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Tinubu to critics: I’m as clean as whistle *You’re too blind to track subsidy savings
President Bola Tinubu on Tuesday, lashed back at critics questioning where savings from removal of subsidy are being deployed, saying much of it has been redirected to the critical areas of the Nigerian economy.
Critics, including Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), had often complained that Nigerians were not seeing the effect of the measure announced by the President on his first day of taking over governance on May 29, 2023, which saw price of petrol jumping astronomically with direct impact on prices of commodities and services across the country.
But Tinubu, maintained on Tuesday, at a two-day interactive session on government-citizens’ engagement organised by the Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation in Kaduna the impact were already manifesting in positive terms because the proceeds were well-utilised.
Hear him: “The removal of fuel subsidy, though painful, has been a necessary reform that saved trillions of Naira. The palliative measures plan and interventions through state governments, Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) support, and public transportation upgrades are mitigating the impacts. The savings are now being redirected into critical infrastructure and human development, while states are receiving increased allocations for development.”
Tinubu, also defended the profile of his administration in terms of accommodating all Nigerians, saying it would ensure equitable development across all regions of the country, with no area left behind.
While highlighting key achievements under the Renewed Hope Agenda, the President, told his audience how he had handled issues regarding the nation’s economic reforms, education, health, security, infrastructure, and food security.
For instance, he said his administration had implemented bold reforms to stabilise and grow the economy, including unifying the exchange rate and restructuring debt profiles, adding that investments had been made in modernising security equipment and upskilling personnel.
Citing ambitious projects he had embacked on such as the Lagos-Calabar Coastal Highway, the Sokoto-Badagry superhighway, ongoing rail projects (Kano-Maradi, Port Harcourt-Maiduguri), and housing initiatives, the President, also highlighted the Renewed Hope Agenda’s priorities to include reforming the economy for sustained growth, strengthening national security, boosting agriculture for food security, unlocking energy and natural resources, and enhancing infrastructure and transportation.
Also pointing to giant strides in the areas of education, health, and social investment, he also listed accelerating diversification through industrialisation and innovation as well as improving governance for effective service delivery as part of his achievements.
Tinubu, who spoke on Assessing Electoral Promises: Fostering Government-Citizen Engagement for National Development, the theme of the event, described the renewed hope agenda was a pragmatic vision built on pillars of good governance with emphasis on transparency, accountability, participation, responsiveness, equity, rule of law, and inclusivity, going beyond just a campaign slogan.
His words: “The economic reform strategies are designed to create a robust, diversified, and resilient economy. By fostering an environment conducive to investment and innovation, the administration aims to stimulate growth across all sectors, reduce unemployment, and ensure equitable wealth distribution.
“Security is the bedrock of national development. The focus here is on enhancing the capabilities of our security forces, promoting peace and stability, and ensuring that every Nigerian feels safe and protected, no matter where they reside.
“Agriculture holds the key to our nation’s self-sufficiency and economic empowerment.”
According to Tinubu, this is by modernising farming practices, increasing access to finance, and expanding market opportunities for farmers.
“This administration places Nigeria on a path to achieving food security and transforming our country into an agricultural powerhouse. Through reforms, the government is unlocking the potential of Nigeria’s vast natural resources and energy sector.
“Through sustainable management, increased investments, and the adoption of modern technologies, the goal remains to drive economic growth and ensure environmental sustainability.”
“Over 400,000 students in tertiary institutions have so far benefitted from the Students’ Loan Programme, while an estimated N53 billion had been disbursed.”
Highlighting the importance of patience and collective efforts in achieving the agenda’s goals, the President, particularly extolled the virtues of the late Premier of Northern Nigeria, Sir Ahmadu Bello, describing him as a phenomenal being who promoted national cohesion and unity in Nigeria.
Also saluting the courage, sincerity, and patriotism of other leaders such as Chief Solomon Lar, Mallam Adamu Ciroma, Shehu Dan Musa, Abubakar Rimi, Prof. Suleman Kumo, Issac Shaahu, Prof. Jerry Gana, and others, he said Nigeria continued to owe them debt of gratitude.
As the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) prepares to elect its next set of national officers on Saturday, July 18, the process has been troubled by court battles, an unprecedented intervention from the office of the attorney-general of the federation, allegations of bias against the association’s leadership, and disputes over zoning arrangements.
This has turned what should have been a routine internal election into one of the most contested election processes in the NBA’s recent history.
With over 82,000 lawyers across 139 branches of the NBA eligible to vote, three senior advocates (SANs) running for the presidency, and legal challenges still pending hours before polls open, the outcome — whether it will be broadly accepted across the profession — remains genuinely uncertain.
