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Gaza Or Jerusalem: Where Should Nigerians Be Found? [OPINION]

Published

2 years ago

October 16, 2023

By Lasisi Olagunju

If history were a child, the Yoruba would insist on calling it an Abiku. History keeps climbing the chimney and, in Wole Soyinka’s voice, yelling at us: “I am Abiku, calling for the first/ And the repeated time.” And with J.P. Clark’s opening glee, his entrance chant, history revels in “coming and going these several seasons.” Hundreds of years before Christ, a rampaging General called Alexander the Great from Macedonia staged what history recorded as the Siege of Gaza. Second century Greek historian and military commander, Arrian of Nicomedia, wrote on the last days of the siege. He also gave a gripping account of the massacre which followed the siege: “Their land now in the hands of the enemy, the Gazanians stood together and fought; so that they were all slain fighting there as each man had been stationed. Alexander sold their wives and children into slavery…” That mass murder happened in October 332 BC. This year, another trouble started in Gaza on October 7. Fifty-years ago, on October 6, 1973, Israel suffered a surprise attack launched simultaneously by Egypt and Syria. Those two Arab countries said they wanted to correct the ‘error’ of the six-day war of June 1967 in which they lost land and honour and prestige to small Israel. In 1967, Syria lost the Golan Heights to Israel; Egypt lost the Sinai Peninsula to Israel; the Palestinian people lost the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. It was those losses that provoked the 1973 war. And who won in 1973? History says both sides claimed victory but the real victor is the power occupying the occupied territories today.

On 7 October, 2023, Palestinian militant group, Hamas, launched a surprise, condemnable assault on southern Israel. Hundreds of innocent Israelis were killed. Israel has been fighting back with bombs and bullets. The entire Gaza is under a total siege. Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Gallant, days ago told anyone who cared to listen that the strip would receive “no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel.” Suffering that measure are 2.2million souls who live there. Condemnable. And, in that cold announcement is a deja vu. At a postmortem of the six-day war of 1967, the then Prime Minister of Israel, Levi Eshkol, reportedly told his ministers his solution to the Arab problem in Gaza: “Perhaps if we don’t give them enough water they won’t have a choice…We’ll deprive Gaza of water, and the Arabs will leave.” This past weekend, Israel announced that it was about to begin a ground operation in Gaza to hunt down Hamas. It then ordered over one million Palestinian civilians living in northern Gaza to leave the place within 24 hours. The old people who live in today’s Gaza are refugees uprooted from the area that became Israel in 1948. The young ones there are their descendants. Both generations are about to be refugees again.

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That corridor called Gaza is a jinxed strip. The International Dictionary of Historic Places puts its date of first habitation as the 15th century BCE. The introductory paragraph of an 11 October, 2023 report by Reuters news agency tells the city’s grim history: “Gaza is a coastal strip of land that lay on ancient trading and marine routes along the Mediterranean shore. Held by the Ottoman Empire until 1917, it passed from British to Egyptian to Israeli military rule over the last century and is now a fenced-in enclave inhabited by over two million Palestinians.” The unjust fencing was done by Israel in 1994 for security and economic reasons. The barrier notwithstanding, the Gaza-Israeli border has continued to be a thunderclap headache to Israel because of extremist reactions to its ‘overlordship’ from the other side.

This 2023 war is not the first and won’t be the last. But then, you want to ask why this war and all the others before it? At the centre of it all is land, the breath that comes with it and the duties attached to its protection. The Jews believe they were promised and gifted the land called Israel by the ‘God of Israel’ and it is their sacred duty to keep it. Palestinians call the land Palestine and they claim it as a bequest to them from the God of their ancestors. They hold that the land, particularly Jerusalem, hosts holy sites and buildings entrusted to their care by God. Both sides won’t surrender it; they won’t betray their ancestors; they won’t sin against God. That is my summary of the problem and why it is a war that may last till (or lead to) the end of the world.

