Siminalayi Fubara, suspended Rivers State governor, recently visited Nyesom Wike, the minister of the Federal Capital Territory, at his Abuja residence in a bid to reconcile following months of political tension that led to the declaration of a state of emergency in the oil-rich state.

The visit followed a separate meeting between Fubara and President Bola Tinubu in London, where the deepening crisis between the governor and his predecessor, Wike, was discussed. The fallout from their feud prompted the federal government to suspend the governor and other elected officials for an initial six-month period.

Sources revealed that Fubara was accompanied to Wike’s residence on April 18 by Dapo Abiodun, the governor of Ogun State and former Governor Olusegun Osoba.

“Fubara was brought to the minister’s house on Friday, 18 April. He prostrated for Wike while holding his legs and calling him, ‘My Oga’,” Premium Times quoted a source familiar with the development.

Although the details of the discussion remain undisclosed, insiders suggest that Fubara was urged to return to Rivers and directly address his supporters and party elders regarding the rift with Wike.

While Wike’s spokesperson, Lere Olayinka, confirmed the meeting, he declined to provide further information.

The rift between Fubara and Wike erupted just months after the former assumed office. It fractured the state legislature into two opposing camps, one aligned with Wike, the other with Fubara. The governor’s recognition of the smaller faction, made up of lawmakers who remained in the Peoples Democratic Party, escalated the dispute, as he declared the others had lost their seats after defecting to the All Progressives Congress.

In February 2025, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of the pro-Wike lawmakers, affirming them as the legitimate state assembly, halting federal allocations to the state, and invalidating local council elections previously held by Fubara’s administration.

By March, the Rivers State House of Assembly issued a misconduct notice against Fubara and his deputy, Ngozi Odu, marking the beginning of formal impeachment proceedings. Lawmakers accused them of financial mismanagement, bypassing legislative approvals for appointments, obstructing the assembly’s duties, and withholding legislative funds.

The impeachment efforts coincided with the dismissal of elected local government chairpersons by the Fubara administration, following the Supreme Court’s judgment. Despite the political upheaval, Fubara pledged to implement the court’s decisions.

The federal government’s intervention, which included suspending the governor and the imposition of emergency rule, has sparked widespread condemnation across Nigeria, with many citizens and legal experts questioning the constitutionality of the move and its implications for democracy in the country.

[Business Day]

The director-general of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Dr. Emomotimi Agama, has issued a warning to Nigerians about firms that claim their registration with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and possession of a SCUML certificate from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) authorise them to operate investment schemes in Nigeria.

Agama shared this message during a recent interview with journalists at a sensitization tour in Abuja aimed at raising awareness against Ponzi schemes.

He expressed disappointment that some Nigerians and foreign companies have specialized in defrauding individuals through fraudulent investment schemes, saying SEC intends to take action against the increasing loss of billions of naira by the public in these scams.

“The public must recognise the risks of investing their hard-earned money in ventures that are not registered or regulated by the SEC,” Agama stated.

He noted, “we have witnessed numerous Ponzi schemes in the past. The Investments and Securities Act, signed into law by the President, enforces a fine of N20 million and a 10-year prison sentence for those found guilty of operating Ponzi schemes.”

Agama emphasized the importance of their outreach efforts to inform the public, saying “we are here to assist them in confirming legitimate investment schemes, and we understand their concerns. It is crucial to educate them to prevent being deceived. CAC registration and an EFCC certificate alone do not guarantee that a company is registered with the SEC; these are warning signs.”

He cautioned that training programmes organised by these fraudulent entities to attract investors are also illegal. The assistant director of the Enforcement Department at SEC, Tope Onwionoko reiterated the Commission’s commitment to promoting financial literacy, particularly regarding the rise of Ponzi schemes in society.

[Leadership]

When Consultant Congenital Cardiac Surgeon Dr. Ikenna Omeje, stepped into the operating theatre on April 16, 2025, it wasn’t just another high-risk procedure — it was a powerful continuation of a remarkable medical journey he helped begin.

