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OPINION: Abulu, The Prophetic Madman, At Akure Summit

Published

2 months ago

November 2, 2025

By Festus Adedayo

I have read enough works on the phenomenon of sycophancy in politics to know that it is a democratic curse. Whenever I reflect on its curse on development, my mind hovers over a character called Abulu in Akure, Ondo State-born Chigozie Obioma’s The Fishermen (2015). A fictional book that got the shortlist of The Booker Prize, in it, four well-brought-up kids of same parents, in the city of Akure, where the tragic plot was set, capitalize on a parental lacuna of their father’s absence to manifest traits of truancy and tantrums of youth.

On one of those fishing expeditions, the truant children encounter Abulu, a madman gifted with prescient ability of prophetic pronouncements. All of a sudden, curses/prophecy waft off Abulu’s mouth. It was to Ikena, one of the brothers. Incidentally, for the ostensible reason of averting Abulu curse of its Omo awùsá – walnut pod-like splinter, last week, Southwest Nigerian leaders met for two days in Abulu’s Akure. On the table was a single agenda: to pursue regional integration and foster prosperity across the six states that make up Yorubaland. Ever since the passage of Obafemi Awolowo in 1987, a man the tribe vested with all the attributes of an ancestor, the tribe has orbited aimlessly without a rudder.

Awolowo himself acknowledged the shortcomings of his people — they were a sophisticated but self-warring tribe who needed an anchor. Like an Abulu curse, after Awo’s death, metaphorically, Yoruba returned to the centuries before him when inter-tribal wars like the Ijaiye, Ekitiparapo, Kiriji and allied wars were waged among themselves.

While unity was the overt reason for the Akure gathering, its integral but hidden essence was to garner support for the second term ambition of their son, Bola Ahmed Tinubu. The summiteers never met to pressure Tinubu for foods on the table of their people but to sing his panegyrics like a self-serving griot. Already, like the local magician of the 1970/80s Nigeria, their son has almost expended all his talismanic wiles, pulling claps-inducing stunts to sustain himself in power. Realizing that the Samia Suluhu Hassan of Tanzania stunt of banning political party leaders and jailing them to remain the numero-uno presidential candidate would spark off Armageddon in Nigeria, ours made a detour to Italian philosopher, Antonio Gramsci.

In his Prison Notes, Gramsci taught Tinubu the way to go. Gramsci’s main teaching is that, rather than the foolish coercion currently sparking hell in Tanzania, a leader could secretly maintain dominance of his people through subterfuge. Having arrested the hearts of governors without firing a single bullet, castrating political parties without any noticeable groan, getting a deranged drunk political ally to clear a political party path for him, and a pliable judge to render the dream of a viable opposition political party a mirage, the next shot to fire was to guard against an Olusegun Obasanjo political shame.

So, to Abulu’s Akure, the president’s appointees came. The unspoken intent of the summit was to clone an Awolowo cultic following for the president and probably recreate his mystique. Garlands and deodorizers hung in the sky. Speaker after speaker beatified what they called the Tinubu exploits of the last months. Even their host, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, in his moment of unprovoked sycophancy, pronounced that re-electing the president had become an executive order. Whatever that balderdash means. They all spoke of the need for Yoruba to speak with a unified voice.

If you ask me, that summit should have appropriately been themed Idíbèbèrè. If well articulated and postulated, the idíbèbèrè as a philosophy is sycophancy. Woven into a common adage, the Yoruba say, Omo eni kò ní í ṣe dí bèbèrè ká fi ilèkè sí dí omo elòmíràn. Literally, the saying means one’s child’s buttocks deserve the waist beads ahead of someone else’s, no matter how beautifully configured the other buttocks may be to securely hold the beads. As a philosophy, it does not brew dissent nor compromise.

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spoken extensively on what kills democracies. In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, these two Harvard University political scientists drilled deep down into how elected leaders gradually subvert democracies. But they obviously didn’t reckon with sycophancy as a cancer strain that kills democracy.

So, I remember an event which took place about 15 years ago. We were all inside a politician’s office that torrid afternoon. My host was a man who had made good in his chosen career and had enough bucks to splash on politics. As at that time, he was angling to govern Oyo State and desired my professional communication experience. And there I was.

I return to the tale of 15 years ago. Politicians of all shades and colour were in a semi-festive mood. The atmosphere borrowed a leaf from the ancient saying that, at the fall of the elephant, diverse types of knives surface to pay obeisance to a naked flesh. Upstairs, occupying virtually all the chairs in the room, I belonged to that crowd seated like a congested mass of humanity. But the theatrics of the politicians had me gasping for breath. One of them walked up to our host, the man who would be governor.

As he stood before him, he flashed him a smile which instantly worked like a talisman. “Your Excellency,” he began, in adoration of a man who was neither excellent nor possessed a capacity to excel in his newfound quest to become governor. Then, he helped him adjust his cap, patented after Yoruba’s recent ancestor, Obafemi Awolowo’s. And from nowhere, the politician dropped the innocuous bombshell.

“Do you know that the way you tilted your cap was the same way Baba Layinka used to wear his cap?”