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While these historical racial rivals fight over their inheritance, should black Africa be divided between the warring two? Ghana and Kenya are officially with Israel; South Africa is with Palestine; Nigeria says it is neutral although its citizens are badly divided over the war. But the two fighting forces have zero respect for black people no matter how pious and religious we think we are. There are Afro-Palestinian people in Jerusalem. They suffer everything black South Africans suffered in apartheid South Africa. In a 2014 report, The Times of Israel reported that in spite of the strong identification of Afro-Palestinians with Palestine “there is nonetheless a degree of racial discrimination against them by the broader Arab population.” Also, writer and journalist, Charmaine Seitz, in a 2002 article published in Jerusalem Quarterly, said “some Palestinians still refer to those with dark skin as ‘abeed,’ literally translated as ‘slaves.’” Seitz was appalled that “racial slurs against blacks are oddly frequent in a society that has experienced its own share of prejudice and discrimination at home and abroad.” The discrimination is not from the Arab side alone. Israelis also loathe blacks mainly for the colour of their skin. A March 2018 report by Al Jazeera on the attitude of the Israeli state and its religious authorities to blacks comes to mind here. The title of that report is: “Black lives do not matter in Israel.” The author is not an Arab, not a Muslim. His name is David Sheen, a journalist from Canada but reporting from Israel and Palestine.

Twenty-three years ago, ‘mysterious’ musician, Lagbaja (Bisade Ologunde), told us to smile and laugh and be merry no matter what we were going through. That was at the beginning of this democracy. His song: ‘No Matter Condition, F’ẹyín ẹ’. I am not sure he would obey himself today. What has happened to Nigeria and its people is much more than what hit the Yoruba Akalamagbo and took laughter from its mouth. A newspaper screamed on Wednesday last week: ‘Naira plunges to $1,050; job losses, factory shutdown loom.’ This is October, not many people in this country are sure of what December will do to their jobs. However, despite the existential challenges ravaging Nigeria, I find it curious that what takes our time is much more than the post-election lightning striking the skies of Lagos and Yola. We’ve allowed into our discourse matters that should not concern us beyond what we feel as members of the human community. The war in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine is one of them. We are involved like the old man who carries a stranger’s load on his head and kicks his own down the hill.

I told a senior colleague mid last week that the war between Palestine and Israel would become a Nigerian war. I told him that I prayed my reading would be wrong. I also told him that there had been relative calm so far in Nigeria because the casualty figures on both sides appeared to be gruesomely equal. I said the moment one side overtook the other and the news was out, we should expect terrible reactions here. One week into the war, the omens here are not good at all. Some Muslim groups held a rally in Ibadan on Friday in solidarity with Palestinians. They called the Arabs their brothers. RCCG’s Pastor Enoch Adeboye also last week sent a solidarity message to the State of Israel: “Hello my beloved brothers in Israel, I want you to know that we are praying for you, that all members of the Redeemed Christian Church of God all over the world are standing by you at this critical moment. The Almighty God, the Holy one of Israel, will give you absolute victory and give you permanent peace from now on in the mighty name of Jesus.”

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Ninety-eight percent of Israel won’t say Amen to the pastor’s prayers. They are not followers of Jesus Christ. The State of Israel which Nigerian pastors pray for has a population that includes Arab Muslims. The ‘Israel’ of today is not exactly the ‘Israel’ of the Bible. It is not just for cosmetic reasons that citizens of today’s Israel call themselves ‘Israelis’, not ‘Israelites’ that you find in the New Testament. Now, I go for available statistics. Real time data website, Wordometer, says the population of Israel, as of yesterday afternoon (15 October, 2023), is 9,214,951. Out of that figure, Jewish Virtual Library says the total Jewish population is 7,181,000 (73.3%). Jews say they practise Judaism although “roughly half (of them) describe themselves as secular and one-in-five does not believe in God” (Pew Research Centre; May, 2015). The State of Israel has 2,065,000 Arab people (21.1% of the population) out of which 1,728,000 are Muslims. This means that even among Arabs, there are Christians. The total number of Christians in Israel is just 184,400 (sbout two percent of the country’s population). The remainder of the people of that country are classified as ‘others’ and they include those “who identify themselves as Jewish but do not satisfy the Orthodox Jewish definition of ‘Jewish’”. Across the border in the State of Palestine, there are Palestinian Christians who suffer what Palestinian Muslims suffer from Israel. If Nigerian pastors would pray for their Christian brethren, they should include those in Palestine who are victims of attacks from extremist groups like Hamas in addition to restrictions and abuse from Israel. If Nigerian Muslims would rally for their brothers, they should not forget Arab Muslims in Israel who are exposed, like the Jews, to death from Hamas’ missiles.

