News
The wahala that will kill Tinubu’s door
Thirty years ago, Nigeria was in severe crisis. In the wake of the previous year’s elections that was annulled and the attendant protests, 1994 was an unpleasant time. General Sani Abacha had rigged his way into power through a coup and was setting the country on edge. Media houses had been shut, and journalists serially harassed and detained. Acclaimed winner of the 1993 presidential election, Moshood Abiola, was in prison along with scores of activists who had protested either the fuel prices inflation or the election annulment. Ken Saro-Wiwa too was in prison. The Niger-Delta region was restless due to the state-induced violence racking the region.
NADECO members were arrested and charged with treason for their audacity to challenge Abacha. Government critics had their homes raided, and some were attacked. That was the year Prof. Wole Soyinka went into exile. Decree after decree expanded the government’s power to punish. They could detain—without charge or trial—anyone suspected of subversive activities. The Senate that had been inaugurated the previous year was disbanded. Six of the lawmakers who had taken a stand against the government were arrested and charged with “treasonable felony and conspiracy.” They were initially granted bail, and five of them re-arrested months later. The sixth person? That was Bola Tinubu.
By now, I am sure you already see where I am going. As you would have read, this week the police arrested and charged 10 people who allegedly participated in the #EndBadGovernance protests last month for the same crime Abacha’s government had once arrested Tinubu: treason. Those 10 people, along with another 700 police said they also arrested, were some of the thousands who responded to the strangulating economic and political conditions the same way Tinubu and his fellow travellers did in 1994.
Tinubu is either forgetful of history or, since he once confessed that he took a major economic policy while under the influence of a “spirit,” has been fully possessed by Abacha’s ghost. It does not matter which is true; the shame is that a severe charge like treason is being trivialised by a government that cannot brook citizens towing the same path that brought him into power. I want to believe that Tinubu’s fellow pro-democracy activists, some of whom were imprisoned on frivolous charges during the dark days of Abacha’s rule, are looking at the unfolding chain of events and terrified at the uncanny repetition of history.
Wherever he is now, Abacha must be exultant. He should rejoice; he is not the only tyrant whose ignominious history would be tossed into the sewers of our national history. By the time their time passes, Tinubu and company would have personified the Orwellian pigs who became indistinguishable from the “man” they kicked out of the animal farm. When we find the mouth with which to tell the story, we will understand how we sought statesmen but were rewarded with executioners.
After reading the police’s press release issued by a fellow called Olumuyiwa Adejobi, I still fail to see how the protests are treasonable. Which “foreign sources” gave “substantial backing” to the #EndBadGovernance protesters? Or was it just that one Briton, Andrew Wynne, who constituted the so-called “foreign sources”? Given that last month, the Department of State Services also arrested about eight Polish nationals who were on an education tour in Kano State while the protests were ongoing, this might just be a case of using white Europeans to create a sensation. DSS spokesperson Peter Afunanya said those Polish nationals were arrested “because of where they were found during the protests and for displaying foreign flags.” I am yet to understand the method to the madness of this “foreign-phobia” among our security agencies.
There are several wild accusations in Adejobi’s document that need substantiating. I am not saying Adejobi plagiarised Abacha’s playbook, but the allegations are a frightful recrudescence of the military era. He says, “preliminary findings suggest they orchestrated and funded violent protests…to create anarchy and justify their illegal plot to overthrow…government.” But what is the pedigree of these individuals that they could organise what is tantamount to a coup? How would their supposed plan to overthrow the government through protests have led them to Aso Rock? Did they have an armoury, or the weapons of their supposed warfare were just placards? What were their plans to take over the National Assembly, for instance?
Adejobi also says they are investigating how these people planned to “orchestrate violence across the country”? I am genuinely curious how this bunch of individuals (including a shop attendant) can have the means to organise the violence that will disrupt the entirety of a complex country like Nigeria. Meanwhile, hear Adejobi on how they established Wynne’s guilt: We went to invade (Wynne’s) bookshop. As we asked questions, he came out. If you have a genuine business, are you not going to ask the police what we went to do in his shop or his office? You read that and you wonder at the quality of investigation that sort of rudimentary extrapolation of evidence can possibly produce. Meanwhile, let us not forget that the “comprehensive investigation” on which they planked their whole case took place in less than a month. If they are that efficient, how come they find it hard to solve kidnapping problems?
Whether they like it or not, protests are a democratic right. You can charge people who committed crimes of looting or violence during protests, but you cannot stifle the right to protest. I never thought the day would come that I would look back and compare Muhammadu Buhari’s government favourably with anyone, but looking wistfully from inside the fire of Tinubu’s government, I am beginning to think we were better off inside Buhari’s frying pan. Even in all his pathological madness, Buhari did not go to the extent of charging the #EndSARS protesters for treason. He did accuse them of trying to topple him, but the ghost of Abacha that had been haunting Aso Rock did not possess him fully. The ghost waited until the perfect person usurped his path into power before completing Abacha’s historic mission of perpetuating himself in power using democratic means.
You listen to the families of those arrested and you realise these people have no new game; they are stuck in historical time. Unfortunately, we are trapped along with them. The Nigeria of 2024 is not that different from that of 1994. There is hardship in the land. Prices of goods and services are skyrocketing; purchasing power is dwindling, and it is getting harder and harder to get by. The marriage of Asiwaju and Shettima of last year has become Àşetì 2023. Nobody’s hope has been renewed, and people are more combustible than the fuel they are expending hours on their lives on extended queues just to purchase. The days ahead are likely to be filled with protests, and the government is preemptively charging protestors with arrests to intimidate.
Meanwhile, this same government faces a million other challenges. There is economic insecurity, a serious threat to the lives and livelihood of Nigerians. Shouts of “ebi ń pa wá” have replaced the “on your mandate we shall stand” anthem in many mouths; hunger is resetting the political loyalties of those whose heads were climbed into power but have now been forgotten. The government appears confused by the complexity of the situation; they have undone several economic knots, and they know not how to re-tie them. Then there is the issue of kidnapping that has become a national epidemic and revealed the police as impotent. Let us not even talk about banditry, plus the one million problems of poor infrastructure that bedevil the country.
Rather than the Tinubu administration concentrating on what it can solve, it compounds its own problems by investing administrative time and energy hounding people for treason. Like the Yoruba door that eventually gets unhinged when endlessly swung back and forth, the Tinubu regime too has found the wàhálà that will wear it down. I almost feel sorry for them.
Culled from The PUNCH
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.
-
News3 days agoBREAKING: Mystery death! *Female student dies a day after arriving Umahi’s home!
-
News4 weeks agoBREAKING: Troops rescue wife of kidnapped General! *Terrorists flee scene
-
News4 weeks agoBREAKING: Count me out, Okonkwo tells Atiku *Amaechi VP’s choice an insult to Ndigbo
-
News3 weeks agoBREAKING: Court sentences Nigerien, two others to death over terrorism
-
News3 days agoDon’t jump to conclusion! *Umahi speaks on mysterious death of female students!
-
News2 weeks agoBREAKING: EX-SSG mowed down by gunmen! *He resisted being kidnapped – driver
-
News3 weeks agoAbductors of Oyo teachers panicking, freedom coming for victims soon!
-
News3 weeks agoTwo hours after Igboho’s ‘red-eyes’ to ‘Fulani’ leaders, gunmen free kidnap victims!