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Tag: Dakuku Peterside

  • Israel-Iran conflict: The Nigerian connection – By Dakuku Peterside

    Israel-Iran conflict: The Nigerian connection – By Dakuku Peterside

    When Israel launched Operation Rising Lion in the early hours of June 13, 2025, most Nigerians were asleep. The footage came in fragments—precision airstrikes, sirens over Tel Aviv, defiant chants in Tehran. Within hours, Iran responded with Operation True Promise III, unleashing waves of drones and missiles toward Israeli positions.

    It was dramatic, brutal, and all too familiar: another chapter in the long, looping narrative of Middle Eastern conflict. But the shockwaves didn’t stop at the borders of Iran or Israel. They travelled through global oil markets, diplomatic corridors, and geopolitical nerves—and in their wake, Nigeria began to feel the tremors.

    By the end of that first week, crude oil prices had jumped sharply. For Nigeria, an oil economy in all but name, this was both a relief and a riddle. Higher oil prices meant more dollars from exports, more money flowing into government accounts, and—at least on paper—a budget easier to balance.

    After all, oil still accounts for more than 90% of Nigeria’s export earnings and approximately half of the government’s revenue. With the 2025 budget benchmarked at $75 per barrel, any sudden climb toward $100 looked like a gift from chaos.

    But nothing is ever that simple. The same price surge that may pad Abuja’s pockets may also punish everyday Nigerians. The cost of diesel, already elevated due to subsidy removals and pipeline vandalism, may rise further. Transporters may hike their fares. Manufacturers facing higher energy costs may pass them on to consumers. Tomatoes, noodles, cement—everything cost more.

    The Central Bank, still trying to steady the naira and tame inflation, has hinted at another interest rate hike. What began as a geopolitical explosion thousands of miles away may be shaping monetary policy in Abuja and emptying wallets in Enugu. It was a familiar paradox: Nigeria, rich in oil, drowning in cost.

    The Israel-Iran conflict touches nerves far beyond the battlefield, and for Nigeria, it activates a complicated web of diplomatic, religious, and geopolitical considerations. First, Nigeria’s identity as a multi-religious nation plays an outsized role in how it engages with conflicts in the Middle East.

    With a large and politically active Muslim population, especially in the northern regions, Nigeria must be mindful of public sentiment. Historically, Muslim-majority countries across Africa have taken strong stances on Palestinian liberation and opposed Western alignment with Israel. Domestic political actors and Islamic clerics in Nigeria often echo this sentiment, making neutrality a high-wire act for Nigerian diplomats.

    Furthermore, Nigeria has long held an official position that supports the Palestinian cause, often voting in favour of Palestinian self-determination at the United Nations and other multilateral platforms. This legacy shapes its foreign policy and regional affiliations, including membership in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

    However, over the past decade, Nigeria has also established discreet but critical bilateral relations with Israel, particularly in the areas of technology, security, counterterrorism, agriculture, and water management. Israeli companies have participated in developmental projects in Nigeria, and security cooperation has included counter-insurgency support in the fight against Boko Haram, Piracy and banditry.

    This means that Nigeria cannot afford to alienate either side. It must craft a nuanced diplomatic language that upholds its historical solidarity with Palestine while preserving its growing strategic relationship with Israel. It also has to navigate its broader relationship with the Islamic world, which includes key oil-producing allies in the Middle East like Saudi Arabia and the UAE—countries that are themselves carefully managing their stakes in the Israel-Iran drama.

    All this unfolds while Nigeria also depends on the West, particularly the United States and European Union, for development assistance, security cooperation, and trade.

    Nigeria’s diplomatic stance on the Israel-Iran conflict may not significantly alter global outcomes, but it must be carefully calibrated to prevent internal unrest, diplomatic fallout, or reputational harm. Silence, ambiguity, or outright bias could ignite tensions at home or weaken strategic partnerships abroad. A clear, principled voice that calls for de-escalation, protection of civilians, and respect for international law may be Nigeria’s best option.

    The possibility that this conflict might escalate into a broader regional war is very real. Should the United States choose to launch direct attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities—or if Iran’s proxies such as Hezbollah, the Houthis, or Shia militias in Iraq step up hostilities—there could be a cascading effect involving multiple regional and global actors.

    Such a scenario would send oil prices soaring well past $120 per barrel, destabilise maritime routes like the Strait of Hormuz, and unleash a wave of economic, political, and humanitarian crises that would reverberate across the globe.

    For Nigeria, the implications would be immediate. Escalation means higher global risk aversion, reduced foreign investment, rising credit costs, and potential disruptions to international trade, particularly in refined petroleum products.

    Furthermore, regional escalation would lead to increased Western military engagement, further entrenching U.S. and European interests in the Middle East and possibly diverting attention and resources away from African security challenges, such as the Sahel insurgency, piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, and democratic backsliding in West Africa.

    There is also the danger of ideological spillover. Nigeria, like many African nations, is not immune to the influence of radical religious narratives. An intensified Middle East conflict could embolden extremist rhetoric among fringe groups in Nigeria, feeding into existing tensions and undermining national security. The more the region becomes radicalised by foreign grievances, the harder it becomes to sustain Nigeria’s fragile religious harmony.

    This underscores the need for Nigeria to strengthen its intelligence and border control capabilities, monitor ideological infiltration, and insulate its domestic narrative from imported conflicts. It also suggests that Nigeria must be more proactive in multilateral diplomacy—working with the African Union, ECOWAS, and international partners to advocate for de-escalation and peaceful resolution.

    One of the more cynical realities of modern geopolitics is the profitability of war. The Israel-Iran conflict, like many before it, activates a global defence economy—particularly centred around the U.S., where the military-industrial complex thrives on instability.

    Every missile launched, every defence shield deployed, and every infrastructure project destroyed and rebuilt becomes a commercial opportunity for arms manufacturers, defence contractors, and reconstruction firms. The result is a self-reinforcing cycle in which war fuels business, and business, in turn, incentivises prolonged instability.

    This pattern is not lost on observers in the Global South. Nigeria, a resource-rich but infrastructure-poor country, should be cautious about relying too heavily on global instability as an economic stimulus. Rising oil prices may temporarily swell government coffers, but they are not a development strategy. Countries that rely on geopolitical chaos to grow their revenue become addicted to volatility and unprepared for long-term planning.

    Moreover, this cycle of conflict reinforces geopolitical blocs and divides the world into transactional alliances. The more Nigeria appears to benefit from war passively—without articulating its long-term interests or building internal productive capacity—the more it risks being seen as a peripheral player in a world order defined by power politics. The war economy is seductive but ultimately unsustainable. Nigeria must avoid being pulled into its orbit.

    The short-term benefit of this crisis—a spike in crude oil prices—should be treated with strategic sobriety. If the Nigerian government sees this windfall as a new lease on life for its oil-dependent model, it will only delay the inevitable reckoning. Instead, this moment should be used as a pivot: to increase oil production where possible, reduce infrastructural leakages, and reinvest earnings into non-oil sectors.

    Nigeria should urgently ramp up efforts to repair its vandalised pipelines, restore confidence among international oil companies, and support indigenous players. Clear fiscal terms under the Petroleum Industry Act must be enforced and simplified to remove ambiguity. With production levels at 1.3 million barrels per day—well below potential—there is room to grow responsibly and transparently.

    But more importantly, this is the time to channel revenues into transformational infrastructure. Funds should be directed toward stable electricity, modern rail networks, agricultural value chains, and digital infrastructure. This includes supporting local refining through modular refineries.

    At the same time, Nigeria must demonstrate fiscal responsibility. Revenues should be used to rebuild the Excess Crude Account, pay down expensive external debt, and introduce legal frameworks that limit excessive recurrent spending.

    Most importantly, Nigeria must stop pretending that commodity booms are equivalent to economic growth. Proper growth requires the development of human capital, the rule of law, institutional reform, and policy continuity. It requires investing in people and systems that can withstand the inevitable bust when oil prices crash again. Because they always do. Any windfall from the Israel-Iran conflict may be unearned, but what Nigeria does with it will be the most accurate test of leadership.

    Ultimately, the lesson Nigeria should draw is one of providence tempered by prudence. The sudden windfall from rising oil prices triggered by the Israel-Iran conflict offers a narrow corridor to shore up finances, invest in the future, and strengthen institutions.

    But it also carries a warning: depending on episodic spikes driven by external instability is neither sustainable nor ethical. Actual resilience demands focusing on governance reforms, economic diversification, and social cohesion so that when the next shock—whether geopolitical, climatic, or technological—arrives, Nigeria’s economy and polity are better equipped to absorb it.

    In the unfolding drama between Tehran and Tel Aviv, Nigeria may feel tremors in its markets and society, but it must direct its fate by using any temporary gains to build enduring foundations rather than chasing transient gains born of conflict. There is no oil price high enough to replace good governance.

    No foreign war is sufficient to substitute for domestic vision. As the world watches the Middle East burn, Nigeria must look inward, ask hard questions, and act with clarity because the real conflict isn’t just between Israel and Iran. It’s between what Nigeria could become—and what it will settle for.

  • Dakuku links quality healthcare delivery to consistent innovations, capacity building

    Dakuku links quality healthcare delivery to consistent innovations, capacity building

    Turnaround expert and an accomplished technocrat, Dr Dakuku Peterside says consistent innovations in the healthcare sector and capacity building would continue to drive quality, accessibility, affordability, and efficiency of health care systems.

    Dr Peterside stated this as the Chairman of the 2025 Afrihealth Conferences and Exhibitions, one of the largest private sector-led healthcare conferences in the sub-saharan Africa region, which held in Lagos.

    The former director general of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) noted that consistent innovations would also help enable data-driven decisions, whilst helping providers predict outbreaks, tailor treatments, and ultimately improve patient outcomes.