As humans, we can pray for the innocent on both sides of this war. People who deserved to live are dead or dying. Many more will die today and tomorrow. Suffering and misery will continue to rule the streets until common sense forces a ceasefire. Both sides are grossly, grisly afflicted – that is what media reports tell us. “At local supermarkets, the shelves have become empty of some items, such as bread, batteries, milk, and eggs. With instructions telling people to have their safe rooms stocked for three days, people have grabbed what they can. Many workers do not come to work. A city usually full of tour groups has none. Many flights are canceled. People who had come on holiday or to see relatives have to scramble to find flights out, often with connections through countries they did not intend.” That was how Israel’s major newspaper, The Jerusalem Post, described the situation at the country’s capital last Tuesday. And it was just three days into the Israeli-Palestinian war. It is more than a week today; things are worse and may still get worse. On the Palestinian side, life is grimmer. Last Wednesday, Al Jazeera published a journalist’s personal experience of the war: “As I write this, I no longer believe we will get out of this alive. I woke from my sporadic sleep to the sound of the bombardment that has continued nonstop for the past four nights. Each day, we wake up in a different house. But each day the sounds and smells we wake to are the same…Early this morning, a blast blew in the windows, and I shielded my baby with my body and realised: No place is safe.”

Life is nasty and brutish for those gasping for life in Gaza without water and food – no thanks to Israel’s blockade. We should empathize with them and with victims of Hamas’ atrocious actions inside Israel. Our government has done very well by staying neutral and calling for peace. We should join the government in demanding an end to hostilities. We should abstain from justifying the evil of one side while excusing the other. The irony is that the supposed beneficiaries of our partisanship have near zero regard for us as members of the human community. The darker the skin, the more monkey the black person is to the Arabs and the Jews. If you’ve ever seen how villagers crack palm nuts, you would understand why the Yoruba say neither of the two stones involved in the cracking business is a friend of the nut. So, why are we taking sides? There are rallies across the world for peace and for a stop to attacks on the innocent, including women and children who have no share in this blame. That is where we should be found.

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[OPINION] Jan 1 Resolutions: Why I Write What I Write

Published

10 hours ago

January 4, 2026

Editor

By Festus Adedayo

As I write this, I am listening to a line of the song of my favourite Jamaican reggae music superstar, Peter Tosh. It is a 1979 track entitled Jah Seh No, in his Mystic Man album. When life becomes too convoluted for me to comprehend, when it seems I am running mad, I run into Tosh’s embrace. But, running to Tosh for an embrace is problematic. Tosh himself was like a madman. He was unconventional, an iconoclast who didn’t see life from the prism of the living. A devout adherent of the Rastafari faith, he was highly spiritual, was a poet, philosopher and a staunch defender of African rights. At some point, life broke Tosh’s will, long before his assassination on September 11, 1987, aged 42, in Kingston, Jamaica. It would appear that his musical preachment made little impact. He was repeatedly assaulted by Jamaican police and once had his skull cracked by them. The charge was his illiberal smoking of marijuana. So, in this track, Tosh bore his frustration with orthodoxy and the system thus: “Must Rastas bear this cross alone and all the heathens go free? Must Rastas live in misery and heathens in luxury? Must righteous live in pain and always put to shame? Must they be found guilty and always get the blame?

Tosh’s Jamaica of 1979 bears similarities with today’s Nigeria. Jamaica wore, like an apron, significant economic instability. This led to intense poverty and inequality driven by global economic shocks, domestic policy choices, capital flight, and political violence. The aftermath was massive hopelessness.

The attendant hopelessness in Jamaica fired the muse of reggae musicians. They saw naked poverty as catalysts for their songs. For instance, in 1976, Maxwell Smith, known professionally as Max Romeo & The Upsetters Band, sang in Uptown Babies Don’t Cry, about a little lad hawking Kisko, a popular brand of ice pops, on Kingston streets and shouting “Kisko pops! Kisko pops!”. He also sang about another lad who, as Star newspaper vendor, shouted, “Star News, read the news!”. They were embroiled in existential survival, said Romeo, and “help(ing) mummy pay the fee, for little junior to go to school.” For Tosh, in his Get Up, Stand Up, Jamaicans must stand up for their rights while Bob, apparently frustrated by the system, in Time Will Tell, sang confidently that ”Jah would never give the power to a baldhead to come crucify the dread.”

