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In the grand theatre of Nigerian politics, where truth occasionally stumbles onto the stage like an uninvited guest who has had one too many, Alwan Hassan has just delivered a masterclass in accidental honesty.
There are moments in politics when a confession is more revealing than an investigation. A politician, carried away by the confidence that comes with power, may disclose what an entire opposition party has spent years trying to establish. In Nigeria, where political memory is often shorter than a campaign promise, such admissions deserve to be preserved for posterity.
There is a peculiar affliction in Nigerian politics: some politicians cannot distinguish between winning an election and acquiring ownership of the state. To them, victory at the polls is not a temporary mandate to govern the people. It is a licence to command institutions, domesticate independent organisations and demand political obedience from everyone within reach of government.
very first-year law student learns that no parliament can bind its successors. A.V. Dicey wrote it down in 1885, and the English courts confirmed it in Vauxhall Estates (1932) and Ellen Street Estates (1934). A Parliament may legislate on anything except the freedom of the next Parliament to undo it. A parliament is a hotel, not a freehold: you check in, you make a mess, you check out, and you do not get to reserve the rooms for the next guests.
Remember Enya Egbe? The young medical student who fled his anatomy lab in tears after recognising the cadaver on the table as his friend Divine, bullet holes and all, the one they used to hit the clubs with? That 2017-ish horror story (the original piece landed amid the long shadow of such practices) was never just about one traumatised student or one unlucky night out. It was a mirror held up to a system that treats Nigerian bodies, living or dead, as disposable raw material. Fast-forward to 2026, and the reflection has barely fogged over. The disrespect remains the operating system.
