The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on Wednesday described the blueprint presented by the All Progressives Congress (APC) to the British House of Commons by leader of the opposition group, Bola Tinubu as a basket of empty shells.
It also described the event itself as an attempt to deodorize the stench of inadequacies that have dogged the yet to be registered party.
“It was a letdown yesterday as the leader of the ACN, Bola Tinubu stunned an international audience with the emptiness he unveiled as the emancipation package of the APC,” National Publicity Secretary of PDP, Chief Olisa Metuh wrote in a statement.
“It is an agenda grossly lacking in essentials, in fundamentals; deep in cosmetics, devoid of originality, laced with half-truths and outright lies and grittily divorced from the substance and incidentals that ginger national growth. It is a basket of promise filled with shells. Nothing exposed the un-seriousness of Tinubu’s presentation than his loud silence on corruption and the alternative roadmap to the extant security challenges, which the opposition coalition has made so much noise about.
“Members of the British parliament must have giggled and waited in vain for Mr. Tinubu to unveil the much vaunted opposition agenda on anti- terrorism and corruption. Is it that the APC has no answers to these or that Tinubu deliberately skipped them?
“Here, curious minds reflect on two things. The PDP led Federal Government has applied the master strategy that is already yielding results; thus leaving the opposition bereft of fresh, better dimension as an alternative or that the man who appeared in the British House of Commons is the least qualified to speak on corruption and terrorism before such a self respecting and well meaning assembly with an in-depth grip on happenings in Nigeria.”
According to the ruling party, the ACN leader has unsettled issues of corruption and questionable credentials while it is obvious to all Nigerians that the leaders of the opposition are the chief promoters of insurgency in the country. It added that Tinubu’s voyage of ridicule turned full circle as in his entourage was also the speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly — a man currently standing trial for acts of corruption. It wondered how the delegation could have made a presentation on corruption?
Writing further, the PDP official stated: “On the issue of national social security, the ruling party wondered why the states under the opposition have not been implementing it if it is such a laudable programme; knowing that under Nigeria’s federalism, the states suffer no restriction over such matters.
“Why is the opposition waiting to get to the centre before implementing this? Why did Tinubu not implement this as Lagos State Governor for eight years? Why are the six ACN states over which Tinubu is the overlord not implementing this? Promises are easily made.
“If Tinubu as Lagos Governor denied workers wage increment and denied pensioners the benefits of decades of service, how could the APC government which he canvasses take care of the aged and the vulnerable under the social security programme? Nigerians need eggs no doubt but not their empty shells!
“Similarly, the school feeding programme which the APC paraded as one of its cardinal agenda is in fact a programme under various stages of implementation since it was launched in September 2005 by former President Olusegun Obasanjo. In fact, some of the PDP states have gone beyond meal-a-day to other accompaniments that make learning easy for the Nigerian child.”
According to the PDP, “While Tinubu was in the UK unfolding the opposition agenda on education, teachers in Ogun, an opposition state, locked the classrooms and chased school children home in strike over lingering issues of service. In Ekiti and Osun states also under the ACN, strikes have been the order of school curriculum for over a year now. Who then takes the opposition serious?”
PDP reminded Tinubu that the same international community before which he tried to demonize Nigerian electoral process had adjudged the 2011 general elections as the most credible in the history of the country. It recalled that Jonathan was in Edo State prior to the election won by Tinubu’s party to assure the people of credible poll and delivered same.
“Tinubu’s sermon on credible election and the state of democracy in Nigeria flies in the face of consistent knockings of the shenanigans that play out in the opposition states as local government elections.
“What then is credible election? Who listens to the hyperactive lies of the Nigerian opposition than those of their hue who already know they don’t have the structures and the unity (already seen in wide division APC leadership slots) to win the 2015 general elections and are therefore fashioning out reasons well ahead of time.