Seven years earlier, Dr. Omeje was part of the pioneering team at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust that delivered Vanellope Hope Wilkins, a baby born with ectopia cordis — a rare and typically fatal condition where the heart develops outside the chest.

At the time, Vanellope was given less than a 10% chance of survival. But she beat the odds according to the BBC.

Now, Omeje was once again at the centre of her story, leading a groundbreaking chest reconstruction surgery aimed at finally giving her heart the permanent protection it never had

“This was always going to be one of the most delicate surgeries we’ve ever done,” Omeje said. “We’ve been waiting years for the right moment to protect her heart properly—and it finally came.”

The operation, which lasted over nine hours, took place at the East Midlands Congenital Heart Centre. Vanellope, who had lived for seven years without a breastbone, relied on a thin layer of skin and an external brace to shield her exposed heart. The goal of this groundbreaking surgery was to use her own ribs to form a permanent, protective cage inside her chest—a method never before attempted in the UK.

Before the procedure, Vanellope was placed on a heart-lung bypass machine, allowing her heart to deflate and be carefully detached from the skin it had adhered to. Surgeons then performed a bilateral rib osteotomy, carefully breaking and repositioning her ribs to enclose the heart within the chest wall.

The surgical team included Consultant Paediatric Surgeon Nitin Patwardhan, visiting Cardiothoracic Surgeon Nagarajan Muthialu from Great Ormond Street Hospital, and around 20 support staff including anaesthetists and perfusionists. But for Omeje, this was personal.

The operation’s success marks a milestone not only in Vanellope’s life, but in medical history. It’s the first time such a reconstruction has been carried out in the UK on a child with ectopia cordis.

Omeje, humbled by the outcome, said: “The best satisfaction is when you get a message from the family saying ‘thank you.’ That’s when you know your work has really made a difference.”

[DailyTrust]

Former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Prof. Chidi Odinkalu, has accused the National Judicial Council, NJC, of being “deeply complicit in judicial corruption” in the country.

According to him, NJC is handing out irresponsible slaps on the wrist of corrupt judges with utter disregard for their effect on judicial integrity.

Odinkalu claimed that the NJC as currently constituted is part of the problem not part of the solution.

The statement comes after the NJC slammed one year suspension without pay on three Judges of the High Court in the country for various acts of judicial misconduct.

DAILY POST reported that the affected judges include Hon. Justice Jane Inyang of the Court of Appeal, Uyo Division, Hon. Justice Inyang Edem Ekwo of the Federal High Court, Abuja Division and Hon. Justice Aminu Baffa Aliyu of the Federal High Court, Zamfara Division.

However, Odinkalu, in a post on his X handle on Thursday, expressed displeasure about the sanctions meted out by NJC against the affected judges.

He specifically stated that what the NJC has done in those cases is just not good enough, arguing that its dispositions are evidence of the deep malaise that currently afflicts the country’s judiciary.

Odinkalu’s words: “Jane Inyang became Justice of @CourtOfAppealNG in Sept 2023, less than 2 yrs ago. Yesterday, @njcNig suspended her for just 1 yr for egregious acts of judicial corruption while she sat in @FederalHigh. How can she still be a judge?!

“This was part of the last minute elevations masterminded by the baleful Olukakayode Ariwoola was he made his way out of office as the Chief Justice of Nigeria, #CJN, in Aug 2024.

“The only miracle in the case of Inyang Ekwo is how he has remained on the bench until now. He’s bn one of the more predictable judges in @FederalHigh. For the past year, he has bn under caution by @njcNig. Now, he has bn suspended for delivering judgment without hearing parties!

“Many will see these dispositions by @njcNig as progress; May be. But, these dispositions are evidence of the deep malaise that currently afflicts the #NigerianJudiciary. 1st, if a person is as crooked as Jane Inyang or as Inyang Ekwo, how can that person be a judge to begin with?

