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Nigeria is a federation. Federal agencies do not get to shut down state governments because they suspect something may have gone wrong with the books. Trail the money into private hands. Do not turn off the treasury. The courts, the governors’ forum and the plain language of the Constitution have already said as much. The only question left is how many more times the lesson must be repeated.
There is a specific, quiet corner in Abuja where Nigeria’s most brilliant ideas go to die. It isn’t marked by a monument, but by dust. It is the graveyard of panels, commissions, and committees a place where billions of Naira and thousands of hours of expert labor are neatly bound into volumes, submitted in front of flashing cameras, and promptly forgotten.
Start with the constitutional oddity sitting in plain sight. The Board's Charter names Donald Trump personally not the office of the President, not the United States as a state party, but Donald J. Trump as inaugural Chairman, with a term that survives his presidency. He can only be removed through voluntary resignation or a unanimous vote of the Executive Board finding him incapacitated, and he alone selects his successor. No sitting president inherits the chair by virtue of the office; a future occupant of the Oval Office might find themselves outranked, within an organisation their own government helped charter, by a private citizen of their predecessor's choosing.
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.
Nigeria's army has been described as mighty on paper many of its soldiers 'ghosts' who exist only on the payroll, much of its equipment stolen and sold to insurgents."The Economist, October 2021