“We once more challenge the opposition to a debate on the alternative roadmap to what the PDP led Federal Government is doing at present. With an empirical comparison of the pace of development at the centre and the states under the opposition on one hand and these states against those under the PDP on the other, Nigerians are no doubt a better judge of who enjoys their mandate in 2015.”
Earlier ACN Leader, Bola Ahmed Tinubu in his presentation before the British House of Commons, revealed how the APC would sacrifice personal political ambition to deepen democracy instead of the current administration’s disregard for votes, evidenced by the controversies that have followed the recent election of the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF).
He promised that APC would combat poverty, saying it would pursue an aggressive plan to lift at least 20 per cent of Nigerians living in poverty out of that level in its first four years. He also expressed assurance that APC would oust President Gooodluck Jonathan from the Presidency in the 2015 general elections.
“I do not support the Jonathan government but I oppose anyone seeking its premature, illegal end. Let this government end at the appointed time. But let it end through the ballot box. Then I shall say good riddance,” he said.
“The central focus of our efforts in the coming years must be the implementation of the most extensive and aggressive plan to lift as many Nigerians out of poverty as possible. Our desire is to be able to move at least 20% of our people out of poverty (defined as earning less than a dollar a day) in the first four years of our administration.
“Besides fast-tracking the construction of Independent Power Plants, IPPs, in designated industrial zones, the APC government would also initiate the construction of trans-state highways, such as the speed train that will connect the nation’s zones and move people, fuel, farm produce and goods, cost-efficiently across the country.”
On APC’s propose national social security scheme, he said: “First, we intend to establish a partly contributory National Social Security Scheme. Some categories of the poor and vulnerable will benefit with or without contribution. We believe that every Nigerian above the age of 60 who is not under a pension scheme and also qualifies as poor by a ‘Means Test’ must be given a monthly stipend. Widows and the disabled proved by a ‘Means Test’ to be poor must also be provided a monthly stipend whenever they are unemployed. They become disentitled when they are employed.
“An important component of state intervention to redress poverty is the one meal a day programme for primary and secondary school pupils. The Federal government through supplemental funding will support States in providing Primary and Secondary school pupils with at least one meal a day. The immediate twin derivatives of this programme is the design to confront the extremely high incidence of malnutrition and other hunger-induced medical conditions amongst poor children as well as eliminating the recruiting grounds for illegal activities.
“Also, the programme will stimulate demand thereby boosting local businesses in poultry, bakery and juice and packing industries. This will employ millions of graduates and non-graduates. Then, we can start to talk truly about the dividends of not just democracy but of impactful leadership.”
“In Nigeria, the tenets of basic arithmetic have little application concerning elections. Votes do not count, they are concocted. Elections are not necessarily won by the candidate with the highest votes. Elections are won by the candidate of the powerful and mighty. Consequently, a group comprising all the nations’ governors could not even conduct a simple 35-person election without a disputed outcome.
“This little episode would be laughable if it were an isolated incident. However, it is emblematic of a larger, more troubling pattern that portends calamity if not arrested. With this recent experience, I fear the length of those in power would go and the means they would employ to manipulate results when the battleground is the entire nation and the stakes are the general elections in 2015. The NGF debacle symbolizes a disdain for democracy and the popular will. If we are to save Nigeria, we must rescue the electoral process from its abusers.”
Tinubu promised that APC would introduce electronic voting, which has been well-accepted and practised in many African countries; and as well halt the current government’s culture of corruption.
“This current Nigerian government is a retrogressive one. Much of what they claim as growth is but the harsh redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top. The bottom gets squeezed while the top expands. They are serving us the salad of corruption. They consume our today and squander the nation’s tomorrow. For 14 years, the PDP-led government cannot turn anything around. A new leadership is required to put a stop to this,” he went on.
“Our people live in dire straits. But this government would rather waste the money than spend it on the public benefit. They do not believe the people are worth it.
