My new friend is 86 years old, Albertus Johannes Venter, famously known as Al J. Venter, with Boer and German ancestry. He is a white South African war correspondent, documentary filmmaker and author of more than forty books. Venter initially served in the South African Navy between 1956 and 1960, rising to the rank of Acting Leading Seaman. He was twice wounded in combat, by a Soviet anti-tank mine in Angola and by sub-machine gun fire. Venter was in Nigeria in 1965 to work for John Holt, and during the Nigerian 1967 civil war, covered it as an Africa and Middle East correspondent for Jane’s International Defence Review, which produced the war memoir, Biafra’s War: A Tribal Conflict In Nigeria That Left A Million Dead (2016). In coverage of the war, he was in the company of his friend, Frederick Forsyth, who was BBC’s war correspondent for Biafra.

In my piece of November 24, 2024, with the title, Obasanjo and Tinubu’s Tańtólóhun dogs, I critiqued Nigeria’s presidential media team’s reactive and oftentimes combative approach to communication. In it, I drew a parallel between this bellicose communication approach and German art enthusiast and scholar, Horst Ulrich Beier, famously known as Ulli Beier’s narrative about the power and powerlessness of dogs. For a media team, President Bola Tinubu apparently or ostensibly keeps a kennel of Rottweilers dogs who, like Beiers’ Tańtólóhun dogs, almost every time get unleashed on perceived haters of their principal.

Outgoing African Development Bank (AfDB) President Akinwumi Adesina seems to be the latest victim of the blood-baying incisors of these Tańtólóhun hounds. In the last two years of this administration, the presidential groove must be brimming with dry bones of top-placed Nigerians whose fleshes have been mercilessly torn into pieces by these insufferable dogs. As president of AfDB, Adesina has variously commented on the economies of virtually all countries in Africa. He had been a passionate bother about the slide in African economies and how, in the immortal words of Chinua Achebe, African leadership had left its plates unwashed and a swarm of flies now holds conferences inside its dirty plate.

Following this path, which has variously earned him kudos as a concerned African, Dr. Adesina, in a keynote address delivered at Chapel Denham, an investment firm’s 20th anniversary held in Lagos, issued a stern warning that, if Nigeria desires to attain a globally competitive and industrialized status by 2050, it must radically transform its economic model. He then warned of a looming deeper economic depression which he saw manifest in his mental computation. His bother was that, with a current per capita of a mere $824, Nigerians are significantly worse off than they were in 1960 at independence. 

 Silence as an answer was golden. Weren’t we warned that it is not all clothes that are spread to dry under sunlight? Replying Adesina with such gruff is akin to a proverbial man lost his virile sexual potency, and who, rather than insert into where his effort was needed, claimed he could insert a thread inside the eye of a needle! Street wisdom counsels silence in this regard. Between the duo of American president, Abraham Lincoln and celebrated American humorist, Mark Twain, a quip credited to either of them dictates the route to follow by the presidential media office in the circumstance. It says it is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubts. The moment our boss, Bayo Onanuga, chose to disobey Twain and Lincoln, he let the cat out of the bag.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter) by the media office, we were entertained to a caterwaul of boring statistics. Adesina’s “figures (that) do not align with available data”, it said, and his comparative analysis of Nigeria’s GDP per capita in 1960 and 2025, misleading. “GDP per capita is not the only criterion used to determine whether people live better lives now than in the past. Indeed, it is a poor tool for assessing living standards,” the post stated. Apparently still fuming that anyone had the temerity to have another opinion about the Eldorado government Aso Rock runs today, Onanuga argued that GDP does not reflect economic realities: “GDP per capita is silent on whether Nigerians in 2025 enjoy better access to healthcare, education, and transportation, such as rail and air transport than in 1960,” he said.

However, the Tańtólóhun dogs did their comparative analysis and reached a conclusion favourable to their narrative. “We can comfortably say without contradiction that it (the economy) is at least 50 times, if not 100 times, more than it was at Independence,” they said. They also recalled that, “in 1960, Nigeria had only 18,724 telephone lines for about 45 million people” but, “today, over 200 million Nigerians have access to mobile and digital services.”