“2nd, if a judge can behave with such manifest impunity & disregard for the basic rules of judicial comportment as these 2 & still remain a judge – that’s what suspension for 1 year means – what wld it take for a judge to be relieved of their position? May be commit murder….?

“3rd, how did Jane Inyang manage to make it to @CourtOfAppealNG while the complaint about her conduct was still pending? @njcNig says it has suspended her from elevation for 5 yrs. U know what that means? She can still get to @SupremeCourtNg. U see the mess we are in?

“In plain language, the @njcNig is now deeply complicit in judicial corruption. It is handing out these irresponsible slaps on the wrist with utter disregard for their effect on judicial integrity or the damage that these entrench in the judiciary. This rot is deeply criminal.

“The conclusion is inescapable that @njcNig as currently constituted is part of the problem not part of the solution.
What it has done in these cases is just not good enough. If it is not willing to root out judicial crookedness, then it should be rooted out.”

[DailyPost]

Against the background of ongoing defections to the All Progressives Congress by politicians from the so-called opposition parties, we still harbour the fear of a one-party state as an imminent reality. The truth is, what we run is already tantamount to a one-party system, a short historical distance away from the military era, where the head of state, who creates political parties, also hands political parties their respective defining ideologies. The multi-party democratic system, planked as it is on the distinctiveness of ideas and ideologies between parties, and requires the independence of political agents. Contenders must have equal chances to sell their moral vision to the people, contest for power, and maintain their stance even when they have not been voted to power. Also, the institutions must be autonomous enough to regulate the activities of political actors across the board. These are all features that have been seriously lacking in Nigerian politics.

Properly speaking, Nigeria does not even have political parties. What we have are platforms on which any candidate who can commandeer money and influence runs an election. The closest to an ideology that anyone will find in Nigeria’s present political arrangement is the desperation to seize power and, if that fails, to get as close to it as possible. Once upon a time, the PDP called itself the most formidable political party and boasted it would sustain power for the next 60 or even 100 years. They hardly survived one election cycle out of presidential power. Their party members virtually emptied themselves into the winning party even before the 2015 electoral losers had fully understood what had befallen them.

In any case, it does not quite matter which side wins an election because we will ultimately be governed by the same cross-carpeting agents. Our politics mostly lacks a distinguishing philosophy. Take, for instance, the APC. Does anyone have any examples of the progressive causes they have pursued since their founding? I even doubt anyone in the APC ever wonders if they are staying true to their “progressive” appellation. One can say the same for the PDP, whether as the “Peoples Democratic Party” or as “Power to the People.” One of the most laughable comments I read about the Labour Party during the 2023 elections was that it platformed a candidate whose antecedents did not match the “labour” ideology. There was an implicit assumption that the Nigerian “Labour Party” had an ideological affinity with the “Labour Party” of, say, the UK and Australia (which are typically peopled by social democrats) and should therefore act according to character. But there is nothing like that in Nigeria. Whatever name a political party calls itself is, at best, aspirational. It has little to do with what they can be trusted to always stand for. What matters is the control of federal power and mobilising resources for electoral victory.

 Our politics has always been more of an aggregation of personalities managing their self-interests rather than an espousal of a governing vision. If you ever watch parliamentary debates in Nigeria, you would have noted that it never happens that lawmakers disagree with their peers based on any philosophy of how government should be structured. They all agree and disagree on the same thing; they collectively sign off the padded national budgets, and like serfs, they jump to their feet to chorus “on your mandate, we shall stand” when Bola Tinubu appears in their hollowed chamber. Without any internal differences, does it truly matter whether we have one party or a dozen?

