria does not face a singular collapse of authority. It faces a structured competition between performed sovereignty and functional sovereignty.
The Mirage still speaks in the language of the state.
The Shadow still governs in the language of necessity.
Between them, society survives by navigating two competing logics of order.
The question is no longer who governs.
It is whether governance itself can be reassembled into a single coherent structure.
The Reversal Condition: Sequential Sovereignty Restoration
The Trinity is reversible, but only in sequence.
Protection must be restored before compliance can shift.
Compliance must shift before territorial credibility stabilises.
Territorial credibility must stabilise before institutional authority can move from performance to function.
Any inversion of this order produces relapse.
The system is not resistant to reform. It is resistant to mis-sequencing.
The Trinity reverses only when sovereignty becomes empirically enforceable again through the sequential reconstitution of protection, compliance, and territorial credibility, thereby disrupting the mutual reproduction loop between the Institutional Mirage and the Shadow Order sustained by The Insecurity Triad.
Where this sequence fails, the loop does not weaken. It adapts.
The Social Contract Is Not Broken — It Is Being Replaced
There can be no social contract in a state where the sovereign performs authority it does not possess, negotiates with rivals it cannot defeat, and watches—from the polished corridors of Abuja—as the names of its own communities are erased from the landscape it claims to govern.
The conventional framing of Nigeria’s crisis describes a broken social contract: the state has failed its obligations, and the people are paying the price.
That framing is not wrong. But it is insufficient.
A broken contract implies a single agreement that has lapsed—and the possibility, in principle, of renegotiation and restoration.
What the Trinity of State Decay reveals is something more structural.
The social contract is not merely broken. It is being replaced.
In the spaces where the Institutional Mirage does not reach—in the northwest, northeast, and Middle Belt, in renamed villages and abandoned farmlands—a rival contract is being written.
On rival terms. Under rival authority. With rival consequences for those who refuse to sign.
The Shadow Order does not offer freedom. It offers a different captivity—one organised around extraction, fear, and the brutal clarity of power that does not pretend to be something it is not.
Within its own logic, it is internally consistent and therefore predictable.
And in conditions where protection becomes uncertain and uneven, predictability itself begins to function as a substitute for legitimacy—not as consent, but as adaptation under constraint.
The Institutional Mirage, by contrast, sustains a different form of instability: the unpredictability of protection, the inconsistency of enforcement, and the performance of authority that does not reliably translate into outcomes.
It is this asymmetry—between predictable coercion and unpredictable protection—that accelerates the silent transfer of compliance from formal sovereignty to rival order.
Conventional state failure frameworks assume a linear erosion of capacity.
The Trinity departs from this by demonstrating a dual-state condition in which formal and rival sovereignties coexist, interact, and reinforce decay.
Nigeria is not a failed state.
It is a state in the grip of a Trinity.
The Definition
Drawing on the full architecture of the foregoing analysis, I now offer a formulation of the Trinity of State Decay theory:
The Trinity of State Decay is the decoupling of a state into rival sovereignties: the Institutional Mirage, which performs authority without fully possessing it, and the Shadow Order—or competing Shadow Orders—which exercises de facto authority in spaces the Mirage has vacated, both sustained by The Insecurity Triad as the mechanism of their mutual reproduction.
The Trinity intensifies where the Mirage fragments into competing centres of performed authority, accelerating the transfer of empirical sovereignty to rival structures.
The Trinity reverses only when sovereignty becomes empirically enforceable again as a stable condition of governance.
This condition is not defined by the mere presence of the state, but by the alignment of three realities: protection must be enforceable, compliance must orient toward the state, and territorial authority must remain continuous.
Where these diverge, sovereignty fragments.
Where they converge, sovereignty reconstitutes.
Recovery is not repair or return. It is the production of a new equilibrium in which the Mirage collapses into function, the Shadow is displaced, and The Insecurity Triad loses its organising role.
This condition is produced through sequence: protection must precede compliance, compliance must precede territorial credibility, and territorial credibility must precede institutional function. Any inversion produces relapse; where the sequence holds, the loop breaks.
While derived from the Nigerian case, the Trinity offers a generalisable framework for analysing state decay in contexts where formal sovereignty persists alongside entrenched systems of rival governance.
Stay seasoned.