The tirelessly whining old Ọkọ Idọgọ train eventually arrived its destination. According to the Nigerian presidency, which reads 2027 into every patriotic call for a governmental sanity, Adesina’s statement was politically motivated. It compared him to the Villa’s tormentor and Achilles’ heel. “Adesina spoke like a politician, in the mould of Peter Obi, and did not do due diligence before making his unverifiable statement,” Onanuga said. The question that needed to be asked the Tańtólóhun dogs was asked some decades back by another Juju music great, Chief Ebenezer Obey, in an evergreen vinyl. In a situation as imponderable as this, Obey asked the Woman cloth seller who held a whiplash as she stood guard of her clothes, what correlation that existed between cloths and goats that could necessitate her standing sentinel over clothes with a whip: Do animals eat lace cloth materials? (Kínni Màmá Aláso ńtà t’ó y’egba dání, àb’éwúré ńje lace ni?) We are asking the Tańtólóhun dogs same Obey question over this statement against revered Dr. Adesina.

Venter’s Takka Takka Bom Bom: A South African Correspondent’s Story is a 27-chapter book of 399 pages, with a chapter entitled “Nigeria: Crazy, but I love it!” It was a title he got from his first report for Argus Africa News Service describing his experience in a 5-year-old post-independence Nigeria. Compared to other countries he had been, the then 27-year-old Venter said he spent “next to nothing” commuting from Calabar, through Port Harcourt, Onitsha, Benin across land to Lagos. “It was significant that I never once encountered any hostility throughout my Nigerian peregrinations, political or otherwise. Lagos was then among the most secure cities in Africa,” Venter wrote, stating, “We were out every night, often on foot, moving around the bars on Lagos Victoria Island or up to Yaba and Ikorodu Roadway – often until the wee hours.” Is the situation same today in Tinubu’s Nigeria? The plenty in Nigeria of the time can effortlessly be found in Venter’s fluid narrative. It is also in the people’s sense of nationalism. Take, for instance, an American Peace Corps female volunteer whose story is in the book. She had sent home a postcard which referred to Nigeria as a disgusting filth pile and slums. All hell was let loose when somebody in the post office passed the card over to someone in government. Not only was the lady kicked out of the country, Nigerians were still disconsolate until Washington apologized for this indiscretion.

Statistics on poverty rates, income growth, and factors like affordability of housing, commute times, and environmental quality are also indicators of overall well-being of a people. The Villa should have availed us that. A few days ago, the World Bank alerted that poverty rate among Nigeria’s rural population had slid to an alarming 75.5 per cent.

Now, we have the Nigerian government gloat on a claim of its having paid up IMF debt. The reality staring us in the face is that the suffering of Nigerian people is spreading like bushfire in the harmattan. If the Villa voodoo media doctors can, for a minute, open the shutters and see beyond the comfy Aso Rock, what will confront them is the reality that, every hour, Nigerians slide into poverty and die because they cannot access healthcare and food. Thousands also slant into depression. Flaunting apocryphal statistics of citizen comfort across ages that are as smelly to the senses as the “remains of dead animals, birds, reptiles and much more” won’t work. The description of smell was given by Venter of Lome witch-doctors’ Akodessawa Fetish Market while filming a documentary in Togo. Citing Venter, the Villa statistics-bandying, without corresponding description of the people’s plight today, finds simile in “using magic to communicate with supernatural spirits and dead people.”

Today, while Aso Rock is winning the war of political demographics and idolatry bow of opposition parties by its feet, it is not winning the hearts of the people. Nigerian political parties, governors, senators, Reps are jumping inside the dirty pond of APC to swim in the mud preparatory to 2027. Great that a Charles Soludo, desperate for a second term, has found an “ideological” liaison in a combine of APC and APGA for an illicit romp. Yes, the president is now “Dike si mba Anambra,” (warrior from the Diaspora) a chieftaincy title conferred on him on Thursday by Igwe Chidubem Iweka who said it was a title “by all the royal fathers from the 179 communities of Anambra State.” What war has the president won since he secured the tenancy of Aso Rock that makes him a Dike, warrior? Hunger war? Hopelessness war? Insecurity war? War against corruption? After politicians finished their trade-off huffing and puffing at the Alex Ekwueme Square, Awka that Thursday and federal largesses exchanged hands, did the people of Anambra go to bed happier or hungrier?