Besides, the nature of our politics makes no room for abstract ideas. Elections are won or lost based on what they call “structure”, a euphemism for clout cultivated at grassroots levels and which will be sold to the highest bidder during elections. Politics is a pyramid scheme where those who hold sway at different levels exchange the votes of the people over whom they maintain some influence, and their calculations are always based on immediate material gains. The average Nigerian, too, hardly subscribes to a politics of ideas; people vote for personalities representing their identity groups and who they believe will hold power in trust for them. The platform on which such candidates compete hardly matters to our people, and it would seem superfluous for any party to maintain a distinctive ideology.

Perhaps, the biggest reason we never seem to evolve beyond a singularising political order is the nature of our economic system itself. We are largely an extractive economy, a system where the primary function of leadership is to manage and allocate raw resources. It is a political arrangement that makes the president disproportionately powerful since the opportunities for everyone’s social mobility are concentrated in his hands. He distributes to them based on the perceived degree of their fidelity to him. It is not in his personal interest to institutionalise the social instruments of democracy, and he will do everything to ensure opposition parties do not flourish.

If the “opposition” does not allow themselves to be amicably enticed with money and other offers, they will find themselves forcefully crippled. It is not strange that Ifeanyi Okowa, the man who could have become the vice president in 2023, is now crawling on his face to join the APC. He could simply have joined the APC without a fuss, like his peers had done, but he had to add a cringeworthy explanation. For a man who has a N1tn case with the EFCC, who can blame him for being practical? He is not the first person to join the APC to have his sins forgiven, as Adams Oshiomole once enjoined. Godswill Akpabio, the Senate President, too, was once in Okowa’s shoes. He joined the APC, and his case with the EFCC has been put in permanent abeyance. In a country where their president can suspend a governor, how many people will not bow and worship if their survival depends on it?

About the only time since 1999 “opposition” politics thrived in Nigeria was when the regional ACN contended with the national PDP. Now that power has changed hands, we know that the APC was hardly driven by ideological commitment during those years. Their “opposition” politics was funded by ambitious Tinubu with Lagos’ money. Once he got into power, he muted their bought voices. The only state in Nigeria where the “Lagos model” of sponsoring political opposition can replicate itself is Rivers State, and Tinubu has already anticipated that possibility. Not only did he undercut the strength of the PDP in that state by taking over one of their chieftains, Nyesom Wike, but he also showed his hand of power by suspending the substantive governor for six months. The Rivers State Governor, Siminalayi Fubara, who—just months ago—stood defiantly on his two feet, now grovels before the almighty federal power. The reality of being out of power must have hit him.

Such is the disempowering nature of our democracy. It constricts our choices to either being rewarded for compliance or punished with marginality. The average career politician chooses the former for obvious reasons, but also because they are amoral like that. Let me be clear that the fear of a one-party state is a well-founded one. To the best of our ability, we must resist it from becoming fully official because it will further degrade our politics. Yet, we cannot just mourn a politics that we wished we had—rather than the one that is already operative.

Suspended Rivers State Governor, Siminalayi Fubara, has commended the resilience and dedication of the state’s workforce, calling for greater protection of workers’ rights and improved working conditions across sectors.

Fubara gave the charge in a solidarity message to mark the 2025 Workers’ Day, stressing that workers remain the backbone of the state’s progress and a beacon of hope amid current political challenges.

He said this in a statement issued in Port Harcourt, the state capital, on Thursday by his Chief Press Secretary, Nelson Chukwudi.

Fubara described the workers’ commitment as the backbone of the state’s development and a beacon of hope for a better future.

He said that this year’s theme, “Ensuring Safety and Health at Work in a Changing Climate,” underscores the urgent need to protect workers amid escalating environmental threats and socio-political uncertainties and stressed the importance of prioritising occupational safety and well-being as essential pillars for sustainable growth.

He acknowledged the efforts of the Federal Government, under the leadership of President Bola Tinubu, in advancing labour reforms and promoting climate-conscious policies that support a healthier, safer working environment nationwide.

The statement partly read, “Governor Fubara expressed deep gratitude to Rivers workers who, despite political turbulence and governance disruptions, continue to demonstrate patriotism, integrity, and an unwavering commitment to duty, emphasising that their sacrifices form the cornerstone of the state’s stability and advancement.”

