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Nothing to celebrate! Okonjo-Iweala’s comments not endorsement – ADC
It is dishonesty, for All Progressives Congress (APC) government of President Bola Tinubu, and its foot-soldiers to go to town, trumpeting that Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), has fully endorsed the manner Nigeria is currently being run.
The African Democratic Congress (ADC), while weighing in on the comments made on Thursday, by the WTO boss, shortly after a private meeting with Tinubu at the State House in Abuja, accused the government of cherry-picking the issue by choosing instead to celebrate the headlines instead of the actual content of the comments.
Okonjo-Iweala, former Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, who acknowledged the government’s efforts in “stabilising” the nation’s economy, stressed that what was remaining was to ensure growth and to create social safety nets to mitigate the suffering being experienced by Nigerians at the receiving end of its policy reforms.
She said: “The President and his team have worked hard to stabilise the economy. The reforms have been in the right direction. The next step is growth, and alongside that, building social safety nets so those feeling the pinch of reforms can get support.”
Against the backdrop of the general interpretation being given to the comment as a full endorsement of the Tinubu’s running of the country, the party which conveyed its pushback through Bolaji Abdullahi, its spokesman, accused the government of seeking validation rather than focusing on the job at hand.
The full statement read: “Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s recent comments on President Tinubu and the Nigerian economy have been seized upon by government officials and their media allies as if their scandalous implementation of hard reforms — which have condemned the majority of Nigerians to absolute poverty and destroyed millions of jobs — had received endorsement by the oracle herself. This is not correct.
“Dr Okonjo-Iweala knows that a stable economy is one that is growing in real terms, led by jobs and productivity. She knows that a stable economy is one that is able to guarantee minimum standards of living for the people. She knows that economic stability that leaves the majority in grinding poverty is meaningless.
“Therefore, what she’s really saying — which the government has chosen to ignore — is that the economy is not growing, jobs are not being created, and too many people are suffering as a direct consequence of President Tinubu’s ill-conceived and badly implemented reforms. These are the issues she wanted the government to address.
“Like the international stateswoman that she is, Dr Okonjo-Iweala prefaced her comments with the niceties befitting her stature by commending the administration for ‘stabilising the economy’. But, having done with that courtesy, she immediately highlighted the urgent need for job creation to bring succour to the ever-growing army of unemployed youths and others who lost their jobs as businesses shut down under the crushing weight of the Tinubu-led government.
“She said the government needs to urgently grow the economy to put money in people’s pockets — which means that whatever ‘stable economy’ the government is celebrating has not translated into real relief for millions of Nigerian families, and they need to change course.
“For the record, the economy is not performing in a way that could justify such selective optimism. GDP growth in Q1 2025 was 3.13 percent, and Q2 registered barely over 3 percent — a sluggish pace that fails to meet the expectation of broad-based expansion.
“Forecasts for the year hover between 3.0 percent and 3.4 percent, far from the robust rebound the administration envisioned. Headline inflation remains unyielding, sitting at 22.22 percent as of June, with food inflation at 21.97 percent, meaning that millions of Nigerians are paying more, not less.
“Petrol prices now average ₦1,037.66 per litre, still a significant burden on households and small businesses. The naira trades at around ₦1,530 to the dollar — drastically weaker than President Tinubu’s pre-reform levels of ₦460 — eroding purchasing power across the board.
“In fact, it is the Tinubu administration’s policy choices — fuel subsidy removal, naira devaluation, tariff hikes on electricity and transport — that have triggered this distress and made social safety nets not optional but essential. Yet these programmes have either been administered haphazardly, suspended, or had negligible impact.
“Every well-meaning Nigerian knows that celebrating the mere appearance of ‘stability’ is not only pyrrhic but also dangerous. This is why we believe Dr Okonjo-Iweala tweeted a clarification this afternoon, noting that Nigerians are experiencing hardship from President Tinubu’s reforms, and that putting in place more programmes to help especially the poor and vulnerable manage this hardship is very important. She further stressed that ‘At the same time, it is necessary to start work on growing the economy to create more jobs and put money in people’s pockets.’
“It is in this regard that the ADC strongly believes such candour from a global economic leader like Dr Okonjo-Iweala underscores the urgent need for federal government policies that go beyond rhetoric and propaganda, but instead address the daily harsh realities of millions of Nigerians under the APC.”
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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