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OPINION: Trump And The Ruin Of Kurunmi

Published

4 months ago

January 12, 2026

By Lasisi Olagunju

To the north of Ibadan, on the way to Iseyin, is a village perpetually wearing mournful, forlorn looks. You must have some interest in Yoruba history to know that this community, at the height of its glory, was Ibadan’s arch-rival in might and riches. It is today called Orile Ijaiye but some 200 years ago, it was simply Ijaiye; it was also known as Ijaiye Kurunmi. Kurunmi was its leader who, in about 1830, with others, literally stole the town, complete with compounds, market and palace, from its original Egba Gbagura owners.

Aare Ona Kakanfo Kurunmi was a man of great conviction and of contradiction. He was “haughty, despotic, ambitious and cruel” but he was also “firm, just and reasonable on most occasions.” That was the judgment of Missionary R. H. Stone who was in Kurunmi’s Ijaiye and observed him and his ways for six years, starting from 1859. The church man wrote all the above in his ‘In Africa’s Forest and Jungle, or Six Years among the Yorubans’ published in 1900.

Reverend Henry Townsend needs no introduction. He published the first newspaper in Nigeria, ‘Iwe Irohin’, in 1859. Townsend met Aare Kurunmi in 1852 and wrote that the strongman professed to be “a great enemy to thieves and kidnapping” but he was also compelling trade caravans “by armed force to visit Ijaiye” so that he could collect from them trade tax (toll) of 200 cowries per load.

Like all vain leaders who dance to adulatory beats of their followers and enjoy being worshipped, Stone noted that Kurunmi “would brook no opposition, although he would sometimes go through the formality of pretending to consult twenty-four elders.”

Historians said the Aare’s subjects held him “in great awe.” They said he was a leader who “dispensed justice in a summary fashion, sometimes even acting as executioner.” They also wrote that the character of his rule was resented even by his friends. Two missionaries were in Ijaiye in December 1854 with one of them noting that they visited the “bloodthirsty” Aare, who seemed to him a very different type of ruler from the “mild, aged and prudent Alake” at Abeokuta.

He was a man of immense wealth. R. L. Smith in 1962, quoting an author, describes the Aare’s compound as a “vast labyrinth covering 11acres and containing many storerooms filled with goods, as well as accommodation for the ruler’s 300 wives and 1,000 slaves; the head slave was himself master of 300 slaves. Visitors were received in a large enclosed space which was used for public trials and executions as well as audiences.”

Beyond this personal wealth, for 31 years, Kurunmi made his town and people a community of pride and prosperity.

Read R.S. Smith’s ‘Ijaiye, The Western Palatinate of the Yoruba’ (1962); Read Samuel Johnson’s ‘History of the Yorubas’ (1921). Smith reviewed texts on that era of recorded history and concluded that Ijaiye was a community of progress. He said Townsend in 1852 estimated the inhabitants at about 40,000 and praised the arrangement and level streets of the town. Townsend wrote that he was particularly impressed by the “spacious market place in the centre of the town… the best I have seen in Africa, not excluding Sierra Leone, and seems to be well supplied.” Smith said “the inhabitants were engaged in weaving cloth and above all in agriculture, Kurunmi being ‘a great farmer’ and expecting his subjects to follow suit.” Stone estimated the population at about 100,000. He too “was very impressed by the market” where, he wrote, “caravans from the interior met those from the coast.”

All the great things Kurunmi gave his town were wiped out in less than two years because Ijaiye had a leader who knew no restraint, who enjoyed hearing only his own voice, who was “haughty, despotic, ambitious and cruel.” Kurunmi grew to become disdainful of the law, norm and custom that gave him leadership. He mismanaged his success so badly that between 1861 and 1862, it was his lot to have his friends, allies and comrades destroy him, destroy his family and destroy his town. He paid the price all tyrants pay, ultimately.

Unfortunately, his town’s greenery died with him.

Marcel Dirsus says when the tyrant “is dead or simply out of office, chaos often follows.”

For most of last week, the world heard American president, Donald Trump, solemnly asserting that his country would ‘take’ Greenland and make it an addition to its prized possession. Greenland is not a no-man’s-land. An autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, it belongs, by law, to Denmark.
But Trump said sensationally in an interview that the law gives him no fetters, he would take whatever he wanted. That is a man in the mould of Phalaris, tyrant of Akragas in Sicily who died c. 554 BC. Tyrants ways in power blight their memory in death.

This is the age of tyrants, domestic and international. Nothing confirms that this world is in trouble more than last week’s Donald Trump interview with The New York Times. Two Saturday’s ago, Trump, like Saddam in Kuwait, invaded Venezuela and took its president as war booty. Yesterday, Trump is shown to have posted an image of himself online captioned ‘Acting President of Venezuela.’ Did he really do that? Audacious. His worst is yet to come.

