The systematic bastardisation of Nigeria and its degraded worth in the eyes of the global community seem to have reached to its inglorious height in recent months. How damning!

Each day, the largest country of black people on earth seems to be gliding uncontrollably down the slippery slope of infamy where countries which hitherto stand in awe and trepidation, now practically spit at its global image.

Only recently, Burkina Faso, one of the smallest countries on the West African sub-region – a country with total worth far less than Lagos got Abuja crawling on its knees to Ouagadougou to plead for the release of a military aircraft flying the Nigerian flag.

Yes! It took a whole 10 days for the Nigerian Air Force C-130 and 11 soldiers on board to breathe the air of freedom once again, after they were detained in the hunger-ravaged African country for making an emergency landing – a routine aviation procedure that is ironed out in a matter of hours with nothing more than a mere explanation required.

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But in this case, it took a special delegation of top Nigerian officials to move to the country with apology letter in hand to beg for the freedom of the detained men and plane from the Burkinabe authorities, whose personnel, openly walked on air to stamp their importance. Compatriots, this is your country – the giant of Africa.

Last year, it took a cough at the Oval Office Washington for Aso Rock Villa to catch cold and harass itself into a frenzy in search for way out of the decade-old issue of mass slaughtering of Nigerians by terrorists in addition to other forms of high crimes that have seized the country over the years.

Yet, even with all the frantic, frenetic and impulsive thrashing around, including a unilateral declaration of State of Emergency on security, what has come out of it?

It took the same United States, to make a decisive statement with the Christmas day bombing of a supposed hideout in Sokoto, said to have decimated scores of terrorist, who had assembled to plot how to wreak another havoc across the country as has become traditional during the yuletide season over the recent years.

But were these disgraceful outings limited to domestic affairs, it would have been more tolerable. But, unfortunately, it is not.

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Internationally too, the tiger has also lost its tigritude. The same Nigeria that virtually stood shoulder to shoulder, gazing eyeball to eyeball as it confronted powerful western nations in a singular bid to end apartheid in South Africa – yes, the same Nigeria that took it upon itself to end the mass slaughtering in Liberia and Sierra Leone, is today cowering in its cocoon over issues it ought to have taken the lead in presenting the African perspective.

Last year, it was South Africa that roared like a lion by confronting Israel over the blitzkrieg in Gaza – going as far as taking the country to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, The Netherlands.

Today, it is Ghana that is taking charge at the world stage, with its voice echoing beyond the seas and wildernesses over the US action in Venezuela where its special forces arrested Nicolas Maduro – that country’s President on Saturday.

“Ghana expresses strong reservations against unilateral use of force and strongly deplores such acts that violate the Charter of the United Nations and international law, as well as the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence of States.

“The Ghanaian Government is keenly following the situation in Venezuela with great concern, and notes that such assaults on international law, attempts at the occupation of foreign territories and apparent external control of oil resources have extremely adverse implications on international stability and the global order.

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“Ghana also notes with deep concern statements by US President, Donald Trump, that the US will “run” Venezuela “until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition” and that US large oil companies will be asked to “go in.”

“These declarations are reminiscent of the colonial and imperialist era. They set a dangerous precedent for the global order. Such colonial ambitions should have no place in the post-Second World War era.

“To allow this is to put the international community at great risk and undermine the sovereignty of every country. Ghana, therefore, re-affirms its commitment to the principle of self-determination and holds the firm view that only the Venezuelan people should freely determine their political and democratic future.

“Ghana calls for immediate de-escalation and the release of President Maduro and his wife. The Government of Ghana shall maintain and defend its long-held principled position against invasion, occupation, colonialism, apartheid, disregard for sovereignty and all forms of violation of international law.”

That was Accra’s bold and fearless response to the Venezuelan saga. Now where is Nigeria? Where is President Bola Tinubu? Mum is the word. The last we heard from our President was via an image of him having lunch with Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda in Paris. No single word uttered – just a picture!

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Even that has also run into its own controversy as the image is now being disputed, because experts are convinced that it is AI-generated. How bad could it get! How deep could a country sink into the morass of infamy! How terrible!

But need anyone look far to ascertain the reason for this parlous situation and progressive dip into the bottomless pit of hopelessness. Of course, not! The answer is very apparent.

It is all about legitimacy and integrity of the leadership of the individual countries. John Dramani Mahama, could stand anywhere on the world stage today to declare that the mandate he holds as President derives from the people of Ghana. Cyril Ramaphosa could also swear in like manner that he enjoys the mandate of South Africans.

Could Tinubu honestly make the same claims today? That is the difference. When Sam Amadi, Harvard-trained lawyer, captured the Nigerian variant of strategy for election victory as the ability to bribe the institutions – INEC, judiciary and security authorities, rather than constituency mapping and messaging to convince the people – this is the result.