The money is more important. They claim to be hoarding it for that mythical rainy day, when most Nigerians are drowning in poverty. If that is not troubled waters, I don’t know what new calamity will make this government ever recognize the need to build the new bridges needed for the people to cross over into prosperity.
“I have said this before and I shall say it again. These leaders would rather save the money and spend the people. We progressives would rather spend the money to save the people.
“It is for this reason- to save the nation from the stranglehold of permanent poverty and poor governance – that the members of the progressive opposition political parties have decided to put aside personal ambition (including my own ambition) to form a new party, the All Progressives Congress, APC. We do this because Nigeria has entered a critical state of economic depression.”
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The Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ola Olukoyede, has offered whistleblowers between 2.5 per cent and 5 per cent of recovered stolen Nigerian assets held abroad for information that leads to their recovery.
Olukoyede disclosed this on Wednesday while delivering a lecture at the Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime in the United Kingdom.
According to him, the ability of EFCC operatives to trace assets, cooperation from the judiciary and access to credible intelligence have played important roles in the commission’s success in securing non-conviction-based forfeiture orders.
He also described the EFCC as having some of the best investigators in the world and stressed the importance of protecting and encouraging whistleblowers.
He said anyone with credible information about stolen Nigerian assets taken or hidden anywhere in the world could receive between 2.5 per cent and 5 per cent of the recovered assets as an incentive, with payment made after the recovery.
Olukoyede further revealed that the EFCC had forfeited cash and assets worth more than $500 million to the Federal Government within the past three years.
He cited several cases involving the recovery and forfeiture of assets, including cases linked to a former Chairman of the Central Bank of Nigeria and a former Attorney-General of the Federation.
The EFCC chairman explained that the commission is legally empowered to seek the forfeiture of suspected proceeds of crime by applying to the High Court for an order. He said the process is similar to procedures used in countries such as Australia and Canada.
Olukoyede also recalled a case involving an aircraft allegedly acquired by an individual who was accused of receiving about $30 million in bribes in connection with a power project. He said the aircraft was forfeited about three months ago and had subsequently been added to the presidential air fleet.
He also referred to a property containing about 753 housing units that was forfeited from a former CBN governor, against whom the EFCC has filed criminal charges in three courts.
Speaking about the immediate past Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, Olukoyede said the EFCC opened an investigation following allegations of abuse of office. He claimed that investigators traced about 57 properties to Malami and that approximately 48 of them had been forfeited.
The EFCC chairman further mentioned the forfeiture of a private university allegedly linked to a director in the Federal Ministry of Health. According to him, the official voluntarily surrendered the property following the commission’s investigation.
Olukoyede said the measures demonstrate the importance of asset tracing, international cooperation, credible intelligence and whistleblower protection in the fight against financial crime and the recovery of stolen public assets.
The Dangote Petroleum Refinery has raised concerns over the growing volume of imported petrol entering Nigeria, warning that it could be forced to export more of its own production if the trend continues.
The refinery said imported Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) made up roughly 43 per cent of the petrol supplied to the Nigerian market in July. It argued that the development was creating serious difficulties for a domestic refinery with the capacity to produce enough fuel for the country.
Dangote Refinery explained that it has maintained sizeable petrol reserves since commencing operations to ensure that consumers across Nigeria have access to a reliable supply. Keeping those reserves, it noted, requires substantial expenditure on storage, transportation and working capital.
However, the refinery said the continued granting of import licences without adequate information about expected import volumes has made it increasingly difficult to determine how much petrol should be produced and stored for the local market.
The company said holding large quantities of petrol becomes financially burdensome when there is no certainty about how much imported fuel will compete for the same market. It therefore considers exporting surplus stocks a more commercially viable option than allowing them to remain in storage indefinitely.
According to the refinery, increased exports in recent months should not be interpreted as evidence that Nigeria lacks sufficient refining capacity. Instead, the exports are being driven by excess stock resulting from unpredictable import volumes.