In the interview with The New York Times, Trump refused to agree that what he did with Venezuela violated international law. “I don’t need international law,” he told his interviewers.

The man said the law was powerless before him. What followed that statement was even more alarming.

He was asked if there were any limits on his war powers on the world stage. His response: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind.”

The man who said the above holds the yam and the knife of the safety of the Earth; the nuclear buttons of the US are in his care, a punch away from his whim.

The whole of humanity should be alarmed, worried and sweating in unease. The unease is sharpened by the scale of what Trump controls – which he knows he controls, and the use of which is now determined by his temper and temperament.

This should lead you to ask how safe you are from this man? Think about this: In 1945, in Hiroshima and Nagazaki, one nuclear bomb’s death toll ran into tens of thousands. Potentially, today, experts say the toll, in large-scale conflicts, could be billions due to firestorms and nuclear famine. Check. It will take just one lone tyrant-leader of a nuclear power to wreak all that. In my opening story, we saw what imperial Kurunmi did to his own civilisation.

A state governor flashed Marcel Dirsus’s ‘How Tyrants Fall’ before me on Thursday. I bought the book on Friday in Ibadan. In the midst of the turmoil across the world, even here in Nigeria (Rivers State, especially), I found it coincidentally instructive that the very first words in the book’s Introduction is a quote from the last Shah of Iran, Mohamed Reza Pahlavi: “I don’t deny I’m lonely. Deeply so. A king, when he doesn’t have to account to anyone for what he says or does, is inevitably very much alone.” There is an English name for a king or leader who does what the Shah describes here. He is a tyrant.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: Saraki’s Persona In Bolaji’s Book

The Encyclopedia Britannica says the word ‘tyranny’, in the Greco-Roman world, is “an autocratic form of rule in which one individual exercised power without any legal restraint.” That definition fits what Trump says he has become. And when you have them in a democracy, how should you approach them? Carouse or cajole them?

“Dictators don’t withdraw. They don’t. They have to be thrown off, thrown out.” Former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, said this. She had many quotes of similar stricture for the madmen of his era. She said it when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands on 2 April 1982; she repeated it when Iraq invaded Kuwait on 2 August, 1990.

The Gulf War was triggered by Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. In a media interview on this matter, Thatcher declared that international resolutions alone do not stop tyrants. She said dictators like Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, must be stopped from marching into other peoples’ territory. After the defeat of Iraq, Thatcher said if the world had reacted with only strong words; if Saddam Hussein was not thrown out, “Saddam Hussein would still be in Kuwait and probably right down the Gulf and in charge of 60 percent of the world’s oil reserves if George Bush and Britain and other nations had not taken action and thrown the tyrant out.”

She believed that the world ran great risks in not cutting dictators to size. Fascist regimes, she said, were a threat to world peace and to people’s wellbeing.

The country called Iran is in turmoil.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said at the weekend that “vandals and rioters” were “ruining their own streets to please the president of another country”; American president, Donald Trump, who sees and says it, believes that what rules Iran is tyranny. He issued a warning to leaders of that country on Friday saying: “You’d better not start shooting because we’ll start shooting too.”

“You be thief, a no be thief” (Fela Anikulapo Kuti). Iran’s Supreme Leader, Khamenei, the same Friday replied Trump and said he was a tyrant destined to fall like his likes: “The US president who judges arrogantly about the whole world should know that tyrants and arrogant rulers of the world such as Pharaoh, Nimrod, Mohammad Reza (Pahlavi) and other such rulers saw their downfall when they were at the peak of their hubris. He too will fall,” Khamenei wrote on X.

In 2019, Rachel Elizabeth Whitlark quoted The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) as demanding “necessity, distinction (between civilian and military targets), and proportionality for any use of force.” Whitlark “urges caution” before legislating oversight of the sole presidential authority for launching a nuclear weapon. That was seven years ago. I am sure she would review her position after reading Trump last week. For, when the custodian of the world’s most lethal weapons of war declares that only he could restrain himself from using those weapons, the problem ceases to be rhetorical; it becomes existential.

How studded is the United States’ nuclear arsenal? Check the Federation of American Scientists’ ‘Status of World Nuclear Forces’. Of the roughly twelve thousand nuclear warheads in existence worldwide, the United States holds over five thousand (about two-fifths of all nuclear weapons on Earth). Check the Arms Control Association. In practical terms, the figures mean that a single human being, the American president, sits atop an arsenal capable, on its own, of extinguishing entire civilisations and altering our planet’s future.