Baba Layinka was the affectionate and affable name given Chief Awolowo. During the 1959 federal election rallies in Lagos, chants of “Awolowo, Baba Layinka, yio se b’otiwi!” meaning, “Awolowo, the father of Layinka, he will keep his word!” rent the air. The man who would be governor grinned from ear to ear like a cow headed for the abattoir. That day, I knew the deadliness of sycophancy and the danger it portends for democratic governance. Though I encountered sycophancy in my stints with politicians, that day in Molete, I encountered it in its rawest form. My earlier stint in government, which weaned me off the prudery of theories of Nigerian politics, showed me that Nigerian politicians derive unspeakable joy, excitement and satisfaction from praises and flattery.

The good thing about the Yoruba is that their espousal of that genuflection to tribe philosophy of idíbèbèrè does not stop them from telling themselves hard, harsh truth. So they say, upon emerging from a house where they hitherto locked themselves, a mutual smile of two brothers equals self-deception while a frown approximates exchange of hurtful truth. This is what will necessitate the submissions underleaf. To begin with, permit me to dwell on three leaders at the summit and their perceptions of the Yoruba current reality.

Baba Reuben Fasoranti began his speech with obeisance to two ecumenical spirits — Oduduwa, Yoruba’s progenitor and, in his words, “in the wisdom of our Sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, and in the hope of generations yet unborn.” He called on Yoruba to be blind to political parties but the ideals of the Yoruba nation. Bishop Ayo Ladigbolu told the summiteers the plain truth we have failed to appropriate since 1987 when Awolowo transited mortality for immortality. It is that, the race may never succeed in recreating another Awolowo.

Chief Bisi Akande’s was a departure from the two. Like a mail-boy, he literally bore a mail from his master and benefactor, the president. After boring the crowd with his prosaic “economy is being re-engineered through tax reform” bla-bla-bla, he proselytized on what he called “Quiet restructuring.” This was a man who, in a media interview on August 2020 signature of ‘see no evil do evil’ defence of the Muhammadu Buhari government, said he was not aware that APC wrote restructuring in its manifesto. Now when it is time to defend his master’s pot of soup, knowing that ‘restructuring’ is one electrifying byword that arrests the consciousness of an average southerner, it was time to appeal to base sentiments for votes.

Some hurtful realities need to be confronted. One is that — let us pardon the younger elements gathered for the summit — among the elders in Akure, who is/was an Awoist? Baba Fasoranti was and is; Femi Okurounmu was and is but Bisi Akande is a self-confessed NCNCer, otherwise known as demo in Yoruba First Republic politics. By his own account, he was brought into the UPN by Chief S.M. Afolabi. He still carries the gene of anti-progressivism in his blood. Secondly, since our president began his politics, where has anyone heard him mouth the name ‘Awolowo’ or pay him tribute? Tinubu’s lifelong ambition, like Olusegun Obasanjo’s, has always been for the Yoruba to erase the name ‘Awo’ from their lips and supplant it with theirs. They remind me of Awolowo’s account in his book about how S. L. Akintola had assured his wife, Faderera, at the coronation of Oba Sikiru Adetona on April 2, 1960, that in six months, she would never hear the name Awo in the western region. Didn’t Awo triumph over them?

As the summiteers prepared to leave Akure, did they hear the voice of Abulu? It may be hurtful but it is the truth: Unless the present government takes off its garment of excessive Yorubanization, either real or imagined, it is digging the Yoruba’s grave. This is more especially for those same “hope of generations yet unborn” whom Baba Fasoranti referenced.

Abulu’s curses may not stick on the Yoruba only if, after Tinubu’s exit from government, the race goes out of Nigeria into its mythic Oduduwa Republic. Otherwise, by 2031, the Yoruba will realize the essence of that ancient saying that, “ohun tí í tan ni egungun odun, omo Alagbaa nbo waf’ akara je’ko.” Broken into its chewable granular, the wisdom in the above Yoruba saying is that, during the Yoruba masquerade festive season, it is usually all sumptuous for children of the Chief Masquerade. However, off season, like everyone else, in contemporary argot, Alagbaa’s children would also “eat breakfast.”

When the Yoruba may have left Aso Rock in 2031, Tinubu stands the risk of becoming our own Aguiyi Ironsi and Odumegwu Ojukwu rolled into one. Recollect that the ostracism Igbo people suffer in the hands of the Nigerian state today is borne out of the Unification Decree Ironsi promulgated and Ojukwu’s preferencing of his people beyond a punishing Nigeria.

If that happens to the children of Oduduwa and Awolowo, by 2031, the rest of Nigeria would then exchange the Yoruba race the Igbo, on account of perceived Tinubu’s attempt to preference his Yoruba people against the rest of Nigeria. In reality though, that perceived preferencing by Tinubu is for his Lagos political acolytes who happen to be Yoruba. While Yoruba must put its house in order, it cannot discount association with other tribes. Right now, western Nigeria has nil federal presence, yet it has courted huge hatred from its ilk. Yoruba leaders can only move Yorubaland forward and ensure the success of Tinubu, not by the kind of rank sycophancy exhibited at that Akure summit, but by telling him the acrid truth that may foul up his tongue.

I can only call the attention of Mr. President to the saying of his people. When danger approaches you facewards, Yoruba say, shoot your shot; when it turns its backside, aim your shot; but when you find yourself all alone, reconsider your stand. Tinubu can still be the greatest president of Nigeria ever if he avoids the Pharisees and Sadducees of Yorubaland. They are the parasitic sycophants who shout, as the people of Tyre and Sidon shouted to King Herod Agrippa I, “This is the voice of a god, and not of a man!” But what happened to Agrippa?

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

Published

1 hour 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

3 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

4 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.