Author: Jonathan Nda-Isaiah

NOW that the dust has settled on most of the party primaries, let us have an honest conversation about what we actually witnessed. The losers are still smarting. The winners are gloating. And the rest of us are sitting here asking the same uncomfortable question we always ask after every election cycle in this country did any of this have to be this ugly? Cast your mind back. The National Assembly, in what looked like a genuine reform moment, removed the delegate system from the Electoral Act and handed us the direct primary and consensus options as cleaner alternatives. The…

THE news that former President Goodluck Jonathan may be nursing serious ambitions to return to Aso Rock in 2027 hit me the way most political gossip from Abuja always hits me ,I filed it as beer parlour speculation and moved on with my day. Even during the build-up to the 2023 elections there were persistent rumours that Jonathan was going to throw his hat in. He didn’t. So forgive me for not rushing to take this seriously. Then I saw the court filing. Jonathan was challenging the constitutionality of the provision that bars him from taking a second oath of…

PETER Obi means well. I will give him that much. The Labour Party presidential candidate turned Nigerian Democratic Congress ( NDC) likely flagbearer has been consistent on at least one thing since he entered the 2027 race ,he wants to be a one-term president. “I would not stay a day longer than four years, even with a gun to my head,” he told News Central TV. Those are strong words. The kind of conviction you rarely hear from politicians in this country, where staying in power is treated like a hereditary right and term limits are just suggestions for other…

SOMETHING is quietly wrong inside the ruling All Progressives Congress, and the party’s handlers either don’t see it or they don’t care. Across the country, videos have been circulating of grown men , aspiring governors, would-be senators, House of Representatives hopefuls weeping like they just lost a parent. Not because they contested and lost. Because they were not even allowed to contest in the first place. The APC’s consensus arrangement has effectively slammed the door on their political ambitions, and the party is behaving as if this is entirely normal. I want to be fair here. I can understand the…

A 28-YEAR-OLD man named Mene Ogidi sat on the ground in Effurun, Delta State on April 26, 2026. His hands were tied behind his back with a rope. He was not running. He was not fighting. He was begging. “Officers, abeg, I go tell you everything. Na my friend deceived me. E dey Sapele. I go carry you go the place.” Someone filmed what happened next. ASP Nuhu Usman cocked his rifle and shot Mene Ogidi at point-blank range. In broad daylight. With the man’s hands still tied behind his back. The officers then lifted the body into a police…

SINCE 1999 when Nigeria returned to democratic rule, no word has been weaponised more selectively in our political dictionary than “zoning.” Mention it at the national level and you will get a standing ovation from every corner of the country. Bring it up at the state level and suddenly everyone develops a convenient case of amnesia. That selective memory is exactly the problem. The truth is this: you cannot shout yourself hoarse demanding that the presidency be rotated to your region while back home in your own state, the same doctrine you are preaching is being violated with impunity. That…

WHEN news filtered in last week that Brigadier General Oseni Omoh Braimah, commander of the 29 Task Force Brigade, had been killed in a coordinated terrorist attack on his own Benisheikh headquarters in Borno, my heart sank. Three days later, when reports came in that yet another commanding officer, this time the man in charge of the 242 Battalion in Monguno, had been killed alongside six soldiers, my heart sank deeper. Two senior officers killed in three days. Yet you would not know it from the way the news has come and gone. The average Nigerian on the street, the…

WHEN news filtered in that the African Democratic Congress had marched to the Indepeendent National Electoral Commission(INEC )headquarters in Abuja, demanding the resignation of chairman Joash Amupitan, and that they opened proceedings by singing the old national anthem, I must confess, I paused. Not because the gesture wasn’t dramatic enough. Because it was perhaps too dramatic. There is something almost theatrical about the image: former Senate President David Mark, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, former Governors Rauf Aregbesola and Chibuike Amaechi, Labour Party’s 2023 presidential candidate Peter Obi, and the Kwankwasiya movement’s Rabiu Kwankwaso all standing shoulder to shoulder, belting…

JUST when you think the worst is over, Plateau reminds you that in Nigeria, the worst is always warming up for an encore. On Sunday night, gunmen stormed the Angwan Rukuba community in Jos, killing at least 30 people. Thirty human beings. Not combatants, not soldiers on a battlefield ordinary citizens going about their lives in a university community that should be a place of learning and aspiration. Instead it became another killing field. And if you are wondering why this keeps happening, the answer is painfully simple: because nobody pays for it. Nobody ever pays for it. Governor Caleb…

A VIDEO went viral recently showing a male student attacking a female student in what was described as a retaliatory assault. Nigerians were outraged. Social media erupted. Suddenly everybody became a saint. Everybody had an opinion on bullying. Parents who have never attended a single PTA meeting were posting long sermons about discipline and moral values. Politicians who bully entire populations for a living were issuing statements condemning violence in schools. The irony was so thick you could cut it with a machete. Let me state clearly: what happened in that school was wrong. On March 5, two 14-year-old female…

