Nigeria has been listed by the World Bank among 39 countries where conflict and insecurity are driving poverty and hunger to alarming new heights — a grim designation that underscores the dire reality on the ground, where more than 10,000 Nigerians have been killed in violent attacks during President Bola Tinubu’s first two years in office.

A new World Bank report released Friday paints a bleak picture: these 39 economies — which include Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan, Ukraine, and Nigeria — are now home to 421 million people living on less than $3 a day, more than in the rest of the world combined. That figure is projected to rise to 435 million by 2030, accounting for nearly 60% of the world’s extreme poor. Unlike other developing countries, these conflict-affected states have seen their per capita GDP shrink by an average of 1.8% annually since 2020, even as it grew by 2.9% elsewhere.

“More than 70 percent of people suffering from conflict and instability are Africans. Half of the countries facing conflict today have been trapped in these conditions for over 15 years,” warned Indermit Gill, the World Bank Group’s chief economist. “Misery on this scale is inevitably contagious.”

Nigeria’s place on this grim list is tragically well justified by data from Amnesty International, which reveals that at least 10,217 people were killed by armed groups and bandits across seven Nigerian states between May 2023 and May 2025 — the first two years of Tinubu’s presidency. The worst affected was Benue State, with 6,896 deaths, followed by Plateau State with 2,630 killed.

The security situation has grown even more complex with the emergence of new armed groups like Lakurawa in Sokoto and Kebbi states and Mamuda in Kwara, adding to long-standing threats such as Boko Haram. Amnesty’s investigation shows entire communities are under siege: in Zamfara alone, 481 villages have been completely destroyed, and 529 remain under the control of criminal gangs. Daily attacks are now so common in parts of the state that multiple incidents often occur within 24 hours.

The violence is also systematically dismantling essential infrastructure. In Benue, attackers have destroyed boreholes, health clinics, schools, and grain reserves across all 23 local government areas, with 148 villages wiped out in just seven. Meanwhile, April attacks in Plateau State saw entire families slaughtered, including children, as coordinated assaults targeted multiple communities simultaneously.

The fallout is a spiraling humanitarian disaster. Over 515,000 people have been displaced — 450,000 in Benue alone — with many forced to move repeatedly as even schools and displacement camps come under attack. Agriculture, the backbone of rural economies, is in collapse. In Zamfara’s Dangulbi district, sweet potato harvests rot in fields because farmers are too terrified to transport their produce to market. Many now beg to survive.

Beyond the killings and kidnappings, bandits impose a reign of economic terror by demanding tribute payments from villagers under threat of death, extorting communities already struggling to survive. As one resident in Zamfara’s Maru local government lamented, “The only relationship between us and the government is that they issue statements after we are attacked. When the next attack comes, they will issue another statement, while the bandits continue.”

Amnesty International has accused the Nigerian government of failing in its international legal obligations to protect citizens and ensure justice. The organization warned that without urgent, decisive action to halt the violence and hold perpetrators accountable, Nigeria’s crisis will deepen — feeding precisely the vicious cycle of conflict and poverty that the World Bank says is pushing millions across Africa and beyond into desperate conditions.

This dual indictment by both global economic experts and human rights monitors highlights just how severe and entrenched Nigeria’s challenges have become — and why, without immediate and meaningful intervention, the country risks sliding even further into a humanitarian and economic abyss.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Top Ukrainian commander sees new assault on key eastern city

Ukraine's top commander said on Saturday that his forces faced a new onslaught against a key city on the eastern front of its war against Russia, while Moscow said it was making progress in another sector farther southwest.

After their initial failed advance on the capital Kyiv in the first weeks after the February 2022 invasion, Russian troops have focused on capturing all of Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. The city of Kostiantynivka has been a major target.

Ukrainian forces have for months defended the city against fierce assaults, with the regional governor urging remaining residents this week to evacuate as infrastructure breaks down.

Top Ukrainian commander Oleksander Syrskyi, writing on Telegram on Saturday, said the area around Kostiantynivka was gripped by heavy fighting.

"The enemy is surging towards Kostiantynivka, but apart from sustaining numerous losses, has achieved nothing," Syrskyi said.

"The aggressor is trying to break through our defences and advance along three operating sectors."

A spokesman for Ukrainian forces in the east, Viktor Trehubov, told the Ukrinform news agency that Kostiantynivka and the city of Pokrovsk to the west were "the main arena of battles and the Kremlin's strategic ambitions".