Those who know would tell those who don’t that nuclear weapons are “civilisational endpoints.” They would warn that the weapons’ custody demands humility, restraint, and institutional brakes, not the confidence of a lone will. Yet, the man who controls the greatest of the numbers of death hinted last week that the world owed its peace to him and him alone. When an individual’s self-control, rather than institutional safeguards, becomes the final barrier between peace and catastrophe, humanity is in deep shit.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR:OPINION: Trump Must Finish What He Started

This era belongs to strongmen (I do not want to say tyrants). From Russia to China, to the US, to Africa, Cape to Cairo, to everywhere. The usual voices of courage are mute; the shrill are the maga who sing and speak in tongues. In Nigeria, the croaky prances uphill and down dale in deep prayer for despotism.

We never learn. Literature after literature, in politics and war studies, warn that enormous powers in the hands of one man is safe only when hemmed in by caution, by consultation, and by credible restraints. In this era, all around us, we see strongmen ignoring the law without consequences. We see personal will replacing systemic restraint; we see the erosion of deterrence.

The word ‘deterrence’ has its roots in Latin ‘deterrentem’; it is the present participle of ‘deterrere’, which means “to frighten from, discourage from.” In theories of law and military strategy, it describes discouraging actions through fear or threats. The concept of deterrence exists today as a reminder to all big men and small men and to all humanity that actions have costs; that leaders are fallible; that societal systems must watch over actions of leaders and that there are consequences for actions taken or not taken. Now, with a world president in Trump, the safety valves have been shortened to the size of personal assurance.

Tyrants are strong men too big to respect caution. Everywhere we turn, we see small and big strongmen acting God. We feel the world as it is being entrusted to the temperament of feeble gods rather than to the strong arms of institutions. With nuclear buttons in the charge of one man who is disdainful of the law, the true danger is no longer in the weapons; it is in the impulsive fingers that may press the buttons.

President Barack Obama was in Ghana in 2009. He famously told the Ghanaian parliament that “Africa doesn’t need strongmen; it needs strong institutions.” He repeated it in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on July 28, 2015 at an African Union event. Looking at his Trump, hearing him and seeing what the strong man does with the strong institutions of the United States and how he does it, I wonder what Obama would say of his America today.

“What is strong when institutions are weak?” Benedicte Bull of The University of Oslo asked in 2014. In her ‘Towards a Political Economy of Weak Institutions and Strong Elites in Central America’, Professor Bull argues that the answer to the question is: “elite networks and their command over, and competition for the control over four sets of resources: money, means of force, information, and ideas and ideologies, including religion.” It is her observation that in the anatomy of weak institutions, you find some that failed, some that are captured, some penetrated by the elite.

If you are a Nigerian, think of the small deities (the small gods) who dare both the law and their chi. Think of institutions that have thrown away their guardrails in the name of elite and political solidarity; think especially of the judiciary. Think of courtrooms where litigants emerge and both sides celebrate as victors. Then ask the hard question: why is the Nigerian judiciary so terminally unwell? Are judgments that perch shamelessly on the fence of justice proof that the courts have failed, that they have been captured, or that they have simply been penetrated?

Whatever you think, just know that tyrants make the law sing for them. They steal institutions. They dismantle structures, they bypass, or co-opt or seize independent democratic, legal, and financial institutions to consolidate power, to enrich themselves, and to eliminate opposition. They are strong men who know and show that they are strong.

Fortunately, like Kurunmi of Ijaiye, strong men are not invincible. If they were, the phrase, ‘Achilles heel’ would never have entered our lexicon.

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Court Orders SERAP To Pay DSS Operatives N100m For Defamation

Published

1 hour ago

May 5, 2026

Editor

The High Court of the Federal Capital Territory has ordered a non-governmental organization, the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project, SERAP, to pay N100 million as damaged to two operatives of the Department of the State Services, DSS, for unjustly defaming them in some publications.

The court also ordered SERAP to tender public apologies to the defamed officers,
Sarah John and Gabriel Ogundele, in two national newspapers, two television stations and its website.

Besides, the organization was also ordered to pay the two operatives N1 million as cost of litigation and 10 percent post-judgment interest annually on the judgment sum until it’s fully liquidated.

Justice Yusuf Halilu of the High Court of the Federal Capital Territory gave the order on Tuesday while delivering judgment in a N5.5 billion defamation suit instituted against SERAP by the DSS operatives.

The judge found SERAP liable for unjustly defaming the two DSS operatives with allegations that they unlawfully invaded its Abuja office, harassed and intimidated its staff, in September 2024.

In the offending publication on its website and Twitter handle, SERAP alleged that the two operatives unlawfully invaded and occupied its office with sinister motives.

The judge held that the publication was in bad taste especially from an organization established to promote transparency and accountability, as nothing in the publication was found to be truthful.

The DSS staff had listed SERAP as 1st defendant in the suit marked CV/4547/2024. SERAP’s Deputy Director, Kolawole Oluwadare, was listed as the 2nd defendant.