It is apparent that the statistics juggling by “Dike si mba Anambra”’s people are all geared towards 2027. Beautiful. While they appear to have tightened the nuts and bolts of the human factor, I wish they spare a minute to screw together God’s nuts and bolts, too. It is like hunting a game, killing and disemboweling the animal but failing to reckon with its bile busting to foul up a neatly-dressed venison. This reminds me of a gory picture Juju music maestro, King Sunny Ade, painted in one of his 1970s songs. KSA’s imaginary enemies had sent a kid on an errand to the l’éku-l’éja market, almost similar to Lome’s Akodessawa Fetish Market. The kid’s assignment was to buy some fetish bric-a-brac with which they hoped to put a final seal of spiritual victory on their enemy. The fetish objects comprised one of the most lethal assemblages ever, but effete in the real sense of it  –  dry head of a cobra, bought for six pence; seven carcasses of the animal called Itun; seven bitter seeds of Abere and seven seeds of alligator pepper, all of which were pounded with a traditional black soap. Little did they know, sang KSA, like nincompoops, (Paddy Ode-nsin) that they had been sold a dummy!

“If the problem is in the name or nomenclature employed by Utomi, then, we may have to search for a less “provocative” name, but no one should tell us that our democracy does not need a vibrant opposition or that the institutions in place at the moment are up to the task. They are not! Can we, therefore, appropriately refer to what Utomi has cobbled together as a “shadow government”? I do not think so. Think-tank, maybe! Pressure group, fittingly! Who elected you our leaders? And who make you rulers and judges over us? That, I think, is the point the Minister of Information was trying to make before he overshot the tarmac “

PROFESSOR Pat Utomi, man of many parts but better known these days as a political activist and relentless critic of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu presidency, has announced the formation of what he has described as a “shadow government” whose purpose, ostensibly, is to hold the feet of the Tinubu administration to the fire for the purpose of safeguarding the good health of our renascent democracy, ensuring good governance, and the delivery of the much-vaunted dividends of democracy to the mercilessly-abused and long-suffering Nigerian people. My suspicion is that many Nigerians will consider the Utomi move a welcome development, especially with the rag-tag opposition parties that exist only in name and appearance and not in contents and substance.

 A gale of defections has hit the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which is the largest opposition party, running it ragged; the next party after it, the Labour Party, is in disarray, with multiple factions laying claim to its leadership, while the former governor of Kaduna state, Nasir el-Rufai’s defection into the Social Democratic Party (SDP) appears a non-starter. Serial presidential candidate and ex-Vice-President Atiku Abubakar’s talk of a merger or coalition that will give Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) a run for their money in 2027 holds no promise but jeers. The National Assembly is seen by many as rubber stamp; the judiciary is looked at suspiciously as compromised while Labour at best is a caricature of its former vibrant self. Student unionism that once stood as a beacon of hope for national redemption has itself fallen into the cesspit of corruption that epitomises the country’s political landscape. Any hope, renewed or rehashed, appears forlorn. And in the absence of nothing, anything goes.

Story of the Tortoise

 Nature abhors a vacuum; hence the void that Utomi seeks to fill with his shadow government, which appears more at home in a parliamentary system of government than in the presidential system that we operate here. An enemy more powerful than the Tortoise one day invaded Tortoise’s home and bound him hand and foot, Tortoise made a last plea: That he be let loose and set on his feet again just for a moment. Wondering what magic he would perform, his captor obliged. Tortoise then scratched the ground with his hands and legs and said, “Let it be recorded for posterity that I protested and gave a good fight before being carried away into slavery”! If all Utomi’s shadow government achieves is for history to record that some people scratched the ground with their hands and legs when, in their view, the country was turning the corner into a one-party state, let it be so recorded for posterity to judge!

Why “shadow government”?

An online medium reported Utomi’s endeavour thus: “Economist and political advocate, Professor Pat Utomi, has unveiled a shadow government established to serve as a credible opposition to President Bola Tinubu’s administration. The initiative, which he described as a ‘national emergency response’, was launched virtually under the banner of Big Tent Coalition Shadow Government. Utomi said the body was created in response to what he described as worsening economic and security conditions under President Bola Tinubu’s government.

 “According to him, the new body draws its membership from a cross-section of Nigeria’s opposition parties and is tasked with regularly scrutinising government actions, identifying policy failures, and proposing alternative solutions in key areas, including the economy, education, healthcare, infrastructure, law and order, and constitutional reform. He said, ‘The recent spate of defections to the All Progressives Congress provides further evidence that all is not well with democracy in Nigeria. The imperative is that if a genuine opposition does not courageously identify the performance failures of incumbents, offer options and influence culture in a counter direction, it will be complicit in subverting the will of the people.’

 “He explained that the group would meet weekly to review public policies, offer alternatives, and push for reforms in key areas, emphasising the importance of focusing on integrity and transparency, which he said are sorely lacking under the current administration. ‘This shadow team must also address issues of ethics, transparency, and integrity, which continue to challenge this government at every turn. Nothing is more urgent than tackling the rising poverty across the country. Multinationals are shutting down, and millions are unemployed…’, he said.