Syrskyi also said that Ukrainian forces had withstood in the past week a powerful attack near the village of Yablunivka in northeastern Sumy region, where Russian forces have been trying to establish a buffer zone inside the Ukrainian border.

Russia's Defence Ministry, in a report earlier in the day, said Moscow's forces had seized the village of Chervona Zirka -- further southwest, near the administrative border of Dnipropetrovsk region.

Russia's slow advance through eastern Ukraine, with Moscow claiming a string of villages day after day, has resulted in destruction of major cities and infrastructure.

Moscow has insisted that progress towards a settlement of the 40-month-old war depends on Ukraine recognising Moscow's control over four Ukrainian regions -- Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

Russian forces control about one-fifth of Ukraine's territory, though they do not fully hold any of the four regions.

Moscow has said in recent weeks that its troops have made advances in areas adjacent to Dnipropetrovsk region, which lies next to both Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions. Ukrainian officials have denied those reports.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russian troops liberate eight communities in Ukraine operation over week — top brass

Russian troops liberated eight communities in the Kharkov Region and the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) over the week of June 21-27 in the special military operation in Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Friday.

"Battlegroup West units liberated the settlements of Novaya Kruglyakovka and Petrovskoye in the Kharkov Region through active operations… Battlegroup South units kept advancing deep into the enemy’s defenses and liberated the settlement of Dyleyevka in the Donetsk People’s Republic," the ministry said in a statement.

Over the past week, "Battlegroup Center units continued developing their offensive on the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Dnepropetrovsk Region. They liberated the settlement of Novosergeyevka in the Donetsk People’s Republic through decisive operations… Battlegroup East units advanced deep into the enemy’s defenses and liberated the settlements of Zaporozhye, Perebudova, Shevchenko and Yalta in the Donetsk People’s Republic," it said.

Reuters/Tass

“The 20-year-old EFCC has not always covered itself in glory,” I wrote in this space in April 2024.

“In five months, it will owe Nigerians its annual report, featuring an army of APC kleptocrats.”

I was discussing the EFCC travails of one Yahaya Bello, Kogi’s former governor who had flattered himself for eight years as the “white lion.”

He had proved to be more of a scared little mouse upon which someone had suddenly turned on the lights: scurrying into dark little spaces to avoid the law.

Bello was exposed by the anti-corruption commission, as he left the governorship, to a variety of corrupt deals, including a N100bn corruption allegation, an N80.2 billion money-laundering scheme, the upfront payment of $760,910.84 to the American International School in Abuja for four children up to university graduation.

That little mouse fled into hiding in the Kogi State Government House in Lokoja: the place where he had been an emperor for eight years, building for himself exalted mansions wherever he wished, including Abuja’s Wuse Zone 4and Asokoro, as well as in Kogi’s Okene GRA.

The same rat hole where he adamantly refused to pay Kogi’s civil servants or pensioners and where, until the National Judicial Council stopped him, he wanted to appoint friends and members of his family, including his wife, to positions in the Kogi judiciary.

An angry EFCC boss, Ola Olukoyede, demanded that Bello come out of hiding, questioning whether he was superior to so many others the commission was dealing with, and warning Governor Ahmed Usman Ododo  about frustrating Bello’s arrest.

When Bello refused to allow the law to take its course, the EFCC declared him wanted.

He was then stripped of police protection and placed on the immigration watchlist.

But no, the EFCC did not issue that 2024 annual report, which would have recorded Bello’s story.  That has been the commission’s tragic playbook since 2007.

Eight months after that first article, I wrote again, observing that the former Kogi Governor was about to drag the EFCC into a familiar hole and become another former governor whose court case travels for decades in an ethical and political fog.

That stripping of Bello’s police protection?  It has been exposed as misdirection, as he has been observed recently driving in a police-protected convoy.

It is this same ruthless, corrupt former governor that an unscrupulous Nigerian Union of Journalists last week “honoured with a “Lifetime Achievement Award on Media Empowerment.”

It said Bello had “encouraged and trained no fewer than 200 media professionals across Nigeria per edition on developmental journalism and how to sharpen their writing skills.”

“Media empowerment”?  Every true journalist who received the story last week responded with a loud gasp and a wink.

Bello received a meaningless “lifetime” award and the NUJ, as an association, attempted suicide.

It was never Bello’s job to train any journalists: his job was to serve the people of Kogi, and every evidence is that for eight years, he helped himself to their resources instead.

The journalists he “empowered” appeared to have been trained specifically not to smell the very scandals that he perpetrated as governor.