    He commended entrepreneurs in the healthcare sector, who he says are true problem-solvers, tackling critical challenges and pushing the boundaries of what is possible.

    According to him, “I want to give a special appreciation to the AFRIHEALTH  Development Foundation for creating this amazing platform that brings together health professionals and allied service providers  from all corners to share knowledge and exchange ideas.

    “I also acknowledge the hard work and dedication of healthcare professionals in Nigeria, who too often have their contributions go unnoticed.

    “It is a real honor to receive an award from the AFRIHEALTH  Development Foundation recognizing my efforts in healthcare advocacy over the years. This recognition means a lot to me and motivates me to stay even more engaged in advancing our healthcare system.”

    Dr Peterside commended the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Dr. Muhammad Ali Pate and his Minister of State counterpart , Dr Iziaq Adekunle Salako for demonstrating exceptional leadership in transforming Nigeria’s health sector.

    According to him, “the recent reforms in the healthcare sector, which have been recognized globally, gives us hope of a bright future for Nigeria. I have faith that one day Nigeria will be a hub for medical tourism , if we get leadership and technical capacity right “

    He particularly pointed out the effort of Dr. Pate to make Nigeria a hub for local manufacturing of biologics, vaccines, and pharmaceuticals, thus ensuring better access to essential and quality medicines.

    Among top speakers at the event were Felix Erondu, a Professor of Radiography, Prof. Lere Baale,CEO and Professor at Business School Netherlands Nigeria (BSNN) and others .

  • Lessons of Mokwa flood disaster – By Dakuku Peterside

    Lessons of Mokwa flood disaster – By Dakuku Peterside

    When the clouds gathered above Mokwa at the start of the 2025 rainy season, no one reached for a weather almanac; the townspeople needed only memory. They had seen the river climb its banks before, had watched water swirl down gullies that doubled as rubbish dumps, and had heard radio callers warn—almost cheerfully—that nature’s annual rehearsal was underway. What they had not felt was the sensation of genuine safety. So, when the torrents finally broke their modest records, they landed on a place that had already surrendered its defences.

    Mokwa was never merely a location on a map; it was a warning sign blinking for years. The tragedy that unfolded in June 2025, claiming over 1,300 lives—including 700 children—was not a bolt from the blue. It was the inevitable result of chronic neglect, dysfunctional planning, and a dangerous culture of silence. Entire families disappeared. Homes, schools, businesses, and a critical section of Nigeria’s railway infrastructure were annihilated. Yet this devastation was neither mysterious nor accidental. It was a known risk that was allowed to fester.

    Long before the flood, experts had flagged Mokwa as a high-risk area. Ecologists had pointed to the fragile river systems and deforested buffers. Meteorologists had issued forecasts highlighting changing rainfall patterns driven by climate change. Urban planners had warned that the unchecked spread of informal settlements, many of which were constructed directly on floodplains, was a disaster waiting to happen. But the alarms were met with bureaucratic shrugs.

    No concerted response, no clear regulatory enforcement, no serious public communication. For years, federal, state, and local governments took turns ignoring the looming threat, focusing instead on short-term political expediency over long-term risk reduction, turning what should have been manageable seasonal flooding into a lethal disaster.

    When the rain finally came, it did what water always does: it followed the path of least resistance. River Dingi, a seasonal tributary typically dry outside the rainy season, transformed into a violent, swelling force. The natural channels it once used had been blocked by construction and waste. The drainage systems designed decades ago had long ceased to function. Many had been filled with silt, others narrowed by illegal buildings, and almost all were incapable of handling the volume of rain driven by climate-induced extreme weather events.

    The town’s land surface—stripped of trees and vegetation—could no longer absorb runoff, accelerating the scale and speed of the flooding. There had been no meaningful enforcement of zoning laws. No incentives to dissuade illegal building. No functioning flood management systems. No early-warning network tailored to local conditions. When the floods came, they revealed not just the weakness of physical infrastructure but the collapse of institutional responsibility.

    A nearby agricultural dam, weakly constructed and poorly maintained, gave way, sending an additional torrent crashing towards an already drowning town. And while Nigeria’s major dams—Kainji and Jebba—remained intact, the lack of effective communication from their operators only added to the confusion and delayed emergency responses. The human cost was staggering: bodies swept away, children separated from parents, people clinging to rooftops as the water swallowed everything below.

    Yet beneath this devastation lies something far more painful: the awareness that it did not have to be this way. Mokwa’s flood was not a punishment from nature—it was the price of inertia. It was what happens when government institutions become deaf to science and blind to their own responsibilities. It was a consequence of fragmented governance, where agencies overlap but do not collaborate, plans are drafted but never implemented, and illegal structures mushroom in full view of regulators without consequence.

    Still, the story must not end in despair. Tragedy can be a turning point, if only we have the courage to transform grief into resolve. In the ashes of destruction lies a rare chance for a complete reset—not just of infrastructure, but of the governance systems that allowed this to happen. Mokwa can become a model of what post-disaster resilience should look like in Nigeria and beyond. And it has already started.

    To its credit, the Niger State government has initiated a commendable response. Governor Bago has promised to literally build a new town in Mokwa. This is real leadership. Roads are being constructed to serve as resilient evacuation routes in the event of future emergencies. The state is building 200 brand-new homes, featuring flood-resilient designs, solar-powered electricity, and communal layouts designed to promote safety and cohesion. Healthcare and educational institutions are being built.

    This reset must begin with a new planning philosophy—one that acknowledges climate change not as an abstract threat but as a force that is already reshaping Nigeria’s landscape. Rebuilding is not the same as transformation. If we truly want to make Mokwa a symbol of resilience, then we must go further. Urban growth must now be risk-informed, and urban planning must transition from a reactive to a proactive approach. Land-use zoning needs to be enforced with seriousness and consistency, especially in areas historically considered flood-prone.

    Informal and illegal settlements must be regularised, relocated, or reimagined with proper infrastructure. Natural ecosystems—such as river buffers, wetlands, and tree belts—must be restored and protected, not sold to the highest bidder. Drainage systems must be overhauled and engineered for the climate realities of today, not the assumptions of 30 years ago. Traditional engineering solutions must be complemented by nature-based infrastructure, such as reforestation, rain gardens, and permeable paving.

    Additionally, resettlement policies must shift from a reactive to a proactive approach. People living in high-risk zones cannot be blamed or punished; they must be supported and relocated through inclusive, well-communicated programmes that provide safety, dignity, and economic opportunities. The new homes being built should set a benchmark—elevated foundations, flood-resistant materials, and solar power should become standard, not an exception. Also, communities must be placed at the heart of early warning systems. It is no longer enough to have rainfall predictions sitting in some government office.

    Low-cost technologies, such as SMS alerts, local siren systems, and community radio broadcasts, should be utilised to inform and prepare residents. Schools must be reconstructed as safe learning spaces, not just buildings. Clinics must be resilient to climate extremes. Children who lost parents or homes must be given trauma support, scholarships, and a chance to dream again. Schools and churches can be designated as evacuation centres with supplies pre-stocked. River levels should be monitored by trained local volunteers who can feed real-time data to emergency agencies. Education about flood risks should be embedded in school curricula, turning awareness into a generational skill.

    The federal government must also play its part. It should take responsibility for high-cost infrastructure, such as river training, national flood modelling, and interstate water basin management. Climate finance—whether from development partners, carbon markets, or green bonds—should be mobilised aggressively to support Niger State and others like it in rebuilding better.

    The Ministry of Environment, the Ministry of Water Resources, and the Nigeria Hydrological Services Agency must harmonise their data and work together, rather than in silos. Niger State must enact and enforce zoning and building regulations. The local government must take community engagement seriously—not just in times of crisis, but every day. The private sector must also be drawn in, not just as contractors but as partners in resilience. What Mokwa teaches us is that flood does not recognise bureaucratic boundaries—and neither should our response.

    Over the next twelve months, the focus must be on stabilisation: dredging the River Dingi, clearing blocked drainage, and providing clean water, health services, and shelter to survivors. Relief camps must be upgraded to include water, healthcare, and sanitation facilities. In the next three years, a comprehensive flood-risk master plan should be developed, unsafe settlements systematically phased out, and attention must turn to permanent solutions: new settlements away from risk zones, resilient schools and clinics, and a binding flood-risk master plan. Over the next five years, Nigeria must institutionalise what Mokwa has exposed—making flood risk management not a temporary intervention but a standing function of governance.

    Every state should have a mapped and budgeted disaster resilience plan. In the long term, climate finance must be harnessed to support green infrastructure. A new regional river-basin authority should be created to manage upstream land use and coordinate data across states. Flood education must be integrated into classrooms, and urban planning must become a core component of professional and political training. Every new housing development must pass environmental impact assessments. Every citizen should know what to do when the rains become a threat.

    Mokwa cannot be allowed to fade from memory. It should haunt us, yes, but more importantly, it should teach us. This disaster reflects what happens when data is ignored, when illegal becomes normal, and when warnings are lost in the noise of bureaucracy. However, it also demonstrates what is possible when political will aligns with public need. If the momentum of recovery continues and systemic issues are addressed, Mokwa can be remembered not for how it drowned, but for how it rose.

    Let this be the moment we stopped rebuilding the same vulnerabilities and started designing for resilience. Mokwa must not just recover—it must lead. It can also serve as a blueprint—a place that rose from the waters not with hollow slogans, but with new systems, better infrastructure, and a public willing to hold leaders accountable.