In the suit, the claimants – Sarah John and Gabriel Ogundele – accused the two defendants of making false claims that they invaded SERAP’s Abuja office on September 9, 2024..

Counsel to the DSS, Oluwagbemileke Samuel Kehinde, had while adopting his final address in the mater urged the judge to grant all the reliefs sought by his client in the interest of justice.

He admitted that although the names of the two claimants were not mentioned in the defamation materials, they had however established substantial circumstances that they are the ones referred to in the published defamation article by SERAP on its website.

The counsel submitted that all ingredients of defamation have been clearly established and the offending publication referred to the two officials of the secret police.

However, SERAP, through its counsel, Victoria Bassey from Tayo Oyetibo, SAN, law firm, asked the court to dismiss the suit on the ground that the two claimants did not establish that they were the ones referred to in the alleged defamation materials.

She said that SERAP used “DSS officials” in the alleged offending publication, adding that the two claimants must establish that they are the ones referred to before their case can succeed.

Similar arguments were canvassed by Oluwatosin Adefioye who stood for the second defendant, adding that there was no dispute in the September 9, 2024 operation of DSS in SERAP’s office.

He said that since SERAP in the publication did not name any particular person, the claimants must plead special circumstances that they were the ones referred to as the DSS officials.

Besides, he said that there is no organization by name Department of State Services in law, hence, DSS cannot claim being defamed adding that the only entity known to law is National Security Agency.

The claimants had in the suit stated that the alleged false claim by SERAP has negatively impacted on their reputation.

The DSS also stated, in the statement of claim, that, in line with the agency’s practice of engaging with officials of non-governmental organisations operating in the FCT to establish a relationship with their new leadership, it directed the two officials – John and Ogunleye – to visit SERAP’s office and invite them for a familiarization meeting.

The claimants added that in carrying out the directive, John and Ogunleye paid a friendly visit to SERAP’s office at 18 Bamako Street, Wuse Zone 1, Abuja on September 9 and met with one Ruth, who upon being informed about the purpose of the visit, claimed that none of SERAP’s management staff was in the country and advised that a formal letter of invitation be written by the DSS.

John and Ogundele, who claimed that their interactions with Ruth were recorded, said before they immediately exited SERAP’s office, Ruth promised to inform her organisation’s management about the visit and volunteered a phone number – 08160537202.

They said it was surprising that, shortly after their visit, SERAP posted on its X (Twitter) handle – @SERAPNigeria – that officers of the DSS are presently unlawfully occupying its office.

The claimant added, “On the same day, the defendants also published a statement on SERAP’s website, which was widely reported by several media outfits, falsely alleging that some officers from the DSS, described as “a tall, large, dark-skinned woman” and “a slim, dark skinned man,” invaded their Abuja office and interrogated the staff of the first defendant (SERAP).

John and Ogundele stated that “due to the false statements published by the defendants, the DSS has been ridiculed and criticised by international agencies such as the Amnesty International and prominent members of the Nigerian society, such as Femi Falana (SAN)”.

“Due to the false statements published by the defendants, members of the public and the international community formed the opinion that the Federal Government is using the DSS to harass the defendants.”

They added that the defendants’ statements caused harm to their reputation because the staff and management of the DSS have formed the opinion that the claimants did not follow orders and carried out an unsanctioned operation and are therefore, incompetent and unprofessional.

The claimants therefore prayed the court for the following reliefs: “An order directing the defendants to tender an apology to the claimants via the first defendant’s (SERAP’s) website, X (twitter) handle, two national daily newspapers (Punch and Vanguard) and two national news television stations (Arise Television and Channels Television) for falsely accusing the claimants of unlawfully invading the first defendant’s office and interrogating the first defendant’s staff.

“An order directing the defendants to pay the claimants the sum of N5 billion as damages for the libellous statements published about the claimants.

“Interest on the sum of N5b at the rate of 10 percent per annum from the date of judgment until the judgment sum is realised or liquidated.

“An order directing the defendants to pay the claimants the sum of N50 million as costs of this action.”

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[OPINION] Tinubu: Borrowing Is Leprosy

Published

6 hours ago

May 5, 2026

Editor

By Suyi Ayodele

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.” William Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 3)

Nigeria has shifted from incurring debt as an instrument of policy to embracing it as a condition of survival. It is a dangerous evolution—made worse when President Bola Ahmed Tinubu appears to regard debt not as leprosy, but as ornament.

Greek philosopher, Plutarch (before AD50-after 120), wrote a piece titled: “That We Ought Not to Borrow.” What the old Greek philosopher said in the piece, published in Vol. X of the Loeb Classical Library edition of the Moralia, 1936 (Pg. 315-339), shows that borrowing is worse than leprosy in all ramifications. Plutarch’s piece summarises the Greeks’ attitude to borrowing.