The new problem then, is the same as the old: every time a mass media organisation goes into the business of awarding “honours” to the same people it is supposed to be covering professionally, it ends up in an ethical retail market in which objective reporting is damaged and fake heroes are manufactured.

First lady Remi Tinubu last week expressedimpatience at the insulting lack of an annual budget for her “Office of the First Lady,” appealing to the Senate for legislative action for direct funding to that “office” to execute one impactful social projects.

“Most of the resources I used to work are just given to me by well-meaning Nigerians,” she told journalists in Abuja.  “It is whatever they give to me that I have to distribute to the First Ladies of various states. It’s difficult.”

First, there is no such thing in the Nigerian constitution as the “Office of the First [Spouse].”

There cannot, therefore, be budgetary allocations for what is only a wishful or imaginary outfit.

Second, people who give money to the first lady, should that even be true, do it for dubious reasons, not because she is starving or so she can undertake a parallel governance of her own definition.  These murky waters are the foundation of the filth in which we swim.

Remember: Patience Jonathan claimed to have accumulated over $15m from such “gifts.”

In 2018, Aisha Buhari had her ADC (why in the world does a housewife need an ADC for “ze oza room” work anyway?) arrested, allegedly for failing to turn over some N2.5bn he had collected as gifts for her.

That was less than two years after she had sworn that she “never collected any gift and till now I don’t and will never.”

Nigerians do not give money to the president’s wife to “distribute to the first ladies of the states.”  Nor should Nigeria amend the constitution to authorise the government to provide such funding.

Nonetheless, I commend the sentiment of Mrs Tinubu that first spouses should not simply “sit in the villa or in the government residences and be eating.”

Not that there is anything wrong with eating to support your elected spouse: it is over-eating or voracious consumption which attracts health problems, and this is precisely why the founding fathers strategically avoided making the ‘First Spouse’ a political or administrative fixture.  It is a role, not an office.

Even then, in Mrs Tinubu’s handbag, that role is already a recklessly expensive one for the so-called Renewed Hope train.

In just five foreign trips between 2023 and 2024, for instance, the records show that First Lady Tinubu collected foreign exchange of $554,064.00.

This is an astonishing haul for something that cannot be located in the constitution or justified in a classroom.

What would happen then, should Senate President Godswill Akpabio, an incorrigible gourmand who is heavily-indebted to President Tinubu, agree to award Mrs Tinubu a direct spending licence?

And let us not forget the serial spending of the presidency on the first family, including on various mansions, and the infamous payment of the private hotel bills of the president’s daughter, Folashade Tinubu-Ojo, in November 2023.  Or that in 2023, the presidency budgetedN1.5 billion on SUVs for Mrs Tinubu.  The world laughed at us.

No, Mrs Tinubu, to make an impact as the First Spouse, you do not need an office or budgetary allocations or contracts.  But you do need commitment, a heart, and a clear vision.

Define that vision.  For instance, you can opt to fight greed in Nigeria.  Build playgrounds or libraries for children nationwide, change our terrible driving habits, sponsor public toilets, renew elementary schools, make books available to children or hospital patients, and maintain public facilities.

Whatever vision you elaborate, those funds from Nigerians, including your husband, maybe, and appreciative governments and institutions, will multiply.  You can even proudly initiate accountability for all the funds.

True leadership comes from the heart, not from the bank.  Goodluck ma’am.

The managing director had a liking for Fred, to the great annoyance of Joe, his main rival for promotion. Joe was convinced that Fred was no better at the job than him. He tried his level best to impress the boss but to no avail. So, he opted for a new strategy. 

He would set a trap for Fred, confident that he would slip up sooner than later. He did not have to wait for long. Fred fell into the trap hook, line, and sinker. Joe quickly and gleefully brought the matter to the attention of the boss. The dye was cast. He knew that Fred would be given the sack.

Kingdom Dynamics

But he was in for a surprise. The boss tried Fred under the perfect law of liberty, found him guilty, and convicted him. But then he also tried Joe for tripping up Fred. He tried him under the Law of Moses, also found him guilty and convicted him. But why try them under different laws? 

The Law of Moses is a law of judgment. Because Joe showed no mercy to Fred in tripping him up and reporting him, he could receive no mercy. Therefore, Joe is given the sack. Jesus says: “Woe to the world because of offenses! For offenses must come, but woe to that man by whom the offense comes!” (Matthew 18:7).

But the law of liberty is a law of mercy.  It does not lead to condemnation but to exoneration. Accordingly, Fred was sentenced to mercy, whereby he was not only absolved from the offense but was also enrolled for training that would ensure that he would not be able to commit another offense in the future. Since he was thereby now deemed to be a model worker, he was promoted. In Fred’s case, mercy triumphed over judgment.