  • Japa: The courage and cost of Nigeria’s great exodus – By Dakuku Peterside

    Japa: The courage and cost of Nigeria’s great exodus – By Dakuku Peterside

    I still remember the evening I first heard the term “Japa.” It came in the form of a meme—“If you’re seeing this, pack your bags”—plastered over an image of a dusty road disappearing into a golden horizon. The joke wasn’t just funny—it was painfully accurate. “Japa,” a Yoruba word meaning “to flee,” has evolved into a cultural and economic phenomenon, serving as a shorthand for the restless exodus of Nigerians, particularly the young and educated, in search of a better life. What was once a quiet movement of the desperate and the privileged has now morphed into a defining feature of Nigeria’s national psyche. It reflects not only a failure of the state but also the boundless courage of individuals who continue to chase dignity, safety, and opportunity across oceans.

    Beneath the headline-grabbing migration figures lie deeply human stories, complicated by trade-offs that span continents and generations. When Aisha, a surgical nurse from Kaduna, arrived in London in 2022, she secured an NHS position that paid her over three times her salary in Nigeria. Her new life was a dream on paper—financial stability, functional healthcare, and reliable electricity. But the price was steep: her mother, widowed and diabetic, was left behind with no one to accompany her to clinic visits. Her younger siblings, used to Aisha’s help with tuition and groceries, now relied on irregular remittance flows and prayer. Her calls home, filled with reassurance and cheer, barely masked the weight of her absence. Aisha’s story is not exceptional—it is replicated across tens of thousands of households in Lagos, Yenegoa, Owerri, Ilorin, and beyond.

    In 2023, Nigeria received an estimated $20.13 billion in remittances, the highest in sub-Saharan Africa and one of the few bright spots in the country’s bleak economic landscape. Remittances now account for nearly 4% of Nigeria’s GDP—greater than direct foreign investment — and serve as a vital buffer for families struggling with inflation, food insecurity, and crippling unemployment. These inflows fund school fees, hospital bills, building projects, and sometimes entire family businesses. For many, having a child or sibling abroad is the difference between collapse and survival. But money doesn’t hug you. It doesn’t walk your grandmother to the mosque or church. It doesn’t explain puberty to your 13-year-old son now growing up without a father figure.

    What’s less visible but just as real is the emotional price of migration. There’s the guilt of leaving ageing parents in precarious health, the pain of missing births and funerals, and the slow erosion of intimacy with friends and siblings. Couples stretch their marriages across time zones, relying on WhatsApp calls that feel both immediate and artificial. Children born abroad grow up with hybrid identities, sometimes unable to speak their parents’ language or understand the values they left behind.

    The psychological price of migration is huge. Take Emmanuel, a computer science graduate from Enugu who arrived in Toronto in late 2023. At first, he thrived—new friends, a buzzing tech hub, crisp winter mornings. Within weeks, though, he began waking at 3 a.m., heart pounding, unable to shake the fear that he was alone in a strange land. Migraines set in, his appetite vanished, and he drifted into a fog of irritability and despair—a textbook case of the “Ulysses syndrome,” an immigrant stress reaction marked by anxiety, insomnia, and somatic pains. A 2020 meta-analysis of Nigerian-American immigrants found that higher acculturative stress was strongly linked to poorer mental health outcomes. Emmanuel endured six months of silent struggles before reaching out for therapy, finally realising that the cost of leaving home included the erosion of his well-being.

    Nigeria, as a state, teeters between the benefits and burdens of this migration wave. On the one hand, remittances boost foreign reserves, provide fiscal stability, and enhance the purchasing power of recipient households. Diaspora investments are also reshaping the tech ecosystem. Diaspora entrepreneurs in London and Toronto have launched some of Europe’s fastest-growing fintech startups. Additionally, Nigeria ranks second only to India in terms of long-term migrants to the UK, with approximately 120,000 Nigerians relocating there as of June 2024. Nigerian-led startups in the UK, Canada, and the US are channelling capital, ideas, and tools back home, with Lagos fast becoming a West African tech hub despite its infrastructural challenges. Culturally, the country is undergoing a kind of global flowering—Afrobeat now dominates international music charts, Nollywood films are streaming on Netflix, and Nigerian chefs are redefining fine dining in New York, Toronto, and Berlin.

    But the cost of this “success” is staggering. Over 75,000 Nigerian professionals have emigrated between 2019 and 2024. The health sector has been particularly hard hit: the Nigerian Medical Association estimates that more than 50% of registered doctors are practising abroad, widening the patient-doctor gap at home and prompting emergency staffing drives that still fall short. In 2023 alone, over 3,600 nurses were licensed to practice in the United Kingdom. University classrooms, once bustling with brilliant lecturers, now depend on visiting professors and part-time faculty. Hospitals are forced to recruit unqualified assistants to fill gaps. In the public sector, civil service talent is drying up, with young officers resigning en masse. The result is a talent vacuum that weakens national institutions just when they are most needed.

    Government responses have been largely reactive and uncoordinated. Proposals to bond medical graduates to public service contracts for five to ten years have sparked outrage, especially among young professionals who argue that the state has no moral authority to restrict their freedom after failing to provide basic infrastructure, job security, or personal safety. Some state governments have introduced scholarship retention schemes and returnee investment incentives, but these remain too few, poorly implemented, or overshadowed by more attractive foreign offers. Policy inertia persists because Japa isn’t just a problem of economics—it is a verdict on governance. People are not leaving because they lack patriotism; they are leaving because patriotism no longer feeds them.

    And while the Nigerian government tries to cope, Western host countries also wrestle with their own dilemmas. Nigerian migrants now comprise a significant portion of new arrivals in countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom. In Canada’s 2024 immigration data, Nigerians ranked among the top five sources of skilled workers. Western host nations find themselves in a precarious balancing act. Nigerian nurses and engineers fill critical shortages, bolstering public coffers through taxes and consumer spending. In the UK, they are heavily represented in the National Health Service and private care homes. These workers are praised for their diligence, education, and resilience.

    However, the systems receiving them are often ill-prepared to integrate them. Many face bureaucratic roadblocks, including slow credential recognition and expensive licensing exams, which delay their full participation in the workforce. Years of retraining blunt the momentum of eager professionals, and discrimination can turn anticipation into anxiety. Others face subtle racism, wage disparities, and cultural isolation. Britain’s new Code of Practice for ethical health-worker recruitment aims to ensure that “poaching” talent doesn’t hollow out Nigeria’s fragile health system, yet the debate over “brain drain” ethics continues amid NHS staffing crises.

    Despite these challenges, the Nigerian presence abroad is growing stronger and more confident. Nigerian culture is reshaping Western norms—Afrobeat now pulses through Glastonbury stages; jollof rice trucks line the streets of London; Yoruba phrases are sneaking into British slang; and the children of migrants are rising to prominence in politics, academia, and the arts. In 2025, the UK’s political landscape saw its first major-party leadership candidate of Nigerian descent. In America, Nigerian-American students consistently excel academically, and Nigerian churches and businesses have transformed entire neighbourhoods. These are not signs of assimilation—they are signs of expansion, the Nigerian identity flowering beyond borders.

    Yet the question remains: what happens to the country they left behind? Who teaches in the schools from which they once graduated? Who rebuilds the hospitals where they were trained? Who ensures that power stays on long enough to power a mother’s air conditioner? Who stays to fix the power grid, redesign the curriculum, enforce the laws, and tell the next generation that hope is still possible at home?

    Japa is not a simple story of brain drain or economic migration. It is a reckoning. It is a mirror held up to a nation that has failed too many of its brightest and bravest. But it is also a thread—an invisible umbilical cord—that connects the streets of Lagos to the clinics of Manchester, the classrooms of Toronto, and the startups of Berlin. And through that thread flows not just money but longing, memory, identity, and love. Japa is not unequivocal gain. It is a human response to systemic failures—economic, social, and political—and to the boundless courage of individuals chasing the promise of a better life. Its actual impact is braided across continents: in the phone calls between a migrant nurse and her mother, in the budget sheets of national ministries, and the urban rhythms of Toronto’s Chinatown.

    Perhaps, over time, Japa will evolve from a flight to a return, as seen in India. Possibly, one day, Aisha will bring her NHS experience back to Kaduna to build a clinic of her own, and Emmanuel will reopen his old bedroom as a co-working space for local tech startups. Perhaps Nigeria will invest in a future that gives people a reason to stay, not just a means to leave. Until then, the suitcase remains half-packed, the visa application opens on the browser, and the heart is torn in two—between what is and what should have been.

  • Nigeria: 730 days later – By Dakuku Peterside

    Nigeria: 730 days later – By Dakuku Peterside

    Two years can feel both fleeting and painfully long in Nigeria. Seven hundred and thirty dawns have rolled across the savannah, the creeks, and the sprawling megacities since the last electoral hoopla promised a national rebirth. We now stand midway between ballots, yet conversation in Abuja’s corridors is drifting toward 2027 slogans when democracy must earn its keep in the seasons between elections. The urgency of the next campaign should be postponed until we have addressed the daily audits posed by breadwinners, commuters, farmers, and students who have lived through every one of those 730 days.

    This daily audit includes answers to the following questions: Are Nigerians better off now than they were in 2023? Is the economy better off now than in 2023? Has there been a measurable decrease in terrorism, kidnapping and violent crime rates since 2023? Are we better off with electric power today than we were in 2023? Do Nigerians have access to more and better food than they did in 2023? ⁠Are Nigerians more united today than they were two years ago? Are more resources being allocated to local and state governments today, and how does this affect development at those levels? Do more Nigerians have access to quality education and healthcare today? Has corruption been reduced? Are laws applied equally to all citizens, including government officials? Until those who occupy offices sincerely answer these questions – we cannot talk about progress. These are not just statistics, but the daily realities of the average Nigerian.

    Let’s start with the matter of feeling safe. Guns have fallen silent in a few long-suffering districts while new flashpoints have erupted elsewhere. One can cite downward-trending incident charts in Zamfara or Katsina but also point to the resurgence of mass kidnappings on the Abuja–Kaduna axis and plateau –Benue axis. According to data from SBM Intelligence, Nigeria recorded over 3,600 abductions between May 2023 and April 2025, with the North-West and North-Central zones remaining the most affected.