HOW IT STARTED
The process for the 2026 election formally began at a national executive council meeting in Edo state on November 20, 2025, where a five-member Electoral Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association (ECNBA) was approved, chaired by Aham Ejelam, SAN, with Ibrahim Aliyu Nassarawa as secretary.
Section 10(1) of the NBA’s 2015 Constitution (amended 2025) establishes the ECNBA as an independent body that runs elections for the association’s national offices and for NBA representatives on the General Council of the Bar.
By June 18, the ECNBA had cleared 35 candidates to contest the various national offices, with three senior advocates emerging as presidential contenders: Olumuyiwa Akinboro of the Abuja branch, Oyinkansola Badejo-Okusanya (the only woman among recent presidential candidates) of the Lagos branch and Lateef Akangbe, also of Lagos.
COURT CASES/ZONING TENSIONS
Trouble surfaced early. On March 4, Gabriel Opayinka, judge of the Oyo state high court, granted an interim order restraining the NBA from taking further steps toward the election, and barring Afam Osigwe, NBA president, from constituting or supervising the ECNBA. The order came following a suit filed by four lawyers — Ibrahim Lawal, Raymond Oki, Omotan Olusola Ogunmodede and Chief Gabriel Ojo Adekunle Ijalana — challenging the legitimacy of the process. In the suit, the applicants contested the legitimacy of the electoral process and the role allegedly played by the NBA leadership in the composition of the ECNBA.
Also, Egbe Amofin O’odua, an association of lawyers of Yoruba extraction, has been pushing for Akinboro to be adopted as the sole western-zone candidate, arguing that he is the zone’s consensus choice.
On February 24, Y. S. Adekunle, the presiding judge, granted an interim injunction barring the NBA from recognising or processing nominations outside the Yoruba lawyers’ consensus candidate arrangement for the presidency.
CALLS FOR OSIGWE’S RESIGNATION
Weeks before the courts got involved, the dispute had already turned personal. At an NEC meeting in Maiduguri, Borno state, on February 5, Akinboro and Akangbe, candidates vying for the presidential office, accused Osigwe of bias. They alleged that the NBA president, while responding to concerns raised over campaign materials being distributed at the venue, declared he could not remain neutral in the election because he holds voting rights as a member. In a letter dated February 15 to the NBA board of trustees, the two candidates cited that remark, along with what they called a pattern of partisan conduct, as grounds to demand Osigwe’s immediate resignation.
AGF’S ‘INTERVENTION’
The dispute heightened after Lateef Fagbemi, attorney-general of the federation (AGF), allegedly issued a directive that the election be pushed from July into August. A document said to contain a sub-committee report and comments attributed to Fagbemi, which circulated online, reportedly went further by calling for the ECNBA to be disbanded, its election technology vendor replaced, a caretaker committee installed, NIN verification introduced, and even the NBA constitution altered to curtail universal suffrage.
However, Osigwe rejected the intervention outright. In a statement, he argued that only the NBA’s national executive council has constitutional power to alter or suspend the election, and described the alleged directives as unconstitutional and beyond the AGF’s authority.
The NBA also defended its election vendor and said its own risk assessment had found that introducing NIN verification at this stage could disrupt the vote, partly because the national identity database might not handle the surge in authentication requests.
As tensions built, a document falsely claiming the election had been suspended began circulating and had to be publicly debunked by the ECNBA, which said it had no connection to the AGF’s office.
On July 14, the court of appeal, Ibadan division, set aside Opayinka’s interim order, which restrained the association from taking further steps towards the election.
In a unanimous judgement, a three-member panel of the appellate court held that the Oyo state high court never had jurisdiction to hear it in the first place. The appellate court held that jurisdiction is foundational to any judicial proceeding and that everything built on a jurisdiction-less order, including the injunction that had restrained the ECNBA and Osigwe, was void. The appeal had been brought by ECNBA chairman Aham Ejelam and other committee members against the four lawyers who filed the original suit, as well as against Osigwe and others.
WHERE THINGS STAND
With voting just one day away, the ECNBA has confirmed a final register of 82,213 eligible voters across 139 branches, published on July 10. The committee has repeatedly said the July 18 date is fixed and that there is no legal barrier to proceeding and said election observers, including the Department of State Services (DSS), the Nigeria Police Force, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), are expected to monitor the process from a central control room at the NBA’s Abuja secretariat.
Voting is due to run electronically from midnight to 11:59 p.m. on Saturday, with results expected Sunday.