These are not the ways of man; these are the ways of God. These are kingdom dynamics.

Caught Red-handed

Once, the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery to Jesus. They wanted to know whether he would contradict the Law of Moses, which states that the adulterous should be stoned to death.

There was no question that the woman was guilty. She was caught red-handed, in the very act. Neither did she argue or attempt to defend herself. She pleaded “guilty as charged.” And yet, Jesus did not allow her to be condemned. Instead, he challenged her accusers: “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” And the Bible records a dramatic turnaround:

“Those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, ‘Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one, Lord.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.’” (John 8:9-11).

The case of the woman caught in adultery deserves scrutiny, not least because it was a major threat to Jesus’ ministry. It was an attack launched from the pit of hell. Had Jesus condemned the woman, his earthly ministry would have ended. Had he condemned the woman, he would have had to, by the same token, condemn all men: “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23). 

That would have short-circuited the whole plan of salvation. “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” (John 3:17).Instead of being the Saviour of the world, Jesus would have become another accuser of the brethren.

Grace of God

“It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.” (Lamentations 3:22). Because of the plan of salvation, God is not only just; he is also the justifier of all those who believe in Jesus Christ. This makes God paradoxically a God of the sinner, as opposed to a God of the righteous. 

Jesus was at pains to explain this to the self-righteous Pharisees: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” (Mark 2:17).

Indeed, according to the dynamics of the kingdom of God, the competition is not between sin and judgment, but between sin and grace. So, Paul says: “The law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more.” (Romans 5:20).

The more the sin, the more the grace of God. Moreover, the redemptive power of grace has given us much more than sin ever took away. Thank God Adam sinned; for while sin robbed us of silver, grace gave us gold.  While sin killed the body of the flesh: grace gave us the body of the Spirit. While sin consigned us to dust, grace lifted us up in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

No Condemnation

Be careful, therefore, not to forfeit the grace of God. Jesus told the story of the contrite publican whom the self-righteous Pharisee despised at the hour of prayer in the temple: “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:14).

Once you judge a man, you have arrogated yourself to be God. Once you judge a man, you cease to be justified. Once you judge, you will be judged. Man often justifies the righteous but God will only justify sinners. 

Since the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made us free from the law of sin and death, Paul says: “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1-2). Then, it naturally follows that those who are in Christ should not condemn others. It makes no difference if you are right; know it would be wrong. 

Once you judge a man, you are casting stones, which automatically qualifies you for condemnation in the court of God: “For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy.” (James 2:13).

Let us look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Jesus contradicted every prescription of common sense. He knew that Peter would betray him and yet continued to walk closely with him. He knew that Judas was a thief, and yet he kept him as his treasurer. He knew that we were sinners, and yet he died for us. And now the Bible says to us: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 2:5).

“For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8).

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; www.femiaribisala.com 

Life is hard. You probably figured that out a long time ago, but a large portion of millennials are only now discovering just how hard the Christian life can be; and many of them are “deconstructing” their faith as a result — which is just a fancy way of saying they're choosing to believe heresy. This trend has left faithful believers scratching their heads and asking why this is happening and if it can be stopped.

Are we willing to take a second look at our messaging to make sure we're not unintentionally contributing to the problem? Are we preparing people for, or even telling people about, the trials that God promised would come to those who truly follow Him?

“You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar” is a common phrase used to explain how it's easier to influence people with pleasantries than by being negative. Positivity attracts; negativity repels. It makes sense to try and attract people to Christ by telling them about the benefits of following Him and leave out the challenges that come with it. The word “Gospel” does mean “good news” after all; and nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news. 

The problem with this approach is it doesn't prepare people for the war they're unknowingly enlisting in, or the attacks they'll face because we live in a world system that's ruled by the devil, who hates us.

Imagine thinking you signed up for a free vacation where all you have to do is listen to an hour long timeshare presentation, only to arrive on a battlefield filled with wounded people and bullets flying over your head. Most people would turn around and go back to where they came from, not necessarily because they're weak or even afraid, but because they feel tricked. It would feel like a bait and switch; they were promised a vacation, but they got a warzone.
Are we promising them a free trip to paradise if they just endure an inconvenient message for about an hour every week, but leaving out the fact that they're enlisting in the biggest and deadliest spiritual war in the history of the universe? 