When Chidi Odinkalu, a professor of law, states categorically that Tinubu did not need the votes of Nigerians but corrupt INEC and the judiciary, to be President, the consequence is illegitimacy, lack of credibility and a country limbo.

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The African Democratic Congress (ADC), was even more emphatic when it linked Tinubu’s silence to the fear of being served the Maduro treatment based on the evidently fraudulent 2023 presidential election that brought him to power, the consequences he has been battling with till date.

Bolaji Abdullahi, its spokesman, recalled how the government of the ousted President was widely condemned as illegitimate and deeply flawed by nine governments across Latin America, the European Union, and international democratic institutions.

Stressing how political opponents were barred from contesting, peaceful protests met with violence, and state institutions weaponised against the very citizens, he pointed to the celebration that followed Maduro’s fate to underscore his argument, stating: “When citizens pour into the streets in celebration, it reveals more than approval of an intervention; it exposes the bankruptcy of the regime that has been upended.”

Back home, he was no less so: “Let’s be clear: the Nigerian government’s choice of silence at this moment has nothing to do with neutrality. Instead, it reveals a government that lacks confidence simply because it lacks integrity. In Nigeria, in Venezuela, and across the world, democracy must mean more than ballots and electoralism. It must translate to freedom, fairness, and a happier life for the citizens.

“In this context, the ADC believes that the situation in Venezuela is a cautionary tale to all dictators, including the supposedly elected ones, and election riggers everywhere. The world is watching, and contrived mandates will no longer find a place to hide.”

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How would anyone dispute this position? The naysayer must give a credible reason for the rapid Nigeria’s current drift to a one-party state, despite the evidential failures of the All Progressives Congress (APC) on all fronts of developments since coming to power in 2015.

Why, for instance are all the 36 governors of Nigeria struggling for space in the All Progressives Congress (APC) and declaring open support for Tinubu, even when the President has posted the most disastrous if not the worst outing in Nigerian history, if they were not being corralled to do so.

Why would a Nyesom Wike, Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) arrogate to himself the power of life and death and insist that Siminalayi Fubara, his successor as Rivers State Governor must be divested of his free choice to contest for re-election as part of a strange “agreement?”

The real story is that Nigeria is no different from Venezuela under Maduro. That a repeat of the 2023 fraudulent presidential election will not only continue to produce a lame-duck President that will either be a puppet a weakling, or a disgrace rolled into one. That will be the real TRAGEDY!

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Nigerians, nay, the world woke up on Monday morning to the shocking news of yet again, the abduction of students in the country – this time at the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School, Maga, Kebbi State.

The incident has now added to the long list of a phenomenon, which started on the night of April 14, 2014 with the kidnap of the students of the Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, an episode now popularly known as the Chibok Girls saga.

When an uproar reverberated across the globe following the Chibok incident, with world leaders weighing in on the matter, including Michelle Obama, former US first lady, who took it personally by joining the campaign to free the young girls, it was an instant response to the gory picture that hovered in the firmament over the fate of of such young lasses, many still in their puberty stage in the hands of such dangerous criminals.

Who would have thought that the development would soon become a constant feature that would continue to smear the nation’s landscape, especially with the exit of then President Goodluck Jonathan, who had suffered the butt of national and international ridicule, as the incident was attributed to him with the derisive term – cluelessness – was eventually tossed out of office as a result?

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On the contrary, it turned out that Muhammadu Buhari, his successor, posted a worse outing, despite his record as a General of the Nigerian Army and former Military Head of State, who during his times as the latter, was known as a no-nonsense leader.

Indeed, while Jonathan was clueless, Buhari practically dozed, slept or actually slumbered on the same issue. Under him, the situation assumed an almost epidemic proportion – from Dapchi Girls, which saw the abduction of 110 students from the Girls’ Science and Technical College (GGSTC), Dapchi in Bulabulin, Bursari Local Government area of Yobe State, on February 19, 2018, to the 279 female students of Government Girls Science Secondary School, a boarding school in Jangebe, Zamfara State on February 26, 2021, which came few months after about 300 students of Government Science Secondary School, Kankara, Katsina State, on December 11, 2020.

During this period, Kaduna suffered some of the worst hits. First, 150 students of the Bethel Baptist High School, in 2021 and then the 2024 edition, when about 285 students were taken from their school in Kuriga, in Chikun Local Government Area.

These are just some of the incidents that quickly come to mind. There are many other cases of similar nature before this latest addition in Maga, where 25 girls were picked up and herded into the bush like cattle.

Now this was the situation under which President Bola Tinubu, had actually packed his bag preparatory to boarding his much-fancied executive jet en-route South Africa and Angola for the 20th G20 Summit of leaders in South Africa and thereafter proceed to Luanda to attend the Seventh African Union-European Union (AU-EU) Summit.