But the Jamaican governmental and political leadership, epitomised by Edward Seaga and Michael Manley, kept on taking advantage of the people’s hopelessness. Nigeria of today is yesterday’s Jamaican mirror on the wall. The hopelessness in the land has the capacity to break the most impregnable will. Everything seems to be upside down. Seaga and Manley are replicated in Bola Tinubu and Abubakar Atiku. Or Peter Obi and other scavengers for power.

Everything is shrouded in a fog. Hope of retrieval of country from the jaws of political carnivores recedes by the day. This year, prelude to election year, will even be worse. Foes will stab friends and friends will stab foes, not in the back, but in their very before. War has begun, says So-kple-So. That line reminds me of Ghanaian Akan poet, Kojo Senanu’s poem, “My Song Burst” in the A Selection of African Poetry, authored by him and Theo Vincent, which recited that Akan war song.

Physical or psychological repression is writ large. Impunity reigns like a malevolent incubus. Those are actually not the ailment. The disease is the Nigerian people. The way Nigerians’ minds have become warped, significantly captured and compartmentalized into a binary, is mind-boggling. Never have Nigerians’ minds operated in a gross profile as this. Tribe, religion, and political parties determine where everyone stands. No one sees rot and maggots but opportunities. Everyone is running a rat race to take a bite of Nigeria’s carrion. Our sense of judgment has been significantly recalibrated. When I read comments by some otherwise knowledgeable and brilliant people on visible rots in the polity, I feel I am falling into depression. Yet, a part of me warns not to take Nigeria seriously. If you run mad and then die, Nigerians would piss on your graveside.

Many times, I have toyed with the option of abandoning this thankless ritual of column-writing which I began in 1998. It is a killing ritual for which, not only don’t you get paid but you are insulted for daring to have a voice. Maybe I could find sanity in silence and abandonment of my voice? After all, Reno Omokri and Daniel Bwala have found redefinition in becoming the biblical Lot’s wife. But my mind tells me I would face hell on earth and would even not rest in peace. But the truth is, where I stand has potentials of running me mad. Permit me to be immodest, those who know me know I have an ecumenical spirit that cannot hurt a fly. But when I sit behind my laptop, I am like a possessed Yoruba deity of smallpox called Sonpona. Chaos, otherwise known as upside-down, which Fela said has its meaning too, is meaningless to me. Everywhere I turn, I see chaos and my head spins, threatening to explode. Even when I cannot totally extricate myself from the rot in the land, I am grieved like a pallbearer. Yet, another part of me tells me that order and chaos are Siamese, built into a profile by the Omnipotent.

As 2025 spun into oblivion, I stood to make a New Year resolution. But before I did this, I checked the literature of resolutions. It offers no comfort. Over a century ago, specifically on January 1, 1887, Rudyard Kipling, English journalist and novelist, attempted to drill into the philosophy of resolutions. In a timeless poem which explored the human desire to make New Year resolutions and the failure that attends it, he gave a tribe of New Year resolution makers a short-lived hope. He did this in a poem he entitled Little-Known Poem on New Year’s Resolutions. Billions of people in the world make resolutions on New Year’s Day. But, said Kipling, there are trials and tribulations in resolutions. In seven short stanzas, Kipling took readers on a journey. He begins by listing vices he wants to give up. They hung on him like an apparition. Chief among the vices were alcohol, gambling, flirting, and smoking. But in each of the stanzas, as he proposes a resolution, he proposes contrary sentences that nullify the resolutions and even justifying their reversals.

Matthew Wills, in his Why New Years Falls on January 1st: Why do we celebrate the beginning of the New Year on the first of January?, took the world on a journey on the frivolities of January 1st. Julius Caesar, he said, is why. The eponymous Julian calendar, said Matthew, began in Mensis Ianuarius (or Januarius) 45B.C. The month of January, he further reminded us, is named after the Roman god called Janus. Janus is a god who had two faces. While one faces the future, the other faces the past. Janus was however perceived, according to Wills, as “the god of beginnings, endings, and transitions, or, more prosaically, doors and passageways.”