In many cases, the Gospel that people heard when they first got saved was something like, “You're lost, hurting and broken, and God wants to heal you, give you a sense of purpose and fill the emptiness that you feel inside with His love.” Of course, all of those things are true, and when people can relate to that kind of pain, oftentimes they want a way out and will turn to Christ for help. But what happens when years later they walk through hardship and they no longer experience the positive feelings they did at first but instead they feel alone, empty, without purpose and broken?
Can a Gospel that only tells people about the benefits they will get if they follow God sustain them when they experience the opposite? 

I'm not saying we shouldn't tell people about the blessings of following the Lord, but I do want us to ask some really hard questions about our approach, such as: is the Gospel we preach ultimately appealing to human selfishness? 

How is “come to Jesus, He'll give you ___” any different than “make this investment and you'll double what you put in!”? And just like making an investment, when people start to feel like their decision for Christ is actually resulting in loss, they'll pull their investment out. Is this “feel better than you do right now” style of evangelism even preaching the Gospel at all? Are new converts even aware of the depravity of their sin and their inability to be good enough to earn their salvation by trying to do good things to make up for the fact that they've done wrong? 

If people are choosing Christ because they're being promised He'll make them feel good, then they'll just as easily “un-choose” Him when they start feeling bad and something else comes along that promises to make them feel better. 

A feelings-based gospel simply doesn't have the power to carry us through hard times, persecution and delayed promises. 

Hebrews chapter 11 gives us a list of men and women who comprise what some call “the hall of faith” because of their capacity to believe God in the midst of contradiction. However, after listing all the miraculous intervention their faith in God released in their lives, in verse 13 it says, “All these died in faith, without receiving the promises, but having seen and welcomed them from a distance, and having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.”

All of our heroes of the faith went to the grave still believing in promises that God didn't fulfill in their lives! There's nothing more terrifying to the devil than a believer with unyielding faith. 

Eighteen years ago I was serving the Lord as a leader in Youth With A Mission (YWAM) and we spent about 3 weeks in Taiwan. While I was there, I went onto a rooftop alone to spend time with the Lord. Now mind you, this was the roof of a 20-story apartment complex, and there weren't any walls or barriers around the edges to keep you from falling if you stepped too close. 

During that time I was wrestling with God over some things I was believing Him for and I came to a moment that to me felt like profound submission where I bowed low and said out loud, “God, I'll believe all your promises even when outwardly it looks like none of them will come true!”

Just then I heard a sound and looked up. About 15 feet away from me on the roof was a pile of corrugated sheet metal stacked about 2 feet tall that had levitated up into the air, and the first piece then proceeded to fly straight towards my face! Contrary to what you might think of me right now, I'm not crazy so I wasn't going to stay there to see what happened. I got up and ran left towards the edge of the roof and watched as these pieces of sheet metal were thrown at me like the top piece of a deck of cards, following me across the roof. When I got to the edge, I decided I would rather try my luck with the sheet metal than a 20-story drop, so I lifted my head up toward Heaven and cried out, “Jesus, help!” (Or something like that). Then the last piece hit me around my right kidney, but it felt as light as a feather and I sensed the presence of an angel standing next to me. Bewildered, I went back to inspect the spot that the first piece of sheet metal hit, and found a broken pipe of some kind that was leaking a bunch of water on the roof. Who knows what it would have done to my face, but it probably wouldn't feel good. Knowing that nobody would believe me (likely you don't either, and that's OK, I would probably be skeptical too) I knew I needed a witness so I went and got a friend to come up and see it too, and he looked more bewildered than I was! 

I share this story to say this: the devil's most overt and supernatural attack against me came after I chose faith in God's promises regardless of what outward circumstances looked like. That kind of faith accesses the power of God and terrifies the devil because it reminds him of his defeat when that kind of faith is present. Enduring faith unleashes the powers of the age to come that will wreak havoc on the kingdom of darkness. It's the only kind of faith that accesses eternal rewards. 

The Christian life is a call to walk in the tension of hope towards God's promises and the pain of their delay. It's the tension of living from inward confirmation and outward contradiction. Faith that overcomes this tension overpowers the devil's resistance and unleashes the powers of tomorrow into the darkness right now. 

This is the life we're called to live. This is the message we need to preach. 

We can't leave out the “bad news of the Gospel.” If people aren't told about trials and tribulations, they'll blame God when bad things happen instead of the devil. That's the best trick in the devil's playbook; to bring harm and then make us believe it's God's fault. 

The Gospel is good news when it comes to our relationship with God, but it's bad news to the devil, which makes us a target.