 “Utomi further noted that the immediate priorities would include stimulating local production, decentralising security, and promoting inclusive governance. Today, I bring to this pioneer body the desperate cries of a people troubled by how their reality seems bound for serfdom. I challenge you to awaken these people who wrongly believe that everything is fine as long as they can manage a share of what little still trickles down from crude oil sales,” he said.

“Utomi also criticised the economic direction of the current administration, especially its handling of the petroleum subsidy removal. He accused the government of using broad consensus among politicians as a cover for poor planning, saying, ‘Making propaganda of most leaders being in agreement on removing the petroleum subsidy was to cover up policy errors of how to remove it without further structural damage to the economy.’

 “On the issue of security reform, Utomi called for decentralised policing, arguing that communities should be empowered to maintain their own security infrastructure through a layered approach involving local forces, state police, and a Federal National Guard… We will travel farther if we get the communities to have their own armed and well-trained police forces, which will be layered with state police and the Federal National Guard,” he said, adding that corruption and centralisation have contributed to the resistance against such reforms.

 Speaking on the makeup of the shadow cabinet, Utomi noted that it includes a range of professionals and public figures drawn from across the opposition. He said the team would operate not only as a think-tank but also as a policy watchdog, offering credible alternatives to government decisions.

 “Among those appointed is human rights lawyer Dele Farotimi, who will lead the Ombudsman and Good Governance portfolio. Farotimi joins other prominent voices such as Oghene Momoh, Cheta Nwanze, Daniel Ikuonobe, Halima Ahmed, David Okonkwo, and Obi Ajuga on the policy delivery unit.

The broader shadow cabinet includes a diverse lineup of experts and professionals: Dr. Adefolusade Adebayo, Dr. Peter Agadah, Dr. Sadiq Gombe, Chibuzor Nwachukwu, Salvation Alibor, Bilkisu Magoro, Dr. Victor Tubo, Charles Odibo, Dr. Otive Igbuzor, Eunice Atuejide, Gbenga Ajayi, Dr. Mani Ahmad, Peter Oyewole, and Dr. Omano Edigheji. Additional members include Sidi Ali, Ibrahim Abdulkarim, Adenike Oriola, Promise Adewusi, Prof. Ukachukwu Awuzie, Ambrose Obimma, Rwang Pam, Dr. Kingsley Anedo, Prof. Auwal Aliyu, Dr. Ghazali Ado, Nana Kazaure, Aisha Yusuf, Dr. Charles Gilbert, and Olujimi Akiboh.”

Caveat emptor!

I do not think there are many Nigerians who would say that the problems itemised here by Utomi are not real or that they do not need confrontation; not even the government can say that because the government itself has not only similarly identified the problems but President Tinubu himself has said now and again that it is confronting them head-on. How successfully, effectively, and efficiently, however, remains the bone of contention. Now that Utomi’s shadow government is poised to present alternatives, Nigerians will be in a better position to determine which option is better – the government’s or Utomi’s. 

 My suspicion, however, is that no government in power where the system of shadow government is alien will not tend to see any other “government” not recognised by law as subversive and treading on the dangerous path of treason. Therefore, there must be understanding and caution on both sides. The APC government must understand that vibrant opposition is the fulcrum of democracy. It must also not forget that a few years back, it was in the opposition. If it had been clubbed to death at the time by the ruling party, it would not be in power today. 

 It is in this respect that the Federal Government’s response to Utomi’s shadow government is ominous. The Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, was reported to have criticised the initiative, describing it as unconstitutional and unsuitable for Nigeria’s presidential system. Said he: “At a time when our nation is set to celebrate 26 unbroken years of presidential democracy, the idea of a so-called ‘shadow government’ is an aberration. Nigeria is not a parliamentary system where such a system is practised, and there is no provision for such in our statute books. While opposition politics is a central feature of democracy, it must be practised at all times within the bounds of propriety. This idea of a shadow government sadly does not pass that test. Our bicameral legislature amply features members of the opposition, and it should be the right place to contest meaningful ideas for nation-building.”

 If the problem is in the name or nomenclature adopted by Utomi, then, we may have to search for a less “provocative” name, but no one should tell us that our democracy does not need a vibrant opposition or that the institutions in place at the moment are up to the task. They are not! If the opposition parties, legislators, judiciary, Labour, etc are already doing the needful, there would have been no use for Utomi and his co-travellers. It is the failure of those institutions that now necessitates the emergence of Utomi’s “shadow government” or whatever else we may choose to call it.