Among the Yoruba, just like Jews’, the agricultural season marks the beginning of the year. For them, the newness of a year is defined by their philosophy of time, which they also approximated in the saying, the next season is here so, don’t eat your yam seedling, «Àmódún ò jìnnà, má jẹ isu èèbù rẹ». Season and time, to the Yoruba, are expressed in an embodiment of words like àkόkὸ (time around), ìgbà (season) and àsìkò (specific season) which they most times deploy interchangeably. The people also have sayings which speak to their conception of time. For instance, late professor of philosophy and my teacher at the University of Lagos, Sophie Oluwole, in one of her works, “The Labyrinth Conception of Time as Basis of Yoruba View of Development” published in Studies in Intercultural Philosophy (1997), cited Yoruba saying to illustrate this. “Tí wón bá ńpa òní, kí òla tèlé won kí ó lo wò bí won o ti sin ín (when today is being killed, tomorrow’s attendance at the murder scene is necessary so that it could see where the corpse of today is buried and for it to know how it too would be interred). The two other Yoruba sayings Oluwole cited to illustrate time and season are, one: “ogbón odún ni, wèrè èèmí ni” (this year’s wisdom is next year’s folly) and “Ìgbà ò lo bí òréré, ayé ò lo bí òpá ìbon” (a life span cannot exist ad infinitum; it is not vertical, and is unlike the straightness of the barrel of a gun).

These were all I reflected upon as I proposed to make a 2026 Resolution. The self-imposed road of a columnist I tread is a lonely, hard road strewn with briers and thorns. I remember the sermon of another Jamaican reggae great, Jimmy Cliff. It is a hard road to travel and a rough road to walk, he counseled. Many times, you are lonely, dejected and rejected on this road. You open your mouth to speak but wordless words ooze therefrom. Just as Tosh lamented in his “Must Rastas bear this cross alone and all the heathens go free?” volunteering anti-establishment opinion is like carrying a cross. Many times, I am inundated by family and friends to turn apostate of my belief. They fear death or state castration. Can’t the world see? Don’t they see the pains, grits and uncertainty on this road? Don’t they know that there is lushness, flourish and plenty on the other side? If I neglected these for a carapace-hard travel, I thought I would be hailed. No. Why is one who chose this lonely road the demon? And those who sup in the bowl of destruction heroes? Why? No response. Only echo of my own silent voice.

In this dejection, Audre Geraldine Lorde came to my rescue. Lorde was an American professor, philosopher, feminist, poet and rights activist. She was also a self-described Black lesbian. Lorde got romantically involved with Mildred Thompson, American sculptor, painter and lesbian she met in Nigeria during FESTAC 77. In a paper she delivered at the Modern Language Association›s “Lesbian and Literature Panel,” Chicago, Illinois, December 28, 1977 with the title, The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, Lorde gave insight into the pains she encountered on account of her beliefs: “I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.”

It could also mean pain or death, but she said, “learning to put fear into a perspective gave me great strength” and that “I was going to die, if not sooner, then later, whether or not I had ever spoken.” Gradually, said Lorde, “I began to recognize a source of power within myself that comes from the knowledge that while it is most desirable not to be afraid, my silences had not protected me.” She died of liver cancer in 1995.

Yes, this is a rough, lonely road. It could be excruciating when you see friends, especially ones in government, desert you because they don’t want to associate with you. You walk alone like a deranged alchemist. Some even ask why, with your endowment and ascription, you live comparatively like a pauper. Your views are criminalized. Where you stand is not popular. But both madman Peter Tosh and lesbian Audre Geraldine Lorde give the will to trudge on in the New Year, regardless. Lorde was loud in my head with her admonition. After her initial apprehension of a mastectomy resulting from a breast cancer, she said: “I was going to die, sooner or later… My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you…. What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear.”

There and then, I made a bold vow, a New Year resolution: I will continue to speak truth to power. Regardless.

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What I Saw After A Lady Undressed Herself — Pastor Adeboye

Published

11 hours ago

January 4, 2026

Editor

General Overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), Pastor Enoch Adeboye, has recounted a remarkable experience in which he said a woman was miraculously healed after prayers.

Adeboye shared the testimony while speaking at the RCCG annual gathering, describing the incident as a clear demonstration of divine intervention and the power of prayer.