It's time to tell the full story again.

Christian Post

“The hunger march is a universal S.O.S.” – Wole Soyinka, 4 August, 2024

“While you are there demonstrating, we will be here eating.” – Godswill Obot Akpanio, Senate president, 31 July, 2024

“That distribution undo excess and each man have enough.” – William Shakespeare, King Lear

Egeremiti is a term, a figure of speech in Yoruba rhetoric for any experience, act or utterance that is so wondrous – in a good or evil sense – that it is close to being an epiphany. As I read the names of so many living and departed comrades, friends and colleagues on the 2025 National Honours list, I was so moved that a thrill ran down my spine as I muttered, “egeremiti, egeremiti” silently to myself. So big, so unprecedented, is this “egeremiti” wonder in the list that no other national honours list like it exists or had ever occurred in either colonial or post-independent Nigeria. My sense is that this wondrous wonder has taken the Nigerian Left, as well as the much larger community of progressive and pro-democracy patriots by such surprise that most of us/them are still wondering what to make of it, especially the living recipients of the honours.

In particular, they/we are wondering how the departed comrades and colleagues whose names are on the list would have reacted. “How would Gani have reacted?” Festus Iyayi? Balarabe Musa? Chima Ubani? The persons on the list – both living and dead – were/are so driven by solidarity with the poor, hungry and oppressed of the land that they would have thought twice before accepting honours from any government that has the cloud of great mistreatment of the hungry, poor and oppressed masses hanging over its head like a halo. And indeed, this is the central dilemma or egeremiti contradiction of the president’s 2025 Honours List. On the one hand, it is without precedent in its celebration of past and present heroes of the struggles for social justice and democracy in our country. But on the other hand, it is closely tied to a humongous sweeping under the carpet of the harsh and unforgiving economic and monetary policies of the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (BAT) toward the toiling and suffering masses. Thus, to accept and applaud the list seems like endorsing these policies.

I deem it very necessary to repeat this observation: no National Honours list has ever been so closely tied to the economic and administrative policies of a president and his administration. This is so important that it easily overshadows the fact that BAT himself has in the past been in the forefront of the struggles for democracy in our country. Let me put this in another formulation: there is the amazing list and there is the excessive praise for and justification of the harsh and unforgiving policies of BAT; thus, the list is the tail that is wagging the dog of the praise and justification of the policies. Comrades and compatriots, please check and recheck paragraphs 27-48 of the president’s Democracy Day speech for yourselves to see whether or not I am making a false or exaggerated claim here. In these paragraphs, BAT is not just crowing that his harsh economic policies are working, he is boasting that no policies of any other administration have worked better for Nigerians in all parts of the country. Egeremiti!

Hunger of a kind that an overwhelming majority of Nigerians have never seen or experienced is stalking the land due to the policies of his administration, but BAT is boasting that under his administration, things are improving and improving and improving. All the five or six coeval generations of Nigerians alive now are experiencing forms and degrees of poverty and impoverishment that no generation has ever experienced in the modern history of the country; but the president is saying the things you are seeing and feeling are not happening; don’t be fooled by what you are feeling and seeing. This brings to my mind a widely popular joke of the late African American ace comedian, Richard Pryor. “If your wife catches you stark naked on top of your lover, deny it. If she refuses to believe you, deny it even more vigorously. And if she continues to disbelieve you, ask her “who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?!” BAT, in his Democracy Day speech, asks Nigerians, “who are you going to believe, my statistics about how good things are or your empty, hungry and growling bellies?”

Not in the Democracy Day speech itself but in other contexts, the president has bragged extensively about how it has taken courage for him to stick unwaveringly to his economic and fiscal policies. I beg to differ. What courage do you show in imposing on the poor and the powerless sacrifices that you have not dared to ask of the rich and powerful? Thus, even as BAT has imposed draconian policies on scores of millions of poor, hungry Nigerians, he has not imposed any curtailment on official and unofficial access of the rich and the powerful to the wealth of the nation. This brings to my mind the parable of Joseph pertaining to ten fat cows followed by ten lean cows in the book of Genesis.

In his interpretation of this dream of the Pharaoh, Joseph sees ten fat cows followed by ten lean cows as a long period of abundance that are then followed by ten years of harrowing famine and hardship. He therefore recommended that in the years of plenty, the people should gather and store much of the bounteous harvests, so that they will have some provisions in store to protect people in the years of famine. The important point here is that the Pharaoh and the elite, together with the whole population, fast and sacrifice together in the lean years. In Tinubu’s Nigeria, only the people are asked to fast and sacrifice, while for the president, the state governors and the honorables of the National Assembly, it is ten fat cows followed by another ten fat cows. Listen to Godswill Obot Akpabio, president of the Senate: “While you are there demonstrating, we will be here eating”. The orgies of “eating” by the ruling class in Tinubu’s Nigeria far surpasses all past and previous records, and this is within two years only!

