Reporting News and opinions
The Steve Oronsaye Report formally titled the Report on the Restructuring and Rationalization of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions, and Agencies is a landmark 800-page public service reform blueprint submitted to the Nigerian government in 2012.
The response by the President's Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to Cardinal John Onaiyekan's television interview reveals a troubling misunderstanding of constitutional democracy. It also exposes a growing tendency within this administration to confuse criticism with disloyalty and accountability with discourtesy.
The performance requires a villain. Africa has been performing that role for free, and at some cost to itself for considerably longer than it should have.
The primary statutory authority for this sentence is Section 260 of the Kebbi State Penal Code Law, 2021, which criminalizes "unnatural offences." While the exact wording of Kebbi State's provision isn't publicly available in full, similar provisions in northern Nigerian penal codes typically define "unnatural offences" as carnal intercourse against the order of nature, which judicial interpretation has extended to include same-sex sexual acts and anal intercourse.
This intersection of libido and governance is deeply rooted in history. In When Sex Threatened the State: Illicit Sexuality, Nationalism and Politics in Colonial Nigeria, 1900–1958, Professor Saheed Aderinto documented moral degeneration among the ruling elite, showing how men of power have long been implicated in what he called the “commoditization of sex.”
