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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.
In 1993, during the dark days following the military takeover that brought Sani Abacha to power, one Nigerian Army officer took an unusual step. Instead of consolidating his position within the new regime, he walked away.
FEC approvals typically involve Executive Council Memoranda (ECMs) submitted by Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs). Here’s the structured workflow:
In a standard DPA regime, a company that self-reports and cooperates can avoid the "corporate death penalty" of a criminal conviction. In Nigeria, we are currently forced to rely on the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) 2015. While the ACJA provides for Plea Bargaining, it is a fundamentally different animal from a DPA:
Centre for Nigeria Progress 