Culled from TheCable
By Ken Harries Esq
“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others,” observed Jonathan Swift. Every generation encounters leaders who solve today’s problems, but far fewer produce leaders who design tomorrow’s possibilities. The true measure of visionary leadership lies in the ability to recognise opportunities long before they become obvious, to imagine possibilities where others see only limitations, and to lay foundations whose full significance may not be appreciated until years later. History’s greatest builders are remembered not merely for the projects they completed, but for the future they envisioned before anyone else believed it was possible.
The true measure of visionary leadership lies not in the number of projects conceived, but in the ability to understand how seemingly unrelated sectors of the economy can reinforce one another to produce lasting prosperity. That was the deeper story behind Senator Godswill Akpabio’s presentation at the 2nd South South Economic Summit in Asaba in April 2012.
Many remember the address for its most celebrated proposal—the Ibom Deep Seaport. Yet the speech revealed something far more profound: a philosophy of development that viewed infrastructure not as isolated monuments, but as interconnected instruments of economic prosperity and social transformation.
That philosophy permeated virtually every aspect of the presentation. It was evident in aviation. At a time when aircraft maintenance in Nigeria depended almost entirely on foreign facilities, Akpabio announced plans for what he described as West Africa’s first Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility alongside the Akwa Ibom International Airport. Once again, the objective was not merely to construct another public facility. It was to retain within Nigeria the economic value, technical expertise, and skilled employment that routinely left the country whenever aircraft were serviced abroad.
Long before expressions such as local value addition, industrial self-reliance, and reducing capital flight became part of mainstream policy discussions across Africa, those ideas had already found practical expression in the development strategy he articulated in Asaba.
Even his brief remarks on state policing now possess remarkable contemporary relevance. Years before today’s broad national consensus that Nigeria’s security architecture requires fundamental reform, he argued that governors could not reasonably be held fully accountable for security while operational control remained centralised. Over time, national debate has steadily moved closer to the position he advanced.
Vision, however, should never be mistaken for perfection. Every transformative project encounters obstacles—financing constraints, regulatory hurdles, political transitions, implementation delays, and public controversy. The Ibom Deep Seaport has experienced each of these realities. When Governor Udom Emmanuel renamed the project from the Ibaka Deep Seaport to the Ibom Deep Seaport, many perceived the change as accompanying a relocation of the proposed site from Ibaka in Mbo Local Government Area to a coastal location in Ibeno Local Government Area. Government maintained that the final location emerged from rigorous technical evaluation, but the episode illustrated how even the most carefully conceived projects can become entangled in local sensitivities and competing interests.
Yet the endurance of the underlying idea is precisely what makes the original vision remarkable.
Governments changed. Political actors came and went. Debates arose and subsided. But the central economic concept endured. The Federal Executive Council approved the project’s business case in 2015, and successive administrations have continued to advance it under the Ibom Deep Seaport name. Good ideas possess a resilience that often outlives the administrations that first conceive them.
Therein lies perhaps the greatest lesson of the Asaba address. Vision is not measured by how loudly it is proclaimed, but by how far ahead it sees. History’s greatest builders were rarely those who merely responded to the demands of their own generation and time. They were those who imagined opportunities others could not yet see and laid foundations whose full value would only be appreciated years later.
Nigeria’s development story will ultimately belong not only to those who completed great projects, but also to those who first conceived them. The true legacy of public leadership is not merely the structures that rise from the ground, but the ideas that continue to shape a nation’s future long after the speeches have ended and the applause has faded. Judged by that standard, the Akpabio’s Asaba address remains an enduring lesson in visionary leadership.
•Ken Harries Esq is an Abuja based development Communication Strategist
The echoes of the drums rolled out to celebrate the rescue of the 44 teachers and students, kidnapped from some schools in Oyo State, after 56 days in the bush, would surely be disrupted abruptly, with the divergent echoes of a fresh abduction, this time coming from Kogi State.
Reports indicate that the gunmen, struck on Tuesday at the Government Secondary School, Odo-Ekina, in Dekina Local Government Area of the state, abducting four students, the school principal and a National Examinations Council (NECO) ad hoc staff member.
Authorities of the Kogi State Police Command, who immediately unleashed their operatives in hot pursuit of the abductors, said the attack occurred at about 5:25 p.m. while the students were writing their NECO examination.
Saliu Oyiza Afusat, an Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) and spokesman of the command, said a combined team of police personnel and other security agencies has launched a search-and-rescue operation following the incident.
Informing that one of the students was actually rescued immediately, she said efforts were ongoing to secure the release of the remaining victims and apprehend the attackers, adding that Naziru Bello Kankarofi, the state Commissioner of Police, alongside the Brigade Commander and the State Security Adviser to the Governor, Commodore Jerry Omodara (Rtd), were already on the way to the scene for an on-the-spot assessment.
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