    Yet, in areas like Borno and Yobe, incidents of Boko Haram violence have significantly decreased, thanks in part to renewed counter-insurgency strategies and regional collaborations under the Multinational Joint Task Force. The grandmother who now sleeps with both eyes shut in her Borno village may indeed feel progress, but the family still cobbling together ransom money in the South-East wonders what “progress” means. Safety is ultimately measured in the heartbeat that no longer races when dusk approaches.

    Electricity tells its own story. Nigeria’s grid capacity currently hovers between 4,500 to 5,000 megawatts on most days, barely improving from the 4,000 MW average of 2023. Yet, despite promises of improved power supply, the country experienced no fewer than seven national grid collapses between May2023 and May 2024. Diesel now sells for over ₦1,500 per litre, up from about ₦850 in early 2023, making self-generation increasingly unaffordable.

    Mini-grid interventions, particularly solar installations supported by the Rural Electrification Agency, have provided stable electricity to over 500,000 households in underserved areas, including Ogun, Nasarawa, and parts of the Northeast. But in most urban neighbourhoods, the hum of private generators remains the national anthem after sunset. Reliable power, ultimately, is best expressed not in megawatts but in refrigerators that stay cold and homework that is finished beneath a steady light bulb.

    In the fight against corruption, promise and disillusion continue their tug-of-war. Televised arrests of “big men” in the government’s early months suggested no one was untouchable, but the glow dimmed as plea bargains and closed-door settlements multiplied. Anti-graft agencies complain about thin budgets while lawmakers debate fresh immunity clauses. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) reported 4,111 convictions in 2024, a record number. High-profile cases, including those involving former governors and serving senators, were reopened; however, many ultimately ended in plea bargains or were delayed in court.

    In October 2023, President Tinubu suspended the EFCC chairman over allegations of misconduct—an irony not lost on citizens who hoped for a cleaner era. Justice is less about dramatic arrests than about quiet transparency: a national procurement database that tracks every public contract or a judiciary that concludes cases in months, not decades. Until the law holds the powerful to the same standard, each new anti-corruption czar will appear like the latest actor in an overplayed drama.

    Macroeconomic statistics paint a fractured portrait. While Nigeria’s GDP grew at 2.98% in Q1 2024, inflation climbed to 33.69% in April 2025, its highest in nearly three decades. The naira has depreciated by over 65% since the removal of fuel subsidies and the unification of the exchange rate. In 2023, a 50kg bag of rice sold for ₦35,000; in 2025, it hovers at around ₦75,000, and the arithmetic is merciless: a salary that rises by ten per cent in a year of thirty-per cent inflation is a pay cut in disguise.

    The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reports that over 63% of Nigerians are now multidimensionally poor, with inflation eroding the purchasing power of even those who are formally employed. Policymakers celebrate tech unicorns and export growth in non-oil sectors, such as sesame and cocoa, yet market women judge the economy by the cost of Koko and Kosai, Garri and palm oil. Aneconomy “on paper” does not cook Ogbono soup.

    Still, some green shoots poke through the cracked soil. Fintech and creative industries continue to prove that young Nigerians, when not hamstrung by policy miscues, can compete far beyond their borders. The creative economy continues to soar, with Afrobeats grossing over $1 billion globally in 2024 and Nollywood titles featured on international platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime. Nigeria’s tech sector attracted over $1.3 billion in foreign investment in 2023 alone, with hubs in Lagos, Abuja, Enugu and Port Harcourt producing fintech solutions that serve millions across Africa.

    In agriculture, agricultural technology outfits are making incremental gains in yield, and programmes like the National Agricultural Growth Scheme (NAGS) have distributed inputs to over 1.2 million smallholder farmers. However, insecurity and climate variability have stunted large-scale productivity. Food remains both sustenance and mirror: when conflict empties farms, and climate change scrambles rainy seasons, a plate of cookedrice becomes a fragile triumph.

    Decentralisation ought to bring the state closer to its citizens. Following fuel subsidy reforms, monthly FAAC allocations to states have increased by over 60% between mid-2023 and early 2025. Yet many state governments have not translated this windfall into visible improvements. For example, Niger, Enugu and Kaduna states have begun investing in technical education and road infrastructure, but local government transparency remains weak. Roads, water schemes and primary-care clinics ought to blossom in tandem, yet potholes and abandoned projects remain stubborn. Money arrives in capitals more reliably than it reaches ward level, where a broken borehole means girls trekking for hours to fetch water. The grassroots will remain neglected until public finance is matched with public accountability.

    Healthcare and education—the twin pillars of human capital—show modest but inconsistent progress. New primary health centres have opened, but many lack essential resources, such as drugs and nurses. The National Health Insurance Authority now allows mobile phone enrolment; however, uptake is sluggish among informal-sector workers who recall earlier deductions vanishing into bureaucracy. The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) expanded enrolment to over 15 million Nigerians in 2024; however, out-of-pocket health expenditure still accounts for more than 70% of total healthcare costs.

    In education, initiatives like the Safe Schools Programme have secured some learning environments, but basic literacy remains alarmingly low, especially in the Northeast, where only 27% of children aged 6–11 attend school regularly. While state-level reforms in places like Ebonyi and Enugu have delivered model schools and digital classrooms, the national picture remains one of inequality and underfunding. Two years is too short to erase decades of neglect, but it is long enough to show whether reform is sprinting or simply strolling. The good news is that the Minister of Education, Dr. Morufu Olatunji Alausa, and the Minister of Health, Dr. Muhammad Ali Pate, have demonstrated creativity and leadership in turning around these sectors in Nigeria.

    Social cohesion, always fragile, continues to teeter on the edge. Ethnic tension flared during the 2023 off-cycle elections in Kogi and Bayelsa while hate speech and disinformation proliferated across social media platforms. However, shared national moments—such as the Super Falcons’ exploits at the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup and global acclaim for Nigerian creatives—continue to offer flickers of unity. The federal character principle remains contentious as calls grow louder for restructuring and a rotational presidency. Unity cannot be decreed; it is cultivated by fairness perceived, and fairness experienced.

    As for the democracy dividend, surveys by NOI Polls show that while 57% of Nigerians still believe in democracy as the best form of government, only 21% say it is delivering real economic improvement. Voters who queued in the sun in 2023 were not asking for utopia; they were asking for water that runs, roads that last, jobs that pay, and leaders who listen. If those basics remain aspirations in 2025, then democracy’s moral account is deeply overdrawn.

    Politics loves horizons; governance must love the now. Every glowing statistic deployed at a press conference will be interrogated by the aroma in a market woman’s pot and the hum—or hush—of a factory line. The following 730 days, before the ballot, are not for campaign rehearsal but for rigorous implementation and a shrinking window to make today visibly better than yesterday. Genuine wins deserve applause. Glaring gaps demand humility. What matters now is the quiet grind of delivery—measurable, consistent, and ruthless in execution. Only then will talk of 2027 feel like anticipation and not escapism — another escape from the realities of 2025. The issues raised here will define 2027.

  • Gatekeepers or spectators? National Assembly’s two-year performance gap – By Dakuku Peterside

    Gatekeepers or spectators? National Assembly’s two-year performance gap – By Dakuku Peterside

    Last week’s column took state governors to task, and the response was electric: inboxes flooded, phone lines buzzed, and hashtags trended. Nigerians are starved for public office scorecards that rely on more than rumour and partisan noise. In that spirit, and with the second anniversary of the 10th National Assembly staring us in the face, the spotlight now swings toward the legislature. In Washington, where we borrowed our presidential model, lawmakers live under the unforgiving glare of the Legislative Effectiveness Score: fifteen indicators that weigh everything from the originality of bills to the art of steering them through committees. Add the Healthy Congress Index(HCI),which checks the institution’s pulse—how often it debates and how transparent the votes are—and you have an ecosystem where inertia is quickly shamed. Abuja, by contrast, offers no such dashboard. All we possess are lofty promises voiced from the rostrum on Inauguration Day and the quiet, often-seething expectations of 220 million citizens. Those promises form the spine of this mid-term review; those expectations supply its moral urgency.

    First, the numbers. In its opening year, the Senate introduced 464 bills and passed 19; in the second year, up to this May, 341 bills produced a meagre seven enactments. The House looked busier—1,727 bills filed by December 2024, 114 of them passed—but peel away the seven executive-sponsored measures and the apparent productivity deflates. Committee clerks admit that roughly one-third of all texts are recycled from earlier parliaments, some lifted almost verbatim from the 8th and 9th Assemblies. It is legislative déjà vu: copy, paste, rename, re-announce. Quantity, yes. Originality and rigour, no. This Assembly would languish in the bottom quartile by the American yardstick that prizes innovation and shepherding skill.

    The quality deficit shows up in what lawmakers choose to rush. The National Anthem Bill of 2024—re-introducing the 1960 song “Nigeria, We Hail Thee”—sailed through first, second and third readings in a single sitting, then became law within eight days. Critics wondered why a symbolic lyric change earned lightning attention while food-price bills languished. A similar haste-then-rethink story dogs the Students’ Loan Act: passed in 2023, repealed and reenacted in 2024 after design flaws emerged. Speed seems reserved for headline bills and presidential priorities; everything else becomes legislative traffic.

    If legislative output has been underwhelming, economic stewardship has been positively somnolent. The economy has seesawed from subsidy removal through currency free-fall to inflation that makes a mockery of monthly pay slips, yet Parliament has rarely mounted an independent critique of budgets, revenue forecasts or tax proposals. Hearings on the 2025 Finance Bill—an instrument that will decide whether families stay afloat or sink—featured more cabinet ministers than civil society witnesses. The optics are unmistakable: the legislature has abandoned its role and now promoting the agenda of the executive . The National Assembly held just two stand-alone debates on monetary or fiscal strategy and rubber-stamped the record-sized 2025 budget in 31 sitting hours—barely one-third the time the 8th Assembly devoted to the smaller 2016 estimates.