•Concluded
•Dr. Max Amuchie is the CEO of Sundiata Post and architect of The Insecurity Triad Analytical Framework, and the Trinity of State Decay theory. He writes The Sunday Stew, a weekly syndicated column on faith, character, and the forces that shape society, with a focus on Nigeria and Africa in a global context.
X — @MaxAmuchie | Email: max.a@sundiatapost.com | Tel: +234(0)8053069436
Godwin Obaseki, former Governor of Edo State was the first to raise the alarm. He rang the bell in the most dramatic manner in that video that went viral on the heels of the 2023 presidential election. It was about the impending tsunami confronting the Nigerian political space – the Peter Obi phenomenon!
The forum the ex-governor spoke was supposed to be a family meeting – a kitchen cabinet affair, where he interacted with the inner caucus of his Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in his state. But he ended up not only alerting the nation, but passing the message about the new reality in the must pungent, direct and unobtrusive manner – something new has come – Peter Obi.
Whether it was meant to be a warning, an admonition or simply a subject of amusement – as the governor seemed tickled while delivering it – Obaseki’s words in that outing hit the right spot in national consciousness across board. The young, the old, the healthy and the infirm, all heard it clearly. Now whatever they did individually remains a different kettle of fish.
In that encounter, Obaseki had told his audience how, despite being a governor and the engine room of the PDP in the state, his own family had turned against him with all children and other young members enlisting into the Obidient Movement and how that was true of every other family in Nigeria.
Now, was Obaseki’s depiction false? Didn’t it come to pass on February 25, 2023, when Nigerians went to the polls? If Yakubu Mahmoud and his INEC had not contrived that technical glitches arrangement to abjure the mandate of the people in line with the grab, snatch and run philosophy of the present beneficiary of that obvious heist, Obi certainly would have been Nigerian President.
Had that happened, Obi’s would have been not only a clean and wholesome mandate, untainted by the paintbrush of rigging or other electoral infamies bespattering previous efforts, it would have been a national mandate – delivered by the people of Nigeria – likened only to Moshood Abiola’s June 12, 1993 presidential election victory.
In fact, so pan-Nigerian was the Peter Obi effort that Nigerians of all ethnic and religious persuasions came together and on their own, in clusters, within housing estates, in villages and communities, contributed money to fund their individual campaigns to promote the project of getting him to the Aso Rock Villa for the nation’s number one job.
Nigerians abroad – Yoruba – Hausa – Ibibio – Jukun – Igala – Tiv – Kalabari – Igbo – Edo – made special arrangements to return home with the sole purpose of not only promoting the agenda, but actually making the idea a reality by casting their votes for him.
Obi was the only one out of the lot that contested the election in 2023 that secured the endorsement of virtually all the ethic organisations across Nigeria.
Afenifere – the pan-Yoruba socio-cultural organisation – the Middle-Belt Forum (MBF) from the North Central – Pan-Niger Delta Forum PANDEF – for the South South region and Ohanaeze – their South East counterpart – all came together to declare their support for his presidential ambition.
Now this is the same person that some naysayers are labouring too hard, day and night to closet inside the straightjacket of ethnicity and religion. From Reno Omokri to Daniel Bwala to Bayo Onanuga and others controlling working from the Presidency to their counterparts at the Blantyre Plaza APC secretariat in Abuja – they continue to trumpet the spurious, bogus and fake narrative of Obi’s ambition being steeped in some sort of Igbo agenda.
Ironically, out of the entire lot, the selfsame Obi, is the only one who came out to boldly declare that nobody should cast a vote for him because he is Igbo, rather, they should do so because they are convinced about his ability to deliver on a new Nigeria of their dreams. No other had the courage to make such a bold declaration.
Surprisingly, even Wole Soyinka, one of Nigeria’s most iconic figures – a central voice in national and international affairs – Nigeria’s man of the century – the Kongi himself – who had hitherto shot himself to a position of a super being – of immortality – beyond reproach – without any credible reason even by his own conjecture – called the Obi ambition – an IPOB agenda.
That underscores the seriousness of the entire scenario. But interestingly, no matter how they try to trumpet it, their efforts have continued to mimic a snake striking at the shell of the tortoise with the aim of infusing its killer poison.
Their frustration not only hinges on this apparent failure but their current desperation too! The Obi brand has continued to soar beyond comprehension. So, when you hear the echoes of ethnic baiting, religious smears or other primordial sentiments, just know they are trying to increase the tempo of the din! Such a frustrating task!
My name is Sunny Igboanugo, I’m The Tiny Voice!
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