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Omatseye: A Psalm of Deception
By Paul Ibe
In stagecraft, ventriloquism stands out as one of the most entertaining and yet peculiar types of comedic performances. A lifeless puppet or dummy is placed on the thigh of a ventriloquist who inserts his hand into the body of the puppet. The ventriloquist mumbles words and creates a false illusion that the lifeless dummy is the one talking while it is, in fact, the ventriloquist that is secretly moving the lips of the dummy.
In his book titled ‘The Art of Ventriloquism: How to Throw Your Voice’ George Callahan teaches how to misdirect. The dummy has no mind of its own. It is an inanimate object incapable of imagination, speech, or motion but is still able to entertain an audience.
Enter Sam Oritsetimeyin Omatseye, the chairman of the editorial board of The Nation Newspaper owned by Bola A. Tinubu. To the undiscerning, Omatseye is a columnist who uses flowery language to express his opinion on topical issues. But a closer look would reveal to the discerning mind that this so-called writer is nothing but a puppet of his ventriloquist, Bola Tinubu.
In Omatseye, Tinubu has emerged the perfect puppet master pulling the strings and diverting attention from himself. This 63-year-old who ought to be a role model to the younger generation of journalists has sadly left his body and soul to the control of Tinubu, his master.
The sad part is that no one is spared from his vitriol. In June 2011, he penned a libellous article titled, ‘Awo Family Without an Awo’, where he launched an attack against the revered family of the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo and his wife, HID.
“This woman whom Awo once described as the jewel of inestimable value has lost value to his cause. If he came back to life, he would have committed the extraordinary act of divorce after death. Even his newspaper, The Tribune, has so stumbled and fallen that it swims in Awo’s vomit,” he infamously wrote.
The baleful article was crafted to diminish the legacy of Chief Awolowo just because many believed that Tinubu – the man who forfeited $460,000 to US authorities for alleged drug trafficking – was not worthy enough to tie Awolowo’s shoe laces yet alone compare to his matchless legacy.
During the last election, this same cantankerous writer described the Labour Party candidate, Peter Obi, as ‘Obituary’ because Obi dared to contest against his master.
His latest tirades are now directed towards former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and ex-Governor Nasir el-Rufai. Omatseye attacks Atiku weekly just because he seeks to run for office, which is his constitutional right.
Omatseye also pours invectives on el-Rufai and his children just because Tinubu suspects that he, the former Kaduna governor, still harbours a grudge since his controversial removal from his (Tinubu’s) ministerial list.
This unscrupulous writer is not bothered about the latest report by the United Nations that 82 million Nigerians will go hungry by 2030. He is unnerved by the fact that in Kaduna, Katsina, and Kano, bakeries are shutting down because food has been priced beyond the reach of the poor.
Omatseye is not bothered by the fact that over 20 million Nigerian children are out of school. He has no qualms about the exit of multinationals and the resulting job losses. He is unperturbed by the insecurity that claims hundreds of lives on a monthly basis, which has forced farmers to flee and contributed to the 40% spike in food inflation.
This agent of distraction sees no evil in the fact that a woman who was denied a fresh term in the Lagos State House of Assembly after hoarding COVID-19 palliatives meant for the poor has been smuggled back as one of the managers of the Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSTIF) which holds billions of naira on behalf of workers.
Omatseye’s only assignment, like the puppet he is, is to distract the public. His duty is to attack Tinubu’s opponents merely because they dare to exist. But Tinubu needs to put an end to the charade. Even the feeble minded are aware that Sam Omatseye is only a weapon, an attack dog at best who takes a cue from the whistle of his master.
Unfortunately for Omatseye, once the stage play is over and the curtain is drawn, the ventriloquist will throw the dummy into the attic where it gathers dust. Were Tinubu proud of Omatseye, he would have treated him the way a mentor treats his protégé. He would have appointed him information minister or presidential spokesman or he would have put him in charge of the National Orientation Agency or the News Agency of Nigeria but even Tinubu knows that a puppet can never be fit to become a ventriloquist’s apprentice hence Omatseye has remained stagnant as chairman of The Nation’s editorial board since 2006.
Ibe is the Media Adviser to Atiku Abubakar, Vice President of Nigeria (1999-2007) and Presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (2023).
Atiku Abubakar seventh attempt at the presidency has been halted by the Court of Appeal in Abuja, which held that David Mark is not the fit and proper person to assume the position of the National Chairman of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) – the camp that produced the former Vice President as candidate of the party.
Hours after the former VP, who had attempted the bid for the nation’s number one job and is on the seventh edition by virtue of his nomination for the 2027 presidential election by the Mark, agreed with the position of the Federal High Court, Abuja, restraining the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) from recognising or participating in any state congresses organised by the former Senate President.
Justice Okon Abang, while reading the lead-judgement in the three-to-one split, said there was no reason for the appellate court to set aside the April 29 order by the lower court, adding that Justice Joyce Abdulmalik, who barred Mark and his executives from interfering with the tenure and functions of the party’s elected state executives, was in order.
Agreeing that the responsibility for conducting state congresses of political parties rested with elected state executive committees and not with the national leadership, he ordered INEC not to recognise the executive produced as a result of the defective process.
Though his position was echoed by Donatus Okorowo in the majority, Justice Abba Mohammed, who disagreed sharply, with a dissenting judgment, held that the case that precipitated the restraining order bordered on a non-justiciable internal affair of a political party, adding that lower court was wrong to have assumed jurisdiction to entertain the matter.