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Indications coming from the Villa, in Abuja, appear confusing, as it suggests “postponement” rather than outright “cancellation,” going by the statement of Bayo Onanuga, the President’s main spokesman, on Thursday.

Onanuga, wrote: “Disturbed by the security breaches in Kebbi State and Monday’s attack by bandits against worshippers at Christ Apostolic Church, Eruku, President Tinubu decided to suspend his departure.

“He now awaits reports from Vice President Kashim Shettima, who paid a sympathy visit to Kebbi on his behalf, as well as reports from the police and the Department of State Services regarding the attack in Kwara.”

Anyone could bet and be sure that the trip was paused substantially due to the general outcry in the country over the move and that even now, the pull similar to the bee to the nectar remains too strong that he might actually step on the plane before the events end.

Pray! What is his role and of what benefit would he willingly stain the floor of these events with the blood of his countrymen with which his feet are currently smeared?

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Pray! With which face would the President be sitting among these leaders, considering the situation in his country, which is practically on intense inferno currently? How would he handle the stolen glances? Knowing the world of diplomacy where much are ensconced in those deep stares and benign but deceptive smiles, those sympathies he would receive could obviously be more pretended than genuine and he would become the butt of private jokes and conversations thereafter.

Remember the heat that attended the discovery of a headless body floating on the Thames River in the UK in 2001 and how life nearly came to a halt in the country as a result.

Now imagine Kier Starmer the current Prime Minister stepping into British Airways en-route the same South Africa or even United Nations summit without resolving the issue of a stolen pet-dog or assuaging the feeling of that little blue-eyed girl ruing over her loss, let alone one young British school girl being kidnapped and in the hands of mindless criminals. Just imagine it!

Did the US not deploy all its intelligence and military might in a multi-million-dollar operation just to rescue one of its citizens the terrorists currently tormenting Nigeria were too inebriated in their madness to abduct.

Now, consider a Donald Trump, even in his extreme eccentric nature, mounting Air Force One and jetting out to France, China or Saudi Arabia to sign some trillion-dollar military hardware contracts capable of jolting the US economy to a 50-year-record high, while one American Marine is in captivity, let alone some 20 students of a college in Alabama. Would the heat generated therefrom not be enough to power a spacecraft?

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Why must Nigeria be different? Is the life of a Nigerian worth less than that of a dog in Britain? Does Tinubu consider the life of the school girl in Dapchi, Kaduna or Maga less valuable than that of her counterpart in Chicago? If no, why not stay back and prove it?

We must say so, unequivocally! Nothing – economically, socially, politically, globally – is more important than the rescue of these 25 young girls. Whether postponed or paused Tinubu must not be found anywhere near that aircraft. In fact, he must not leave Nigeria until those girls are rescued! Nothing could be more serious, nothing more valuable!

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When in 2021, Peter Obi called attention to the indiscriminate borrowings of Muhammadu Buhari, the President of Nigeria, the reaction was instant as it was virulent. The former Governor of Anambra State, had pointed out to the President that his penchant for grabbing money from foreign and domestic lending institutions, was not only a bad behaviour, but completely dangerous to national health, because it was akin to mortgaging the future of the country and putting the children of the next generations in harm’s way.

Naturally, the quick riposte from Buhari and his men, was that Obi was jealous of the administration and the giant strides it was making and that his intervention was dangerous to the general health and wellbeing of Nigeria. In other words, he was effectively declared the nation’s number one enemy. In fact the noxious attacks against the former governor could have been likened to the venoms from the desert puff adder, a rock scorpion and the Amazon spider put together – more lethal than the poisonous gas that escaped from the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine.

But because truth was itself a buffer and the most potent antidote to such mortal poison, the barrage of attacks constituted little effect on him. Intriguingly, Obi’s, like that of John The Baptist in the wilderness calling for repentance to the Jews, was a lone voice calling attention of Nigerians to the danger ahead at a time many others including the so-called Nigeria’s celebrated economists, decided to switch to the silent mode.

From Lai Mohammed, the official spokesman of the government to the duos of Femi Adesina and Garba Shehu, the President’s spokesmen to the goons at the APC, and many more of their supporters at the Brantyre Wuse Secretariat, the remit, was to make a mincemeat of Obi and cast him as enemy of progress, as they echoed the oft-sung mantra of their principal – we’re building infrastructure.

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Today, where are the infrastructure that administration claimed they were sinking the billions of dollars they were borrowing from left, right and centre? The Port Harcourt Refinery, has become the perfect metaphor for the idea of resuscitating the nation’s four refineries. The railway project, another drainpipe of that administration remains comatose, confirming Obi’s fears whenever he asks – where are the infrastructures?