Incidentally, every arguement he posted in the material aligns with the African’s philosophy of a borrower ending up a broke person. Our elders, right from the beginning of time, say: Àì l’ówó l’ówó kìí jé ká ní owó l’ówó (being broke makes one to be more broke).

They say this because the broke man goes a-borrowing and ends up using the little he has to service his debts thus ending up without money. A man without money is a sad man. That confirms the age-long axiom of he who goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing.

President Tinubu, on Tuesday last week, at an engagement with all the movers and shakers of events from Plateau State, said to those critical about the rate of borrowing by his administration that “borrowing is not leprosy.” He added that whenever the occasion arose for him to borrow, he would not hesitate to do so.

Maybe we should allow Tinubu to speak: “If we have to borrow money, we will, because borrowing is not leprosy; we just have to work hard to be able to repay it.” To the President, going by these uttered words, what matters is the ability to pay. And to pay back the countless debts incurred by his administration, Nigeria and Nigerians must work hard.

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It is not what Tinubu said that worries me. My concern is the metaphor he deployed – “leprosy”. That is the worst of all contagious diseases. Anyone who contracts leprosy is usually isolated. Leprosaria, in ancient days, were built in the deep forest. This is why it is said that: A kìí kó ilé adétè sí ìgboro; inú igbó ni adétè ńgbé (no one builds the house of a leper in the city; lepers live in the forest).

The idea of the forest in this ancient saying itself depicts graphic metaphors of a pariah, isolation, and of an individual who lives with ultimate shame. So, when our President deployed that metaphor, its meaning goes beyond the theatrical message his audience thought they heard and clapped for. What Tinubu told his audience is that Nigeria had not borrowed to that level when it would become an isolated nation, a leprous entity that nobody would dare touch with a 10-feet pole! We may soon get there, anyway! Back to ancient Greek.

Ancient Greek philosophy never supports borrowing. Rather, it considers borrowing, which usually comes with heavy interest, as another form of servitude. The borrower, in the Greek mindset, is not just a slave to the lender; he is equally considered a weakling and one with the base of all moral values. Plato, Aristotle, and other ancient philosophers believed that a borrower, especially a reckless one, is an ‘unnatural and socially corrosive” individual. Any borrowing that imposes heavy interest on the borrower, they said, is ‘predatory.’ (See: “Lending and Borrowing in Ancient Athens,” by Paul Millett, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2022).

This is the summary of Plutarch’s work, where he argues that taking loans comes with its own degree of disgrace and leads to “a voluntary loss of freedom and a sign of folly.” A simple review of Plutarch’s essay says: “That We Ought Not to Borrow” (Greek: De vitando aere alieno) is a famous essay….that argues against debt, describing it as a form of slavery to lenders that causes stress and ruins financial freedom. Plutarch advises avoiding loans, whether rich or poor, arguing it is either unnecessary or impossible to repay.”

In an October 5, 2021, piece on this page with the title: “Buhari and the chronic debtor-wife of Osin”, I expressed worry at the rate at which the administration of General Muhammad Buhari was taking loans. I warned that Nigerians would be left in pain and sorrow at the end of the day. The introductory paragraph of the said article is worth repeating here:

“Permit me to call this Buhari regime Onígbèsè Aya Osin (The chronic debtor-wife of Osin). Osin is the Yoruba deity of royalty. According to the legend, Osin married a shameless woman who owed virtually everyone in the community. In our tradition, once a person’s behaviour is off the mark of our acceptable mores, norms and traditions, we give such a person a descriptive name. This wife’s reputation followed her everywhere she went. ‘Onigbese’ is the Yoruba word for chronic debtor; ‘Aya’ is wife. Her cognomen is an exercise in character portrayal. She is known as Onigbese Aya Osin, who buys pangolin without paying, and buys porcupine on credit. She sees the woman hawking a hedgehog; she runs after her empty-handed. She uses the money from antelope to pay for deer. Yet, she fries neither for her husband nor cooks for her concubine. Her first child is sold into slavery to service her debts; her lastborn is pawned off for her indebtedness. When she talks, she accuses her husband of not covering her shame whereas, she neither informs the husband nor takes permission from him before buying bush meat on credit.”

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Whatever we saw in the Buhari administration that informed the above has since paled into insignificance in the administration of Tinubu. This government borrows with reckless abandon! That is troubling. And unlike Buhari, who was decent about it, the current set of Onígbèsè in the Aso Rock Villa adds arrogance to the charade. This is why, when he had nothing more to tell us all, Tinubu said that our level of indebtedness had not reached the leprosy stage where no nation would want to touch us.