By Ken Harries Esq
Some speeches disappear with the applause that greets them. Others acquire greater force with the passing of time. Their words do not change; history simply grows into them. Years later, they resonate with fresh power, not because they have been rewritten, but because the nation has finally arrived at the realities they foresaw.
One such speech was delivered in April 2012 at the 2nd South South Economic Summit in Asaba. There, Senator Godswill Akpabio, then Governor of Akwa Ibom State, presented what many regarded as an ambitious vision for maritime corridor and blue economy development.
Speaking before political leaders, investors, and development stakeholders at the 2nd South South Economic Summit in Asaba, Akpabio outlined what many regarded as an ambitious vision for a model state in particular and regional development in general. Long before the Ibom Deep Seaport became a national priority, he argued that Nigeria needed new maritime gateways, integrated industrial clusters, aviation maintenance facilities, and modern logistics infrastructure to unlock economic growth. His vision was not simply about building a port; it was about creating an economic ecosystem capable of transforming a region and strengthening the nation’s competitiveness.
Fourteen years later, those remarks read less like political advocacy and more like an economic blueprint whose underlying logic has steadily been vindicated by events and times. Looking back today, his address appears almost prophetic—not because it predicted the future in mystical terms, but because Nigeria has gradually grown into the ideas it contained.
Truly visionary speeches never fade; they gather strength with time. This one deserves renewed attention, not because every prediction has materialised exactly as envisioned, but because it reveals a quality increasingly scarce in public leadership: the ability to think beyond electoral cycles.
Nigeria has never lacked projects. What it has often lacked are leaders willing to imagine the infrastructure of tomorrow while grappling with the demands of today. Akpabio’s vision was shaped by precisely that instinct.
At a time when public discourse was largely focused on roads and recurrent expenditure, he spoke instead of logistics corridors, industrial ecosystems, aviation maintenance, manufacturing clusters, export processing zones, maritime and blue economy opportunities, and security reform—not as isolated initiatives, but as interconnected pillars of national competitiveness.
His vision for the then proposed Ibaka Deep Seaport, now known as the Ibom Deep Seaport, best illustrates this broader philosophy. Rather than presenting it as another state prestige project, he framed it as a strategic response to structural inefficiencies in Nigeria’s maritime sector and the wider economy. He argued that the Lagos ports were already burdened by severe congestion, with vessels waiting for extended periods to berth, driving up costs, disrupting supply chains, and delaying the delivery of critical imports, including pharmaceuticals.
His objective, however, was never to rival Lagos, but to complement it. The distinction is fundamental. No major trading nation concentrates all its strategic maritime infrastructure within a single corridor. Successful economies spread capacity, ease bottlenecks, and create multiple gateways through which commerce can flow efficiently. Nigeria has long recognised this principle in policy documents; Akpabio was among the few public leaders articulating it so clearly more than a decade ago.
Equally significant was his emphasis on geography. He reminded his audience that Ibaka possessed a naturally deep coastline requiring little or no dredging, with water depths of approximately fifteen to seventeen metres. According to his account, the location had been identified as suitable for a deep seaport as far back as 1963, yet decades passed without meaningful progress. His observation that “being a minority area, there was nobody to push it” reflected a broader concern that strategic national investments have too often been influenced by political considerations rather than economic merit.
Whether one agrees entirely with that assessment is, in many respects, secondary. The larger point is that Akpabio consistently argued that national infrastructure should be driven by economic logic, strategic necessity, and long-term national interest rather than sentiment or political convenience. More than a decade later, that remains a lesson Nigeria is still striving to learn.
Yet, to see the 2012 Asaba address merely as a speech about a deep seaport is to miss its larger significance. The Ibom Deep Seaport was never presented as an end in itself. It was conceived as the anchor of a much broader economic ecosystem—a platform around which industries, manufacturing, aviation, logistics, free trade, and investment could flourish.
Akpabio envisioned the acquisition of about 14,000 hectares of land to support a self-sustaining industrial city comprising fertiliser and ammonia plants, refining capacity, manufacturing facilities, and a Free Trade Zone. What development economists today describe as industrial clustering was already embedded in his thinking. The port was simply the gateway.
That broader vision deserves a discussion of its own. Today, Ibom Deep Seaport in that Asaba Speech has berthed.
•Ken Harries Esq is an Abuja-based Development Communication Strategist.
Justice Joyce Abdulmalik of the Federal High Court in Abuja, on Monday, granted allowed Uche Nnaji former Minister of Science and Technology, to go home, on the condition of a N20million bail bond.
Nnaji, who was arrested at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (NAIA), Abuja on July 1 by officials of the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Offences Commission (ICPC), while returning to Abuja, was granted bail after pleading not guilty to a six-count certificate forgery charge.
The anti-corruption agency alleged that Nnaji, Minister of Science and Technology between August 16, 2023 and October 6, 2025, when he resigned office after a crisis regarding his university degree broke out is currently the governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Enugu for in the 2027 general election, squaring up against Peter Mba, the incumbent, who incidentally won his office in 2023 under the same PDP, before defecting to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
He was accused of forging his academic credentials, especially a degree certificate from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) alongside presenting a bogus National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) discharge certificate during his ministerial screening process in 2023.
At the proceedings on Monday, the former Minister pleaded not guilty to the charges, and following an application by James Onoja (SAN), his lawyer, was granted to bail in the sum of N20 million with one surety in the like sum, who must also be a civil servant resident in Abuja, not be below grade level 15.
The court, which ordered the surety to depose to an affidavit of means, mandated the former Minister to also surrender his international passport and not travel outside the country without permission, while fixing September 21 for the commencement of the trial.
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