In four days, President Bola Tinubu will complete his second year in office, following the compromised election, according to various election monitoring groups, which brought him to power in 2023.
The same day was also going to be the nominal beginning of his run for re-election in 2027, but one week ahead last week, APC pre-emptively endorsed him, with the leadership of the National Assembly positioning him to keep the presidency without a contest.
These are strange times. In 2017, Tinubu, as the National Leader of APC, declared that the party would follow the ”normal democratic processes” for the 2019 presidential election and not simply award sole candidature to President Muhammadu Buhari.
That was after the party’s governors had endorsed Buhari, just as they did Tinubu himself last week. For himself, he has no objection.
Concerning last week, Senate President Godswill Akpabio had already declared Tinubu to be an unopposed candidate for the election, just as he would himself be unopposed in the senatorial. Keep in mind that Akpabio was single-handedly installed as Senate President in 2023, although he was not only unqualified but facing serious EFCC corruption allegations.
Those allegations are still outstanding, but according to Vice-President Shettima, Tinubu handpicked the former Akwa Ibom governor to lead the Senate to avoid the “negative narrative of Islamisation.”
Akpabio has laboured as hard as the best chameleon since his swearing-in to lead the 10th Senate, to maintain the confidence of Tinubu as his ticket to staying out of prison and maintaining his spot on the Abuja political ladder.
At that event, remember, he was frothing over, affirming that in his care, the chamber would “hit the ground running and make sure that our constituents are proud of us.”
That came from a man who has not done one lick of honest legislative work in two years, and does not know what the Senate is supposed to be doing.
I know that because Akpabio has not presented a legislative agenda. He has not read the constitution either. Part of the evidence for this—beyond his bumbling incompetence and needless controversies—is the unresolved matter of asset declaration by public officers.
The constitution empowers the Code of Conduct Bureau to receive these declarations, examine and retain them, and also make them available to interested Nigerians. The unresolved issue is that the National Assembly is supposed to provide guidelines for this process.
For 26 years, legislators, particularly Akpabio and Speaker Abbas, who last week boasted about their endorsement of President Tinubu, have not found the legislative or patriotic will to carry out this straightforward constitutional duty, which is clearly stated in the Third Schedule, among others.
On the contrary, it emerged, thank you, BudgIT—that the legislative body has continued to extort Nigerians, inserting over N6.93trn of personal and political excess into the 2025 budget.
BudgIT’s 18-page report says: “A total of 11,122 projects culminating in N6.93tn were inserted in the 2025 budget by the National Assembly…The additional 3.18tn was added to the capital supplementation (see Appendix II), which makes up N9.11tn in capital projects. 238 of the projects worth N2.29tn are in the range of values greater than N5bn in value. We also noticed that 984 projects worth N1.71tn, and 1,119 projects within the range of N500m-N1bn, worth N641.38bn were inserted into the budget.”
Think about that: 11,122 projects. Nearly N7trn.
The House of Representatives had by the end of last week said nothing about the report, perhaps neither reading nor caring about it.
The Senate pretended to care, spokesperson Yemi Adaramodu, immediately diving into witchcraft mode.
The bill “passed based on the exact amount presented,” he said, completely ignoring the events between December 18, 2024 and February 28, 2025. “The dark angels of falsehood and public discord are only interested in stirring disaffection against the National Assembly.”
In saner climes, public-minded citizens would be calling on the authorities to probe this ruthless legislative collapse, which is why I previously diagnosed Nigeria as being with fewer than two arms of government.
But to whom are such Nigerians to appeal: Tinubu, burdened with ethical baggage that would cripple the Lagos lagoon; Akpabio, whose track record is so revolting he should be reading about governance behind bars; EFCC chairman Pastor Ola Olukoyede, who can neither find the strength to bring charges against Akpabio nor to resign; or ICPC chairman Musa Aliyu, who would rather protect Nigeria’s most corrupt than serve the nation?
Sadly, if we produce legislators who cannot see beyond narrow political and personal interests, Nigeria is headed for violent conflict, if not division. I have complained repeatedly here about the poor quality of the Nigerian federal legislature, with the leadership of the 10th National Assembly clearly the poorest since 1999. Last week’s events, in which they abandoned patriotic legislative oversight for public blackmail, confirms the point.
This is a legislature that is inaccessible to the public the way legislatures are elsewhere. A legislature with no public record: the Senate’s 74 Committees idle, as are the 134 Committees of the House. A legislature with no functional joint committees.
This, then, is the body of men and women which wants to polish and deodorize APC’s stunning betrayal not only of its own mandate and the party Manifesto that I identified as the APC mess as far back as 2017, and in 2020, called a ‘Historic Swindle.’
If anything has changed, it is that Nigeria’s ruling party has come out of the shadows, metamorphosing from a political party into a kingship, featuring palace hands with bloody hands such as Akpabio, whose ambition is to flog everyone into voting for them.
They have given us a place in time where people of integrity or expertise have no place. The more opaque and more ruthless your journey is, and the more related you are by blood to the Oba, the greater you are.
Except that the praises that are poured upon the Oba by his worshippers ignore the sufferings of Nigerians outside the gates. Hunger continues to rampage and to broaden the circle of its victims. People cannot pay their rent, or for education, or for medical care.
Insecurity continues to grow for those who are outside the circle of family and friends. Nigerians who can flee continue to flee the country while murderous Fulanis move in, exacting their toll unchecked.
Left, then, are Nigerians who are desperate and will grow more desperate. These are the people, including an army of disaffected youth, who will now face heavy advertising, for a historically unpopular figure, by overfed symbols of the rot.
As president, Tinubu has not been afraid to make some key decisions, and I commend him for that. But he has been even less afraid to make atrocious decisions, especially in favour of himself and his inner circle. He does not know what it means to lead by example.
This is the man they are positioning for sainthood. In 2027, will INEC repeat for Tinubu the scandalous BVAS and IReV magic of 2023?
And now that the legislature has fully morphed into the cheerleading office of Aso Rock, will the judiciary, the police and the security agencies join them to turn Nigeria into an Obaship?
By Sonala Olumhense