Reaffirming his administration’s dedication to workers’ welfare, the governor called on all employers —public and private — to respect labour laws and uphold the rights and dignity of every worker.

He advocated for continuous improvements in working conditions to reflect both legal standards and moral responsibility.

Fubara offered prayers for divine wisdom and guidance for all leaders, pledging that his administration will remain steadfast in creating a work environment that nurtures dignity, opportunity, and prosperity for all.

He encouraged the people of Rivers State to stay hopeful and united, assuring them that the “forces of justice, peace, and progress will prevail in the end.”

[Punch]

As a directing staff at the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, I was charged, as one of my responsibilities, with bringing the participants at the senior executive courses (SEC) and other programmes up to speed on recent developments in public administration and management in the twenty-first century. One of the most significant developments, and the point of many excited discussion is public policy decision-making. Given that governments all across the world are judged on their performance of the function of policy formulation and service delivery (of course, the regulatory function is also significant), the policy architecture of any government must factor in intelligent policymaking that will transform policy intelligence revolving around governance and development decision-making processes. And if the public service must facilitate a professional and intelligent policy advice to the government in ways that orient the politics-administration dichotomy in public administration, then due attention must be given to new developments in intelligent policymaking in the twenty-first century. 

However, the practical worry I usually communicated to the SEC participants is how, since its emergence, public administrators in Nigeria have failed to give decision science its right of place in administrative and management practices. The cutting-edge application of development in this fascinating field has only been exploited by industrial management. Decision science was significantly facilitated by Chester Barnard. In his groundbreaking The Functions of the Executive (1938), he outlines a theoretical framework that allows us to examine how organizations actually operate outside of any normative or prescriptive requirements. Bernard’s contributions connect between the rationality of organizational, rather than individual, decision-making processes, and the cooperative capacity required to facilitate decision-making. While organizational decision-making is more significantly logical and rational, it is often facilitated by social and strategic contexts, like clear objectives, specialization, the flow of information, etc. 

The organizational rationality that Barnard was referring to does not translate into the “perfect rationality” of traditional economic models and theories. This concept assumes that in the decision-making process, the decision makers are fully equipped with the necessary information and data to make the best economic decisions. On the contrary, Herbert Simon undermined this assumption of a perfect decision-making. According to him, human fallibility makes it impossible to achieve the perfect standpoint—having the capacity and the resources to gather and process all the information and data required to make perfectly rational decisions. There is just too much uncertainty involved in how we decide, what we decide and the alternatives available in resolving our decisional dilemma. This therefore implies that in critical decision-making, cognitive limitations, policy complexity and resource constraints, Herbert Simon argues, that decision-makers only pursue satisficing rather than optimal solutions. A solution is satisficing if it is founded on rational and pragmatic principles and circumstances. 

Given the many troubles and predicaments of the modern world, from climate change to political processes, and given the fact that we do not have all the answers we seriously need. This is where artificial intelligence and big data become the starting point of our attempt to understand before we can even predict or act. It is in this sense that decision science has learnt a lot from Barnard’s and Simon’s understanding of decisional rationality, and how computers and machines generally can contribute to the decision-making dynamics. We can therefore immediately see how the idea of a data-driven decisional strategy can assist governments across the world, and especially in Africa, to come to terms with critical policy intelligence required to backstop governance and development policies. 

There is no gainsaying the fact that we now live in the world of big data and artificial intelligence. This is the age of the machine. The operation of social media platforms, their algorithmic underpinnings, and the emergences of enormous databases all indicates that the amount of data available in contemporary world is beyond staggering. It has been reported that Facebook, the social media platform, warehouses “300 petabytes of data about its 2 billion active users, or 150 megabytes of data per user.” Of course, the Cambridge Analytica scandal that ignited concerns about the misuse of data raised critical issues around the ethics of data usage. However, that same concern attends the extent to which governments can ethically deploy data-driven policy intelligence in the pursuit of the well-being of their citizens. And even beyond this, governments all across the world are now confronted with multiple dimensions of polycrisis that disarticulate all efforts at making sense of their governance and development circumstances and objectives. The deployment of artificial intelligence and big data—from financial transaction data to the internet of things (IoT), and so on—cumulate into the enhancement of the credibility of those governments who have the courage to exploit their usage for policy intelligence. 