Whatever Tinubu said during the encounter, his spokesman, Bayo Onanuga, further amplified. In his criticism of the borrowing spree of this government, Peter Obi, the 2023 Labour Party (LP) presidential candidate, said that “Borrowing is not only leprosy, but a killer cancer when it is borrowed for consumption and not production as it is in Nigeria today.” He further lamented the nation’s “Debt that is not tied to measurable economic value; debt that does not translate into jobs, growth, or improved living standards for the Nigerian people.”

Onanuga, responding to Obi, said that the opposition politician was “bringing up the same old arguments again with your sensationalist approach.” Like his master, Onanuga stressed that “…Every sovereign nation borrows money, and as President Tinubu correctly pointed out, borrowing is not a disease. If you really want to know, the government has been taking loans to pay for important infrastructure projects, not to spend on everyday things. The fact that we are getting money and have lenders who are willing to lend shows that our country is trustworthy and able to pay back the money.”

I read Onanuga’s position, and I wondered if ‘silence is no longer golden’, as we were told, especially when one does not have something intelligent to say! How can borrowing become an ornament that a government should wear like a medal, the way Onanuga deodorised it? So, if every nation of the world wants to lend us money, we should take all the loans with reckless abandon, the way the government, the ‘old activist’, is defending does? And, if we may ask: what are the “important infrastructure projects” Onanuga is talking about?

Do they include the $2.7 billion borrowed from the World Bank by this administration in 2023, part of which is the $700 million loan taken for adolescent girls’ secondary education that we have nothing to show for except the daily kidnapping of our school boys and girls up North? Or the preposterous $750 million loan for power sector recovery, only for the Aso Rock Villa to detach itself from the National Grid?

Can we also ask Onanuga if his “important infrastructure projects” for which this government took a World Bank loan of $4.25 billion in 2024, include the $1.57 billion loan to strengthen human capital, improve health for women and children, and build climate resilience, without anything to show for it? What about the $357 million, $57 million, and $86 million loans for rural road access and agricultural marketing projects, in a country where bandits, herdsmen and terrorists don’t allow farmers to go to their farms?

Is the 2025 World Bank loan of $2.695 billion, part of which $500 million was said to have been for education under the HOPE Education loan, or the $253 million and $247 million for NG-CARES, also part of Onanuga’s “important infrastructure projects?” What sort of awkward reasoning governs this nation?

Can someone please help tell those in power and their defenders that figures don’t lie! According to the Debt Management Office (DMO), Nigeria’s total public debt in 2015 was approximately N12.12 trillion to N12.6 trillion ($63–$64 billion). Various independent reports confirmed that figure, which is said to include both domestic and external debt stocks, representing the total liability at the time the administration of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan ended in May 2015.

But by December 31, 2023, according to the DMO, the nation’s total public debt was N97.34 trillion (US$108.23 billion). Again, the figure includes the external and domestic debt of the Federal Government, the 36 state governments, and the Federal Capital Territory.

Fast forward to the three-year-old administration of President Tinubu, Nigeria’s total public debt is projected to exceed N159 trillion (approx. $110 billion, “driven by a N68.32 trillion budget that relies heavily on borrowing. The government has allocated roughly ₦15.81 trillion for debt servicing (interest and fees) in 2026 alone, highlighting a severe debt service burden on the economy.”

Pray, what do you call a disease that makes a government spend over 80% of its revenue to service debt, if not ACUTE LEPROSY? What can be more cancerous than a government which borrows to satisfy the President’s fantasies at the expense of good living conditions for the citizenry? How do you describe a government which goes a-borrowing to finance its own budgets if not a leprous and cancerous government?

And since Onanuga has deliberately chosen not to understand why the government he defends has “lenders who are willing to lend” as he posted in response to Obi, I suggest, and very strongly too, that he takes a simple tutorial in Plutarch, who posits that “…the Persians regard lying as the second among wrong-doings and being in debt as the first; for lying is often practiced by debtors; but money-lenders lie more than debtors and cheat in their ledgers, when they write that they give so-and‑so much to so-and‑so, though they really give less…” This is why Onanuga and his ilk will be eternally wrong in their celebration of “lenders who are willing to lend.”

The Greek philosopher adds in the piece that, while he had “not declared war against the money-lenders”, he must point it out “to those who are ready to become borrowers how much disgrace and servility there is in the practice and that borrowing is an act of extreme folly and weakness.”

In concluding the piece, “That We Ought Not to Borrow”, Plutarch cautions thus: “Have you money? Do not borrow because you are not in need. Have you no money? Do not borrow, for you will not be able to pay….therefore in your own case do not heap up upon poverty, which has many attendant evils, the perplexities which arise from borrowing and owing, and do not deprive poverty of the only advantage which it possesses over wealth, namely freedom from care; since by doing so you will incur the derision of the proverb: I am unable to carry the goat, put the ox then upon me.” May the cosmos give us the grace to learn from ancient wisdom!