    Where the economy goes, social misery follows. Nigerians now speak of poverty, food prices, banditry, kidnappings and unemployment as if they were the weather—inescapable, ever-present, uncaring. One might expect a flurry of poverty-reduction bills, police reform blueprints, or social welfare overhauls. Instead, the Order Paper remains eerily devoid of landmark initiatives. The lone poverty-relief measure that did clear both chambers has been trapped in the harmonisation mill for half a year, gathering dust while food queues at all gatherings lengthen.

    Public sentiment is matching the numbers. Citizens have noticed. A media sentiment scan across 18 dailies found a 72-per cent negative slant toward the Assembly this year. The latest Afrobarometer country brief finds that only 19 % of Nigerians trust National Assembly “somewhat” or “a lot,” a figure lower than the police and barely above political parties. In an era when Instagram comedians draw bigger live audiences than oversight hearings, that statistic feels less like survey data and more like lived reality.

    When the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre( PLAC) set out to gauge public faith in National Assembly, its findings were bleak: confidence in the National Assembly hovered near rock bottom. Wanting to test whether that verdict was an outlier or a mirror, I sifted through months of news coverage and then spoke, quietly and without a script, to two hundred Nigerians spread across markets, campuses and motor parks. Their verdict echoed PLAC’s numbers—distrust has hardened into something close to resignation. The Speaker of the HOR, writing in the Guardian, conceded that Parliament must “earn back the people’s faith.” It takes no political genius to decode that sentence: the legislature’s legitimacy is in free fall, and even its highest officers can feel the rush of air.

    Why the distance? Many civil society voices point to the Electoral Reform Bill, which should sit at the heart of any democracy worth the name. Instead, it idles on committee desks, adjourned and re-adjourned while more photogenic bills leapfrog it on the order paper. Electoral rules shape everything else—how leaders are chosen, how accountable they feel, and how national resources are shared. Treat that foundation lightly, and the cracks spread into every social and economic wall we’re trying to shore up. Until lawmakers urgently confront that truth, the trust deficit they bemoan will only widen.

    Another reason for that collapse is the anaemic quality of debate. Plenary sittings open without forming a quorum. Though you have 100 per cent attendance on the register, the Senate hardly witnesses more than 40 persons on the floor. The House of Representatives (HOR) is worse; not more than 50 members are out of 360 on a good day. Bills often sprint through first and second readings in minutes. Committee rooms—those sweatshops of legislative business —registered a mere 14 investigative hearings in two years, compared with 61 during the equivalent stretch of the 8th Assembly, confirming that the watchdog’s bark now registers as a whimper. Civil society groups invited to testify say draft bills sometimes arrive the night before or not at all. Oversight this thin cannot scarify an errant minister, let alone a recalcitrant bureaucracy.

    Institutional reform, loudly trumpeted on inauguration day, has suffered the same fate. The presiding officers promised digital voting boards, live attendance logs, televised committee sittings and a root-and-branch rewrite of the standing orders. Two years later, the boards are dark, the logs are unpublished, the cameras are absent, and the rulebook is “with consultants.” Promises postponed are promises broken. Misuse of voice voting for a serious national issue, such as declaring a state of emergency in Rivers state, screams of a National Assembly ready to sell its soul for the “porridge” of the Executive.

    And then there is money—the ₦6.9 trillion worth of  projects smuggled into the 2025 budget, spanning a staggering 11,122 individual schemes. There is no need assessments, community consultations, or GPS-tagged disclosure of location —just pork-barrel politics on a scale large enough to feed an ark.  This total legislative add-on is above the combined capital votes of health and education. Just imagine that!

    Civil society trackers can find locations for barely a quarter of the projects, procurement portals list even fewer contractors. The optics feed a perception of “Legis-looting” so potent that 21 citizens have already sued the presiding officers for budget opacity, while anti-graft agencies circle but have yet to pounce.

    Patterns emerge: a recycling culture that dilutes policy innovation; deference to the Executive that hollows out checks and balances; token oversight that lets scandals slip through the net; opaque spending that deepens the conviction that everyone under the dome is on the take. Each pathology feeds the next like cogs in a depressing machine.

    What to do? Borrow, yes—but not mindlessly—from the United States. The National Institute for Legislative Studies could design a Nigerian Legislative Effectiveness Index in concert with civil society and the media, weighting originality, cross-party sponsorship, committee diligence and real-world impact. Every bill should face a “rigour filter” before the second reading: a clear problem statement, a fiscal note, and evidence of stakeholder consultation.

    Constituency projects could be forced into the sunlight by a public, geo-tagged dashboard that lets citizens upload smartphone photos of progress—or the lack thereof. Committees deserve independent counsel, research budgets and minority-party chairs for at least 30 per cent of probes, reversing the rubber-stamp culture. And National Assembly must anchor quarterly, nationally televised debates on the economy, timed to the budget cycle, forcing lawmakers either to defend fiscal choices or fold under the klieg lights.

    None of this is utopian. All of it is achievable. The 10th National Assembly is not the laziest in purely numerical terms—thousands of bills tell that story—but by any honest qualitative yardstick, it is the least consequential in a decade. Nigeria’s cascading crises require a legislature that legislates, scrutinises and inspires confidence. The good news is that redemption is still possible; the bad news is that the window is shrinking by the week. Citizens have started counting the seconds aloud. Whether lawmakers can still convert this chorus of disillusion into a spur for reform will decide not only the legacy of the 10th Assembly but also, in part, the trajectory of Nigeria’s fragile democracy.

    Two years remain. That is enough time to pivot from legislative theatre to legislative therapy: subject every new bill to rigorous stakeholder input , schedule quarterly macro-economy debates that cannot be waived; and adopt a Nigerian-tailored Legislative Effectiveness Index data. These and not outrage should drive the end-term review. Until such reforms take root, the 10th National Assembly’s legacy risks being summed up in one brutal statistic—nineteen per cent.

  • ₦47 trillion later: A mid-term reality check for state power – By Dakuku Peterside

    ₦47 trillion later: A mid-term reality check for state power – By Dakuku Peterside

    The halfway mark of any journey invites a reckoning, and politics is no exception. In mature liberal democracies, the reckoning is built into the calendar: mid-term elections test the strength of the governing party by subjecting its record to the electorate’s cold appraisal. One of the defining features of American-style liberal democracy is the midterm performance review, typically carried out through congressional elections. These elections serve as a referendum on the executive arm of government, allowing citizens to reward or punish the party in power based on its performance. In this model, electoral outcomes are influenced more by lived experiences and perceptions of government efficacy than by party loyalty or ethnicity.

    However, Nigeria, which claims to have adopted the American-style presidential model of democracy, lacks such institutionalised midterm reviews. Our electoral system is structured around end-of-term verdicts, often distorted by electoral manipulation, weak accountability systems, and voter apathy. More curiously, we have observed an inverted pattern: the worse a government performs, the more its ruling party appears to be rewarded at the polls—2015 being the most notable exception, when an incumbent president lost his seat.

    Against this backdrop, the question arises: Will the current 2023–2027 political cycle be any different? This column initiates a de facto midterm review by evaluating the performance of Nigeria’s 36 state governors at the halfway point of their tenures. The focus on governors is deliberate: state executives are often closer to the people, are more accessible, and are directly responsible for delivering basic services such as education, healthcare, road infrastructure, and local security coordination. More importantly, they control significant fiscal resources. Their decisions impact economic growth, job creation, food security, and poverty alleviation.

    In Nigeria, every gubernatorial term glides past its midpoint in near silence. Only a handful of columnists, civil-society groups and citizens pause to ask whether those who promised transformation in May 2023 have delivered even modest change by May 2025. That silence is costly. It allows underperformance to harden into habit and propaganda to pass for progress, until the electorate wakes up on election day to discover that four years have passed.

    The indices for the performance of our governments presuppose that in a democracy, direct government involvement in development can advance society. That may be true in the cases of social development—education, healthcare, and poverty reduction. However, governments must deploy the resources at their disposal to promote private sector initiatives. That is an area where the Nigerian system seems to lack clarity and focus.

    Consider the scale of the resources at stake. In just two fiscal years, the 36 states collectively budgeted ₦47.75 trillion—more than the entire annual budgets of fifteen African countries combined. Nearly two-thirds of the ₦15.26 trillion shared from the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) in 2024 alone poured into state and local government coffers. If we juxtapose this level of resource allocation against on-ground performance, the discrepancy becomes glaring. The problem is not just underperformance, but the complete misalignment of priorities. Too many governors approach governance as an extension of political campaigns—prioritising visibility over value, short-term optics over long-term transformation. When numbers of that magnitude yield potholes, empty hospital wards, absence of classrooms and unpaid teacher salaries, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Nigeria’s problem is not scarcity but squandering—of money, of opportunity and, ultimately, of hope.

    Seven lenses offer a clear view of what has gone right and wrong by this mid-term point. The first lens—security—exposes the fault line in Nigeria’s federal structure. Governors rail against constitutional limits on their power to command police and security formations, yet few have exploited the tools within reach: credible local intelligence networks, robust coordination with federal agencies and transparent funding of community-based initiatives. Where such steps have been taken—Niger’s vigilante partnership in the north-central or Ondo’s Amotekun collaboration in the south-west—kidnapping incidents have fallen. Where they have not, violence has spread across farming belts, choking food production and inflating prices for the urban poor.