Win-win situation

 By the way, what is a shadow government? In our context here, a shadow government has been defined as “a government that is prepared to take control in response to certain events, especially one made up of the leadership of the largest opposition party in parliament, which would assume control should the ruling party be displaced in elections”. Usually, a shadow government is composed of a shadow cabinet, albeit with no executive powers, with portfolios assigned to respective senior members of the opposition party whose duty it is to scrutinise the policies and actions of the government as well as to offer alternative policies. In short, it is government-in-waiting, as we have it in the United Kingdom.

 Can we, then, appropriately refer to what Utomi has cobbled together as a shadow government? I do not think so. Think-tank, maybe! Pressure group, fittingly! Shadow government? No! Who elected them our leaders? Who made them rulers and judges over us? That, I think, is the point the Minister of Information was trying to make before he overshot the tarmac – like Utomi himself has also done. Apart from the reservations that I have about the composition of Utomi’s think-tank, I also do not think its task should be limited to only identifying the “performance failures” of the government. Utomi and company should be honest enough to give credit, and applause, where it is due. Otherwise, it will not be long before they begin to sing like a broken record and sound like brass and tinkling cymbals.  

Where is the owner of the dismembered hand dangling from the mouth of this dancing ape? And where is the body from which he amputated the human foot he is using as a clapper in his celebration orgy? In which unfortunate country did this happen? Where was the law when these beasts were on the prowl? Who is going to redress this unspeakable transgression?

As members of the global human family, what hope for the rest of us, the unarmed survivors, who are usually told to patiently await our turn to be guillotined, with our body parts used in a mock-dance.

Mercifully, I’ve since learned that the video was shot in Burkina Faso by their own religious lunatics who are nonetheless as cannibalistic as the Nigerian variant. Thanks to PRNigeria, an online medium, we now know that “The viral video originated from Burkina Faso. The men seen dancing with what appear to be human body parts are militants from that country, celebrating the defeat of their enemies.

“If you have also seen the video, may I ask you how it makes you feel? Or, have you reached the stage of being unshockable – which the late educationist, Dr. Tai Solarin, warned us against many years ago?

No, we must not allow society to get used to these numbing depravities regularly posted on social media by subhuman monsters who should never have been born. Boko Haram started the trend with colourful video clips of decapitation. Then, its leader, Abubakar Shekau, posted even more horrifying videos of himself personally slaughtering helpless victims.

Borno And Middle Belt

Even the mere retelling of just a tiny slice of the horror we have been through gives goose pimples. Now, we are being bombarded daily with even more horrendous stories of whole families dismembered and then incinerated in Benue and Plateau states by bands of terrorists who, in some cases, have since taken over the villages.

Governor Zulum of Borno State was almost reduced to tears the other day when he was calling for help. It was pathetic, more so because Zulum has been one of the more forthright and competent administrators among the current generation of governors. Horror has its limits. For Boko Haram to be knocking on the door of the state capital when we all but thought that those demons had been consigned to the bottomless pit, was galling.

Perhaps because of the trauma, and for want of better intellection-based solutions, Professor Zulum then went on to ban the sale of alcohol throughout the state. I would have thought that, as an academic, the governor would commission social scientists to help him establish the causative factors of the state of anomie so that appropriate actions could then be taken. I was therefore taken aback when the good professor simply announced the ban on alcohol.

I haven’t yet done a research on the subject but I suspect that irresponsible parenting which exposes children to homelessness, begging, narcotics and anti-social behaviours would feature prominently among the causative factors. The almajiri system provides a ready army for Boko Haram and other terrorist organisations using religion as a cover.

Truth be told, the traditional milieu in which parents can just abandon their children (some as young as three years old) to a mallam for religious training, does not belong to the 21st Century. Such impressionable children are gullible enough to be pumped with anti-social sentiments and queer religiosity which ties their candidacy for paradise to the number of skulls they harvest.

If the political elite want to end the odious almajiri system tomorrow, they can; but will they? If it’s a matter of political realignment or demanding more political appointments, the elite will show up in their resplendent voluminous robes. But which of them is looking out for the children of the poor?

Security Summit

The Senate has recently been wrestling with the idea of a national security summit to address the state of insecurity in the country. We have had several such summits in the past and they came to naught. We all know that talk-shops mean different things to different people: contract to the contractor, honorarium to the academic, photo-op to the politician, mudslinging latitude to party apparatchiks, visibility to the ambitious ‘in-coming’, etc.