JUST when Nigerians thought the worst was behind us, the ghosts came back. Last Monday, suicide bombers struck at the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital and two markets ,Post Office and Monday Market killing at least 23 people and wounding over 108 others. The bombs went off at the entrance of a hospital. Let that sink in. A place where people go to save lives became a place where lives were snuffed out. For those of us who lived through the dark years between 2011 and 2015, the images from Maiduguri last week were painfully familiar. Going to church or…

“PDP will rule Nigeria for the next 60 years.” That was Prince Vincent Ogbulafor in 2008, chest out, voice full of the kind of confidence only a Nigerian politician swimming in power can muster. Reading that statement today feels like discovering a letter from someone who predicted the Titanic would make three more voyages. Less than two decades later, the Peoples Democratic Party is not planning its 60-year reign. It is planning its funeral. During the week, the Court of Appeal in Abuja dismissed the PDP’s appeal against the October 31 judgment by Justice James Omotosho of the Federal High…

ON Monday, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu nominated Taiwo Oyedele as the Minister of State for Finance, replacing Dr Doris Anite-Uzoka, who will now move to the Ministry of Budget and National Planning as Minister of State. That makes it her third portfolio in this administration. Three portfolios in under three years. If that does not tell you something about the nature of this cabinet, I don’t know what will. With Oyedele’s nomination ,he was until now the chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms the cabinet has ballooned to 51 ministers. Fifty-one. That is arguably the…

LAST weekend, the Federal Capital Territory area council elections held and for the first time in recent memory, all eyes were on what is usually a low-key affair. The reasons are not far-fetched. The opposition African Democratic Congress (ADC) wanted to prove a point that the groundswell of discontent against the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) had translated into real electoral muscle. The stakes were high enough that former Anambra State Governor Peter Obi and former Vice President Atiku Abubakar showed up in Abuja to campaign for the ADC candidate for Abuja Municipal Area Council, Dr. Moses Paul. It was…

SINCE 1999, every government that has come to power has made fighting corruption its number one priority. President Olusegun Obasanjo created the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). President Muhammadu Buhari rode the anti-corruption horse all the way to Aso Rock twice. Now President Bola Tinubu is singing the same song. Twenty-six years of anti-corruption speeches, probes, task forces, and asset declarations. Yet Nigeria still ranks 145th out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index. You want to know why nothing changes? It’s not because our institutions are weak, though they are. It’s not because the laws…

NIGERIANS love a good buzzword. We grab onto one, hold it tight, and convince ourselves that once we crack that one code, the country will transform overnight into Singapore. We did it with sovereign national conference. We did it with restructuring. And now the latest silver bullet? Electronic transmission of election results. Before the political class lights up social media with accusations of me being anti-democracy, let me state clearly ,I support anything that makes our elections cleaner and more credible. Any sane Nigerian should. But I have a problem with how we approach these things. We treat every new…

NEPA promised us no more blackouts by 1986.We’re in 2026. Two national grid collapses in the first week of January alone.If you’re not laughing at the absurdity, you’re probably crying in the dark right now because there’s no light to read this column. I saw that old newspaper headline recently “NEPA: No more blackouts: 1986 deadline looms” and I didn’t know whether to laugh or weep. Forty years later, we’re still having the same conversation. Forty years of promises. Forty years of “the government is working on it.” Forty years of darkness. The question every Nigerian asks is simple: why…

TWO weeks ago, Kano State governor Abba Yusuf defected from New Nigeria People Party (NNPP ) to the All Progressive Congress(APC) That’s not what got me thinking. What stopped me cold was reading about Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso’s son resigning from the cabinet. I didn’t even know the man had a son in government. Which tells you how normalised this whole thing has become, we don’t even notice anymore when politicians slot their children into positions of power. Look around. The pattern is everywhere. Bello El-Rufai, son of former Kaduna governor Nasir El-Rufai, has been in the House of Representatives since…

ON Sunday, terrorists walked into three churches in Kurmin Wali, Kajuru Local Government Area of Kaduna State, blocked the exits, and marched 172 worshippers into the forest at gunpoint. Nine escaped. The rest 163 people, including children remain in captivity. The Christian Association of Nigeria reported it immediately. Eyewitnesses confirmed it. Families wept. Clergy raised the alarm. And the Kaduna State Police Commissioner, Muhammad Rabiu, stood before cameras on Monday and called it “falsehood peddled by conflict entrepreneurs.”Let that sink in for a moment. In an area that everyone and I mean everyone knows is an epicentre of banditry, where…

THE Katsina State Government wants to release 70 suspected bandits as part of a “peace deal. “Let me say this plainly: this is madness dressed up as policy. While our soldiers are dying in Zamfara, Kaduna, and Niger State fighting these same criminals, Katsina wants to throw open the prison gates and declare peace in our time. The state Commissioner for Internal Security, Nasir Muazu, says this is like “wartime prisoner exchange. Really? Prisoner exchange? In a proper war, you exchange soldiers, uniformed combatants fighting for recognised authorities. What Katsina is doing is releasing kidnappers, murderers, and rapists who’ve terrorised…