    Education and health, the twin pillars of human capital, reveal a different kind of failure: one of imagination. Nearly every inaugural address in 2023 bristled with promises of “world-class” schools and “21st-century” hospitals; two years later, many of those promises rest on foundation trenches already filling with weeds. Instead of innovation, there’s inertia. An exception glimmers in Enugu, where a Smart-School initiative has equipped classrooms with broadband, tablets and a curriculum that blends coding with civic education. Enrolment has climbed; learning outcomes, measured by early literacy tests, are inching upward. Kaduna state’s innovative healthcare approach, based on unified health data and health insurance, stands out. Yet the overall picture remains grim: strike-weary teachers, phantom waivers for healthcare equipment and maternity wards that rely on kerosene lanterns when the grid fails. Beyond such isolated examples, most states show no sign of high-level thinking or policy creativity.

    Agriculture ought to be the foundational line of defence in a country where food inflation has breached 30 per cent. While Nigeria remains food insecure, most states depend on subsistence farming with no value chain development. Most states still treat farming as a social welfare programme rather than a business. Seed subsidies are distributed moments before the rains, storage silos lie rusted by the roadside, and farm-gate produce spoils because feeder roads crumble in the wet season. Credit is scarce and land titling opaque. Agro-processing—a key link to job creation and economic diversification—is almost non-existent.

    However, a handful of states, such as Enugu, Ebonyi,Cross River, Jigawa, Kebbi, Nasarawa, Kaduna, Benue, Oyo, Lagos, and Niger, have taken commendable steps toward establishing agro-industrial hubs, supporting farmers with inputs, and investing in storage and logistics. Enugu with the farm estates and special agro industrial zone, Cross River with its oil palm estate and cocoa-processing plant, Jigawa with an irrigation-backed rice cluster, Lagos with the Imota rice mill and Niger with massive investment in farm equipment, irrigation and integrated livestock zones—show how targeted investments can lengthen the value chain, generate jobs and expand internally generated revenue. These pockets of promise, however, remain the exception.

    The economic-growth lens sharpens the argument. The National Bureau of Statistics has yet to publish state-by-state GDP figures for 2023 and 2024, but the lived experience is instructive. Outside a few commercial hubs—Lagos anchored by services, Rivers by oil, Ogun by manufacturing estates—most states have not shifted from consumption to production. The manufacturing sector, a crucial driver of employment and foreign exchange, is in decline across over 90% of states due to poor infrastructure, unreliable power supply, and insecurity. Governors prefer to tout road construction projects—many overpriced, poorly executed, or outright abandoned—as evidence of development. Yet, these projects often have little to no economic multiplier effect. Internally generated revenue averages a paltry 15 per cent of total receipts nationwide, leaving states dangerously exposed to the ebb and flow of oil-derived FAAC transfers. In effect, the governor’s campaign is based on the rhetoric of entrepreneurship but governed by the mathematics of entitlement.

    Infrastructure is where rhetoric and reality collide most visibly. Billboards display smiling portraits beside “legacy projects,” yet many of those projects are mere political capital—roads resurfaced in an election year using substandard asphalt, bridges that crack under their first flood, housing estates marketed to middle-income families who cannot afford them. Procurement rules are bent to favour cronies; oversight committees meet seldom, if at all; and whistle-blowers quickly learn that silence is safer than scrutiny. In the most egregious cases, contractors are mobilised with hefty advances, abandon the site after clearing the bush, and reappear at campaign rallies to pledge loyalty to the governor’s “vision.”

    That pattern bleeds into the final lens: good governance. Most governors have failed to develop precise policy thrusts or articulate a developmental vision for their states. There is an over-reliance on propaganda and political theatrics, while serious policymaking is neglected. Public participation is minimal, budgets are not people-oriented, and many citizens are unaware of what their governments stand for. This absence of clarity has created a vacuum of leadership at the subnational level. As hunger, unemployment, and hopelessness deepen, people are increasingly disconnected from state structures.

    That said, there are high points worth noting. Niger and Enugu States have made meaningful efforts to create a welcoming environment for private investors, simplify bureaucratic processes, and offer incentives that have drawn interest in sectors such as power and agriculture. A few other states have demonstrated courage in tackling previously ignored sectors, experimenting with innovative educational models or agricultural partnerships.

    How many state governments in the 2024-2025 fiscal year published their annual budget, budget implementation report, Internally Generated Revenue monthly report (IGR), current debt profile, audited statement and policy statement on their website? Abia, Enugu, Nasarawa, Jigawa, Anambra, Niger and Ekiti may be the only exceptions. Ebonyi gets credit for subjecting its proposed budget to referendum before legislative approval.  Compared to the 2022 survey, states were less open and transparent in 2024. The inference to draw is that most state governments do not care about transparency and citizen engagement.

    As we enter the second half of this administration’s tenure, the questions confronting Nigerians are profound. Will governors use the remaining time to recalibrate their strategies, articulate clear policy goals, and invest in transformational projects? Or will the next two years mirror the first—marked by more trial and error, corruption, and politically motivated showmanship? What should Nigerians demand in the remaining two years of this cycle? These questions merit immediate consideration.

    Midterm reviews may not be codified in Nigerian law, but they are an important democratic tool. They serve as a moral and civic audit of our leaders’ stewardship. For citizens, civil society, and the media, this is a moment to hold governors accountable—not just for what they have done, but also for what they have failed to do. Half-time is over. The second half beckons, and the scoreboard is visible to everyone looking.

  • Can an American Pope speak to Nigerian realities? – By Dakuku Peterside

    Can an American Pope speak to Nigerian realities? – By Dakuku Peterside

    When white smoke curled into the Roman sky and the world learned that the College of Cardinals had elected Robert Francis Cardinal Prevost, Pope Leo XIV—an American—it was met with mixed emotions across Africa. For many, particularly in Nigeria, it stirred a sense of cautious hope layered with curiosity. However, it also raised questions about whether a pontiff shaped by the wealth, power, and contradictions of the United States could truly understand the depth of Nigeria’s struggles and the weight of its aspirations. Could he effectively address the wounds of a country still healing from centuries of colonisation, exploitation, and spiritual marginalisation?

    Yet as days passed and the new Pope began to speak—not in abstractions, but in words charged with moral clarity and historical awareness—Nigerian Catholics began to feel a surprising resonance.  Nigeria  with the second largest population of Catholic population in Africa  is home to significant church influence. From rural churches in Ebonyi to urban dioceses in Lagos and Kano, conversations shifted. What started as distant interest has evolved into an emerging conviction: that Pope Leo XIV might be the global moral voice Africa, and Nigeria in particular, has long yearned for—not because he is perfect, but because he appears willing to listen, learn, and lead with compassion.

    The emergence of an American Pope now could mean a lot for global Christianity. It is coming at a time of great moral possibilities for a world in active realignment. Can democracy go awry while morality remains intact? Can an American political leader destabilize the world order while an American pope preaches unity and peace? Pope Leo XIV has a heavy moral burden. He can only discharge it by emulating Pope Francis, by drawing closer to the masses to emphasize our common humanity over and above the clashing swords of global big powers and political showmanship.

    Sister Benedicta Okeke of Onitsha captured this shift in a post-mass conversation: “You can’t imagine how healing it is to hear a pope acknowledge colonialism not as a thing of the past but as a system whose aftershocks still affect our people. When he said, ‘Africa’s poverty is not a divine mystery but a human-made injustice,’ I wept. For once, our pain was not dismissed as charity fodder. It was treated as a matter of justice.” Recalling Leo XIV’s inaugural homily in which he condemned “the old and new empires that bleed the global South,” her words distilled decades of frustration among believers who have watched multinational corporations extract resources. At the same time, local communities remain poor. In that moment, she said, “our wounds were not invisible anymore.”

    Nigeria is home to a significant proportion of the world’s poorest populations. A pope who places the poor at the centre of his teachings reaffirms the Church’s mission of compassion and solidarity. Pope Leo XIV’s unwavering focus on social equity and economic justice will resonate deeply in Nigeria, where poverty, inequality, and limited access to healthcare and education persist. His leadership could redirect global Catholic aid priorities towards Africa, inspiring international donors and Catholic organisations to intensify their commitments to humanitarian efforts. His voice could also encourage local Catholic communities to build stronger, self-sustaining social ministries that reflect the Church’s preferential care for the marginalised, instilling a sense of inspiration and motivation in believers nationwide.

    The new Pope’s empathy for migrants struck another chord. His bold defence of migrant rights, a stance that has reverberated among Nigerian migrants worldwide, is a testament to his global perspective. In a modest flat in Milan, Chidozie Umeh shared a message with his local parish group: “The Pope’s bold defence of migrants made me feel visible for the first time in many years. When he said ‘no human being is illegal,’ it wasn’t just a slogan—it was a lifeline.” For thousands of Nigerians enduring racism, statelessness, and institutional neglect in Europe and North Africa, the Pope’s stance is more than symbolic. It is a form of pastoral advocacy that they rarely receive from their home or host governments. For Nigerians navigating uncertain legal status in Europe or the Middle East, Leo XIV’s stark defence of migrant rights is surely a lifeline.

    But the promise of Leo XIV’s papacy is not confined to words. Its echoes are beginning to shape the ground realities of faith communities across Nigeria. In Enugu, some Catholic faithfuls have begun mobilising funds for mobile health clinics in underserved communities. The Pope’s emphasis on structural justice—not just acts of mercy—has pushed them to reimagine healthcare as a right, not a luxury. Similar ripples are felt in Jos, where some youth leaders recently mobilise agricultural  cooperatives: They’re starting a community farm project because the Pope reminds them that the Eucharist must extend beyond the altar, and charity begins in the parish.For these Catholics, papal words are seeds that must germinate in local initiatives.

    A broader theological implication of this papacy is its impact on representation and hope. For many Nigerians, the election of an American pope signals that the papacy is no longer a preserve of European tradition. If a man from the United States can lead the Church, then perhaps Africa’s turn is not far, and this is no longer a distant dream. It is a possibility. The notion of a future African pope—once whispered in seminaries as wishful thinking—is now discussed with cautious realism.