According to the cleric, the incident occurred during a visit to a city where he had checked into an undisclosed hotel.

He said the lady approached him, greeted him and insisted on following him to his hotel room despite his objections.

“I told her, ‘Please don’t put me into trouble, I can pray for you here,’ but she insisted on following me,” Adeboye recounted.

He said that upon getting to the hotel room, the woman revealed the condition that prompted her persistence.

“When she pulled her dress up, what I saw shocked me. Her body was covered with scars,” he said.

Adeboye explained that he immediately began to pray for the woman, adding that he did not mind being loud during the prayers.

“I began to pray for her, and before I knew it, all the scars were gone,” he said.

The RCCG leader described the experience as a powerful testimony of faith, stressing that it reinforced his belief in prayer as a tool for healing and transformation.

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Missing N128bn: SERAP Demands Probe Into Power Ministry, NBET Expenditures

Published

12 hours ago

January 4, 2026

Editor

The Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has urged President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to immediately order an investigation into allegations that more than N128 billion in public funds is missing or has been diverted from the Federal Ministry of Power and the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc. (NBET), Abuja.

The allegations are contained in the latest annual report of the Auditor-General of the Federation, published on September 9, 2025, which highlighted multiple cases of financial irregularities, undocumented payments, ents and suspected diversion of public funds across both institutions.

In a letter dated January 3, 2026, and signed by SERAP’s Deputy Director, Kolawole Oluwadare, the organisation called on President Tinubu to direct the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, SAN, alongside relevant anti-corruption agencies, to promptly probe the findings and ensure accountability.

SERAP stressed that any individual found culpable should be prosecuted where sufficient admissible evidence exists, while all missing or diverted funds should be fully recovered and paid back into the national treasury.

The group further urged the president to deploy any recovered funds to address the deficit in the 2026 budget and help ease Nigeria’s growing debt burden.

According to SERAP, Nigerians continue to bear the consequences of entrenched corruption in the power sector, which has contributed to persistent electricity shortages, frequent transmission line failures and unreliable power supply nationwide.

The organisation argued that addressing corruption in the sector would significantly improve access to regular and uninterrupted electricity.

The civil society group described the allegations as a grave breach of public trust and a violation of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), Nigeria’s anti-corruption laws and international obligations, including the United Nations Convention against Corruption.

Detailing the audit findings, SERAP noted that the Ministry of Power failed to account for over N4.4 billion transferred to the Mambilla, Zungeru and Kashimbilla project accounts, with no evidence provided on how the funds were utilised.

The Auditor-General expressed fears that the money may have been diverted and recommended its recovery.

The report also revealed that the ministry paid over N95 billion to contractors for various projects without documentation or proof that the projects existed or were executed.

Additionally, more than N33 million was reportedly spent on foreign travels for the minister and aides to attend international events in Abu Dhabi and Dubai without required approvals from the Secretary to the Government of the Federation or the Head of Civil Service.

Further concerns were raised over unaccounted expenditures, including over N230 million on the GIGMIS platform and more than N282 million paid as non-personal advances to staff beyond statutory limits, all without adequate documentation.

At NBET, the Auditor-General uncovered multiple cases of irregular contract awards and payments. These include over N427 million in contracts awarded without evidence of procurement advertisements, more than N7.6 billion transferred into purported sub-accounts of unnamed beneficiaries, and over N9.3 billion paid to Egbin Power Plc without documents to authenticate the transactions.

The audit also cited payments exceeding N8 billion made without proper record-keeping, over N420 million paid to ineligible consultants without evidence of services rendered, and more than N1.1 billion spent as extra-budgetary expenditure without approval from the Minister of Finance or the National Assembly.

Other questionable expenditures highlighted include payments for vehicles without due process, unapproved legal fees, undocumented staff welfare packages, and consultancy services not captured in approved budgets.

SERAP warned that if decisive action is not taken within seven days of the receipt or publication of its letter, the organisation would consider legal steps to compel the government to act in the public interest.

Citing constitutional provisions, SERAP reminded President Tinubu that Section 15(5) of the Constitution mandates the abolition of corrupt practices, while Section 16 obliges the government to ensure that the nation’s resources are managed to promote the welfare and happiness of all citizens.