There are many recommendations from past summits/conferences gathering dust in abandoned files in the federal and state government’s offices. Let’s task the relevant committees of the National Assembly, in collaboration with the security agencies to update what had been done in the past.

We don’t have all the time in the world, so we must treat this issue with the urgency it deserves, Already, the terrorists have retaken villages earlier seized from them by the army in the Northeast. They’re collecting taxes. They’re torching and renaming villages in the Middle Belt. They’re killing hunters and vigilante members in the Southwest. And, if social media revelations are anything to go by, hundreds of newly imported foreign fighters are massing around Kwara State with the aim of attacking the Southwest.

If their progression continues unchecked, who says they will not forcefully declare a republic someday soon? After all, their unmourned leader, Abubakar Shekau, once declared a caliphate.

What To Do

It is my considered opinion that we have to do the following urgently: The armed forces are overstretched and should be limited to the worst areas of insurgency and banditry in the Northeast and Middle Belt and selected strategic infrastructure (for example, oil installations in the creeks). The strategy of the savages is to open up many fronts of engagement to overstretch the elastic limits of the armed forces.

Relevant laws should be amended to allow hunters and vigilantes, under the supervision of the state police, to bear arms up to the calibre of AK 47, the favourite weapon of the vagabonds. If not, people in the rural areas will start acquiring their own superior weapons in a bid to counter the terrorists.

All states should establish their own police forces immediately. All states should also constitute vigilante groups for their villages under the supervision of the state police.

The diplomatic corps should be sensitised on the criminal activities of their nationals, e.g., Chinese cyber criminals exposed in Lagos.

To side-step traitors within the system and expose sponsors of terrorism, the federal government should contract an independent ‘digitracker’ to help expose how the ransom money of bandits is laundered between various accounts.

The federal government should release the list of terrorist sponsors identified by the UAE government.

Habemus Paparam

The declaration, “Habemus Papam” reminded me of my Latin classes in the days of yore. By the time the identity of the new pope was revealed, the announcement triggered shock waves around the world. Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost went into the second day of the papal conclave as a voter and came out as Pope Leo XIV.

A 1977 graduate of mathematics who later read Philosophy and bagged a doctorate in Theology, he is the first Augustinian friar and first American/Peruvian to become Pope. Augustinians embrace a lifestyle of poverty, travelling, and living in urban areas for purposes of preaching, evangelisation, and ministry, especially to the underprivileged. His motto indicates his spiritual egalitarianism: In illo uno unum -“In the One, we are One”. May his reign be impactful.

Those who couldn’t tolerate the late Pope Francis’ advocacy for the poor should hold their breath until they hear this new pope. What are Augustinians if not advocates for the poor?

The Tinubu presidency has shown utter disrespect for Nigerians. It is above all insensitive to the suffering and hardship of most Nigerians. Instead of rendering a sensible mid term account of its mandate, the administration is celebrating the onset of the 2027 presidential election race.  A clear two years to the end of its tenure, major political voices in the ruling party are already predicting a sweeping Tinubu re -election victory and his coronation as the king hereafter.

The administration has cornered public opinion and its vulnerable opponents into a mindset that the most urgent national challenge of the moment is the 2027 election. The central question of the polity is being recast as: who succeeds Tinubu? Of course, there is a truism that groundless optimism is the most common disease of political animals. Show me a politicians that is not optimistic of victory at the next election and I will point at a platoon of wise fools!

We are at the mid term of a tenure that promised Nigerians nearly every opposite of the Buhari interregnum. Mr. Buhari, easily the most disastrous leader of modern Nigeria before the Tinubu catastrophe, had run the nation literally aground before tenure expiration saved him from himself  and rescued the nation from what was clearly the world’s most tragic instance of bad governance. Mounting debts, incoherent policies, perennial absenteeism of the leader,  disastrous elocution, embarrassing aloofness and industrial scale corruption were the hallmarks of the Buhari era. In the history of Nigeria, never had a Central Bank Governor been charged with the magnitude of treasury looting as Buhari’s Godwin Emefiele.

Then came Tinubu on the wagon of one of the most disgraceful elections in national history. A mandate secured on a razor thin majority of less than 30% of registered voters ushered in what has so far turned out to be Nigeria’s most clueless dispensations. Tinubu promised nothing. He said little that any one found coherent. No one recalls making sense of his campaign gibberish, They said he promised to  right the wrongs of the Buhari era even though he was running on the same party ticket as his Daura friend. In all fairness, no one remembers what exactly Tinubu said he was going to do with power. His only mission was to pack into a rent free Aso Villa. But two years after, here we are with a presidency that has turned our lives into two years in purgatory. The only Nigerians who now harbor any hope of a reprieve from hell are the few partakers in the feast of pork and patronage in Abuja.