However, before any government can get to the zenith of credibility and legitimacy, there is the outstanding and fundamental issue of extracting meaning, purpose and direction from the enormous amount of data available. This involves designing the models that extract and interpret the data in ways that enable government to explain and predict things, situation and circumstances in the real world. Data scientists, in other words, assist the governments in formulating hypotheses, based on the identification of trends, patterns and flows that investigate current problematics, anticipate future challenges and proactively energize government policies. In a world where climate change has undermined lots of policy intelligences, where geo-spatial data analytics backstops the government’s infrastructure masterplans in terms of identifying geographic patterns, trends, dynamics and disparities so as to be able to initiate creative policy designs and formulations that prioritize investments, allocate resources more effectively, and facilitate service delivery. 

We now need to confront the necessity of deploying artificial intelligence and big data at the level of public service institutions, especially in line with the imperatives of institutional reforms that have the objectives of bringing these institutions up to speed with modern technologies, procedures and administrative imperatives that can enhance the government’s capacity to efficiently deliver goods and services to the citizenry. This deployment must however go beyond the default level where pubic institutions are just compelled to adopt any reigning innovation without a significant feasibility study in terms of the fundamental utility of the innovation within an overall organizational reform blueprint. For example, as part of the institutional imperatives, public institutions have to factor in the challenges of privacy, security, data governance and data ethics. 

What differentiates a good administration from a bad one is the intelligent policymaking capacity that is founded on policy intelligence. Within Nigeria’s governance framework and policy architecture, a reformed policymaking founded on big data and artificial intelligence demands that the public service adopts a change management programme that must first give attention to the (re)professionalization of the workforce, especially the senior executive service. The SES must be beefed up as a multidisciplinary elite team that is charged with the articulation of a strategic policy intelligence. This allows the SES to not only play a critical role in policymaking function, but also facilitate the strategic deployment of big data. Recruitment into this top-level administrative corps will be on the basis of intelligence, professionalism and performance rating. 

The establishment of the SES will entail modifying the generalist composition of the workforce through a competency mapping that create a hub of specialists and experts specifically reskilled for the demands of new technologies, artificial intelligence, big data and data science. The second dimension of the change management is to link this generic professionalization to the reform of the department of planning, research and statistics in the MDAs. The DPRS could then serve as the effective policy hub that mediates the articulation of the demands of decision science and big data around the dynamics of data culture, data availability and action research capacity to interpret such data as input to policy and feedback.      

Each DPRS will have to recruit, train and incentivize new officers who will be put in charge of regulating the new innovation. It is not just enough to innovate; it must be a guarded reform that is founded on a blueprint of how artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science and new technologies factor into the governance and development objectives of the Nigerian government. This will necessitate, for example, collaborating with research-based think tanks and institutes in ways that further enhance the quality of policy decision and the data dynamics needed to formulate policy intelligence. 

The biggest requirement for harnessing the requirements of decision science is the political will of governments to go all out in traversing the challenges of institutional reforms, and especially of exploring and exploiting the intricacies of big data analytics in terms of its capacity to improve decision-making and the efficiency of service delivery to Nigerians. There is just no other alternative to the transformation of the policy architecture of the Nigerian government than the political willingness to become proactive in the institutional reform of the public service. Given the economic and governance challenges that the administration is confronting, the reality of the time is really auspicious with regard to the reform opportunities that global best practices have presented the Nigerian government with. There is no alternative to reform, and decision science is the opportunity to make it work for democratic governance.