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OPINION: APC’s Politics Of Consensus

Published

18 hours ago

May 4, 2026

Editor

By Lasisi Olagunju

In a democracy, victory won through real elections brings enduring legitimacy. ‘On Your Mandate We Shall Stand’ was composed and sung for Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola because he submitted his ambition to a competitive process: he had a competent opponent, votes were cast, counted, and he won. The song, its defiance, and resilience followed that mandate because it was legitimate.

Those who chant similar slogans today may find themselves clutching empty matchboxes tomorrow if they continue to sidestep competitive elections. A democratic seat secured through elite manipulation and backroom agreement cannot command enduring popular support, especially when those same elites decide to take it back.

Nigeria today stands in the grip of what is called consensus politics; choosing candidates without the ‘trouble’ of voting. We are even scheming to elect a president next year without the inconvenience of election. Good luck to all of us.

At the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066, the Norman king, William the Conqueror, defeated King Harold II and went on to become King of England. Historians note that the victory set off sweeping changes across the British Isles. They say by force of arms, William took the crown and went on to remake the Church, the palace, and the culture of England. They say he did more than change the English crown; his victory remade the English language through a deep infusion of Norman/Latin forms. The consequence is that more than 60 percent of English words now carry Latin parentage.

One such word is ‘consensus’, from the Latin ‘consentīre’—“to feel together”,

“to agree,” “to be in harmony,” “to concur.”

The rains started beating that word a long time ago. Language historians note that words which experienced long migration often shed their original sense of shared feeling and acquire more instrumental meanings. So it is with ‘consensus’ in today’s political usage.

Somewhere along its long journey from Latin to modern political speech, ‘consensus’ lost its warmth. The distortion of the word and its meaning is no longer abstract. In our usage today, ‘consensus’ no longer suggests a meeting of minds; it often signals a decision already made; an outcome proclaimed from above and affirmed below. A word that once implied a genuine convergence of minds now describes an order from the throne, delivered through courtiers.

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The parties—especially the ruling APC—have stretched and inverted the meaning of the word. In APC’s political dictionary, “consensus” increasingly reads as the will of the president, not the outcome of deliberation.

As we had it in Sani Abacha’s transition programme, we think any of today’s living parties that make it limping to the ballot in January 2027 should reach an ‘agreement’ and adopt one person as the consensus presidential candidate. That is how rich our imaginative thoughts are and how limitless our capacity for distortion of values is.

Within both party and polity, the president now embodies what Aristide R. Zolberg calls “the chief executive who is also the supreme legislator (the chief elector), and the ultimate arbiter of conflict.” Because the president is what he has always been, photo ops are staged as proof of order, while his name, cast as the final authority in the APC’s doctrine of “consensus”, is invoked to sanctify outcomes.

The APC set its neighbour’s hut on fire and rejoiced; now the blaze has caught its own roof. Across the states, the refrain is the same: the abuse of ‘consensus,’ with the president inserted into the process as decider-in-chief.

Oyo State offers a very sharp illustration. Some APC leaders, on Friday, announced Senator Sharafadeen Alli as the party’s “consensus” governorship candidate, invoking the president’s name. Within hours, former minister, Adebayo Adelabu, pushed back, also invoking the same presidency, and declaring that he remained in the race as the president’s “son”. When two rival claims lean on the same authority, what is presented as consensus begins to look like a contest of endorsements, not agreement.

Our fathers say the medicine must match the disease. Bí àrùn búburú bá wòlú, oògùn búburú la fi ńwò ó (When the affliction is severe, the remedy cannot be gentle). That may explain why the rhetoric of resistance has turned harsh. One does not need a keen ear to catch the crudity in what now issues from Oyo APC bigwigs. It is a stream of curses and abuse, imprecations without restraint. And one must ask: why?

Beyond Oyo, across Nigeria, north to south, we hear cries of plots to impose “consensus” candidates. How do you use the words ‘imposition’ and ‘consensus’ in the same sentence? Imposition comes from above; the other grows from below. ‘Imposition’ is force without consent. ‘Consensus’ is agreement without force. The two opposites appearing as companions presents a contradiction, and politics is autological, a self-defining oxymoron. You will likely agree with my linguistic choice if you believe the popular (but etymologically false joke) that “politics” comes from ‘poly’ (many) and ‘tics’ (blood-sucking parasites).

In Nasarawa, former Inspector-General of Police and APC governorship aspirant, Mohammed Adamu Abubakar, rejected any move towards “consensus,” insisting that only a direct primary could confer legitimacy. To him and others in the race, what is being dressed up as consensus is little more than unilateralism in softer language.