Nearly every indicator of hardship is on digital display in today’s Nigeria. The majority can ill afford the next meal. Hunger has emerged as a national epidemic for the first time in our history. Access to electric  power has shrunk to the extent that even the Presidential Lodge in Abuja can hardly afford to pay its power bills and now has to install a solar panel to save costs.

Insecurity  has enveloped the entire national space, compelling informed people to suggest that the Ministry of Defense should be scrapped and replaced with an omnibus  Ministry of  Internal Security as all available security infrastructure and personnel all over the country have been deployed to joint internal security operations with hardly any tangible results.

Bandits, kidnappers, serial abductors and sundry gun men and women rule the highways and streets while official security personnel have since been outgunned by non -state agents and vigilantes of unknown nomenclature. A supposedly modern Nigerian state with well funded armed forces and over decorated officers is now shamelessly enlisting the services of native hunters, medicine men and charmers to stave off the forces of insecurity across the land.

It is this myriad of afflictions and failures that threaten the existence of the Nigerian state. It is these threats to national existence and the integrity of the Nigerian state that those who voted in 2023 are demanding that Tinubu and his gang should account for. At this mid term hour, Nigerians are asking for affordable food, essential drugs, affordable building materials, access to affordable education in schools without leaky roofs and guarantee of basic safety in their daily lives. It is accountability for these pressing basic needs and problems that demand urgent attention as the Tinubu government marks two years in office. National political offices that were meant to go round and give us all a sense of belonging to one nation have been cornered into one corner of our commonwealth.

To ignore these basic needs of the people and shunt public attention to the 2027 succession political battle is the height of insincerity and political deceit. To jump from that fraud to speculation as to why Tinubu deserves a second term in office is worse than mass deceit. It can only be that the administration is investing more energy  in mass deceit and amnesia than the real grind of governance. The efforts of the government  seem to be geared more towards succession politics than real time governance on a daily basis.

The obstacle to this deceptive politics is perhaps the possibility of an opposition coalition to challenge the APC in 2027. To counter this obstacle, whatever fickle opposition there is in the political space is being squeezed into a survival mode. The Peoples Democratic Party and its mascot, Mr. Atiku Abubakar, have been reduced to an unsettled chaotic herd. No one knows which executive now runs the party as conflicting factions engage each other in either fisticuffs  or silly litigations in various courts across the land. Corrupt judges that have to adjudicate in these cases are having a ball with their bankers. The special squad of destabilisers led by the ubiquitous FCT Minister, Mr. Nyesom Wike, are having a busy time disorganising the PDP all over the country. If indeed the PDP survives between now and the eve of 2027, it will be a ghost of its former robust self.

The Tinubu taskforce on political ‘realignment’ is leaving nothing to chance. It recognises the potential danger posed by the Peter Obi–led Labour Party. An increasingly popular political movement led by a charismatic political ‘good man’ cannot be ignored. Obi’s Labour Party and its back-up Obidient Movement presented a veritable threat to Tinubu’s ascendancy in 2023. Therefore, two active factions of  demolishers are at work on the Labour Party.

One faction of thugs led by one Lamidi Apapa has been busy challenging both the legitimacy and very existence of the party in court. A slightly more targeted attack is being led from within by Mr. Abure who ordinarily would be the Chairman of the party. In a recent move, Mr. Abure and his fellow travellers have suspended a slew of high level party members including a senator and the only state governor on the ticket of the party, Mr. Alex Otti of Abia state.

Beyond these party based destabilization antics, the incumbent government and ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has unleashed squads of recruiters all over the country who are busy attracting defectors and converts from other parties into the ruling party. So far, the results have been impressive. The most spectacular outcome has been recorded in Delta State where the incumbent governor and his immediate predecessor have defected to the APC. In addition, these political leaders decamped from the PDP with all their local government leaders. It is significant that Dr. Okowa, the immediate past governor of the state was also the vice presidential candidate of the PDP in the 2023 election. The Delta defection is therefore an arrow in the heart of the PDP in the strategic Niger Delta region.

There have been numerous other defections into the APC from other parties and political formations across the country. There is now a palpable fear in the political space that if the rate continues, the vast majority of politicians in the country would by the eve of the 2027 election be in the APC.