Of course, in connivance with their collaborators abroad, who for a clearly diabolical purpose, have ensured that these loans keep coming continuously, aware of the mindset of the recipients is not only the voracious appetite for lavish spending, undiluted corruption and the penchant to return the money to their banks, had to rig the 2023 election to ensure that Obi never came close to office to stop the stream of continuous sleaze.

So, what did the world see? With the first set of loans, President Bola Tinubu, like Buhari, went on a binge of spending, buying everything in sight. He suddenly remembered that the nation needed a N5billion yacht and that the Vice President needed a new lodge and gifted N21billion. Then, there was the need for a new Presidential jet to put him at par with his United States counterpart or the King of Saudi Arabia, who are Nigeria’s contemporaries.

Then, there was the home front to be taken care of. For that, some N2billion was devoted for the cars to ensure that the First Lady luxuriated around in optimum pleasure devoid of the impact of road craters. To ensure that the largesse went round, about 500 mint super-comfort, freshly-minted Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs), were ordered from the automobile factories of Japan for members of the National Assembly.

Since then and two years on, the story has remained the same – streams of borrowings that seem to go into nothing outside pampering the palates of people in the corridors of power with Nigerians, whose children and grandchildren are supposed to repay the debts, left in the lurch, while their fortunes continue to plummet such that majority of Nigerian families now go to bed hungry.

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But the scary part has just arrived the scene. Like the python that goes for bigger preys as it increases in size, Tinubu has gone for the kill! Last Tuesday, he notified Nigerians of his intention to borrow a whopping N34.15 trillion.

Naturally, he port at his usual arena – NASS, his pliable ally in the entire macabre dance. In a letter to lawmakers at the Senate and House of Representatives, he sought approval for a new external borrowing plan of over $21.5 billion, which translates to N33.39 trillion at the official exchange rate of N1,590 per dollar as well as domestic bond issuance of N757.9 billion to settle outstanding pension liabilities.

Hear him: “The 2025–2026 borrowing plan covers all sectors, with specific emphasis on infrastructure, agriculture, health, education, water supply, growth, security, and employment generation, as well as financial and monetary reforms, among others.” Now, does this not sound familiar? Was this not the same mantra Buhari sang throughout his tenure that got Nigerian into this deep morass?

We must warn from the outset that this loan is a death sentence that must not be touched with a long stick. We say so because nothing in the borrowing of the last two years indicates that Tinubu is going to deploy the proceeds to the needed areas. Nothing suggests so. Recently, Babachir Lawal, former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), claimed that previous loans were shared before the got to Nigeria. Unfortunately, this is the dominant public position.

It is not surprising that the NASS appears in a haste to hit its rubberstamp on the proposal as usual. In both chambers, the matter was referred to committees dealing with the subject, with a mandate to report back in two weeks. That again bears a familiar tone. But before the gavel sounds to approve the request, the lawmakers must call the President to give a clear and comprehensive account of what he did with all the previous loans they approved for him.

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The answers to this must be the cogent, verifiable and justifiable reasons for the approval or rejection of the proposal. They must also call the President to question on where the money from the removal of subsidy on petrol has also gone. Nigerians were told that the reason for the move which Tinubu announced minutes after his inauguration on May 29, 2023, for which they have been experiencing the level of deprivation, poverty and pain nobody ever thought was possible, was because funds needed to be freed to pursue massive infrastructure development in the country.

Where are those infrastructures? Has anything been added to the rail infrastructure project Buhari left behind? Have Nigerian roads become smooth and clean that NASS members no longer need SUVs to navigate them? Have Nigerian hospitals and other federal institutions acquired the needed state of the art equipment that ensures that medical tourism will be reduced and made a choice and no longer a necessity?

If these are not evident, then the proper step to take at the moment is to ask Tinubu, where is our money? This question will not be answered by pointing at the four kilometres they have done on the Lagos – Calabar super highway or the students loan initiative that is currently reeking of accusations of massive corruption. It is not about the conditional cash transfer and other claims, which Nigerians see as more audio than real. These claims are too scanty and far in-between!

We are not taking this position because we are not aware of the propensity for Tinubu to muscle his way or because we are numb to a NASS that seems sworn to live fully by its tag of rubberstamp legislature. No, we want to put it on record that we did not keep mute when things are going south. Like Peter Obi was on record for shouting when Buhari embarked on his own binge, we must shout and put it on record that this loan is another reckless attempt by Tinubu that he has completely captured Nigeria.

Let it be known that we do not support this new loan, which only result is to plunge Nigeria further into excruciating pain and unlivable condition. It is bad for the health of the nation, both now and in future and must be rejected. NASS, reject this loan request. We need not say more!

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