I must come to the conclusion of this comment. Here, I am thinking of the pertinence of another parable: that of the frog in a slowly boiling pot of water. If the water in the pot is really, really boiling slowly, the frog barely notices that anything is wrong, almost close to boiling point. And then, of course, total and utter destruction and catastrophe for the frog. We must revise this parable in order to apply it to Tinubu’s Nigeria. Here, long, long before the boiling point, the catastrophe is already happening and there are over two hundred million frogs in a whole lake of boiling water. Long before many of them succumb to catastrophe, they suffer horribly. They shout to the king of froglake and his courtiers but because their own part of the lake isn’t boiling at all, they don’t know what the SOS call is about. That is why there is not even a single mention of hunger in Tinubu’s Democracy Day speech. But Akpabio heard the SOS calls in the hunger strikes of last year clearly, and as utterly despicable as it is, his response is more “honest” than of the president’s total blindness and deafness to the hunger.

I suggest that at the root of the president’s indifference to the hunger is a legitimation crisis that did not start with his administration but has deepened immeasurably in (only) two years of his presidency. A legitimation crisis, according to a book of the same title published by the late German Marxist sociologist and philosopher, Jurgen Habermas in 1973, is not the same thing as a crisis of legitimacy. In a crisis of legitimacy, only a president or prime minister and/or his or her administration is under a suspicion of illegitimacy that is wide and deep in the collective mind of the public. A legitimation crisis is a hundred times worse than this because it affects all the institutions and organs of the state and public affairs: the executive, the legislative, the bar and the bench, the security apparatus, together with monopoly of the means of force and terror. In a legitimation crisis, they are all not working smoothly and efficiently – or indeed they have completely collapsed. So pervasive is the resultant barbarism that only isolated and private acts of courage, compassion and decency remain to make life livable and solidarity still sustainable among families and communities across the nation itself. But barbarism pervades among the people, as it does among the rulers from whom it originated. Neuroses and alienation, criminality and life-wrecking values and ritual beliefs and acts become so common as to be quite banal. Please, read Wole Soyinka’s 620-page novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth published in 2022 and you will see the barbarism of legitimation crisis in our country, as it has never been given literary expression before.

My deep worry about the egeremiti combination of the positive and the negative in the president’s Democracy Day speech, as I have suggested earlier in this comment, is that it has thrown confusion and irresoluteness into the ranks of the regular opposition, as well as the much wider circle of the Nigerian Left, progressives and patriotic democrats. We must admit that this is a strategic master stroke, a vintage Tinubu gambit intended for 2027, for his own political survival. But remember, comrades and compatriots, Tinubu said emilokan not awalokan, we progressives and democrats throughout the country! The president can still pull back from his hunger games and transfixed befuddlement about what to do about the banditry and terrorism going on both in the heartland and the peripheries of the whole country. But will he, can he?

Epilogue

Three days ago, almost immediately after I completed the first draft of this comment, information came to me that a very close, lifelong friend of mine had jokingly “complained” to guests in his house about the absence of my name on the 2025 National Honours List. Since I neither harbour this complaint nor asked anyone to make it on my behalf, I was so shocked and annoyed on hearing it that it effectively delayed my release of this comment by more than two days. Now, I wish to make the following clarification about my attitude toward national honours and awards from the Nigerian state in general; a clarification that I thought I would never have cause to make public in my lifetime.

When Professor Emeritus Niyi Osundare was awarded the Nigerian National Order of Merit in the year 2014, I was the first person – as he told me – that he gave the news. After congratulating him very warmly, I then quietly informed him that I would not be making my congratulation public. He was, of course, stunned by this information, but before he could put his surprise into words, I gave him my reason: I had been asked many times to allow my name to be considered for the same award but had politely declined the invitation. I had told the colleagues who approached me with the request that since I would reject the award if it was ever given to me by any administration in our country, it would be unfair and hypocritical of me to allow my name to be considered, knowing this unshakable personal attitude of mine to the award.