Fears have been expressed about the possibility of Nigeria ending up as a one-party democracy with other parties ending up as fringe minority parties. Former president Goodluck Jonathan has added his voice to those of opposition politicians like Atiku Abubakar in this regard. But some key opposition politicians have waved this possibility off, insisting that what is going on is the result of a political herd mentality.

Politicians are trooping to the ruling party where they think the bulk of patronage is flowing. Nigerian politics is principally about instant pork and patronage. Very few Nigerian politicians want to be left out in the cold of political wilderness.  The APC has deployed poverty to attract membership.

There is however an overriding political curiosity and worry about the gale of defections and mass migration into the APC in particular. At a time of grave national disquiet about worsening social and economic conditions throughout the country, it is curious that the mass of political followers should be tempted to join the very political party whose leadership has literally run the country aground. Clearly, there must be forces beyond naked political sentiments driving the entire movement.

The consequences are many and could be dire. An early start of campaigns for elections that are two years away  could lead to a vast dissipation of resources and political energy that would in fact make the fledgling opposition forces more attractive. The gathering of divergent political interests and tendencies in one inchoate ruling party could inject disequilibrium into the mechanism of the ruling party and lead to a pre-election implosion. A very large political party could prove difficult to manage and therefore come apart on its own weight.

This is not to under estimate the optimistic projections of Mr. Tinubu’s strategists and planners. On the more optimistic side, it is quite possible that what APC strategists are planning is for a 2027 race with little or no significant internal or external opposition movement. If most political voices were to be drowned inside one party, the choice of candidates, especially the presidential candidate, would be a serial ritual endorsement. In a more or less one party configuration, Mr. Tinubu would literally be returned unopposed as his party’s candidate at every party primary convention and be elected with minimal opposition. In line with that simplistic line of thought, Mr. Tinubu could head effortlessly to a coronation at Eagle Square.

There is a lazy trait in this line of thinking that conforms to Mr. Tinubu’s authoritarian mode of politics and leadership. He has railroaded the National Assembly into becoming a glorified rubber stamp conclave with literally no opposition on vital legislations like the reversion to the old National Anthem,  tax bills, successive national budgets etc.

More worrisomely, Mr. Tinubu has carried on more like an emperor than a democratically elected president. He identifies his interests in the system. He then gets people to convert these interests into legislative bills or projects. He then proceeds to procure a National Assembly rubber stamp or Executive Council approval. It is popularly speculated that each approval sought by the president has a price tag and once the transactional details are fine tuned, the road is clear either to railroad an unpopular legislation or the award of yet another Lagos to Calabar Alaskan highway contract.

The road to a second term coronation for the Tinubu presidency is however strewn with booby traps and political land mines. The assumption that all politically minded Nigerians will end up in the APC by the eve of 2027 is naïve and even a bit foolish. The vast majority of voting Nigerians will hardly become card carrying members of any party.

Irrespective of who is in the parties, the solid majority  of ordinary Nigerians remain the victims of the incompetence of this government. They are not about to join any parties and do not need to do so to reject an unpopular government at the polls. The greater the level of incompetence of the government, the higher their demand for voters cards and the greater their hunger to vote out the fraudulent bunch. We had a foretaste of this in 2023. The combined population of voters for both the Labour Party and the PDP overwhelmed the minority that voted for the APC.

It was the instrumentality of INEC’s dubious complicity and the division in the votes of the PDP and Labour Party that saved the APC thinly from deserved humiliation.

What is likely to abort the infantile projection of a Tinubu coronation in 2027 is therefore the continued rejection of the APC by the majority of the poor, deprived and angry Nigerians who do not care about formal party membership. The challenge of the next election is for INEC to expand its voter portal to accommodate all those who want to vote in 2027. And for the majority of Nigerians, the challenge of 2027 is not the mass migration of members into the APC. Party members are always a negligible variable in voter turnout. It is the mass of non- partisan voters that troop out to make their voice heard that matter most. They will decide who succeeds Tinubu, not the unthinking herd of “follow follow” party migrants.

Ultimately, then, the political destiny of the country still rests with the calibre of opposition coalition that the incompetence of the APC forces into existence. That opposition coalition must be everything that the APC has failed to be. We desire and deserve a credible, competent and coherent opposition with a clear national outlook. It must consist of persons of character with proven records. Above all else, we need a social democratic coalition that can carry the majority of Nigerians along a populist path to create and distribute Nigeria’s wealth for the good of all.