Dangote Refinery maintained that it remains fully committed to supplying the Nigerian market and has the capacity to meet or surpass the country's petrol requirements. It said its decision to export surplus products was aimed at managing inventory efficiently and avoiding unnecessary storage and financing expenses.
The refinery also warned that market disruptions caused by excessive imports could make it harder for domestic refiners to accurately predict demand. Any resulting supply problems, it said, should not automatically be blamed on local refineries.
It urged regulators and other industry stakeholders to improve transparency around petrol imports and strengthen coordination within the downstream petroleum market.
The company argued that policies that give greater support to domestic refining would help Nigeria reduce its dependence on imported fuel, conserve foreign exchange, strengthen energy security and maximise the economic benefits of investments in local refining infrastructure.
Dangote Refinery said it remains prepared to supply the country but stressed that a more predictable and transparent market environment is necessary for efficient production and inventory management.
Business
In The Spotlight
A group of heartless carpetbaggers have captured the Nigerian state, and it appears that they, their biological and political descendants, will hold the levers of government and access to Nigeria’s commonwealth for a long time to come.
When you consider news reports of how previous and current state actors steal public funds, buy choice properties in the toniest districts of Nigeria’s major cities, acquire private jets, and even establish private universities, you wonder if some people have more than two heads, to adopt a Yoruba phrase.
Either because of an inability to deliver the greatest good to the greatest number of Nigerian citizens, or by intention, the political elite have kept the people poor, causing them to depend on the largeness of heart of the same elite to meet their existential needs.
That explains why poor, downtrodden, and unconnected Nigerians eagerly collect crumbs of measly N5,000, rice, gari and whatever else the politicians offer to obtain their election votes or acquiescence after rigging the elections.
When watching an economically disadvantaged individual tell a politician who is seeking to become a legislator the good news that his wife just had a new baby, and he needed to prepare for the naming ceremony, it felt like the oppressed poor were enabling his oppressor to further oppress him.
It was like the classic case of Stockholm syndrome, of victims collaborating with their “captors” to cement the oppressive stranglehold that they already had over the state and the commonwealth of the nation, thus unwittingly arresting their own future development.
A running mate to a former governorship candidate in a Southwestern state hilariously regaled Nigerians with the story of how constituents would have raided all the alcoholic drinks in his refrigerator in the early hours of the morning, even before he woke from the hectic campaign tour of the previous day.
The political elite have practically cornered the Nigerian state for themselves, children, tribesmen and acolytes, and have devised a way to admit only those that they have found to be loyal, or pliable, into their rank of oppressors.
The oppression of the citizens of Nigeria is easily accomplished because of the high illiteracy level amongst the poor masses. The use of the weapon of illiteracy is more evident in Northern Nigeria, whose political leaders somehow turn a blind eye to the illiteracy and underdevelopment of their people.
In 2024, UNICEF revealed that out of Nigeria’s 18.3 million out-of-school children, about 12.1 million, or 66 per cent, were resident in the Northwest and Northeast regions. Yet, instead of expanding educational facilities and opportunities, some Northern governors are arranging mass weddings for children who are hardly out of their teen years.
And this is not to deny the weaponisation of illiteracy even in Obafemi Awolowo’s Western Region, which is regarded as the Athens of Nigeria, after its pre-Independence head start of free, universal and compulsory primary school education.
As if he had a premonition that Nigeria’s so-called democrats would eventually compromise education, to the detriment of the lowest and marginalised masses, that Karl Marx described as the “lumpen proletariat”, French political thinker Montesquieu argued a long time ago that “It is in a republican government that the whole power of education is required.”
Western Nigeria’s free education scheme was gradually abandoned from the days of the Second Republic when some Yoruba members of President Shehu Shagari’s political party knocked it off its bottom with the argument that “qualitative” education was better than “free” education.
It is more than a shame that a free, universal and compulsory primary school education scheme was abandoned under President Shagari, who not only was a trained teacher, but had a career as a teacher before his political career.