Niyi, of course, asked me to explain the basis of this attitude: sadly but firmly, I had reached the conclusion that there was unlikely to be any president, any administration in the remaining portion of my lifetime, whose rule I could support and respect enough for me to receive an award or accolade from him/it. I think that among all my very, very close friends, next to Edwin Madunagu, Niyi Osundare knows more than anyone else the depths from which my moral convictions and ideological assumptions come. So he said to me, “BJ, I accept and respect your personal stand on this matter, but as my views about the issue are different from yours, I am going to accept the award.” To this, I quickly responded that not only did I not expect him to reject the award because of my position, but I went on to assure him that I would never make my position public because I realise how our differences could be used as a wedge with which to create divisions between us by the megaphones and media foot soldiers of our ruling class and their administrations. To this day, I have rigorously kept faith with that promise. To what I said to Niyi on that day in 2014, I should perhaps add a further clarification.

In the immediate aftermath of the tragic “Ali Must Go” demonstrations of 1978, Edwin Madunagu and myself began a massive project of information, documentation and explanation to which we gave the project title of “the making and unmaking of Nigeria”. But within a year of starting the project, we found out that beginning with the “Ali Must Go” crisis” itself, “making” almost completely disappeared from the experience of our country, “unmaking” becoming the overwhelming reality – or unreality. There were, first, three military dictatorships; they were followed by three PDP administrations that were themselves followed by two APC administrations, all without exception contributing to the headlong “unmaking” of our peoples’ hopes, aspirations and happiness. It was in that context that I made the decision that I would never accept any award or accolade from any president or administration. It is a measure of the depth of my despair that I think this is likely to last for the rest of my lifetime.

Oluwaniyi Osundare, okunrin ogun, now that I seem to have broken that promise never to make this decision public knowledge, I hope that you do realise that circumstances beyond my control dealt me a hand that I could not ignore. The person who jocularly made the complaint about the absence of my name in the unprecedented 2025 national honours list is someone who I can trust with my life; he intended no harm. But I did not ask anyone to complain on my behalf about the absence of my name on the list o! Egbin! Tufia!

** Biodun Jeyifo is the foundation National President of ASUU and, with the late Festus Iyayi of revered memory, was ASUU’s representative on the National Executive Council(NEC) of the NLC under the presidency of Comrade Hassan Sumonu. BJ, as he is widely known, is also Emeritus Professor of English at Cornell University and Emeritus Professor of Comparative Literature and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He divides his time between Oke-Bola, Ibadan and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

PT

A Kenyan high court has ruled that the 2021 abduction and rendition of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), from Nairobi to Nigeria was unlawful, unconstitutional, and a gross violation of his fundamental rights.

Delivering judgment on Tuesday, Justice E.C. Mwita held that the Kenyan government failed in its constitutional duty to protect Kanu—who lawfully entered Kenya—and instead collaborated with external agents in a covert operation that led to his illegal detention and transfer.

The court found that Kanu’s abduction, incommunicado detention, torture, and denial of food, water, medication, and legal access amounted to serious breaches of his rights under Kenya’s Constitution. Mwita declared that Kanu’s rights to due process, security, and freedom of movement were flagrantly violated.

The judge awarded Kanu general damages of Kshs 10 million (approximately N110 million) and ordered Kenya’s Attorney General to pay both the compensation and the costs of the litigation.

“The constitution is clear that the Bill of Rights binds not only state organs but every person within Kenya,” Mwita said. “The covert operation to abduct and forcibly remove Nnamdi Kanu from Kenya was executed with the knowledge and complicity of the government. By doing so without following due process, the government violated the constitution, the rule of law, and Kanu’s fundamental freedoms.”

In his declarations, Mwita ruled that Kanu’s abduction and forced transfer to Nigeria breached Kenya’s laws and constitution. He stressed that authorities failed to produce Kanu in court within 24 hours of his arrest as required, and instead facilitated an illegal foreign rendition.

The case was brought by Kingsley Kanu, Nnamdi Kanu’s brother, who named Kenya’s cabinet secretary for interior, director of immigration services, director of criminal investigations, the police officer in charge of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, and the attorney general as respondents.

Background

Kanu has remained in the custody of Nigeria’s Department of State Services (DSS) since he was seized in Kenya and flown to Nigeria in 2021, where he faces charges bordering on treasonable felony. Although granted bail in 2017, his bail was later revoked after he failed to appear in court, leading to a bench warrant for his arrest.

In April 2022, a Nigerian court struck out eight of the 15 charges against him. By October 2022, the Court of Appeal quashed the remaining charges and ordered his release. However, the ruling was stayed after the federal government appealed to the Supreme Court, keeping Kanu in detention.