    And it’s not only about leadership at the top. This new papacy concerns cultural legitimacy. Our liturgy—our drums, our dance, our call-and-response chants—have always been considered secondary, something to be tolerated. But now, the Pope himself has said African worship is not an imitation of Catholicism; it is Catholicism. Diversity is no longer a concession; it is the soundtrack of Catholic universality. It is a testament to the Church’s recognition of its global congregation’s richness and diversity.

    The most pressing issues Pope Leo XIV has thrust into the spotlight are Christian institutions’ credibility, accountability and transparency. Nigeria is no stranger to ecclesiastical scandals, financial opacity, and misplaced priorities. But now, voices within the Church are rising with renewed confidence. Leo XIV’s insistence on public diocesan audits should reverberate in Nigeria, where some parishes keep opaque books. The Pope’s zero-tolerance stance emboldens Nigerians to ask hard questions of bishops. In a country where corruption routinely hollows out institutions, a transparent Church could model the good governance the state so often lacks.

    This sense of empowerment extends into diplomacy and development, where the Pope’s background as an American could prove strategically beneficial. If this Pope speaks directly to U.S. lawmakers about ethical foreign policy, it could change how aid is delivered and how conflicts are addressed. He understands both African suffering and American power. The hope is that he could serve as a moral interpreter between Africa and the West—a bridge with a conscience.

    Leo XIV’s personal familiarity with Africa deepens these hopes. Nigerians still recall the Pope’s past visits to Jos and other cities. We feel he understands our reality, which means he can interpret our needs to audiences in Washington and Rome alike. That bridge-building potential implies that the pontiff could unlock U.S. philanthropic networks for dialogue programmes across Nigeria’s religious fault lines.

    That potential is especially resonant in economic and environmental justice circles. If Pope Leo XIV addresses debt injustice or the exploitative structure of global trade, Washington will not ignore him. He’s not just a theologian. He’s an insider with prophetic courage. In the oil-polluted communities of the Niger Delta, some activists assumes that when the Pope shines the papal spotlight on our creeks, maybe then the oil giants will remember we are people, not just pipelines. The notion that a spiritual leader could steer profit-driven decisions may seem utopian, yet history is full of encyclicals that nudged governments toward unexpected reforms.

    However, the Pope’s impact on domestic reform may be most transformative. Inspired by his message, parishioners in Yola’s St Theresa’s Church recently drafted an open letter urging their governor to publish a transparent and people-focused budget. In southern Kaduna, where violence has claimed countless lives, Father John Yakubu confessed: “This Pope challenges us priests to leave our comfort zones. We are called not only to preach, but to walk beside victims—to be visible where pain is present.” When moral authority radiates downward through the ecclesial chain, it can animate laity and clergy alike to confront entrenched dangers.

    All these voices converge on a single conviction: the Church’s relevance in Africa will depend on how deeply it listens to Africa. An American pope who learned compassion amid his nation’s contradictions may be uniquely positioned to foster that listening. He stands at the confluence of Washington’s power, Rome’s tradition, and Africa’s youthful dynamism. If he can channel those currents into a river of justice, he will do more than make history—he will help heal it.

    For now, Nigerians keep watch, balancing hope with realism. They know that papal exhortations do not automatically translate into legislative victories, access to education, healthcare or clean water taps. But they also know that culture often shifts on the hinge of imagination, and Leo XIV has already widened that imaginative horizon. As youth leader Blessing Iyorah stood in her cassava field outside Jos, she captured this new spirit best: “Faith isn’t an escape plan. It’s a construction manual. The Pope has given us blueprints. Now we must build the kingdom—right here, right now, with our own hands.” And in that soil, under the sun of central Nigeria —amid prayer, planning, and prophetic courage—the significance of an American pope for Nigeria might be taking root.

  • NELFUND: Against a culture of impunity – By Dakuku Peterside

    NELFUND: Against a culture of impunity – By Dakuku Peterside

    When the Nigerian Education Loan Fund, better known as NELFUND, was unveiled, it landed like a spark in a dry forest of despair. It brought a glimmer of hope, like a bold attempt to democratise access to higher education in a country where tuition fees are a barricade and scholarships are too few, too politicised, or too elitist. The idea was simple: interest-free student loans, disbursed through an automated and digitally tracked platform with zero human interference. For students who have long watched their dreams deferred by poverty, this was more than a policy; it was a lifeline.  For many first-generation undergraduates, it promised to end the humiliating routine of begging relatives, hawking phone cards or pausing degrees. The phrase “game-changer” was on everyone’s lips.

    But hardened by history, Nigerians know that nothing bright survives long in a system riddled with rot. Almost immediately, allegations swirled that money had already begun to vanish from the scheme. Some universities  allegedly misappropriated student loans by making illegal deductions from NELFUND student loans.Certain  university officials are taxing loans given to students for their selfish gain. NELFUND swiftly dismissed the reports as reckless misinformation. Still, the damage was done. In a country where corruption is both epidemic and endemic, citizens don’t wait for audits or court rulings. They trust their gut. And their gut tells them that anything involving public money is already compromised. Nigerians know too well that even the most visionary programmes can be bled dry by the country’s stubborn corruption crisis.

    This instinct isn’t paranoia; it’s pattern recognition. Nigeria’s corruption problem is not just a matter of lack of transparency or stolen funds. It’s a deeply embedded culture of impunity where influential individuals manipulate public institutions like personal ATMs and emerge unscathed. From misallocated security votes to inflated procurement contracts, Nigerian public life is littered with episodes in which influential actors, politicians, regulators, and even some law enforcement agents, mishandle or misappropriate funds with little fear of sanction. Often, officials caught in massive scandals are celebrated months later as elder statesmen or traditional title holders. Investigations go cold. Probes fizzle. Court cases drag on for years without resolution. It’s not just about the looting; it’s the sense that nothing will ever happen to the looters. This pattern breeds a sense that looting the public purse is not a crime but a career path.

    But the very scale that makes NELFUND transformative also makes it attractive prey. Experience shows that dedicated accounts can be hacked, payment queues quietly rerouted, and datasets tampered with in return for kickbacks. When such manipulation occurs in education finance, the damage is generational: courses are abandoned, research labs fall silent, and an already skills-starved economy stumbles further. In effect, stealing student loan funds is stealing the country’s future.

    The corruption culture has now come under sharp focus again, this time through the jaw-dropping revelations from the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL). Since 2021, nearly $3 billion has been earmarked for “quick-fix” refurbishments of the country’s three state-owned refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna. The promises were grand. Press conferences were held. Cameras rolled. But within weeks of their so-called resumption, the refineries ground to a halt. Warri shut down entirely within a month; Port Harcourt barely sputtered at less than 40% capacity. Kaduna never really started.

    Then came the real thunderclap: the EFCC launched sweeping investigations into the use of the funds. Three managing directors were arrested, and ₦80 billion was allegedly found sitting in the personal accounts of one of them, whether it is true or not, this raises a red flag, especially against the background of trillions of Naira spent on rehabilitation of non-functional refineries. Thirteen senior executives, including former Group CEO Mele Kyari, were named in official documents. The probe’s scope is vast, touching every level of NNPCL’s leadership during the disbursement period. Energy experts were not surprised. They had long warned that the televised recommissioning ceremonies were theatre, not substance. One described it as “a charade.” And now, that assessment appears tragically accurate.

    The episode has become a national morality play: billions vanish, steel tanks fall silent, workers fume, and consumers pay more—and, until those arrests, few insiders expected real consequences. Against that backdrop, it is obvious why a digital student-loan platform, no matter how cleverly coded, can feel one scandal away from derailment.

    The parallels between this refinery disaster and the looming threats around NELFUND are unmistakable. Both involve essential national priorities, energy and education, and require vast public investment. Both were launched with great fanfare. And both operate in a governance ecosystem that rewards mismanagement and punishes transparency. The refinery funds went up in smoke, quite literally. If the structural weaknesses aren’t addressed, NELFUND could follow the same path, and we must prevent that from happening.

    The implications of corruption and impunity are glaring. Loan diversion, illegal taxing, or misallocation limits enrolment, widens inequality, triggers brain drains, and hobbles innovation. Refinery non-performance sustains import dependency, drains foreign exchange, and keeps fuel prices volatile; budget overruns divert funds from health, roads, and digital infrastructure. Each scandal deepens cynicism; citizens disengage from civic processes, fuelling voter apathy and social unrest. Legitimate businesses face distorted markets, and connected rivals bend rules without penalty.

    Every administration promises a clamp down. State anti-graft agencies trumpet arrests and asset forfeitures, yet the average citizen seldom sees a powerful individual serve meaningful jail time or make full restitution. Small wonder opinion surveys in 2024 repeatedly show that Nigerians believe corruption is worsening. The chorus of disappointment grows louder each time a high-profile investigation fizzles or a suspect circles back into public office.

    President Bola Tinubu has acknowledged the crisis, using his May Day address to decry corruption as a force that enriches the few at the expense of the many. He vowed to dismantle the “structures of greed.” The rhetoric was strong, the delivery confident — but it lacked detail. There is no clear plan, new legislation, or timelines—just more words in a country drowning in them. For a public that’s seen too many commissions, too many promises, and too few results, the speech offered more comfort than clarity.

    This is the core of the Nigerian paradox: a nation bursting with brilliance, talent, and ambition, stymied by a political class addicted to extraction. Students are not looking for pity. They want a fair shot , the right to learn, grow, and compete globally. The NELFUND initiative could be the bridge between inequality and opportunity, between hopelessness and aspiration. But for that to happen, it must be protected from the same forces that crippled the refineries and tainted so many national programmes before it.