In Ondo, there are subdued objections to what the party may decide on Ondo South senatorial ticket. Aspirants for the Ondo East/Ondo West federal constituency have raised similar alarms, accusing party leaders of plotting to impose a candidate under the convenient cover of consensus. Their warning is simple: once choice is managed from above, internal democracy is already compromised.

In Yobe State, Senator Ibrahim Mohammed Bomai, Kashim Musa Tumsah, and Usman Alkali Baba—three APC governorship aspirants—have rejected the party’s endorsement of former Secretary to the State Government, Alhaji Baba Malam Wali, as its “consensus” candidate for the 2027 election.

Bomai’s choice of words is telling. He described the “consensus” imposition as an affront to democratic principles. He warned against the steady replacement of popular choice with elite arrangement. No individual, he argued, regardless of past office or political influence, has the authority to determine the leadership of millions behind closed doors. Leadership, he insisted, must emerge through a process that is free, fair, and transparent—not one brokered in the name of “consensus.” Quoting him directly, he said: “We categorically reject this attempt to subvert due process. We reject the culture of imposition. We reject any scheme that undermines fairness, equity, and the democratic rights of our people.” Those words give voice to what dissatisfied but muted APC leaders and members in Kwara, Ogun and beyond are saying in uneasy, even fearful, silence.

Lagos, for now, appears to be the exception. The emergence of Dr Obafemi Hamzat as the APC governorship candidate quietly followed a process that bore the marks of consultation rather than imposition. Hamzat combines the fine qualities of a gentleman with humble erudition. In a field without a formidable opposition, his path to final victory looks smooth. Congratulations may therefore be in order.

Choice of candidates by consensus is good, cheap and safe if it comes with clean hands. Going far back into our beginning, we find that real consensus is not alien to the African political tradition. Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu (1931 – 2022), in his reflections on ‘Democracy and Consensus in African Traditional Politics’, argues that decision-making in pre-colonial African societies was anchored in discussion and agreement rather than imposition.

He draws, for instance, on the words of Zambia’s founding father, Kenneth Kaunda, who observed that “in our original societies, we operated by consensus. An issue was talked out in solemn conclave until such time as agreement could be achieved.” Similarly, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, in 1961, noted that “the African concept of democracy is similar to that of the ancient Greeks, from whose language the word ‘democracy’ originated. To the Greeks, democracy meant simply “government by discussion among equals.” The people discussed, and when they reached an agreement, the result was a “people’s decision.” In African society, he said, the traditional method of conducting affairs is “by free discussion… the elders sit under the big trees and talk until they agree.”

Our politics has refused to benefit from that past of refined due process. There is no “people” in today’s decisions. And we expect today’s “consensus” arrangement to yield good governance. No. It will not. It can only produce a system that answers to kings, kingmakers, and the capos who guard their power.

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When a ruling party actively promotes “consensus” after weakening the opposition, it risks sliding toward a very bad form of authoritarianism. It also strips even its own members of the power to choose their candidates. As Kwasi Wiredu observed, both Kenneth Kaunda and Julius Nyerere defended systems that claimed consensus but, in practice, narrowed choice.

The Yoruba, watching what has become of this democracy in the hands of its custodians, would say: when a wise man cooks yams in a mad fashion, the discerning take theirs with sticks. That is àbọ̀ ọ̀rọ̀—half a word—and for the wise, it is enough.

What passes for consensus in Nigeria today therefore demands closer scrutiny. When outcomes are settled before conversations begin, when dissent is managed rather than engaged, and when unanimity is announced rather than negotiated, consensus ceases to be the product of dialogue; it becomes instead an instrument of control.

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” In politics, as William Shakespeare suggests, opposites often blur; good and evil do not always stand apart; they, in fact, reinforce each other. Bernard Crick, in ‘In Defence of Politics’ (1962), reminds us that politics thrives on contradiction, that it is “a creative compromise… a diverse unity.”

All dictionaries insist that “consensus” and ‘coercion’ are not the same. Our politicians, however, behave as though they are—indeed, as though one can be made to pass for the other. Once coercion learns to speak the language of consensus, it no longer needs to persuade; it only needs to declare. And declarations are fast, sweet and cheap.

But there are consequences.

Someone said “every cheap choice is a lost chance at joy.” The quest for easy victory is behind the current ‘consensus’ frenzy. But it may be the death of this democracy.

In Yoruba, some proverbs come as stories. Take this: “All the animals in the forest assembled and decided to make ìkokò (hyena) their asípa (secretary). Ikoko was happy to hear the news, but a short while later he burst into tears. Asked what the matter was, he replied that he was sad because he realised that perhaps they (his electors) might revisit the matter and reverse themselves.”

Professor Oyekan Owomoyela, from whom I got the proverb, explains what it says: “even in times of good fortune one should be mindful of the possibility of reversal.”

The moral is that those who donate victory cheaply through agreement can agree again to whimsically annul the victory without consequences.