Awolowo had warned Nigeria’s political elite with the following quip: “The children of the poor that you failed to educate will not let your children sleep peacefully.” The insecurity that currently occurs in nearly every part of Nigeria only drives Awolowo’s point home.
Probably the realm of the Nigerian republic that has been most complicit with the carpetbagger political elite is the media, whose members either serve the elites as press secretaries who kill media brushfires, or editors who either run planted stories, or spike stories that the politicians do not want published.
The media is so compromised that it can hardly perform those responsibilities assigned to it by Section 22 of the Nigerian Constitution, which are to “be free to uphold the fundamental objectives contained in (Chapter II of the Constitution) and uphold the responsibility and accountability of the Government to the people.”
Some apologists have argued on behalf of the media that the political elite have so run the economy aground that the media, which can only thrive as commercial enterprises within Nigeria’s quasi-capitalist economy, cannot stay afloat, especially with the devastating inroads that the digital media are making into their audience, advertising revenue and profit.
The absence of regional economies, the argument goes, prevents the emergence of regional newspapers that can thrive on advertising revenues from regional companies, the way it obtains in the economies of North America and Western Europe. Many Nigerian newspapers, that are essentially regional, often pretend to be national to receive advertising revenue from companies whose market is national.
Two other collaborators of the political elite are the election management agencies and the judiciary at both the national and sub-national levels of government. The conspiracy between these agencies and the political elite is almost like that of Siamese twins conjoined by the belly button.
After the election management agencies may have deliberately bungled (especially) governorship and legislative house elections, and declared false reports, the losers, who felt that they won the election, would then approach the temple of justice, with significant financial inducement to ask for justice(?).
From that point on, the justice that both contestants hope to corruptly obtain could swing according to the heft of the naira in the Ghana-must-go bag that they will be hauling into the chambers of the denizens of the corrupted judiciary.
Thus, the “award” of electoral justice is “a matter of cash”, to quote Basi, the protagonist of “Basi & Co”, the television sitcom produced by environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who himself was denied justice from the judiciary that served the regime of General Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s most notorious military dictator.
In Nigeria, the lines of separation of powers that demarcate the duties of the three arms of government –the legislative, executive and judiciary– and the checks and balances that empower each arm to check the others have become almost irredeemably blurred.
As legislators use constituency projects as a ploy to carry out the functions of the executive, the president issues executive orders that are essentially legislative in nature. Though the judiciary does not perform the duties of the other arms, it fails to check them as it indulgently winks at their excesses.
If those who are regarded as Nigeria’s political elite really know what is in their enlightened self-interest and would like to protect the future of their descendants from what Thomas Hobbes described as a short, brutish and nasty existence, they will use their current privilege to correct the evil they have done to Nigerians.
They must urgently redeem the future before it delivers violence against their children.
By Lekan Sote
In The Spotlight
Lagos alone is worth more than Botswana, Namibia, Rwanda and Mauritius combined.
Let that sink in.
With an economy of N41.17tn — about $102bn in 2021 — Lagos State dwarfed the entire gross domestic products of four countries. Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Delta and Bayelsa sit on oil wealth that funds nations. Ogun, Anambra and Imo churn out goods, services and commerce that would make small economies jealous.
By the numbers, Nigeria’s states are giants.
But walk the streets of Lagos, and you will still find mothers cooking with firewood. Drive through Port Harcourt, and you will see communities drinking water polluted by the same oil that makes the state’s GDP glow. Visit Umuahia, Abeokuta, or Minna and ask the average trader what “trillion-naira economy” means to her dinner table.
The answer is: nothing.
That viral video telling you “10 Nigerian states are richer than countries” is both true and a lie. True, because the 2021 BudgIT figures don’t lie — Lagos at N41.17trn, Rivers at N7.96trn, and so on. A lie, because those numbers are GDP, not prosperity. They measure how much economic activity happens _in_ a place, not how much of it reaches the people who live there.