    There are ways forward. Swift justice is one. No more endless adjournments or slap-on-the-wrist sentences. Special courts for corruption, with strict 180-day limits, could start to change the game. So could real-time transparency, dashboards that show every Naira disbursed through NELFUND, publicly accessible to all. Digital systems should be strengthened, with blockchain-backed audits making tampering nearly impossible. Whistle-blowers must be protected and rewarded, not punished. Above all, funding releases must be tied to actual, measurable outcomes, student enrolments, graduation rates, and employment stats. No more blank cheques.

    The Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, deserves commendation for his proactive response to the alarm raised about unauthorised deductions by some university officials on funds related to NELFUND loan disbursement. By initiating an independent investigation with support from the Athena Centre, the Minister has demonstrated strong leadership and a clear commitment to addressing corruption as a significant threat to widening educational opportunities. The Athena Centre for Policy and Leadership is partnering with the Federal Ministry of Education to improve transparency and accountability in Nigeria’s student loan scheme (NELFUND). This partnership includes launching a compliance-tracking initiative, an Annual University Transparency Index, and technical support for universities to maintain open-portal systems for loan disbursement and monitoring. The signalling is proper and needs to be supported. We ask for a transparent investigation, and findings should be made public.

    It’s easy to become numb. Scroll past the headlines and shake your head. But apathy is the oxygen of impunity. If the NELFUND student loan scheme fails, if it is captured, corrupted, or abandoned , it won’t just be a policy failure. It will be a national betrayal. It will signal that even the most promising reforms are no match for Nigeria’s machinery of plunder. And yet, the possibility remains. With enough pressure, vigilance, and political will, NELFUND could be a game-changer and a turning point. A moment when Nigeria chose a different path. A moment when the future stopped being stolen, and finally started being built.

    Nigeria’s greatest assets are neither crude oil nor rare metals but its people, especially the millions of youths whose aspirations depend on credible institutions and fair opportunities. Programmes like NELFUND can unlock that human capital, but only in a governance environment where corruption is costly and impunity impossible. The refinery scandal provides a cautionary tale; NELFUND offers a chance for redemption. If the country can prosecute wrongdoers swiftly, embed transparency technologically and refuse to tolerate “business as usual,” it will signal that public money is once again public, not private. The student loan initiative may yet fulfil its promise—lighting a path out of systemic dysfunction toward shared prosperity and democratic renewal.

  • A Pope’s funeral and new leadership paradigm – By Dakuku Peterside

    A Pope’s funeral and new leadership paradigm – By Dakuku Peterside

    The world came together on a warm April morning in Rome. Under Bernini’s wide colonnade, a simple wooden coffin lay, almost shy against the grand marble of St. Peter’s. It held the body of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, better known as Pope Francis; it also carried a final message, passed without words. As I watched the funeral, I wondered if the message would be clear to leaders in places where leadership is often about show instead of service. Nigeria, my country, came to mind, because its people long for leaders who serve with humility rather than rule with power.

    At first glance, comparing a pope to political leaders might seem unconventional, but important commonalities exist. Upon reflection, parallels are audacious: a Catholic pontiff and a republic’s president inhabit very different orbits. Yet both preside over institutions that store immeasurable wealth-monetary, cultural, spiritual, and both command loyalties that can bless or wound the human spirit. The difference lies in the currency they spend. Francis traded almost exclusively in moral capital. His motorcade rarely stretched beyond a small Fiat. He lived in a guesthouse, took meals in a communal dining hall, and instructed that his funeral expenses be redirected to shelters for people experiencing homelessness.

    In stark contrast, many political leaders, notably in Nigeria, have consolidated power through patronage, wealth accumulation, and coercion, severely damaging their credibility and the public’s trust. Nigerian power, by contrast, is often measured in sirens, convoys, and security votes, in the distance a public office holder can place between themselves and the exhaust of everyday life. The funeral invited a radical thought: what if legitimacy flowed from humility, not from the choreography of importance? This stress on the importance of humility in leadership could enlighten and provoke reflection on governance.

    Humility, though, is not a mannerism. It is a decision made daily, a refusal to situate oneself above the collective story. Francis’ last request, “bury me outside the Vatican walls”, was a slight tectonic shift, the first such break with tradition in over a century. It told pilgrims and presidents alike that holiness is not the property of marble tombs but of living deeds. Pope Francis was buried in a simple wooden coffin instead of the traditional three-nested casket, symbolising a life dedicated to humility and service. This act is probably the first of its kind in papacy history. This powerful statement of reform and decentralisation challenged entrenched traditions that maintain privilege.

    Nigerian leaders, accustomed to the trappings of power and privilege, could profoundly benefit from embracing servant-leadership that prioritises citizens’ welfare above personal gain. Imagine for a moment a Nigerian governor choosing to sleep occasionally in the wards of a rural clinic that lacks electricity, a senator commuting without escorts, or a budget speech opened with an apology to those whose dreams are still postponed. Such gestures, inspired by Pope Francis’ humility, would earn ridicule from cynics trained by years of theatrical piety, yet they might also crack the granite of distrust that politics has laid around the citizen’s heart.

    Throughout his papacy, Francis consistently demonstrated simplicity, living modestly, rejecting extravagance, and continuously expressing empathy for ordinary people. For Nigerian political leaders, adopting similar modesty could substantially enhance their legitimacy, distancing them from the extravagant lifestyles that alienate them from the realities of the people they govern. By following Pope Francis’ example, Nigerian leaders could bridge the gap between themselves and the citizens they serve, fostering a deeper connection and understanding.

    The scenes in Rome offered other lessons as subtle as incense. Refugees and cardinals knelt side by side; presidents exchanged the sign of peace; atheists joined murmured prayers. I thought of the Plateau and Benue, of plains made fertile by rivers and yet stained by cycles of reprisal killings, each side armed with grievances as old as maps. If a pope’s funeral could fold the devout and the doubtful into the same silence, perhaps state ceremonies in Nigeria could be reimagined as platforms for reconciliation rather than patronage. Symbols matter because they reach the imagination before the policy can touch the pocket. A wooden coffin whispered more convincingly than any communiqué on inclusive governance ever could.

    None of this is to canonise a man in hindsight; Francis was criticised, resisted, and sometimes misunderstood. Reform always bruises the edges of comfort. But in death, he achieved what many living leaders rarely managed: he convinced opposing camps to pause their quarrels long enough to say, “Thank you, Father.” The applause that rippled through St  Peter’s Square did not celebrate power captured; it celebrated power surrendered. How extraordinary and disconcerting to think that the shortest route to influence might be the surrender of privilege.

    I wish to reference the testimony of Vinod Sekar, the Hindu philanthropist who once described being in the presence of “someone relentlessly good” pointing to Pope Francis. Sekar confessed that holiness ceased to be a place, temple, mosque, or cathedral, and became instead a verb: to shelter, to include, to feed. Nigeria’s streets are crowded with worship houses, yet the mood often tastes of scarcity- scarcity of trust, of light, of potable water, of the belief that tomorrow might be gentler than today. What if holiness were measured not by the decibels of our prayers but by the quality of our public schools and hospitals ? What if fiscal policy became a beatitude, not just a technical tool or to score cheap political point but a source of broad social good?

    Authentic goodness, the kind that disarms calculation, cannot be legislated; it must be modelled. Leaders who publish their asset declaration unprompted, reject grandiose titles, and break bread with market women without cameras in tow begin to tilt the atmosphere. And atmospheres are contagious. When a pope chooses simplicity, bishops take notice; when a governor chooses public transport, commissioners start to wonder whether the show of might is worth its cost. A single act does not topple corruption, but it can short-circuit the logic that sustains it.

    Critics will argue that symbolism is cheap and that coffins and cassocks cannot patch roads or fund hospitals. They are right, unless the symbol changes the story, and the story changes the budget. A nation cannot legislate self respect into its citizens while its leaders accumulate properties in distant capitals. Neither can it ask for sacrifice while official lips sip champagne at state banquets. The funeral in Rome stubbornly insisted that credibility is the one commodity no treasury can purchase; it must be earned in increments of integrity.

    As I write, the image of that lone coffin lingers, framed by sunlight and the tear-streaked faces of strangers who felt seen by a man in white. Power looked strangely like the vulnerability that morning, and history tilted, not dramatically, but perceptibly, toward the possibility that public office might again be synonymous with public service. I imagine a version of that morning unfolding on Abuja’s Eagle Square: no imported SUVs, no choreography of arrival times to signal rank, only leaders standing shoulder to shoulder with nurses, farmers, students, and the internally displaced. I imagine a moment when applause signals not relief that the ceremony is over but gratitude that the example is true. Perhaps that is naïve. Yet every durable reform was once a naïveté stubborn enough to outlive its ridicule.

    The cypress boards of Francis’ coffin will one day fade, but the memory of his choices will migrate from anecdote to folklore, from folklore to benchmark. Nigeria, a country whose anthem pleads to “build a nation where peace and justice shall reign”, needs new benchmarks more urgently than new oil blocks. It requires the quiet scandal of servant leadership to make corruption look as outdated as a triple-nested casket. Nigerian leaders should embrace key principles drawn from Pope Francis’ life and funeral rites: humility that transforms rulers into servant-leaders; real and courageous reforms dismantling corruption; moral authority grounded in integrity and humility; inclusivity that fosters unity across ethnic and religious divides; and a legacy defined by public trust rather than accumulated wealth.

    Ultimately, Pope Francis’ funeral provided a profound narrative on leadership that Nigerian political figures must internalise. By embodying these principles, they can cultivate a governance system rooted in moral authority, transparency, and service, genuinely transforming their nation and securing a legacy that endures beyond wealth or power. I end where I began, in the quiet of that Roman square, listening to chants swell like a rising tide, watching a coffin slip into the basilica, and feeling the strange comfort of a paradox: the smaller the ego, the wider the circle of souls who find shelter beneath its shade. This truth, more than any doctrine, is the gospel political leadership must embrace if it hopes to bury an age of hollow grandeur and awaken a season of genuine hope.