A country with $7,778 GDP per capita, like Botswana, will still feed its citizens better than a state with $102bn in total output but $2,058 per capita, like Nigeria. A state can host a port, an oil rig, and a tech hub, yet fail to build a hospital that works.
So, the real question isn’t “Which state is bigger than which country?”
The real question, and the one our governors should lose sleep over, is this: When your economy is bigger than a nation, why are your people still living like they have nothing?
In this edition of The Bottomline, we follow the money from GDP to the gutter — and ask why Nigeria’s trillion-naira states have not become trillion-naira lives.
The viral numbers are not new. They were lifted straight from BudgIT’s 2022 State of States report and reflected 2021 estimates: Lagos at N41.17tn, followed by Rivers at N7.96tn, Akwa Ibom at N7.77tn, Imo at N7.68tn, Delta at N6.19tn, Anambra at N5.14tn, Ondo at N5.10tn, Ogun at N5.03tn, Bayelsa at N4.63tn and Niger at N4.58tn.
The trick is in the timing. To pitch those 2021 figures against 2025 country GDPs is statistical fraud. Nigeria has since rebased. The NBS moved the base year from 2010 to 2019, and the whole map shifted. Lagos itself has moved on: its 2025 _Lagos Economic Development Update_ puts the state at N43.06tn in 2023, with forecasts of N54.77tn for 2024 and N66.47tn for 2025. Those are projections, not fresh NBS post-rebasing observations, but they tell you the direction: up.
There is no debate that Lagos is Nigeria’s economic engine. From a colonial port to federal capital until 1991, it never lost momentum. Today, trade, manufacturing, ports, telecoms, tech, entertainment, real estate and finance all cluster in just 3,345 square kilometres. Compare that footprint to Botswana’s 581,730 sq km, Namibia’s 825,615 sq km, Rwanda’s 26,338 sq km, and Mauritius’ 2,040 sq km. Yet in 2021, Lagos’ $102 billion economy was several times larger than Botswana’s $19.9bn, Namibia’s $15.1bn, Rwanda’s $16.4bn, and Mauritius’ $16.2bn, according to 2025 World Bank figures.
That comparison is legitimate. The conclusion people draw from it is not.
GDP tells you how much value was produced in a territory. It does not tell you who owns it, who earns it, or whether the roads work, the lights stay on, or the hospital has drugs.
A state can run a trillion-naira economy and still have mothers boiling water on firewood. A country can have a smaller GDP and deliver a better life. Look at the per capita numbers: Botswana at $7,778, Namibia at $5,309, Mauritius at $11,819. Nigeria sits at about $2,058. Even Rwanda, at just $773 per capita, has pushed its $3-a-day poverty rate down to 38.6 per cent — proof that size is not destiny.
The oil states expose the fraud most brutally. Rivers, Akwa Ibom, Delta and Bayelsa rank high because petroleum inflates their GDP. But oil wealth does not flow into state coffers in equal measure, and it certainly does not flow into household wallets. BudgIT’s own fiscal sustainability index proves this. In 2022, Rivers topped overall fiscal performance despite Lagos having the biggest economy. A big economy without revenue discipline, jobs, and services is just a billboard.
Nigeria does not have a GDP problem. We have a translation problem.
We have pockets of enormous economic power. Lagos. Rivers. Akwa Ibom. Ogun. Anambra. Delta. The output is real. What is missing is the bridge between that output and ordinary life.
Until economic activity creates real jobs, until IGR rises and addiction to federal allocation falls, until infrastructure supports production instead of strangling it, those trillion-naira figures will remain a cruel joke.
So let the video go viral. Let Lagos be “bigger than Botswana”.
But governors, commissioners, and citizens should ask only one question:
If my state can outproduce a country, why can’t it out-deliver a decent life for the people who call it home?
Until we answer that, we are not rich. We are just big.
By Raphael Mbamalu